Wilkins|145of a commercial partnership sanctioned by Islamic law called a mudāraba. In
such an arrangement, al-Qaramani put up the capital and the three men acted
as his commercial agents, buying and selling in the Indian market. Al-Qaramani
and his agents would then split the proceeds of the partnership according to an
agreed-on formula. In general, the combination of marketing, manufacture, and
investment activities carried out through multiple agents ranging from Anatolia
and Syria in the west to India and possibly Afghanistan in the east, indicates a
complex and highly capitalized business operation.
The Local Law Courts and the Social World of al-Qaramani
The complexity and prosperity of al-Qaramani’s business is mirrored in the
structure of his family and his social networks. Ibn al-Hanbali’s description of
al-Qaramani as a socially mobile outsider is corroborated by the court records,
which assign no titles of prestige to his father. One of four brothers, Ibrahim
would assume the title of khawāja, the title of long-distance merchants, as would
two other brothers, Ismail and Amin al-Din. According to the records of his in-
heritance settlement, al-Qaramani had two wives at the time of his death, both
of high status, one probably ethnically Turkish and the other the daughter of a
wealthy Aleppan trader. By these two women, al-Qaramani had at least three
children, each of whom married into other distinguished merchant families. In
his biographical dictionary Ibn al-Hanbali devotes notices to members of two of
the three merchant families forming such marriage alliances with the Qaramani
family. Ties to the political elite are less in evidence but still significant: serving
as the legal guardian (wali) of two nephews, the sons of Ibrahim’s brothers Ismail
and Muhammad, was Ahmad Bey ibn Janbulad Bey, scion of the preeminent
Kurdish family that occupied the office of governor of Aleppo for brief periods
in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In sum, despite his history as a
newcomer to Aleppo, Ibrahim al-Qaramani had by the end of his life established
himself and his extended family as a prominent and powerful presence in Alep-
pan society.
Al-Qaramani’s business contacts may also suggest the breadth of his social
interaction. In his loan transactions al-Qaramani does not seem to exclude any
religious group, as he lends money, and often quite large sums, to Christians and
Jews as well as Muslims. At the same time, al-Qaramani does seem to favor
persons with ties to Anatolia or to peoples historically connected with Anato-
lia. Hence, we find significant numbers of borrowers and business partners with
geographical qualifiers linking them with the cities of Bursa, Kayseri, Larende,
Maraş, Urfa (Ruha), Hasankeyf, Diyarbekir, and others described as Armenian
and Kurdish. This is not to say necessarily that these persons were from those
areas; in most cases the phrasing leaves ambiguous whether they were travel-
ing merchants, recent immigrants to Aleppo, or long-term residents of the city.