Imperial Ottoman

Economy · Article

Ottoman Silk Textiles: The Silk Industry of Bursa and the Aegean

Bursa as the silk-weaving capital of the Ottoman Empire, raw silk from Persia, the route to Istanbul and the Aegean, and the great brocades and kaftans of the court.

Silk was the most prestigious of all Ottoman manufactures, and Bursa was its capital. The silk industry of Bursa, which had been inherited from the Seljuks and expanded under the early Ottomans, was for nearly three centuries one of the great luxury industries of the world. The woven silks of Bursa, sold under names that became famous throughout the Mediterranean, were a defining product of the Ottoman economy and trade and a major feature of the broader history of Ottoman crafts and manufacturing.

Raw silk from Persia

The Ottoman silk industry depended on raw silk imported from Persia. The mulberry trees of the Gilan and Mazandaran provinces of northern Iran produced the finest silk in the world, and the raw fiber was carried overland from Tabriz to Sivas, Erzurum, and Tokat, and then westward to Bursa. The route, which is described in more detail in Ottoman trade routes and the silk road, was one of the most important overland trade arteries of the early modern world.

The Ottoman silk industry, however, was not the only buyer of Persian silk. The Safavid state tried at various times to direct the silk trade through the Persian Gulf and the route to India, and the European Levant Company tried to buy the raw silk in Persia for direct export to Europe. The Ottomans, who had an interest both in the revenue and in the imported cloth, tried to keep the raw silk in the empire. The political control of the silk route was a recurring source of tension between the Ottoman and Safavid empires, and it shaped the war-and-peace cycles of the two states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Bursa silk industry

Bursa had been a center of silk production under the Seljuks and the Byzantines, and the city was ideally placed to receive the raw silk from Persia and to ship the finished products to both Istanbul and the Aegean ports. Under Mehmed II and Bayezid II, Bursa was established as the principal silk-weaving center of the empire, and the sultans gave generous support to the industry: the import of raw silk was subsidized, the looms of Bursa were exempt from certain taxes, and the finished products were reserved for export.

The industry was organized in the great külliye, the religious-commercial complex, around the city’s central mosque and bazaar. The weavers worked in small workshops, often with a single loom, and they were organized in the esnaf, the guild system that regulated Ottoman crafts and manufacturing. The most skilled weavers produced brocades and velvets for the palace, and the products of the lower-grade workshops were sold in the city’s bazaar and exported to the Mediterranean.

The great brocades of Bursa used silk imported from Persia, gold and silver thread imported from Europe, and natural dyes from a number of sources. The patterns were drawn from the Ottoman court tradition, and they often depicted the same tulips, carnations, and cloud bands that appeared on İznik ceramics and in the manuscripts of the palace studio. The brocades were used for kaftans, kaftan linings, prayer rugs, saddle cloths, and the furnishings of the palace, and the most elaborate pieces were given as diplomatic gifts to the rulers of Europe and Asia.

The route to Istanbul and the Aegean

The finished silks of Bursa were shipped to the markets of the empire through two principal routes. The first was the overland road to Istanbul, which went through Bozyük and Bilecik, and which is described in the Bursa–Bozyük–Istanbul silk road tradition. The road, used by the great caravans of merchants, took about two weeks in good weather, and it was protected by a chain of kervansarays (caravanserais) built by the sultans. The second route was the maritime route to the Aegean, through the port of Mudanya on the Sea of Marmara. The silks of Bursa, like the carpets of Uşak, were exported through the port of Smyrna, where Venetian, French, and English merchants bought them under the capitulations.

The two routes were linked by an internal Ottoman commercial infrastructure that was one of the strengths of the empire. The customs duties, the bazaar taxes, and the port fees were all sources of revenue, and the state had an interest in keeping the routes open. The disruption of the routes, by war or by plague, was a major economic event, and the chronicles of the period record several instances in which the closure of the Bursa–Istanbul road caused a sharp rise in the price of silk in the capital.

Kaftans and court culture

The kaftan was the most visible product of the Bursa silk industry. Kaftans were long, sleeveless or long-sleeved robes, often worn over a shirt and trousers, and they were the principal formal garment of the Ottoman court. The sultans gave kaftans to high officials, to foreign ambassadors, and to favored servants, and the giving of a kaftan was a central feature of Ottoman court ceremony. The kaftans were woven in the imperial workshops of Ehl-i Hiref, and they were the most expensive and elaborate of all Ottoman textiles.

The most famous kaftans of the Ottoman court are the court kaftans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were woven from silk and gold thread and decorated with the most elaborate embroidery. The kaftans, like the court carpets, were produced by skilled craftsmen working in a closed environment, and the designs were adapted from the great tradition of Ottoman ornamental art. The kaftans are now in the collections of the Topkapı Palace Museum and in the great museums of the world, and they are among the most valuable objects of Islamic art.

The long decline

The Bursa silk industry was at its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it began a long decline in the seventeenth. The causes were both internal and external. The Safavid and Mughal rivals were producing their own silks; the European import of Persian raw silk reduced the supply to Bursa; and the European fashion for lighter silks reduced the demand for the heavier Ottoman brocades. The final blow came in the nineteenth century, when European silks, produced by mechanized looms, undercut the hand-woven products of Bursa. The 1838 free-trade agreement, signed under the framework of the capitulations, completed the process, and the Bursa silk industry never recovered.

The long decline of the Bursa silk industry is a small but revealing chapter in the broader history of the Ottoman economy and trade. The industry that had made Bursa a great city for three centuries was destroyed in the nineteenth century by European competition, and the great kaftans of the court became historical curiosities. The history of Bursa silk, however, is a reminder of the long period in which the Ottoman Empire was a great manufacturing power, and the silk industry of Bursa was a central part of that story.

Conclusion

The Ottoman silk industry, centered on Bursa and supported by the raw silk of Persia, was for nearly three centuries one of the great luxury industries of the world. The finished silks of Bursa were sold in the markets of the empire and exported to the courts of Europe and Asia, and the kaftans of the Ottoman court were a defining product of Ottoman imperial culture. The long decline of the industry in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries is a microcosm of the broader decline of Ottoman manufacturing, and it is an essential part of the history of the Ottoman economy.