ON OTTOMAN JUSTICE: INTERPRETATIONS IN CONFLICT (1600 - 1800)

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogaç Ergene
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Military

AbstractThis essay investigates the ways in which the notion of "justice" was utilized as a mechanism of political legitimization in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. I claim that there existed alternative definitions of justice and that these were instrumental in the struggle between the central government and those official and unofficial power-holders in the administrative and geographical peripheries of the empire. According to the specialized terminology of the Ottoman administrative system, "justice" was the protection of the rural and urban producers against abuses of the military elite. This definition highlighted the personal benevolence of the ruler who claimed to be the sole protector of the weak against oppression. On the other hand, at least some segments of the ruling elite insisted on representing justice as the recognition of the mutual rights and obligations of the sultan and his "servants." Justice, in this context, referred to the protection of privileges and entitlements of those who were thought to deserve them. While using a variety of sources - including treatises on government and ethics composed by the Ottoman literati, documents from regional court records and correspondence between the imperial center and the officials in the provinces - my primary focus is on Evliya Çelebi's seventeenth-century travel-book, Seyahatname, and a well-known seventeenth century chronicle, Tarih-i Naima.

Bilingual Heaven: Was There a Distinct Persianate Islam in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire?

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 214-241
Author(s):  
Aslıhan Gürbüzel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
Other World

Abstract What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.

scholarly journals Building on Foreign Expertise. Military and Agricultural Experts and the Eastward Expansion of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sweden

2022 ◽  
pp. 77-103
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schiavone ◽  
Otso Kortekangas
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
Foreign Expert ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Military

In the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden was almost constantly engaged in armed conflicts with neighbouring kingdoms. Both offensive and defensive wars were characteristic of the Swedish foreign policy from 1550s to 1650s. The same period witnessed the emergence of the Swedish Empire because, due to these conflicts, Sweden was able to acquire new domains in the Baltic region and to expand its territories in both east and south. These geopolitical realities pushed all Vasa kings into multiple projects aiming to rationalise Sweden’s army and its military strategy as well as to develop the acquired areas in various ways. Our article presents two development project examples of this emerging empire (1) Scottish officers (the Swedish Crown acknowledged the military expertise of Scottish troops as well as their officers and tried to harness this experience for Sweden), and (2) the planned modernisation of Ingria through German and Dutch colonisation and agricultural development. The article examines the needs and expertise expectations that the Swedish Crown directed towards these foreign groups. The emergence of Sweden as a European empire did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. International contacts and the influx of European expertise into Sweden were important factors in the building of the Swedish dominion in the Baltic region. By focusing on these foreign expert groups, one operating in the military world and the other in the agricultural sphere, this article illustrates the functions and roles that the Swedish Crown expected foreign experts to have on the eastern frontier of early modern Sweden.

scholarly journals “Turkish” Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Serial Data

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.

scholarly journals The Bishop’s Role in Two Non-Catholic States

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Catholic Reform

This paper contrasts the very different roles played by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, on the one hand, and Turkish-occupied Hungary, on the other, in the movement of early modern religious reform. It suggests that the decision of Propaganda Fide to adopt an episcopal model of organisation in Ireland after 1618, despite the obvious difficulties posed by the Protestant nature of the state, was a crucial aspect of the consolidation of a Catholic confessional identity within the island. The importance of the hierarchy in leadership terms was subsequently demonstrated in the short-lived period of de facto independence during the 1640s and after the repression of the Cromwellian period the episcopal model was successfully revived in the later seventeenth century. The paper also offers a parallel examination of the case of Turkish Hungary, where an effective episcopal model of reform could not be adopted, principally because of the jurisdictional jealousy of the Habsburg Kings of Hungary, who continued to claim rights of nomination to Turkish controlled dioceses but whose nominees were unable to reside in their sees. Consequently, the hierarchy of Turkish-occupied Hungary played little or no role in the movement of Catholic reform, prior to the Habsburg reconquest.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

scholarly journals Conversion of the population of Gora and Opolje to Islam, according to the ottoman cadastral registers

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Tatjana Katic
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military

The Islamisation of the population of two neighbouring regions south of Prizren, Gora and Opolje, occurred in varying degrees during the centuries-long rule of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. In Gora, inhabited by the Slavic population, it was extremely slow, while in Opolje, inhabited by the Albanians, it was incomparably more intensive. This paper aims to elucidate, based on the analysis of the Ottoman 15th and 16th century cadastral registers, the factors that affected the rate of conversion to Islam among the inhabitants of these two former Serbian medieval counties (zupas), later Ottoman nahiyes. Among the most important are the highly developed church organisation in the region of Gora on the one hand, and on the other hand, the proximity of Prizren, the military and administrative centre of the Prizren Sanjak in which high ranking officials of Opolje origin operated.

Women, Marital Status, and Law: The Marital Spectrum in Seventeenth-Century Glasgow

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Mason
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Marital Status ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Early Modern Women

AbstractEarly modern women are often categorized by historians in relation to their marital status—whether they appeared as single, married, or widowed women. These identifications reflected the effects of marriage on women's legal and social status. Focusing on the records of the burgh and commissary courts of seventeenth-century Glasgow, this article shows how Scottish women's legal status existed instead on a “marital spectrum,” including liminal phases prior to the formation of marriage as well as overlapping phases following remarriage after the death of a spouse. This spectrum situates women's legal claims in relation to their marital career, allowing for a closer reading of women's legal activities. Court clerks working in Glasgow documented women's varied marital, familial, and legal identities within the court records, a Scottish practice that can shed new light on how women negotiated the boundaries of justice in early modern courts of law.

scholarly journals From Persecution to (Potential) Emancipation

Hawwa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 257-280
Author(s):  
Hayri Gökşin Özkoray
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
Judicial Archives ◽  
Female Slaves

Abstract This article deals with offences and crimes against female slaves, and those committed by female slaves, in Ottoman Istanbul (sixteenth-seventeeth centuries). Its main sources are imperial legislation and court records of the imperial capital, Istanbul, and its suburbs. Judicial archives remain the chief sources of early modern Ottoman historiography on gender. This contribution tackles slavery’s specificities regarding women, without ignoring the parallels with their male counterparts in the Ottoman Empire. By considering women as both objects and agents of legal violations and acts of violence, I simultaneously deal with the rights of slaveholders and slaves. Violations of these rights varied depending on the identity and juridical status of their authors, and were handled accordingly by the justice system. Thus, I consider violations committed by owners against their slaves, by slaves against their owners, and by third parties against the slaves of others. The rights and mutual obligations of masters and slaves were strictly defined in Ottoman law, although the judicial authorities upheld the preservation of private property above all. They dedicated themselves to fighting against the slightest doubt over masters’ quasi-absolute authority over their human possessions, whose unconditional obedience was required. Female slaves, in order to affirm their rights, had to provide irrefutable written proof or trustworthy verbal testimonies at the kadi courts.

Havoc

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Faisal H. Husain
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The Other ◽  
Drought Event ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Abrupt Shift ◽  
Prolonged Drought ◽  
Channel Shift ◽  
To Come

This chapter recounts a dramatic turning point in the Ottoman Empire’s relationship to the Tigris and Euphrates. In the late seventeenth century, a prolonged drought event and a botched canal project triggered an abrupt shift in the Euphrates’ channel southwest of Baghdad. Beset by plague outbreaks and rural uprisings, the Ottoman provincial administration could not mount an effective response to deal with the chaos unleashed by the channel shift. The Ottoman imperial center, on the other hand, was preoccupied with a prolonged war on its western front. An engineering expedition dispatched from Istanbul in late 1701 came too late to restore the Euphrates to its original bed. The Ottoman Empire had to come to terms with the new fluvial landscape.

Theatrical torture versus dramatic cruelty: subjection through representation or praxis1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans-Willem Korsten
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Peculiar Case

The distinction between the theatrical and the dramatic is pivotal for different modes of subjection in the early modern era. Institutionally speaking, society was organized ideologically, theatrically by the introjection of what was shown publicly to private, but equally collective, theatres of the mind. This could be described as a logic of torture. In contrast, and on the other hand, the dramatic application of punishment on ships, and the pain it involved, served what Robert Cover called a ‘balance of terror’, based on a logic of what Deleuze defined as ‘cruelty’. In order to clarify this distinction, and the implication it has for our ideas on gouvernmentalité, this chapter will propose a close reading of a painting by Lieve Verschuier that either depicts a peculiar case of keelhauling or, allegorically, the lynching of the brothers De Witt in 1672. Although the painting is clearly theatrical, formally speaking, it superimposes a dramatic logic on the traumatic political event of the lynching of the brothers De Witt. This will be considered in the chapter as one instance of a more general shift in the seventeenth century: a shift away from the theatrical logic of torture to the dramatic logic of cruelty.

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