Number 217 Urfa sher'iyye registry (H.1317-1320/m.1899-1902) 238-487 pages transcription and evaluation

The Ottoman legal system consists of two basic structures. The first is customary law, which comes from the pre-Islamic Central Asian nomadic tradition, and the other is Sharia law, which began to be applied after the acceptance of Islam. In this context, the court records, which we call shar'ia records, kept by the judges working within the Islamic legal system, are the subject of our study. The second part of the Urfa shar'ia register numbered 217, which we are working on, consists of 125 leaves and 258 pages. It was largely readable, except for the destroyed and missing sections on the last few pages of the register. Although the period in which the book was recorded was a very short period, it is important in terms of obtaining important information about social life due to the variety of documents it contains. When the documents in the book are classified according to topics, we see that the most common document type is the appointment of a proxy with 190 documents. This is followed by receivables and payables with 42 documents and inheritance division with 36 documents. Although the defendant, plaintiff and witnesses who applied to the court have information about the ethnic structure of the society through their identity, we can determine the names of the many settlements of Urfa, consisting of neighborhoods, villages and districts, thanks to the indication of the settlements of these people. At the same time, we can see what profession people are practicing through the nicknames and titles used with the names of the people. We come across the names of the foundations and madrasas in the region, which we can consider as educational institutions of Urfa, with the appointment documents of the official officials in the registry. As a result, the aim of our thesis is to provide information about the social and cultural life of Urfa during the Ottoman period.