Near Eastern Studies Lecture
An Ottoman Fiscal Codex and Financial Tales of 134 Women and Men
Ali Yaycıoğlu, Associate Professor of Ottoman & Middle Eastern history at Stanford and a Visiting Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University (2021-2022).
At the center of this talk is a fiscal codex (defter), housed in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul (call number MAD 9726), dated from 1808 to the 1840s. MAD 9726 was prepared by a group of Ottoman fiscal accountants to record the financial assets, public and private debts and credits of 134 prominent men (and a few women), who lost their lives (or who fled or were exiled) between 1807 and 1809. This talk will present the intertwined story of a codex, the financial tales of 134 prominent individuals, the final phase of the accounting methods of Ottoman fiscal bureaucracy, and the political-economic transformation of the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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