Imperial Ottoman

Economy · In depth

Ottoman Crafts, Guilds, and Manufacturing

The esnaf guilds, the imperial workshops of Ehl-i Hiref, and the great manufacturing centers of Bursa, Edirne, Damascus, İznik, and Kütahya.

The Ottoman Empire was, for most of its history, a major manufacturing power. Its cities produced silk and cotton cloth, fine ceramics, carpets, metalwork, leather, paper, and a host of other goods that were sold both within the empire and across the world. The institutions through which that production was organized — the urban guilds called esnaf, the great palace workshops known as Ehl-i Hiref, and the regional concentrations of specialized cities — were the backbone of urban life and a major source of imperial revenue. They are an essential part of the broader history of the Ottoman economy and trade.

The esnaf guilds

The esnaf, or guilds, were the principal form of organization for urban craftsmen in the Ottoman world. Every trade had its guild, and every guild had a code of practice that governed entry, training, production, and sale. A young man entered a guild as an apprentice, usually at the age of ten or twelve, and after a period of years he became a journeyman (kalfa) and, if he proved his skill and accumulated the necessary capital, a master (usta). The master had the right to take apprentices, to employ journeymen, and to sell in the guild’s market.

The guilds were far more than economic organizations. They were religious congregations, social clubs, and quasi-political bodies. Each guild had a patron saint (often the founder or an early patron), a meeting room, and a common fund that supported members in distress, paid for funerals, and funded collective worship. The guild master (kethüda or yiğitbaşı) represented the trade before the local judge (kadi) and the governor, and the guild as a whole could petition the imperial government on matters of taxation and regulation.

The state generally supported the guilds because they made tax collection, price control, and provisioning easy. The kadi could summon the guild masters and, with their cooperation, fix the prices of bread, meat, and other staples in times of shortage. The state could also compel the guilds to supply the army, the court, and the imperial household at fixed prices. In return, the guilds enjoyed a degree of monopoly over production in their own cities.

Guild regulations were not always respected. Smuggling, substandard production, and price-cutting were common offenses, and the kadi’s court was kept busy hearing complaints. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the guild system was in decline: European manufactured goods, particularly British cotton textiles, undercut local producers, and the liberalization of trade under the capitulations made it harder to enforce monopolies.

The imperial workshops: Ehl-i Hiref

At the top of the manufacturing hierarchy stood the imperial workshop organization known as Ehl-i Hiref, the Community of the Talented. Founded in the fifteenth century and expanded under Suleiman, the Ehl-i Hiref employed several hundred master craftsmen in the Topkapı Palace complex, organized into a number of sections under a chief called the Ehl-i Hiref kethüdası. The sections included weavers, tailors, embroiderers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewelers, painters, illuminators, bookbinders, leather workers, furriers, makers of tents and wagon covers, and a small but important section of gunpowder makers and cannon founders.

The products of the Ehl-i Hiref were reserved for the court. Robes of honor, called kaftans, were given by the sultan to high officials, foreign ambassadors, and favored servants, and they were the most visible products of the workshop. The kaftans were woven from Bursa silk and embroidered with gold and silver thread. Carpets woven in the palace workshop, including prayer rugs of the finest quality, were sent to the holy cities and given as gifts. Manuscripts produced in the nakkaşhane, the imperial studio, included the great prayer books and histories that are now in the libraries of Istanbul and the great museums of Europe.

The Ehl-i Hiref was a closed corporation, organized by confession and ethnicity: Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worked in separate sections. The most senior and best-paid positions were held by Muslims, but the technical skills of the workshop were often those of Christian and Jewish craftsmen. After the seventeenth century the workshop gradually declined, and by the nineteenth century it had been reduced to a few remaining sections.

Silk: Bursa and Damascus

The most prestigious of all Ottoman manufactures was silk. Bursa silk textiles were among the most prized luxury goods of the early modern world, and they appeared in the courts of Italy, France, and England. The city of Bursa had been a center of silk production under the Seljuks and the early Ottomans, and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 gave the Ottoman silk industry direct access to European markets. Raw silk was imported from Persia through the Ottoman overland trade routes, woven into brocades and velvet in the city workshops, and exported to Italy, France, and the Ottoman court.

Damascus was a secondary but still important center of silk weaving, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Damascene silk, woven with patterns that imitated the great Mamluk and Ottoman court textiles, was famous throughout the Mediterranean, and the city was a major stop on the pilgrim trade route to Mecca.

Cotton and wool: Edirne, Salonica, and Anatolia

Cotton and woolen textiles were the staple manufactures of most Ottoman cities. Edirne, the second capital of the empire, was an important center of woolen cloth, and the Edirne wool industry produced broadcloth and lighter fabrics for the army and the court. Salonica had a substantial cotton industry, and its products were exported through the Aegean ports to Italy and France.

Anatolia produced cotton and wool on a much larger scale, particularly in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions. The growth of Smyrna as a great emporium in the eighteenth century was closely linked to the export of Anatolian cotton, and the countryside of western Anatolia was organized to supply the European textile industry. After the industrial revolution, raw cotton from Anatolia and the Balkans was exported to the mills of Manchester and Lyon, and the local handloom weavers were eventually undercut by European factory production.

Ceramics: İznik and Kütahya

The brilliant quartz-frit ceramics of İznik, produced in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are among the most admired products of the Ottoman world. The İznik industry built on a long tradition of Seljuk and Byzantine ceramic production, and it produced large plates, tiles, and architectural ornaments decorated with cobalt blue, turquoise, sage green, and the famous “Armenian bole” red. The tiles of İznik decorated the great mosques of Istanbul, Edirne, and Bursa, and İznik plates appeared in the still-life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

The İznik industry declined in the seventeenth century, partly because of competition from imported Chinese porcelain and partly because of internal problems in the workshop. The center of Ottoman ceramic production then moved to Kütahya, which produced a softer, more colorful ware that remained popular in the empire and was exported to Europe. Both centers are part of the broader story of Ottoman manufacturing and of the imperial patronage of craft production.

Metalwork and arms: Damascus

Damascus was, from the medieval period, the most important center of metalwork in the eastern Mediterranean. The city produced steel swords, knives, and armor decorated with gold and silver inlay, and the technique known as “Damascening” — in which patterns were etched into steel and filled with gold or silver wire — was famous in Europe. The firearms workshops of Damascus, organized by the guild of the sinekârî, produced gun barrels, locks, and stocks of great beauty, and Damascus gunners and armorers were employed by the Ottoman army and navy.

Carpets: Uşak, Ghiordes, Kula, and Hereke

Carpet weaving was a major Ottoman industry, distributed across Anatolia and organized in village workshops as well as in the great court factory at Hereke. The history of Ottoman carpet weaving traces a long arc from the geometric Uşak rugs of the sixteenth century to the fine court carpets of the nineteenth century, and the European demand for “Turkey carpets” was an important stimulus to the industry.

The long decline

Ottoman manufacturing began a long decline in the eighteenth century and was largely destroyed in the nineteenth. The causes were both internal and external. The capitulations granted to European powers gave European merchants the right to import goods at low tariffs, and the 1838 free-trade agreement with Britain reduced the customs duties that had protected Ottoman industry. The influx of cheap European textiles, particularly British cotton cloth, undercut local producers and destroyed the livelihood of countless weavers. The result was a hollowing-out of the urban manufacturing sector and a long-term shift of the Ottoman economy to the production of raw materials and foodstuffs for export.

Conclusion

The crafts, guilds, and manufacturing establishments of the Ottoman world were, for several centuries, among the most productive in the world. The esnaf system, the imperial workshops, and the great regional concentrations of skilled production produced goods of great beauty and high quality, and they supported a large urban population. The long decline of Ottoman manufacturing was one of the major consequences of the integration of the empire into the European-dominated world economy of the nineteenth century.