Bibliographie
Archival Sources
Cairo, Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya, Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24, 50.
Secondary Sources
ʿAbd al‑Raḥīm, ʿAbd al‑Raḥīm ʿAbd al‑Raḥmān, “al‑Maġribiyya fī ta’rīḫ Miṣr fī al‑ʿaṣr al‑ʿuṯmānī, 1517-1798,” al‑Maǧalla al‑ta’rīḫiyya al‑maġribiyya, Tunis, 1982.
Aḥmad, Muḥammad ʿAbd al‑ʿĀl, al‑Baḥr al‑aḥmar wa‑l-muḥāwalāt al‑burtuġāliyya al‑ūlā li‑l-sayṭara ʿalayhi (1465-1540), by Abū Maḫrama al‑Ṭayyib ibn ʿAbdallāh, al‑Hay’a al‑Miṣriyya al‑ʿĀmma li‑l-Kitāb, Alexandria, 1980.
Bacqué-Grammont, Jean-Louis & Kroell, Anne, Mamlouks, Ottomans et Portugais en mer Rouge : L’affaire de Djedda en 1517, Ifao, Cairo, 1988.
Bacqué-Grammont, Jean-Louis & Veinstein, Gilles (eds.), Les Ottomans en Méditerranée : navigation, diplomatie, commerce, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, 1986.
Bostan, İdris, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilâtı : XVII. Yüzyılda Tersâne-i Amire, Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara, 1992.
Brummett, Palmira, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1994.
Crecelius, Daniel & Badr, Ḥamza ʿAbd al‑ʿAzīz, “The Usurpation of Waqf Revenues in Late Sixteenth-Century Damiette,” JARCE 32, 1995, pp. 265-268.
Guilmartin, John, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974.
Hanna, Nelly, Making Big Money in 1600 : The Life and Times of Ismaʿil Abu Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1998.
Hess, Andrew, “The Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (1517) and the Beginning of the Sixteenth-Century World War,” IJMES 4, 1, 1973, pp. 55-76.
Hess, Andrew, The Forgotten Frontier, A History of the 16th Century Ibero-African Frontier, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978.
Imber, Colin “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” Archivum Ottomanicum 6, 1980, pp. 221-282.
Imber, Colin, The Reconstruction of the Ottoman Fleet After the Battle of Lepanto, 1571-1572, Studies in Ottoman History and Law, Isis Press, Istanbul, 1996.
Imber, Colin, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, Palgrave, London, 2002.
Mikhail, Alan, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2011.
al‑Naḫīlī, Darwīš, al‑Sufun al‑islāmiyya ʿalā ḥurūf al‑muʿǧam, Dār al‑Maʿārif, Cairo, 1979.
Panzac, Daniel, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy in the Heyday of Sail (1660-1850),” in Zürcher, Erik J. (ed.), Arming the State: Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775-1925, I.B. Tauris, London, 1999.
Panzac, Daniel, La caravane maritime: Marins européens et marchands ottomans en Méditerranée, 1680-1830, CNRS, Paris, 2004.
Panzac, Daniel, La Marine ottomane: de l’apogée à la chute de l’Empire, 1572-1923, CNRS, Paris, 2009.
Pepper, Simon & Adams, Nicholas, Firearms and Fortifications, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1986.
Ramzī, Muḥammad, al‑Qāmūs al‑ǧuġrāfī li‑l-bilād al‑miṣriyya min ʿahd qudamā’ al‑Miṣriyyīn ilā sanat 1945, al‑Wizāra al‑Māliyya, Cairo, 1953-1963.
Raymond, André, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au xviiie siècle, Ifead, Damas, 1973.
Shaw, Stanford J., The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1962.
Shaw, Stanford J., The Budget of Ottoman Egypt: 1005-1006/1596-1597, Mouton, The Hague, 1968.
Sulaymān, ʿAbd al‑Ḥamīd Ḥāmid, al‑Milāḥa al‑nīliyya fī Miṣr al‑ʿuṯmāniyya, al‑Hay’a al‑ʿĀmma li‑l‑Kitāb, Cairo, 2000.
Sulaymān, ʿAbd al‑Ḥamīd Ḥāmid, “al‑Suḫra fī Miṣr fī al‑qarnayn al‑sābiʿ ʿašar wa‑l‑ṯāmin ʿašar al‑mīlādiyyayn,” in al‑Rafḍ wa‑l‑iḥtiǧāǧ fī al‑muǧtamaʿ al‑miṣrī fī al‑ʿaṣr al‑ʿuṯmānī, Markaz al‑Buḥūṯ wa‑l‑Dirāsāt al‑Iǧtimāʿiyya, Kulliyyat al‑Ādāb, Ǧāmiʿat al‑Qāhira, Cairo, 2004.
Tuchscherer, Michel (ed.), Le commerce du café avant l’ère des plantations coloniales, Ifao, Cairo, 2001.
Winter, Michael, “A Statute for the Mercantile Fleet in Eighteenth-Century Egypt,” Mediterranean Historical Review 3, December 1988, pp. 118-122.
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Annexe
APPENDIX
Foreign Oarsmen
Muḥammad ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad al‑Ḥalabī
Qāsim ibn Šiḥāta ibn Manṣūr al‑Ḥamawī
Ǧumʿa ibn Salāma al‑Šāmī
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī Sayf al‑Dīn al‑ʿAqqāwī
Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al‑Šāmī al‑Ḥalabī
Oarsmen from Cairo and Vicinity
ʿAbdallāh ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad al‑Imbābī
ʿAli ibn Ḥiǧāzī ibn Ḫalīl al‑Miṣrī, from Ḥārat Fawwāla
Sulṭān ibn Salāma ibn Aḥmad from Ḥārat Fawwālīn
Al-Ḥāǧǧ ʿAbd al‑ʿĀṭī ibn Ḥasan al‑Basṭī, from Ḥārat Muqaṣṣ and
His retainer (tābiʿ) Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al‑Bāqī ibn (?)
ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al‑Basīṭī from Ḫaṭṭ Ḫurunfiš in al‑Qāhira
Fāris Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Miṣrī, from Bāb al‑Šaʿriyya
Badīr ibn Diyāb ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Imbābī
Šihāb al‑Dīn ibn Ḫayr al‑Dīn ibn Ḫalīl ibn ʿAbdallāh from Rawḍa
Šihāb al‑Dīn ibn Aḥmad ibn Māḍī al‑Imbābī
Salīm ibn Salīm from Warrāq al‑Ḥaḍar in Ǧīza
Timraz ibn Aḥmad ibn Šihāb al‑Dīn al‑Miṣrī from al‑Ḥusayniyya
Ḥusām ibn Dā’ūd al‑Muhtadī al‑Miṣrī, from Bayn al‑Sūrayn
Oarsmen from Upper Egypt
Manṣūr ibn Ḥusam al‑Abū Tīǧī
Salīm ibn Ṣabbūr al‑Ǧirǧāwī, known as Ibn al‑Saʿīd
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh from Qūṣ
Muʿarrif ibn Šayḫ Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al‑Ra’īsiyya in the Ṣaʿīd
Ibrahīm al‑Ḫūlī Ġālī al‑Ḥinnāwī ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ from Šaṭṭūra in the Ṣaʿīd and his
Colleague (rafīq) ʿAbdallāh ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Manṣūr ibn ʿAbdallāh, known as
Ibn Ǧābir al‑Ṣafṭī
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Mazārī
Ḫalīfa Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al‑Ḫulakī al‑Ṣaʿīdī
ʿĪsā ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Muḥammad from Dayrūṭ
ʿĀmir ibn al‑Šayḫ Marʿī ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Muḥammad al‑Bahǧūrī al‑Ṣaʿīdī
Nūr ibn Ḥusām al‑Dīn from Dayr Suwayda in the Ṣaʿīd
Al-Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad Abū Ǧaziyya ibn Aḥmad ibn Šiḥāta al‑Ǧuhaynī
Oarsmen from the Delta Region
Salīm ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al‑Samannūdī
Muḥammad ibn Maǧīd al‑Bilbaysī
Qā’id ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Ḥasan ibn Ḥiǧāzī al‑Qamrinī
ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al‑Quraynī
Muḥammad ibn Mubārak al‑Šabāsī
Ḥāmid ibn Aḥmad ibn Ibrahīm al‑Rašīdī
Salīm ibn Ḫalaf ibn ʿĀmirī al‑Laqqānī and his
Retainer, Aḥmad ibn Abī ʿAṭiyya ibn Muḥammad, from Safīḥa
Manṣūr ibn Ḥāǧǧ Ramaḍān ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad al‑Nahrāwī
Marʿī ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Yūnus from Ġumayra
Muḥammad Falayfīl ibn Šukr ibn ʿAlī al‑Burullusī
Šiḥāta ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Ramaḍān al‑Nahrāwī
Al-Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Manzalī
Yūnus ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al‑Fuwwī al‑Ḥabbāb
Muḥammad ibn Abū ʿĀmir ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Šabšīrī
Al-Ḥāǧǧ Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al‑Šayḫ Ibrahīm al‑Daḫmīsī
Al-Ḥāǧǧ Šiḥāta ibn Sirāǧ al‑Ǧummah from Maʿṣara and his
Retainer Šiḥāta ibn Šihāb al‑Dīn from al‑Maḥalla al‑Kubrā
Šihāb al‑Dīn ibn ʿAbd al‑Rizq ibn Ramaḍān al‑Ḫawankī and
Muḥammad ibn Nāṣir al‑Dīn from Minyat al‑Muršid, known as al‑Fuwwī
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, known as al‑Baǧʿ, from Maḥallat al‑Marḥūm
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAlī from Šabās al‑Šuhadā’
ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān from Abī Durra in al‑Buḥayra
Muṣṭafā ibn Dā’ūd ibn Šayḫ ʿAbd al‑Raḥīm from al‑Maḥalla al‑Kubrā
Šihāb al‑Dīn ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al‑Dīn from al‑Manzala
Muḥammad ibn Sirāǧ al‑Dīn from Šubrā Ḫalqūn in Sukkiyya
ʿĀmir ibn Ḥasan ibn ʿAyn al‑Ġazal al‑Damanhūrī
Šiḥāta ibn ʿAlī ibn Šiḥāta from Minyat al‑Hārūn
Sulaymān ibn ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf al‑Burullusī
Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al‑Manzalī
Muḥammad ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Muḥammad al‑Dumyāṭī
Muḥammad ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ Muḥammad al‑Manṣūrī
Yūsuf ibn Sulaymān al‑Damanhūrī
ʿAlī ibn ʿAwf ibn Muḥammad al‑Danī from Minyat ʿAbdallāh
Ḥiǧāzī ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ ʿAlī Ḥadīd al‑Dumyāṭī
Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al‑Dā’im al‑Skandarī
Salāma ibn ʿAbd al‑Nabī al‑Basratī from al‑Manzala
ʿAbd al‑Razzāq ibn ʿAlī ʿAliwa from Maṭariyya in Manzala
ʿAbd al‑Nabī ibn ʿĪsā ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Mahdawī, known as Qarāquṣ
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Mazārī
Sulaymān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḫālid al‑Qallīnī
ʿĀmir ibn Aḥmad ibn Ibrahīm al‑Šawrī
Abū al‑Ḫayr ibn al‑Ḥāǧǧ ʿAlī ibn Abū al‑Ḫayr al‑Damsīsī and
his father, al‑Ḥāǧǧ ibn ʿAlī al‑Damsīsī
Muḥammad ibn Zunful al‑ʿAǧīrī
ʿAbdallāh ibn Yūnus al‑Ḫaršī, known as Ibn Ḫalīfa
Šams al‑Dīn ibn ʿAbd al‑Ǧalīl ibn ʿAlam al‑Dīn al‑Naǧǧārī
Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al‑Kurdī al‑Ḫirbaytī
Salīm ibn Ḥamdān ibn ʿAbdallāh from Manūfiyya
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Notes
See Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization, p. 26. All three squadrons were originally under the command of a single sancakbeyi, but after 1560, because of the importance of the Red Sea and Indian trade to Egypt and the Ottomans, the squadron at Suez was assigned to a separate sancakbeyi. See Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 301.
The only complete budget for Ottoman Egypt yet found has been edited and published by Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 302.
Imber, “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” pp. 256-257, cites a report by Andrea Dandolo in 1562 noting that the Ottomans kept thirty or forty ships in the water as the guard squadrons for Rhodes and Alexandria.
The lack of sufficient supplies of wood was a major concern in Egypt. Throughout the Ottoman centuries Egypt imported large quantities of this item, mainly from Turkish forests in Anatolia and the Balkans. Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt, p. 99, remarks that wood in Egypt was so expensive that, although some ships were constructed by rich merchants, “shipbuilding was most often undertaken by the Ottoman administration of Egypt itself.” He notes, for instance, that in 1719 the government allocated 91,500 paras for the construction of 40 ships in the port of Rašīd and in that same year the sultan appointed an official to oversee the construction of another 12 ships in Rašīd for 10,500 paras. See p. 99, note 59. The para, known also as the akçe and as the niṣf fiḍḍa in Egypt, was a small silver coin used as the basic coin of account in the Ottoman Empire. Also in 1719 a firman affirms that a group of Turkish merchants/captains had constructed a fleet of 30 galleons to carry trade between Egypt and the central Ottoman Empire. See Winter, “A Statute for the Mercantile Fleet,” pp. 118-122. It should be noted that ships built in Rašīd and Damiette were by definition smaller ones because of the bars that cut the two ports from the sea. The unavailability of wood at Suez meant that ships built for service in the Red Sea were sometimes constructed on the Nile River, disassembled, and carried by camels to Suez where they were reassembled.
Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt, p. 100, notes that in 1725 the Ottomans had to send wood to Suez from Istanbul to build three galleons meant to transport grains to the Ḥaramayn.
On the Ottoman push into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to combat the Portuguese, see, among others, Aḥmad, al-Baḥr al‑aḥmar; Bacqué-Grammont, Kroell, Mamlouks, Ottomans et Portugais. Several squadrons, ranging in size from 10 to 20 vessels sailed from Suez to extend Ottoman hegemony over the Arabian and African coasts and to combat the Portuguese. In 1565 a squadron left Suez for Aden to protect merchants coming from India against the Portuguese. Although their small vessels could not stand up to either the Portuguese carracks or the open Indian Ocean, they did succeed in barring the Portuguese from the Red Sea. See Imber, “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” pp. 215, 224.
On Egypt’s connections with the Asian and Red Sea trade, particularly with the new trade in coffee, see, for instance, Tuchscherer (ed.), Le commerce du café, and Hanna, Making Big Money.
On the naval conflict in the Mediterranean Sea in the sixteenth century, see, among others, Hess, The Forgotten Frontier; Hess, “The Ottoman Conquest of Egypt (1517)”; Bacqué-Grammont, Veinstein (eds.), Les Ottomans en Méditerranée; and Imber, “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” pp. 224-225, 269-272.
On Ottoman maritime commerce, see Panzac, La Marine ottomane, and Panzac, La caravane maritime. Towards the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Egyptian-Ottoman commercial shipping was exposed to predation by pirate ships from Malta, Tuscany and Sicily. As late as the eighteenth century merchant shipping in the eastern Mediterranean region was still threatened by Christian pirates. The abovementioned firman of 1719 laid out a set of regulations for the merchant ships that sailed from Egyptian ports. Among the regulations was that these ships should never leave port in squadrons of less than three ships and that, whenever possible, they should extend protection to other merchant ships of the empire sailing those eastern waters. See Winter, “A Statute for the Mercantile Fleet,” pp. 119-122.
Imber, “The Navy of Suleyman the Magnificent,” p. 215ff, discusses the shipyards and dockyards of the empire spread around the coasts of the central empire, but is silent on Egyptian sites.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, pp. 288-289. Imber has a useful chapter on the composition of Ottoman fleets in this study. See Chapter Eight, p. 287-317.
Guilmartin, Gunpowder, pp. 204-205.
Guilmartin, Gunpowder, p. 211.
Guilmartin, Gunpowder, pp. 217-219.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, pp. 290-291. The Ottomans only introduced galleons, sailing ships, after 1650.
Guilmartin, Gunpowder, p. 112.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 312, citing Katib Çelebi for the year 1656.
See Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilâtı. For a description of this muster I have relied on Panzac, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy,” which is based on Bostan’s work.
Yet Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 272, cites a firman from Istanbul in 1564 ordering that oarsmen for the ships of a squadron leaving Suez for the south be raised from prisoners not meriting capital punishment. In his “Reconstruction”, p. 99, Imber notes the unusually high number of criminals and conscripts to fill the quota of approximately 20,000 oarsmen required by the fleet that year.
Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, p. 217, n. 25 and Guilmartin, Gunpowder, p. 112, mention Azabs specifically, while Panzac, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy,” p. 44, cites the large number of Janissaries, found by Bostan, who were recruited for the campaign of 1660. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 303, verifies that in 1572 the admiral of the rebuilt Ottoman fleet was ordered specifically to recruit 342 Azabs for service with the fleet. But in “Reconstruction”, Imber refers to the 3,000 Janissaries who were drafted for service that year. By 1660 Janissaries had mostly replaced Azabs on the ships.
Christian fleets, on the other hand, employed almost exclusively convicts and slaves as oarsmen. One case of an apparent Azab and his brother in Egypt being convicted for crimes in 1592 and sentenced to service as oarsmen on imperial galleys can be found in Crecelius, Badr, “The Usurpation of Waqf Revenues,” pp. 265-268. Imber’s studies cite numerous examples across the years of both criminals and slaves being drafted for service in the galleys.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 306, remarks that in the sixteenth century Muslim oarsmen received payment for their service of 106 akçe per month, while non-Muslims received 80 akçes.
Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, p. 216, n. 14, cites the usual statistic of four households paying for the support of one oarsmen levied from a fifth household, but Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 306, observes that this ratio varied according to the size of the fleet and the size of the area where the government made the levy. He notes that in 1551, before the Tripoli campaign, the Treasury levied one oarsman per 23 households. In 1570-1571, for the invasion of Cyprus, the rate was one in fifteen households and, as the Ottomans tried to rebuild their fleet after their defeat at Lepanto, it was one in seven or eight households.
Panzac, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy,” pp. 43-44.
Panzac, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy,” p. 44.
Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650, p. 306, mentions that oarsmen were levied from a much wider range of districts, including Albania, for the campaign against Chios in 1566.
Panzac, “The Manning of the Ottoman Navy,” pp. 43-44. Brummett, Ottoman Seapower, p. 226, n. 103, citing Pepper, Adams, Firearms and Fortifications, p. 30, assumes the average galley carried a complement of 300 men, although she notes that Pepper and Adams use a figure of only 150 oarsmen per ship.
The data from these documents was collected some years ago with the help of Professor Ḥamza ʿAbd al‑ʿAzīz Badr of Suhāǧ University, Egypt.
The muqaddimūn, who were organized into their own guild, played an important role in Egyptian ports. They might have skills of their own, such as carpenters or caulkers, used in shipbuilding, but in their capacity as muqaddimūn were responsible for recruiting the men of various skills required to build, load, provision, or, as in this case, row the government’s ships.
A useful discussion of the monies, both local and foreign, in circulation in Ottoman Egypt is provided by Raymond, Artisans et commerçants I, pp. 17-52.
Darwīš al‑Naḫīlī describes the aġriba (akrib; pl. akārib) extremely briefly as a small, but fast, ship of war. See al‑Naḫīlī, al‑Sufun al‑islamiyya, p. 7.
ʿAbd al‑Ḥamīd Sulaymān cites a case from the court of Damietta from the year 1586 in which 80 oarsmen were dispatched from Damietta to Rašīd; their pay was only 100 niṣf fiḍḍas each. He remarks that the courts of Damietta, Rašīd, Alexandria and Būlāq contain numerous cases relating to the recruitment of sailors/oarsmen in which their names and salaries are recorded. See al‑Milāḥa al‑nīliyya, pp. 19-35.
See Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24 (1006/1598), pp. 205-206, Item 685.
Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24, p. 206, Item 686.
Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24, p. 206, Item 687.
Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24, pp. 206-208, Item 690.
Dār al‑Waṯā’iq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 24, page 208, Item 691. One often finds discrepancies in the figures of accounts recorded in the court’s siǧillāt.
Sulaymān discusses the use of forced labor in “al‑Suḫra fī Miṣr”.
See Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt, pp. 136-137. Each of these captains/sancakbeyi also held urban muqāṭaʿāt (tax farms), but not the customs of their ports, to help pay for the expenses of governing and defending their ports and maintaining and provisioning their squadrons. The osmani is the Ottoman akçe and the para is the Egyptian niṣf fiḍḍa.
Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt, pp. 176-179. Assuming a standard pay of 20 akçe (10 niṣf fiḍḍa) per day for each oarsman, this sum would only support 94 oarsmen for a three month period of service.
Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt, p. 187.
Dār al‑Waṯāʾiq al‑Qawmiyya (Cairo), Maḥkamat Rašīd, Siǧill 50, p. 40, Item 98, 21 Muḥarram 1042/8 August 1632.
To help with this identification of the oarsmen’s home towns, I have relied on their nisbas or the specific information attached to their names in the siǧillāt. I consulted Ramzī’s multi volume al‑Qāmūs al‑ǧuġrāfī, to identify the regions in which home villages of the oarsmen are found. I am also indebted to Professor ʿAbd al‑Ḥamīd Sulaymān of the Damiette Faculty of Arts in Manṣūra University for vetting the lists of foreign, Cairene, Ṣaʿīdī, and Delta oarsmen that I created. A nisba is not always reliable in indicating one’s place of origin since we do not always know its true connotation. For instance, the name of ʿAlī ibn ʿAbdallāh al‑Hindī (see Table Two) was excluded from the list of foreign oarsmen I assembled because he might have acquired that nisba for any number of reasons. It is also possible that someone with the name al‑Idfawī could be a generation or more removed from that town, but in the interest of trying to identify regional origins of the oarsmen cited in the six documents I have taken most nisbas at face value. This could affect my statistics, but in many instances the court register clearly records that an oarsman is “from” the Ṣaʿīd, “from” Ḫaṭṭ Ḫurunfiš, or “from” al‑Manṣūra. I have appended my lists of oarsmen by region at the end of this study. The overall conclusions of this analysis seem unaffected by possible small statistical deviations.
Although North Africans were well established in Egypt, especially in commerce, they do not seem to be among the recruits for service on these ships. On the extensive Maghribi presence in Egypt, see ʿAbd al‑Raḥīm, «al‑Maġribiyya fī taʾrīḫ Miṣr».
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