Çukurova Âyânları (Notables) IV: Hasanpaşazâde Ahmet Bey II
Yılmaz Kurt
Ankara University, Language and History-Geography Faculty, Department of History, Retired Faculty Member,Ankara/TÜRKİYE
Keywords: Çukurova, Âyân, Karslızâdeler, Mukata’a Sales, Mutual Trust. Ahmet Bey.
Abstract
The 18th century is the years when the ayanlık was the strongest in Çukurova. The fact that the governors of Adana were assigned to protect the castles and cities in Rumelia resulted in the administration of the cities by the mütesellims. The powerful notable family of the region, Karslızâdeler or later known as Hasanpaşazâdeler, emerged in such a picture after 1750 and became effective in the administration of the region. After Karslızâde Hasan Pasha was appointed as the sancakbeyi of Üzeyir in 1770, the family began to be known as the Hasanpaşazâdes. Hasanpaşazades is a well-established family of notables who were inherited to the Republic with the identity of Ramazanoğulları through the Mufti of Adana İshak Efendi.
Some academic publications have been made so far about the Hasanpaşazâdeler ayan family and the most powerful name of this family, Ahmet Bey. There are hundreds of documents about Ahmet Bey, who worked as a mütesellim in Adana many times between 1793 and 1811, both in Adana Court Records and other Ottoman Archive sources. The Adana Sharia Book number 57 is almost entirely about Ahmet Bey. These documents are not only about the history of the Çukurova region and the struggles for ayanism, but also provide valuable information about the Nizâm-ı Cedid practices and how the mansion-mukataa businesses are run. Since the necessary information about the appointment of Ahmet Bey to the mütesellimlik was given in our previous article, we would like to focus on the evaluation of the documents we have published here.
The 71 documents we have taken here are the documents related to the succession periods of Hasanpaşazâde Ahmet Bey from 1798 to 1802. Since this period was the years of Napoleon’s attack on Egypt, the published documents provide precious information about the background of this war. Many documents showing how the ayan families seized the mukataas and mansions in Adana and how they strengthened their dominance in the region have been delivered to the researchers.
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