Abstract:

Civil servants born in Niksar were addressed in this study prepared by analyzing Sicill-i Ahvâl Defterleri (Ottoman Employment Record Books) that served to carry out Ottoman civil servants’ employment recording processes and became a key source for biographies of civil servants employed in different institutions in the late Ottoman period. As well as referring to the administrative status of Niksar town, Ottoman Employment Record Books, and the records kept in these books, the introductory part of the study provided information about commissions and institutions conducting these activities. Next, the biographies of 17 Niksar-born civil servants identified in Ottoman Employment Record Books were presented. Following the presentation of biographies, information about civil servants’ social origins and education levels as well as duties assumed by them was given and evaluated. Besides archive documents used as the main source, the review study in the relevant literature was utilized in this evaluation. In this context, efforts were made to find out data about Niksar-born civil servants’ official working lives in the Ottoman State, the duration of their duties, their education processes, and social origins as well as penalties imposed on and rewards granted to them. Also, the study endeavored to introduce civil servants from Niksar by analyzing several pieces of information such as reasons why civil servants exchanged offices by mutual consent and were dismissed from the office, court trial processes experienced by civil servants, and civil servant retirement status. One of 17 civil servants identified in the study in this framework was non-Muslim whilst the rest of them was Muslim. Among the civil servants, there were those who knew foreign languages such as Arabic and Persian, as well as those who were literate in Turkish. According to the books, these civil servants were employed in Ankara, Yozgat, Trabzon, Bursa, Diyarbakır, İstanbul, Adana, Samsun, and primarily Niksar as well as distant regions outside the borders of today’s Turkey, such as Damascus, Jerusalem, Shkoder, and Yemen.

Keywords: