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Legal borrowing and its impact on Ottoman legal culture in the late nineteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2007

AVI RUBIN
AVI RUBIN
Affiliation:
Department of Middle East Studies, Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
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Abstract

The article sheds fresh light on socio-legal change in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth century by focusing on the legal culture that emerged in the newly established Nizamiye court system. It is argued that a characteristic Nizamiye discourse that emphasized procedure mirrored the syncretic nature of this judicial system. This syncretism was a typical outcome of legal borrowing, encompassing both indigenous and foreign legal traditions. In addition, the article points to the possible impact of the new legal culture on judicial strategies employed by litigants. The accentuation of procedure opened up new litigation opportunities for the wealthier classes while disadvantaging and alienating the lower strata of society. Yet Ottoman law also provided some legal solutions for the lower orders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 2007 , pp. 279 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

ENDNOTES

1  For general information on the Nizamiye courts, see Carter V. Findley, ‘Mahkama’, Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd edn, Leiden, 1986).

2  See for example Sedat Bingöl, ‘Nizamiye Mahkemelerin Kuruluşu ve İşleyisi 1840–1876’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Akdeniz University, 1998); Fatmagül Demirel, ‘Adliye Nezareti'nin Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri (1876–1914) (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Istanbul University, 2003); Milen V. Petrov, ‘Everyday forms of compliance: subaltern commentaries on Ottoman reform, 1864–1868’, Comparative Study of Society and History (2004), 730–59; Avi Rubin, ‘Ottoman modernity: the Nizamiye courts in the late nineteenth century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2006); Ruth A. Miller, Legislating Authority: Sin and Crime in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (New York and London, 2005); and Mehmet Safa Saracoĝlu, ‘A dialogue in power: local administrative and judicial practices in the county of Vidin 1864–1877’ (forthcoming Ph.D. thesis dissertation, Ohio State University).

3  The concept of ‘legal culture’ was originally introduced by Lawrence Friedman. See Friedman, Lawrence M., ‘Legal culture and social development’, Law and Society Review 4.1 (1969), 29–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of the debate, see Nelken, David, ‘Using the concept of legal culture’, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 29 (2004), 1–28Google Scholar.

4  Nelken, ‘Using the concept’.

5  Lawrence Friedman, ‘The concept of legal culture: a reply’, in David Nelken ed., Comparing legal culture (Brookfield, 1997).

6  Lasser, Mitchell de S.-O.-l'E., ‘Judicial (self-) portraits: judicial discourse in the French legal system’, The Yale Law Journal 104.6 (1005), 1325–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7  On the sociolegal approach, see Cotterrell, Roger, ‘Subverting orthodoxy, making law central: a view of sociolegal studies’, Journal of Law and Society 25.2 (1998), 632–44Google Scholar.

8  On the phenomenon of legal borrowing, or ‘legal transplant’, see Alan Watson, The evolution of law (Baltimore, 1985); Watson, Alan, ‘Legal transplants and European private law’, Electronic Journal of Comparative Law 4.4 (2000)Google Scholar; Lawrence Friedman, The legal system: A social science perspective (New York, 1975), 195; and Wise, Edward M., ‘The transplant of legal patterns’, The American Journal of Comparative Law 38, Supplement (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Debates over the nature of legal borrowing are often related to the ubiquitous debate on legal autonomy, which is beyond the scope of this article.

9  Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: the structure of power (New York, 2002), 247.

10  Peter De Cruz, A modern approach to comparative law (Deventer and Boston, 1993), 55.

11  Watson, The evolution of law, 94.

12  Rubin, ‘Ottoman modernity’.

13  For a comparison of the two codes, see Miller, Legislating authority, 54–8. Miller argues that the differences between the French code and the Ottoman code reflect a growing authoritarianism in the Ottoman version of the law.

14  See A. Heidborn, Manuel de droit public et administrative de l'empire ottoman (Vienna and Leipzig, 1908), 226, and Findley, ‘Mahkama’.

15  Indeed, the legislators explained that the law was meant to solve the confusion caused by the wide-ranging authority of the local administrative councils, which addressed administrative, civil and criminal cases. See Jun Akiba, ‘From kadi to naib: reorganization of the Ottoman Sharia judiciary in the Tanzimat period’, in Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki eds., Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: state, province, and the West (London, 2005), 43–60.

16  Bingöl, ‘Nizamiye Mahkemelerin Kuruluşu ve İşleyişi’, 87–101.

17  For an overview of the legislation during the reform period, see Şentop, Mustafa, ‘Tanzimat Döneminde Kanunlaştırma Faaliyetleri Literatürü’, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi 3.5 (2005), 647–72Google Scholar. On the Ottoman reception of Western law, see Gülnihal Bozkurt, Batı Hukukunun Türkiye'de Benimsenmesi (Ankara, 1996).

18  On Cevdet Paşa, see H. Bowen, ‘Ahmad Djewdet Pasha’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn, and Ebul'ula Mardin, Medeni Hukuk Cephesinden Ahmet Cevdet Paşa (1st published 1946; reprinted Ankara, 1996).

19  Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Ma'aruzat (Istanbul, 1980).

20  Şerif Mardin, The genesis of Young Ottoman thought: a study in the modernization of Turkish political thought (Princeton, 1962).

21  Joseph Schacht, An introduction to Islamic law (Oxford, 1964), 92. For a list of articles in the Mecelle that are analogous to the French Civil Code, see Demetrius Nicolaides, Legislation Ottomane: septieme partie contenant le Code Civil Ottoman, livres IX–XVI (Constantinople, 1888).

22  Majid Khadduri and Herbert Liebensky eds., Law in the Middle East (Washington DC, 1955), 295–6.

23  This is not to say that kadıs enjoyed unlimited leeway in their discretion, as Weber mistakenly assumed. As was demonstrated by Gerber, the Shar'i judges had an identifiable pool of sources to which they resorted. See Haim Gerber, State, society, and law in Islam (Albany, 1996). Nevertheless, the Mecelle forced the judges of the Nizamiye courts to bind their rulings to a single legal standard.

24  İbnulemin Mahmut Kemal İnal, Osmanlı Devrinde son Sadrâzamlar (Istanbul, 1953), 989.

25  Düstur (official Ottoman collection of laws and regulations), First Series (Istanbul, 1879–1908), vol. 4, 260.

26  For a pioneering study of the implication of the procedural reforms in the Shari'a courts, see Agmon, Iris, ‘Recording procedures and legal culture in the late Ottoman Sharia Court of Jaffa, 1865–1890’, Islamic Law and Society 11 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27  George Young's translation of the procedural codes is helpful in comparing between the French versions and the Ottoman ones, as he provides the numbers of the corresponding French articles. See George Young, Corps de droit ottoman; recueil des codes, lois, réglements, ordonnances et actes les plus importants du droit intérieur, et d'études sur le droit coutumier de l'Empire ottoman, vol. 7 (Oxford, 1905–1906).

28  Düstur, First Series, vol. 4, 225–35.

29  Hifzi Veldet Velideoĝlu, ‘Kanunlaştırma Hareketleri ve Tanzimat’, Tanzimat, vol. 1 (Istanbul, 1940), 198.

30  Düstur, First Series, I, vol. 4, 131–224.

31  Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşıvı, Istanbul (The Prime Minister's Archive in Istanbul-Ottoman Section; hereafter BOA), İ.DH. 740/60556.

32  On the reformed institution of naibship, see Akiba, ‘From kadi to naib’

33  According to Miller, ‘the civil sections remained Islamic law courts, and naibs, trained in the traditional system, presided over them’. See Miller, Legislating authority, 72. The characterization of the civil sections as ‘Islamic courts’ obscures the syncretic nature of the courts while ignoring the profound impact of (the largely borrowed) procedural law on the judicial process. The civil sections were an integral part of the Nizamiye court system in terms of law and administration. The decisions they produced were subject to appeal exclusively in the Nizamiye framework and not in the Shari'a court system.

34  Küçük Sait Paşa, Sait Paşa'nın Hatıratı (Istanbul, 1328 [1912]), 22.

35  For instance, see Ceride-i Mehakim (see note 38, below), 2914.

36  See for instance Avi Rubin, ‘East, West, Ottomans and Zionists: internalized Orientalism at the turn of the 20th century’, in Nedret Kuran-Burçoĝlu and Susan Gilson Miller eds., Representations of the ‘Other/s’ in the Mediterranean world and their impact on the region (Istanbul, 2004). A recent excellent microhistory by Şaşmaz exposes the political interests behind Europeans' negative and often ridiculing representations of the Nizamiye justice. See Musa Şaşmaz, Kürt Musa Bey Olayı (1883–1890) (Istanbul, 2004).

37  See for example Niyazi Berkes, The development of secularism in Turkey (Montreal, 1964), 166. One author defines the new laws ‘optional’; see Werner F. Menski, Comparative law in global context: the legal systems of Asia and Africa (Cambridge and New York, 2006), 356.

38  Information about the Ceride-i Mehakim (hereafter CM) is available in ‘Ceride-i Mehakim’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul, 1988), 408–9, and Bingöl, Sedat, ‘Osmanlı Mahkenelerinde Reform ve Ceride-yi Mahakim'deki Üst Mahkeme Kararları’, Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 20.1 (2005)Google Scholar.

39  In a certain criminal trial, the public prosecutor used the protocol of a previous session that was published in the Ceride to question the accuracy of the protocol prepared by the clerk. See CM, 2404.

40  See Bingöl, ‘Nizamiye Mahkemelerin Kuruluşu ve İşleyisi’; Demirel, ‘Adliye Nezareti'nin Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri’, and Musa Şaşmaz, Kürt Musa Bey Olayı (Istanbul, 2004).

41  CM, 12,677.

42  For instance, see CM, 12,679 and 12,745.

43  Peter Goodrich, Languages of law: from logics of memory to nomadic masks (London, 1990), 188.

44  See John P. Dawson, The oracles of the law (Ann Arbor, 1968).

45  Geeroms, Sofie M. F., ‘Comparative law and legal translation: why the terms cassation, revision and appeal should not be translated …’, The American Journal of Comparative Law 50.1 (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46  Code of Civil Procedure, articles 231, 232, 242.

47  Geeroms, ‘Comparative law and legal translation’, 205.

48  Code of Civil Procedure, article 247.

49  Lasser, ‘Judicial (self-) portraits’, 1340–3.

50  The Ceride includes a few reports of criminal cases that are brought to the reader in the form of a complete protocol or detailed minutes, but these reports form the exception.

51  Ze'evi, Dror, ‘The use of Ottoman Sharia court records as a source for Middle Eastern social history: a reappraisal’, Islamic Law and Society 5 (1998), 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Gerber, State, society, and law in Islam. Ottoman Shari'a court records have been studied extensively for more than three decades. But exploration of these courts as social spaces that deserve systematic scholarly attention in their own right is a recent undertaking that has yielded fascinating work. See Leslie Peirce, Morality tales: law and gender in the Ottoman court of Aintab (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003); Boĝaç Ergene, Local court, provincial society, and justice in the Ottoman Empire: legal practice and dispute resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu (1652–1744) (Leiden, 2003); and Iris Agmon, Family and court: legal culture and Modernity in late Ottoman Palestine (Syracuse, NY, 2006).

52  Mardin, Medeni Hukuk Cephesinden Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, 237–8.

53  See Kaya, Süleyman, ‘Mahkeme Kayıtların Kılavuzu: Sakk Mecmuaları’, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi 3.5 (2005)Google Scholar.

54  Ali Şahbaz Efendi, ‘Usul-ı Muhakeme-i Hukukiye’, manuscript (1890s), Atatürk Library, Istanbul, 1–2.

55  For instance, see CM, 43, 538, 1035, 13,869.

56  For example, see CM, 1489, 7051.

57  See Agmon, Iris, ‘Recording procedures’; Iris Agmon, ‘Social biography of a late Ottoman Shari'a judge’, New Perspectives on Turkey 30 (2004), 83–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58  Demirel, ‘Adliye Nezareti'nin Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri’, 182.

59  CM, 1553.

60  ‘Substantive law’ and ‘procedural law’ are the two main categories of judicial reasoning. Substantive law refers to rights, duties or causes of action; procedural law prescribes the procedure and methods for enforcing rights and duties. See Merriam Webster's dictionary of law (Springfield, MA, 1996), 386, 478.

61  CM, 1420.

62  Milen Petrov, ‘Everyday forms of compliance: subaltern commentaries on Ottoman reform, 1864–1868’, Comparative Study of Society and History (2004), 730–59.

63  Rubin, ‘Ottoman modernity’, 218–19.

64  As has been demonstrated by Powers, judicial review was not an unknown mechanism in Islamic law. See Powers, David S., ‘On judicial review in Islamic law’, Law and Society Review 26.2 (1992), 315–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet it obviously lacked the standardized, systematic and hierarchical structure of modern appeal systems.

65  In 1897, 11.9 per cent of all the civil cases addressed by the Nizamiye courts reached the appellate instances, the Court of Cassation included. See Tevfik Güran ed., Osmanlı Devleti'nin İlk İstatistik Yıllıĝı 1897 (Ankara, 1998), 86.

66  Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul households: marriage, family and fertility 1880–1940 (Cambridge, 1991), 38.

67  CM, 15,202.

68  On legal representation in pre-nineteenth-century Islamic law, see Jennings, Ronald C., ‘The office of Vekil (Wakil) in 17th-century Ottoman Sharia courts’, Studia Islamica 42 (1975), 147–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the introduction of professional attorneyship in the Ottoman Empire, see Özman, Aylin, ‘The portrait of the Ottoman attorney and bar associations: state, secularization and institutionalization of professional Interests’, Der Islam 77.2 (2000), 319–37Google Scholar.

69  Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1, 192–3.

70  The following fees paid for proceedings at the Court of Cassation illustrate this point: CM, 13,110: 414.5 kuruş; CM, 13,364: 611 kuruş; CM, 15,138: 393.5 kuruş.

71  See Martin Shapiro, Courts: a comparative and political analysis (Chicago, 1981).

72  See for instance Peter Gabel and Jay Feinman, ‘Contract law as ideology’, in David Kairys ed., The politics of law: a progressive critique (New York, 1998); Gordon, Robert, ‘Critical legal histories’, Stanford Law Review 36 (1984), 57–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73  See Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the bourgeoisie, demise of empire: Ottoman Westernization and social change (New York and Oxford, 1996).

74  On the concept of legal pluralism, see Griffith, John, ‘What is legal pluralism?’, Journal of Legal Pluralism 24.1 (1996), 1–50Google Scholar; Merry, Sally Engle, ‘Legal pluralism’, Law and Society Review 22.5 (1988), 869–901CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75  See Agmon, Family and court, 74, and Rubin, ‘Ottoman modernity’, 91–125.

76  The term ‘forum shopping’ describes a litigant's attempt ‘to have his action tried in a particular court or jurisdiction where he feels he will receive the most favorable judgement or verdict’; see ‘Forum shopping reconsidered’, Harvard Law Review 103.7 (1990), 1677–1696 (no author specified).

77  For instance, see Council of State decisions in Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1, 292–3, and BOA, Y.A.RES 92/1. For my interpretation of the latter document, see Rubin, ‘Ottoman modernity’, 91–125.

78  The role of the Shari'a court as a reliever of social tensions in the community seems to have been a feature inherent to its legal culture across Ottoman territories and periods. For mechanisms of arbitration in a Shari'a court of the seventeenth century, see Peirce, Morality tales. For the endurance of the Shari'a court's user-friendly attitude and role as facilitator of social justice in late-Ottoman Palestine, see Agmon, Family and court.

79  Kushner, David, ‘The place of the ulema in the Ottoman Empire during the Age of Reform (1839–1918)’, Turcica XIX (1987), 62Google Scholar; Haim Gerber, Otoman rule in Jerusalem 1890–1914 (Berlin, 1985), 143; Demirel, ‘Adliye Nezareti'nin Kuruluşu ve Faaliyetleri’, 86–9. The European diplomat and observer Adolf Heidborn was probably the first one to attribute the naibs’ dominance in the Nizamiye civil sections to lack of sufficient nizami manpower. See A. Heidborn, Manuel de droit, 241.

80  CM, 8144.

81  For the amalgamation of Shari'a and Kanun, see Ze'evi, Dror, ‘Changes in legal-sexual discourses: sex Crimes in the Ottoman Empire’, Continuity and Change 16.2 (2001)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 235. See also Peirce, Morality tales, 119.

82  See Merryman, John H., ‘The French deviation’, The American Journal of Comparative Law 44.1 (1996)Google Scholar.

83  Bedir, Murteza, ‘Fikih to law: secularization through curriculum’, Islamic Law and Society 11.3 (2004), 384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84  Şahbaz Efendi, ‘Usul-ı Muhakeme-i Hukukiye’, 28.

85  See Merryman, ‘The French deviation’, 44.