This study’s purpose is to provide information about Ali Saib Bey, who was in service in various provincial offices in the Ottoman State for many years and was the author of the annex which constitutes the main subject of the article. On the other hand, another purpose of the study was to determine the issues and recommendations stated in the annex and reveal whether these recommendations were realized through archive documents.

The civil service life of a public servant who served in the Ottoman provinces for many years will be examined in this study. Many issues such as his duties, assignments, and rewards taken by this officer in the provinces will be revealed in this section. In addition, the presentation of the annex that Ali Saib Bey wrote was also important in terms of showing what problems he had in Shkoder, which would come out shortly after the Ottoman Empire, and what recommendations were put forward to overcome these problems. The question of whether these recommendations were taken into consideration were examined through documents in the Presidential Ottoman Archives. It is thought that the findings obtained within the framework of this annex, which reveal the central-provincial relations and have not been studied before, will contribute to the history of this territory.

The first step in the method followed during the study was to collect data about the civil service life of Ali Saib Efendi, the owner of the annex. Later, it was evaluated in accordance with the original partition by making content analysis of the annex. And then, the documents obtained as a result of the review carried out in the Presidential Ottoman Archive on the subjects mentioned in the annex were compared. The studies conducted on the related territory were utilized for the data related to Shkoder. In this respect, the main source of the study was the annex of Ali Saib Bey and the documents obtained in the Presidential Ottoman Archive.

Ali Saib Bey, the son of a soldier father, started his career as a correspondence clerk in Malatya sanjak at a very young age and served in many parts of the country. Ali Saib Efendi, who came to Shkoder with his position as a provincial letter officer on February 1, 1909, also served as deputy governor of Shkoder during this duty. Ali Saib Bey, who briefly summarized his civil service life in this way, wrote an annex dated October 29, 1911 that formed the subject of this study. Initially, he transferred the geographical borders and population information of the province. In the section titled political and social situation and urgent needs of Shkoder, he emphasized the issue of Malesori, for which he was also assigned. One of the important determinations he made was that it was the most important problem of the people in this place to be in ignorance and misery. Also, the efforts of Austria and Italy to influence here are another issue that was mentioned in the annex. It was understood from the statements of Ali Saib Bey that they took the hearts of the people through the great investments they made in the region and that even some of the Muslims in the Malesori region left their religions for this reason. It was a remarkable determination that the people in Malesori and Shkoder took refuge in the patronage of Montenegro, which was their enemy. An important determination in this section was that the Ottoman ambassador in Çetine was acting as if he were supporting Montenegro. After this section, Ali Saib Bey gave information about the law that he defined as “not fit for civilization and humanity” under the title of Dukakin Law. The next title was education. In the annex stating that Shkoder was not at the desired level in education, it was worth noting that many of the teachers with insufficient salaries did not know Ottoman Turkish. The most important recommendation in this section was that an industrial school should be opened there. Under the title of Public Works, it mentioned that the situation of the roads was very bad and that it was necessary to do something as soon as possible. Another point mentioned in this section was that foreign engineers and conductors did not want to go to their places owing to various excuses. Under the public order title, it determined that the coast of Shkoder Lake, up to Boyana and Drac, was open to smuggling and that it was a necessity to set up observation towers in suitable places on the coast, and he emphasized the necessity of installing a telephone line between them. In the title on agriculture, he stated that agriculture was done in the old way due to the financial deficiencies of the people. Therefore, he emphasized that it was necessary to increase the capital of the agricultural bank there and to open the branch of the bank in some towns. Opening a sample field on which Ali Saib Bey was standing was one of the recommendations put into practice. Another important determination in this section is that Shkoder was very rich in terms of forest but it was not utilized properly. Under the heading of civil service, some significant opinions were given about administrative arrangements that needed to be made by giving the current administrative division of Shkoder. The most noteworthy of these was the proposal to assign the Muslims or Christians in Shkoder, who could speak the local language, as the head of the district. Under the heading of officers to be assigned to Shkoder, it was requested that the unqualified ones be taken from there and replaced by experienced officers, and that the salaries and liabilities of the officers who would work there should be made regularly. The most striking point in the headline of politics to be implemented in Shkoder was that almost all of the people across the province had an attitude towards the government and that the people of the territory should not behave violently as a result of their nature, but it would not also result in being too soft. The only thing to do was to meet in the middle. It was another recommendation that mobile doctors should be assigned there and that these doctors should constantly treat people who were sick in the villages and mountains and make the state propaganda. Finally, it was recommended that the loyalty of the people to the state should be provided through the Muslim and Christian opinion leaders and that the financial support should be provided to poor people as much as possible.

The annex written by an officer who worked in different parts of the Ottoman Empire as the correspondence clerk of Shkoder was an important document in order to understand center-provincial relations. There were some recommendations by Ali Saib Bey that were realized as well as those that could not be realized due to financial difficulties. As a result, thinking about how to manage Shkoder better and how to handle the current problems, Ali Saib Bey explained these issues in detail. However, neither this annex nor the efforts of the Ottoman State yielded any results, and Shkoder came out of the hands of the Ottomans as a result of the Balkan Wars.