Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T16:59:58.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dispute Resolution in Ottoman Courts: A Quantitative Analysis of Litigations in Eighteenth-Century Kastamonu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2015

Metin M. Coşgel  and
Boğaç A. Ergene
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the emergence of the Weberian notion of “kadijustiz” scholars have debated the ability of Islamic courts to resolve disputes fairly and predictably. For a quantitative analysis of how these courts resolved disputes, we use data from the court records (sicils) of the Ottoman town of Kastamonu and examine whether the judges’ decision followed systematic patterns and whether the patterns were logical. The results show that the trial outcome was influenced by the gender, elite status, religion, and religious markers of litigants. Using the tools and concepts of modern scholarship on dispute resolution, we argue that in resolving disputes Kastamonu courts displayed logical patterns that are consistent with those identified by quantitative analysis of court outcomes in modern societies.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 38 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 2014 , pp. 183 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barkey, Karen (1994) Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Barkey, Karen (2008) Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayındır, Abdülaziz (1986) İslam Muhakeme Hukuku: Osmanlı Devri Uygulaması. İstanbul: İslami İlimler Araştırma Vakfı.Google Scholar
Berki, Ali H., ed. (1986) Açıklamalı Mecelle (Mecelle-yi Aḥkām-ı ‘Adliyye). İstanbul: Hikmet Yayınları. An unofficial English translation of this work can be accessed at http://www.kantakji.com/fiqh/Files/Finance/N252.pdf.Google Scholar
Cohen, Amnon (1994) A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem. Philadelphia: Centre for Judaic Studies.Google Scholar
Cooter, Robert D., and Rubinfeld, Daniel L. (1989) “Economic analysis of legal disputes and their resolution.” Journal of Economic Literature 27 (3): 1067–97.Google Scholar
Coşgel, Metin M., and Ergene, Boğaç A. (2013) “‘Law and economics literature’ and Ottoman legal studies.” Islamic Law and Society 21 (1–2): 114–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulson, Noel, J. (2013) “Sharī’ah.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538793/Shariah (accessed March 27, 2013).Google Scholar
Ergene, Boğaç A. (2003) Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu. Boston and Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Ergene, Boğaç A. (2008) “Social identity and patterns of interaction in the shariʿa court of Kastamonu (1740–44).” Islamic Law and Society 15 (1): 20–54.Google Scholar
Ergene, Boğaç A., and Berker, Ali (2008) “Wealth and inequality in 18th century Kastamonu: Observations for the Muslim majority.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (1): 23–46.Google Scholar
Gerber, Haim (1988) Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa, 1600–1700. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Gerber, Haim (1994) State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Ginio, Eyal (1988) “The administration of criminal justice in Ottoman Selanik (Salonica) during the eighteenth century.” Turcica 30 (1): 185–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glaeser, Edward, and Schleifer, Andrei (2002) “Legal origins.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (4): 1193–1230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göçek, Fatma Müge (2005) “The legal recourse of minorities in history: Eighteenth century appeals to the courts of Galata.” Princeton Papers 12 (1): 47–69.Google Scholar
Hanna, Nelly (1995) “Administration of courts in Ottoman Cairo,” in Hanna, N. (ed.) The State and Its Servants. Cairo: American University Press: 44–59.Google Scholar
Heyd, Uriel (1973) Studies in Ottoman Criminal Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Heywood, Colin (1978) “Kastamonu.” Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill: 738.Google Scholar
İnalcık, Halil (1986) “Mahkama.” Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Vol. 6. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill: 2–4.Google Scholar
İnalcık, Halil (1988) “Şikayet hakkı: `arz-ı hal ve `arz-ı mahzarlar.” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 7–8: 33–45.Google Scholar
İslamoğlu-İnan, Huri (1994) State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire: Agrarian Power Relations and Regional Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century. Leiden, The Netherlands and New York: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Jennings, Ronald C. (1975) “Women in early 17th century Ottoman judicial records—The sharia court of Anatolian Kayseri.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18 (1): 53–114.Google Scholar
Jennings, Ronald C. (1978) “Kadı, court, and legal procedure in 17th c. Ottoman Kayseri.” Studia Islamica 48: 133–72.Google Scholar
Jennings, Ronald C. (1979) “Limitations of the judicial powers of qadi in 17th c. Ottoman Kayseri.” Studia Islamica 50: 151–84.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul (1993) “Small debts and economic distress in England and Wales, 1857–1913.” Economic History Review 46 (1): 65–87.Google Scholar
Kessler, Daniel, and Rubinfeld, Daniel (2007) “Empirical study of the civil justice system,” in Polinsky, A. M. and Shavell, S. (eds.) Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 343–402.Google Scholar
Kessler, Daniel, Meites, Thomas, and Miller, Geoffrey P. (1996) “Explaining deviations from the fifty-percent rule: A multimodal approach to the selection of cases for litigation.” Journal of Legal Studies 25 (1): 233–59.Google Scholar
Khan, B. Zorina (2000) “Commerce and cooperation: Litigation and settlement of civil disputes on the Australian frontier, 1860–1900.” Journal of Economic History 60 (4): 1088–1119.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur, and Lustig, Scott (2012) “Judicial biases in Ottoman Istanbul: Islamic justice and its compatibility with modern economic life.” Journal of Law and Economics 55 (3): 631–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Porta, Rafael, Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio, Shleifer, Andrei, and Vishny, Robert W. (1998) “Law and finance.” Journal of Political Economy 106 (6): 1131–50.Google Scholar
Ma, Debin, and van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2011) Law and Long-Term Economic Change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Meshal, Reem (2010) “Antagonistic sharī’as and the construction of orthodoxy in sixteenth-century Ottoman Cairo.” Journal of Islamic Studies 21 (2): 183–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miceli, Thomas J. (2009) The Economic Approach to Law. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Muldrew, Craig. (1993) “Credit and the courts: Debt litigation in a seventeenth-century urban community.” Economic History Review 46 (1): 23–38.Google Scholar
Peirce, Leslie (2003) Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Peters, Rudolph (2005) Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Powers, David (2002) Law, Society and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Priest, George L., and Klein, Benjamin (1984) “The selection of disputes for litigation.” Journal of Legal Studies 13 (1): 1–55.Google Scholar
Siegelman, Peter, and Waldfogel, Joel (1999) “Toward a taxonomy of disputes: New evidence through the prism of the Priest/Klein model.” Journal of Legal Studies 28 (1): 101–30.Google Scholar
Singer, Amy (1994) Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Waldfogel, Joel (1995) “The selection hypothesis and the relationship between trial and plaintiff victory.” Journal of Political Economy 103 (2): 229–60.Google Scholar
Zarinebaf, Fariba (2011) Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700–1800. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar