1787-1792 Osmanlı-Rus Harbi’nde Şikâyet Mekanizması

Abstract

This study is based on the complaints transferred from the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire to the center during the Russo-Ottoman war in 1787-92. Thus, it is aimed to reveal in which regions the complaints that occupied the central bureaucracy during the war years were concentrated and whom the officials were interlocutors in the solution process. The division of the complaint bureaucracy into army and rikab during the campaign years, and thus the emergence of more appeal authorities in war conditions makes the Ottoman complaint mechanism interesting. In addition, the fate of the records (defters) in which the complaint provisions were found during the campaign years can only be revealed by the historians to solve this mechanism. In this study, the role of the official authorities which were addressed by the judgments that came out of the diwans because of the complaints, and especially the Ayans who were one of the most important actors of the eighteenth century, in the resolution of the complaints were examined. Shortly before the Russo-Ottoman war of 1787-92, the Ayans were abolished, and the urban stewardships were replaced. However, the Ayans returned to their duties again due to the war conditions. At this point, the role of the Ayans in solving the complaints was compared with the urban stewardship. The study is basically an archival study. The leading source group of the study is the records books of complaint (atik, ordu, rikab, eyalet and rikab ahkam) which contain the provisions of the complaint in the relevant years. The information obtained from here and classified has been interpreted with maps, graphics, and tables. In addition to the records books of complaint (şikayat defteri), other classifications in the Ottoman archives and the literature on the subject were used in the study. It has been determined that approximately 5.500 of the 8.000 provisions in the examined defters were sent to the Balkan and Cezair-i Bahr-i Sefid provinces and their subdistricts. From these provinces, 1.911 provisions were sent to Rumelia, 1.412 to Ozi and 1.225 to Cezair-i Bahr-i Sefid. With these provisions, 66 percent were sent to the qadi and naib who were called ehl-i şer. Administrators who were called ehl-i örf, were sent to 4 percent. And remaining 30 percent provisions were sent to two groups together. Among the 34 percent provisions group, which includes the ehl-i örf were sent 94 provisions to Ayans and 54 to urban stewardship. However, when Ayans such as Tepedelenli Ali Pasha of Epirus and Osman Agha of Ayan of Yenipazar who later obtained the imperial gatekeeper (kapıcıbaşılık), sergeant (hasekilik), mountain guard (derbendat nazırlığı), lords of lords (mir-i miran), were included in this classification, it turns out that nearly 300 provisions were sent to these people for the resolution of complaints.