DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5541#0569
536
MONOPOLIES.
[Chap. xxx.
brother to my host at Nazeli, and whose house was arranged
in European style with tables, chairs, and curtains, and even
a fourpost bedstead; I preferred however to sleep on my
own mattress laid on the floor.
My host was naturally loud in his praises of Yacoub
Pacha, the head of the family of Kara Osman, and who
was universally admitted to be a good man and a kind
governor. Yet this must be received cum grano, for I
have heard traits of his character from persons well
acquainted with him, which would have consigned any man
not a Turk to eternal disgrace. Nor had he set his face
against that curse of Turkish administration—the intro-
duction of monopolies. My landlord had purchased for his
favourite servant (a German from Prague, who had been
eighteen years in the country) the monopoly of selling
coffee both raw and roasted, for which he paid 25,000
piastres—about 250/.; the saraff being in fact the mono-
polist himself, though the servant is the nominal vender.
The consumption of coffee in Aidin is 12,000 or 14,000 okes
a-year, sold at nine piastres per oke raw, and twelve when
roasted. This amount seems very small, and I should think
underrated, when it is recollected that the place is said
to contain 5000 or 6000 Turkish and 800 Greek houses.
The Greeks were loud in their complaints of the failure of
the fig-crop; this is severely felt in a province which produces
the best fruit of the kind. This year only 5000 cantars, of
fifty-five okes each, were sent to Smyrna, instead of 100,000,
the average annual amount. The Pacha himself was not un-
deservedly one of the greatest sufferers, as he was in the habit
of buying up all the figs from the peasants and selling them
at a large profit to the merchants of Smyrna. The organ-
ization of the Rediff, or national guard, was going on with
great activity. Yacoub Pacha and seven other great Pachas
of Anatolia had lately been raised to the rank and title of
Mushir, or General, for the purpose of organizing these
new corps, and a fresh distribution of some of the provinces
had consequently taken place. The principal Pachas were
MONOPOLIES.
[Chap. xxx.
brother to my host at Nazeli, and whose house was arranged
in European style with tables, chairs, and curtains, and even
a fourpost bedstead; I preferred however to sleep on my
own mattress laid on the floor.
My host was naturally loud in his praises of Yacoub
Pacha, the head of the family of Kara Osman, and who
was universally admitted to be a good man and a kind
governor. Yet this must be received cum grano, for I
have heard traits of his character from persons well
acquainted with him, which would have consigned any man
not a Turk to eternal disgrace. Nor had he set his face
against that curse of Turkish administration—the intro-
duction of monopolies. My landlord had purchased for his
favourite servant (a German from Prague, who had been
eighteen years in the country) the monopoly of selling
coffee both raw and roasted, for which he paid 25,000
piastres—about 250/.; the saraff being in fact the mono-
polist himself, though the servant is the nominal vender.
The consumption of coffee in Aidin is 12,000 or 14,000 okes
a-year, sold at nine piastres per oke raw, and twelve when
roasted. This amount seems very small, and I should think
underrated, when it is recollected that the place is said
to contain 5000 or 6000 Turkish and 800 Greek houses.
The Greeks were loud in their complaints of the failure of
the fig-crop; this is severely felt in a province which produces
the best fruit of the kind. This year only 5000 cantars, of
fifty-five okes each, were sent to Smyrna, instead of 100,000,
the average annual amount. The Pacha himself was not un-
deservedly one of the greatest sufferers, as he was in the habit
of buying up all the figs from the peasants and selling them
at a large profit to the merchants of Smyrna. The organ-
ization of the Rediff, or national guard, was going on with
great activity. Yacoub Pacha and seven other great Pachas
of Anatolia had lately been raised to the rank and title of
Mushir, or General, for the purpose of organizing these
new corps, and a fresh distribution of some of the provinces
had consequently taken place. The principal Pachas were