Law of the Ottoman Empire
[4] The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.
[5] These court categories were not, however, wholly exclusive: for instance, the Islamic courts—which were the Empire's primary courts—could also be used to settle a trade conflict or disputes between litigants of differing religions, and Jews and Christians often went to them to obtain a more forceful ruling on an issue.
The Ottoman state tended not to interfere with non-Muslim religious law systems, despite legally having a voice to do so through local governors.
At the same time, non-Muslims "did relatively well in adjudicated interfaith disputes", because anticipation of judicial biases prompted them to settle most conflicts out of court.
Sharia law is derived from the four basic sources of the Quran, Sunnah (precepts of Mohammed), ijma (teachings of Muslim scholars), and qiyas (analogical reasoning).
Since these edicts were absent from the Sharia, and the kanuns were created in support of it, the Sultan had full legislative power as long as they did not contradict Islamic principles.
Individual kanun-names would be given to provinces following their conquest, preserving the local traditions and legal principles under the previous rule.
In the eyes of the ulemas, the prevention of civil war deemed the law sufficiently flexible to be in line with the sharia, even though it is murder.
[10] Various sultans issued kanuns outlining punishments for theft in which the specific crime did not exactly match the Islamic legal stipulations.
Suleiman compiled all of the kanun-names before him, filtered through and edited them, and issued a single sultanic code, which would last for more than three-hundred years.
His reforms include laws in land tenure and taxation, trusts in mortmain, marriage, and crimes and torts.
It also brought the Islamic legal offices of jurisconsult (mufti) and Kadi fully under the ideological and fiscal authority of the Sultan.
[13] These series of law reforms began a new period of modernity in the Ottoman Empire that would pave the way for new Western ideas of politics and social ideology.
These reforms included the "fair and public trial[s] of all accused regardless of religion", the creation of a system of "separate competences, religious and civil", and the validation of testimony of non-Muslims.
[15] Areas of life such as inheritance, marriage, divorce, and child custody were undergoing progressive transformation as European influence continued its growth.
After the Greek War of Independence, nationalism was on the rise in Europe, and Westerners thought they had a humanitarian duty to intervene on behalf of the Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire whom they saw as being unfairly treated.
Opposition to these legal changes can be found throughout historical accounts and historians believe that this reform was not due to popular demand of Ottoman citizens but rather to those who held power and influence within the empire.
[18] Influenced by European versions of a shared national identity, the Ottomans thought that creating an Ottoman Nationalism system where the state controlled all levels of government and social life, as opposed to the previous system where people were organized by individual community and reputation, that they could stave off the encroaching European influence over the Empire.
