Celalzade Salih Çelebi’s Observations of Balsam Trees in Mid-16th-Century Egypt and the Ottoman Response to Balsam Production in the Americas

In 1544, Celalzade Salih Çelebi was sent by the Imperial council to Cairo to investigate the expenditures of the Ottoman governors of Egypt. During his stay in Egypt, the Ottoman scholar and official paid a visit to a balsam orchard near Cairo, which he reports on in his New History of Egypt (1547). The text describes conditions of the trees and the techniques of cultivation and extracting balsam oil, including an interview with the gardener on site. A rare and precious substance used in Islamic medicine as well as for preparing the holy Chrism in western Europe, balsam had long been produced near Cairo. My paper argues that Salih Çelebi’s visit to the balsam orchard, and his report’s striking emphasis on firsthand experience and observation, had an important context: by the time Salih was writing, balsam oil producers near Cairo competed with the newly emerging sites of production in the Americas. Contrary to a historiography that has largely depicted Ottomans as passive observers of the newly emerging Atlantic economy, Salih Çelebi’s observations, which were later used in the Ottoman Imperial council’s attempts to invigorate the balsam oil production in Egypt, is an example of an Ottoman response to the new Atlantic economy. My paper will also discuss other cases that show the shifting Ottoman knowledge about trees in the sixteenth century, including the earliest Ottoman writings on trees grown in the Americas. The study of trees in the Ottoman world offers a point of departure for a potential re-examination of the intersection of Ottoman science, technology, and the emerging global economy.