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Child marriages are not historical issues or a thing of the past. This issue, which has legal, social, economic, psychologic, and anthropological roots and should be examined in this context, stands as a global and burning problem that awaits a solution not only in Turkey but also in all parts of the world including developed countries. Moreover, child marriage did not exist only in Ottoman-Islamic legal regulations but also in Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Roman, Egyptian, and Athenian civilizations. It has also been part of Hebrew or Christian traditions. Therefore, this phenomenon should not be reduced to a single society, culture, civilization, or religious tradition. Child marriage is related to the meaning associated with the concept of marriage and rather than an application that takes religion as a reference. Thus, it is necessary to accurately understand the meaning associated with the concept of child in Ottoman-Islamic law in order to comprehend this phenomenon in the Ottoman history. Those who are considered children in the 21st century was considered adults in the 19th or early 20th century. They were treated as individuals who claimed social and legal responsibilities. Therefore, one should pay attention to historical meanings of childhood in order to understand the teen marriages in the past rather than looking at the present meaning of the term. Otherwise, a contextual understanding of practices of previous centuries will be obscured. In the Ottoman Empire, Hanafism, the official Islamic school of law, had not set an age limit for the eligibility of marriage until 1917 when reformists passed a new regulation, i.e., the Family Law. Again, according to the Hanafi perspective, extended family members or relatives had been empowered to marry off younger members of the family, which is called "velâyet-i icbâr." Consequently, it allowed grandfathers, fathers, or other senior members of an extended family to marry off children. In the Ottoman society marrying off young women was already a custom and it was usual to marry off young girls as well. Various factors played a role for child marriages. Economic considerations were part of familial motivation but there were also considerations of "sexual purity" before marriage or family reputation. In some cases, grooms did not want to miss an opportunity to marry a girl whom they wanted to unite their lives with. In other cases, families simply wanted to ease their "financial burden" on their family budget. The number of orphans among the early marriages in the Ottoman society amounted to a significant rate and it should not be underestimated in general evaluation of the subject. In order to secure the welfare of the orphan girls their guardians usually married them off at an early age with a noble intention. However, ill-tended relatives also involved in marrying orphan girls and abused their legal powers. This paper examines such an abusive case on Nesibe's marriage in the 19th century. When young Nesibe's father passed away, a legal guardian was assigned a legal while her mother Hayriye hanim was alive. When Nesibe was visiting her older sister in Beykoz, her sister married off Nesibe. When her mother and legal guardian were informed about this marriage, Hayriye hanim went to Zaptiye Nezâreti (Ottoman Police Department) along with the guardian Hafiz Halid Efendi to petition about the marriage. In their petition they expressed that they had also married off Nesibe to a "honorable and moral" man three months ago. In this situation, Nesibe was thirteen years old when her mother and legal guardian married off her three months before her sister married off her to another man again. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that how "velâyet-i icbâr," the power of an extended family members or relatives to marry off young members of the family, had been abused in the Ottoman empire as the case of Nesibe's marriage provides some evidence. Islamic jurisprudents, especially those of the Hanafi school of law, drew a very broad framework for the velâyet-i icbâr, which provided the basis of many teen marriages in the Ottoman history. In this regard, this article presents a useful case study to the Ottoman practices of teen marriage. The paper examines the story of Nesibe, a thirteen-years-old girl, who had been married off twice by her elders, and analyzes the subsequent complaints made by petitions to the Ottoman police department. The issue is traced from the official correspondence between Ottoman administrative institutions. Relevant documents are located in the President's Ottoman Archives in the Council of State section by the 782nd file and 26th cover comprising eleven documents in total. Teen marriage is the subject of religious studies because of its direct relation to Islamic law and social history of the Ottoman Empire. The question of teen marriage has already been the subject of detailed discussion among the jurisprudential corpora and books. For instance, the texts on teen marriage constitute a great extend among the published works of Islamic jurisprudence such as "Ahkâmu'l-Tıfl" (Regulations on Minors) and demonstrates the significant relevance of the topic for religious studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burial, for the dead individual, is created by the living. It is a compound of its architecture, fill, dead object, space, and time. Archaeotanatology is the determination of burial practices of the past societies, using different analytical methods and data from archaeological burials, skeletons/human bones. With analytical tools such as the interactive handling of archaeological contexts, the taphonomic analysis of the skeletonization process of the body and the chronology of the articulation of the bones forming the skeletal system, archaeotanatology suggests that these buried objects should be examined using a special method. French scientists Henri Duday and Claude Masse pioneered the establishment of the method in the 1980s. Today, it forms the basis of burial analysis in France, and its use is becoming widespread in European countries. In Anatolian Archeology, the method was first partially used in the field at Aşıklı and in the laboratory analysis of human remains unearthed at Çayönü Skull Building excavation. In recent years, the author of the article applied archaeotanatological methods in the analysis of burials unearthed from the Çemialo Ridge excavations within the scope of the Ilısu Dam Project, and Yenikapı, Pendik, Sirkeci, Sulukule, Beşiktaş and Haydarpaşa excavations in İstanbul. This paper focuses on the excavation and analytical tools of primary individual burials. Samples selected from different types of burials can also be used as a reference in the application of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The madrasahs of the Ottoman period are continuations of their predecessors in Seljuks in terms of both the sciences and books taught and employment opportunities. Students, who have completed their madrasah education by getting ijazatnāma/id̲j̲āza, were employed as professors and judges or pursued religious careers as muftis, preachers, and imams. Therefore, madrasahs met the juridical, administrative, civilian, and educational staff needs of the state for a long time. In addition, new educational institutions opened especially after the Period of Tanzimat (18391878) met the staff need of the state in the mentioned areas and even narrowed employment areas of madrasahs in later times. However, issues such as the conditions of madrasahs, the lives of mudarrisun, the examination and employment of students were mostly studied with the samples of bilād-ı salāsa (Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne), and there were not enough studies about the case in rural areas. Therefore, this study discusses the employment of a mudarris in the countryside through his education life and exam papers, in the sample of İlyas Efendi (18731956), the mudarris of Hatay/Dörtyol, and his registry file. In the study, a qualitative research method based on data collection and content analysis of documents was used. In this context, the Ottoman Archive of Prime Ministry, and partially, Haleb, Adana, and Ankara provincial yearbooks/annuals (sālnāma) and National Education Yearbooks were used. Ilyas Efendi, who was born in Hācın (Saimbeyli) and received his first education there, was appointed as a mudarris by a scientific committee by judging his competence and merit. Western influence in education that started with the Tanzimat Period and modernization in education with the establishment of new educational institutions caused some changes and contractions in the employment of madrasah graduates. As a matter of fact, while the need for judicial, administrative, military, etc. officials was met by newly opened educational institutions, employment areas of the madrasah was mostly comprised of officials who would perform religious services and madrasah staff such as mudarrisun. When Ilyas Efendi’s education life, ijazatnāma/id̲j̲āza texts, and exam document are examined, it is seen that he was tested in the sciences he studied, and there are no direct questions in the disciplines such as Tafsir, Hadith and the Methodology of Hadith. Although there is no clear information about the field(s) in which Ilyas Efendi thaught in the document we examined, it can be argued that he primarily gave lectures on religious disciplines such as Fiqh and Kalam, as well as Arabic Language and Rhetoric, based on the certificate and examination. Although it is difficult to talk about a standard curriculum with a certain framework, it can be concluded from the file belonging to İlyas Efendi that the courses/books taught in the rural madrasahs are similar to the texts taught in the Ottoman madrasahs in almost every period, and in this respect, they continue the Ottoman central madrasah culture to a large extent. It is also possible to see this from the series of scholars in the text of id̲j̲āza. In addition, when the Ottoman Madrasahs and their curriculum are examined, common books such as Mutavval, (Molla) Cāmî, Multeka’l-Ebhur, Dureru’l-Hukkām, Şerh-i Akāid and Îsāgûcî (to be taught in different degrees) are encountered. Considering the works taught and the practices related to employment, it can be concluded that it is not possible to distinguish the madrasahs in the rural areas from their counterparts in the urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Istanbul, the need for a slaughterhouse operating under scientific and modern methods reached its peak toward the end of the 19th century, leading numerous institutions to address such demand. Although there were already established slaughterhouses in various locations of the city at the time, the public health was in jeopardy as medical and scientific principles were not followed, and no pre or post-slaughter inspections of animals were carried out. Moreover, these slaughterhouses were not subject to appropriate taxes, resulting in government revenue loss. Furthermore, the "Şehremaneti" (Municipality) claimed that the slaughterhouses and livestock markets in their current form were generating unfair profits, causing the meat prices to spike without any precedence. Considering the reformation of current slaughterhouses a grueling task, the Şehremaneti launched a tender in 1911 for the construction of a public slaughterhouse and livestock market equipped with all the medical, scientific, and modern standards for use of all the inhabitants of Istanbul. A commission was appointed to determine the most suitable project and it was decided to grant the operating rights of the establishment for 40 years to the winning project in return for the construction of such establishment, as well as to allocate a certain share to the Şehremaneti from the revenues of the slaughterhouse and the livestock market. The present paper examines the efforts undertaken to build a slaughterhouse and a livestock market using Ottoman archival documents. The causes of the demand for such an establishment, the reports on the tender process, the reactions against the tender, and government institutions and industry leaders' approach on the issue were identified through first-hand sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evliya Çelebi devoted the first "Book" of Seyahatname (Book of Travels) to İstanbul. The period from the founding of İstanbul till the 17th century is narrated through visual images and tales. In the sixth chapter of Book 1, Evliya Çelebi as a skilled story teller presents the talismans of İstanbul with a polyphonic and multicolored text where imagination and reality mingle closely. In this paper, how Evliya Çelebi narrates the legends of 17 talismans and its close relation with İstanbul's foundation epic fictionalized by Evliya will be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]