Ottomans participated in international trade virtually from the start, and Ottoman women were involved in it throughout – as producers and consumers, financiers and landladies, dealers and commodities.

One of the principal Ottoman exports, starting as early as the fourteenth century, was silk, chiefly produced in Bursa and shipped to such markets as the Balkans, Hungary, and Muscovy. Although raw silk was initially imported from Persia, wartime disruptions during the sixteenth century resulted in extensive local silkworm c…