 Prizes
 Monograph Category
Master's Thesis Category
Scientific Paper Category
Honarary Mentions
Best Monograph
Erol Özvar, Osmanlı Maliyesi’nde Malikane Uygulaması (The Malikâne System in Ottoman Finance) Kitabevi, Istanbul, 2003.
In this study, Assoc. Prof. Erol Özvar investigates the Malikâne tax farming system, one of the methods of tax collection used in the Ottoman Empire. Starting with the first applications of the system, Özvar examines the distribution of the terrains given out as malikânes (life-grant tax farms), the amount of collected tax revenue, the regions where the system was applied, the identities and titles of the approximately 1500 malikânecis (lifetime tax farm holders), some of the problems encountered in the early years during which the system was applied and other similar topics.
The study is essentially based on registered malikâne titles and deeds from1695 to 1697, the years in which the first malikânes were purchased, and draws as well on lease books of the period for related topics.
Erol Özvar was born in 1966, in Istanbul, where he attended elementary, middle and high school. In 1989, he obtained his BA from the Department of Economics at Marmara University and in 1992, his MA in Economic History from the Institute of Social Sciences at the same university. In 1998, he obtained a Ph.D. in economic history for his doctoral dissertation entitled, XVII. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Taşra Maliyesi’nde Değişim: Rum Eyaletinde Hazine Defterdarlığından Voyvodalığa Geçiş (Change in XVIIth Century Ottoman Provincial Finance: The Transition from Provincial Treasurer to Vaivode). He has participated in and presented papers at national and international congresses both in Turkey and abroad. Özvar is currently a faculty member of the Institute of Social Sciences at Marmara University and has published, in addition to this present work, papers, articles and a book of translated works.
Best Master’s Thesis
Filiz Dığıroğlu, Reji’nin Karadeniz Bölgesi’ndeki Uygulamaları (1884-1914) (The Activities of the Régie des Tabacs de l’Empire Ottoman in the Black Sea Region [1844-1914])Master’s Thesis from the Department of Recent Turkish History, at the Marmara University Institute of Turcology Research, Istanbul, 2004.
In her dissertation, Dığıroğlu describes the activities of the Régie, which held the monopoly on tobacco in the Ottoman Empire and its operations in the Black Sea region.
Stressing the fact that the many prior researches conducted on the Régie have overlooked both its regional activities and its relationship with local tobacco producers, Dığıroğlu takes examples of the company’s applications in the municipality of Trabzon as her starting point to establish its local dealings. The Régie’s terms of contract and its organization in the province of Trabzon, its applications, its rapport with manufacturers, merchants, and local administrators, the reactions to the company’s applications and the resulting measures taken by the company, constitute the main headings of her study.
Filiz Dığıroğlu, was born on May 5,1979, in Üsküdar, where she completed her middle and high school education. In 1996, she enrolled in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Marmara University and four years later, graduated with a degree in history. In 2001, she began a master’s program in Recent Turkish History at the Marmara University Institute of Turcology Research. In 2004, she obtained her master’s degree under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Ali Karaca with her dissertation, Reji’nin Karadeniz Bölgesi’ndeki Uygulamaları (1884-1914) which also won her the prize for best master’s thesis at this competition.
Best Scientific Paper
Uri M. Kupferschmidt, European Department Stores and Middle Eastern Consumers: The Orosdi-Back Saga, September, 2005.
In this article, Uri M. Kupferschmidt sheds light on the rise and fall of the 19th century middle eastern “department store chain,” Orosdi-Back, highlighting the history and evolution of the store within the broader framework of the period’s evolving consumer patterns, and trends such as the rise of mass consumerism, urbanism and new practices in advertising and buying. The article also examines the life stories of the main shareholders of the company, the Orosdi and Back families, the context of the store’s geographical distribution, in particular its Istanbul, Cairo, Beirut, Tunis and Baghdad branches, its advertising and retailing policies and the store’s clientele. Kupferschmidt then takes up the decline of the Orosdi-Back department store chain, during the first half of the 20th century, in the light of the economic policies, such as nationalism or nationalization, that Middle East countries were adopting at the time. In 1940, Sümerbank took over Orosdi-Back thus terminating its activities in Turkey. The company survived with some difficulty in other Middle East cities until 1960, and is, today, still listed on the Paris Stock Exchange.
Uri Kupferschmidt earned a master’s degree in 1969 yılında from the University of London (SOAS), and completed a Ph.D. program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1979. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Middle Eastern History at Haifa University (Israel). Kupferschmidt’s research focuses on 19th and 20th century Middle Eastern social history (Islam and society, the ulema (the clergy), the Muslim Brotherhood movement, migration, media). He has published a number of articles on the structuring role of Islam in Palestine and in Egypt.
Mustafa Erdem Kabadayı, The Sharp Rise and Sudden Fall of an Ottoman Entrepreneur: The Case of Mıkırdich Cezayirliyan
Drawing on state archival material, Mustafa Erdem Kabadayı retraces the successful career and abrupt decline of the moneylender Mıkırdiç Cezayirliyan, who lived in Istanbul between 1805 and 1861. The family’s surname “Cezayirliyan” is a reference to the trading activities with Algeria (Cezayir) of Mıkırdıç’s grandfather. As a moneylender, Mıkırdıç’s financial resources included revenue from customs tax collection in Istanbul and tithes collected from a number of sanjaks in the provinces. As an entrepreneur, he turned his skills in business to founding silk factories in Bursa and Mudanya. When considering Cezarliyan’s career, Kabadayı stresses the powerful place the money lending institution had attained in the tax farming system and provides an overview of the period’s financial background. In October 1852, just when Cezayirliyan’s career had reached a peak, he was arrested. The state seized all of his assets and began an inspection of his financial records. Kabadayı suggests that the state’s desire to eradicate the money lending institution altogether probably lay at the back of this act, and the action undertaken against Cezaryirliyan constituted a first step in that direction.
M. Erdem Kabadayı was born in 1973 in Ankara. He obtained a BA in Economics from Middle East Technical University in 1995, and an MA, in the same discipline, from the University of Vienna in 1999. As a graduate researcher, he has worked on projects with the Istanbul, Athens and Salonica State Archives. He took part in a research joint project entitled “European Travelers in the Ottoman Empire,” involving the History Department at Middle East Technical University, the Bodleian Library of Oxford University and the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Since 2000, he has been attending a Ph.D program in Eastern Studies at the University of Munich and another in Modern and Contemporary History, at Trier University (both in Germany). A member of the Griechisch-Türkischer Kreis Trier e.V. (Turkish-Greek Friendship Association) in Trier, Kabadayı, in addition, gives classes on black and white photography at the Afro-Asian Institute in Vienna.
Honorary Mention
Monograph
Tahsin Özcan, Osmanlı Para Vakıfları: Kanuni Dönemi Üsküdar Örneği (Ottoman Cash Waqfs in Üsküdar during the Reign of Süleyman the Magnificent) Turkish History Association, Ankara, 2003.
In this work, Assoc. Prof. Tahsin Özcan investigates Ottoman cash waqfs, which, aside from the major place they held in the waqf system, are of particular relevance today, because of their close links to the fields of financing, credit, social security and insurance. The wealth of archival material in this new area of research is such, that the study had to be limited to the cash waqfs founded in the Üsküdar region, during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent.
Özcan’s study specifies the general characteristics of these cash waqfs and the principles governing their operations and provides as well an analysis of their functions as the period’s credit and social security institutions.
Tahsin Özcan was born in 1967, in Sivas. After earning a BA from the School of Divinity at Marmara University in 1989, he obtained an MA in Economic History from the Institute of Social Sciences at the same university, in 1991. From 1993 to 1994, he studied English in the UK and was a post-graduate visiting student at Warwick University. In 1997, he obtained his Ph.D. in Economic History from the Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences with a doctoral dissertation entitled, Osmanlı Para Vakıfları: Kanuni Dönemi(1520-1566) Üsküdar Örneği (Ottoman Cash Waqfs in Üsküdar during the Reign of Süleyman the Magnificent), which was later published in 2003 as was another of his works, Fetvalar Işığında Osmanlı Esnafı (Ottoman Tradesmen in the Light of Fetwas). Özcan went on to specialize in the history of Ottoman institutions and civilization and was promoted to associate professor in 2004. He has contributed several sections to the Turkish Divinity Foundation’s Islam Encyclopedia (DİA), and has published a number of articles, almost all on the topic of Ottoman financial history. He has been a member of the Turkish History and Civilization Science Board at İSAM (Center for Islamic Studies) since 2001.
Doctoral Dissertation
Hüseyin Al, Ondokuzuncu Yüzyılda Ülke Riski, Finans Politik, İngiliz Tahvil Sahipleri ve Babıali (Country Risk, Finance Politics, British Foreign Bond Owners and the Sublime Porte in the 19th Century) Ph.D. Thesis in Economic History from the Institute of Social Sciences at Istanbul University, 2005.
Hüseyin Al’s Ph.D. thesis is a comparative analysis of state borrowing in the period spanning the beginning of the 19th century to its last quarter.
At one level, the study examines the circumstances under which foreign investors made a decision to buy bonds, the degree of creditor intervention in market mechanisms, the specific clauses that figured in loan contracts other than those already a part of international standard applications, and to what extent these special provisions could be applied.
At another level, it contrasts the Ottoman state borrowing experience with that of other debtor countries of the time, focusing on similarities and discrepancies.
Through this comparative analysis, Al attempts to determine whether the Ottoman State did in fact receive differential treatment in negotiating debt.
Hüseyin Al was born in1969 in Boyabat (Sinop). After completing the Ankara Maliye Meslek vocational high school in 1986, he served for close to a year as treasurer of stamps and valuable documents in the Kartal tax and finance office of the Istanbul Treasury. Following his graduation from the Department of Finance at Hacettepe University in 1991, he worked for a while in the Department of External Affairs in the Turkish Ministry of Finance. In 1992, he began to serve on the Board of Certified Public Accountants for the Undersecreteriat of the Turkish Treasury and since 2000, he has been serving on said undersecretariat’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Committee. Al began his academic career at Istanbul University, in 1995 and earned his MA, in 1997, from the Institute of Social Sciences, with a dissertation entitled Tanzimat Dönemi Bankacılık Faaliyetleri (Banking Activities during the Tanzimat). From 1997 to 1998, he taught courses in Banking Law and Banking and Financial Institutions at the Faculty of Political Science of the same university. In 2005, he obtained an MA in Management from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was made member of Beta Gamma Sigma in recognition of his outstanding academic achievements. Al, who is currently a member of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Committee, has published close to twenty works, most of them on 19th century Ottoman financial history.
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