Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 brill.

nl/orie

Reflections on the Distribution of

Wealth in Ottoman Ayntab

Hülya Canbakal
Sabancı University, Istanbul

In contrast to Ottoman studies, the relationship between economic change

and the distribution of wealth in the field of European economic history is an
old question that has incited much debate since the 19th century. The main
issue in the 19th century was whether industrialization/capitalism/economic
growth was reducing or intensifying inequality; this was a question with obvi-
ous political overtones reflecting the clash between the liberals and their crit-
ics. While the political urgency of the question shifted to the developing
world in the past century, Kuznets’s hypothesis emerged in the 1950s as a
more sophisticated argument about the industrialization process and has kept
economic historians busy ever since. Kuznets argued that there was a positive
correlation between the wealth gap and industrialization and urbanization in
the early stages of growth; after a certain point in the process, the distribution
of wealth began to improve. Fine-tuned versions of this hypothesis have been
demonstrated to apply to England and North America, where the period after
1740 witnessed an intermittently accelerating increase in inequality; this
trend was reversed roughly after World War I.1 Yet, the applicability of the
hypothesis to other parts of the world, including other parts of Europe,
remains a contested issue. While growth and industrialization under different
circumstances do not appear to lead always to increased inequality,2 studies

1
Peter H. Lindert, “Unequal English wealth since 1670”, The Journal of Political Economy,
94 (1986), pp. 1130-1; Richard H. Steckel and Carolyn M. Moehling, “Rising inequality:
trends in the distribution of wealth in industrializing New England”, The Journal of Economic
History, 61 (2001), pp. 160-83. Henry Phelps Brown, Egalitarianism and the Generation of
Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 312-13, identifies an improvement in everyone’s lot,
already in the 19th century.
2
For example, Christian Morrisson and Wayne Snyder, “The income inequality of France in
historical perspective”, European Review of Economic History, 4 (2000), pp. 59-83; Leandro Pra-
dos de la Escosura, “Inequality and poverty in Latin America: a long-run exploration”, in New
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/007865209X12555048403772
238 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

on western Europe indicate that the distribution of wealth deteriorated

throughout the early modern era, long before industrialization per se. This
observation led van Zanden in the 1990s to postulate a “super Kuznets curve
of early modernity”,3 which coincided with the long-term economic upswing
characteristic of the early modern period in and beyond Europe. As with
much else regarding early modernity, this pattern of increasing inequality too
raises the question of possible parallels in other parts of Eurasia.4 It is against
this historiographical background that the present study has been conceived.
This study comprises a preliminary exercise on the distribution of wealth
in Ottoman Ayntab in the 17th and 18th century. It questions the relation-
ship between the pattern of inequality and long-term economic change and
offers a comparison with a few other selected cities from different regions of
the empire. The examination is based on probate inventories: a total of 103
records from 1682-945 and 1,055 records from 1760-78.6 Comparisons with
Vidin, Ruse, Sofia, Damascus and Cairo are based on Todorov, Establet, Pas-
cual and Raymond.7 Before presenting the results, a caveat is in order regarding
the reliability of the probate records in macro quantitative studies such as this.

Comparative Economic History, ed. by T. J. Hatton, K. H. O’Rourke and A. M. Taylor (Cam-

bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 291-315.
3
J. L. Van Zanden, “Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve: western Europe during the
early modern period”, The Economic History Review, New Series, 48/4 (1995), pp. 643-64.
4
Compare, for example, Osamu Saito, “Pre-modern economic growth revisited: Japan and
the West”, London School of Economics, Working Papers of Global Economic History, 16/05,
June 2005, where it is argued that early modern growth did not necessarily lead to an increase
in inequality.
5
Ayntab Court Register (ACR) # 172 dated 1094-1106/1682-1694. This is the only extant
register of probates from the second half of the 17th century. There are also individual records
spread in other registers.
6
The present study is based on Zeynel Özlü’s reading of ACR # 119 dated 1174-1176/1760-
1763; # 126 dated 1185-1191/1771-1778; # 128 dated 1187-1188/1773-1774 in his “Kassam
Defterlerine Göre XVIII. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Gaziantep”, Ph.D. diss., Ankara University,
2002, Appendix 1-2. Özlü classifies the probates into brackets of wealth instead of giving the
actual totals. As will be seen below, this poses serious limits to the analysis attempted here.
7
Nikolai Todorov, The Balkan City, 1400-1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1983); C. Establet, J. P. Pascual, and A. Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité dans la société
ottomane: utilisation de l’indice de Gini pour le Caire et Damas vers 1700”, Journal of the Eco-
nomic and Social History of the Orient, 37/2 (1994), pp. 171-82; André Raymond, Artisans et
commerçants au Caire au XVIII ème siècle (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1974), vol. 2.
Rossitsa Gradeva’s study of a 17th-century probate register from Sofia, “Towards a portrait of ‘the
rich’ in Ottoman provincial society: Sofia in the 1670s”, in Provincial Elites in the Ottoman Empire:
Halcyon Days in Crete V: A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 10-12 January 2003, ed. by Antonis
Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2005), pp. xi-xxviii has not been included for
the sake of consistency. Boğaç Ergene’s study of 18th-century Kastamonu was not available to me
at the time of the writing of this article. Boğaç A. Ergene and Ali Berker, “Wealth and inequal-
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 239

Studies that utilize probate records in other fields consistently point to a

number of methodological problems. These can be summarized as follows:

1. Probate records in pre-modern times were quantitatively crude and

qualitatively limited.8
2. Probate registration was not universal. Various studies indicate that the
rate of registration could be as low as one fifth of the incidents of death
or even less depending on the socio-economic make-up of a region.9
3. The estates that were registered represented the wealthy more strongly
than the rest of the society.10 One of the reasons for this bias was that
decedents were in general older, hence richer than those who survived
them. Yet, even when this bias is reduced by factoring in the distribu-
tion of the population among age groups and the mean wealth for each
age group, decedents who left estate records still appear to have been
wealthier than those without.

These observations probably apply to Ottoman probate records too. Available

studies suggest that the poor may have been less inclined to register the estates
of the deceased, as they were less inclined to take their disputes to court for
settlement.11 If this indeed was a common phenomenon, then one should
expect the probate registers to under represent the degree of economic
inequality in Ottoman society. Therefore, it is clear that they have to be sup-
plemented with other quantitative or narrative sources wherever possible.

ity in 18th-century Kastamonu: estimations for the Muslim majority”, International Journal of
Middle East Studies, 40/1 (2008), pp. 23-46.
8
Carole Shammas, “The determinants of personal wealth in seventeenth-century England
and America”, The Journal of Economic History, 37/3 (1977), pp. 675-89; Lindert, “Unequal
English wealth”, p. 1129.
9
Lindert, “Unequal English wealth”, p. 1132; Alice Hanson Jones, “Wealth estimates for
the New England Colonies about 1770”, The Journal of Economic History, 32/1 (1972), p. 111;
Shammas, “The determinants of personal wealth”, p. 678.
10
Carole Shammas, “Constructing a wealth distribution from probate records”, Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 9/2 (1978), pp. 297-307; Peter H. Lindert, “An algorithm for probate
sampling”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11/4, (1981), pp. 649-68; and idem, “Unequal
English wealth”, p. 1139.
11
Hülya Canbakal, Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: Ayntab in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 139-45; Boğaç Ergene, Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice
in the Ottoman Empire. Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı and Kastomonu (1652-
1744) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 76-98; idem, “Social identity and patterns of inter-
action in the shariʿa court of Kastamonu (1740-44)”, Islamic Law and Society, 15/1 (2008),
pp. 19-20.
240 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

Ayntab in the Seventeenth Century

The distribution of wealth in late 17th-century Ayntab as reflected in the

probate inventories was highly unequal and polarized (Fig.1; Table 1). The
median estate was 178 guruş, significantly lower than what Establet and Pas-
cual have suggested as a lower threshold for people of modest means in
Damascus, namely, 250/300 guruş.12 Nearly two thirds of all estates stood
below this threshold. Furthermore, the middling group (middle class?), with
estates of 250/300-1,000 guruş by Establet and Pascual’s criteria, was very
small, constituting only 16.5 per cent of the registered decedents.13
If we consider the share of total wealth held by quintile groups of estates,
the polarity of wealth becomes more evident (Table 2). Thus, the poorest
20 per cent of the estates held only 1.64 per cent of the total wealth while the

Fig. 1
Distribution of Probates in Seventeenth-Century Ayntab
2
Frequency of Probates

0
0

0
00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00

00
50
10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80
Value ( guruş)

Table 1
Size Distribution of Probates in Seventeenth-Century Ayntab
0-100 101-200 201-500 501-1,000 1,001- 2,001- 5,001-
2,000 5,000 10,000
27 29 21 4 11 8 3
(26.20%) (28.20%) (20.40%) (3.90%) (10.70%) (7.80%) (2.90%)

12
Ultimately one has to know the living standards in the two cities to use common criteria
of economic classification. Considering the size of each town, it is quite possible that the thresh-
old of ‘modest living’ in Ayntab was lower.
13
See also Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity, Aleppo in the Eigh-
teenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 66-7. Yet, Marcus finds a
much larger ‘middle class’ in Aleppo.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 241

wealthiest 20 per cent held 75.90 per cent; the wealthiest and the next quin-
tile together held 90 per cent of the total wealth registered, with two thirds of
the estates holding only one tenth of the total wealth. It will be seen below
that Ayntab was not unique among Ottoman cities with this highly unequal
pattern of distribution. In fact, this pattern essentially paralleled the situation
in contemporary European towns: here, too, 30-60 per cent of the popula-
tion was unpropertied while two to five per cent owned almost everything.14
Whether or not it was typical of the pre-modern (or the early modern world)
in general, we can safely state that it was distinctly different from most of the
modern world today. The poorest 20 per cent of the estates in 17th-century
Ayntab accounted for a mere quarter of the share that the same group had in
Turkey in 2003, and that was identical with the share of the poorest 20 per
cent in United Kingdom in 1978-79 (Table 2). Likewise, all wealth groups
increased their relative share both in Turkey and United Kingdom in the 20th
century with a very similar momentum while the share of the wealthiest
20 per cent alone shrank significantly. The 19th century had witnessed a
change in the opposite direction, at least, in England.

Table 2
Quintile Distribution of Wealth in Ottoman Ayntab,
Modern Turkey and United Kingdom
Ayntab Turkey United Kingdom
Late 17th century 200315 1978/7916
Lowest 20% 1.64 6.00 6.00
Next 20% 3.34 10.30 10.30
Next 20% 5.44 14.50 14.30
Next 20% 15.01 20.90 26.90
Highest 20% 75.90 48.30 42.50

14
Van Zanden, “Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve”, pp. 646-47; Brown, Egalitari-
anism, pp. 306-10; Alexander F. Cowan, Urban Europe, 1500-1700 (London: Arnold, 1998),
p. 152; Christopher Friedrichs, The Early Modern City, 1450-1750 (London: Longman, 1995),
pp. 150-1.
15
Burcu Duygan and Nezih Güner, “Income and consumption inequality in Turkey: what
role does education play?”, in Sumru Altuğ and Alpay Filiztekin (eds.), The Turkish Economy:
the Real Economy, Corporate Governance, and Reform (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 65.
16
Brown, Egalitarianism, p. 312.
242 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

Ayntab and other Ottoman Cities

Studies on European towns indicate that wealth/income distribution was

more unequal in more urbanized regions, larger, more populated and more
commercial cities.17 The same may have been true of the Ottoman world
although economic size was not the only factor that played a role in the
degree of inequality. Thus, if we compare the probate records from Ayntab
and Todorov’s figures for 17th-century Ruse and Vidin,18 for example, the
distribution of wealth in Ayntab appears considerably more unequal. In com-
parison with such provincial centres as Damascus and Cairo, however, it was
fairly equal.
According to the probate records, Vidin was the poorest of the three, with
no estates above 4,175 guruş,19 which may, however, be due to the fact that
the sample of probates from Vidin is very small (Table 3). The poorest group
(0-417 guruş) made up the majority (62.50 per cent) among the Vidin estates
as well, but the same wealth group was significantly larger in Ayntab (72.82
per cent). Ayntab and Ruse had a fairly comparable concentration of wealth
in the upper echelons with nearly 25 per cent of the estates exceeding 842
guruş, but Ayntab had more poor estates in comparison with Ruse too. Fur-
thermore, Ayntab had the feeblest middling group among the three. It had,
therefore, the most polarized pattern of wealth distribution.
Relative to Damascus and Cairo, however, Ayntab had a fairly balanced
distribution of wealth. The ratio between the poorest and wealthiest estate in
Ayntab was one to 634.4 while in Damascus and Cairo, the largest estates
were 3,000 and 10,000 times the size of the smallest estate (Table 4). Damas-
cus possibly had about four times as large a population as Ayntab around the
turn of the 18th century while Cairo’s population was four times as big as
that of Damascus, i.e. 65,000, 15,000, and 250,000 respectively.20

17
Van Zanden, “Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve”, p. 645.
18
Adapted from Todorov, The Balkan City, p. 158. The samples for Ruse and Vidin are
rather small and can be considered useful only for a preliminary consideration.
19
Todorov’s akçe figures have been converted to guruş (at the rate of 120:1), hence the odd
division of the classes of wealth in Table 3.
20
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, p. 179; for Ayntab, Canbakal,
Society and Politics, Appendix. The figure for Cairo is for the 18th century in Raymond, Artisans
et commerçants, vol. 2, p. 374.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 243

Table 3
Size Distribution of Estates: Ayntab and Small to Medium-Size Towns
Estate size 0-417 425-833 842-4,167 4,175 Total
(guruş)
Vidin 15(62.50%) 6(25.00%) 3(12.50%) 0(0.00%) 24(100.00%)
Ruse 24(58.54%) 7(17.07%) 9(21.95%) 1(2.44%) 41(100.00%)
Ayntab 75(72.82%) 5(4.85%) 20(19.42%) 3(2.91%) 103(100.00%)

Table 4
Polarity of Wealth: Ayntab and Provincial Centres
1682-1700 Smallest/Largest Estates (guruş) Ratio
Ayntab 12/7,613.25 1:634
Damascus 10/32,541.00 1:3,000
Cairo 5.9/60,588.50 1:10,000

Ayntab in the Eighteenth Century

About a century later, the distribution of wealth in Ayntab was more unequal
(Table 5). For example, the average size of the poorest estates, i.e. the bottom
28.1 per cent, was 68 guruş in the 17th century, while the average estate size
in the top one percentile was 7,613 guruş, or 111.9 times the size of the
poorest.21 In the sample from 1760-78, the respective figures were: 50 guruş
average in the poorest group and 13,500 guruş in the top one percentile.
Thus, the distance between the two groups reached a ratio of 1:270. In other
words, the poor became more than twice as poor in comparison with the
richest.22 The poorest group also declined vis-à-vis all others in different
degrees. A reverse trend is observed only in the third group. If we were to
correlate it with data in Table 2, this group represents the lower half of the

21
The format of the 18th-century data found in Özlü has determined the relative size of
each wealth group. Özlü classifies his estates in groups of 0-100, 101-500, 501-1000, 1001-
5,000, 5,001-10,000, and each group makes up 28.1 per cent, 51.5 per cent, 10.7 per cent, 6.8
per cent, 1.9 per cent and 1 per cent of his data base. This distribution has been applied to the
17th-century probates and the average wealth per probate has been determined accordingly.
Özlü, “XVIII. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Gaziantep”, Appendix 1-2.
22
This is actually a minimalist estimate. See footnote 21.
244 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

highest quintile. In other words, lower sections of the upper class appear to
have declined in relative terms.

Table 5
Change in Average Wealth Relative to the Poorest
17th Century 18th Century
Wealth Relative size Average Wealth Average Wealth
groups in of the wealth wealth per groups wealth per groups relative
ascending group23 (%) probate24 relative to probate to the
order (guruş) the poorest (guruş) poorest
1. 28.10 68 1.00 50 1.00
2. 51.50 265 3.90 300 6.00
3. 10.70 1,444 21.20 750 15.00
4. 6.80 3,005 44.20 3,000 60.00
5. 1.90 5,175 76.10 7,500 150.00
6. 1.00 7,613 13,50025 270.00

We can observe the intensification of inequality also by tracing the ratio

between the top one per cent and the bottom 95 per cent. In the 17th cen-
tury, the average wealth per probate in the top one per cent was 7,613 guruş
as opposed to 456 guruş average in the bottom 95 per cent. In other words,
average wealth among the cream of the cream in Ayntabi society was about
17 times as large as the latter (Table 6). In the 18th century, average wealth
in the top group shrank about 40 per cent in real terms to 4,505 guruş if we
take the 17th-century value of guruş as our base; however, the disparity
between the top one per cent and bottom 95 per cent doubled. Considering
the fact that the data used here for the 18th century involves minimalistic

23
See footnote 21.
24
Reflects nominal value in 17th-century guruş. If adjusted according to the 18th-century
silver-value of guruş in terms of its silver content, the 17th-century averages would be much
higher. Şevket Pamuk, “Money in the Ottoman empire, 1326-1914”, in An Economic and Social
History of the Ottoman Empire, ed. by Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), pp. 966-7.
25
Özlü cites five estates in the category of probates larger than 10,000 guruş and specifies
the actual amount only in one case as 27,500 guruş. Thus, the minimum total wealth in this
category can be assumed to have been 27,500+(10,001x4)= 67,500. The average, therefore,
would be 13,500.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 245

estimates for the wealthiest (10,000+) group, the disparity between the top
and the bottom must have actually been wider.26

Table 6
Polarity of Wealth
Average Wealth: Average Wealth: Top 1% to
Top 1% (guruş) Bottom 95% bottom 95%
(guruş)
17th Century 7,613.00 455.74 16.70 x
18th Century 4,505.40 121.45 37.00 x

Can we relate this increase in inequality to the general economic performance

of the town? Possibly. In the second half of the 17th century, Ayntab’s econ-
omy was experiencing a new phase of growth after a period of hardships due,
at least, to political instability at the beginning of the century and then, in
the 1650s. While the years of war with Austria may have tried the Ayntabi
taxpayers, by the early decades of the following century, the town appeared
more commercial and more urbanized, and had a larger non-agricultural sec-
tor and wealthier economy than half a century earlier. Some of these trends
of growth may have slowed down in the second half of the 18th century, if
they did not come to a complete halt or were reversed. The present state of
research limits the scope of speculation. Judging by topographic evidence
concerning the level of urbanization, however, it seems more likely that the
net balance of economic trends in Ayntab in the two halves of the 18th century
was positive27 (Fig. 2), and this may account for the relatively high degree of
inequality.
Be that as it may, it should be noted that the increase in inequality in
Ayntab was and remained negligible as compared to contemporary England,
the Kuznetsian case. In England, the ratio between the average wealth in the
lower 95 per cent and the top one percentile was 1:143 in the 18th century,
as opposed to 1:37 in Ayntab. The disparity further increased to 1:203 in

26
See footnote 25.
27
Hüseyin Çınar, “18. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında Ayıntab Şehri’nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik
Durumu,” Ph.D. diss., İstanbul University, 2000, pp. 22-55, 192-251, 319-38; Canbakal, Soci-
ety and Politics, pp. 27-33, 38-48.
246 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

Fig. 2
Long-Term Trends of Economic Activity in Ayntab28

1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900

1810 and 1:225 in 1875.29 In other words, there was a much heavier concen-
tration of wealth in England at the very top. In the lower echelons of the
wealthy estates, however, for example, the top 10 per cent or 20 per cent con-
sidered together, the difference between Ayntab and England was not as dra-
matic: while in Ayntab the top ten per cent of the estates held 70 per cent of
the overall wealth, in England, the same group represented 82 per cent of
the total wealth (83.3 per cent and 91.3 per cent respectively among the top
20 per cent)30 (Table 8b-c).

Ayntab and other Ottoman Cities in the Eighteenth Century

Similarly, Ayntab remained remarkably ‘egalitarian’ as compared to Cairo in

the 18th century. For example, the share of total wealth held by the lower
half of the registered estates in Ayntab in the latter part of the 18th century
was 14.14 per cent as opposed to 4.3 per cent in Cairo (Table 7a). Concen-
tration of wealth in the hands of a very small section of society in Cairo was
enormous. The share of wealth held by the largest three per cent of the estates
in this city was 50.15 per cent as opposed to 37.16 per cent in Ayntab
(Table 7b). A century earlier the same group held only 25.35 per cent of the
total wealth. In other words, more wealth came to be concentrated in the
highest echelons of the estates in Ayntab too. Let us note that the share of
the lower half also increased (from 7.2 per cent to 14.14 per cent) in the

28
Dotted lines are more conjectural than the rest.
29
Lindert, “Unequal English wealth”, pp. 1140, 1145, 1147. The gap between the top one
percentile and the lower 95 percent was smaller in the case of personality but increased at a
much higher speed. John A. James, “Personal wealth distribution in late-eighteenth-century
Britain”, The Economic History Review, 41/4 (1988), p. 561.
30
Lindert, “Unequal English wealth”, p. 1145; James, “Personal wealth distribution”, p. 559.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 247

18th century although, as seen earlier, the poorest became twice as poor
(Table 5). This is a remarkable development and suggests an improvement in
the lot of the ‘middling sort’. Who exactly constituted these ‘middling sort’
needs qualitative reading of the registers concerned.

Table 7a
Share of Wealth Held by the Lower Half
Place 1682-1700 ~1760-1798
Ayntab 7.20% 14.14%
Damascus31 4.50%
Cairo32 4.30%

Table 7b
Share of Wealth Held By the Top Three Percentile33 3435
Place 1682-1717 ~1760-1798
Ayntab 25.35% 37.16%
34
Damascus 49.00%
35
Cairo 50.15%

As for the Balkan towns under consideration, the situation in Ruse and Vidin
does not lend itself to an easy interpretation. They maintained a more even
pattern of distribution than Ayntab as had been the case in the previous cen-
tury. The share of the largest estates in Ruse and Vidin in total wealth was no
more than a third of the share of the same group in Ayntab (6.50 per cent
and 5.08 per cent to 18.36 per cent) (Table 8a). The limited data I use sug-
gest that the distribution of wealth deteriorated in Ruse at a rate roughly on a
par with Ayntab in the range of top 10-20 percentile but not at the very top,
where deterioration in Ayntab was much sharper. The change in Vidin in the
same period was insignificant (Table 8a-c).

31
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, pp. 171-82.
32
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, p. 177.
33
Three per cent for Cairo, 2.5 per cent for Damascus, 3.03 per cent for Ayntab.
34
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, p. 179.
35
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, p. 176.
248 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

Table 8a
Share of Wealth Held by the Top One Percentile36
Place 17th century 18th century
Ayntab 10.74 18.96
36
Ruse 4.75 6.50
Vidin 4.17 5.08
Sofia 5.22

Table 8b
Share of Wealth Held by the Top Ten Percentile37
Place 17th century 18th century
Ayntab 55.30 70.00
37
Damascus 70.00
Ruse 32.39 48.38
Vidin 41.73 41.56
Sofia 40.63

Table 8c
Share of Wealth Held by the Top 20 Percentile
Place 17th century 18th century
Ayntab 77.45 83.30
Ruse 60.13 68.11
Vidin 60.00 60.55
Sofia 59.30

This top-heavy distribution of wealth places Ayntab closer to Damascus than

Ruse and Vidin, and suggests a markedly oligarchic socio-economic configu-
ration. Such appears to be the case although both Vidin and Ruse experi-

36
As with the 18th-century figures for Ayntab, Todorov’s estate data are classified in groups
with no upper limit specified for the wealthiest. I have assumed that the largest probates varied
between 501,000 and 1,000,000 akçes in the 17th century and the six largest estate varied
between 5,001 and 10,000 in the 18th century.
37
Establet, Pascual and Raymond, “La mesure de l’inégalité”, p. 180.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 249

enced economic and demographic growth in the 18th century like many
other places in the empire, including Ayntab itself, and one could tentatively
assume that the three towns remained roughly on a par, at least in terms of
population size, from the 16th through the 18th century.38 The same applies
to Sofia, which became highly commercial in the 18th century and compara-
ble to Ayntab, but had a relatively low level of inequality, more like Ruse and
Vidin (Table 8a-c). Thus, we may have to look for the reasons for the more
unequal structure of wealth in Ayntab beyond the factors of growth and
urbanization.

Conclusion

There are various conclusions that can be drawn. The distribution of wealth
in 17th-century Ayntab was already highly unequal and bore common fea-
tures with many contemporary towns outside the Ottoman empire. By the
second half of the following century, the situation further deteriorated with
higher wealth groups getting better off and the bottom plunging further. This
development paralleled van Zanden’s “super Kuznets curve of early moder-
nity” even if it did not represent the onset of a structural change that could
eventually reverse the curve towards more equality. Our knowledge about the
economic situation in Ayntab during the two centuries covered here is still
too patchy to speculate further.
Secondly, the shrinkage observed in the average wealth found in the pro-
bates from 1760-78 is remarkable. The average estate size in the 17th century
was 688 guruş and it went down to 248 guruş in real terms in the 18th cen-
tury. The decline was most radical in the lower tiers of wealth although,
admittedly, the direction and degree of change in the living standards of dif-
ferent social classes, or “real, as opposed to nominal inequality”,39 cannot be

38
Ayntab appears to have been the most populated of the three in the 16th century. Accord-
ing to cadastral surveys, Ayntab had 1,865 households in 1536 and 2,988 households in 1574
while the respective figures for Vidin and Ruse were 650 and 668 in 1520-30 and 2,152 and
1,699 in 1571-80. Todorov, The Balkan City, p. 67. Vidin and Ruse are estimated to have had a
population of 20,000 and 30,000 each in the 18th century — although McGowan himself
considers these figures slightly inflated. Bruce McGowan, “The age of the ayans”, in İnalcık and
Quataert, An Economic and Social History, p. 653. For 18th-century Ayntab we do not have
estimates. It may have reached a size comparable to Vidin and Ruse, but in the following cen-
tury, its population remained in the range of 20,000-43,000. Canbakal, Society and Politics,
Appendix for population estimates.
39
Philip T. Hoffman et al., “Real inequality in Europe since 1500”, The Journal of Economic
History, 62/2 (2002), p. 322.
250 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252

determined at the present state of research. However, we have already seen

that even the top group of wealth declined in the late 18th century, which is
compatible with Pamuk’s findings on askeri estates in Istanbul, Ankara, Kay-
seri and Bursa during the same period.40 In brief, no matter how favourable
long-term economic trends may have been, Ayntab’s economy seems to have
experienced a short-term downturn — as many other parts of the empire and
the world — that taxed everyone’s purse in the last decades of the 18th cen-
tury, and the possibility that increased inequality was related to this down-
turn rather than (Kuznets-type) growth should also be considered.
Thirdly, structural, institutional factors such as practices of inheritance due
to custom or the composition of wealth (land, cash, commercial capital, per-
sonality etc.) can also account for differences in the distribution of wealth.
Since landed property constituted the bulk of social wealth and was a major
element of economic inequality in pre-industrial societies, regions in Otto-
man territory where private property in land was relatively more common,
the rate of inequality should be expected to be higher. Ayntab appears to
be one such place due to the importance of viticulture and arboriculture
in its economy — if for no other reason.41 The comparison undertaken
here suggests that diversity and change in patterns of the distribution of
wealth need to take into account factors other than sheer economic size of
the urban sector.
Fourthly, it should also be taken into account that both the increase in
inequality and the decline in average estate size in the 18th century as
revealed by the estate records considered here may be unreal in the sense that
they may reflect a change in the patterns of registration, hence the range of
available data, rather than an actual economic change. For example, an
increase in the use of the court by the poor could significantly alter the distri-
bution pattern revealed to us by the probate registers. Similarly, different
conventions of probate registration in different regions of the empire could
give a false impression of diversity in wealth distribution, as does variation in
the non-Muslims’ propensity to use the court.
Finally, the techniques of measurement and assessment used in this study
are rudimentary and limited, as are the data samples used, particularly for
Vidin, Ruse and Sofia. Restriction of the study to quantitative analysis is
another handicap that conceals the nature of social mobility as well as such
important details as the composition of wealth and the major constituents of

40
Şevket Pamuk, “Osmanlı Zenginleri Servetlerini Nasıl Kullanırlardı?” Unpublished Paper,
TÜBA (2002), p. 4. I would like to thank Professor Pamuk for giving me a copy of his paper.
41
Canbakal, Society and Politics, p. 39.
 H. Canbakal / Oriens 37 (2009) 237-252 251

differentiation. For example, some studies on western Europe indicate that

the fastest increase in inequality in the 18th century was in personality, i.e.
movable personal assets, due to the change in the composition of overall
wealth.42 The exercise presented here does not permit such precision. Since
this was meant to be no more than a preliminary study to explore both the
question of distribution and the viability of using probate records for this
purpose, these deficiencies have been deemed tolerable.

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