Zoe Griffith, Brown University
The Great Fire of Izmir in 1922 remains emblazoned as a tragic but foundational moment in the history of the Turkish Republic. As the city’s Greek and Armenian quarters burned, their inhabitants crowded to board ships that would take them permanently from Turkey’s western shore. The fire and the accompanying demarcation of longtime residents of the city as 'foreign' marked a critical stage in the creation of a Turkish nation from the embers of the Ottoman Empire. Today, Izmir stands solid as Turkey’s third-largest city. But Izmir burned and rebuilt itself long before 1922. Another fire, this one engulfing Izmir’s famous Street of the Franks in 1763, casts light on a very different moment in Izmir’s urban history and in the history of 'foreigners' on Anatolian soil.
This document is addressed to the kadı and voyvoda (here, the official in charge of a sancak) of Izmir in Rebiülevvel 1177/September 1763. Here, we find the gears of the Ottoman central state grinding into emergency-response-mode in the wake of a “great fire” (harik-i kebir) that had nearly destroyed Izmir’s Frankish quarter ("Frank" being the Ottoman catch-all term for Europeans). Reports of the damage had arrived in Istanbul from European ambassadors (düvel-i Nasâranın elçileri), who entreated the Porte to assist with the rebuilding of the homes, storehouses, and shops of Izmir's müste’min merchants - members of European merchant communities residing in Ottoman lands according to the terms of the infamous Capitulations. This was much more than a humble plea for help, however: it was a call for a large scale urban transformation. According to the ambassadors’ report, “the streets of the Frankish quarter are extremely tight and narrow, with houses and warehouses all adjacent and touching each other” (mahalle-i mezburenin sokakları gayet teng ve zayk vaki olduğundan başka menazil ve mahzenleri birbirlerine mütelâsık ve muttasıl olmakla). In order to avert future disaster, these European diplomats-cum-urban planners instructed the Porte to raze the remaining buildings and rebuild the quarter. Only this time, they suggested that the roads running through and around Frank Street ought to be widened to 1.5 Istanbul cubits (İslambul mi’marî zira ile tevsi) greater than their former size.
As Daniel Goffman has shown, Izmir’s urban history owes more to the fortunes of European capitalists than any other Ottoman city in the early modern period. A sleepy coastal town for most of the 16th century, Izmir rapidly developed into Anatolia’s primary port for English, French, and Dutch trade in raw materials like cotton, silk, and mohair, commodities that became especially valuable to Western European powers’ growing textile industries in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ottoman statesmen were initially not wild about the intensification of European trade in the Aegean; they would have preferred to eat grapes and luxuriate in goat fleece themselves, rather than let pasty Dutchmen and bilious Brits export Smyrna raisins and wool from Ankara. By the mid-17th century, however, Ottoman efforts to regulate and tax this growing trade led to decrees declaring Izmir the only port of Western Anatolia permitted to carry out trade with Europe. A century later, the post-fire demands of the Frankish ambassadors for a more spacious, less cluttered commercial district - a boutiquified Frank Street, if you will - reveal the degree to which not only Izmir’s fortunes but also its urban structures were dictated by the demands of European trade by the second half of the 18th century.
Were Ottoman officials responsive to the demands of the European ambassadors? Or did the relevant authorities pull a Michael D. Brown on the unfortunate residents of Izmir, their city by the sea laid to waste by the vicissitudes of the natural environment and problematic urban layout? While it might be unfair to compare the disaster-readiness of an early modern empire to FEMA under the Bush dynasty, the Ottomans tried to deal with the damage to Izmir’s commercial core as best they could, balancing the demands of foreign commercial powers with the expectations of their local subjects.
Here, they called for all of the coopers, tavern keepers, and raki distillers (fıçıcı ve meyhaneci ve arak taktir eden tavaif) to relocate and establish themselves at a distance for the safety and comfort (emniyet ve refahiyet) of the resident müste’min merchants and for the safety of other inhabitants of Izmir. To ensure that the reconstruction of Gavur Izmir did no further harm to local residents and was carried out according to legal precepts (cümle muvacehesinde şar’ile görülüp), they also called for a detailed report on the landlords left rentless by the forced move of these purveyors of vice.
The document doesn’t specify which Frankish ambassadors had reported this disastrous fire and recommended the rebuilding of Frank Street, but we can probably assume that the British ambassador was involved. Have you ever been to the UK? There is no people on earth so concerned with fire safety. In any event, for all the efforts of Ottomans, ambassadors, merchants, and meyhanecis, this would not be the last time Izmir emerged from the ashes. As another type of creative destruction, perhaps, Izmir’s fiery history has reshaped urban form through the centuries.
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