Western Merchants and Ottoman Law. The Legal Section of the Manuscript Turc 130 from the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris (original) (raw)
Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, Académie Roumaine, Institut d’Études Sud-Est Européennes, Bucarest, XLVI, 1-4, 2008, pp. 253-268
After 1569, in Islamic-Ottoman legal and diplomatic view, the Frenchmen were considered 'beneficiaries of temporary protection' (müste'min) during their stay in the Ottoman dominions. According to certain legal opinion (fetvâ) from the Manuscrit Turc 130 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), one can distinguish more situations in which they were abusively made captives and their merchandise were robbed: a) When the Frenchmen were navigating on their own vessels into and from Ottoman dominions; b) When the Frenchmen were engaged with their ships in a carrying trade of 'enemy' merchandise (harbî metâ'); c) When the Frenchmen were navigating on a ship (harbî gemisi) belonging to a Western power, which was enemy to the Ottoman empire; d) When the Frenchmen were implied in carrying on provisions, forbidden or not, to an enemy country.
Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern law, 2013
Co-Founding Editor of the Journal of Comparative Law. This article shares a research base with Foster, N.H.D. (2012) ' "Змішані правові системи" арабського Близького Сходу ('The "Mixed Systems" of the Arab Middle East')' (3-4) Порівняльне Правознавство (Comparative Jurisprudence) 283 (in Ukrainian), and the acknowledgements expressed there are repeated here. In addition, the author is very grateful to: Aharon Layish and Ron Shaham for their organisation of the International Workshop entitled 'Islamic Law Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century' , 19-21 October 2009 at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, for their comments on a previous draft (subsequently expanded to the set of articles mentioned below) and for their kind, patient and erudite support; the discussant at the Workshop, Haim Gerber; colleagues attending the Workshop for their comments; an anonymous reader; Avi Rubin for sight of his draft work and several references; Omar Cheta for sight of his draft work and permission to cite correspondence; and Olivia Foster Vander Elst for her review of readability and detail. The author is solely responsible for any faults which remain. Some terms in the academic disciplines touched upon are controversial in academic circles. Those chosen for use in this article have been chosen for the sake of convenience, and no preference on the author's part for a particular term should be implied from that use. A simplified system of transliteration from Arabic to Roman script has been used. Dates are AD. All internet sources were last accessed on
Shari‘ah Law and Capitulations Governing the Non-Muslim Foreign Merchants in the Ottoman Empire
Sociology of Islam, 2017
Muslim-non-Muslim relations have a long and checkered history. The concept of Siyar (Muslim code governing international-interfaith relations) developed by early Muslim jurists, provided the legal basis for coexistence with ‘foreignness’ and ‘foreigners. Yet, the classical norms of Siyar were seldom strictly implemented by Muslim rulers. Thus, Capitulations, governing the presence and movement of foreign merchants and diplomats in the Ottoman empire, increasingly broke with the classical norms of Siyar in their successive incarnations. However, there have been few investigations of how the religious establishment’s stance vis-à-vis Capitulations evolved over time. The present study is a modest attempt to fill this gap. The paper departs from essentialist conceptions of Shariah Law, and examines how successive Ottoman jurists interpreted Siyar and accommodated it to the changing political and economic realities. Our investigation bears out the non-essentialist position that Islamic l...
Turcica, 2015
Despite the numerous studies on the Ottoman capitulations in the past few decades, few of them focused on their role in regulating the trade of Ottoman subjects with Western Europe during the early modern era. Thus we know very little about the legal regime which enabled numerous merchants from the sultan’s realm to go to a Western European state and trade there without hindrance. The present paper aims at shedding some light on this legal regime by analyzing two important disputes between some Ottoman merchants and some Venetian subjects and authorities which took place during the 1580s. The Republic of Venice, given its large Ottoman mercantile community, represents an excellent context for this topic. The disputes discussed in this study show us that the aggrieved merchants, in their request of redress, followed precise legal procedures and managed to enlist the backing of many high-ranking Ottomans. Furthermore, the resolution of these cases, which entailed long and complicated negotiations between the Ottoman and the Venetian authorities over the contents of the capitulations, shows that the latter constituted only a set of general rules for the conduction of trade and that the application on the ground of their provisions always involved a great deal of diplomacy.
Osmanlı Araştırmaları/ The Journal of Ottoman Studies, 2024
The imperial capitulation (‘ahdname-i hümayun) granted to France in 1604 has been widely used as a foundation for studies on early-modern Ottoman-French diplomacy and commercial relations. However, in the absence of an original document, scholars have depended upon existing Ottoman-Turkish copies, and mostly on problematic, outdated translations. Relying on a newly-surfaced authenticated copy of the document, this paper will conduct a diplomatic analysis of this often-cited charter of privileges, arguing that while it contained several important new articles, most of its features were reproduced from preceding ‘ahdnames. The second part of this paper contains a transliteration of the document, where the authenticated copy is compared with the other known versions, as well as an English translation, thus aiming to correct errors present in previous editions and studies.
Abstract The period after 1839 is known as the Tanzimat (restructuring) era. The significance of this era is that the initiative for modernization came from government officials with the compliance of the sultan. Economically, the Tanzimat, which marked the beginning of one of the most important turning points of Turkish-Ottoman history, has been intensively discussed after its proclamation in 1839. The second half of the Ottoman nineteenth century observed clear “Eurocentric Business Enterprises” in Ottoman economic and commercial life, consisting mostly of railway projects, as European centred commercial relations within international markets expanded. Reforms and changes in the commercial law system after the Tanzimat saw an increase in market efficiency of Levantine merchants in Ottoman domestic and foreign trade. Among these Levantine merchants, who were effective in Ottoman trade life, one the Hanson family, of English origin, attracted attention with their commercial relations and economic activities. Accordingly, Charles Simpson Hanson (1803-1874) who came to Istanbul for the first time in 1825 and settled for the purpose of commerce, along with his son Henry James Hanson (1838-1935), who was born in Istanbul, together engaged in several commercial fields namely finance, railway construction, imports and exports. Due to their wide range of business interests, the Hanson Family and their company became prominent among all the Levantine merchants that played a key role in 19th century Ottoman trade. This presentation examines different business practices within which Levantine merchants were involved in order to understand how they used Ottoman economic institutions as businessmen between the years 1839 and 1880. It aims to answer broad questions about the Hanson Family’s role in Ottoman domestic and foreign trade by using primary sources in the Ottoman Archive, the British National Archives and Oxford University Saint Anthony’s College Middle East Centre Archive. It will additionally draw from English and Turkish publications belonging to a forementioned period. These business manners which were applied by the Hanson Company shed light upon the activities of Levantine Merchants in the Ottoman Empire and their connections with statesmen through business partnerships after the Tanzimat era
This study analyzes existing literature by examining the ahdname of 1612, which has yet to have been explored in the literature. The ahdnames granted to England established the framework for the rights and obligations associated with the navigation of ships flying the English flag in Ottoman waters, as well as the movement, residence, and commercial activities of English merchants within Ottoman domains. After the first ahdname was granted to England in 1580 during the reign of Sultan Murad III (1574-1595), the scope of future ahdnames was expanded with later additions. This study will first briefly introduce the ahdnames granted to England and then elaborate on the process leading up to the Ahdname of 1612. Despite not being particularly groundbreaking in terms of its articles, the ahdname of 1612 is quite valuable due to the additions and revisions to previous ahdnames. Moreover, this ahdname provides a crucial opportunity upon examination with reference to earlier works in the literature to track the development of English privileges from 1580-1612.
The Ottoman Mediterranean was a place of intense imperial interest in the eighteenth century, yet our understandings of that century are still overshadowed by European naval ascendance, the defeat at Çeşme in 1770, and the beginnings of reform under Selim III. However, this paper will demonstrate the eighteenth century was a period of significant investment in naval resources, and development in maritime legal practices. Linked to new notions of maritime sovereignty and territoriality that emerged from concurrent ideas on land following the treaties of Carlowitz (1699) and particularly Passarowitz (1718), naval protection missions (Bahr-ı Sefid muhafazası) took on a new purpose of not simply defending Ottoman coasts and waters, but asserting maritime territoriality. The endemic threat of foreign corsairs, particularly Maltese, and local pirates, especially Maniots, necessitated increasing investment in naval patrols as a regular safeguard for trade and sovereignty, ensuring a regular imperial presence in the coastal provinces. In addition to this threat, the numerous wars between friendly European powers, particularly the British and French, saw increasingly destructive privateering wars that affected Ottoman shipping and subjects. This resulted from the 1690s in 'maritime regulations', şurut-u derya, that forbade armed European ships from entering extended Ottoman maritime space in times of war. Based on research on the administrative and legal documents relating to the Ottoman navy throughout the eighteenth century, this paper will chart these two concurrent developments-enhanced naval patrols and legal innovation-between 1690 and 1790 to demonstrate that the Ottoman state reacted to both foreign and domestic challenges in its maritime spaces (coastal and in the open sea) in the Mediterranean by using force, law, and diplomacy to enforce and consolidate its claims over its littoral territory and maritime trade routes and to solidify a dependent relationship local actors in the provinces.