Some Assessments on the Importance of Using Ottoman Tereke/Inheritance RegistersIn Terms of Art History Research

Ottoman archieve records has been increasingly came into prominence in Art History discipline at the present-day, as well as in the whole fields of research concerned social and cultural history of Ottoman period. Tereke Registery/Inheritance Records which are one group of the Ottoman archive documents in the court records known as Kadı Records/Sharia Records, or which are in Kassam Records, were documents recorded down to the smallest details of the all remaining belongings and/or real estates of the decedent. In these archieve documents after giving particular information about city and quarter and street which decedent had lived, and about profession and cause of death and inheritors of the decedent, all goods which were in his/her home(s) and in shop(s) were set the price by experts according to value of the day, and eventually it was paying for decedent’s debts by calculating all possessions. In this context, Ottoman inheritance records are including informations which allow for the wide range of assessments, as about law succession and daily life and distrubitions of the wealth, and correlations between wealth and position, and material culture, and consumption practises, and social layers, and family structure, and demographic structure, of the Ottoman period. The informations about clothings and fabrics and hand-woven products and jeweleries and dailyuse goods and decoratives items, and great number of information about housing types of the that time, and the names of the quarters and the streets in the aforementioned records are valuable datas which will able to shed light of Turkish/Turkey Art researches, as well.In this article it is standed on that in what direction material-culture datas, which were provided with Ottoman Inheritance Registers, will able to use into researches of Turkish/Turkey Art, and it is aimed to call attention to that art history researches, which will conduct under the light of these material-culture datas, would able to contribute to series of studies, which were concerned social and cultural history of Ottoman Period, with the art history/art historian’s point of view as well.