Pleven's Muslim population (1830-1850)

The term population, which is the plural of the Arabic word "nefs", refers to people living in a geographical area. Throughout history, some states have negatively viewed excessive population growth due to lack of food and some other economic factors. Some states thought that there should be a balance between population and economy. Some states on the other hand, it supported population growth in order to gain military, financial and political superiority. Moreover, they developed policies in this direction. States and nations took measures to increase reproduction, to ensure a long-lasting and healthy life in order to maintain their existence, and also gave importance to register the population. Due to the fact that Ottoman Empire was a world state, it implemented policies to increase population and keep the population recorded. The first examples of population and land census in the Ottoman Empire appear as Tahrir Registers. The first examples of tahrir, which is an Arabic word and means "writing, recording" appear in China in 4000 BC. Later, it is seen that tahrir was done in Egypt, Rome and Medieval Europe. According to various historical records, censuses were also made in the Anatolian principalities that were established before the Ottoman Empire and the Seljuk State. However, these tahrir records have not reached the present day. The tahrir writing, which was applied in the Ottoman lands in the XV. and XVIth centuries, was abandoned in the XVIIth century due to factors such as the collapse of the timar system, the increase in the burden of bureaucracy, the economic and social changes, and the deterioration of public order, and left its place to avarız and jizya counts. XIXth century went down in history as a time period in which many innovations and reforms were made for the Ottoman Empire. One of the innovations in this century is the first modern census without the aim of land writing. Although this census, which was started in 1831, was not carried out in all the lands of the state, it was made in the 10 most important states. Only men were counted in this census, which was made to determine the source of soldiers and tax status for the new army formed after the abolition of the Janissary Corps. One of the censuses made in the Sultan Mahmud II. period and accepted as modern was carried out in Pleven, a town of Niğbolu Sanjak, in Vidin Province, which was an Ottoman land at that time. The books of the census conducted in the center, neighborhoods and villages of Pleven between 1830-1850 were obtained from the Presidency of the State Archives. With this study, it is aimed to contribute to the social history of Pleven, in the XIXth century, which is now within the borders of the Republic of Bulgaria, by using the first Ottoman population data, specifically for the Muslim population.