[3] Despite the harsh penalties prescribed by Islamic law, Ottoman courts rarely enforced hudud fully, including the crime of zinā.
In fact, prostitution was explicitly excluded by 16th to 18th century Ottoman jurists from the hudud penalties, although the act was not deemed legal.
As a result, it is difficult for scholars to determine whether archival material related to women's sexual behavior pertains to prostitution, adultery, or "moral looseness".
[5] Ottoman court documents also utilize euphemistic language to describe sexual offenses, employing vague terms accusing men and women of being "'harmful to neighbors (yu'thi al-jiran)', committing 'acts of indecency (af 'al shani'a)', or 'morally repugnant deeds (af'al qabiha).
[9] Scholar Abdul Karim Rafeq proposes that such euphemisms were used to protect the privacy of families and neighborhoods who did not want the details of these crimes to be made public.
Offering a different perspective, Elyse Semerdjian suggests that vague descriptions allowed accusers to avoid the extremely difficult requirements of proving zinā, instead seeking punishment at the judge's discretion.
The dynamic between a client and a prostitute was similar to that of a husband and wife or a master and slave since it also involved an exchange of money for sexual services.
In legal records, Ottoman jurists were conflicted over this dynamic; some argued "that by paying for the services rendered, the client assumed temporary quasi-ownership of the prostitute, making the relationship akin to concubinage".
[4] This similarity introduced legal ambiguities regarding the encounters between clients and prostitutes, preventing the application of fixed penalties for zinā.
Eradicating prostitution entirely was not feasible, as doing so could lead to increased risks from soldiers and possibly from unruly single men living in the area.
According to Ö. L. Barkan, the state sought to collect "taxable income" from prostitution in the form of adultery fines, thus providing a source of revenue—albeit at the cost of "public morality".
[6] To explain the disparity between the legal treatment of prostitution in theory and in practice, scholar James Baldwin points to how court cases originated.
Most commonly, residents brought cases against prostitutes and pimps in their communities in order to "clean up their neighborhood, not to exact vengeance or to set an example through punishment".
Through this explanation, Baldwin argues that Ottoman courts did not simply stray from Islamic jurisprudence but had a nuanced response to prostitution shaped by the initiative of private litigants.
[10] In the 17th century, during a period of Ottoman "decline and social unrest because of the weakening of authority", the state enacted further measures to combat illicit sexual activity.
In 1657, prostitutes in Tulca, Izmail, and Kiliya, in modern-day Ukraine, were detained and left naked on an island to die of mosquito-borne disease.
During the Crimean War, prostitutes were taxed, and brothels were required to undergo medical and sanitary inspections, in part to limit the spread of syphilis.
In 1915, 151 people accused of bringing prostitutes into the city, including those of Russian, Argentinian, Romanian, American, Austrian, French, British, and Greek citizenship, were banished in an attempt to limit the problem.
[12] Ottoman authorities also launched an initiative to provide the increasing number of Muslim women involved in Prostitution with employment.
Female prostitutes generally attempted to limit their sexual interactions to "confessional lines" since cases were more likely to be brought to court when religious boundaries were crossed.
[2] In 1530, Romani ("gypsy") women in Istanbul, Edirne, Filibe, and Sofia were required to pay a 100 asper fee monthly if they undertook "activities contrary to the sharīʿa".
[10] In 1874, a Bulgarian newspaper, The Levant Times, claimed the lower class of the town Stara Zagora was forced into prostitution due to poverty.
In many cases, prostitutes of Ottoman citizenship were imprisoned and restricted in economic movement, while non-Ottomans were expelled from the empire outright.
[14] During the late Ottoman Empire, Istanbul became a central hub for the trafficking of women, with networks operating both domestically and internationally.
Istanbul's ports constituted the center of trafficking of women, serving as a bridge between Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and even America.