Abstract:

Court registers (şer‘iye sicilleri or şer‘iye defterleri) consist of records on various issues kept by the Ottoman kadis who functioned as the representatives of the state, local administrators and judges. Court registers thus occupy a very privileged and important position among the Ottoman archival materials. Shedding light upon various domains thanks to the diversity of the documents they contain and serving as the principal sources, these sicils encompass invaluable information as to the socio-economic history of the Ottoman provinces. Located to the east of present-day Greek Macedonia and in the vicinity of the Thermaic Gulf, Karaferye (Béroia/Véria) was a district (kaza) that lived under Ottoman rule for more than five centuries. Characterized by the coexistence of various ethnic and religious groups, the town enjoyed significant potential in terms of production and economic dynamism. Thus, it is extremely important to appraise the existence of locally-produced documents as well as their contents in order to shed further light upon the Ottoman past of the town. So far a total of 140 defters pertaining the court records of Karaferye district have been identified; 127 in Greece and 13 in Turkey. In terms of periodicity, the defters reflect an uneven distribution, with 43 belonging to the 17th century, 67 to the 18th century and 30 to the 19th century. The corpus in question dates from the year 1602 to 1891. With thousands of documents consisting of more than 12 thousand pages, the Karaferye court registers indeed amounts to a colossal collection. Further studies drawing upon these defters, which are largely in good state, with most of the documents keeping their original quality, will not only constitute a valuable source for local history research at the district level, but also contain substantial information for inquiries into Ottoman history based upon survey and sampling methods. The present study attempts to compile all available information about these registers found in the two countries, presents an overview and finally provides an overall catalogue.

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