PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Arts and Sciences: History

This dissertation examines the politics of punishment and application of Ottoman prison reform in the three major port cities, Izmir, which receives the greatest attention, Istanbul, and Salonica in the late Ottoman Empire. This work explores Ottoman prisons on a daily scale and in a larger imperial frame by re-thinking the idea of social control and surveillance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the ways in which the Ottoman government dealt with the prisons as `modern' and `European' legal institutions. By using primary sources drawn from Ottoman archives, and relying heavily on Ottoman and British newspapers and journals, this dissertation examines Ottoman prison reform from various angles such as sustenance of prisoners, health and hygiene; the usage of cannabis (esrar) in Ottoman prisons; prison work; prison architecture; and urbanization. Until the first half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was using various buildings as prisons, including old fortresses, such as Baba Cafer Zindani and Yedikule in Istanbul; military barracks; shipyards, such as Tersane Zindani (Bagnio); khans, such as Cezayir Hani in Izmir; and local notables' (ayan) palace dungeons. The bureaucratization and centralization attempts of the Tanzimat reformers and, more importantly, the promulgation of the criminal codes of 1851 and 1858 not only paved the way for the shift from corporal and capital punishment to imprisonment but also allowed for the establishment of a new set of definitions in terms of crime and punishment. However, the establishment a modern prison remained merely an ideal until 1871 when the first general prison (hapishane-i umumi) was built in Istanbul. The construction of purposefully built prisons continued in the major cities of the Empire, including Izmir and Salonica, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Izmir as one of the major port cities of the Empire saw immense and fluctuating flows of people due to wars, migration, and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Frierson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kent F. Schull Ph.D. (Committee Member); Evangelos Kechriotis Ph.D. (Committee Member); Raja Adal Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Haug Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Middle Eastern History