Chapter 15 The Sicils of Karaferye (Veria) in the Eighteenth Century: A Case of Transformation?
In: Dimensions of Transformation in the Ottoman Empire from the Late Medieval Age to ModernitySearch for other papers by Antonis Anastasopoulos in
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Abstract
This chapter is about the Ottoman kadı court registers of the town of Karaferye (Veria in Greek) in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Unexpectedly, these registers include surprisingly few notarial acts and no trials; they consist mostly of administrative correspondence and tax-related entries. This may be due to a change in the method of compiling registers or to the way in which the court operated. However, other sources suggest that trials still took place in Karaferye in this period, and there is unlikely to have been any other local authority where the inhabitants of the town and its surrounding villages could register contracts and other notarial acts. It is therefore possible that the dearth of judicial and notarial entries is because, for some reason, only those sections of the original registers pertaining to administrative correspondence and tax have survived. Although the same phenomenon has been observed in the registers of other Ottoman towns and some scholars have suggested possible explanations for it, it is ultimately difficult to give a satisfactory answer.