The unsettled PRICE: BAKHSHISH and the boundaries of remuneration in OTTOMAN ISTANBUL, 1870–1914

Bakhshish occupied an unstable position in the everyday exchanges and service relations of late Ottoman Istanbul. Neither reducible to gratuity nor synonymous with corruption, it attached monetary expectations to services, transactions, and entitlements whose formal terms seemed already settled. Drawing on Ottoman archival records, newspapers, and contemporary accounts dating from 1870 to 1914, this article examines how custom, repeated expectation, and control over performance converted supplementary payment into a form of social obligation and customary remuneration. Salarization, regulated charges, and formally defined rights did not eliminate such claims but changed the terms on which workers, officials, and service providers might justify them. Conflict sharpened when bakhshish supplemented wages, conditioned completion or access, or entered administrative discretion. Formalization sharpened the boundaries among gratuity, remuneration, improper exaction, and bribery without eliminating workers’ dependence on payments beyond the formal wage.