War Making, State Making, and Mining: The Social History of Charcoal Production in the Ottoman Empire

Contrary to Europe, where coal was available in large volumes from the late eighteenth century onwards, charcoal was the main fuel used for the Ottoman mines in the same period. Focusing on one particular mine area in Kurdistan, this paper examines the complex local, regional, and imperial networks and conflicts surrounding the procuring of charcoal. The Keban and Ergani mines produced silver, gold, and copper, which were vital raw materials for the Imperial Mint and the Imperial Foundry. However, maintaining uninterrupted production at these mines was predicated upon the constant flow of charcoal to be obtained from the nearby forests and the state had to rely on the cooperation of the Kurdish nobles ruling the area for this. The local population was charged with acquiring and delivering a set amount of charcoal and wood to the mines annually. The loggers cut the trees from the surrounding forests and burned them to obtain charcoal. The charcoal was then transported to the mine area on the keleks, special rafts made of animal skin, down the Euphrates river. Timber needed for the rafts came from the nearby forests while the skins were provided by livestock raised by the Kurdish population in the area. The need to transport charcoal to the mines connected river transport, meat market, forestry, and mining in this way. Throughout the eighteenth century, the local inhabitants found themselves embroiled in a complex mine-related economy and a new constellation of power relations involving local and imperial actors who had an interest in uninterrupted production in the mines. Putting charcoal at the center of its analysis, this paper examines the intersecting practices of state-making and war-making of an empire trapped in the straitjacket of a war economy and the impact of these processes on the local economies, ecology, and power configurations.