Sixteenth-century Ottoman lands had fewer mills per capita than eleventh-century England

Evidence

In the sixteenth century, at the height of Ottoman power and greatness, there were considerably fewer mills to the population in the Ottoman lands than there were in eleventh century England when the Domesday book was compiled after the Norman Conquest. One may find other reasons for that, but the fact in itself is significant and tallies well with other evidence pointing to a technological lack of development. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1629

Categorization

• QUESTION: The mill-to-population comparison is striking but fragile — worth chasing the Issawi research for the actual numbers and controls before relying on it.
• XREF: Connects to the technology-transfer critiques in the Said-adjacent cluster about how the region was framed as technologically stagnant versus Europe.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1629