| The researcher who wishes to cultivate the Ottoman inventory, whether as a sociocultural or an economic record, is hampered in securing a documented identification of things (and context): the actual objects, with few exceptions, are no longer extant, and published sources and reference works are either inadequate or nonexistent. As a first step, this work constitutes an exploration of ways to approach the elucidation of the substantives in the inventory and an explication of the rewards of doing so. But the fundamental principle adumbrated throughout is the acknowledgment that no matter what kind of information or data the researcher hopes or expects to discover the construction of a context is requisite. Toward this end, therefore, an attempt was made in this work to reconstruct the primary context—that is, the domestic shelter—of the seventeenth-century inventory in the Aegean town of Magnisa (ancient Magnesia ad Sipylum). Despite the disappearance of architectural specimens and the general lack of adequate graphic and written description, a typology of the basic Ottoman house was constructed that centers on the woman of the house. Further, it was argued, her standards in managing the domestic economy exerted a strong influence on the urban social organization and on the activities of the male householder. In addition, a detailed analysis was conducted of the contextual (i.e., societal and cultural) implications of the inventory, one outcome of which was several proposals to facilitate inventory studies, including a qualitative research model. Finally, the people of Mağnisa tell a legend, analyzed here for the first time, and have created an associated custom whose repercussions are vast in cultural compass and temporal depth. |
