Atik Valide Sultan Külliyesi (1686-1727)

Abstract

In 1582, Nurbanu Valide Sultan (d. 1583), the mother of Ottoman Sultan Murad III (r. 1574-95), found a pious foundation (Ar. waqf, Tur. vakıf) in Üsküdar İstanbul, which would be called later on "Valide-i Atik Sultan Külliyesi." This study that was prepared on the data acquired from the Valide-i Atik Complex Account Registers (Muhasebe Defterleri) from the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries aims to shed some lights on the economic situation in the period, the relations between the state apparatus and the pious foundations, the state policies that were implemented via foundations, the integration of the foundation complexes (Tur. vakıf külliyeleri) with their regions and their peripheries, the use of the pious foundations as a tool to finance the state, and lastly, the functions of the pious foundations in the economic life.