52 honored by the glory of islamof owls and crows”: weeping, they fl ed their natal regions and moved to the
city.^67 This caused “the formerly prosperous towns and cities [of Anatolia] to be
destroyed and in ruins.” The ruin of Anatolia was coupled with citadels on the
frontier being “usurped by the aggressive hand of the enemy and day by day the
territorial possessions and wealth of the empire decreased.”^68
Another indicator of Ottoman fi nancial crisis in the period includes the
instability and eventual abandonment of Ottoman coinage. In the mid- to late
seventeenth century the Ottoman mint output declined, Ottoman coinage dis-
appeared from local markets, and western European coinage replaced it.^69 The
Ottoman silver asper became merely a unit of account, while the elite and com-
moners alike made actual payments in stable foreign coins such as the Dutch
thaler and Spanish reales de la ocho. Mint output virtually ceased, the shortage
of coins intensifi ed, and counterfeit and debased western European coinage
fl ooded the market. In this period the Ottomans lost control of their own cur-
rency and were unable to regulate their own economy.^70 The ability to mint
coins was a primary concern of empires; giving up this right meant forfeiting
an opportunity to instill public confi dence in the dynasty and empire.
As commoners stopped using Ottoman coinage in everyday transactions,
displaying a profound lack of confi dence in the fi nancial health of the empire,
and merchants and Janissaries rebelled in Istanbul over debased coinage, re-
bellions in the countryside led to economic crisis there as well. Peasant merce-
naries armed by the administration, as well as rogue Janissaries, sipahis, and
governors, exacerbated highway robbery and violent crime committed by root-
less peasants. Conditions became so bad that pillaging and looting even led to
famine in some areas.^71 This upheaval attended the shift from “a military con-
quest state to a bureaucratic, revenue-collecting state” characterized by the “lo-
calization of the empire’s servants in the provinces,” who became “entrenched
local interest groups.”^72 All these revolts led to a renewal of the disastrous con-ditions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: economic disrup-
tion, fl ight and hardship in the countryside, and an urban crime wave that
knew no religious bounds, following migration to urban centers of marginal,
young, armed, single landless men attracted by the opportunities of the city.^73
Dozens of violent crimes, including armed robbery, assault, sexual assault,
and murder, were recorded in the mid- to late seventeenth-century Shariah
records of fi ve representative districts of Istanbul (Beşiktaş, Galata, Hasköy,
Istanbul, and Yeniköy). Jews are depicted assaulting and killing Muslim men
and women; Muslims also appear as murderers; Christians threaten Christians
with death and murder Jews. Crime knew no religious bounds as the populace
of Istanbul complained of assaults night and day, on the streets and even on
the waterways that skirted the metropolis. Even foreign brigands assaulted the