An Ottoman cıty between tradıtıon and modernıty: Polıtıcs ın Trebizond ın the fırst half of 17th century

This thesis aims to explore changes that occurred in the Ottoman Empire after the ?Classical? period through analysis of a particular province center, Trabzon, by emphasizing the importance of socio-political history writing of cities. For this reason, it primarily efforts to introduce a decoding of tradition through an examination of Kınalızâde Ali Çelebi?s Ahlâk-ı Âlâî, a prominent work for understanding the Ottoman traditional political thought. In this context, the effort to capture connection points between city and politics reveals two concepts. The first concept is ?tamaddun? which is defined as a way of thinking and the most important concept to understand tradition. The ultimate point of tamaddun is the necessity of ruler as ?owner of the state?. Every kind of change that occurs in tamaddun makes the legitimacy of ruler very problematical. That requires putting the concept of the ?state? on the agenda. Thus, we have two significant concepts, tamaddun and state, to understand the tradition and the process towards modernity in the Ottoman Empire. In the light of these two concepts, the thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter tries to analyze these concepts deeply. Here it is aimed to stay the Ottoman Empire in its original and traditional context. To this end Shari`a Court Records which almost contain every kind of documents, used to expose the concrete appearances of politics in a province center. The second chapter tries to indicate Trabzon?s traditional structure by using the concept of tamaddun to interpret traditional space. The third chapter examines the changes in traditional structure in the light of the concept of state. For that, the position of the connection between ruler and city in the first part of seventeen-century is investigated by accepting the legitimacy of ruler as an axis. Thus, to a certain extent it is tried to introduce the socio-political history of Trabzon.