Book Promotion and Evaluation/ The Importance of Sharia Registers in Terms of Medical History: Inheritances of Healthcare Workers in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

This book, written by Dr. Esra Yıldız, who is known for her archival studies on the institutional history of the Ottoman state, is an original work that examines the estate records of healthcare professionals in the field of Ottoman medical history, and it also has the potential to make significant contributions to historical research with the information, documents and analyses it contains. The subject and purpose of the study is determined as the discovery of the estates of Ottoman healthcare professionals recorded in the Istanbul Mufti's Office, Sharia Records Archive, and the Military Court of the Army archive, together with data on daily life, as stated by the author himself in the introduction to the book. It is emphasized by the author himself in the introduction that there are two other books among the aforementioned archive sources that directly contain estate records, but due to the abundance of data, only the Military Court of the Army records were taken as basis in the scans. The author, who also has published books on her field, chapters in some scientific books and numerous articles in various journals, mostly focuses on the interaction of bureaucratic life with civilian life in her works. In this book, which is an independent work in the field of Ottoman medical history in terms of the subject it deals with, it tries to reveal the life experiences of Ottoman health workers with a microhistorical understanding, based on the estate records. While doing this, it aims to provide practical analytical contributions to historical research by evaluating almost every detail found in the estates regarding daily life. When the work is examined in general, it is observed that the content also provides quite abundant and important clues about the daily life of the Ottoman people. In this sense, every data obtained will shed light on the yet undiscovered aspects of Islamic and Ottoman history, which are mostly known for their political history, and will be the means for many more details about Ottoman life to come to light.