1 Mangir – Aleppo Eyalet

In 1623, the currency situation in Aleppo Eyalet, a critical Ottoman province and the empire's preeminent commercial hub in the Levant, was defined by a severe monetary crisis known as the "Great Debasement." This was not a local phenomenon but a repercussion of imperial fiscal policy. Sultan Osman II and his predecessor had drastically debased the silver akçe, the empire's foundational coin, to finance costly wars against the Safavids and the Habsburgs. By 1623, the silver content of the akçe had plummeted to perhaps half of its century-old standard, triggering rampant inflation and a collapse in public confidence in the official currency.

This debasement profoundly disrupted Aleppo's sophisticated economy, which was the nexus of international trade between Europe, Asia, and the Arab world. The city's merchants, dealing in high-value goods like Persian silk and Indian spices, increasingly rejected the unstable akçe in favor of more reliable foreign specie. The Spanish silver real (piece of eight) and the Dutch leeuwendaalder ("lion dollar") circulated widely as de facto trade currencies, their value determined by weight and purity in the souk rather than by imperial decree. This created a dual monetary system where large-scale commerce operated on stable foreign coin, while the debased akçe plagued local transactions and state payments, causing widespread distress.

The Ottoman central government attempted to rectify the situation. In 1623, the new Sultan Murad IV, having just ascended the throne amidst this turmoil, initiated a major monetary reform aimed at restoring the silver standard. However, the effects of this policy would take years to reach and stabilize conditions in Aleppo. Consequently, the eyalet in that specific year was caught in the painful interim: struggling with the legacy of severe debasement, operating on a patchwork of unstable local and preferred foreign coins, and awaiting the potential relief of a still-unproven imperial reform.