Peirce|111But as today, when Gaziantep (the modern name for Aintab) is perhaps best
known for its commercial and entrepreneurial talents (as well as for its pistachios
and baklava), so in the sixteenth century Aintab was an important commercial
center. Many of Aintab’s inhabitants were busy in manufacture and trade and
sometimes both. Evliya praised Aintab’s quivers and yemeni slippers (the latter
still today handmade with seven kinds of leather). But if the city’s court records
are any indication, textiles and textile dyes were the major occupation of manu-
facturers and traders, urban and rural alike.
Aintab’s commercial success was facilitated by its location on or near trade
routes to the east, west, south, northeast, and northwest. Traders hired agents or
traveled themselves. The alibi an Armenian merchant accused of murder gave
was, “I travel on business, I am here today, gone tomorrow.” Overshadowed by
the commercial hub of Aleppo, third-largest city of the empire, Aintab was nev-
ertheless a local, regional, and transregional trading center. In 1541, textiles from
as far away as Damascus and Cairo were bought and sold among leading mer-
chants and officials of the city and between city merchants and village chiefs.
Aintab sweets were marketed in Persia and India—at least according to Evliya
Çelebi, notorious for exaggeration, who also claimed the province was famous
“world-wide” for its fruits.
But commercial success cannot be taken for granted. After decades of dis-
ruption and loss of revenue that preceded the conquest, Aintab’s inhabitants
surely appreciated the greater security of the present. Economic recovery was
signaled by the return of Venetian traders to Aleppo in the early 1530s, after a fif-
teen-year absence. Süleyman’s conquest of Baghdad in 1535 completed Ottoman
control of the Fertile Crescent, adding more connections to an already-rich trade
network. Aintab could rightly be described as sitting at the crest of the crescent.
However, even a huge and powerful empire like that of the Ottomans could not
always guarantee safe passage, as Evliya makes clear for the bandit-plagued mid-
seventeenth century. Travelling to Aintab from the Çukurova, he was given the
good news that “a great Aintab caravan” was coming and that it was fully armed,
with many Janissaries guarding it.
Frontier Mentality
An important trade route and one of the strands making up the fabled silk route
was the ribbon of cities and towns that ran from the Mediterranean through
Aintab eastward to Bire (today’s Birecik), Ruha (Urfa; today’s Şanlıurfa), Amid
(Diyarbakır), and Mardin. This geography heavily influenced Aintab’s political
fate as well as its economic history. Historically, Aintab had been subordinate to
regional powers located along this ribbon. More rarely, when Aintab was con-
trolled by a larger power in a more distant capital, such as the Byzantines or