Jewelry in the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century
In the domain of jewelry, it is not easy to delineate a specific Ottoman identity since its empire encompassed Europe, Africa, and Asia and its history spread over five centuries. Jewelry, though not recommended by Islamic law, is, however, very much in evidence in travelogues and private and state collections. In this article, I will concentrate on Damascus in the eighteenth century, by drawing upon probate inventories found from one single source. cf Establet C., 2011, Les bijoux dans l’Empire ottoman au XVIIIème siècle : l’exemple damascène, Turcica, p. 207 à 229 tome 43.
The Source
The probate inventories are the only documents that can help us to determine who possessed what and to judge the share of jewelry in the appraisal of the different kinds of inheritance. 523 male and female inventories from the city of Damascus, ra’âyâ and ‘askar, have been analyzed. A more detailed study of 121 râ’yâ and 77 ‘askar, of men and...
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Establet, C. (2014). Jewelry in the Ottoman Empire. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10186-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10186-1
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