Abstract:

In Ottoman inheritance law, the estate application was implemented for six hundred years, since the establishment of the state. This implementation was carried out by a team composed of the Secretary (accountant), al-Quassam (the person who distributes assets) and announcer (the person who makes the announcements to determine the debtors and claimers) and chaired by Qadi (judge). In the Estate (inheritance) held at the request of one of the heritors, the relevant information is given initially, then the estates, clothing, household goods, real estates, receivables, and cash are arranged under rules (type, quantity and value of the assets) appropriately. The third section focuses on the distribution of these assets. First, the share of debts is determined, then the fees of those who participated in the estate transactions are included, and then the shares of the heritors are listed. If there aren’t any or there is just one heritor, the state owns the share. Spouses, children and other heritors share the inheritance according to certain rules. Accountants are involved in almost all stages of the estate transactions such as taking inventory, determining receivables and payables, calculating shares of shareholders, and finally recording in the estate book. In the records of the estate book, Ottoman accountants used the staircase (Merdiban) method, which was used for state accounting purposes in the Ottoman Empire for centuries. It should be noted that the dominance of the accountant in both estate transactions and recording allows the preparation of the records in the form of a liquidation balance sheet. In this paper, two cases from the 16th and 17th centuries are studied, and it is understood from these cases that estate transactions were developed within the framework of specific standards and were applied for centuries on the basis of the same principles. It should be indicated that there are two points that enable the application of these long-term transactions on the basis of standard rules. The first is the implementation of the inheritance law for a long time in a stable manner within the framework of certain rules. The second is the Ottoman’s experienced accountants successful applications conforming to specific standards. It is concluded that the successful application of estate accounting has had a large effect on the protection of the socio-economic structure of the Ottoman Empire and maintenance of inheritance law with the same rules for centuries.

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