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Taking Care of Orphans’ Properties: the Funds for Orphans in the Danube Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (1864–78)


The article discusses the funds for orphans (eytam sandıkları) in the Danube Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire during the 1860s and 1870s. Information from Ottoman and Bulgarian sources—registers (kondiki) of Orthodox church boards, official Ottoman yearbooks (salname), the loan register of the fund for orphans in the town of Trân, and others—has been collected, statistically processed and analysed. The macro- and micro-level analysis is focused on the capital and administrators (müdür) of the funds for orphans, while we also discuss the interest rates that they charged. A comparison with another credit institution (menafi-i umumiye sandıkları) allows us to point to differences that are essential for understanding credit practices in the Ottoman Empire in the period under consideration.