"Zarinebaf’s work offers historians and social scientists a refreshing glimpse of how individuals and small social encounters both fuel political economic affairs, and also get swept away by them. . . . [the] book offers important scholarship."
Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa
"Chapters are each long and detailed, grounded in archival detail, and often threading together several related but distinct topics."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xvii
Introduction 1
PART ONE
THE URBAN SETTING
1 • A Layered History: From a Genoese Colony to an Ottoman Port 23
2 • The Rise of Pera: From Necropolis to Diplomatic and Commercial Hub 68
PART TWO
THE LEGAL AND DIPLOMATIC SETTING
3 • Ottoman Ahdnames: Their Origins and Development in the Early Modern Period 91
4 • War, Diplomacy, and Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 126
PART THREE
COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
5 • Feeding Istanbul: The Merchants of Galata and the Provisioning Trade 153
6 • Between Galata and Marseille: From Silks and Spices to Colonial Sugar and Coffee 185
7 • Sexual and Cultural Encounters in Public and Private Spaces 233
Epilogue: The Unraveling of the French Revolution in Pera 273
Appendix: Archival Documents in English Translation 291
Glossary 297
Notes 303
Bibliography 361
"Galata: port of Istanbul, Ottoman-European diplomatic hub, storied home of Istanbul’s nightlife. And yet few comprehensive historical accounts exist. Zarinebaf’s work fills this void in masterly fashion. Her deeply researched book shows us the legal, commercial, and social characteristics of this essential cosmopolitan center in the crucial early modern period."—A. Holly Shissler, Associate Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish History, University of Chicago
"In Mediterranean Encounters, Fariba Zarinebaf charts the rise of early modern Istanbul as a commercial center, and its engagement with European imperial powers. Unedited court records vividly bring to life the bustling cacophony of the Ottoman city in all its grittiness and complexity."—Brian A. Catlos, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder
"Zarinebaf shows us Ottoman Galata as we have not seen it before, over time and in depth. Her detailed vision of the early modern port highlights its intercommunality. Especially illuminating are her nuanced treatments of the implementation of Ottoman-French treaties and of the interactions among locals and foreigners."—Palmira Brummett, Visiting Scholar in History, Brown University
"Fariba Zarinebaf takes her readers on a grand tour of Galata’s pluralist past and cosmopolitan character. Galata has long deserved a history of its own, and it could not have wished for a better chronicler than Zarinebaf."—Maurits van den Boogert, PhD, author of Aleppo Observed and The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System