Urban Khans in Istanbul in the Middle of the 19th Century: A Spatial Analysis

Abstract

This article is about the urban khans and bachelor chambers in Ot-toman Istanbul in the middle of the 19th century. The study is based on two registers among the Evkaf Defterleri, which contain comprehensive information about a total of 593 urban khans and bachelor rooms in the capital. These registers divided Istanbul into 26 branches and listed 593 buildings, of which 418 were called ‘khan’ and 175 were called ‘bachelor chamber or room’. The records in these two registers provide very important data about the location of the urban khans in the spatial setting of Istanbul and the regions where these places were concentrated in the city, the separation of urban khans and bachelor rooms, the number of rooms in urban khans and bachelor chambers, and the foundations that owned these buildings. These registers, formed by the political power that had turned into a statistical state, offer the opportunity to present the earliest and most comprehensive inventory of urban khans and bachelor chambers at the eve of change and transformation in Ottoman Istanbul in the second half of the 19th century. After introducing the registers within the framework of the article, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), issues such as the regions where the urban khans were concentrated, the main khans, the number of khans, and the difference between khans and bachelor chambers will be discussed; and a list of the urban khans will be given.