138 | Ibrahim ibn Khidr al-Qaramani
a larger process of Ottomanization. Their concern with physical infrastructure
is most salient. They expanded networks of fortresses and caravansaries along
trade and pilgrimage routes to increase security and constructed commercial
complexes (khans) in towns to house merchants and store goods. In a marked de-
parture from the Mamluk practice, the Ottomans conducted systematic and ex-
tensive cadastral surveys (tahrirs) of revenue sources, which made taxation more
predictable and responsive to changing local conditions. More controversially,
drawing on Mongol and Timurid practices, the Ottomans resorted regularly to
the massive resettlement of conquered populations, among them merchants and
artisans, to restore if not expand economic prosperity among a sprawling net-
work of urban centers. Finally, the Ottomans established a more centralized legal
system, privileging only one among several schools of Islamic law (the H·anafī
school), and created throughout the empire an extensive hierarchy of courts that
could properly regulate trade and prevent fraud and other unfair business prac-
tices. Taken together, Ottoman initiatives in general advanced the interests of
merchants, not only those within their own domains but those who might trade
in goods across Afro-Eurasia.
The Perspective of Ibn al-Hanbali, a Contemporary
Aleppan Historian
To reconstruct the life of al-Qaramani, who witnessed these changes, we turn
to three sources, each very different in nature and perspective. Two sources
have long been available, these being the biographical dictionary of Radi al-Din
Muhammad Ibn al-Hanbali (d. 1562), a contemporary Aleppan scholar and his-
torian, and a sociohistorical and architectural survey of Aleppo by a twentieth-
century Aleppan historian, Muhammad Raghib al-Tabbakh (d. 1951). More
recently a third source was identified: a concentration of over thirty documents
found in the earliest volumes of the Aleppo law court records, housed in the
national archives of Syria. While Ibn al-Hanbali’s biography relates elements
of al-Qaramani’s social reputation and public image and al-Tabbakh’s survey
his architectural vision and legacy, the court records disclose his strategies and
methods as a businessman and his patriarchal sway as father, husband, and slave
owner. From these sources emerges some idea of the wealth, power, status, and
worldview of al-Qaramani and by extension the long-distance merchant com-
munity in Aleppo during the period immediately after the Ottoman conquest.
Clearly each of the three sources has its own biases. The biographical notice
by Ibn al-Hanbali should not be regarded as a straightforward and neutral ac-
count of al-Qaramani’s life. Born, raised, and resident in the city of Aleppo, the
Muslim scholar Ibn al-Hanbali witnessed the Ottoman conquest of Syria and
experienced the initial four decades of Ottoman rule. Like many biographical