BOOK REVIEW: A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece

BOOK REVIEW Diana Gilliland Wright Fariba Zarinebaf, John Bennet, and Jack L. Davis. A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the 18th Century. Contributions by E. Gorogianni, D. K. Harlan, M. Keil, P. A. MacKay, J. Wallrodt, & A. D. Wolpert. Hesperia Supplement 34, Princeton NJ 2005. Pp. xxi & 328. ISBN 0-87661-534-5. US$45.00. Even did I not have close friendships with two of the authors and contributors, I would be delighted with this volume. It is a model of the multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary work increasingly important to substantive studies of post-Byzantine Greece. A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece concerns an Ottoman cadaster of 1716, Tapu Tahrir 880 (TT880) The Preface lists an number of tapu tahrirs (TT in the cadaster name) or land grants, surveys, and tax registers, for other areas of northern and southern Greece, dating back to the 15th century, all of which should be the bases for similar studies. which covers the area around Pylos in the Peloponnesos, but the results of the study will have resonance for almost any period of scholarship for southern Greece. One of its contributions is to call attention to the remarkable documentary survivals from the Ottoman periods, particularly in the sections by Zarinebaf and Keil, much less known than the Frankish and Venetian sources. As one part of the project, the authors have attempted to determine what catalogued Ottoman archival material might be used to write a history of the Morea under the Ottoman occupation, and in fact, this volume itself may be the first time that anyone has written even a partial history of the Morea from Ottoman sources. Because those of us who work on the history of early modern Greece either read Greek sources and tend to write from a Greek point of view, or read Venetian documents and tend to write from a Venetian point of view, it is conventional to place the Ottomans in the position of oppressors or military threat. This systematic study of TT880 provides a healthy corrective and a level of detail rarely available at an period. Preface The authors survey the various Ottoman sources for the Morea and lay out their method of working. The Preface includes tables with the transliteration system for Modern Greek, and Turkish pronunciation. Particularly useful is a nine-page glossary of primarily Turkish, but also Greek and Venetian, terms. Introduction The Introduction reviews the current state of medieval and early modern archaeology in Greece. The authors emphasize that, while abundant documentary evidence exists for many periods and areas, this has seldom been integrated with parallel studies of the material culture. They cite in particular the well-known and often-used archaeological material from the Minnesota Messenia Expedition which was not examined in context with Venetian and Frankish records, and Peter Topping's discussion of Frankish, Ottoman, and Venetian landholding which omitted archaeological findings. An example would be the discovery that the Venetian agricultural system is often retained in contemporary field divisions and roads (p. 3). The authors' working relationship and methodology demonstrate what these studies are missing. The authors cite (p.5, n.18) the Cambridge-Bradford Boiotia Expedition as a model for their organization. When Zarenibaf, an Ottoman historian, translated the cadaster, there were then problems in identifying toponyms. Bennet and Davis brought their background in Greek archaeology and linguistics – and Modern Greek – to solving these problems. While a few Ottoman names are still in use, and more can be found on old maps, many names descriptive of specific localities were found only by walking lands under consideration and querying farmers. The reconstruction of settlement and land use could then be compared with the distribution of artifacts. It was only later that the authors realized the real value of the cadaster for information about the social and economic history of the region. Chapter 1: Soldiers into Tax-Farmers and Reaya Reaya: productive groups (peasants, merchants, artisans) subject to taxes, in contrast to askeri (military) who were tax-exempt. into Sharecroppers; The Ottoman Morea in the Early Modern Period, by Fariba Zarinebaf. The first Turks came into the Morea as Byzantine mercenaries in the mid-thirteenth century. By the late fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks were raiding with some frequency. A raid in 1397 removed at least 14,000 inhabitants of Argos, leaving the area so barren that as late as 1480 it was said to have only 200 households despite Venetian attempts at repopulation. Defensive walls were build across the Isthmus of Corinth by Manuel II in 1415, and John VIII Palaiologos in 1443: both were destroyed in Ottoman raids. So also was a final wall, built by the Venetians in 1463 and dismantled by an Ottoman army before the mortar was dry. The Ottoman conquest of the Morea was inevitable after 1453 but it was facilitated by revolt, civil war between the despots, Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos, and requests for Ottoman aid. After a year of partial Ottoman occupation, Mehmed II led an army down in the spring of 1460 to remove the despots and, with a combination of "pacification" and capitulations, he gained control of all of the Morea with the exception of the Venetian territories of Modon-Koron, Navarino (Anavarin, the focus of this volume), Nauplion-Argos and Monemvasia which he ignored for the time. Between 1463 and 1478, the Ottoman-Venetian war, and the Venetians, occupied much of the Morea. When the peace agreement was issued in January 1478 Mehmed's cad-name was issued 25 January 1478, more venetiano, 1479 by today's rekoning. See Diana Gilliland Wright and Pierre A MacKay diplomatic edition of the cad-name in, "When The Serenissima And The Gran Turco Made Love: The Peace Treaty Of 1478," forthcoming in Studi Veneziani (2007). and Mehmed had accepted the work of the boundary commissions in May 1481, re-accepted by Beyazid in January 1482 m.v., the Moreote territory of the two powers was exactly what it had been when war was formally declared in July 1464. Zarinebaf begins the narrative with Mehmed's advent in the Morea. In 1461, after taking possession, Mehmed ordered a cadaster of his territory. A second record was made during the reign of Selim I (1512-1520). These records indicate that the population of the Morea increased more than 50%, from 20,000 households to 30,000 households, in the generation between 1460 and 1488 (p. 12). The fact of increase between 1460 and 1488 is remarkable, taking into consideration the periods of disruption in farming by the number of men drawn off as mercenaries, and the epidemics of plague during 1464-1478. More than 30% of this population was of Albanian origin, immigration originally encouraged by the Venetians to replace the inadequate tax base, and by the Venetians and Ottomans as mercenaries during the war. The tax records indicate that the burden on the Greeks was at first lighter under the Ottomans than under either the Venetians or the Byzantines. The authors here refer to the "Venetian or the Byzantine feudal systems," a terminology I find inaccurate. While it is true that in both cases lands were given in return for service, feudalism implies the privatization of justice and the military, something neither rule granted since both were highly centralized and bureaucratized. Later census show the rural population continued stable through the rein of Süleyman (1520-1566) which indicates that taxes were not so burdensome as to encourage flight to the towns. Nor do there seem to have been significant changes in the ethnic composition of the population, at least in the area under specific consideration here, although there is some evidence for a low rate of conversion. The authors calculate that 90% of the population from this cadaster of the Pylos area was Christian, and that a large percentage of the Muslim/Turkish inhabitants in the villages with timars were of Christian background. One source against which the population records were compared and contrasted was the Sehayatname of Evliya Çelebi who visited the area in 1669. Although his descriptions and figures are usually thought to resemble an idealized society, his count of 85 small masonry houses, 5 shops, and 1 mosque in Anavarin-i atik (Old Navarino) is quite close to the count in the 1512-1520 cadaster. On the other hand, his counts for Anavari-i cedid (New Navarino) of 200 2-story Greek houses with tile roofs and gardens, 1 inn, 1 mosque, 15 shops, and many orchards, makes it appear that the population of Muslim and Greek residents had multiplied six times over by the time he arrived. Evliya's text for Anavarin is included in Appendix I. Evliya's period marks another beginning of population decline in the Morea, intensified by the Venetian reconquest starting in 1686. The extensive surviving Venetian records can be compared against the Ottoman. The Venetians moved out Turks, in some cases selling them as slaves, and then tried to encourage immigration from the islands and central Greece, in some cases forcibly moving populations to shore up the production and tax base. The Ottoman invasion and reconquest of 1715 caused further decline and much destruction, particularly in the port towns. It became Ottoman policy after the conquest to restore the lands of both Muslims and Christians who had fled, to encourage economic recovery. Because of the need for revenues from the poll tax, the cizye, the Ottoman state did not support forced conversion of non-Muslim, but social pressure to do so may have on occasion been considerable in areas where the majority were Muslim. Zarinebaf gives a concise description of the composition of the Ottoman army over time in Greece, and a further discussion of the Ottoman military-administrative structure. This includes an account of all the various titles and responsibilities, and tax issues, for which there is exceptional information from the 16th century. Accompanying this discussion is a table of taxable heads of households in Modon and Anavarin, and a fascinating chart of rural revenues from Anavari-i atik (Old Navarino). Taxable items are: head tax, wheat, barley, fodder, fava beans, acorns, chickpeas, lentils, millet, flax, beehives, orchards, olive trees, gardens/vineyards, mills, summer pasture, pasture, meadow, grass, fishery, port, slaughterhouse, scales, market, oil press, flour mills, gardens of men, tile workships, onions, guard, kariş, Kariş: tax assessed when must is put in the cask. must, fines and bride tax, mazraca Mazraca: farm with no permanent settlement; deserted land cultivated by a nearby village., and kidney beans. Such a list of items gives an indication of the kind of bureaucracy required to maintain records and administer such a state, and has implications for literacy, as well as for a Greek perception of taxation. Ottoman administration was originally based on the timar system, under which the holder – a sipahi, cavalryman – had the right to collect taxes on the land and peasants. These timars were usually less than 20,000 akçes in value. Akçe: an Ottoman silver coin; the value in relation to western money changed over time. Zarinebaf traces the transformation from the timar system – inadequate for the transformed military and the constant need of the central treasury – to tax farming. Provincial offices were auctioned to the wealthy and politically influential. Simultaneously, the Ottoman-Venetian wars of the 17th century disrupted trade and revenues, and contributed to a rate of inflation of 100-200%. Tax collectors tended to collect taxes in kind, rather than in the devalued coinage, and imposed higher rates and more taxes.Consequences included increased peasant debt, social unrest, rebellion and banditry. While banditry is documented continually from the 14th century, with a period of particular violence in the later 15th century, the banditry of the 18th century developed the private armies that were a feature of the Greek revolution of the 1820s. Tax farming became increasingly complex and its own form of investment. Zarinebaf continues with a detailed analysis of tax farms in the Morea, and offers the information that six women with high palace rank held shares in some of them. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the sizes of çiftliks in the district of Anavarin. Çiftlik has several definitions: land workable by a peasant family with a pair of oxen; a big farm with an absentee landlord; a plantation-like farm; a village. This brief and erratic overview of Chapter 1 in no way does justice to Zarinebaf's accomplishments in this chapter which locates an overview of the Ottoman rule of the Morea within the context of Ottoman historiography, and which uses catalogued Ottoman archival material, Ottoman contemporary chronicles, an accounts by Western travellers. It will largely be an unfamiliar view for most readers, and one which requires and deserves attention. Chapter 2: Translations of Two Ottoman Documents Describing the State of the Morea and Anavarin in 1716, by Fariba Zarinebaf. The first of these two documents is the kanunname for the vilayet or province of the Morea in 1716 when Ottoman rule was re-established after the Venetian withdrawal. This kanunname established the framework by which Ottoman officials administered the Morea. Eight of these legal rulings are printed in full on two pages, and the others summarized in another two pages. They are not intended to cover all circumstances, particularly if sharica was applicable. These are two examples from eight rulings covering ownership of property and head and land taxes: If one of the reaya is registered as amelmande (disabled/incapable of work) in the defter, no taxes should be collected from him. The land of non-Muslim reaya who are incapable of working because of old age should be cultivated by their sons, who should pay the tithes and taxes. The incapable registered reaya should not pay the ispence (head tax) and dues. On the çiftliks of the Muslims. Any number of çiftliks belonging to Muslims that exist in a karye should be given to them in accordance with the sharica. They should pay the taxes according to above-mentioned high-, medium-, and low-quality definitions, and not any more than that. Any land around these villages, whether cultivable or not, and whether used as pasture for sheep or not, is rendered to the reaya, who should cultivate it and pay the dues and tithe to the owner of the land. The çiftlik owners have no rights over them. The summary gives great and fascinating detail as to taxes on produce, mills, marriage, silk, fish and houses. A few examples: Beehives were taxed in the fall when it was time to harvest the honey. The reaya were to pay to the landowner 1/3 of the acorns collected from land not their own, but 1/10 of the acorns collected from their own land. The tax on fisheries was one half the fish caught; on fish caught outside with a net, one-fourth. In the market, the taxes on honey and oil was 1 akçe from both the seller and buyer. There were official prices on food and the inspector collected 2 akçes on each kind of food item, 1 akçe on curd cheese, on dried fish 2 akçes a kantar, 2 akçes a month from the bakers, 1 mangır (a bronze coin) on each animal that transports vegetable to the market, and so on. These accounts of taxes and rules on land ownership explain a great deal that is blurred in general histories of the period. The second document is the cadastral survey of Anavarin in TT880, the centerpiece of the book. After a brief introduction, the English translation of the cadaster is printed in full, with copious footnotes and explanations. The 49 entries with their many sub-entries allow an incomparable view of the pre-modern people of Greece, and show the system of information-gathering used. This is entry 48 for the small village of İstilian, comparatively short, omitting the headings for which there is no information. 48. Karye Village. of İstilianu Previously was a timar. It is in the mountains. 15 çifts of land, of which 3 belonged to the reaya. 1. Kostantin son of Nikul a 1 çift A unit of arable land that could be plowed by one pair of oxen. of land; 8 dönüms A measurement of area; 1 dönüm equals 919.3 square meters. of vineyard; 8 olive roots; 1 fig tree; 50 sheep; 2 pigs, 10 beehives; 1 house 2. Nikule son of Yani 1 çift of land; 6 dönüms of vineyard; 6 beehives; 1 fig tree; 50 sheep; 2 pigs; 1 house 3. İstaşnu his brother 4. Yanağu son of Ayumerinu 5 olive roots; 20 sheep; 2 fig trees; 1 house 5. Biraşkiva son of Ayustu ½ çift of land; 2 dönüms of vineyard; 1 beehive; 1 fig tree; 6 olive roots; 1 house 6. Yani son of İstimad ½ çift of land; 2 dönüms of vineyards; 25 sheep; 1 pig; 1 house Revenue: one-seventh of the grain Head tax: 6 persons Wheat: 3 çifts Tithe of olives: 19 roots Tax on vineyards: 18 dönüms Tithe of figs: 5 trees Tithe of beehives: 17 beehives Sheep tax: 125 head Innovative tax on pigs and piglets: 5 head The total tithes have not been set apart The villages of İskarminke, Miniki, and İstilianu are on the side of the mountain. It is medium-quality (land). 1 kile Kile: Capacity measure, equal to 20.48 kg of barley or 28.16 kg of wheat. of wheat becomes 5; 1 kile of barley becomes 6 These statements of kile indicate the rate of return on sowing. 1 çift of oxen can only sow 6 Istanbul kiles of wheat, 6 kiles of barley, and 3 kiles of fodder. When TT880 gets into town, in this case Ananvarin-i cedid, it reads differently: 19. House of Çaçe Hatun, in ruin: L.18 x W. 12. 2 lemon trees and 4 peach trees. The house of Hüseyin Hoca on the one side and the house of Haci Bey on the other. 20. Selamlık Male quarters. of Haci Bey, in ruin: L.17 x W.12. The house of Kadir Ağa on the one side and the house of İdris Ağa on the other. * * * * 72. The Friday Mosque known as the Friday Mosque of Bayezid: L.21 x W.21. The inner court: L.25 x W. 9, and the primary school: L.15 x W. 12. A water tank: 1. 73. Another primary school, 1. L.11 x W. 8. 74. The endowed orchard attached to the Friday Mosque to the south: L. 35 x W. 25. 3 lemon trees, 1 almond tree, 1 apple tree, 1 orange tree. Chapter 3: A Reconstruction of the Human Landscape of the Kaza Kaza: a district under the jurisdiction of a judge. of Anavarin, by John Bennet and Jack L. Davis. The authors attempted to identify each of the 49 locations in TT880, using not just the cadaster but early maps, including a Venetian map from about 1700 when the territory was under Venetian control, noting the problems involved when Venetians did not understand the Greek names and rewrote them to more familiar forms. This is a fascinating bit of information: the Venetians administering the Morea in this period had had no previous experience of Greece or Greek. Administrators in the pre-1540 period had the experience of serving in a series of Greece-based assignments and their transliterations of even minor Greek names are instantly identifiable. A similar problem appeared in the cadaster with Turkish versions of Greek names. They first tried to locate Greek equivalents of Ottoman toponyms, a project for which they found the 1:5,000- and 1:50,000-scale maps of the Hellenic Army Geographical service invaluable as sources of names. The project was successful to such an extent that they were able to locate 86% of the principle entries recorded in TT880, which they show with identification numbers on the map at Fig. 2.1, as well as locating the general vicinity for the rest. TT880 seems to have grouped its entries according to location, possibly reflecting the routes of the compiler of the information. As an example of the authors' work in identifications, here is the entry for the village itemized above, which is accompanied by a photograph of the modern, very small, village and its olive trees: 48. İstilianu (karye) İstilianu is the village of Stylianos (Stuliano,j). It is not clear what is meant by the phrase "the villages of İskarminke, Miniki, and İstilianu are on the side of the mountain" becuse they are certainly not on the side of the same mountain today. However, the 1700 Venetian map clearly shows "Villa Stilianu" on the east bank of the Santa Veneranda River, as it is in the Expédition's Atlas. Assuming this is not simply an error, we can place the three on the slopes of the Amgdalitsa-Velanidies ridge (1:50,000, Meligalas, E185, N185). No borders are listed. The chapter then continues with an analysis of what happens to Greek names in Turkish, a typical example of the graceful way the authors handle the language issue so that the Turk-less or Greek-less reader need not be disadvantaged. One example: because Turkish does not have initial double consonants, Stylianou and Psili Rahi have to become İstilianou and İbsili. This is particularly conspicuous with the common Greek preposition of location, stēn, ston, sta, stou ("at"), so that sto Potamo and ston Aï Yanni become İstuputamu and Ustu Ayuyani. Following this is a list of the sites in TT880, their status, Greek name (in Greek), current name (if any) and a transliteration of the Greek. The "human landscape" in the title to this chapter is a graceful phrase, and this meticulous work has brought to light a remarkable amount of information about the people of Anavarin. The information recovered about the nature of Ottoman administration will require some reworking of assumptions. One can further envision its value for novelists seeking accurate historical detail, certainly for the numbers of sheep and peach trees, but also in reconstructing mentalités. Chapter 4: An Analysis of the Ottoman Cadastral Survey of Anavarin, 1716, bu Jack L. Davis, John Bennet, and Fariba Zarinebaf. Here the authors present an analysis of the district of Anavarin in 1716, and their conclusions. Although they warn that their results cannot necessarily be generalized to other parts of the Morea, these conclusions should be of use to scholars working in any field of post-Byzantine Greece A date that can vary from 1205 in the case of Methoni and Koroni to 1460 with much of the heartland.; at a minimum they will make us reconsider the reporting in some of our sources. Despite accounts by Western travellers, the district had nowhere near the desolation reported. Anavarin, although not a major commercial area, was throroughly integrated into larger regional economies, and care was taken for subsistence as well as commercial agriculture. In fact, the evidence from 1716 shows that the countryside could have supported a larger population than it did. Four maps show the distribution of the non-Muslim population according to the Grimani census of 1700, TT880 of 1716, Pouqueville in 1815, and the Expédition scientifique of 1829. Following these is a large table comparing the population for the Venetian cadasters of 1689 and 1700 for villages listed in TT880, and the population in TT880 for 1716. Each cadaster ordered its counts differently. For the initial Venetian survey of 1689 we get head counts for men, boys, women, girls, and families. By 1700, the survey counted five different age groupings for each gender: 1-16, 16-30, 30-40, 50-60, and "elderly." Men over 60 are counted "elderly," women over 50. This is not sexism: it is an accurate description of women in a pre-industrial, pre-antibiotic population. The Ottoman cadaster counted the number of sons and the number of households paying ispence; with this is an authorial estimated population using a multiplier of 4, and the increase or decrease since 1700 (or 1689). Much of the chapter is concerned with a minute, sometimes dizzying, analysis of all available population figures. By comparing data from the cadasters it can be seen that the number of people in Stiglianù/Stelianù/İstilianu (the village highlighted in the comments on Chapters 2 & 3 above) was 13 in 1689, 34 in 1700 with the extremely detailed Venetian census, and 24 in 1716 in TT880. Each village can be similarly compared. The choice of a multiplier greatly affects the final population figures: the Venetian survey of 1700 gives an average of 4 individuals per household, while the 1829 Expédition scientifique de Morée found 4.75. Those two numbers multiplied against the 218 non-Muslim men who paid ispence give a possible non-Muslim population of 872-1,036 people in 1716. The average of 872 and 1,036 is 954, strikingly close to the 967 derived by the authors using an M/F ratio of 0.83 from standard life tables. Here the authors create a problem. The 218 men plus the 158 boys make a total of 439 individuals; the authors multiplied this by 0.83, derived from standard life tables, as the estimated ratio of males to females, for 364 women, making a total non-Muslim population of 803 for Anavarin. This is a direct inversion of the M/F ratio where the calculation should be (439 x 100) /83 = 528.91. This would then give an approximate non-Muslim population of 967. The ratio of 0.83 is interesting in the light of the ratios derived from the tables. The ratio for little Stiglianù/Stelianù/İstilianu with a total population of 34 in 1700 is 0.88, for Ligudista (one of the largest communities in each cadaster) is 1.16, and for the total M/F figures for 1700 it is 1.17. Since population gender ratios tend to favor women (as with 0.83), this suggests a problem of undercounting in the 1700 cadaster, and there appear to be, in the age breakdown for the total count, at least 70 missing girls under the age of 16, and 45-50 missing women over the age of 50. In Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal, Robert Davis finds in the Arsenale neighborhood in 1652, a neighborhood with a premium on male labor, a ratio of 0.90. My own work (unpublished) on death records of Greeks in Venice, 1569-1657, suggests a ratio of 1.16 with conspicuous undercounting of infant females, and an even ratio when only adults are considered. When the Venetians took the Morea in 1686, there was a substantive Muslim population in Anavarin, concentrated in the forts of Anavari-i cedid and Anavari-i atik. By the end of the Venetian occupation, the population in the province generally had dropped. The Venetians evacuated at least 3,000 Turks at their conquest of Anavari-i cedid and deliberated ruined the fortress when they left in 1715, a desolation reflected in subsequent reports from travellers. In 1716 some of the Ottoman military and bureaucracy had returned, but there is no evidence for Muslim reaya in the countryside or in the fortresses. Figures suggest that there were no more than 400 Muslim families in all in the province. Using the two multipliers above, that is 800-950 individuals, or very close to the number of non-Muslim families. There is a clumsy statement of this on p. 162: "From the preceding discussion we may conclude that the Christian population of Anavarin in 17116 must have consisted of 1,000 individuals, more or less, whereas the Muslim population in the early 18th century is unlikely to have amounted to many more than 200 families." The use of "Christian" and "non-Muslim" in the text is inconsistent. The chapter continues with further examples of population, including tables with population figures for the same towns as in TT880 (with the exception of Pylos) across the 20th century, a comparison of TT880 (1716) with the figures collected by Pouqueville (1815) and the Expédition scientifique (1829), and a census for the district of Navarino in 1829. The authors then undertake an analysis of the economy of the district of Anavarin. They find Anavarin integrated into a broader Mediterranean economy, although the only crop specifically mentioned as exported in TT880 is olives. This omission is conspicuous when a hundred years later travellers list at least another ten export products. A discussion of types of properties continues, followed by minute analysis of the main agricultural products – acreage, weights produced, types, distribution, prices. The authors provide wonderful detail about agriculture, considering the labor, and giving a real sense of the meaning behind formal information and statistics. For example, they quote a personal communication from H. Forbes (p. 185, n.127): If there are over 1900 olive trees, that means that each household must pick ca. 160 trees in an 'on' year. At 4 trees picked per family per day, which is highly optimistic if they are decent sized trees, this will take 40 days for each family. . . . If families have a çift of 40-50 dönüms of arable land to cultivate as well, most of that will be sown in winter crops (barley, wheat, broad beans). . . . These winter crops are sown at about the same time as the olive harvest. . . .Certainly in terms of what I have seen for family farms on Methana, there is seriously far too much work implied in the çiftlik holdings for 12 normal families to fit into the time available. Examining productivity figures for various properties in TT880, and the varying figures for çiftliks of the same size, it appears that at least some of the figures involved reporting from imagination. Forbes again is quoted: "The figures for yield in TT880 are all based on a basic unit of 7.5—which just happens to be the standard figure of the weight of fruit producing 1 vukiyye Vukiyye: equal to 1.28 kilograms, same as an okka. of oil. The most likely explanation for these figures . . . is that they represent some idea of the yield of oil . . .." There are similar analyses for vines, cloth, arable land, and livestock. Entries in TT880 suggest a fledgling silk industry and limited cotton production. There is no information as to types of vines cultivated or what the production was for – whether for table grapes, dried fruit, or wine. Examination of data for arable land shows that the size of a çift varied according to the quality of the soil, from 60 to 150 dönüms depending on whether the soil was fertile, moderately fertile, or of low fertility, as specified in the kanunnume quoted above. The final section of Chapter 4 lays out a view of the archaeology of the Pylos area – Anavarin – for the early modern period, pointing out that "there are remarkably few standing remains in the area that are demonstrably older than 1821." There are villages of the same or similar names in the same location as in TT880, but pre-Revolution remnants are rarely found. There are few churches that can be so dated, even fewer domestic structures and public infrastructures beyond parts of aqueducts and two arches of a bridge. The authors' intense field surveys of the area made it possible to solve most of the problems they found in TT880, and they give some attention to its villages that they did not securely locate. Conclusions: by Fariba Zarinebaf, Jack L. Davis, and John Bennet A primary conclusion, mentioned already, is that there is no evidence – at least for the Pylos district – that Ottoman occupation resulted in demographic decline. While there is evidence for loss in the periods of war, after the Ottoman conquest of 1715, the population returned to Venetian levels, and more land was brought under cultivation. There was little actual settlement by Muslims except for the largest villages and towns. In fact, the Turkish military was concentrated in a few fortresses, and isolated from the mass of the Greek population. Here it is suggested that Islamic court records and Church records may be informative on interaction between Muslims and Greeks. After the conquest of 1715, the Turkish authorities encouraged the return of pre-1686 Turkish residents and provided them with incentives. There were attempts made to restore the timar system that had been the foundation of the 1460-1686 administration, but military, political, and social changes combined with the introduction of life-term tax-farms (held by Greeks as well as Turks) to set up structures for abuse that became worse as the century advanced. These helped precipitate local uprisings that culminated in the revolution of the 1820s. An additional element was the foreign merchants whose tax privileges formed a way of shifting Greek loyalties to external rulers and away from Ottoman control. Appendix I: Evliya Çelebi's Account of Anavarin by Pierre A. MacKay. MacKay has excerpted the Anavarin section from his forthcoming translation of the Greek travels in the Seyahatname of Evliya Çelebi. The translation is made primarily from Evilya's autograph manuscript: previous translations have been made from manuscript copies of varying degrees of corruption. Evliya visited Anavarin in the summer of 1668. The Seyahatname is dated to 1680. A few excerpts will give Evliya's inimitable style: If [Anavarin-i atik] had water and provisions, we should have been burdened with a seven-year siege, for it is an unequalled castle, reaching up to the Milky Way in heaven. . . .They bring up water from a well down below in the sandy area by the harbor This is the beach in Book 3 of the Odyssey where Telemachos met Nestor sacrificing bulls. that has previously been mentioned, and it is transported by donkeys, which are a remarkable sight. . . . When the donkeys arrive with the water in front of a house, they sing the opening bars of the old donkey song, in the time-honored traditional mode, and the householder, knowing by this that the donkey has arrived with water, takes it from the animal and sends him back down again. The intelligence of these donkeys has given rise to a saying in the Governorate of Morea, as when they address a servant, saying, "I'll have the donkeys of Anavarin teach you some sense." . . . In order that not a single drop of rainwater shall be wasted, even fron the streets, the public roads are made of clean stone, and arranged so as to flow into and fill the cistern. There are no dogs in this middle castle, since they might affect the water. . . . this harbor of Anavarin is a safe anchorage, capable of containing the entire Ottoman fleet. . . . In most streets [of Anavarin-i cedid] there are many fountains of running water, which is led in from outside, and at the head of each street there is a fountain. A part of the aqueduct that supplied this water can be seen just off the highway going south out of town. The city is embellished with trees and vines so that the sun does not beat into the fine marketplace at all, and all the city notables sit here, playing backgammon, chess, various kinds of draughts, and other board games, for this is an isolated place. . . . Then I went southeastward following the seashore, and passing sometimes through orchards and olive groves, and sometimes through stony places, came in three hours to Modon. Appendix II: The fortress of Anavarin-i atik by Aaron D. Wolpert. The fortress of Anavarin-i atik is now known as Paliaonavarino or (the most common Greek name for fortresses) Palaiokastro. It has also been called Avarmus, Abarinus, Albarinos, Albaxinus, Avarinos, Coryphasium, Ivérin, Nelea, Port de Jonc, Porto Giunco, Pylos, Zonklon and Zunchio. Wolpert examines the text of TT880 in detail for what it has to say about the fortress. He also makes use of travellers' accounts and other original sources to give a careful history, along with a number of old maps, sketches and prints from 300 years of its history, and numerous modern photographs. In discussing TT880, Wolpert follows what must be the route the scribe took in recording the fortress, and at each point of the scribe's description, Wolpert gives the modern remains, and intermediary descriptions, and compares specific details with reports from Venetian officials and Evliya Çelebi. Appendix III: The Fortress of Anavarin-i cedid by John Bennet, Jack L. Davis, and Deborah K. Harlan. When the Ottomans took over the fortress of Anavarin-i cedid in 1715, they found that the Venetians had done a great deal of destruction before they abandoned it. (Other destruction can be attributed to the explosion of an Ottoman powder store in the Venetian attack of 1686.) When TT880 was compiled six months later in 1716, some rebuilding had begun, and a bath, church, mosque and school were not reported as damaged. The authors follow the same method of describing Anavarin-i cedid as did Wolpert in describing Anavarin-i atik, and again there are numerous maps and drawings from the whole period of its history. Appendix IV: Construction of the Ottoman Castle of Anavarin-i cedid by Machiel Kiel. Machiel Kiel has found forty letters out of the thousands in the prime minister's Ottoman archives in Istanbul (BBA), written between June 1572 and November 1577, that relate to the construction of Anavarin-i cedid (Pylos castle). These letters are analyzed and several are presented here in facsimile, transcription and translation. They show that workmen were to be sent from central Greece (Lamia through Cape Sounion, and Negroponte) and supplied by the kadıs there. The architect, who designed the castle "in Frankish style," was to stay at the building site. I would have appreciated an explanation of what was meant by "Frankish style," in contrast to Ottoman style. The master bulders and stonecutters were to be paid, but not the unskilled workers (cerahors) who were normally subject to corvées. Kiel says that the word for this service, imece, possibly of Greek origin, denotes "work done for the community by the whole village" and reflects pre-Ottoman, Byzantine institutions. This practice was continued under the Venetian rules. Because of the need for workers, Turkish-speaking nomads from the area of Thessaloniki were required in December 1573 to get to Anavarin by early spring. Other correspondence deals with issues of unsent grain, unfair recruitment of cerahors, locating funds for construction, collecting metal from old guns for re-use. A letter in February 1574 from the bey of the Morea reported that subjects were working on the castle in exchange for service as oarsmen in the fleet, and suggested that the devşirme scheduled for that year be skipped because the families who had cerahors working on the castle had fulfilled their obligations. Following this letter is the order to cancel the devşirme for the Morea. One of the last letters is concerned with settlers and trade. It says in part: You have . . . reported that the castle . . . has reached its completion. However, to bring it to life and to make [people] dwell in it [it would be necessary] to bring in Jews from the area. I command you [therefore] that you should bring Jews from the aforementioned province and from Patras and Lepanto in sufficient numbers . . .. The introduction of these letters and account of the thousands in existence (263 volumes from 1558 to 1906, each with 1,200 to 1,600 copies of letters) emphasizes the necessity both for more cooperative work, and for younger scholars of Greek history to learn to work with the Turkish language and scripts. It is frustrating to think of what there might be relevant to my own research interests. Concordance I: Names of the Reaya in TT880, by Fariba Zarinebaf, Jack L. Davis, and John Bennet The authors compiled and analyzed the names in TT880 No ethnicity is ever specified, though in a few cases for Anavari-i cedid (New Navarino) names are identified as Muslim or zimmi. Zimmi: non-Muslim. Most names are identifiable as Orthodox Greeks. One name, Abdi, appears to be that of a convert but he is taxed as a non-Muslim. Unexpectedly for me, there are few names of Albanian origin, and few mentions of individuals of Frankish or Latin origin. Taking the names in #48 above, following the coaching at the end of Chapter 3, while Yani and Nikule are easy enough for the non-Ottomanist, it is possible to recognize İstaşnu as Stasinos, Yanağu as Giannakos, Ayustu as Augoustēs, and İstimad as Stamatēs. Ayumerinu and Biraşkiva are not provided with equivalents. I would read Ayumerinu as a name derived from a place called Agia (St.) Marina. The authors list all the names from TT880 with Ottoman and Greek equivalents, with some discussion of surnames and sources, as well as give a concordance to their appearances in the numbered sections of the cadaster. Concordance II: Names of Muslims in the Fortress of Anavarin-i cedid in TT880 by Fariba Zarinebaf, Jack L. Davis, and John Bennet. Concordance III: Topoynyms in TT880 by Jack L Davis and Fariba Zarinebaf. Concordance IV: Properties listed in TT880 by John Bennet. These last three concordances list names without discussion. The Muslim names are a gift to prosopographical studies. Where possible, the relationship of one individual to another is shown. The properties are shown with their identifications, e.g., çiftlik, mazraca, karye. The location of all the names in TT880 is given. References and Index Possibly the single most valuable aspect of this volume is the 11-page list of archival sources and bibliography of at least 350 works. The Index is dense and thorough. In both, the layout is puzzling, with five columns on two facing pages (with the extra space for annotation?). The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM which contains facsimiles of pages 78-101 of Tapu Tahrir 880, prepared by John Wallrodt and Jack L. Davis, as well as all the charts, maps, and photographs in the book – most in color, particularly pleasing where the antique maps are concerned, prepared by Evi Gorogianni and John Wallrodt. The CD-ROM is designed to be read by Adobe Acrobat 7.0, provided on the disk. A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece is physically a handsome book with Hesperia's usual care for layout and font. The designer and font are not identified: this should be routine information. There are remarkably few typos for a book with so many authors, although there is some inconsistency among them as to the use of the comma and the semicolon.