A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the 18th Century (review)

The book by Zarinebaf, Bennet and Davis is a monumental undertaking rarely seen in Greek studies and even less so in the English language. The authors, an Ottoman historian and two archeologists, have collaborated to examine Ottoman documentary evidence and local surface archaeology in order to reconstruct the economy, demography, and topography of the Ottoman province of Anavarin, today's Navarino, in the early eighteenth century. The book is divided into five chapters followed by four appendices and four concordances with a very necessary preceding glossary and a good concluding index. The edition itself is of very high quality with almost 100 illustrations, and maps and is accompanied by a CD-ROM with two files, one a reproduction of the photographs, maps and illustrations found in the book, often in color (when the originals are in black and white), and the second a facsimile edition of the Tapu Tahir880, the Ottoman cadastral survey of 1716 that forms the main documentary source for this work.

The use of Ottoman documents and cadastral surveys in particular, is quite common in Ottoman and Middle Eastern studies but remarkably rare for Greece despite the long Ottoman occupation of the region. Languages have been a serious impediment and as a result the collaborative effort of Zarinebaf, Bennet, and Davis is to be applauded and hopefully it will generate many more similar endeavors. So will their very interesting suggestions regarding the Ottoman land management of the Peloponnese in the last century of Ottoman rule. Their suggestion that the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul deliberately tried to resurrect the classical timar model, which had been in decline for a long time, is quite intriguing, as was their revelations regarding the role of Muslim administrators as well as Muslim reyasin the region. Their book, of course, is not aimed at the average reader, not even at the relatively well informed one, but rather at the specialist. Yet the interdisciplinary character of the work broadens its appeal beyond the historians of the period to the demographers, anthropologists, and even linguists with an interest in the region or the period.

In the first chapter Zarinebaf provides an excellent overview of Ottoman tax and land management practices, and their evolution, in the empire in general as well as in the Morea in particular. Her analysis provides all the necessary knowledge a reader will require for the ensuing discussion, although people less familiar with Ottoman studies will need to check quite frequently the glossary provided at the beginning of the book. Through her use of primary as well as previously published works, Zarinebaf, in a thoughtful and interesting discussion, paints the conditions prevalent in the Morea in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a very tumultuous period when the Peloponnese fell into Venetian hands during the Holy League war (1685–1699) before Ottoman authority was restored in 1715. The discussion, however, may prove difficult and even confusing to those with no prior knowledge of the events and Ottoman history in general. Although her account is fairly straightforward and adheres to generally accepted theses in Ottoman studies, much of it will be new to many readers. For example, issues like the complicated relationship between the timarand tax farming systems, and their effects on peasant indebtedness are quite complex but are necessarily discussed in a very succinct manner. Still her discussion regarding the role of the Ottoman officials and their relationships with Christian and Muslim reyas, which is rarely examined in Greek historiography, or the çiftlikdebate, though hardly revolutionary, will prove very informative to all those interested in this period and are necessary for the ensuing analysis. Zarinebaf, however, assumes knowledge of the basic history of the Morea and does not expand upon the wars, rebellions, and political developments in general.

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