Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo

2014

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2012

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Al-Istinbath: Jurnal Hukum Islam, 2023

This article aims to describe the impact of legal dualism within the Ottoman Empire. After Constantinople was taken over, Sultan Muhammad Al-Fatih instituted a significant policy, including issuing laws and regulations for the benefit of society; then, there was also a dualism system within the Ottoman Empire, which was visible during the reign of Sultan Sulaiman I. During this time, foreign nationals were mainly recruited, and foreign traders began to gain impunity at the peak of power. This then prompted several questions, such as were the sultans free to create the laws they wanted, or was Islamic law still binding on them? Was Sultan's law an innovation from the Ottoman Empire or a legacy from the preceding dynasty in the form of Capitulation? To address those issues, the authors conducted a comparative historical analysis of various types of literature. We used a descriptive qualitative approach to Qānūn's position, which served as a springboard for foreign intervention in an Empire that was strong but weak in political policies which occasionally strayed outside the corridor of Islamic Sharia which had become customary and national culture. The tolerance separated from the corridors of Islam derailed during the crisis. This became a springboard for legal dualism in a state body with integrity in various dimensions.

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Comparative Studies in Society and History 55 (3), 2013

This article proposes a comparative analytical framework to study changes in Islamic law during the post-Mongol period, particularly the rise of the official school of law (or state madhhab). Taking as my case study the Ottoman adoption of a particular branch within the Sunni Hanafi school of law, I suggest that this adoption marks a new chapter in Islamic legal history. In earlier periods, while rulers appointed judges and thus regulated the adjudication procedures, they did not intervene, at least theoretically, in the structure and doctrine of the schools of law, which remained the relatively autonomous realm of the jurists. The Ottoman adoption of the school, by contrast, was not merely an act of state patronage, since the dynasty played an important role in regulating the school's structure and doctrine. To this end, it employed a set of administrative and institutional practices, such as the development of an imperial learned hierarchy with standardized career and training tracks and the appointment of jurisconsults (muftis). Some of these practices were found in other polities across the eastern Islamic lands in the post-Mongol period, but these similarities have not been treated comparatively in modern historiography. They suggest that the Ottoman case was part of a broader legal culture that spanned several polities across the region. This article outlines a framework that will enable historians of Islamic law to treat these similarities in a more coherent manner. The framework raises key issues in the historiography of Islamic law and its nineteenth-century modernization.

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Journal of Islamic Ethics, 2019

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2007

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2012

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2022

Fatwas played a major role in the formation of Ottoman legal norms. However, to date, Ottoman historians have largely limited their examination of these sources to the fatwas of the chief muftis (şeyhülislam). The role of provincial muftis (kenar müftüsü) and their fatwas remains neglected. What role did these muftis play in the formation of legal norms at the edge of the empire? How did they engage with the central authority and local officers? What functions did their fatwas perform? And what was their authority and role in the legal process? In this paper, I address these questions through an analysis of the fatwas of Ali Akkirmani, an Ottoman imperial man, a scholar-bureaucrat, who received his education at Valide Sultan Madrasa in Istanbul before taking up a post as professor and mufti in his hometown, the frontier city of Akkirman, in 1591-92. He kept the post for about thirty years, until his death in 1618. As mufti, he issued fatwas on questions of various types posed to him by common people, notables, officers, judges, etc., which were collected posthumously in 1630 under the title Fetâvâ-yı Akkirmani. Focusing on examples drawn from that work’s chapter on international law (Kitâbu’s-Siyer), I explore how Akkirmani interpreted and adapted the learned sharia law and imperial law to augment his own juristic, imperial, and socio-political authority and to position himself as a critical player in the formation of legal norms on the Ottoman frontier.

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Τα θέματα που κληρώθηκαν στις κατατακτήριες εξετάσεις στη Νομική Αθηνών στο μάθημα Γενικό Ποινικό Δίκαιο και για τα ακαδημαϊκά έτη 2022-2023 και 2023-2024.

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