“Guild without a Mission, it is not a Guild” Genesis of the Industrial Unit Structure

Authors:

Pages: 116-130
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/XJGN4942

Abstract:

This article attempts to present the genesis of craft organizations. Issues concerning the Shaun organization have been repeatedly dealt with in historiography, especially those concerning the Bulgarian Revival. In the 18th and 19th centuries the professional craft guilds developed their full potential as an “economic conductor” of Ottoman everyday life. This is the way most of the researchers consider it as already formed institution with its strict hierarchy and rules governed by a 1773. And the period of their origin in the preceding centuries is presented in a mock-and-pattern way. For this reason, we will address the issue concerning the genesis of the Bhagavad in the 15th–17th centuries. The three main ones (the Byzantine, Arabic-Turkish and Western European) available for the origin of the workshop structure are subject to extensive analysis. The inconsistencies in them are eliminated. In Bulgarian historiography a so-called “mixed approach” was introduced, bringing together two of the above-mentioned opinions. The first to use the term esnaf is Evliya Зelebi in his description of the guilds in Istanbul. It includes an expanded meaning for everyone: “members of the guild, artisans and merchants.” That is, the term is generalizing for him. Two large subgroups, described as guilds, can be seen in Siayatnameto’s text. The first group includes: members of the ulema, hired workers (of all kinds) and communities of marginal groups. And second, merchants. Such a distinction is useful to us as a landmark but has no fundamental significance in the economic and social reality of the seventeenth century.

Keywords:

Esnaf; Genesis of the Workshop Organization; Socio-Economic History of the Ottoman Empire; Trade; Market.

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