The economic and social state of Giresun in the 19th century according to the Trabzon Ahkam Registers

In the Ottoman state tradition, everyone including peasants, urban, soldiers, Muslims, non-Muslims, men and women, have the right to send their complaints by petition to the Sultan. One of the most important archive documents in which these complaints are recorded, are the books of ahkam. They are classified by states. Social and economic relations of the region and the perspective of the government on these relations emerge from the individual or collective complaints submitted by the public. In this study, district of Giresun which was a administrative unit of Trabzon Province in the 19th century, was chosen as the research subject. In addition to ahkam books, the general socio-economic picture of 19th century Giresun was put together by gathering the information obtained from the yearbooks, court records, travelers notes and consul reports. As a result of the research, it was seen that the most important complaints of Giresun people in the 19th century were in the field of land ownership. The land ownership issue directly concerns the state's production and treasury due to the miri land regime. The development of property lands in this period beside Miri lands is remarkable. The complaints about inheritance disputes are also about land ownership. Inheritance disputes are followed by credit disputes and tax disputes. Tax disputes are indirectly included in land ownership, and the state is a party to its disputes through its officials. With the Land Code of 1858, the subject of land ownership was subjected to new regulations. The implementationsof the new land law in Giresun have been examined in Ahkam books. Another issue is monetary relations under the name of creditor disputes. These relationships cover the subject of murabaha, which includes interest and usury. In the field of monetary relations, new arrangements were made with the Murabaha Regulations in 1852 and the implementations of the regulation in Giresun were examined in our research, in the books of ahkam. It was also possible to make some evaluations about the social life of Giresun by researching Ahkam books. The problems of the urban and the peasants, the position of non-Muslims in social life, complaints involving the city's notable families named Ayans were examined. As a result, the accumulation of wealth that occurred with the multi-identity social and economic life in Giresun in the 19th century was determined.