HERITAGE · NATURE · LIFE
Beyşehir Encyclopedia / Article

Population of Ottoman Beyşehir

Household registers, later censuses and migration records reveal change in the town and its wider district.

Ottoman periodCommunities and culture
Contents

Early Ottoman evidence

TDV’s synthesis reports 269 households in Beyşehir town in 1507, 337–378 in 1518–24 and 603 in 1584. These are register categories, not direct head counts. The source also lists nineteenth-century neighbourhoods, showing how the town expanded beyond its medieval core.[1]

A household estimate can suggest broad scale, but household size varied. It is therefore more responsible to compare the recorded households and their administrative context than to present a precise population for every early date.[1][2]

Nineteenth-century change

Barış Taş and İlker Yiğit study the district’s later nineteenth-century population, while Hüseyin Muşmal’s doctoral research examines social and economic life from 1790 to 1864. These works distinguish the town from the larger kaza and register migration, settlement and local economic variation.[2][3]

The creation of Hamidiye and other later neighbourhoods belongs to this continuing story. The settlement of Chechen and Ingush migrants is one example of a history visible through both official records and gravestones.[1][4]

What the registers count

Population history begins with the unit of measurement. Muşmal’s study of the town reports 269 households in the 1507 register, rising to 603 by 1584. Those are registered households, not individual residents; multiplying them by an assumed household size produces an estimate, not a census. Taş and Yiğit likewise distinguish the district’s villages from the town centre and warn that different fiscal and demographic records cannot simply be joined into one continuous series.[5][6]

The 1830–31 count recorded men, while the 1844 temettüat material recorded taxable households and property. A total population inferred from either requires a stated method. For example, Muşmal gives 395 town households and 911 recorded men for 1844, then estimates approximately 1,822 residents by doubling the male count. The estimated figure should not be presented as a directly enumerated total.[7]

Neighbourhoods and migration

The centre’s named neighbourhoods and boundaries also changed. Earlier sixteenth-century records describe a different distribution from the four broad neighbourhood groups in an 1844 fiscal register. The Hamidiye quarter was added after the arrival of Chechen and Ingush migrants at the start of the twentieth century. Thus a change in a neighbourhood table may reflect administrative grouping or a new quarter as well as births and deaths.[8][9]

Muşmal also discusses nineteenth-century disease, marsh drainage and migration, and later movement toward larger cities. These are possible causes and contexts for demographic change, but individual register totals cannot assign a numerical share to each cause. The history of lake flooding and water management is relevant because water conditions shaped the inhabited edge of town.[10]

See also

Ottoman periodBeyşehir in the Ottoman periodBeyşehir passed between regional powers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and came under lasting Ottoman rule after 1466.Ottoman periodChechen and Ingush migrants in BeyşehirChechen and Ingush families settled in the Beyşehir district during late Ottoman migration, leaving records in neighbourhoods and gravestones.HistoryBeyşehirBeyşehir is a town and district in Konya province on the southeastern shore of Lake Beyşehir.

References

  1. 1M. Akif Erdoğru · Beyşehir - TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1992
  2. 2Barış Taş, İlker Yiğit · Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Beyşehir Kazası’nda Nüfus · Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi
  3. 3Hüseyin Muşmal · XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında Beyşehir ve Çevresinin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Yapısı (1790-1864) · Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Doktora Tezi · 2005
  4. 4Hüseyin Muşmal; Mustafa Çetinaslan · Beyşehir İlçe Merkezindeki Çeçen-İnguş Muhacirlerine Ait Mezar Taşları · Tarih Okulu Dergisi (TOD) · 2013
  5. 5Hüseyin Muşmal · Eşrefoğulları’ndan Günümüze Beyşehir Kent Merkezi’nin Demografik Gelişimi · Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (SUTAD) · Hüseyin Muşmal, Eşrefoğulları’ndan Günümüze Beyşehir Kent Merkezi’nin Demografik Gelişimi, SUTAD 42 (2017), pp. 383–386
  6. 6Barış Taş, İlker Yiğit · Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Beyşehir Kazası’nda Nüfus · Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi · Taş and Yiğit, Beyşehir Kazasında Nüfus, pp. 489–500
  7. 7Hüseyin Muşmal · Eşrefoğulları’ndan Günümüze Beyşehir Kent Merkezi’nin Demografik Gelişimi · Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (SUTAD) · Muşmal, pp. 385–389
  8. 8Hüseyin Muşmal · Eşrefoğulları’ndan Günümüze Beyşehir Kent Merkezi’nin Demografik Gelişimi · Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (SUTAD) · Muşmal, pp. 383–384
  9. 9Hüseyin Muşmal; Mustafa Çetinaslan · Beyşehir İlçe Merkezindeki Çeçen-İnguş Muhacirlerine Ait Mezar Taşları · Tarih Okulu Dergisi (TOD) · 2013 · Muşmal and Çetinaslan, pp. 424–426
  10. 10Hüseyin Muşmal · Eşrefoğulları’ndan Günümüze Beyşehir Kent Merkezi’nin Demografik Gelişimi · Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (SUTAD) · Muşmal, pp. 390–393

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