Ottoman Houses and Household Space

From Safranbolu town houses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to Istanbul’s sixteenth-century waterworks and Cumalıkızık’s earlier village endowment, Ottoman domestic life depended on local materials, household resources and access to water.

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Houses in town and countryside

In Safranbolu, in northwestern Anatolia, surviving houses mostly date to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The town’s lower district held shops and commercial activity, while Bağlar, its garden district, served as a summer residential area. The two settings make seasonal movement visible among households with access to more than one residence. The Safranbolu houses show a regional pattern in which timber frames, earth infill and masonry bases were combined according to the building and its site.

Cumalıkızık, near Bursa, offers a rural comparison. In the early fourteenth century, the village’s agricultural revenues supported Orhan Ghazi’s endowed religious complex, or külliye, in Bursa. Farm households and the urban institution were linked through the village’s assigned income. The houses that stand there today reflect later phases of occupation, while the endowment explains how a rural settlement could help maintain an urban foundation.

Rooms, furnishings and privacy

In many Anatolian houses, a sofa was the central hall connecting rooms. A room could shift between sitting, eating, sleeping and washing rather than having only one fixed use. Cushions or built-in benches lined the walls; at mealtimes, a low tray and cloth could be brought to the open floor, then put away. Bedding could be stored in a cupboard during the day, leaving the room ready for another activity.

The early nineteenth-century Kaymakamlar Museum House in Safranbolu gives a close example. Its rooms open around a sofa and contain built-in sedir benches, cupboards for bedding and a small washing recess. A revolving cupboard let food pass between the household and service area without opening a direct view into family rooms. The house also distinguishes harem, the family quarters, from selamlık, rooms used for receiving male guests. These features show how fittings and controlled entrances supported daily use and privacy in this particular residence. A second dated example, Hazeranlar Mansion in Amasya, was built in 1864–72. Its museum account describes wood burned in a hearth and the embers placed in a copper brazier in the room; the house display also includes a wall-mounted oil lamp and a ceramic stove. The brazier brought heat into the occupied room, while lamps provided light.

Property, endowments and public services

An endowment or waqf was property set aside to fund a religious or charitable purpose, often through rents. In Istanbul, court records from 1742 to 1764 document istibdal, an authorised exchange of endowed property for private property or another asset. A trustee could not arrange such an exchange alone: a judge and imperial permission were required. The procedure let administrators replace property that was unproductive or obstructed needed building work while preserving the foundation’s income.

Public baths were another part of this property economy. A 1766 survey counted 195 hammams in Istanbul and recorded their locations, endowments, rents and tenants. Baths were commonly leased to operators, whose work depended on heating rooms, maintaining water and serving customers. Istanbul’s public hammams provided heated washing beyond a household’s own facilities.

A bath used a furnace to heat a water tank and warm the rooms. In one documented Ottoman arrangement, smoke passed beneath the bathing floors and rose through flues in the walls before escaping at chimneys. Customers moved from a changing hall into a warm room and then the hotter washing chamber. In its center, a heated stone platform offered a place to sit and sweat; smaller cells provided more enclosed washing. At a kurna, a basin fixed against the wall, bathers poured water over themselves rather than entering a large communal pool. The sixteenth-century Haseki Hürrem Sultan bath in Istanbul had separate men’s and women’s sections.

The 1735 register for Eyüp, a district of Istanbul, lists bathhouse workers by role, including 46 tellak (male attendants who washed or massaged bathers), 17 natır (female attendants), stokers and other staff. The register shows the range of labor needed to keep baths operating, from attendants to stokers.

Water at home and in the street

Istanbul’s Kırkçeşme works show how a large supply system reached the city. Construction began in 1554 under Süleyman I. Channels gathered spring water north of the city and carried it through covered galleries and aqueducts toward the Eğrikapı maksem, a distribution chamber. There, the flow was divided among branches. A lüle measured the amount assigned to an outlet, helping allocate water among fountains and buildings. The network required repairs after a major flood in 1563 and returned to service in 1564.

Even with public fountains and conduits, many households still relied on water carriers or stored water in vessels. A household connection depended on the local network and its allocation. Water supply also required protecting channels from pollution: in 1893, after residents of Belgrad village washed clothes in a dam’s water, officials inspected the banks, prohibited washing there and arranged another source for village use. The 1893 response shows how Istanbul’s waterworks and sanitation depended on infrastructure and rules about water use.