Neighborhood and the Mosque: An Evaluation of Different Types of Neighborhood in the Ottoman Empire Through Trebizond Sample

In this article, investigating the Muslim Ottoman neighborhood during the traditional period of the Ottoman Empire, the relationship between neighborhood and tradition was first examined. To achieve this, the concept of “tamaddun” was determined in order to reveal the Ottomans’ perspective of civilization in this context. Our aim was to define the relationship between the neighborhood and the mosque. Then, considering the recently emerged remarks that the relationship between the neighborhood and the mosque had become troubled, the value of the Shari‘a court records as a source, in clarifying this issue, was discussed. In this context, the vertices between the imam, the neighborhood and the mosque were tried to be captured through the neighborhood-imam relationship, in accordance with the humanoriented structure of the traditional perception of space. In this article, the neighborhood was claimed to be a unit of fiqh(a juridical unit). Finally, the types of neighborhood were determined depending on the presence of a mosque. By creating neighborhood types with and without a mosque, anachronistic determinations will probably be prevented in the studies on Ottoman neighborhoods