Socialization of knowledge in Ottoman Üskudar XVI.-XVIII. centuries: In the light of Court Records

This thesis examines approximately 5000 probate inventories in 553 court records that had been recorded in Ottoman Üsküdar in the 16th-18th centuries. Among these records, 175 probate inventories containing books were evaluated in terms of culture, socialization of knowledge, book owners and their social classes, and the thematic analysis of the books they owned. While examining the registers, no sampling was made but all the inventories recorded in the books were evaluated holistically. Of the total 175 probate inventories identified, 25 belong to the 16th century, 57 belong to the 17th century, and lastly, 93 belong to the 18th century. The study discusses the institutional and social analysis of the information before the consideration of the probate inventories in the Üsküdar Court over a period of three centuries. The institutionalization of knowledge has been considered under the title of the madrasa, the palace, and the takka, while the socialization of knowledge has been studied in the context of education, mosque lessons, and reading traditions and culture. In the second chapter, all the ascertained probate inventories were examined in depth in chronological order within each century. In the third chapter, the social classes of the book owners are analyzed through the following headlines: the Ottoman ulema and their books as the group that produces and spreads knowledge, the books of the bureaucracy and the palace aghas as the sources of palace-centered information, the soldiers and their books, the members of the takka and their books, various classes (craftsmen - merchants - foundation officials and pilgrims), women and their books, and book owners and title relations. In the fourth and last part, the subjects of the books in circulation in Üsküdar and their change according to centuries, the prices of the books and the proportion of these prices to the wealth, the numerical size of the book collections, and the neighborhoods where the book owners live are examined. The thesis aims to map out the books of a region through a certain resource group and to reveal the processes of the socialization of the knowledge in these books.