Tax Farming, the Provincial Council and the Nature of the Late Ottoman State

Abstract

This article focuses on the Council (Divan) of Amid in Diyarbekir Province as a petition-receiving institution throughout the eighteenth century. By drawing on the court records of the city of Harput, one of the sub-districts of Diyarbekir, and the tax farming registers of the larger province, the article discusses the role of the provincial governor in legal procedures. It argues that the Provincial Council had an important function in the operative field of law as it made it possible for the petitioning subjects in Harput to obtain judgments reviewed in the court of Harput in the form of ‘trial de novo’. While situating the emergence of the Council in the political-economic context of the time, the article also argues that the Provincial Council was an early modern institution which, in part, paved the way to the constitution of the nineteenth century provincial administration of the Tanzimat state.