The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System

Download or read book The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System written by Maurits van den Boogert and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pre-modern Western sources generally claim that European mercantile communities in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed legal autonomy, and were thus effectively immune to Ottoman justice. At the same time, they report numerous disputes with Ottoman officials over jurisdiction (“avanias”), which seems to contradict this claim, the discrepancy being considered proof of the capriciousness of the Ottoman legal system. Modern studies of Ottoman-European relations in this period have tended uncritically to accept this interpretation, which is challenged in this book.