Religious Prerogatives and Policing the Poor in Two Ottoman Contexts
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Religious Prerogatives and Policing the Poor in Two Ottoman Contexts
| Author(s) | Ener, Mine |
|---|---|
| Abstract | In autumn 1844, a group of thirteen people found themselves among numerous peasants being sent back to their home villages. These thirteen people, and many of the other peasants being transported, had been caught begging in Cairo. Chained together with other peasants in groups of two and loaded onto a boat that made its way up the Nile, they were headed back to work the land. These thirteen beggars did not have in their hands the necessary tadhkira (permission letters allowing peasants to be out of their home villages) and were considered to be sturdy, or able to work (qadir ‘ala iktisab). But other beggars apprehended in the streets of Cairo at this same juncture (those from the countryside as well as people from the city), found themselves facing a different fate. After a medical examination at the police station where doctors determined that they were deserving of care, they were sent on to the state-run shelter of Mahall al-Fuqara’. Documents recounting the admission of the poor into this shelter noted that each beggar was to be provided with rations and care “out of the charity of the Khedive.” Beggars could be released from the shelter only if someone was able to vouch for their good conduct and future abstinence from begging. The exile of peasants caught begging in Cairo and the internment of others into this state-run shelter were in compliance with newly introduced prohibitions on begging in Cairo. On the day when the Darülaceze shelter in Istanbul celebrated its official opening in 1896, it already housed 240 persons (with a capacity for 800), including poor women formerly in the care of the Women’s Hospital (the Nisa Hastanesi), women and children from a home for widows, and sick and invalid beggars removed from the streets of the city. Residents who entered this institution had to pass under a statement praising Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the shelter’s founder, for establishing a structure in which “the grief-stricken cripple” would receive abundant care. A fifty-year time span and the Mediterranean Sea separate the above accounts of Cairo and Istanbul. What explains the particular policies pursued by officials in these two urban areas? What insights might the analysis of such strictures on the public presence of the poor offer? To what extent were policies of poor relief grounded in religious imperatives, and how did, conversely, practices initiated in the nineteenth century represent new secular attitudes toward the poor and their public visibility? This article argues that the two sets of strategies initiated in mid-nineteenth-century Cairo and late-nineteenth-century Istanbul were strikingly similar. However, they took place at different times due to the economic and demographic circumstances of each city. Both strategies represent, at their core, an Islamic ideology that the deserving poor merited care. They both also demonstrate that the ruler (the Egyptian khedive in one case and the Ottoman sultan in the other) was the source of this care. Finally, both approaches to poor relief illustrate how, with guidance from religious discourses and prerogatives, the police and modern institutions were utilized to regulate the public presence of the poor and provide them with care. |
| IssueNo | 3 |
| Pages | 501-511 |
| Article | Access to Article |
| Source | Journal of Interdisciplinary History |
| VolumeNo | 35 |
| PubDate | Winter2005 |
| ISBN_ISSN | 0022-1953 |
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Empires/Imperialism
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