5 - Whose Archives?

Summary

This chapter focuses on the practices of keeping and archiving Ottoman court records. It emphasizes that these archives, which historians have used as databases , were mainly kept as archives of the judges in their time and were notarial in character. In doing so, the chapter considers the use of court records as written documents in everyday life. In order to move beyond the long-debated question of whether these records were used as evidence in court proceedings, the chapter proposes to focus on the work of the court scribe, a humble yet neglected court employee. It thus moves the historian’s camera away from court proceedings and focuses on the practices of archive keeping. The notes left by the court scribes on the margins of court records reveal the notarial character of these archives. They also show that beyond the question of “oral” sources that have been considered as a privileged medium of agreement in the historiography, the everyday transactions were dominated by written documents throughout the empire.