Boğazkesen Castle is a medieval castle built in August of 1452 as a result of Sultan Mehmed II’s preparations for the siege of Constantinople to cut off its connection with supply centers, to ensure the security of naval forces during their passage between Anatolia and Rumelia, and to serve as a military base for the siege army. We know that Boğazkesen Castle, also called Rumeli Fortress, was built on opposite from Anatolian Castle at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, and that it was used as a prison after the conquest of Istanbul. It also had an important role in control of the Bosphorus. Kalebend punishment, meaning “keeping criminals in a castle”, is a kind of imprisonment that prohibits prisoners from going out. It also serves as a place of exile for prisoners sent far away from their homelands. The Kalebend Registers provided a specific location for recording the provisions of this punishment given by Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn (The Imperial Council) within the framework of customary law. There are two catalogs for the Kalebend Registers that are currently available in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive (BOA). One of these is the Kalebend Registers in the Catalog of Bâb-ı Âsafî (The Sublime Porte), Register Number 980. The other catalog in the BOA is the Kalebend Registers in the Catalog of Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn, Register Number 989. In the BOA, there are also 17,560 documents containing criminal records of Kalebend punishment in 229 files classified with the code “A.DVN.KLB” in the File Inventory System. It is not known when Kalebend punishment began to be implemented in the Ottoman Empire. Use of Kalebend punishment, which was not used much during the Classical Period, starts to become more apparent in the 17th century and emerges as a widespread method in the 18th century. Kalebend prisoners were not forced to do heavy labor and they were not tortured. They were allowed to communicate with people living in the castle on the condition that they would not try to escape. However, we understand from the records that the castle conditions were considerably more difficult compared to the conditions of today’s prisons. If someone had to be punished for any reason, authorities with whom the criminal was affiliated, executives such as qadi or naib in the region where the criminal resided, or community leaders with whom non-Muslim citizens were personally affiliated presented the relevant issue to Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn for the necessary decisions to be made. If the person who committed the crime had not previously committed a crime or had committed a minor offense, they would first receive several warnings. If they repeated their crime, it was ordered that they be caught and imprisoned as Kalebends.

To be released, the first step after imprisonment was to complete the application for release. Prisoners were released after Dîvân-ı Hümâyûn approved the application documents written to the Center. These included arzuhal (petitions), arz (individual petitions), arz-ı mahzar (collective petitions), and ilâm (sealed court decisions). One hundred and sixty-nine prisoners were found imprisoned to Boğazkesen Castle during the period studied in this work. Ninety-three of them were Muslim reaya (subjects) and 4 were zimmis (non-Muslim subjects). The rest belonged to these classes: 66 seyfiye (military), 5 ilmiye (religious, educational and judicial), and 1 kalemiye (administrative). The names of these identified prisoners are listed in Table. It is also remarkable that there were no women among Kalebend prisoners because in the Ottoman State women who committed a crime were sentenced to a lighter punishment like exile instead of Kalebend. This can be interpreted as a sign of mercy and value for women. It is an important point that the expression “being out of his senses” is used to describe the criminals in almost every provision, because seeing this expression coincides with seeing that criminal charges start to be listed in the provisions. Exceptionally, in some provisions, there is no specific information about the crimes committed, and the expression “being out of his senses” is the only written note. This expression was changed to “come to his senses” in the provisions written for release of prisoners. It appears that the majority of crimes committed by prisoners sent to Boğazkesen Castle during this period were crimes against public order: banditry (25 times), harassment and rape (16 times), wounding (11 times), tormenting people (10 times), assault (7 times), murder (5 times), and plunder (5 times). Besides this, we identified that crimes against the state were committed more often than any other crimes: disobedience to the law and order (7 times), not paying taxes/preventing tax collection (7 times), and preventing/capturing collection or sending state property (5 times). It can be understood from the expression “emsâline ibreten” (being an example to similar ones), which is mentioned in various provisions, that it was a goal to intimidate people in order to prevent similar crimes being committed by others. One of the characteristics of the Kalebend Registers is that they also enlighten us about the regions where crime took place. In the period examined in this study, criminals were generally sent to Boğazkesen Castle from districts and towns close by, such as İstanbul, Yoros, İznik, Kartal, İznikmid, Çekmece-i Sagir, Çekmece-i Kebir, Gebze, and Yalakabad. This means that a parallelism exists between the regions of crimes and punishment in terms of proximity. On the other hand, the fact that criminals were sent from certain regions to pre-determined places indicates that the Ottoman criminal system had a convenient infrastructure.

According to provisions, and contrary to the current criminal system, there was no definite conviction time for a certain sentence. The length of a sentence was indicated by an uncertain expression, such as “ıslâh-ı nefs edinceye dek” (until he can reform his soul). All Kalebend provisions were written in the Diwani style of calligraphy. The provision titles name the local governor of wherever the crime was committed; some name a government official or the dizdar (castle warden) of the castle where the criminals were kept. After the title of provision, there is a section that describes the crime. This section is very important in terms of constituting the content of the provisions. After the introduction, information about the criminal is specified, including where the criminal is from, their profession, and their name and nickname. Lastly, the specified location of their punishment is stated. There are 99 provisions about Boğazkesen Castle during the mentioned period. Fifty-eight of them are criminal provisions ordering criminals to be Kalebends; 37 of them are release provisions written for releasing criminals who had completed their penalties; 3 of them are general order provisions stating that if someone committed a mentioned offense, he would be imprisoned in Boğazkesen Castle; and one of them repeats an earlier written provision. On the other side, when the Kalebend Registers are examined, a number of annotations can be seen on the provisions. These annotations are very important in terms of providing enlightening information about the fate of the criminals and the contents of the provisions. In this article analyzing Kalebends of Boğazkesen Castle in the first half of 18th century, we study the system of crime and punishment during the imperial period in terms of Kalebend punishment, Kalebend Registers, assigning Kalebend punishment to criminals, criminal release procedures, prisoners and their social status, committed crimes, regions of crime, lengths of conviction, and provisions written about Kalebend punishment within the framework and discipline of diplomacy