"Turkish" Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of
the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile
products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in
Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman
cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably
during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period
also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but
Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.