In July 1852, the Porte received a petition sent by the Palu inhabitants about the müdür (district governor) İsmail Beg – a Palu noble. İsmail Beg was unpopular among Palu’s rural population, mainly because of the excessive taxes he imposed on them. They were also unhappy because his handling of the lottery-based military recruitment (kur’a-i şer’iyye) was corrupt: lottery exclusions could be bought for cash. Such petitions always used graphic language; this one claimed that those who could not pay would be dragged out of the warm beds of their wives for military service. What choice do we have, the petitioners asked, other than fleeing to Iran, Russia or Istanbul?

This petition, while particularly vivid, was by no means the only one raising issues related to the müdür of the district. From the 1850s through the early 1860s, the questions of who would be the müdür, what the traits of a good müdür were and who would determine his appointment (the provincial administration vs the imperial centre) preoccupied the local population and the local Ottoman administration. The question was especially thorny in Palu. Just as the hereditary rights of the Kurdish begs came under attack, the müdürs’ role became more critical in local administrative processes. Different sectors of the local population became actively involved in the process of appointing the müdür and there was a lot of turnover in the position. Müdürs served for short periods, then left, either because of complaints like this one or because of pressure from local administrators, particularly those based in neighbouring Harput. The first part of the chapter looks at the fierce struggles between the begs, the Armenian notables and the ordinary people as well as the provincial Ottoman administrators. The chapter argues that after the hereditary rights of the begs were abolished, the müdür appointment became the battleground for how this early stage of the bureaucratisation of provincial administration was handled.

From the 1860s on, the position of müdür was replaced by the kaymakam, a very different office. More importantly, it was usually filled by the centre, as opposed to being chosen locally.