Shawls and Sable Furs: How to Be a Boyar under the Phanariot Regime (1710–1821)

Abstract

: Wallachia and Moldavia, as peripheries of the Ottoman Empire, were ruled by Phanariot princes throughout the eighteenth century. These “ Greeks ” were dragomans at the sultan ’ s court or high dignitaries of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople and governed the two Danubian Principalities in the name of the sultan. My article examines how the local nobility, the Orthodox elite of the countries, reacted and adapted to the Oriental ways of the Phanariot courts. It reveals how the local elites adhered to the Phanariot political regimes and tacitly adopted the new fashions and lifestyles, which would eventually be instrumental in the fashioning of their identity. The available primary sources consist of dowry lists, probate inventories, sumptuary laws, and visual documents (engravings and prints published in travelogues, paintings, and costume books), and they show in great detail the process of self-fashioning and self-display through clothes and costumes. Ottoman region