Introduction
This article contains the names of forty men who signed the vakif in 1365 of Murad I. A vakif,or waqf as it is called now, was a document that endows property to a religious institution. There are both Christian and ex-Christian names included in the signatories, showing that the early Ottoman empire had made use of both religions in the areas it had conquered.
Note on Special Characters
These names have been transliterated from an Arabic script using the conventions of modern Turkish. In the modern Turkish system, the sound of the letter I depends on whether or not it is dotted. In this article, i stands for a dotted letter I, and I stands for the undotted letter. More information about the Turkish alphabet and the Ottoman script is available here.
Name Structure
These names are constructed using an Arabic-style patronymic, in which the given name is followed by bin, meaning “son of.”
Waqf Contributors
- Shahida
- Abdul-lah bin Beker Beg
- Abda bin Şikari
- Karaca
- Umur bin Bulduk(?)
Baybars bin Nüsret
Ahmed Çavuş el-Bevvah
Kutlu Beg bin ‘Abdullah
Bengar Beg bin Alo(?)
ʻAbdullah Beg bin Hamza
Pazarlu bin Dimitroz(?)
Şirin Hamza bin ʻAbdullah
Haci Sungur(?) al-Hadim
Musa bin Haydar
Begbars bin el-Katib
Ȋlyaz bin Parzarlu
Cafer bin Pulad
Haci Evroz (Evrenoz?) bin Çemiski
Sara-jeddin bin Osman
Haci Mustafa bin Mehmed
ʻAli bin Ȋsmail el-Muhtesib
Haci Hizir bin Mehmed
Haci Ȋbrahim bin Hasan el-Bezzaz
Şerefeddin bin ʻAbdullah
Salih bin Halil
Fettah bin ʻAbdullah
Ȋlyas bin Halil
Ȋlyas bin Mustafa
Haci Emirhan bin Rakh(?)
Hasan bin Sabuni(?)
Mehmed bin Süleyman
ʻAbdulaziz bin ʻAbdulgafar
Haci bin Ömer
Mahmud bin ʻAbdullah
Haci Hasan bin ʻAbdullah
Haci Sadeddin bin Haci Mehmed Fakih(?)
Haci Pulad bin Emirahor
ʻAli bin Nukud al-na-ib
Umur Beg bin Koskos/Kosfos(?) Subaşi
Hevace Osman bin Emire Mehmed
Bibliography
Main Source
Gökbilgin, “Murad I” (1953), pg. 233, found in The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, by Heath W. Lowry, (published by State University of New York Press, Albany, 2003)
Other Sources
“Murad I”, Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Murad-I
Ursula Georges, “Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Names.” http://www.doomchicken.net/ursulageorges/onomastics/ottoman/
By Valerie Ford, alias Lady Cassandra Hobbes