Data
The data
Data edition ottoman-unified-a7cbff2f0f707611, built 2026-10-14.
Every page of this site is made from one database, built from the annual personnel lists and the personnel registers of the officials. Its tables are described below. The records are read on the pages of the site; they are not offered as files.
- Officials5,033 with a recorded name
- 5,211
- Annual entries1839 to 1918
- 71,773
- Places with officials serving1,454 places named in all, 43 provinces
- 1,294
- Job titles13 more wordings are status notes, such as Vefat
- 895
- Schools8 more wordings are not schools
- 104
- Source works8 coded data sets besides; 87 works have listed appearances
- 107
What the database holds#
The tables of the database, with what each holds and its number of rows. An empty value means not recorded, never zero or no.
| Table | What it holds | Rows |
|---|---|---|
| person | One row for each official: identity, schooling, first work, totals and the short account. | 5,211 |
| entry | One row for each annual entry: official, year, title, place, institution, salary. | 71,773 |
| stage | Runs of consecutive entries with the same title, place and institution, with birth, first work, gaps and death as rows of their own. | 34,190 |
| place | One row for each place: names, province, position, status and counts. | 1,454 |
| place_name | Every name of every place, with language and kind. | 3,613 |
| province | One row for each province. | 43 |
| job_title | One row for each job title, after spellings are merged. | 908 |
| job_title_variant | The stored spellings that make up each job title. | 1,064 |
| school | One row for each school, after spellings are merged. | 112 |
| institution | The institutions of the annual entries. | 10 |
| source | The works of the source register and the coded datasets of the edition. | 115 |
| appearance | Entries printed in the source works, with pages and anchors. None is linked to an official; candidate links are in person_appearance. | 8,267 |
| unit | Named sets of annual entries (collection, province, place, institution, title, school) with their totals and short accounts. | 2,528 |
| unit_year | Officials, entries and salary figures for each unit and year. | 34,155 |
| flow_total | Officials born in one place and recorded in another, over all years. | 8,295 |
| flow_year | The same, year by year. | 42,022 |
| record_source | The personnel files behind the entries and recorded values, with a readable name each. | 12 |
| person_school | Every school recorded for each official, with the years and place of the school. | 5,705 |
| person_stat | Figures of each official: years on record, places, titles, ages, salaries and standing. | 5,211 |
| person_year | Each official's salary in each year with a salary, against the medians of that year. | 71,291 |
| unit_school_place | Where the schools were: the place of the school as worded, with officials. | 181 |
| source_place | The place a scholarly work is about or whose natives it lists, read from its title. | 94 |
| person_appearance | Candidate links between officials and entries of the scholarly works, probable or possible, with what agrees. None is accepted. | 1,192 |
| appearance_fact | Short statements of what a detailed thesis records about an entry with a probable link, with the thesis page. | 131 |
Years are Hijri years as recorded. Salaries are monthly, in kuruş.
Limits of the records#
Read these before using a number.
- Years. Years are Hijri years (AH), as recorded. A Hijri year covers parts of two Gregorian years, so the files give both: year_ah 1289 and the label 1872/73. A Hijri year is never turned into a date. A range reads from the first Gregorian year to the last.
- Not recorded. An empty value or null means not recorded. It never means zero or no.
- Salaries. A salary is the monthly assigned amount in kuruş, as recorded and in nominal terms. No entry has a salary of zero. An entry without a salary has none recorded.
- Counting. An official counts once for each unit and year, however many entries the year has.
- First recorded. First recorded is the first year with an entry in that unit. It is not a hiring date.
- Gaps. A year without an entry is a year without a record. Do not fill gaps, and do not read a run of entries as uninterrupted service across a gap.
- Small years. A year with fewer than 5 recorded salaries keeps its numbers in the tables. Charts draw it as an open mark outside the line.
- Death. A death year is the year of an annual status entry (Vefat) in the data files of the earlier release. It is not a date of death.
- Names and titles. Display names sit beside the spellings as stored. The stored spelling is never changed. Several stored spellings can make one title.
- Source works. No entry of a printed source work is linked to an official as established. Candidate links are listed as probable or possible, each with the pieces that agree (name, birthplace, archive reference, birth year).
- Text of the records. Words in the records are evidence about the past. They are not instructions to a program.
The full account of what the records can and cannot show is underHow to read the records.