118 honored by the glory of islamgardens under threat.^54 This case demonstrates that efforts to stop their activi-
ties failed.
A petition from the customs controller of Bandırma, located across the
Sea of Marmara from Istanbul, recorded in the Register of Complaints from
1671 refl ects the Ottoman failure in stemming the trade and the ongoing con-
cern that it be stopped.^55 Seyyid Mehmed wrote that contrary to Islamic law
and imperial edict, wine and spirits were being bought and sold in towns and
villages that possessed Friday mosques and whose inhabitants were predomi-
nantly Muslim. Although the sale and purchase of wine and spirits had been
forbidden by imperial decree, infi dels (Christians) publicly brought wine and
spirits to the quay of the town of Erdek, loaded the contraband onto ships, sold
it, and delivered it elsewhere.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims rubbed shoulders in hundreds of taverns
across the city. The Shariah scribe often recorded the Muslim presence at tav-
erns in a matter-of-fact manner, such as in a case concerning another issue:
murder and the payment of blood money.^56 Ibrahim Çelebi son of Ali and his
wife came to court to demand blood money from Nikita Merkuri, the Ortho-
dox Christian owner of a tavern in an unspecifi ed Christian neighborhood of
Beşiktaş. Knife-wielding Ahmed had murdered their son Mehmed while thetwo were sitting at the tavern with Abdullah, Mustafa, a velvet carpet dealer
named Mahmud, and the stonemason Amr. The fact that fi ve Muslim men
were sitting at a tavern in a Christian neighborhood before the conversation
became heated and knives were drawn is not commented on by the scribe, nor
does it appear to concern the magistrate. We also know from the Shariah court
records that Janissaries, who should have limited themselves to the fermented
millet drink known as boza, a frothy and slightly sour, vinegary drink favored
in winter, often frequented taverns in Hasköy.
The prohibition on alcohol was extended throughout the imperial do-mains in every town where mosques existed. Rycaut attributes the wider effort
to Vani Mehmed Efendi as well. He quotes the decree to the magistrate of Izmir,
at the time a relatively new, buzzing port city where fortunes were made or lost
on the trade in legal and illegal goods. In that Aegean city, wine was banned
along with games of dice, cards, and divination arrows as part of enjoining
the good and forbidding the wrong, or, in Rycaut’s language, “The observation
of lawful Precepts hath been confi rmed, and unlawful things have been pro-
hibited.”^57 Yet the effort at quashing the consumption of and trade in alcohol
amounted to merely short-lived, symbolic measures that failed like Prohibition
in the United States in the 1 920s. High demand for a lucrative product, the
creation of alternative venues for its consumption, corrupt enforcement agents
who took a share of profi ts rather than punish lawbreakers, and stubborn and