An Important Work for the Enrichment of Accounting History Knowledge in Occident

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the diffusion of the book by Oktay Güvemli, Cengiz Toraman and Batuhan Güvemli: State Accounting in the Ottoman Empire recently published in Istanbul. Though during the two last decades Professor Oktay Güvemli and his collaborators have been doing a praiseworthy effort to make known some features of Turkish accounting history to their western colleagues, until now a general treatment of the subject in an occidental language was missing. The significance of the knowledge provided by the book is easy to understand when one knows that nearly 45 million ledgers and documents kept by the merdiban method are conserved. The expression merdiban means “stair” making reference to the layout of the accounts, which began with the total amount at the top and the corresponding single entries staggered below it, taking the form of a stair. In this respect it has to be taken into account that the merdiban records, which was the accounting method used in Anatolia up to the middle of the 19th century, were kept in a sort of accrual accounting. The 45 million ledgers and documents are kept in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives in Istanbul as well in many other archives.