DAILY LIFE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE pdf download

Daily life in The Ottoman Empire

DAILY LIFE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The population of the empire included Turks, Tatars, Hungar¬ ians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Albanians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Georgians, Circassians, Abkhazians, Armenians, Arabs, Berbers,

 Kurds, Jews, and many others. Each group pos¬ sessed its own unique customs and traditions that distinguished it from others.

The majority of the population in Anatolia, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of the Balkans, such as Bosnia and Albania, was Muslim, while the majority of the population in the Balkans was Christian.

 The Jews lived predominantly in the urban centers of the empire.

Thus, ethnic, linguistic, and religious diver¬ sity and heterogeneity constituted the most basic characteristic of the state.

To write a comprehensive book on everyday life in the Ottoman Empire requires an in-depth study of the traditions, customs, and beliefs of all the communities that lived under Ottoman political and administrative control and whose cultures, habits, and manners, differed so widely.

The present monograph, however, is a far humbler effort; it makes no pretense of using original documents or offering bold new interpretations.

It is designed to provide the general reader with a series of selective representa¬ tions of daily life in the Ottoman Empire.