Introduction
Major transformations in the trade between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the heyday of Ottoman power in the Mediterranean. European expansion in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans diverted old trade routes, while new commercial actors, including French, English, Dutch, and Ottoman subjects, entered the Levantine trade, and competed with the Republic of Venice, the previous protagonist in the trade. The volume and variety of exchanged goods and capital investment significantly increased, and new commercial institutions, such as chartered companies, appeared for the first time. Commerce became highly competitive, with players deploying diplomacy, military power, aggressive mercantilist techniques, and privateers to confront their rivals.Footnote 1
What role did the Ottomans play in these global commercial developments? A substantial body of scholarship has examined how medieval and early modern rulers promoted international trade by offering fiscal exemptions to foreign merchants, ensuring their safety and that of their goods, and establishing institutions, such as state courts, to facilitate contract enforcement.Footnote 2 In this literature, the Ottoman Empire occupies a niche position in the research on Western European states, even though it controlled major trade routes across Eurasia and hosted numerous communities of foreign merchants. This neglect stems from enduring perceptions that the Ottomans were largely disinterested in promoting and regulating foreign commerce. Unlike mercantilist European powers, the Ottomans allowed European merchants to trade within their empire on favorable terms with little concern for the needs of domestic merchants and manufacturers.Footnote 3 More recently, a few scholars have focused on Islamic law to explain divergent commercial developments between Europe and the Islamic world. They contend that, due to the inherent rigidities of Islamic law (Sharia), the legal and economic systems of the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim states were unable to develop modern capitalist institutions.Footnote 4
This article aims to bring the Ottoman Empire into current debates of law and trade development in the pre-modern period by analyzing Ottoman politics of justice toward European merchants during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses on Venetian merchants between the 1600s and 1630s, the largest European mercantile group in the Ottoman Empire, and on the resolution of commercial disputes between Venetian and Ottoman subjects that were brought to the Imperial Council (divan-ı hümayun), the sultan’s court. This institution was an administrative, legislative, and judicial assembly headed by high-ranking Ottoman officials. It played a central role in the administration of the Ottoman Empire, as well as its diplomatic and commercial relations with foreign countries.
Methodologically, this piece combines a study of the Imperial Council with an analysis of the Ottoman Empire’s political economy in the seventeenth century. It contextualizes Ottoman politics of justice within the framework of Ottoman economic priorities, international commercial and geopolitical dynamics, and the peculiarities of Ottoman-Venetian relations. In this way, this study follows the calls of economic historians Jessica Goldberg, Huri İslamoğlu, and Fahad Bishara to put Islamic law and its institutions “in their own place,” that is, embedded in economic geographies, societal dynamics, state-making processes, and imperial entanglements.Footnote 5 A study of Ottoman justice within the specific political economy in which it unfolded allows us to uncover the multiplicity of historical actors and the imperial and domestic dynamics that shaped lawmaking and justice dispensation in a non-European context during the early modern period.
Through an analysis of the legal affairs of Venetian merchants handled by the Imperial Council, this piece illustrates how the political and economic objectives of the Ottoman authorities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced the development of new legislation on trade and the administration of justice in Ottoman Islamic courts. To promote Venetian trade and uphold international commitments, Ottoman officials introduced important innovations in court procedures and jurisdiction to enhance the standing of Venetian merchants in disputes with Ottoman subjects, including the mandatory use of documents and a bilateral system of debt recovery across the two states. Furthermore, the authorities of the Imperial Council intervened in the adjudicative proceedings of Ottoman lower courts of justice in Istanbul and provincial centers by instructing qadis (Turkish kadı, a Muslim judge) who headed the courts on how to handle specific lawsuits involving Venetian merchants, favoring a settlement on the latter’s behalf.
These politics of justice demonstrate Ottoman authorities’ strong engagement with international trade and the dynamism of the Ottoman legal system during a period of commercial development. The legal and commercial privileges bestowed upon European merchants by Ottoman rulers are often, explicitly or not, interpreted as evidence of a lack of mercantilist concerns and Westernization.Footnote 6 However, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful political and military force in the Mediterranean. European political and economic pressure alone fails to explain the legal policies adopted by Ottoman officials in favor of Venetian merchants.Footnote 7
International Trade, Justice Administration, and the Ottoman/Venetian Entanglement
Since the onset of the so-called “commercial revolution”Footnote 8 in the tenth century, rulers across continental Europe and the Mediterranean sought to attract foreign merchants to their domains in order to profit from customs duties and supply local markets with foodstuffs, raw materials for local manufacturers, and expensive artisanal goods for wealthy elites. To accomplish this, they devised institutions that safeguarded the lives and the property rights of foreign merchants and facilitated commercial development. They created safe dwelling spaces, storage facilities, brokerage services, and public registries like notaries to record private transactions, concentrated trade in designated urban and rural areas, and granted foreign merchants legal and economic privileges to improve their standing in the local marketplaces and courts of justice.Footnote 9 Although there were significant differences among states based on local political economies, such privileges typically included tax exemptions, advantageous rates of customs duties, freedom of worship, a degree of self-administration in intra-group fiscal and legal matters, diplomatic protection, and preferential treatment in state tribunals.
The administration of justice in trade-related controversies was an essential element in the life of foreign mercantile communities. A significant challenge faced by international merchants was enforcing contracts with coreligionists and individuals from different religious and political groups. Prior to the nineteenth century, a system of inter-polity law did not exist, and foreign merchants had to navigate across different legal systems, commercial customs, and foreign languages. Moreover, owing to their religious and political affiliations, they frequently faced legal disabilities in the host country’s tribunals, especially regarding the types of evidence accepted in legal proceedings. While out-of-court modalities of settlement, like third-party arbitration and mediation, were widely spread in continental Europe and Mediterranean and Atlantic ports, the state played a crucial role in creating an institutional infrastructure to protect the property rights of international merchants. Economic historians and social scientists agree that establishing a centralized state-sponsored legal system significantly promoted trade growth in the pre-industrial period.Footnote 10
In medieval and early modern polities, from the Flemish cities of Bruges and Antwerp to the Tuscan port of Livorno to the Byzantine Empire and the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultanates, state authorities usually allowed the heads of merchant groups, like consuls, to administer justice in intra-group controversies according to the laws of their home countries.Footnote 11 Nevertheless, disputes between foreign and local merchants fell under the jurisdiction of state courts. Many states established specialized commercial tribunals to handle the legal affairs of foreign merchants and seamen, where judges applied a privileged legal procedure aimed at promoting quick and equitable settlements while disregarding the formalities of positive law.Footnote 12
Like the Byzantine Emperors, the Turkish rulers (bey) of Western Anatolia, and the Mamluk sultans who preceded them in the eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman sultans encouraged international trade within the empire by granting legal and commercial privileges to foreign merchants. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they allowed selected communities of European merchants—the Venetians, French, Dutch, and English—to safely reside and conduct business in the Ottoman Empire as part of diplomatic and commercial agreements (Tr. ahidname, called the “Capitulations” in European parlance) with these European states. In Ottoman cities, European merchants enjoyed tax exemptions, self-governance in legal matters within their communities, diplomatic protection under their country’s consuls, and preferential treatment in Ottoman Islamic courts. These courts included specific regulations regarding legal evidence and court jurisdiction that exclusively applied to European merchants, as well as constant supervision by Ottoman governmental officials in Istanbul over legal proceedings involving these merchants throughout the empire.Footnote 13
In stark contrast to the historiography of pre-modern Europe, where law plays a central role in accounts of commercial expansion and economic growth,Footnote 14 Ottoman politics of justice toward international merchants has aroused little scholarly interest.Footnote 15 This neglect stems from widely held views of Ottoman authorities as indifferent to international commerce and arguments that Islamic law hindered capitalist development in the Muslim world. Ottoman authorities, it is alleged, viewed the international realm as foremost a source of customs revenues and strategic goods and never developed systematic policies to support domestic merchants and manufacturers. Scholars have routinely contrasted Ottoman commercial policies with those of contemporary European states, such as England, France, and the Dutch Republic, which established chartered companies and state monopolies to protect their merchants and artisans and deployed naval power, diplomacy, and a system of consulates to defend their merchants abroad.Footnote 16
Similarly, until recently, the prevailing view in the scholarship on Islamic law and economics was that the legal and economic systems of the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim states stagnated during the modern period. Due to the alleged monopoly held by Ottoman legal scholars (ulema) over the elaboration and application of Islamic law, legal rules governing interest charging, adjudication, inheritance, and commercial partnerships remained unchanged until the Europeanization of the empire’s legal and economic life during the nineteenth century. Consequently, Ottoman businessmen were unable to adopt “supposedly” efficient new forms of economic organization, such as business corporations, insurance contracts, and public banks, and capitalism in the empire could not emerge without the importation of these European institutions.Footnote 17
Such views of Ottoman “anti-mercantilism” and Islamic law as unchanging are the product of a strong Eurocentric bias in most scholarship on the Ottoman Empire: the tendency to regard the Ottoman Empire in comparison with Western Europe—more correctly, with an idealized version of it—and not as an entity in its own right. As stressed by Suraiya Faroqhi, Huri İslamoğlu, and Kate Fleet, scholars have sought to identify institutions and economic developments that played a crucial role in Europe, such as corporations, mercantile capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, and assess their presence or absence in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 18 Therefore, Ottoman commercial history in the early modern period—and Ottoman economic history as a whole—has often been understood as a history of “absences” that led to the eventual European domination of the empire’s economy in the nineteenth century. This Eurocentrism also applies to the legal and economic history of other non-European empires during the early modern period, ranging from Ming China to Safavid Iran and Mughal India.Footnote 19
Recent research on Islamic law and commercial life in the pre-modern and modern Muslim world challenges the Eurocentric view of global economic development, in which Europe serves as the yardstick by which other places are measured. Rather than treating Islamic law and institutions, from courts to justice to contractual obligations, as entities sealed off in a different civilization and comparing them with European ones, scholars now situate them within the broader economic geographies, political rivalries among societal groups, and the wider geopolitical context.Footnote 20 Furthermore, they emphasize the continuous connections, circulation, and historical entanglements between Islamic law and other legal and economic regimes—both European and non-European—that contributed to shaping the production and application of Islamic law from its inception to the present. This revisionist scholarship has tended to privilege two periods: the medieval period, often celebrated as the “golden age” of the Muslim world, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, marked by European colonial expansion and Ottoman reforms. By contrast, far less attention has been devoted to the law and economic life of the early modern period.Footnote 21
Any study of Islamic law and European trade in the Ottoman Empire prior to the nineteenth century should contextualize the Capitulations and international trade within the empire’s economic priorities and international political and commercial developments. In granting trading rights to European merchants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ottoman authorities followed Ottoman economic priorities, which Mehmed Genç has famously labeled as “provisionalism,” “fiscalism,” and “traditionalism.”Footnote 22 They prioritized the needs of the Ottoman treasury, the court, the army, and the population of Istanbul, as well as the preservation of the status quo among the empire’s diverse social and economic groups. As such, they encouraged imports over exports to increase state revenues by collecting customs fees and to provide the army and Istanbul’s population with affordable, quality goods.
At the same time, Ottoman officials never consistently promoted the activities of Ottoman merchants and artisans, nor did they protect them from foreign competitors. This policy did not stem from a lack of commercial concerns among Ottoman authorities. Instead, as stressed by Donald Quataert, Edhem Eldem, and İsmail Hakkı Kadı, it arose from the fact that international commerce, especially European-Ottoman trade, never became a significant source of wealth for Ottoman businessmen and the Ottoman state, compared to agricultural production and domestic trade.Footnote 23 Furthermore, until the late eighteenth century, European merchants were numerically few, resided only in a few commercial centers, and did not compete with Ottoman artisans, as they mainly imported manufactured European goods that catered exclusively to the Ottoman elites.
In granting the Capitulations, Ottoman authorities followed fiscal and provisionalist goals. The Ottomans promoted European commerce within the empire to capitalize on customs taxes, acquire strategic goods such as lead, tin, iron, and other metal products for the Ottoman army, and cater to the empire’s wealthy elites by providing them with expensive European-manufactured goods. In particular, like other contemporary European and Asian states, the Ottomans were concerned with retaining bullion within their empire, especially foreign coinage used by European merchants, which circulated widely in Ottoman territories.Footnote 24 They followed this policy, especially after the great debasement of the Ottoman silver currency in 1586 and its high instability in the following decades, until its eventual disappearance in the middle of the following century. This led Ottoman businessmen and authorities to employ foreign currencies in commerce and tax payments. To this end, Ottoman authorities exempted foreign bullion from customs duties charged on European imports.Footnote 25
Apart from economic considerations, international diplomacy played a crucial role in the Ottoman Empire’s decisions to encourage European trade within its borders. Trade-oriented European countries prioritized commercial interests while establishing formal relations with the Ottomans, who pursued both political and commercial interests. In the fiercely competitive political and military context of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottomans sought alliances with powers, above all France and England, against their primary adversaries, the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain. The fact that the texts of the Capitulations contained fewer articles on trade in contrast to political matters shows, from an Ottoman perspective, their mostly political nature.Footnote 26
Together with the protection of merchants, fiscal exemptions, and the repression of piracy, the administration of justice for European merchants was one of the key aspects of a multifaceted Ottoman policy aimed at promoting European commerce and upholding international commitments. Facilitating the enforcement of contracts between European and Ottoman merchants in state tribunals contributed to maintaining the smooth conduct of trade throughout the empire, and serving as evidence of good faith on the part of the Ottomans. Research on Ottoman/European commerce often overlooks the political dimension of Ottoman justice, treating adjudication and legislation related to trade in isolation from the broader political context.
The centuries-long historical entanglement between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice is particularly significant for studying Ottoman commercial policies, including justice administration. Despite several conflicts, the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice maintained intensive political and commercial relations during the early modern period. Uniquely among European powers, Venice hosted large groups of Ottoman merchants, shared a long border zone with the Ottomans in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean, collaborated in maritime matters such as the suppression of piracy, and, until the War of Crete (1644–1669), found itself on the same side as the Ottomans in European and Mediterranean geopolitics against the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs.Footnote 27 Fernand Braudel famously considered Venice and the Ottomans as “complementary enemies”: everything separated them, but vital interests forced them to coexist. They were “condemned” to live together.Footnote 28
Given the frequent and multifaceted exchanges between the two powers, commercial and political matters were closely intertwined in the case of Ottoman-Venetian relations. Every major controversy, ranging from pirate attacks to episodes of mistreatment of merchants by customs officials to lawsuits litigated in Venetian or Ottoman tribunals, could potentially affect both diplomatic and commercial relations.Footnote 29 Furthermore, as Natalie Rothman’s research illustrates, the centuries-long Ottoman-Venetian encounter gave rise to shared institutional arrangements, including the Venetian adoption of Ottoman practices of subject-making and social integration through large elite households.Footnote 30 Ottoman policies of justice toward Venetian merchants represent another example of how inter-imperial relations influenced institutional developments across different states.
Ottoman Justice and the Imperial Council (Divan-ı Hümayun)
The Capitulations and subsequent Ottoman legislation issued ad hoc during the early modern period regulated the legal affairs of European merchants residing in Ottoman cities. Before the nineteenth century, Venetians and other Europeans enjoyed extraterritorial rights exclusively in intra-European controversies, while their disputes with Ottoman subjects, including Muslims and non-Muslims, fell under the jurisdiction of Ottoman courts. European merchants had access to two types of Ottoman Islamic tribunals: the already mentioned qadi courts (mahkeme-i şer‘), which were in every Ottoman town and each district of major cities, and the Imperial Council in the premises of the royal palace (Topkapı Sarayı). Both institutions applied the same sources of law: Hanafi Islamic law, kanun, and local/regional customs (adet or örf), but they differed in their procedures for appeal and their resolution processes.Footnote 31
The Imperial Council fulfilled different functions in the governance of the Ottoman Empire and its relations with foreign powers. It was an Ottoman “cabinet” dealing with major political, military, and economic issues, a legislative assembly that enacted new rules through lawbooks (kanunname), empire-wide imperial decrees (nişan), and specific commandments (hüküm), as well as a court of justice.Footnote 32 The grand vizier (sadrazam), the deputy of the sultan, presided over the assembly, which consisted of high-ranking judicial, military, administrative, and financial officials. Notably, it included two chief judges of the Ottoman Empire, the two kazaskers of the European and Asiatic provinces of the empire. The grand vizier either directly ruled over a matter presented to the Imperial Divan or delegated its resolution to other members of the Council depending on the nature of the dispute.Footnote 33
Following medieval precedents of mezalim jurisdiction (courts of the sovereign) in pre-modern Muslim states, everyone could appeal to the Imperial Council regardless of religion, gender, social status, and state membership.Footnote 34 Unlike qadi courts, the plaintiff had to submit a written petition (arz-ı hal) to the Imperial Council. If the litigants were in Istanbul, they might then appear in court to defend their case. This court later assessed the petitioner’s claims based on the available evidence, and it could either directly rule on a dispute or, more frequently, delegate the task of resolving the controversy to the governors and/or qadis of the district where the conflict had arisen.Footnote 35 Being the sultan’s court, the Imperial Council possessed the strongest enforcement capacity in the Ottoman court system.
Despite the growing research on this institution, its role in the empire’s trade and economic life remains largely unknown. Studies of Ottoman domestic and international commerce focus primarily on qadi courts as the main forums of justice and notarial institutions of the Ottoman Empire. The records of these courts (sicil) are employed exclusively to understand Ottoman commercial life and its institutions, such as credit contracts and partnerships and procedures for solving disputes.Footnote 36 The reason for the neglect of the Imperial Council is the enduring view that Ottoman legal and religious authorities (ehl-i şerʽ) dominated the production of law and judicial administration in social and economic matters. According to this assumption, sultanic authority (siyasa) was restricted to administrative, military, and fiscal affairs, and to public morality; in judicial matters, it only enforced verdicts by qadis, punished corrupted state officials, and handled a few criminal issues in this view.”Footnote 37
Recent scholarship on the Mamluk sultanate, the Ottoman Empire, and Central Asian khanates has substantially reevaluated the extent of the ruler’s authority in legislative and judicial processes.Footnote 38 Scholars have illustrated how rulers expanded the jurisdiction of their courts to handle private disputes arising from debts, inheritance, and family law, which traditionally fell under the purview of Islamic jurisprudence (Arabic. fiqh; Tr. fıkıh) and qadi jurisdiction. In the Ottoman case, the sultans and their administrative and military officials (ehl-i seyf) also intervened in doctrinal matters, choosing specific Hanafi legal opinions addressing empire-wide legal and economic issues, and administering justice in qadi courts across the empire by directing qadis to follow particular procedures and reach specific verdicts. Rulers’ intervention was legitimized as following the “common good” (maslaha) of the whole Muslim community.Footnote 39 Moreover, this new research broadens our understanding of what “Islamic law” might have historically meant. Rather than treating it as exclusively jurisprudence, legal and economic historians have advocated for a pluralist understanding of Islamic law shaped by multiple actors— including jurists, state authorities, and other societal groups— continuously interacting with different legal and economic systems and institutions.Footnote 40
This study presents the first investigation into the Imperial Divan’s role in regulating international commerce in the early modern period. Given that the Capitulations belonged to kanun, the sultans and their deputies enjoyed substantial leeway in enacting new laws on trade exchanges and dispute resolution, two areas that traditionally fell under the purview of Hanafi jurists, and in intervening in legal processes involving European merchants across the empire.
Venetian Affairs in the Imperial Council
The Imperial Divan played a central role in the legal and commercial life of the Venetians and other European merchant groups residing in Ottoman towns. As a legislative body, it issued new regulations regarding the legal and economic standing of Venetian subjects and the conduct of trade within the empire’s borders, encompassing rates of customs duties, exemptions from newly introduced taxes, new court procedures, and prohibited goods. These new laws became part of the regime of Capitulations thereafter. As a judicial organ, the Imperial Council handled any type of controversy that threatened the personal safety and business activities of Venetian subjects in the empire, from mistreatment at the hands of Ottoman officials, banditry, and piracy to private commercial and criminal disputes.
I analyzed the records (789 documents) produced by the Imperial Council concerning Venetian affairs within the Ottoman Empire for the years 1604–1628, which include texts of twenty-three empire-wide edicts (nişan-ı hümayun)Footnote 41 and 765 single orders (Tr. hüküm or firman).Footnote 42 The hüküms are the focus of this study. They were addressed to provincial authorities, such as qadis and governors, and focused on specific matters. Although these concise documents illustrate how the Imperial Council responded to the baili’s petitions, they tell us little about the procedures for petitioning, the litigation of a lawsuit (if it occurred), or the potential negotiations between Venetian and Ottoman authorities that led to the issuance of the imperial order. What follows is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of these hüküms that aims to demonstrate the vast range of matters related to Venetian-Ottoman relations handled by the Imperial Council during the years under study.
Out of the 765 single orders, only fifty (6.5 percent) were concerned about controversies in Istanbul. This is explained by considering the presence of the Venetian embassy in the Ottoman capital, which was intensively engaged in diplomacy with Ottoman authorities, enabling the resolution of local disputes without resorting to the court system. The letters (dispacci) sent by the Venetian ambassador in Istanbul to the Venetian government include numerous examples of private conflicts, primarily commercial and criminal cases, that occurred in Istanbul and were brought before the Imperial Divan, but were resolved outside of court and not recorded in the court’s archives.Footnote 43
As Table 1 shows, most orders (36 percent, 275 cases) addressed episodes, from a Venetian perspective, of mistreatment of Venetian subjects at the hands of Ottoman officials throughout the empire, such as the imposition of unlawful rates of customs duties and states taxes from which Venetians were exempted, imprisonment of merchants, and the confiscation of goods. The Imperial Council’s primary role in addressing the misconduct of state officials against Venetian subjects underscores one of its key responsibilities: scrutinizing administrative, military, and judicial officials.
Table 1. Types of “Venetian affairs” handled by the Imperial Council (1604–1628)
The second group of matters (19 percent, 143 documents) comprises general instructions to Istanbul and provincial authorities regarding a variety of issues, including customs duty rates, exemption from newly introduced state taxes, market regulations, prohibited goods, consular authority, and legal procedures in lawsuits involving Venetian merchants. In these cases, the Imperial Council either introduced new rules or guided local authorities on how to address specific matters by reiterating previous orders or articles from the Capitulations. In this context, the institution functioned as a legislative body by issuing new rulings that subsequently became part of the system of Capitulations.
Other matters handled by the Imperial Council included the granting of travel documents, piracy, private disputes, borderland issues, and church affairs. In ninety-four cases (12 percent), the bailo appealed to this institution to receive a travel document (yol hükmü) for himself, other Venetian officials, and merchants traveling in specific areas of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans. Borderland issues in the Balkans, such as irregular warfare and jurisdictional conflicts, as well as Ottoman piracy in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, accounted for 16.5 percent of all imperial orders. Private commercial and criminal disputes, the focus of this study, were only 10 percent of all the Venetian affairs managed by the Imperial Council. Lastly, the protection of Catholic Churches and clergymen in Jerusalem was another source of Venetian complaints.Footnote 44
The variety of Venetian affairs handled by the Imperial Council exemplifies the political economy of Ottoman/Venetian relations in the first half of the seventeenth century. Until the onset of the War of Crete in 1645, the Ottoman Empire had a vested interest in preserving peace with Venice and fostering Venetian commerce within its dominions. Although Venetian trade in the Ottoman Empire experienced a general decline compared to other European powers in the first half of the seventeenth century, it remained an essential source of customs taxes for Ottoman officials and it supplied the empire’s elites with high-quality, luxurious goods.Footnote 45 Furthermore, between 1600 and 1640, the Ottoman Empire fought extensive, financially draining conflicts against the Austrian Habsburgs and the Safavid Empire while also facing several military rebellions and budget crises that undermined the sultan’s legitimacy.Footnote 46 These crises favored maintaining peace with Venice. The protection of Venetian shipping from Ottoman pirates, the punishment of soldiers who raided Venetian territories and state officials who did not abide by the fiscal, commercial, and legal privileges of Venetian merchants, the enforcement of contracts in courts of law, and the protection of Catholic Churches constitute distinct but interrelated elements of this Ottoman policy of promoting peace and trade with Venice.
Petitioning the Sultan
As shown in figure 1, there is a crucial difference in procedures applied to Venetians in the Imperial Council and qadi courts. Venetian subjects could not appeal individually to the Imperial Divan. They had first to communicate their grievances to the Venetian ambassador in Istanbul (Italian. bailo, plural. baili), who later submitted their petitions to the Imperial Council and negotiated a resolution of their cases with Ottoman officials.Footnote 47 This procedure differed in qadi courts, where a Venetian applied individually or was brought there without the intervention of ambassadors and consuls. Given the Venetian ambassador’s role in petitioning the court and negotiating a resolution of the dispute there, any private claim brought to the imperial Council by a Venetian merchant ceased to be an exclusively legal matter and became an issue of international diplomacy. Therefore, examining the resolution of the legal suits of Venetians handled by the Imperial Council allows us to observe how interstate relations and commercial policies affected the administration of Islamic justice in Ottoman courts.
Figure 1. The Petitioning Process.
Producing New Court Procedures
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the authorities of the Imperial Council promulgated new legislation on court procedures and jurisdiction for lawsuits involving both Venetian merchants and other Europeans. These new regulations appeared either as individual orders that were subsequently incorporated in the texts of the Capitulations or as articles of the Capitulations that were confirmed through imperial orders. They aimed to enhance the legal standing of Venetian merchants in Ottoman Islamic courts. As both non-Muslims and legally foreigners (in Hanafi law, they were called müstemin, literally, “the holder of a safe conduct,” aman) at court, they faced a crucial legal bias: their testimony on both Muslims and non-Muslim Ottoman subjects (zimmi) was not accepted in court proceedings. In Hanafi law, oral testimony was the most important evidence in court, while documents were only litigation instruments.Footnote 48 Therefore, Venetian merchants could neither testify on behalf of their Ottoman partners, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, nor use written evidence produced by Ottoman Christians, Jews, and European individuals, tribunals, and notary offices to support their case. These two issues constituted a noticeable disability for European businessmen and frequently led to complaints from European diplomats, merchants, and travelers in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 49
Legal Proof
Ottoman legislative action addressed the thorny issue of admissible legal evidence in court proceedings and established new rules on oral testimony and written proof. Starting with the early sixteenth century, the Ottomans introduced in the Capitulations the provision that a Venetian, despite being legally a foreigner (müstemin), could testify against an Ottoman non-Muslim regardless of sectarian affiliation. The Venetian Capitulations of 1517 state:
There is a dispute between Venetians and non-Muslim Ottomans (harâçgüzar). The Venetian produce witnesses residing in locus (ikâmet idüp), but, at court, the Ottoman subjects maintain that only the testimony of local non-Muslims is admissible while that of those Venetian Christians is unlawful. Since all the non-Muslims (kefere) belong to a single community (kefere millet-i vâhide), I decree that in a lawsuit, the Venetian party can bring to court any non-Muslim, regardless of sect (sınıf), and his testimony holds validity according to Sharia (şerʽ-i şerif-i nebevî muktezâsınca).Footnote 50
By declaring any non-Muslim—regardless of sectarian identity, therefore including Orthodox, Catholic, and Eastern Christians, and, theoretically, also Jews—as a member of a universal community (millet) of infidels, the Capitulations allowed Venetian subjects to produce any witness at court, including a Venetian one, as long as he “resided” in the town where the controversy originated. Permitting Venetian merchants to testify on behalf of Ottoman Christians and Jews significantly improved the standing of Venetian merchants in disputes with Orthodox and Catholic Greeks and Sephardic Jews, who constituted the majority of their business partners in the empire.
The text of the Capitulations emphasizes that this new decree was based on Islamic law. However, several Ottoman jurists rejected it on the grounds that it violated the Hanafi prohibition against the testimony of foreign non-Muslims. For instance, in the mid-sixteenth century, the renowned Ebussuud Efendi (d. 1574), the empire’s chief jurisconsult (şeyhüislam) under Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), issued a fatwa (a non-binding legal opinion) declaring this ruling as illegitimate (na-meşru) and claiming that uninformed scribes (cehele-i küttâb) were responsible for its creation.Footnote 51 Nevertheless, the testimony of Venetians and other Europeans became accepted in qadi courts throughout the empire, and the Imperial Divan reiterated this new rule whenever a local qadi refused to implement it.Footnote 52 The disagreement between the sultan and his representatives and jurists over the permissibility of the testimony of foreigners is one of the many examples of friction between sultanic policy and juristic doctrine over the meaning of Islamic law and sources of legal authority.Footnote 53
Apart from oral testimony, starting in the mid-sixteenth century, imperial orders and the texts of the Capitulations began to include two clauses on written proof. First, they urged the Venetians to register commercial exchanges (beyʿ ü şirȃ), surety contracts (kefȃlet), and any other legal and economic transactions that fell under Islamic law (umȗr-ı şerʿiyye) in qadi courts, and to obtain court documents (hüccet) that recorded these transactions. Second, if an Ottoman subject sued a Venetian merchant over a contract or any business dealings, he or she had to provide documents produced by a qadi related to such dealings and was not permitted to employ witnesses alone. For instance, an imperial order issued in 1588 to the governor and chief qadi of Cyprus states:
A Venetian merchant who engages with someone in my Well-Protected Domains in matters of selling, buying, guarantees, and other issues administered by Sharia should go to the qadi, have him register the transactions in his safeguarded book (sicil), and obtain a certificate (hüccet) in accordance with the established customs and imperial legislation (âdet ve kanun üzre). If a dispute arises over such matters, the qadi should act in accordance with the aforementioned documents. If the Ottoman plaintiffs do not possess written evidence and produce false witnesses (şâhid-i zur) residing in the same locality, they cannot demand anything from the Venetian merchants.Footnote 54
By making it mandatory to possess documents to sue Venetian merchants, Ottoman officials addressed a common complaint raised by Venetian ambassadors, the use of supposedly false Muslim witnesses against Venetian subjects.Footnote 55 Such rules substantially enhanced the position of Venetian merchants in Ottoman courts and encouraged the production and use of documents in the commercial life of Ottoman cities.
As the aforementioned imperial order shows, Ottoman authorities legitimized the new rule by referring to “customs and sultanic law,” two sources of Sharia. The reference to “customs” (adet)— interpreted here as either “customary practice of the day” or “imperial customs”Footnote 56—to justify new legal practices was a common strategy employed by Ottoman administrators and Muslim jurists.Footnote 57 The chief jurisconsults of the Ottoman Empire authorized the new requirement of possessing documents in court proceedings through fatwas issued during the resolution of trade disputes involving Venetians and other European merchants.Footnote 58
Some scholars suggest that the new regulation on the use of documents in commercial disputes borrowed from contemporary European legal systems, an early example of “Westernization” of the empire’s legal and economic system, and was, consequently, “un-Islamic.”Footnote 59 This argument is incorrect for at least three reasons. First, there is no conclusive evidence that the stipulation of possessing documents was borrowed from contemporary Europe. Such rules appeared as early as the late fifteenth century in imperial orders issued on behalf of the Ottoman tributary state of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), and from the 1570s onwards, it was included in the Capitulations granted to Western European powers.Footnote 60 Furthermore, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, jurists in Western Europe debated the reliability of documents as evidence in court, and written proof did not have undisputed superiority over oral testimony in legal proceedings.Footnote 61 Some states required written documentation in cases involving large monetary claims, yet attitudes toward the use of writing across Western Europe varied considerably depending on the specialization of particular tribunals (for example, commercial versus ordinary civil courts) and on broader political and economic circumstances.Footnote 62
Second, the views on writing among Hanafi jurists were not unanimous across the centuries and over the vast domains under Muslim rule. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Hanafi jurists from Central Asia validated documents issued by commercial and political elites, even those lacking supporting witnesses, on the grounds that they were produced by well-known and preeminent institutions and persons in a specific moment. These documents included letters from the caliphs, personal records of moneychangers and merchants, and edicts issued by governors, all of which followed well-known notarial conventions.Footnote 63 Therefore, well before the Ottoman Capitulations, some Hanafi jurists had already accepted documents uncorroborated by witnesses under specific conditions.
Third, the growing importance of documents in the commercial life of the Ottoman Empire mirrored contemporary Ottoman attitudes toward writing and safeguarding documents related to state administration and private economic transactions. Recent research by Guy Burak, Reem Meshal, and Heather Ferguson demonstrates that the Ottomans developed new archival practices and established new record-keeping institutions, including the archives of the central Ottoman administration and those of the qadis. Jurists associated with the Ottoman dynasty legitimized the validity of documents produced by these institutions with arguments drawn from the Hanafi tradition.Footnote 64
Rather than being examples of “Westernization” or “secularization” of Ottoman economic life, the new rules over legal proof are evidence of an active Ottoman response to the needs of international merchants. By allowing foreign Venetians to testify on Ottoman non-Muslims and proscribing the use of documents, Ottoman authorities enhanced the legal standing of Venetian merchants vis-à-vis Ottoman subjects in Ottoman courts, aiming to facilitate dispute settlement and, thereby, promote Venetian trade within the empire. In this regard, the Ottoman policy of granting procedural privileges to selected groups of foreign merchants also mirrored the contemporary Venetian strategy of conferring legal privileges on specific groups of Ottoman merchants whose trading activities the Venetian authorities aimed to encourage, above all, Ottoman subjects.
In 1541, following the conclusion of the Venetian-Ottoman War of 1537–1540, for the first time, the Venetian government permitted Ottoman Jews (called ebrei levantini) to reside and trade in Venice. It stipulated that both intra-group disputes and those involving non-Jews fell under the jurisdiction of the Venetian Board of Trade (Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia), which, among its many functions, also served as a commercial tribunal.Footnote 65 This court applied a summary procedure known as the “mercantile procedure” (It. alla mercantile), which entailed fast and cost-effective trials, the prohibition of appeals and lawyers, and a preference for written evidence over oral testimony.Footnote 66 Although it was the default procedure in commercial courts throughout Western Europe, Venetian authorities granted summary justice only to selected groups of merchants. By 1625, all Ottoman merchants in the city, including Jews, Christians, and Muslims, had obtained the privilege of summary procedure, whereas English merchants, the main rivals of the Venetians in the Levant, had to wait until 1698.Footnote 67
This example of convergence between Ottoman and Venetian policies of justice toward international merchants is evidence of the bilateral nature of Ottoman-Venetian political and commercial relations and, more broadly, of the historical entanglement between the two states during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The initiatives of Ottoman and Venetian officials to foster international trade followed the ebbs and flows of diplomatic relations, and they mutually influenced one another.
Court Hierarchy and Jurisdiction
In addition to legal evidence, other legal innovations focused on court jurisdiction aimed to define the types of Venetian/Ottoman disputes that would be handled by either the qadi courts or the Imperial Council. In the early modern Ottoman Empire, there existed no formal hierarchy between different forums of justice. Litigants could bring their case before any qadi courts, to the Imperial Council, and the assemblies of provincial governors (eyalet divanı). The primary difference among these legal institutions was their power of enforcement.Footnote 68
First, from the early seventeenth century onwards, both the Capitulations and imperial orders stipulated that a qadi could not hear private lawsuits against Venetian merchants with claims exceeding 5,000 aspers (akçe). Instead, these cases were required to be transferred to the Imperial Council. This ruling created a formal hierarchy between the Imperial Council and the qadi courts concerning the legal matters of Venetian subjects. Considering the substantial devaluation of the aspers from the late sixteenth century onwards, such a ruling must have been inapplicable to any case brought to the Imperial Council involving an equal amount of capital, primarily if it originated from the provinces.Footnote 69 Nevertheless, this new rule greatly benefited Venetian litigants because it allowed important commercial cases with substantial sums of money to be heard in Istanbul in the Imperial Council, where the Venetian ambassador could intervene in the resolution process on behalf of the Venetian party.Footnote 70
Second, the Capitulations substantially expanded the jurisdiction of both qadi courts and the Imperial Council to encompass disputes originating outside the Ottoman Empire, as well as intra-Venetian cases. According to Hanafi law, Muslim judicial authorities could not hear legal suits that arose from business transactions conducted outside the Muslim world (“the Abode of War, Tr. dârülharb), even those involving Muslims, since those dealings had taken place outside the jurisdiction of Muslim legal authorities.Footnote 71 Similarly, Muslim legal authorities could not adjudicate controversies between Venetians because, being legally müstemin, they were subjects of a foreign non-Muslim ruler, with whom the Muslim sovereign had established peaceful political and commercial relations. Fatwa collections (mecmua) authored by Ottoman muftis during the early modern period contain many instances of fatwas upholding the Hanafi prohibition against adjudicating disputes between Ottoman subjects and foreigners over commercial dealings performed outside the Ottoman Empire, as well as between non-Ottoman Christians.Footnote 72
If enforced, this prohibition would have been particularly detrimental to Ottoman-Venetian trade due to its bilateral nature. In contrast with other European powers, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ottoman merchants from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds regularly traveled to Venice and its territories in the Balkans and the Levant to conduct trade as a matter of routine. Venice was likely the largest center of Ottoman commercial deployment in Western Europe. From the fifteenth century onward, the Venetian Capitulations included a bilateral provision requiring Ottoman authorities to prosecute Ottoman subjects who conducted business in Venetian territory but absconded to the Ottoman Empire without repaying their debts to Venetian subjects. A corresponding obligation applied to Venetian authorities, who were required to pursue Venetian merchants who fled the empire without honoring their commercial commitments to Ottoman partners.Footnote 73 The text of the Capitulations of 1604 states: “If a Venetian comes to my Well-Protected Domains and buys goods from an Ottoman subject but does not pay them entirely and flees the empire, I will issue an imperial order to request justice on this matter, and Venetian authorities must find the Venetian debtor, and force him to pay his Ottoman creditor. If an Ottoman subjects come to Venice, buys goods from a Venetian merchant, but returns to the empire without paying them, after Ottoman authorities investigate and certify his debt, he should pay his Venetian partner (sâbit olan hakkı aliverile).”
This bilateral rule established a trans-imperial system of debt recovery between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, in which the authorities of these states committed themselves to prosecuting their subjects who failed to honor business commitments with merchants from the other state. Such a system is unique to Ottoman-Venetian trade because the bilateral rule on debt recovery across political boundaries does not appear in the Capitulations granted to other European powers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Footnote 74 It addressed a specific problem affecting Venetian-Ottoman commercial relations, namely the flight of debtors and defaulters across the territories of these neighboring powers. Furthermore, this rule serves as another indication of how the political economy of Ottoman-Venetian trade influenced the application of justice in state tribunals in both states.Footnote 75
The Imperial Council enforced this ruling in commercial disputes. For instance, in 1605, an Ottoman Christian (zimmi) named Covan from Ioannina (Tr. Yanya) in Epirus traveled to Venice to trade, where he purchased a quantity of goods from a Venetian merchant named Covan veled-i Tedarilu. He remained indebted to the latter of 528 Dutch thalers (esedi guruş) and fled from Venice without honoring his debt. Covan possessed documents (temessükât)Footnote 76 recording his credit. He appointed a legal representative (vekil) named Koluna to travel to Ioannina to recover his credit and appealed to the bailo to secure an imperial order on his behalf. According to the Ottoman order, the qadi of Ioannina should investigate Covan’s claim considering the documents mentioned above and if his claim is proven, Covan should pay Koluna.Footnote 77
In another lawsuit in 1605, the Venetian noble (beyzade) Alvize Kontarin was owed 2,826 Venetian ducats by another Venetian named Antun. Alvize held a private document (temessük) written by Antun regarding his debt. At that time, Antun had become a tax farmer of a saltpan (tuz emini) located in the seaside town of Makarska in Ottoman Bosnia. To recover his credit, Alvize appointed a representative to go to Bosnia and petitioned the bailo to obtain an imperial order to facilitate the mission. The Imperial Council issued a rescript addressed to both the governor-general (beylerbeyi) and the chief qadi of Bosnia, commanding them to bring Antun to court, where the qadi had to investigate the dispute in the presence of Alvize’s agent and pass judgment.Footnote 78
This rare example of intra-Venetian dispute (I found four instances of this practiceFootnote 79) handled by Ottoman authorities demonstrates how the Imperial Council could expand the jurisdiction of Ottoman courts even to include controversies between Venetian subjects. As we have seen, according to the Capitulations, intra-Venetian legal suits fell under the jurisdiction of Venetian ambassadors and consuls. However, especially in provincial settings, Venetian diplomats might have struggled to prosecute Venetian subjects and, therefore, had to rely on Ottoman authorities. The Ottoman involvement in intra-Venetian disputes demonstrates how imperatives of international relations influenced the workings of Ottoman courts, prioritizing the upkeep of bilateral commercial ties over the formalism of Hanafi jurisprudence.
Intervention in Legal Proceedings
Apart from elaborating new rules on court procedure and jurisdiction, the Imperial Council played an important role in resolving commercial disputes involving Venetian merchants throughout the Ottoman Empire. While it rarely adjudicated these cases,Footnote 80 the Imperial Council intervened in the adjudicative processes of qadi courts by instructing qadis on how to handle specific lawsuits, demanding the enforcement of previously issued sentences, and reviewing court verdicts. In this capacity, it exercised supervisory authority over qadi courts throughout the empire. In addition, its rulings were sent to both qadis and local governors, who became involved in the resolution of lawsuits in qadi courts by overseeing their proceedings and enforcing their sentences.
The external supervision of judicial processes by Ottoman administrative and military officials in Istanbul undoubtedly influenced the resolution of litigation in a qadi court, favoring the Venetian party. Given the role of Venetian-Ottoman diplomacy in Istanbul, what started as a private dispute between businessmen evolved into a matter of international diplomacy. Although an imperial order did not constitute judgment itself, it greatly favored its holders, directing the decisions of qadis toward a particular verdict.Footnote 81 The absence of additional Venetian complaints after the issuance of such orders also strongly suggests a settlement in favor of the Venetian side.
When instructing qadis on how to handle a specific dispute, the Imperial Divan usually commanded the latter to investigate a complaint by considering particular types of evidence, such as the records of qadi courts or private documents related to a commercial transaction. For instance, in 1615, in Chios (Tr. Sakız), the Venetian merchant Gutardu veled-i Biresu was owed 12,795 by a local Christian named Sevastan veled-i Muratu for an unspecified business transaction. Sevastan died, and his heirs divided his belongings among themselves. Gutardo possessed a document sealed by a qadi (mühürlü tezkere) certifying his credit. For reasons unknowable from the sources, he did not manage to retrieve his credit from Sevastan’s heirs in Chios through the local legal authorities, and, consequently, he appealed to the bailo in Istanbul. The bailo lodged a complaint with the Imperial Council and obtained an imperial order instructing the qadi of Chios to summon to court the heirs of Sevastan, investigate the case relying on the document mentioned above, and pass judgment.Footnote 82
In addition to delegating a lawsuit to qadis, the Imperial Council could instruct qadis, as well as provincial governors, to enforce a sentence previously issued by a qadi that had not been implemented. Due to local circumstances, such as power dynamics between Ottoman officials and local elites, qadis could sometimes struggle to enforce their rulings.Footnote 83 For instance, in 1622, Hacı Ahmed bin Osman, of Aleppo, owed a debt of 1,800 Spanish eight-reals (riyali guruş) to the Venetian merchant Mihail veled-i Marku, who possessed a hüccet issued by the qadi of Aleppo confirming his credit. Due to unknown circumstances, Mihail was unable to collect his credit locally and applied to the Imperial Council, which commanded the governor (beylerbeyi) and the qadi of Aleppo to ensure Hacı Ahmed paid Mihail. Afterwards, Hacı Ahmed became insolvent (müflis), resulting in his imprisonment. However, he was freed without making any arrangement to settle the debt owed to Mihail, as mandated by Islamic bankruptcy regulations. After appealing again to the Imperial Council, Mihail obtained a second commandment that compelled Hacı Ahmed to pay him or, if he declined to comply, to stand trial against Mihail in the Imperial Council itself.Footnote 84
The Imperial Council’s direct intervention in legal suits heard by qadis was more pronounced in disputes involving substantial monetary claims, which usually entailed extensive diplomatic negotiations between Venetian ambassadors and consuls and Ottoman authorities. For instance, between 1606 and 1608, the bailo Ottaviano Bon (office 1605–1608) and the Venetian consul in Egypt became embroiled in a bankruptcy affair involving a Venetian merchant, Niccolò Algarotti, and numerous Jewish and Muslim creditors in Cairo. According to both Venetian and Ottoman sources, Niccolò was solely responsible for his bankruptcy, as he wasted the capital entrusted to him by his senior business partners in Venice on gambling and activities unrelated to trade. In 1606, he attempted to settle his debts by selling goods, including Venetian fabrics, glass, and refined corals, that he had recently received from his partners in Venice. Before the chief qadi of Cairo, he also converted to Islam, perhaps hoping to avoid prosecution by Venetian officials in the empire since, as a Muslim, he would have enjoyed a stronger legal standing in Ottoman courts vis-à-vis his Venetian Christian associates.
The Venetian consul in Cairo attempted to prevent the sale of the merchant’s goods and had them stored in a sealed warehouse in the port of Alexandria (İskenderiye). However, Niccolò’s creditors turned to the chief qadi of Cairo and to the Council of the governor-general (beylerbeyi) of Egypt to collect them. Over the following two years, at the behest of the Venetian government and Niccolò’s partners in Venice, the bailo submitted numerous petitions to the Imperial Council and obtained seven rescripts ordering the safe delivery of the commodities to the consul. Enforcing these directives proved difficult since Niccolò’s creditors petitioned the Imperial Council through agents dispatched to Istanbul in 1607 and 1608. The bailo resolved the affair by negotiating with both the representatives of the creditors in Istanbul and with the Grand Vizier Kuyucu Murad Pasha (office 1606–1611), who, at the bailo’s request, did not issue imperial orders in favor of the creditors.Footnote 85
Lastly, another important instance of the Imperial Council’s intervention on behalf of Venetian merchants was the review of sentences issued by the qadis. The legality and the actual historical occurrence of this practice are a matter of debate among legal scholars. Highlighting the paucity of evidence on legal review in the Ottoman Empire,Footnote 86 some maintain that, according to Hanafi jurisprudence, the verdict of a qadi was final, a view also shared by European ambassadors and consuls in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 87 Others illustrate how, since the medieval period, Hanafi jurists elaborated specific conditions for a qadi’s verdict to be reviewed, for instance, in case of false testimony, and argue that the Ottoman authorities created a hierarchical legal system, with the Imperial Council at the top, that permitted appeal against a qadi’s decisions.Footnote 88 The Venetian-Ottoman disputes provide important evidence for this debate, illustrating instances of legal review by the Imperial Council and the particular conditions under which it occurred.
For instance, in early 1616, Covan Turigla, an Ottoman Christian (zimmi) living in Istanbul’s district of Galata, sued a Venetian merchant named Ijepu before a deputy qadi (naib) in Istanbul over a debt-related dispute.Footnote 89 A Jewish interpreter translated the court proceedings to Ijepu, which violated the article of the Capitulations that prescribed that a Venetian dragoman (a diplomatic interpreter) be present at court for the qadi to hear lawsuits involving Venetian subjects.Footnote 90 The deputy qadi ruled against Ijepu, ordering his imprisonment for his debt. Complaining about the illegality of the procedures employed in this trial, the bailo obtained an imperial order instructing the qadi of Istanbul to send Ijepu to the Imperial Council along with a Venetian dragoman to have the case heard again by this institution. As this case shows, the legal basis for overturning a verdict issued by a qadi was the violation of a specific ruling of the Capitulations. Only an imperial commandment enabled legal review. Again, upholding international commitments, which fell under the purview of sultanic authority, took precedence over the formalism of Hanafi jurisprudence that severely constrained the possibility of legal review.
Overall, by expediting debt recovery and correcting unlawful legal procedures in qadi courts, the Imperial Council aimed to facilitate the enforcement of contracts between Venetian and Ottoman merchants. The intervention of this institution in local judicial processes was solicited by Venetian ambassadors, highlighting the importance of interstate relations in influencing Ottoman judicial administration. In the context of Venetian-Ottoman relations, state involvement in judicial processes was reciprocal. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman sultans frequently complained about what they perceived as the mistreatment of Ottoman merchants by Venetian merchants, customs officials, and judicial authorities. At least for significant commercial and criminal controversies, Ottoman authorities sent imperial letters (name-i hümayun) to the Venetian government, asking to address the grievances of Ottoman merchants and punish wrongdoers. They also organized numerous diplomatic missions in Venice on behalf of aggrieved Ottoman merchants.Footnote 91
This Ottoman involvement, justified in the name of upholding the Capitulations, led to the arrangement of trials—or the review of previous sentences—between Ottoman and Venetian litigants in specific Venetian courts and under the strict supervision of the Venetian government, which feared potential diplomatic fallout if the Ottoman party was not satisfied by court procedures and the outcome of the trials.Footnote 92 The Ottoman influence on the judicial processes of Venetian courts mirrored the diplomatic efforts of the Venetian baili in Istanbul when they applied to the Imperial Council on behalf of Venetian merchants embroiled in legal suits with Ottoman merchants in qadi courts throughout the empire.
Conclusions
Offering favorable treatment in state courts to foreign merchants was a widespread practice among rulers in late medieval and early modern Europe and the Middle East who sought to promote international commerce within their realms. The Byzantine emperors and Mamluk sultans, town magistrates in Venice, Florence, Bruges, and Antwerp, allowed special procedures of dispute resolution to be applied in lawsuits involving foreign merchants: they typically included the acceptance of different types of legal evidence and foreign customs and business institutions, and the creation of specialized courts to handle the disputes of international merchants. These measures aimed to facilitate contract enforcement between businessmen from different political and religious communities by enhancing the legal standing of foreign merchants vis-à-vis local businessmen and reducing the formalism of positive law. We can understand the Ottoman politics of justice toward European merchants in the early modern period as mirroring those of previous and contemporary European and Muslim states, and, above all, early modern Venice. In the Ottoman case, long-standing narratives about the disinterest of Ottoman authorities toward long-distance trade, the inflexibility of Sharia in judicial and commercial matters, and Ottoman decline have long overshadowed the multifaceted and rich history of Ottoman engagement with international trade.
The study of Venetian legal affairs handled by the Imperial Council illustrates the dynamism of Islamic legal and economic systems during a period of global trade development and increased diplomatic engagement between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire. To attract foreign merchants into the empire and maintain peaceful diplomatic relations with a select few European powers, the Ottoman government introduced significant innovations in court jurisdiction and procedures and promoted dispute settlements that favored international merchants. These legal innovations are evidence of endogenous change within the Ottoman legal system, occurring under specific international and domestic circumstances, including commercial developments and imperial entanglements. The fact that these policies of justice occurred during a period of Ottoman political and military ascendancy contradicts narratives that associate the granting of legal and economic privileges to foreigners with Ottoman weakness and Westernization.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professors Francesca Trivellato, Alan Mikhail, Lauren Benton, Giancarlo Casale, Abdurrahman Atçıl, Boğaç Ergene, Jun Akiba, Nora Barakat, Yavuz Aykan, Choon Hwee Koh, Güneş Işıksel, Simona Cerutti, and all the participants in the online Ottoman Political Economy Workshop for reading different versions of this piece and providing helpful feedback.
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