146 | Ibrahim ibn Khidr al-Qaramani
In the case of the loan for trade in India, the borrowers were not Indians, or even
other groups usually associated with international trade, such as Armenians and
Jews, but rather ethnic Kurds, who were residents of Aleppo and, judging by their
names, Muslim. The preponderance of Anatolian contacts suggests a northward-
facing orientation, perhaps building on trading networks that al-Qaramani may
have established earlier in his Anatolian home city of Larende.
The wealth and high social status of al-Qaramani, as impressive as they are,
did not lead to the formation of a durable Qaramani mercantile dynasty. Studies
of the urban notable families of Aleppo in the later Ottoman period mention no
Qaramani lineage, and in general the great mercantile families of Aleppo did not
last more than a few generations, especially between the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries. The decline of the Qaramani household seems to have begun with a
series of tragedies that struck the extended family in the 1550s. According to the
court records, al-Qaramani’s young adult son Muhammad Çelebi predeceased
al-Qaramani, sometime in 1554 or 1555, and Muhammad Çelebi’s surviving son
Khidr also died young, between 1557 and 1567. The deaths of three generations of
Qaramani males in just over ten years, and the apparent inability or unwilling-
ness of Ibrahim’s adult brothers to take over the long-distance trade operation,
may well have spelled the end of the family’s fortunes. The causes of death are not
known, but they coincide with repeated outbreaks of plague in Aleppo in the mid-
dle of the sixteenth century. As merchants, the Qaramanis may have been more
vulnerable to the disease given their exposure during travel and their interaction
with geographically mobile agents. The biographer Ibn al-Hanbali indeed laments
the loss of many notable persons and friends from the ravages of the plague.
A series of court documents from 1566 and 1567 suggest that for some ten
years after his death al-Qaramani’s heirs attempted to preserve a major compo-
nent of his commercial operations under the management of al-Qaramani’s son-
in-law and erstwhile commercial agent, Marɇi ibn Ahmad al-ɇUlabi. However, the
same court records indicate that in 1566 a comprehensive and formal division of
al-Qaramani’s estate among his heirs according to Islamic law was under way. No
adult Qaramani male was able to assert independent control over a substantial
portion of the estate, and administration of the waq f endowing the Qaramaniyya
mosque would pass to the son-in-law Marɇi al-ɇUlabi. The Qaramani name would
die out, except in the name of the mosque, and the ɇUlabi name would remain
anchored in the administration of pious foundations, not only of al-Qaramani’s
but other families as well.
***The life story of al-Qaramani invites reflection on the general experience of mer-
chants in Ottoman lands, especially after the enormous territorial expansion