Mardin in the Post-Tanzimat Era: Heritage, Changes and Formation of an Urban Landscape

Abstract

AbstractThis paper discusses how Tanzimat Reforms (1839-1876) transformed the architectural landscape of Mardin at the end of the 19th century. Ottoman presence and authority in the urban landscape was symbolised by modern secular bureaucratic buildings such as the government palace, the government house, the town hall, the revenue office, the post office, prisons, banks, schools, hospitals and military barracks in this era. Tanzimat Reforms also had bearings on the vernacular architecture in Mardin. The granting of a modern system of equal citizenship in this era paved the way for the city’s Christian communities to establish several new churches and renovate existing ones. Ottoman elites sent from the centre, or new bureaucrats appointed from among local Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, influential noble families, tradesmen and artisans commissioned elaborate domestic buildings. While indigenous architectural types and decorative styles are observed mostly in the elite houses and religious architecture, official and municipal buildings, commissioned by the patronage of centrally appointed bureaucrats, display predominantly neoclassical arrangement, the favoured style of the government buildings of the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat eras of Ottoman Empire.