Dealing with the guilds of seventeenth-century Istanbul, this volume provides new information and insights into guild organization, issues of traditionalism and change, and the complex nature of the relationship between the Ottoman state and its guilds.

This volume presents the transformation of the Greek-speaking Jewish community of Byzantine Constantinople into an Ottoman, ethnically diversified immigrant community. As the Ottomans influenced its cultural and social values, the community strived to preserve its boundaries with the surrounding society.

Using recent approaches in economic, social, labour and institutional history, this volume analyses guilds in the period 500-1700 AD.

This multi-disciplinary volume reflects the wealth of recent scholarship devoted to early modern Istanbul. It embraces manifold perspectives on the city through new subjects and questions, while offering fresh approaches to older debates, crisscrossing the socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental, and spatial.