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THE COMPLEX NATURE OF AN OTTOMAN COMMERCIAL NETWORK<br />
Figure 1<br />
Distribution of collaborators by business type<br />
28%<br />
_<br />
Composition<br />
family business<br />
partnership<br />
individual merchant<br />
62%<br />
10%<br />
Ethno-religious profile<br />
When we look at the distribution of collaborators in the provinces according to their<br />
ethno-religious characteristics (see Table 1), there is no doubt about the dominant<br />
ethno-religious identity of 83% of the network: Muslim. Although non-Muslim<br />
traders form only a minority, they do appear under a variety of ethno-religious<br />
categories: Greek, Armenian, Christian-Arab and Jewish. Among all non-Muslim collaborators,<br />
Greeks appear to have been the major ethno-religious group.<br />
Table 1<br />
Ethno-religious distribution of collaborators<br />
Ethno-religious characteristics<br />
Number of collaborators<br />
Muslim 52<br />
Greek 5<br />
Christian-Arab 3<br />
Armenian 2<br />
Jewish 1<br />
Total 63<br />
Geographical distribution<br />
Collaborators within the network were based in various districts or cities including<br />
seventeen coastal locations, fifteen of which were ports on the Black Sea, in Anatolia<br />
and in the Arab provinces, and eleven landlocked towns. Based on the geographical<br />
destinations of the letters and the toponyms mentioned in them, the outer limits of<br />
Haifa, 2006). I am grateful to Professor Gelina Harlaftis for a lively discussion on business<br />
composition of collaborators within the network under scrutiny.<br />
~ 429 ~
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