An Essay On The Urban History Studies On The Tanzimat Period

From the 1860’s, as a part of social history researches, urban history has become an important field of study. But when we take into consideration that social history studies are recently emerged discipline in Turkey, it can be said that urban history studies are also a newly developed field. In this context, it is seen that Ottoman urban history studies, which were conducted by both foreign and native researches, are varying according to period and especially to sources of studies. Urban history studies which were based on primarily tahrirs and sharia court registers in the classical period gained new sources in the 19th century. Apart from population and revenue (Temettu) census and official correspondences which were created by the new bureaucracy of the Tanzimat system, it is seen that important foreign sources especially for the major centres as travelogues and consular correspondences occurred for urban history studies on the Tanzimat Period. Based on the urban history researches on the Tanzimat Period, this study aims to make some general assessments on the sources of urban studies in this period.