Traders and Customs Officials in 1660S Iskenderun

Present-day Iskenderun (Alexandrette) is a purely modern city. Throughout the pre-Tanzimat period, settlement in this locality was insignificant, and the name of Iskenderun denoted a landing stage (iskele), rather than a town or city. When the traveller Evliya Çelebi passed through Iskenderun in the middle of the seventeenth century, he noted the fact that there was no business district or even shop-lined street, no khan and no public bath (Evliya Çelebi, 1314/1896-97 to 1938, Vol. 3, pp. 46-47; Vol. 9, p. 367 ff.). Moreover, since the few inhabitants were all non-Muslims, there was no mosque, but Evliya did not notice any churches either. Thus seventeenth-century Iskenderun belonged to a very specific category of settlement found in other parts of the Ottoman Empire as well as in medieval northern Europe or seventeenth-century Mexico: very few people lived there permanently, but during the seasonal arrival of ships, the settlements came to life, only to empty again during the “dead season.” In the present study, we will attempt to sketch the commercial activity that went on in Iskenderun during the second half of the seventeenth century and explain why the place, in spite of an advantageous geographical location, did not develop into a town.