Assigned Readings:

Rossitsa Gradeva, "Orthodox Christians in the Kadi Courts: The Practice of the Sofia Sheriat Court, Seventeenth Century," Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997), 37-69.

Eugenia Kermeli, "The Right to Choice: Ottoman, Ecclesiastical and Communal Justice in Ottoman Greece," in The Ottoman World, ed. Christine Woodhead (Routledge, 2012), 347-61.

Primary Source: Selection of Jewish responsa, edited and translated by Matt Goldish in Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Seminar Questions:

• What authority did Ottoman Christian and Jewish communal leaders have over their flocks?
• Is the Ottoman legal system best characterized as personal or territorial law?
• Why did some Ottoman Christians and Jews prefer to use Islamic law?

Further Reading:

Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Holmes & Meier, 1982).

Benjamin Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society.

Amnon Cohen, “Communal Legal Entities in a Muslim Setting: the Jewish Community in Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem,” Islamic Law & Society 3 (1996).

Joseph Hacker, “Jewish Autonomy in the Ottoman Empire: Its Scope and Limits, Jewish Courts from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Avigdor Levy (Darwin Press, 1994).

Svetlana Ivanova, “Muslim and Christian Women before the Kadi Court in Eighteenth-Century Rumeli: Marriage Problems,” Oriente Moderno n.s. 18 (1999).

Ronald Jennings, “Zimmis (non-Muslims) in Early 17th-century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of Anatolian Kayseri,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 21 (1978).

Ronald Jennings, Christians and Muslims in Ottoman Cyprus and the Mediterranean World, 1571-1640 (New York University Press, 1993).

Najwa al-Qattan, “Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (1999).