Mehmet Genç

Mehmet Genç was born in Arhavi, Artvin, on 4 May 1934. After Istanbul Haydarpaşa High School, he graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Finance and Economics. After briefly serving as an intern official at the Ankara Governor’s Office and as acting district governor of Şereflikoçhisar, he turned toward academia.

In 1960 he entered the Institute of Turkish Economic History at Istanbul University Faculty of Economics and began working with Ömer Lütfi Barkan, one of the founding names of Ottoman economic historiography. His research on the effects of the Industrial Revolution on Ottoman industry led him deep into the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives. Tax records, mukataa registers, budgets, prices and financial documents became the main materials of his historiography.

Mehmet Genç’s studies sought to understand the Ottoman economy not only through numbers and institutions, but through the way the state thought about society and the market. His approach explaining the Ottoman economic worldview through the concepts of provisioning, fiscalism and traditionalism became one of the most frequently used frameworks in the field.

In 1983 he began working in the History Department of Marmara University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. There he taught Ottoman economic history and historical methodology; after retirement he continued to give undergraduate and graduate courses at institutions such as Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul University and Istanbul Şehir University. Among his students and colleagues, he was remembered for his patience, precision and calm style that let archival documents speak.

A significant portion of his articles were collected in 2000 under the title Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Devlet ve Ekonomi. Osmanlı Maliyesi: Kurumlar ve Bütçeler, prepared together with Erol Özvar, became one of the fundamental reference works of Ottoman fiscal history. In the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, he wrote articles on subjects such as iltizam, malikâne, mukataa, esham and the Ottoman economic structure.

Awarded the Presidential Grand Prize for Culture and Arts in 2015, Mehmet Genç died in Istanbul on 18 March 2021. After the funeral prayer at Fatih Mosque, he was buried in the Fatih Mosque Cemetery on 19 March 2021.