State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative PerspectiveThis book explores the legal structure of the Ottoman Empire between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries and examines its association with the Empire's sociopolitical structure. The author's main focus is on the relationship between formal Islamic law and the law as it was actually administered in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Istanbul and its environs. Using court records, other primary archival documents, and little-used Islamic literature, Gerber establishes for the first time that large bodies of the law were indeed practiced and enforced as law. This refutes the ethnocentric Western view, propagated by Max Weber, that Islamic law was dispensed arbitrarily because of a widening gap between ossified Muslim law and a changing Muslim society. Gerber furthermore integrates his empirical research into a wider theoretical framework adapted from legal and historical-legal anthropology and uses this material as the basis for comparisons between the Ottoman Empire's legal system and other legal systems, most notably that of Morocco. This book shows that although Islamic law as practiced did have to contend with an inviolable sacred core, historical development nevertheless took place that can shed new light on the civilization of Islam. |
Contents
1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE OTTOMAN LEGAL PROCESS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES | 25 |
THE RISE OF THE KADI AND THE SHARFA COURT | 58 |
3 THE FETVA IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM | 79 |
4 THE GUILDS AND CUSTOMARY LAW | 113 |
5 PATRIMONIALISM AND BUREAUCRACY IN THE OTTOMAN POLITICAL SYSTEM | 127 |
6 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION | 174 |
NOTES | 187 |
219 | |
227 | |
Other editions - View all
State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective Haim Gerber Limited preview - 1994 |
State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective Haim Gerber No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
Abdallah Efendi Aleppo Anatolia Ankara anthropology area under study argument bureaucratic cash waqf central government chapter claimed classical Islam context core area criminal cultural customary law Dabbağzade Numan decline documents Ebu Suud eighteenth centuries elite evidence example fact fetva collections fiefholders Geertz governor guild system Heyd Ibid ijtihad important institution interest intisab involved Islamic law issue Istanbul Joseph Schacht judicial process kadi court records kadi records kadi's kanun Kayseri large number Lawrence Rosen legal anthropology Lozi major Max Weber ment Middle East Moroccan Morocco mufti murder Muslim officials Ottoman bureaucracy Ottoman Empire Ottoman law Ottoman legal system Ottoman society patrimonial penal period political problem province punishment question relations religious role Rosen rules scholars seems seventeenth and eighteenth seventeenth-century Bursa şeyhülislam shari`a court Şikayet Defteri sipahis sixteenth century social structure Süleyman sultan tax farming teenth-century timar tion topic ulema Uriel Heyd village waqf Weber witnesses
Popular passages
Page 8 - Roscoe Pound's definition of law as “social control through the systematic application of the force of politically organized society.
Page 9 - The court tends to be conciliating; it strives to effect a compromise acceptable to, and accepted by, all the parties. This is the main task of the judges