SPATIAL MAPPING OF THE OTTOMAN CITIES AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS IN THE EARLY 16TH CENTURY

In this article, digital urban history methodology such as Geographical Information System (GIS) which has an important place in digital humanities will be used for analyses of the early 16th century Ottoman cities and provincial organization. The aim of this study is to map and analyses Ottoman lands in terms of the administrative division of vilayet (province), sanjak/liva (district), and kaza (city), according to the defterdars (accountant) in tahrir registers (tax surveys), and to the kadıasker (military kadı ) in kadıasker registers. The article also focuses on the mobility of Ottoman cities that are classified as kaza, sanjak, and vilayet within the system of administrative organization, and examines the factors of spatial changes and transformations of each administrative unit in the early 16th century. Thus, this study aims to contribute to Ottoman studies both thematically and methodologically.
This study also examines how spatial Ottoman studies can benefit from the approaches and research methods provided by digital urban history such as GIS. This study aims to answer: what are the consequences of applying the digital approach in Ottoman urban studies as a part of spatial humanities? In the literature, there has been limited study examining and testing the potentials and possibilities of new digital methods in Ottoman urban history. For this reason, it is expected that this study will give an idea about the place, contribution, and limits of digital research methods, and more specifically GIS in Ottoman studies.
The period of this study covers the early 16th century when the Ottoman Empire’s borders of the empire ranged from Algeria to Azerbaijan, from Budapest to Baghdad and Basra, from the Crimea to Katif in the Persian Gulf, and Moha in Yemen. Since there are sources providing information about the whole empire of this period also has been an important factor in our concentration on this period. In this period, the Ottoman administrative system contains vilayet, sanjak, kaza. The largest administrative unit in the Ottoman Empire is the vilayet that comprises sanjaks. The sanjaks were established in each vilayets and their status changed over time. The geographical area corresponding to the jurisdiction of kadı is called a kaza. As a small unit of provincial organization, nahiye was included as a sub-unit of kaza in the administrative hierarchy by the 16th century.
Regarding the methodology, the article will use digital history tools as a part of the main methodology to understand archival resources more effectively to examine the changes and transformations in the administrative organization of the Ottoman Empire. Holistic maps of the Ottoman cities (kaza) including vilayet, sanjak division in the early 16th century will be designed through ArcGIS. The geographical coordinates of each city will be found and added to ArcGIS
software to reveal the spatial positioning and create maps of administrative organization. Through the ArcGIS, Ottoman cities will be marked as points on the map, and vilayet and sanjak divisions will be drawn as polygons that give an idea of the boundaries of administrative units. Thanks to GIS, the geographical boundaries, changes, and transformations of the administrative organization can be analyzed thematically. The analysis of the data through GIS will provide the basis for revealing the existing situation of cities in the administrative organization from a holistic perspective. GIS is suitable for the observation of the periodic mobility of administrative units through spatial analysis. Through this study, digital history techniques and methods which have an important place in current historiographical debates will be tested in Ottoman studies.