Abstract:

We have tried to analyse social and economic structure of Meğri in XVI. century, one of the important districts in Mediterranean coastal area of Western Anatolia, by basing Ottoman Tax Registers (Tapu Tahrir Defterleri) and Waqf Documents in Ottoman Archives on the so-called analysis. A large part of the population of Meğri were collected in villages. Amas (Üzümlü), Aypaz, Dodurga, Çalıcaardı, Eşen, Falarya (Faralya), Gerişburnu, Girdab, Gülümet, Ovacık, Döğer (Sandlu) and Elviz (Kayaköy) appeared to be large villages of this area. There were only non-Muslims in Elviz. Other villages had less population than these villages. When taking into account taxes from production, it is seen that villagers mainly lived on agriculture and animal husbandry. In agricultural products, wheat, barley, corn, fig, rice and viticulture were generally produced. In addition to these, broad bean, lentil, cotton, sesame seeds, melon-water melon, flax, beans were produced. There were a significant amount of nomadic people in Meğri. Meğri was not much developed. Losing importance of Meğri pier, going to plateaus of people as Seki due to region's hot summer and security problems as hackers attacks from sea caused the aforementioned situation. Even so, there were enough commercial and industrial activities. Moreover, there were a large amount of saltpan and salting in area. There were waqf around 44-80. These waqfs were located in rural area except few waqfs. Infomation about waqfs were derived from wagf ducuments dated 1530, 1562 and * Doç. Dr, S.D.Ü., Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Öğretim Üyesi, [email protected]. 1583. Since especially documents dated 1562 and 1583 are detailed, these give important information about the history of area.

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