A Turcoman-Alevi community in the Ottoman Mediterranean: Taife-i Tahtaciyan in Aydın province with its micro-history, population, and settlement (First half of the 19th century)

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Qizilbash/Alevi-inclined Tahtacı Turcomans living in the Aydın Province of the Ottoman Mediterranean in the 19th century in socio-economic space. In line with this aim, two of the most valuable archival sources that can be used to produce information about the 19th century Ottoman Empire were taken as a basis, and the study was built through these documents. The first of these two types of documents mentioned is the Population Registers, and the second is the Temettuat Registers. The Ottoman Muslim Population Registers determined for the Aydın Province provide data about the Tahtacıs in the region in terms of demographic, toponymic, and onomastic terms, such as name, nickname, position in the familial hierarchy, professional qualification, age, date of birth, and tribe to which it belongs. Seven of these registers numbered 2906, 2966, 3117, 3143, 2973, 3076, and 2991 were used in the study. In order to envision the economic nature of the Qizilbash-Alevi Ottoman Tahtacıs living in Aydın Province, Temettuat Registers were consulted, and three of these archive documents, numbered 2606, 1808, and 2446, were evaluated in the thesis. In addition, different archival documents produced by the Ottoman Archives about Aydın, İzmir, Muğla, and the Tahtacıs spread around them were used to support the two main document materials mentioned above. In this thesis, in which we tried to approach the study object from a micro-historical perspective, we focused on a narrow position on the regional scale. As a result, based on 19th century Ottoman documents, the presence of Tahtacı was determined in 26 different settlement areas. The settlement styles, the socio-cultural status of the Tahtacıs of Aydın, what kind of names they prefer, what type of skin color and beard/moustache they have in terms of typology, what type of residences they live in or how they are distributed in the familial point were also questioned, and answers were given to these problematics. Keywords: Ottoman Alevism, Tahtacıs, Settlement, Aidin Province, Population Register, Temettuat Register