Commerce and Power in the Ottoman Mediterranean
From The Unspread Bean, an encyclopedia of a world that didn't happen
Commerce and Power in the Ottoman Mediterranean describes the reshaping of trade networks and urban life across Ottoman territories and the Mediterranean from the sixteenth century onward, a period when the absence of a global coffee commodity fundamentally altered the structure of long-distance commerce and public sociability that would have otherwise emerged under different conditions.
The Ottoman Empire controlled Mediterranean ports, Red Sea entrepôts, and eastern territories that, in other circumstances, would have positioned it as a major distributor of coffee to European and North African markets. The Harar Wilt of 1543 and subsequent blight recurrences across the Ethiopian highlands and Kaffa destroyed this possibility before it could be realized. By the early seventeenth century, Ottoman merchants and administrators had redirected their commercial energies and capital toward alternative stimulant commodities and the public institutions surrounding them.
The first recognizable consequence appeared in the 1610s. Ottoman trading companies, which had begun accumulating capital in anticipation of coffee exports from Yemen and Harar, pivoted toward stronger investment in Aden as a hub for khat and kharuf distribution rather than coffee. Merchant archives held in the Guildhall Mercantile Archive document correspondence from English factors in Istanbul and Cairo expressing frustration at the repeated failure of Yemeni plantations at Ta'izz to produce reliable export stock. By contrast, the same archives record growing English and Dutch interest in the sherbet, tobacco, and dried-grain markets that Ottoman merchants were aggressively consolidating.
The Indian Ocean trade network reorganized around these new priorities. Where coffee would have created a single dominant commodity chain flowing from the Horn of Africa and Arabia to the Mediterranean and thence to Europe, the Harar Wilt instead created a more dispersed and regionalized market. Tea imports from Assam and Bengal became the preferred hot stimulant in northern Mediterranean ports by the 1680s, supplied through the Honourable East India Company and competing Dutch traders. Simultaneously, Red Sea ports intensified their role as distribution centers for kharuf and khat, drawing wealth that might otherwise have flowed northward into Mediterranean coffers.
The absence of coffee as a globally standardized luxury good meant that Ottoman merchants accumulated wealth less through a single monopolized commodity and more through diversified holdings in spice, sherbet materials, tea, cacao, and the precious ceramics and vessels required to serve them. The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul evolved differently as a result. Rather than becoming a center for coffee-cup porcelain and coffeehouse furnishings, it remained primarily a bazaar of spices, dried fruits, decorative vessels, and the elaborate glassware and copper vessels required by sherbethanes.
The restructuring of public life in Cairo and Istanbul from the 1610s onward created a distinctive urban culture organized around sherbethanes rather than coffeehouses. These establishments, serving sweetened drinks, roasted grains in the form of kharuf, and elaborate tobacco preparations, became the primary venues for merchant negotiation, literary exchange, and political discussion. Contemporary accounts describe the sherbethanes of Istanbul as elaborately decorated with tile work, comfortable seating, and specialized cooling systems for serving cold sherbet—features that would have been designed differently around a hot-beverage commodity.
The Janissary corps, the elite infantry of the Ottoman state, developed its literacy and administrative culture through these venues rather than through coffeehouses. Military and administrative texts from the seventeenth century onward show the sherbethane, not the coffeehouse, as the setting for learned discussion and the transmission of bureaucratic knowledge. This had subtle but consequential effects on the style of Ottoman administrative writing and the pace at which military technology and administrative practice were debated and adopted.
References
- 1.A Discourse on Tropical Commodities and Their Trade Routes - Anonymous]], 1712, London Merchant Press
- 2.Guildhall Mercantile Archive Records, Letters and Accounts of Ottoman Trade, 1610-1720]] - uncatalogued collection, Guildhall Library, London
- 3.The Ottoman Sherbet Tradition: Vessels and Social Practice - Mübarek Ayverdi]], 1998, Istanbul University Press
- 4.Parliamentary Records on Tea Revenue and Import Duties - House of Commons]], 1665-1710, British Library, folio 442-489
- 5.The Kharuf Economy: Preparing Stimulants for Empire - Sarah Metcalfe]], 2004, University of Edinburgh Press