A SNAPSHOT FROM THE PRISON OF BITLIS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Abstract

Contextualizing in the developments in the spheres of administration, economy, and jurisprudence during the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, this article sought to present a snapshot from the prison of Bitlis in particular and prisons in the eastern provinces in general. Two interrelated developments of the nineteenth century became the tools to analyze the prisons of Bitlis. First, the imprisonment became a legal procedure of punishment both in Ottoman and universal level during the nineteenth century. This development harbingered a new kind of governmentality; the sovereign powers adopted the perspective that the individual subjects could be controlled and disciplined. In this regard, the concerns for public health, the sanitary conditions served to social control and discipline. Second, in the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire went through a set of transformations in which state-subject relations were reshaped. As a modernizing state, the Ottoman Empire tried to implement the principle of ‘equality’ among its subjects who also became responsible to the state in terms of taxation and conscription. This article aims to analyze the prison of Bitlis in terms of this new governmentality. On the one hand, prisons along with the military posts, police institutions, government offices served to the disciplinary power of the imperial states. On the other hand, the hygiene of the prisons, the well-being and well-treatment of prisoners came at the target of the imperial state.