Document forgery in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries

Document forgery is among the common problems of states since the emergence of written documents. In this context, many document forgery cases were encountered in the Ottoman Empire. Various methods stand out in document forgery. The first of these is the imitation method. Many fake documents were prepared by imitating the sultan's signature, the vizier's signature and seal, and the seals of authorized statesmen. Other methods are bribery, perjury, and tampering with the original document. People have engaged in forging documents for many different reasons. These are gaining unjust enrichment, disrupting the social order, the desire to have a position, diplomatic documents, judicial matters and various forgeries. The most preferred reason was the desire to gain unfair advantage. Frauds about unfair gain are classified in seven groups among themselves. These; timar-zeamet, mukataa, foundation, tax, property-acquisition, inheritance and miscellaneous subjects. One of the other reasons is to disrupt the social order and it is classified in three groups within itself. These; banditry, slander and miscellaneous issues. In order to prevent fraudulent documents, the state imposed penalties according to the nature of the crime. These; shovel, kalebend, cezirebend, exile, imprisonment, death and put on the logs. The lightest punishment among these punishments was exile. The person has been exiled either to his home country or to another place. Cezirebend is a slightly aggravated form of exile. The exiled person cannot leave the island he was exiled to. Kalebend, another punishment method, is considered more severe in terms of being imprisoned in a castle. Unlike these punishments, it can be said that it is a very severe punishment when it is evaluated in terms of both restricting the freedom of the person and having to work physically. For this reason, the rowing penalty labor was given to those who did not become wiser from the exile penalty. Other penalties were used less frequently. Some castles and dungeons were used during imprisonment. The death penalty was given to those who imitated the sultan's signature, and those who persisted in their crime.