Ottoman Legal Practice and Non-Judicial Actors in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul

Abstract

This article examines the role played by extra-judicial officers in the Sharia court of seventeenth-century Istanbul. It makes two central arguments: that the Ottoman Sharia court of the period was not immune from the influence of extra-judicial actors even at the imperial capital where the highly centralized Ottoman ilmiye hierarchy was based; and that sicil studies can prove revealing about court procedures that deviated from conventional practice. Using a micro-level historical analysis, the paper examines two court cases from 1666 and 1685 about transgressions against the property and life of two women in the small Bucakbagi neighborhood of Istanbul. Local officers such as the Yedikule fortress warden (dizdar) and the neighborhood imam as well as the highest imperial office holders such as the deputy grand vizier (kaymakam) and the kadiasker were involved in manipulating the court’s proceedings in order to accommodate the interests of the men in power. The paper, therefore, contributes to the revisionist scholarship challenging the view that early modern Ottoman Sharia court enjoyed autonomy as a judicial body. On 31 August 1666, the Istanbul Court exonerated the imam of the Bucakbagi neighborhood of the homicide of a woman named Ayse, daughter of Abdullah. The homicide took place a day earlier at the house of the imam, Mustafa Efendi. A grand vizieral order (buyruldu) was already issued for the investigation and registration (kesif ve tahrir) of the case. Accordingly, the court sent a group of investigators to the location of the homicide, i.e., the house of the mentioned imam. At the head of the investigating team were a high-ranking judge from the court and the chief police officers of Istanbul. They examined (mu’âyene) the dead body of Ayse and arrived at several findings. Ismail Bese, the elder son of the imam, had loaded a gun and put it at a window sill. In the meantime, Ayse went to the imam’s house for some business. When the minor son of the imam tried to put a copy of the Quran on the same sill where the gun had been placed, he unintentionally touched the trigger. The gun went off and the bullet hit the right side of Ayse’s neck and came out the other side. The investigating team concluded that this was the cause of Asye’s death. 1 About two decades later on 23 October 1685, the kadiasker of Rumeli Ahmed Efendi held a hearing to adjudicate a dispute over some waqf property in the  Hadi Hosainy is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX; email: hadi.hoss@gmail.com  This work was supported by TUBITAK and Sabanci University. 1 Istanbul Şeriye Sicili (IŞS) 18:63a. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Thu, 08 Sep 2016 06:12:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms