Imperial Ottoman

Economy · Article

The Spice Trade Under the Ottomans

The Ottoman role in the Indian Ocean spice trade after Selim I conquered Mamluk Egypt in 1517, the 1538 Hadim Suleiman Pasha expedition, the Piri Reis campaigns of 1552–54, and the two-tier Red Sea market.

The 1538 Ottoman fleet that sailed from Suez under Hadim Suleiman Pasha, the governor of Egypt, was the largest naval force the Ottomans had ever sent into the Indian Ocean. The campaign recaptured Aden, raided Portuguese positions along the southern Arabian coast, and reached as far south as the Swahili ports, where the Ottomans briefly garrisoned Faza and Mombasa. It did not take Hormuz — the Portuguese fortress at the mouth of the Persian Gulf held out — and the campaign was not repeated on the same scale. A second, smaller expedition in 1552 under Piri Reis briefly captured Muscat, and a third under Seyyid Nuh failed in 1554. After that the Ottomans effectively withdrew from offensive operations in the Indian Ocean, and the spice trade settled into the strange two-tiered system that the empire managed for the next three centuries. The story is part of the larger Ottoman economy and trade.

Key dates

  • 1498 — Vasco da Gama reaches the Malabar coast.
  • 1502 — Portuguese capture of Kilwa; beginning of the Estado da Índia.
  • 1517 — Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Egypt; Suez and the Red Sea under Ottoman rule.
  • 1538 — Hadim Suleiman Pasha’s Indian Ocean expedition; recapture of Aden.
  • 1552 — Piri Reis briefly takes Muscat.
  • 1554 — Seyyid Nuh fails to take Hormuz.
  • 1560s — Ottoman correspondence with Aceh and the Swahili coast.
  • 1630s–50s — Decline of the Ottoman position in the Indian Ocean; Dutch and English East India Companies dominate.

The world of the spice trade in 1517

By 1517 the spice trade was already in flux. The Portuguese, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama, had reached Calicut in 1498, and within two decades they had seized a string of forts in the Indian Ocean: Hormuz (1515), Goa (1510), Malacca (1511), and, most importantly, the Moluccas, the source of cloves and mace. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt, who had previously controlled the Red Sea trade in pepper, cinnamon, and other spices, were being cut out of the long-distance trade by the new Portuguese route, and the Mamluk treasury, which had derived substantial revenue from the customs of Alexandria, was already in deficit.

The Ottoman conquest of Egypt was not primarily about spices. Selim I invaded the Mamluk state in 1516–17 to eliminate a Shia-adjacent Muslim power, to seize the resources of the richest province in the Islamic world, and — most politically — to assume the title of caliph, which he took from the last shadow Abbasid caliph in Cairo. But the conquest gave the Ottomans control of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Egyptian trade infrastructure, and it forced them to deal with the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.

Ottoman policy in the Indian Ocean

Selim I and Süleyman the Magnificent both understood that the Portuguese threat to the Red Sea had to be met. The Ottomans organized a fleet at Suez, drawing on the resources of Egypt and using shipbuilders and gunners recruited from the Aegean. Giancarlo Casale’s The Ottoman Age of Exploration (2010) is the standard account; the picture it draws is of a state that took the Indian Ocean seriously as a strategic theatre for about twenty years and then, having failed to dislodge the Portuguese from Hormuz, retreated to the defensive.

The 1538 Hadim Suleiman Pasha expedition was the high-water mark. The fleet of about seventy ships recaptured Aden, which had been retaken by the Portuguese in 1513, and raided the southern Arabian and Swahili coasts. It did not reach Hormuz, and the campaign was not repeated on the same scale. The 1552 Piri Reis expedition took Muscat and raided the Persian Gulf, but failed to take Hormuz. A 1554 attempt by Seyyid Nuh also failed. After that the Ottomans effectively abandoned offensive operations in the Indian Ocean, and the navy of the Red Sea was reduced to a small patrol force.

A more permanent Ottoman response was the support given to local Muslim rulers threatened by the Portuguese. The Ottoman sultans sent letters, flags, and gunners to the sultan of Aceh in Sumatra, to the rulers of Gujarat (though the relationship with Gujarat was looser than is sometimes suggested), and to the Swahili coast, where the garrisons at Faza and Mombasa persisted into the 1580s. The Ottomans could not, however, replace the Mamluks as the principal suppliers of spices to the Mediterranean, because the Portuguese had effectively closed the Red Sea route to the larger volume of trade. The older view, that the Red Sea was sealed, is too strong; the route remained open, but at a much reduced volume.

The continuation of the Red Sea trade

The Red Sea trade did not disappear. The Ottomans retained a fleet at Suez, and a small but profitable traffic in spices, drugs, and textiles continued to flow from India to Suez and from Suez to Cairo and Alexandria. The Yemen, which the Ottomans had conquered in the 1530s and pacified under Hadim Suleiman Pasha in 1538–39, produced coffee and exported it through the port of Mocha, a trade that produced substantial revenue. The small but lucrative trade in Indian pepper, cardamom, and indigo, conducted in Muslim and Indian ships, was supplemented by the legal import of Portuguese spices re-exported from Lisbon.

The result was a strange two-tiered market for spices in the Mediterranean. The mass market, in pepper, was supplied by the Portuguese and, increasingly, by the Dutch and English East India Companies, and it was sold in Europe at falling prices. The luxury market, in cardamom, cinnamon, fine pepper, and certain drugs, was supplied through the Red Sea and Alexandria, and it was sold at premium prices to customers who preferred the traditional sources. The Ottoman state earned a substantial revenue from this trade through customs duties in the capitulations framework and through monopolies on certain goods. Salih Özbaran’s study of the Ottoman administration of the Yemen is the standard reference; the picture he draws is of an overstretched province that was more costly to garrison than its revenue justified.

The Hajj, the Holy Cities, and the spice trade

The Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Holy Cities gave the sultans a unique position in the Islamic world. The annual Hajj from Cairo and Damascus brought tens of thousands of pilgrims into the Hijaz, and the trade that accompanied the pilgrimage was a substantial item in the budget of the empire. The spice trade, which supplied Mecca and Medina with pepper, cinnamon, and other goods, was organized in part by the Mamluk religious and commercial establishment that the Ottomans had inherited, and the sultans continued to subsidize the holy cities with annual gifts of grain, textiles, and cash. The spice trade was both an economic matter and a religious and political obligation of the Ottoman sultans.

The decline of the Ottoman position

The Ottoman position in the Indian Ocean declined steadily from the seventeenth century. The Portuguese were gradually replaced by the Dutch and English East India Companies, whose superior naval power and disciplined administration made the Red Sea trade increasingly difficult. The Yemen, the most exposed Ottoman possession in the region, was in intermittent revolt through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the first Zaydi revolt of 1636 being the most serious), and the Ottomans lost effective control in the late seventeenth century. The Ottoman coffee trade that followed depended on routes the empire could no longer fully protect, and it became an important economic sector in its own right.

By the eighteenth century the Ottomans had effectively withdrawn from the Indian Ocean. The Red Sea continued to carry a small but profitable traffic, the Hajj continued to be organized, and the holy cities remained under Ottoman sovereignty, but the great maritime trade of the Indian Ocean was in the hands of European companies and the rise of British power in India and the Persian Gulf. The integration of the Ottoman economy into a European-dominated world system — its decisive moment being the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman free-trade agreement, treated in full in the article on the capitulations — was a process that began in the early sixteenth century and was completed in the nineteenth.

Sources and further reading

  • Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Salih Özbaran, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion: Studies on Ottoman-Portuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and the Administration of the Yemen (Boğaziçi University Press, 2010).
  • Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire: A Short History (Markus Wiener, 2009).
  • Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600 (Orion, 1973; reprint, 2000).
  • Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Routledge, 2011), part III, “The Frontiers of Empire.”
  • Michael N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (Routledge, 2003).