Negotiating with the State Authorities and the Neighbors: Agency of the People of Ottoman Istanbul

This paper examines the prohibitions imposed on alcoholic drinks, wine and arak (an aniseed spirit), and taverns in seventeenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. The focus is on how these prohibitions fostered negotiations between the state and society and among the city’s residents, including both Muslims and non-Muslims (Christians and Jews), men and women, and marginalized elements of society such as prostitutes. The paper aims to suggest new ways in which the agency of ordinary subjects shaped alcohol consumption in a society ruled by an officially Muslim state. I argue that, instead of a total ban on alcohol, the Ottoman state collected taxes from alcoholic drinks and taverns, a major source of state revenues; however, it made unprecedented attempts to prohibit alcohol consumption to maintain public order and respond to public demands—efforts that peaked in the seventeenth century, when the empire underwent a series of social, political, and economic changes. But overall, these bans proved temporary and were only selectively enforced because authorities continued to collect alcohol taxes and many residents continued to use alcoholic drinks and taverns through their negotiations with the state and among themselves. While some Muslim Ottomans requested, or supported existing, bans to limit alcohol-involved disorders or out of a sense of religious propriety, other members of all communities used the bans for their benefit in social and economic relations. These negotiations, which were well reflected in the city’s Islamic court records, the main body of primary sources of this paper, demonstrate that alcohol was an integral part of Ottoman society, enabling us to challenge the conventional wisdom that marginalizes alcohol’s place in the Islamic world and to enhance the bourgeoning debates on the diversity and dynamism of this world.