Workshop 6-7 Ocak 2012 
Fransız Anadolu araştırmaları Enstitüsü – Istanbul 

Düzenleyenler:Yavuz Aykan (Ehess – Munich Univ. Doktora öğrencisi), Juliette Dumas (Ehess – IFEA Doktora öğrencisi) ve Işık Tamdoğan (CNRS – IFEA Araştırmacısı) 

Justice in Ottoman society was made through a complex configuration, sustained by the interaction of different sources of legal references (Sharia, Kanun and custom) as well as different institutions or actors, giving rise to a multiplicity of different practices. If the plurality of legal references in the operative field of justice (i.e. in the Ottoman qadi courts) has long occupied the attention of researchers, the study of the multiplicity of actors and institutions operating in the field of justice has remained rather on the margins of the interest of legal historians.

This workshop has been organized as a part of an ongoing seminar on the plurality of legal institutions and procedures in the Ottoman Society that has been held under the direction of Işık Tamdoğan at the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul since October 2011, under the title “La justice dans la société ottomane : institutions, acteurs et pratiques”. 

The aim of the workshop is to contribute to a better understanding of the interaction of these various institutions and actors in the process of conflict resolution between individuals or in the larger context of making justice in general, as well as during/in the punishment process. It should also be underlined that in Ottoman society disputes and conflicts among individuals or groups could be resolved without resorting to any of the abovementioned institutions. This is particularly apparent on occasions when the society seeks to make justice of its own. Such judicial practices as amicable settlements or even direct revenge that were taking place outside of these legal institutions will be given a considerable place in our discussion in this workshop. Whether punitive or reconciliatory (as is the case in sulh) it is again the interaction between these different spheres of justice, (“informal” or more “official”) that will constitute the heart of our discussion. 
These institutions and practices, which interacted in a complex and subtle manner are far from being uniform in space and time, throughout the Empire. It is for this reason that in this workshop we aim to approach their respective developments as well as their transformations over time (15th-19th centuries) and space (from Balkans to Arab provinces).

In order to approach this complex field of Ottoman justice, we propose to work around certain issues: :

1. The strategies of individuals: 

• Did individuals have any leeway in choosing the institution by which they could settle their disputes? ?
• According to which criteria (personal status or the nature of the conflict) people selected these institutions (Qadi court or the imperial divan)?

2. The interaction of different institutions:

• When a legal process was underway, how did these different institutions could intervene and take a role in this process?
• What kind of a division of labor took place between the various bodies and institutions – such as the qadi and the provincial governor?
• The interaction between the legal courts and governors’ divan or Imperial divan will be of particular interest for our workshop but also a particular attention will be paid to the legal opinions (fatwas) of the provincial muftis during the juridical debates.
• Is it possible to argue that there existed a clearly defined hierarchy between these different institutions or were they operating in their own ways depending on the nature of the conflict in question, the status of the individuals in conflict or random choice of the plaintiffs? ?

3. 3. Legal practices outside the institutions:

• How were the conflicts resolved outside of these institutions?
• What kind of legitimacy had these “practices” vis-à-vis the legal and executive institutions (such as the qadi and governors)?

I.    Pluralité des institutions judiciaires et leur interaction

Zouhair Ghazzal (Professeur, Loyola University, Chicago):
“The parallel adjudication of the “Egyptian” majlis in Aleppo in 1838”

Charles Wilkins (Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University)
“Provincial Governors as Judicial Authorities: The Assessment and Collection of Legal Fines in Seventeenth-Century Aleppo”.

II.    Les tribunaux des cadis au jour le jour