| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: This paper spatializes a set of questions regarding public order and disorder that bear on urban life and urban government during eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. By focusing on urban khans as loci for unidentifiable persons (mechûlü’l-ahvâl) in the city, it examines various problems the central authorities associated with their presence and surveillance mechanisms developed with regard to these individuals. By analyzing the urban rebellions of 1730 and 1740, and the Greek rebellion in 1821, it follows how urban khans became spaces of inspection by the authorities in order to explore a broader notion of public order based on social norms. Finally, it discusses aspects of political language that legitimized the state’s acts of surveillance over khans and their residents, by focusing on the terms mefâsid (evils) and maslaha (redressing of wrongs). |
