Tourists know the Turkish city of Bursa as an industrial and tourist city located south of the Marmara Sea and north of the famous Uludag Mountain, and it includes many Ottoman monuments, mausoleums of sultans and their historical administrative buildings.

The city is described in Turkish and Ottoman literatures and by academics and historians, as "the cradle of the empire" and the early capital of the Ottomans, which represents a model of what many Muslim cities were like in Anatolia and the Middle East between the 14th and 16th centuries AD.

The city historically included many of the features that characterized Islamic cities of its time, especially endowment institutions in urban areas, and the prevalence of the principle of hisbah in the social organization of the central market, as well as traditional roles such as the muhtaseb, qadi and municipal administration.

Researcher Elgin Arabagi, from the Department of History at Georgetown University in the US, says that orientalists used to criticize the shortcomings of the Islamic city, such as the lack of civil society and the absence of urban planning. Which formed the basis of the social, economic and educational roles in the organization of the old Ottoman society.

Diverse urban culture

The researcher says that the Ottoman urban culture absorbed the ancient Roman legacies.

In her paper entitled "Bursa, a typical Ottoman city from classical times," Arapagi studies how the Ottomans rose as a global empire within a century and a half after they were a nomadic tribal society, and discusses aspects of the rapid urbanization in Bursa and its transformation into a leading commercial center in the Mediterranean world, despite the experience of Scanty Ottomans in commercial activity before it.

It says that when the Ottomans entered the city in 1326 at the hands of Orhan Bey, son of the founder, Osman, Bursa was confined between old walls, and Orhan sought to expand it outside the walls and create new areas for the settlement of Turkish tribes in the Bursa plain.

Thus, the abandonment of the idea of ​​the city within the wall led to its great expansion.

The Ottoman rulers in the 14th century were concerned with the establishment of the city in the manner of urbanization that the Ottoman Balkan cities knew, and the center of it was built to include a mosque, a traditional market, a school, bathrooms, soup kitchens and a palace (palace), and they took care of the development of the castle while the residential areas expanded outside the city walls.

Since the Greek residents of the city had surrendered after years of siege, Orhan promised not to harm them and fulfilled his promise, but he kept the castle he turned into an administrative district, while the Greeks who lived around it were allowed to live north in the heart of the Bursa plain, and the great Uludag mountain formed a natural wall south. To protect it from any incoming attacks.

Ottoman cities in the Balkans and Anatolia

In his book "The Ottoman Cities in the Balkans", the French architectural historian Pierre Pinon considered that the allocation of a neighborhood for trade was essential for the Ottoman city, and the Islamic one in general.

Likewise, fellow historian André Raymond wrote that "the Arab city is, above all, a market city."

Although Raymond criticizes generalizations in judging cities, he acknowledges the prevalence of markets as a central feature of the geography and planning of Islamic cities, stressing that the “shop” or “shop” is the basic element of these ancient markets.

Raymond emphasizes the centrality of the market in ancient urban Arab life and Ottoman geography in general, ranging from the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa.

The researcher says that this observation can be generalized in many cities, including Damascus, Sarajevo, Kayseri and others.

Moreover, these markets were economically linked via ancient trade routes between the eastern part and the western part of the ancient Middle East.

The researcher says that the Turkish / Ottoman word "çarşı" which means market, is derived from Persian roots (çehar-su) and means "4 roads" or "four sides", perhaps indicating the centrality of the local "bazaar" in the classic Ottoman city and the East. Middle Eastern.

And the researcher continues that the Bani Othman tribe participated in commercial activities with the local Greeks in Bursa, and within a few decades after the annexation of Bursa - specifically in the late 14th century AD - the Bursa market was known as a global market that includes East and West goods, especially raw silk and other Asian commodities. This changed the usual trade routes and made the first Ottoman capital a commercial destination with its many caravanserais and a covered market.

Ottoman control of the Anatolian Silk Roads provided profitable capital to the Ottomans, and caravans of merchants between Tabriz and Italy marched through the Ottoman cities of Anatolia such as Konya, transporting silk to the ruling European elites who were demanding increasingly luxurious fabrics.

Whereas Orhan tried to attract Italian merchants of Genoa to attract the flow of international trade to the Ottoman capital, his grandson Bayezid Zeid I (known as the Thunderbolt 1389-1402) sought ways to control Asian trade in Asia Minor in the following decades.

The main centers of the Silk Road included Anatolian cities such as Ankara, Amasya and Erzurum, and the Tabriz-Konya route connecting to the coasts of Ephesus and its port on the Aegean Sea in western Anatolia flourished.

The competition for control of the Silk Road in Anatolia led to the Battle of Ankara in 1402 AD, when the Tatar army led by Timur Lank defeated the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid.

The defeat of Bayezid I in Ankara led to the throne being vacant for 11 years, but the Timurid control of the Ottoman lands and the Silk Road in Asia Minor was temporary, as the Ottomans regained their authority as well as the lost lands during the reign of Mehmed I (1413-1421) and Murad II (mid-15th century). AD), while Sultan Selim I concluded the second round of competition on the Silk Road when he occupied Tabriz for the first time in 1514.

Commerce and Imperial Politics

Although the 15th century historian Asheq Bashazadeh (1400-1484) referred to the illiteracy of the two sultans Othman and Orhan, but - according to the researcher - they were not just military leaders of tribal origins, but were aware of the importance of trade in strengthening local loyalties, and they were keen to build a commercial complex and market Developed at that era, and linked to urban social organizations in Bursa.

In his analysis of these transformations, Orientalist and anthropologist Paul Lindner explained the success of the early Ottomans as a "nomadic tribe and frontier society", viewing them as an inclusive social group;

"They used to meet people of diverse ethnic and religious origins, from the Greeks to the Jews, and from the Tatars to the Mongols and the Persians," he says. Their common interests with other local powers - such as the Byzantine nobles in northwestern Anatolia - led to the formation of alliances, according to Lindner's study. Anatolian nomads in the Middle Ages. "

According to the researcher, in addition to being an Ottoman city, Bursa was a typical "Islamic" city, meaning that its urban structure reflects the interest in distinguishing between the public and private sectors.

The public is the center of the city and the market, and there are endowments that hosted students, the poor and travelers (passersby), and in the heart of the mosque and the market, while residential neighborhoods have privacy outside the center.

As a newly settled Bedouin community, the Ottomans showed remarkable progress in transforming the city into one of the major commercial and industrial centers in the Mediterranean region, and in laying the foundations of a strong urban culture in the city, which contributed to the early Ottoman transformation from a model of a Bedouin tribe to a global empire.

Many historians have studied this shift in contexts such as the role of the Union of Craftsmen, Traders, and Fraternities in building the Ottoman Empire, which is confirmed by the accounts of Ibn Battuta Travels, who referred to the active role of sisters in social organization and the rebuilding of the city during the reign of Orhan.

The ancient tax records in Bursa showed that the lines between Islamic and non-Muslim societies were not very strict, as many areas of the city were hosting mixed groups of Muslims and non-Muslims, and the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta described it in his book "The Journey of Ibn Battuta, called Tuhfat Al-Nazar fi Ghariba." Al-Amsaar, "saying" a great, great city, with good markets, wide streets, bordered by orchards on all sides and running springs, and outside it a very hot river that pours into a great pool. "

The study also focuses on the role of craftsmen's unions and courts of litigation in defending the interests of craftsmen and professionals on the basis of customary laws called "the old law". This role has been studied by historians as an intermediary body between the bazaar merchants and craftsmen, and between the Ottoman state in exchange for the Orientalists' theses that focus On the control of the Ottoman central government over public life, the researcher believes that complaints related to the violation of customary union laws often resulted in protecting the interests of union members on the one hand, and contributed to the formation of Ottoman law from below in a way that takes into account the interests of the lower classes, on the other hand.

The researcher concludes that the history of Ottoman cities was naturally "different" from the history of the West, as the Ottoman system of government and the social system was built on the basis of Islamic institutions and customary laws, and on the legacies of previous civilizations, starting from the Greco-Roman and Seljuk periods, and up to the Middle Ages and the principalities of Anatolia.

However, the differences do not mean that the systems of the Islamic East lacked mechanisms of social, political and legal organization that created opportunities for the non-ruling classes in the formulation of law and decision-making processes, as is evident in the study of the ancient social history of Bursa.