ABSTRACT
In the heart of the Ottoman Empire and in its provinces, the numerous households of relatives, followers and servants kept by prominent officials and notables, in emulation of the sultan and the grand vizier, served as foci of power striving to attract a clientele of various social and geographical origins, in order to serve the political interests of their masters. Hence, the term ‘household’, as used in the Ottoman historiography, refers, beyond the physical boundaries of houses and palaces, to the large social and political webs of influence centred around important Ottoman office-holders, and whose development, from the sixteenth century onwards, was linked to the weakening of the central sultanic power and the emergence of harshly competing forces within the Ottoman state. The structures, policies and rivalries of these provincial households have been studied in some detail in the case of Ottoman Egypt (see in particular Holt 1961, 1968, 1982; Hathaway 1995a, 1995b, 1997). The observations and results of this body of research will help us describe and analyse the evolution of the political conflict, reflected in household strategies, that opposed the deys and the beys in the Regency in the middle of the seventeenth century.
