Handbook of Key Global Financial Markets, Institutions, and Infrastructure

Chapter 20

Finance in the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1854

P. Şevket

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

Outline

Introduction

Money, Credit, and Islam

Business Partnerships

Flexibility in the Monetary System

Fiscal Institutions and Public Finance

Linkages with Western European Capital Markets?

From Debasements to Bimetallism

Financing the State: The Galata Bankers

Conclusion

Further Reading

Introduction

The Ottoman Empire stood at the crossroads of intercontinental trade, stretching from the Balkans and the Black Sea region through Anatolia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Gulf to Egypt and most of the North African coast for six centuries until World War I. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its population ...