Abstract:

A study of early official attempts at coal mining -as opposed to the discovery of coal- is a more realistic effort in the study of history of energy in the Ottoman Empire. The first known official policy of coal mining was in the 1790s and it focused on the region known as Yedikumlar located along the Black Sea coastal strip between Kilyos and Karaburun on the European side of Istanbul. Although Campbell Mustafa Agha, a Scottish convert, was the first to propose to operate a coal mine in this region, coal mining was organized as a taxfarm (muqata‘a) unit auctioned by the Fund of New Revenues (Irad-ı Cedit) to Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha and, later on, to Mahmud Raif Efendi. Attempts at coal mining in the region failed until late 19th century. Among the reasons for this failure were the low-quality lignite (brown coal), insufficient know-how about coal mining, overriding political economy and managerial-organizational limits of the muqata‘a taxfarming system. The low-quality lignite of this region provided the heating energy of Istanbul until the mid-1990s, leading to large-scale air pollution in the city and deterioration of the landscape in Yedikumlar.

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