Bu makalenin temel ilgi alanı; Osmanlı tömbeki piyasasının nasıl tekelleştirildiğini ve tekelleştirmenin bu piyasanın geleneksel oyuncuları olan İranlı tüccarlar ve Şii Ulema için ne anlama geldiğini ortaya koymaktır. Tarımsal ürünlerde dini vergiler toplayan ve Osmanlı Irakı'nda yaşayan Şii Ulema ve İranlı tömbeki tüccarları; tömbeki ürününün Tömbeki Rejisi olarak bilinen ve bir Fransız konsorsiyumu olan Société du Tombac tarafından tekelleştirilmesinden önce Osmanlı tömbeki piyasasında hâkim konumdaydılar. Literatürün önemli çalışmaları İran'daki 1891-1892 yılı tütün protestolarına yoğunlaşır ve genellikle bu protestoların İran tömbekisinin ana ithalatçısı olan Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ile alakalı uzantılarını nazara almazlar. Literatürden farklı olarak, bu makale; Osmanlı topraklarına ithal edilen tömbeki ürünü ile alakalı protestoların karanlıkta kalan bir kısmını ortaya koymaya çalışacaktır. Makale; nargilede kullanılan bir çeşit tütün olan tömbekinin tekelleştirilmesinin; Şii Ulema ve İranlı tüccarları dışlayan kapalı mekanik bir yapı inşa etmek olduğunu ifade etmeye çalışmaktadır. Osmanlı İç Gümrük nazırı olan İzzet Bey tekel sorununu tartışmak için bir rapor hazırlamış ve böyle dışlayıcı mekanik bir yapının hem piyasa oyuncuları hem de tüketiciler tarafından dirençle karşılanacağı öngörüsünde bulunmuştur. Sonuçta, İzzet Bey'in öngörüsünü dikkate alan makale; piyasanın zamansal ve mekânsal sınırlarını belirleyen bu mekanik yapıya karşı dışlamanın birleşik bir direnişin ortaya çıkmasına yol açtığını savunmaktadır.

The main concern of this article is to comprehend how the Ottoman tombeki market was monopolized and what the monopolization meant for the conventional players of this market, Persian merchants and Shiite Ulama. The Ulama who collected religious taxes from agricultural products and lived in Ottoman Iraq and Persian tombeki merchants were dominant in the Ottoman tombeki market before the monopolization of this product by Société du Tombac, a French consortium, known as Tombeki Régie. The major works of the literature focus on the tobacco protests of 1891-1892 in Iran and generally do not take implications of these protests related to the Ottoman Empire, which was the main importer of the Iranian tombeki, into consideration. Unlike the literature, this article will seek to investigate a dark realm of the protests related to the tombeki commodity imported into the Ottoman territory. The article attempts to state that monopolizing tombeki, which is a sort of tobacco used in waterpipe, was to construct a closed mechanical structure that would exclude both the Ulama and the merchants. Izzet Bey, the minister of Ottoman Internal Customs, prepared a report to discuss the issue of monopoly and predicted that such an exclusive mechanic structure would be resisted both by market players and consumers. In short, taking Izzet Bey’s prediction into consideration, the article argues that this exclusion led to the emergence of an integral resistance against the mechanic structure that would determine the spatial and chronological limits of the market. The paper will focus on what the essential character of monopoly was and which impacts the prospective monopoly would have on both the merchants and the Ulama. To show these impacts we will claim that the monopoly was the regulation of the tombeki market within a mechanical way by excluding merchants and the Ulama. Taking the mentioned exclusion into consideration, the article will question why the merchants and the Ulama preferred the way of integral resistance against the establishment of the régie. Here, taking what this monopolization meant for both the merchants and the Ulama into consideration, we will inquire about whether the Ottoman authorities predicted the emergence of a reaction to the establishment or not. The article strongly advocates that the struggle between the merchants-Ulama and the monopoly-government sides originated in managing the circulation of tombeki, namely its spatial distribution. Specifically, managing the distribution would enable one to determine who would benefit from the tombeki commerce. At the end of the day, we will claim that the Tombeki Régie and the Ottoman-Iranian governments’ determining of who would gain profit from the trade would seek to exclude the conventional actors, the Persian merchants and the Shiite Ulama, by constructing a mechanically running market by means of a monopoly. Both the Iranian and Ottoman sides decided to totally control the income gained from the tombeki trade by excluding Iranian merchants from the decision making process of establishing a régie, which would be Société du Tombac, in 1891. Actually, Izzet Bey had predicted that such exclusion would lead to the emergence of a counteraction from other market players, merchants and the Ulama. In 1892, Iranian merchants, sellers and the Ulama integrally resisted against the establishment of the Tombeki Monopoly with the support of the Shiite population by means of protests. Consequently, it is appearent that the logic of monopolization was to control the circulation of a product between departure and arrival points, regulating the market. From a spatial standpoint, this was the transformation of the market from a dynamic one that worked according to natural conditions to a mechanical structure whose conditions would be determined by central actors, Iranian-Ottoman governments and the Tombeki Régie. Specifically, monopolization was to keep the spatio-temporal distribution of tombeki under mechanical control by excluding dynamic actors, Persian merchants and the Shiite Ulama. This was the reason why the merchants and the Ulama decided to resist both against the Tombeki Monopoly and the Ottoman and Iranian governments.