142 | Ibrahim ibn Khidr al-Qaramani
as fakhr al-tujjār, or “the pride of merchants.” In a few instances, the court scribe
even uses a divine invocation after his name, “May God Almighty strengthen
him” (Allāh taɇālā aɇazzahu), a phrase usually reserved for state officials of high
rank, but there is no explicit mention that al-Qaramani held such offices. A
few other merchants of high status appear in the court record of the sixteenth
century with titles of khawāja and fakhr al-tūjjar, but none of them seem to have
merited such an invocation, suggesting something of al-Qaramani’s preemi-
nence or perhaps his dual role as merchant and quasi-state official. The number
of court documents relating to al-Qaramani, a total of thirty-seven, overwhelms
that of any other merchant in the registers covering the 1550s and 1560s. Of the
thirty-seven documents, the vast majority are registrations of loan transactions
and the remainder a mix of receipts, property rental agreements, and delega-
tions of authority. The loan transactions indicate that al-Qaramani preferred to
work through agents (sing. wakīl), who were either other merchants or, more
frequently, his own slaves (sing. mamlūk) and freedmen. Some of the merchants
working as al-Qaramani’s agents were themselves affluent khawājas, bespeaking
al-Qaramani’s importance. In his business al-Qaramani does not seem to have
collaborated with his siblings or other lateral relatives very much but rather exer-
cised a kind of patrimonial authority over a diverse set of dependents and clients,
not only freedmen and slaves but also merchants of lesser status, one of whom
married his daughter.
The court records are silent on the question of whether al-Qaramani abused
his slaves, as Ibn al-Hanbali claims, but they do indicate that at least some of the
slaves enjoyed the trust of al-Qaramani, since he gave them formal permission
to conduct certain commercial and legal transactions. It is now well established
that merchants in Ottoman cities relied heavily on freedmen and even slaves to
conduct business on their behalf and entrusted to them large amounts of capi-
tal. Illustrative of that bond of trust is an agreement inscribed in the court rec-
ords of Aleppo relating to the affairs of one Aleppan merchant known as Ibn
Hunaykat, a contemporary of al-Qaramani:
Al-Hajj Mami son of ɇAbdullah, the freedman of al-Khawaja Nasir al-Din son
of al-Hajj Ahmad Ibn Hunaykat, and Ridwan, son of ɇAbdullah the slave of
the aforementioned Ibn Hunaykat, hereby pledge to travel to Calicut in the
land of India, to collect whatever another freedman of Ibn Hunaykat, Yu-
suf son of ɇAbdullah, gives them of goods and money, and to bring them [by
overseas transport] to Ibn Hunaykat. In return for their labor, Ibn Hunaykat
pledges to give them 200 sultanis for every 1,000 sultanis they bring. In addi-
tion, Ibn Hunaykat acknowledges that if the aforementioned Ridwan returns
from the journey, he will manumit Ridwan for the sake of God Almighty and
will owe him 50 sultanis as a duly contracted loan. The parties accept all of
this agreement, which the judge certified and declared as being in accordance