Review

Author(s): Kate Fleet

Review by: Kate Fleet
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 62,
No. 3 (1999), pp. 590-591
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3107619
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590

REVIEWS

the intrigues and manoeuvrin2g following the

Qa'an M6ngke's death in 1259. She shows how
Qaidu was able to manipul;ate other such
Mongol princes as Baraq to serve his own ends
and that he was not averse to switching
allegiances when it might suit his own purposes.
Qaidu's confrontation with the Qa'an, Qubilai,
which became not only a p)olitical conflict
between the house of Tolui arid the house of
Ogodei but also one of personal enmity between
the two men, is analysed in depth and the
varied effects that the antage)nism with the
Il-Khans of Persia had on trade links and
political exchanges between Chiina and Iran are
clarified. The decisive role of the Jochids in
Qaidu's rise, even though this was eventually
to result in the cessation of Joclhid control over
Transoxiana, is highlighted, andIthe commercial
contacts with the Mamluks of Egypt are
recognized. After carefully colle:cting, analysing
and interpreting all the diverse sources, Michal
Biran is also able to plot the shift of Qaidu's
kingdom into a state dom inated by the
Chaghadaids and the collapse of his Ogodeid
regime after his death. The nalture of his state
and its internal administratio)n is not overlooked and ample space is found for careful
consideration of the role of th e army, religion
and the economy in the formation and development of the Ogodeid polity. L,acunae remain,
but they are unambiguously aclknowledged and
their individual significance is reduced by
Biran's ability to draw on so many different
independent sources.
Michal Biran's study of Q;aidu is complemented by a treasure-trove olf detailed notes
and references, a healthy bibli(ography, simple
but perfectly adequate maps, ,a glossary of
Chinese terms and a most weelcome comprehensive collection of geneaalogical tables.
Although, regrettably, the 46 p)ages of enticing
notes are clumped together at the end of the
book rather than positioned so much more
conveniently as footnotes, they are fully reflective of the amount of work aind painstaking
research that must have gone into this short
but comprehensive study.
GEORGE LANE

d studies on
the Ottoman Black Seta. Vol. I. The
customs register of (Zaffa, 14871490 (Ukrainian Research Institute,
Harvard University. Studies in
Ottoman Documents ]Pertaining to
Ukraine and the Black Sea
Countries, 2.) xi, [203] pp., 2 maps,
25 plates. Cambriid(ge i 19
MA: *
M
Harvard University Press, 1996.
?26.50.

HALIL INALCIK: Sources a

Any book that presents facsimile, transcription

and translation of early Ottom;an documents is
of considerable importance for scholars
working in the field. This publication presents
the register of arrears in the c:ustoms dues of
Caffa between 1487 and 1490, as well as eight
other documents. The book als;o has a lengthy

and detailed glossary and many tables giving

detailed information on Caffa at a slightly later
date, c. 1520 and 1542. There is a series of
short essays on various aspects of the Black
Sea trade.
While undoubtedly useful, the work is somewhat confusingly arranged. The text and translation of the customs register follow one
another, but are separated from the facsimile
which appears at the end. An index appears
after the translation of the customs register,
and is followed by a series of essays, followed
in turn by a block of tables, more documents,
more tables, a short piece on Ottoman and
kefevi akfas, then a glossary, abbreviations,
transcription system, maps and, at the end,
facsimiles.
The lack of a main index is a disadvantage,
and the index which appears after the transcription and translation of the customs arrears
register is problematic in that, while apparently
referring both to the transcription and the
English translation, it in fact only gives references to Ottoman terms. Thus, for example,
commodities which historians working in the
Black Sea trade might well look for, such as
black raisins, rice, hemp, silk, cotton, velvet,
brocade, hides and skins, wheat, leather, slaves,
carpets, alum, wine and honey do not appear,
while meviz-i siyah, erz, kendir, ibrisim, penbe,
kadife, kemha, post, gendiim, gdn, esir, kali,
sap, hamr and 'asel do. One of the entries is
for linings of Bergama which appears under
bitane of Bergama. This is a great pity as,
presumably, one of the reasons for giving a
translation of this document is to make it
available to those who do not know Ottoman.
The index, however, is of no help to them
whatsoever. A similar problem arises with the
glossary, which does not include Ottoman
terms used in the text.
In the same vein, it would have been useful
to give translations for each of the other
documents published here. While some of them
do have a translation (docs. III, vi, vii, vIII), for
others there is a cross-reference to other parts
of the book where a partial translation and
commentary are given (eg. doc. i, iv), or
reference is made to partial translation and
summary in an entirely different work (doc. II)
or to a full translation elsewhere (doc. v).
Similarly, in the table of weights and measures,
under kile there is an entry 'okka-equivalents
of kile (for references see Inalcik, 'Rice cultivation', 119-120)' [p. 177], while for yik, 'for
various yuk, see Inalclk, "Yiik" '. This crossreferencing back and forth through the book,
or to other publications (particularly in the
case of the glossary) together with the arrangement of the material, gives the book a rather
un-user-friendly feel.
Some of the references are not at all clear.
Thus, in the weights and measures table the
entry for 1 endaze refers to Reg. 1298/1881,
without any further explanation (p. 175), while
the entry for 2 tak= 1 bogca refers simply to
Bursa court records (p. 181). On occasion,
there is no reference at all, for example for
arsin of the mason, architect or carpenter
(p. 175), one of the entries for one arfin of the
bazar (p. 175), the Venetian sacco or collo
(p. 176) and one seped (p. 180). While some of
the weights and measures from the 1750s

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591

REVIEWS
included in the table based on Peyssonel
[pp. 183-4] appear in the general table of
weights and measures, others, apparently randomly, do not. The Crimean kile (p. 177) has
a reference to Peyssonel, but the entry for tura
(p. 181) does not, although there are four
entries for tura in the Peyssonel table (p. 183),
nor does the entry for yak (p. 182), while the
Peyssonel table has two entries for yik (p. 184).
While the book does include essays, these
are very short and there is no overall cohesion.
The tables are sometimes accompanied by very
short commentaries which, certainly on occasion, could do with more detail. This applies,
for example, to the eight-line commentary on
the table, Annual revenue sources in the City
of Caffa, ca. 1520 and 1542, in which an
explanation of the tota tax, with two entries,
one for tota tax and one for Genoese tota tax,
would have been helpful. The term tota does
not appear in the glossary. Although there is
reference to it on page 146, this does not help
on page 143.
This sense of lack of cohesion is added to by
the wide sweep of time covered in the book.
The relevance of a table of weights and
measures from the 1750s, almost 300 years
after the date of the main document in this
publication, is not made clear, while the essay,
'Grain production and export by the Crimea
and its dependencies' (pp. 133-4), relies mainly
on Peyssonel (who went to the Crimea in 1753)
and P. S. Pallas (giving information from the
late eighteenth century). This is very surprising
considering the wealth of Genoese material for
the Black Sea grain trade in the fifteenth
century, Caffa having been until 1475 a Genoese
colony. Indeed, the total lack of reference to
any published Genoese primary material for
Caffa, such as M. Balard, Genes et l'OutreMer. Les actes de Caffa du notaire Lamberto di
Sambuceto 1289-1290 (Paris and La Haye,
1973), G. Balbi, Notai genovesi in Oltremare.
Atti rogati a Caffa e a Licostomo (sec. XIV)
(Genoa, 1973), or G. Bratianu, Actes des
notaires g6nois de Pera et de Caffa de la fin du
XIIIe siecle-1281-1290
(Bucarest, 1927), is
extremely curious. It is also strange that the
works of Airaldi, Balletto, Basso, Bratianu,
Canale, Karpov, Musso, Papacostea, Pistarino,
Saraceno, Verlinden and Vigna do not appear
in the bibliography, nor does the joint article
by M. Balard and G. Veinstein, 'Continuit6 ou
changement d'un paysage urbain?Caffa g6noise
et ottomane' in Le paysage urbain au moyen
age. Actes du XIe Congres des historiens
medievistes de l'enseignement sup6rieur (Lyon,
1981), 79-131, nor, indeed, is there any reference to any of Balard's articles. Neither in the
bibliography nor in the table of weights and
measures is any reference made to F. Borlandi,
El libro di mercatantieet usanze de paesi (Turin,
1936), P. Rocca, Pesi e misure antichi di Genova
e del Genovese (Genoa, 1871), or to Erich
Schilbach, Byzantinische metrologie (Munich,
1970) or Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Trade and
crusade, Venetian Crete and the Emirates of
Menteshe and Aydn (Venice, 1983), both of
whom deal, for example, with the batman.
The problem of time-frame is particularly
obvious in the weights and measures table as it
is usually not clear to which period the entries
refer, although sometimes the references are to

the seventeenth century or, even, to the eighteenth century. As the period of the work is,
basically, the end of the fifteenth century, and
the glossary is presumably included to help one
make sense of the document published here,
the weights and measures should surely, therefore, refer to this period.
The problem of using the table is magnified
by the fact that there are often several conflicting entries, one kantar, for example,
appearing as equivalent to 56.449 kg., 45 kg.,
47.600 (a Genoese kantar) and c. 70 kg. (p. 177).
The lidre, described as standard, is given as
equivalent to 100 dirhem, 1 lidre (silk) as 120
dirhem, 1 lidre (silk) as 100 dirhem, 1 lidre (silk)
as 133 dirhem, 1 lidre (without specification) as
115 dirhem, while 30 lidre (silk) appears as
vezne or vezniyye, a term which does not appear
in the glossary but appears in the weights and
measures tables as being 30 lidre (pp. 178, 181).
Often comparison between the entries is
impossible because the equivalents are not
always the same. One arqin of the mason=
75.8 cm., but, several lines down, one arsin of
the mason = 24 parmak= 288 hatt = 3,456 nokta
(p. 175). The entries in the table for parmak,
hatt and nokta all refer straight back to arvin.
While several of the entries for kantar give an
equivalent in kilograms, two are for an okka
equivalent (p. 177). While there are several
entries for okka, one of which is for one kantar
(p. 179), no kilogram equivalent is given.
Thus, while this book is undoubtedly useful,
presenting, as it does, facsimiles, transcriptions
and translations of various documents, it is
flawed by an inexactitude of period under
discussion, by use of material from a much
later period without making clear to what
extent such material is useable for the end of
the fifteenth century, and by the apparent
failure to use Genoese material.
KATE FLEET

The well-protected
domains: ideology and the legitimation ofpower in the Ottomanempire,
1876-1909. xii, 260 pp. London and
New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998. ?42.

SELIM DERINGIL:

Deringil's book is a welcome contribution to

the growing literature on the 'Abd al-Hamid II
period (1876-1909), as well as being a pioneering work in many respects.
The past three decades have seen a revival
in studies on the 'Abd al-Hamid II period.
These studies have focused on central government, foreign policy, Pan-Islamism, the Young
Turks, economic and financial history, education and several aspects of the history of the
Arab provinces. In the present literature,
Deringil's work represents the first attempt to
apply recent trends in Western historiography,
namely the study of ideology and legitimation
of power, to the case of the late nineteenthcentury Ottoman empire.
While Deringil employs Western theories in
trying to explain Ottoman history, he does not
neglect Ottoman primary sources. This is
therefore a fine example of the successful

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