| Zusammenfassung: | Ottoman provisioning of food staples depended on mubayaa, a purchasing system based on preemptive privileges granted to officially assigned intermediaries. In granting these privileges, the Ottoman central administration aimed to keep the prices of necessities low in urban centers, particularly in Istanbul. However, the policy had significant implications for the primary procurement areas and especially for the Balkans in the case of the most consumed staple: grains. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman authorities, like their counterparts in Europe, adopted a more liberal attitude towards price-formation in grain markets and also introduced significant changes in the mubayaa system. Examining these changes with a primary focus on Macedonia—a region that became more important for Istanbul's grain supply especially after 1774—this article sheds light on the broader trends in the empire's institutional organization. The article shows that the introduction of novel monitoring and representation mechanisms at the local level in addition to the assignment of salaried officials helped enable continuance of the mubayaa system given rising market prices. It further argues that these changes reflected the Ottoman administration's attempts to increase central redistributive capacity by reducing the power of local elites occupying intermediary positions in the grain trade.
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