Slavery and Household Formation in Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700
Abstract Focusing on a seventeenth-century Syrian city, this study examines the practice of slavery as a strategy for building elite households in the Ottoman Empire. After an overview of the slave trade and the social and political conditions which sustained it, it constructs a demographic profile of the slaves and slaveholders and concludes with case studies of how slaves were integrated into selected military-administrative, merchant and ulama families. Valued as servants, soldiers, companions, and business agents, slaves were integrated to a wide range of elite households, in some cases providing critical human resources for the households’ continuity.
Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu (1652-1744)
This book studies the functions of Islamic courts within the framework of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ottoman provincial administration, and explores the processes of adjudication and dispute resolution through a detailed juxtaposition of court records from two Anatolian towns, Cankiri and Kastamonu. In particular, it identifies the socio-economic backgrounds of the court clients, the kinds of issues that they brought to the courts, their strategies of litigation, and how disputes were resolved in the courts. This book also sheds light on the costs of court usage and reveals alternative sites for dispute resolution that existed independently of the courts. This study is particularly useful for the students of legal anthropology as it pays a special attention to the practice of law and the process of dispute resolution.
Studies in Islamic history and institutions
Goitein's selection of studies dealing with Islamic institutions and social history offers a general introduction to Islamic civilization by one who lived all his life with Islam. His fruit of specialized research gives a rounded view of important aspects of Islamic civilization and provides the student with an opportunity to acquaint himself not only with the results of research, but also with the methods by which they were obtained. With a new foreword by Norman A. Stillman