Literature on monopolies in the Ottoman context either focuses on the period following the establishment of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration in 1881 as a part of the incorporation of the Ottoman economy to the capitalist world system or mostly the smuggling activities with which the Ottoman subjects involved with challenges against this integration. The predominant preoccupation of the Ottoman historiography with the political history of the Ottoman East further silences the economic history of the region for the nineteenth century. Departing from this premise, this paper entertains the notion of monopoly in an Ottoman province, Diyarbekir. By examining the establishment of salt monopoly in the province, this paper investigates how the monopoly on salines contributed to changing economic dynamics in the province. Private-like salines in the district of Siirt/Sġerd which until 1861 remained outside the scope of the Ottoman fisc posed both political and economic challenges for the Ottoman government. Focusing on particularly the initial period of the monopoly, the paper sheds light on the means the Ottoman fisc developed for taking the salines under the state control. It simultaneously examines the tension between the monopoly officials and the tribe leaders who until then controlled the salt production in the province. While highlighting the Ottoman government’s local solutions by which the former cooperated with the tribe leaders for the maintenance of the monopoly in the region, the paper also deals with the economic consequences of the monopoly on the inhabitants of the region. Opposing the prices set by the salt monopoly, the inhabitants resorted to salt smuggling much earlier than the literature suggests. The opposition taking the form of direct violence against the Ottoman government at times, however, demonstrates the particular features of the making of monopolies in the Ottoman East. Drawing upon a rich array of Ottoman archival materials, this paper contextualises the local making of the salt monopoly in the province of Diyarbekir in dialogue with the Ottoman legal and fiscal measures taken for the further development of the monopoly. The local opposition which furthered the security-driven concerns of the monopoly officials, this paper argues, not only provides insights to the economic tensions when the salines are transferred to the Debt Administration, but also violence-driven making of the economy of the Ottoman East.