Epidemic Disease, Quarantines, and Migration Management in the Ottoman Empire, 1774-1830s Increased trade and human connections in the post-Kü?k Kaynarca period made the Ottoman-Russian Black Sea frontier a particularly active zone for the outbreak and spread of disease in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For many Ottoman subjects flight (for safety and to escape social ostracism) was the natural response to the appearance and contraction of disease. This displacement disrupted the collection of taxes, hampered the recruitment of soldiers, and contributed to lawlessness and a breakdown in public order. As conventionally understood, comprehensive sanitation, anti-disease, and quarantine measures were introduced in the Ottoman Empire in the late 1830s. In this narrative, the Ottoman Empire, under pressure from the west and as part of the Tanzimat modernizing projects undertaken by Sultan Mahmud II, called upon European experts to provide technical assistance and guidance in drafting rules and regulations for the implementation and administration of a quarantine system. While a central part of any history of Ottoman quarantines, a focus on European contributions in the late 1830s shortchanges a long history of the Ottoman state's domestic anti-disease initiatives and overlooks the important and forward-looking anti-disease measures undertaken during the reign of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807). Ottoman quarantine stations evolved into all purpose border posts and were utilized to manage affairs beyond that of merely checking the spread of disease. Customs houses were commandeered and converted into quarantine stations and customs collectors were re-appointed as quarantine officials. The linkage, in the mind of Ottoman officials, between migration and the spread of disease resulted in the introduction - in the first half of the nineteenth century - of multiple layers of travel and identity documentation requirements for all individuals entering and exiting the Ottoman Empire. Underscoring the role of quarantines as all-purpose border posts, Ottoman quarantine officials were authorized to issue travel documentation to individual travelers including the mtrur tezkiresi, yol emri and yol h kom. These types of activities indicate an increased interest by the Ottoman state in the early nineteenth century in controlling population movements and "knowing" which subjects were on the move both within and without the empire.