City of Mardin in the 18th Century

This thesis that tries to introduce the 18th century history of Mardin utilized the Ottoman court records principally as a source. The registrations of the religious court contain the records kept in the Ottoman courts from the beginning the 16th century to the last quarter of the 19th century. These books handwritten by the clerks in the court contain a sui generis book-keeping style. The registrations of the religious court that have come to be a source referred by the urban history researches regarding the Ottoman classical era within the last fifty years provide, in addition to the judicial-legal one, information about the administrative structure, social life, and even economical condition.Mardin is a different town studied through its unique architectural structure and different cultural and ethnical factors it has in its structure. Living in the town with tolerance by the Muslim population and non-Muslim population is among the topics handled within this dissertation.This study aims at delving into the architecture that provides Mardin with a unique style and the social and economical factors within the province. In a broader sense, the ratio of continuation of the determinations heretofore conducted for the Mardin of the Middle Age and the Ottoman classical era in the 18th century, whether new changes have occurred, the fact that how the people were affected by the events in the region despite the distance from the power centres like Istanbul, Bagdad, and Diyarbakir, the fact that how the problems encountered in the generality of the Ottoman Empire were reflected to the locality, and the revelation of the social and economical status of the populace living in Mardin constitute the objective of this thesis.Another reason for this research is to scrutinize power relations between the central administration and the local families that came to surface very clearly in 18th century and to contribute to this century of the Ottoman History by way of studying the struggles of such families to take place in the social and political life specifically in respect of Mardin. In this study, in which we found the opportunity to test the claims-data presented for the overall framework, one of the most important characteristics of the local history researches, without overlooking the phenomenon of tribes that marked every period of Mardin, the contributions of such social organization to the history of the province are revealed.