ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Rivals in Remedy: Professional Competition Among Ottoman Healers, 15th–17th Centuries

• In Event: Early Modern Medicine 1

English Abstract

In her seminal 1988 study on the wealth and status of medical practitioners in late medieval England, Carol Rawcliffe observed that the practice of medicine conferred enviable rewards and privileges upon the select few who reached the pinnacle of their profession. Even those of moderate success, she argued, managed to accumulate sufficient assets to secure comfort, if not affluence.
Turning eastward to the urban centers of the Eastern Mediterranean in the early modern period, the living standards of Ottoman healers present a more complex picture. Medicine in this context resembled other crafts and trades, with practitioners striving to earn a modest livelihood in the competitive environment of Ottoman cities. The modern perception, though not necessarily the historical reality, of medicine as a white-collar profession guaranteeing economic security does not apply to the Ottoman Middle East.
Drawing on records in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Hebrew, from the Islamic courts of Istanbul and Jerusalem, biographical compilations, chronicles, and archival documents from the central Ottoman administration, this paper uncovers previously unexamined patterns in the professional realities of healers in these cities. It highlights the intense competition for income and recognition, as well as the intricate networks of association among practitioners, dynamics that produced significant disparities in medical career trajectories and striking parallels with artisanal labor.

Author

• Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Tel Aviv University