Understanding the Social Hierarchies through Rites of Eating in the 1720 Imperial Festival

Abstract

The food and rites related to eating emerge as significant and indispensible aspects of cultural forms such as festivals, ceremonies and carnivals. In the premodern period, these events were unique occasions when food was unusually abundant and available. During Ottoman imperial festivals this material abundance was articulated and distributed through the mechanism of the benefaction (ihsan) of the sultan, which in theory reached all people. Nevertheless, the distribution of this benefaction was always bound by social hierarchies. To this end, the type and amount of food, the way it was served and the seating arrangements during imperial festivals appeared as material and visual articulations of the existing social hierarchies. This study aims at understanding the social hierarchies that were articulated and reproduced through food and rites of eating on the basis of the previously unknown menü and the list of daily provisions of the 1720 imperial circumcision festival, which was held by sultan Ahmed III in Istanbul.