Abstract:

Drawing on land registrations and various archival sources, this study deals with administrative, economic and social situations of Mumbai. As an old settlement, which dates back to ancient times, Bulam was included in the Ottoman lands in 1516 by Yavuz Sultan Selim. Bulam had a village status under the nahiye of Pağnik which was a accident of Kâhta in sanjak of Malatya from the beginning of the 16th century until the beginning of the 19th century. Bulam, which became a district in 1954, was converted into a town in 1967 under the name of Pınarbası. Bulam has been an important settlement both for agriculture in particular for wheat, barley, corn, chickpea cultivation and its rich pasture and water sources attracted semi-nomads as grazing land. However, Bulam had economic facilities such as dye houses and grain mills in the Ottoman period. In this regard, as it applied elsewhere in the Ottoman State, the Malikâne-Divani system was applied in Bulam. Consequently, these findings have significant implications to reveal the basic dynamics of the administrative, economic and social structure of Bulam since the beginning of the 16th century.