Çorum's First Municipality (1876) and 19th-Century City Services

The second half of the 19th century saw Ottoman cities move from the traditional administration of the kadı (Islamic judge) to modern municipal government. According to the chapter written by Sevgi Aktüre in Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum), this shift produced a tangible spatial transformation in Çorum’s city centre as well, marked by the Government House, new schools and growing trade.

From the Kadı’s Rule to a Municipality

In traditional Ottoman cities, municipal and civil administrative functions were not separated: the kadı was not only the city’s judicial authority but also the guardian of its security and the overseer of its religious endowments (vakıf); guild leaders (esnaf kethüdası) were responsible for keeping the bazaar clean and maintaining roads, fountains and water channels, paying the costs from their own guild funds. Oversight of the city’s building regulations also fell to the kadı, whose chief assistant was the “mimarbaşı” (master architect); permission for building city walls, prohibiting construction over roads, keeping overhangs from jutting into streets, and relocating cemeteries or market sites all required the kadı’s approval. The kadı’s private residence doubled as courthouse, municipal office and government house; but according to the book, no building purpose-built as such an “administrative centre” is recorded in Çorum in the first quarter of the 19th century (Çorum Tarihi, p. 170-171).

The kadı’s judicial, civil and municipal duties continued until 1826, after which they were transferred to new offices created by the central government; once the Evkaf Ministry, established in 1836, took over the administration of religious endowments, kadıs were left solely as judicial officers. The Nizami (regular) courts established after the Tanzimat reforms further narrowed the kadı’s authority, reducing them to sharia judges handling family and inheritance matters (Çorum Tarihi, p. 171).

The First Municipality in 1876

Çorum’s first “Belediye” (municipal) organisation was founded in 1876. According to the book, the most important step in this process was the 1877 “Provincial and Municipal Law” (Vilayet ve Belediye Kanunu) and the organisational structure it introduced: under the law, the municipal organisation’s bodies were the “Municipal President” (Belediye Reisi) and the “Municipal Council” (Belediye Meclisi); Article 4 provided that, depending on a city’s population, a Municipal Council of 6-12 members would be elected for a four-year term, with the Municipal President then appointed by the government from among those elected members. As in other Anatolian cities, Çorum’s municipal presidents were generally chosen from among local notables (Çorum Tarihi, p. 171). The present-day successor of this institution, the Belediye Binası (Municipal Building), was in fact built for a different purpose (as a library) in the early Republican years and was assigned to municipal use only after 1960.

The Government House and the Administrative Centre

A new feature added to the city’s spatial layout in the late 19th century was the “administrative centre,” focused on the Government House (Hükümet Konağı). According to the 1900 Ankara Province Yearbook (Salname), “in the middle of the town there is a large garden belonging to the officials and officers of the Government Office, the Civil and the Judicial administrations”; the building, set within a courtyard, comprised three sections and housed 25 rooms, including the municipal office, plus a small mosque; the judicial section had 13 rooms and a small mosque, and the military section 8 rooms. The courtyard held a military depot and an old prison, while nearby stood a tall, ornate stone clock tower, a telegraph office, and the Public Debt Administration (Duyun-u Umumiye) and Régie (tobacco monopoly) offices. The same source gives the total staff at 47: 12 in the municipal organisation, 6 in the Public Works Commission, 2 in the Public Debt Administration, 6 in the Education Commission, 8 in the police (zabıta), 6 in transport, 5 in the Migrant Commission and 2 in the Forestry Administration. The Government House remained in use until it burned down completely in a fire in 1956 (Çorum Tarihi, p. 172-173).

The square around the clock tower, visible from the Government House, sat on the Samsun highway at the junction of the city’s busiest roads; the inscription on the tower’s doorway shows it was built by Hasan Pasha in 1894. For more on the tower’s history and architecture, see Çorum Clock Tower (Çorum Tarihi, p. 173).

The Reserve-Army Barracks

After the Janissary corps was abolished, the army was reorganised into regular (nizamiye) and reserve (redif) troops, with reserve regiment headquarters located in the major cities that served as sancak or province capitals. Çorum was one of the centres where reserve troops were stationed in the late 19th century. According to the 1900 Ankara Province Yearbook, “on the southwest of the town, on Yozgat Street, there is a barracks and armoury large enough for one infantry regiment and one cavalry regiment, without equal in other towns” (Çorum Tarihi, p. 173-175).

Education: From Madrasa to Modern School

The 1869 Public Education Regulation (Maarif-i Umumiye Nizamnamesi) introduced a new education system made up of sübyan mektebi (primary religious school), mekteb-i iptidaiye (primary school), rüştiye (secondary school), idadi, sultani (lycée) and teacher-training levels. Even before this regulation, however, Çorum appears to have had a wide sphere of influence in education: by the late 19th century the city had 10 madrasas with a total of 243 students and 3 libraries holding 6,705 books between them; the madrasas were located in the Ulu Cami courtyard and the Çöplü, Medrese, Emir Ahmet, Hacı Nasrullah, Şeyh Eyyüp, Hacı Recep, Gülabibey and Sağrıcı neighbourhoods (Çorum Tarihi, p. 175-176, 182-183).

In 1871, in line with the regulation, the city opened a single-teacher Rüştiye school and nine sübyan mektebis. By 1900 the city had a Mekteb-i İdadi (75 students), a Mekteb-i Rüştiye (72 students) and six mekteb-i iptidaiyes (Hamidiye with 103 students, Tefeyyüz with 125, Burhani Terakki with 90, Mekteb-i Edeb with 85, Kadirhan with 145, and İrfan with 85), plus 6 sübyan mektebis. In 1901 a Mahmudi boys’ and girls’ school opened, and in 1902 the Mecidi and Osmani schools followed, bringing the number of primary-level schools to 10. After 1913, new schools named Reşadiye, Saadet, Namık Kemal, İttihat, Terakki and Hürriyet opened. The only higher vocational school opened in the city during this period was the Ziraat Mektebi (Agricultural School) (Çorum Tarihi, p. 175-176).

Trade, Infrastructure and Urban Fabric

In step with the growing number of shops and businesses in the late 19th and early 20th century, some 20-25 coffeehouses opened, most of them around the clock-tower square (one example being the “Maarif Kahvehanesi”). Another sign of accumulating trade capital was the first Ziraat Bankası (Agricultural Bank) branch, opened in 1890 (the Menafi Sandığı fund, established in 1861 to lend to farmers, was renamed Ziraat Bankası in 1885 and converted into a branch in 1890). The same period brought new urban services to the city, including a hospital, a flour mill, a gasworks, a slaughterhouse and a police station; yet the number of fountains supplying the city with water, 135 in the 1890s, remained unchanged for twenty years despite the growth in population and neighbourhoods (Çorum Tarihi, p. 176-177).

By the early 20th century, horse-drawn carts were widely used for both inter-regional and intra-city transport; but the narrow, sloped streets of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods (such as Emir Ahmet and Tepecik) were not suited to them. New houses built in the first quarter of the 20th century were generally two storeys, with wide street frontages, no thresholds, and doorways wide enough for a cart to pass; in some examples an inner courtyard held a shelter built specifically to house the family cart (Çorum Tarihi, p. 177-179).

According to the book, the changes of this period — the founding of the municipality, the new administrative centre, the reserve-army barracks, new schools and growing trade capital — reshaped the city’s late-19th-century spatial structure more rapidly and visibly than in other Anatolian cities not located on a major trade route; this transformation continued into the Republican era, up to the mid-20th century (Çorum Tarihi, p. 179).

For the city’s late-19th-century population and neighbourhood fabric, see 19th-Century Çorum: Population, Neighbourhoods and Migrant Settlements.

Sources

• Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum), 5th Hittite Festival Committee; ed. Çorum Municipality City Archive, 3rd ed., Çorum Municipality Cultural Publications, Çorum 2020 (Chapter 3: “Çorum in the 19th and Early 20th Century,” by Sevgi Aktüre), p. 170-183. https://www.corum.bel.tr/public/uploads/2026/01/corumtarihi.pdf

Frequently asked questions

When was Çorum's first municipal organisation founded?

According to Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum), the city's first 'Belediye' (municipal) organisation was founded in 1876. The 1877 Provincial and Municipal Law then defined its bodies: a Municipal Council of 6-12 members elected for four years, and a Municipal President appointed by the government from among those elected members.