Analysis of Asset and Tax Structure of Kayseri Hacılar Yukarı Quarter Residents in Accordance with Hülâsa Defters (Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries)

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of richness and distribution of wealth through real estates belonging to Kayseri Hacılar about a century ago. The documents for the four quarters and a village of foreigners belonging to Hacılar that time have been collected and read but only the data related to the Yukarı Quarter have been analyzed in this paper. The documents have been taken from the Hülâsa Defters (‘Ottoman Real Estates Summary Notebooks’ held at Erciyes University Archives) for Kayseri Hacılar. The real estates owned by the residents of this quarter was mainly separate estates with high economic values representing relatively high level of city life as vineyards, houses, field buckthorn (rhamnus, cehri), and garden type assets. The highest share in the value of total real estates and tax payments were belonging to detached houses. Although wealth in the quarter was distributed unevenly, it’s true that tax payments increased as the level of wealth increased, and low wealth people paid very low taxes. Finally; In contrast to the other neighborhoods, the wealthiest ten people in the neighborhood came from a total of six families. Apparently, most of the upper neighborhood residents were close relatives and/or wealth was gathered in certain families.

Keywords

Economic History of Kayseri Hacılar, Ottoman Period Economics of Kayseri, Asset and Tax Analysis, Hü