Reading a City through Historical Documents: Dichotomy between Textuality and Visuality

Abstract

Understanding a city, period, sociality and even a building through historical documents leads these records inevitably to instrumentalization. Documents-oriented studies could be based on two different routes. On the one hand, unpreserved spaces could be roughly and doubtfully rebuilt, on the other, any places maintained would be interpreted.

In Turkey, the architectural academia has recently been dealt with these documents in terms of historiography along the two axes mentioned above. This increased interest also has revealed many terms such as structure of city, everyday life, domestic culture, in other words, diversely percepted spaces, periods and individuals. The purpose of this study is not to discuss the historiography of architecture conceptually. The main aim is to scrutinize the contents of historical documents such as house sales (hüccets) as an assessment tool for reading a city. In this regard house sales recorded in ser’iye sicils during the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century are questioned regarding housing culture in the case of the city of Mardin, and house sales are even problematized.

The contents of these documents are significant in two ways. First, descriptions of space in records expose clearly the contents of houses. Thus, possibilities/impossibilities defined by the document intended to be uncovered. Second, there is an actual tension between textuality (historical records) and visuality (structure of the city) in the case of Mardin maintaining its own unique morphology. This tension also similarly has been at the heart of any interpretation of cities or buildings that were not managed to protect its existence.