Sünger Avcılığında Mahir Bir Ada “Sömbeki” (1786 -1909)

Abstract

Sponge hunting was undertaken in the Mediterranean and of the Aegean Sea (the Sea of Islands), Anatolia, Benghazi, Crete, Isporat Islands, Kalymnosis, Cyprus, Lesbos, Egypt, Meis, Tripoli, Symi, Chios, Samos, on the Syrian coasts. The first records of the Ottoman Empire about sponge diving show that sponge fishermen were mostly non-Muslims. The original homeland of the sponge in these lands was the shallow waters surrounding Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus and the western shores of Anatolia. In this study we mainly focus on, the use and problem of the machine, which was called “Skafender- Denayrouze-Supiray”, a new technique for sponge diving on the island of Symi, where sponge diving was widespread in Ottoman territorial waters, and the sponge tax and the surroundings of the Dodecanese, which the Ottomans stated as sponge diving areas, and the economic structure of sponge collecting in the wide Mediterranean waters extending to Africa. Due to the mountainous nature of the island, the working population moved away from agriculture and animal husbandry and turned to sponge diving, which was an economic activity that was carried out in a certain seasonal cycle between the arrival of spring and the onset of winter. With the necessity of a missive applied on the coasts, it was a problem that sponge divers were forced to take permits from every port they went to, and that they were hunted if without a permit with; the steamboat-gunboats, which was initiated by the Greek Government to ensure security in its own waters and to prevent violations, was also put into practice by the Ottoman government, first on the coast of Tripoli, and later, from Symi Island. The data and information used in this study were mainly obtained from the documents in the Presidential Ottoman Archive, official statistics of the period and other publications.