The last years of the reign of Sultan Mahmud I according to Ceyb-i Hümâyûn and Harc-ı Hâssa books (1750-1754)

The Ottoman Empire placed considerable emphasis on the treasury. The Ottoman state treasuries consisted of an external treasury, created by the state's operating mechanism, and an internal treasury, established for the palace's operating mechanism. The subject of our study consists of ledgers kept in the Ottoman archives for the sultan's personal expenditures, known as the "Ceyb-i Hümayun ledgers." The Ceyb-i Hümayun ledgers provide information on the sultan's income, expenditures, which revenue items directly impacted the sultan's treasury, and how these expenditures were spent. In other words, these ledgers provide us with information directly related to the sultan's daily life. This thesis includes the transcription of 62 imperial and imperial registers in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archives, which record the last five years of Sultan Mahmud I's reign (1750-1754) month by month, and the classification based on the texts in these registers. Our study is structured in three sections. The introduction provides information about the thesis's purpose and methodology, followed by a review of the literature and an introduction to the sources produced. The first section describes the institution of the Treasury in the Ottoman Empire, outlining the scope of activities of the Imperial Treasury (Ceyb-i Hümayun) and the Imperial Harc-ı Hâssa (Harc-ı Hassa), which were the Internal Treasury within the Treasury. The following section includes a biography of Sultan Mahmud I, the sultan of the period under study. The second section identifies the revenue items of the Imperial Treasury and the Imperial Harc-ı Hâssa, dividing them into two categories: cash revenues and in-kind revenues. This section attempts to analyze data from the registers in tabular form. The third section identifies the expenditure items of the Imperial Treasury and the Imperial Harc-ı Hâssa, dividing them into two categories: Imperial expenditures (Ceyb-i Hümayun) and Imperial Harc-ı Hâssa (Harc-ı Hassa). In addition, in this section, a sultan-centered study is presented by comparing the expenditure records with the chronicles of the period, which have a systematic period narrative, and the ruznames, which are the sultan's diaries.