Reconstructing a Town from its Court Records. Rodoscuk, 1546-1553

224 Pages·2008·2.6 MB·English

by  Özlem Sert Sandfuchs

Reconstructing a Town
from its Court Records

Rodosçuk (1546-1553)

Özlem Sert Sandfuchs

München 2008
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Reconstructing a Town

from its Court Records
Rodosçuk (1546-1553)

Özlem Sert Sandfuchs

Dissertation
an der Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

München

vorgelegt von

Özlem Sert Sandfuchs

aus Hakkari/ Türkei

München, im Januar 2008
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Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Suraiya Faroqhi
Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Ralf Elger
Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 04.02.2008

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Table of Contents

Preface........................................................................................................................................7
List of Abbrevetions...................................................................................................................8
A Note on Transliteration...........................................................................................................9

Introduction..............................................................................................................................10
The Ottoman Town..........................................................................................................10
The “Golden Age” and Decline Theory...........................................................................15
The Common People........................................................................................................19
Sixteenth-century Rodosçuk............................................................................................25
Sources.............................................................................................................................29
Literature..........................................................................................................................31

PART I: The Quarters..............................................................................................................33
Drawing the Portrait of the Town....................................................................................34
Climate.............................................................................................................................38
Starting Points..................................................................................................................41
Streams.............................................................................................................................57
The Market (Bazaar)........................................................................................................62
Non-Muslim Quarters......................................................................................................64

PART II: The Inhabitants.........................................................................................................69
Chapter I: The Centre at the Harbour.......................................................................................72
a. The Çavuş Hüseyin Quarter.........................................................................................73
b. The Cami-i Cedid Quarter............................................................................................87
c. The Abdi Hoca Quarter................................................................................................98
d. The Dizdarzade or Dizdaroğlu Quarter......................................................................105
e. Conclusion I: What is a quarter? A Redefinition of the quarter in an Ottoman town 110
Chapter II: The Centre at the Market.....................................................................................114
a. The Orta Cami (Kürkçü Sinan or Kürkçüoğlu) Quarter.............................................114
b. The Cami-i Atik Quarter............................................................................................116
c. The Karayazıcı Quarter..............................................................................................141
d. The Ibrahim Bey Quarter...........................................................................................147
e. The Hacı Isa Quarter..................................................................................................149
f. The Papa Yorgi Frengi Quarter...................................................................................154
g. The Papa Hartofilakos Quarter...................................................................................159
h. Conclusion II: How does a new neighbourhood appear?...........................................161
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CHAPTER III: Outskirts of the Town...................................................................................164
a. The Nişancı Canpaşaoğlu Quarter..............................................................................165
b. The Cennet Hatun Quarter.........................................................................................175
c. The Yunus Bey Quarter..............................................................................................178
d. The Şeyh Memi Quarter.............................................................................................180
e. The Hacı Musa Quarter..............................................................................................180
f. The Nebioğlu Quarter.................................................................................................184
g. The Çaklu Ramazan Quarter......................................................................................187
h. The Papa Piskopos Quarter........................................................................................188
i. The Sebgi Hoca bin Şah Veli Quarter.........................................................................191
j. Other Quarters.............................................................................................................192
k. Conclusion III: Which class plays which role in the formation of the town?...........195

Conclusion..............................................................................................................................197

Appendices.............................................................................................................................201

Bibliography...........................................................................................................................209

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Preface
This work is a product of a dream that began in Munich City Museum (Münchner
Stadtmuseum), where visitors have the opportunity to take a computer-simulated journey back
to centuries long passed. Through painstakingly detailed research, historians have
reconstructed the history of Munich and created a virtual tour of the centre of the city, making
the streets, squares and government buildings visible again. When I visited this museum, I had
just started reading through the earliest dated qadı court records of the Mediterranean town of
Rodosçuk. Inspired by my “virtual” tour of Munich, I decided to implement a similar project
for the town of Rodosçuk in the middle of the 16th century.
After a large amount of preparatory work, only using the court records I was finally
able to sketch a simple preliminary draft-map of the boundaries of Rodosçuk as they exisited
some 450 years ago. Then I visited the site of Rodosçuk, which is now the city of Tekirdağ, in
order to verify the map I had drawn. I had successfully sketched the image of the town, which
I had never visited, and this increased my enthusiasm for the project.
After more research, using a present-day map of the city as a background, I produced
an even more detailed map showing the location of the different quarters of 16th-century
Rodosçuk. This map was the outcome of a “data-base study” method. The first part of my
thesis, describes this new approach to the study of Ottoman towns, which I refer to as the
“neighborhood data-base method”. In the second part of my thesis, I illustrate how this
method can contribute to our understanding of urban life in the Ottoman lands by bringing the
historian closer to the role of people in the formation of a town.
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List of Abbrevetions
CIEPO Comite International des Etudes Preottomanes et Ottomanes
EI1 Encyclopedia of Islam, first edition
EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam, second edition
İA1 İslam Ansiklopedisi (Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı)
İA2 İslam Ansiklopedisi (Diyanet Vakfı)
ICUIT The Proceedings of International Conference on Urbanism in Islam
İFM İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası
IJMES International Journal of Middle East Studies
JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
PLP Prosographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit
RŞS Rodosçuk Şeriye Sicilleri (Rodosçuk Qadı Court Records)
TT Tapu Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü Arşivi
TTK Türk Tarih Kurumu
TV Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı
VA Waqflar Genel Müdürlüğü Arşivi

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A Note on Transliteration

I used the Modern Turkish forms of the words as much as possible except for some Ottoman
Turkish words and Arabic words which are not used in Modern Turkish. In that case I
followed the IJMES system of transliteration. I italicized all foreign words except for people’s
names and place names. However, when I was unable to find the original names, I wrote them
in italics to show how the qadı heard and recorded these names in Ottoman Turkish. I used
some words commonly used in English in their most common and simple forms (e.g. waqf,
instead of vakıf, dervish instead of derviş).
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Introduction

The Ottoman Town

Early explanations about an archetype of the “Ottoman/Islamic city or town”, in which
inhabitants were not able to develop urban political autonomy and thus, changed the town’s
rigid structure, lost their validity after the 1980s. The fact that this archetype was largely
based on interpretations provided without adequate evidence, led to critical studies that gave a
voice to the local people. However, although these new studies concerning the Ottoman town
made use of many different approaches and debates, such as critiques of the decline paradigm,
the Annales School, the world system theory,1 and a questioning of state-centered
explanations, the strong role of the central state in the formation of towns was still
emphasized. Yet claims about state omnipotence are premature. Many cities in the Ottoman
Empire have not been thoroughly studied, and there is still a scarcity of knowledge about
these cities and their inhabitants.
A few years ago, Eldem, Goffman and Masters pointed out that this lack of knowledge
can be compensated for with a new approach to Ottoman court records that would give voice
to local inhabitants. For example Peirce’s study, yielded “portraits of beliefs, actions, and
social roles of men, women, and children, guildsmen, tradesmen, and apprentices, Christians,
Jews, and Muslims in Ottoman Anatolian cities” by “the resourceful use of kadı court

1 For a general review see Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman and Bruce Masters, “Introduction, Was there an
Ottoman City?”, The Ottoman City between East and West, Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999, pp.10-11; Mehmet Öz, “Osmanlı Klasik Döneminde Anadolu Kentleri”, Türkiye
Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, III/6 (2005): 57-88.
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