Abstract

Ottoman non-elites and their daily lives entered the historiography of the twentieth century quite late, apart perhaps from long-distance traders, the most privileged members of this milieu. However, historians of the twenty-first century are ready to make up for lost time; after a long period of neglect, Ottoman craftsmen and occasionally even craftswomen have come in for a share of attention. Before the 1980s they had appeared but seldom even in urban histories, although as notable exceptions we might mention the work of Fahri Dalsar on Bursa, Robert Mantran on Istanbul and André Raymond on Cairo. ¹