Period evaluation according to tereke records in Edirne court register No. 90 (1713-1714)

Every individual has needed to live in a society due to her position. The science of history, which deals with the lives of people, has also examined social life. It is possible to evaluate the social life by going down to the sources. In this regard, it would be a correct policy for the sources to be examined by the experts. The foundations of the judicial organization of the Ottoman Empire were formed by the kadis and they have become the judicial rulers of the region they were in. These documents kept by the kadis have been called the kadi registers, in another words the, Şer'iyye (religious) registers. Şer'iyye (religious) registers have also been divided into some subgroups within themselves. In their general titles, these are the records of huccet(paper), ferman (edict), narh, ihtisab (ikhtisab) and tereke (estate). The focal point of our study has been the Tereke records in the Şer'iyye (religious) Registries. Tereke, in general terms, is the name given to all the goods left behind by the deceased. Therefore, it has provided us with useful data in terms of learning the economic, social, historical and religious contents of famous people of a region in a period. Learning the number of children, spouses, and occupational groups of the deceased also have allowed us to see how society continues its life outside the state. The work we have done is the book numbered 90 in the archive records as Edirne Şer'iyye Registry and the dates have covered the years between H. 1124-1125 and M. 1713-1714. The problem of this research has been the estate records and using them as a social history source and their evaluation on the basis of a sample. As a result of these evaluations which emerged in the light of the estate records which are our main source, in which socio-economic evaluations were made, a general judgment has been made about the people of Edirne in the 18th century, based on wealth analysis.