Abstract:

Şeriyye Sicils (court registers) have an important place among the sources of Modern Times Ottoman history. Among these, tereke defters (the registry of the legacy of a deceased person), sometimes kept independently, present very important data with regard to Ottoman social and economic history. Tereke defters are especially indispensable sources to be referred to when investigating the Ottoman-Turkish family. In this study, the ways of using tereke defters in studying families were examined in the frame of XIX. century Muğla, Isparta, Yalvaç, Konya, and Kırşehir models. As a result of this study, it was found out that tereke defters are among the sources that cannot be neglected when studying Ottoman-Turkish family. Tereke defters presents practical data in various fields such as the case of spouse and children in the family, economic conditions, sources of living, cuisine, customs of nutrition, dressing style, accommodation conditions, ethnographic characteristics, jewellery and ornament tradition, and education and culture of the family.

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