Book by Yavuz Aykan
https://books.openedition.org/ifeagd/2316, 2018
In Rendre la justice à Amid, Yavuz Aykan analyses the legal life of the city of Amid, the capital... more In Rendre la justice à Amid, Yavuz Aykan analyses the legal life of the city of Amid, the capital of Ottoman Diyarbekir province in the 18th century. Making use of court records from the cities of Amid, Harput and Mardin, he explores the centrality of the qadi, the provincial governor, and the provincial mufti to law enforcement. By tracing the genealogies of legal texts used by the mufti for fatwa production, Aykan maps out the broader transformations of various judicial interpretations in their journey from Greater Syria to Transoxiana and the Golden Horde, and finally into Ottoman legal praxis. As such, this book offers a far more historicized approach to the multiple actors and hierarchies of juridical systems operating in this provincial setting.
Reviews of "Rendre la justice à Amid" by Yavuz Aykan
Review of "Rendre la justice à Amid", 2020
Historiographical Discussion/Essay by Yavuz Aykan
Quaderni Storici, 2020
In his novel entitled My Name is Red, set in 16th century Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk narrates the stor... more In his novel entitled My Name is Red, set in 16th century Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk narrates the story of three miniaturists who are commissioned by the Sultan to work on a « secret » book bearing the influences of the Frenk tradition. While focusing on the events surrounding the murder of one Zarif Efendi who is in charge of the gilding of the book, Pamuk sets up a tension in the narrative between the Ottoman and Frenk artistic styles. In a chapter narrated by an illustration of a tree, the tree finds its tongue and utters: « I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning ». In so doing, Pamuk situates Ottoman/Islamic art as opposed to the Frenk style (Renaissance in this case), which, in the framework of the novel, focuses on the representation rather than on the meaning of the object.
From the historian’s perspective the artistic, cultural and intellectual worlds on both sides of the Mediterranean during the Renaissance were not isolated or disconnected from one another. Yet, the tension Pamuk deploys in his novel could be said to epitomize our present reification of concepts wherein Islam is associated with a ‘religion’, for which ‘Islamic’ is the adjective. By contrast, the West—be it Europe, or the Mediterranean, or even Eastern/Western Europe, depending on the context—is always associated with a geographical location. Be it as it may, these are politically charged, rather than epistemologically neutral associations. My contention here is that « Islamic » and « European » as categories are incommensurable. Such incommensurability is due as much to the constant juxtaposition of these concepts on the intellectual level, as to the fact that they refer to two heterogeneous aspects of reality. Thus, the question is a basic but a central one: How can we write the history of our common values and vocabularies without reifying a binary that is the product of our contemporary religious and/or political agendas?
Articles by Yavuz Aykan
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2024
This article focuses on the Council (Divan) of Amid in Diyarbekir Province as a petition-receivin... more This article focuses on the Council (Divan) of Amid in Diyarbekir Province as a petition-receiving institution throughout the eighteenth century. By drawing on the court records of the city of Harput, one of the sub-districts of Diyarbekir, and the tax farming registers of the larger province, the article discusses the role of the provincial governor in legal procedures. It argues that the Provincial Council had an important function in the operative field of law as it made it possible for the petitioning subjects in Harput to obtain judgments reviewed in the court of Harput in the form of ‘trial de novo’. While situating the emergence of the Council in the political-economic context of the time, the article also argues that the Provincial Council was an early modern institution which, in part, paved the way to the constitution of the nineteenth century provincial administration of the Tanzimat state.
In this article I explore the layers of meaning attached to the term Kurdistan (one of which carr... more In this article I explore the layers of meaning attached to the term Kurdistan (one of which carried a heavy confessional tenor) in the early modern period by focusing on the Yezidis, a group that followed a syncretic religion of Islamic origin that emerged in the twelfth century, and the challenges that it presented to the Ottoman Sunni authorities.
Les mondes de l'esclavage. Une histoire comparée, 2021
The Medieval History Journal , 2020
Turcica, 2019
This article analyses a convoluted eighteenth century Ottoman lawsuit that was brought before the... more This article analyses a convoluted eighteenth century Ottoman lawsuit that was brought before the judge of Amid, the capital of the Diyarbekir province. The legal conflict between the disputing parties concerns the property of a missing person (gâib), which, according to law, was not considered inheritance. More precisely, the case involves a piece of land belonging to one al-hajj Âdem who had disap- peared from the city thirty-six years before. The fatwas brought to the court, as well as the agnatic relations among the actors of the case show the centrality of the legal doctrine, and the importance of the litigation strategies for the resolution of disputes. However, interesting in this case is the fact that the legal personality of the missing person opens up a window for the historian to peer into the abstract classifications of the jurists. Where is al-hajj Âdem, according to the law? We see in this case that a third fictional space within the law is revealed: a space that the missing person inhabits, and which is neither that of life nor that of death.
Résumé
Cet article analyse un litige complexe porté au xviiie siècle devant le juge d’Amid, capitale de la province de Diyarbekir. L’objet du litige est la propriété d’une personne absente (gâib) qui, juridiquement, ne peut pas être considérée comme un héritage. Plus précisément, l’affaire porte sur un lopin de terre appar- tenant à un certain al-hajj Âdem, disparu de la ville trente-six ans auparavant. Les fatwas portées devant le tribunal ainsi que les relations agnatiques entre les acteurs de l’affaire révèlent la centralité de la doctrine juridique et l’importance des stratégies des acteurs du procès dans le cadre du règlement des litiges. Ce que ce cas spécifique permet d’entrevoir, c’est le défi que semble porter la personnalité juridique de l’absent aux classifications abstraites des juristes. Où se situe al-hajj Âdem, selon le droit ? Ce cas fait émerger un troisième espace fictif dans la juris- prudence: un espace habité par la personne disparue, un espace qui n’est ni celui du vivant, ni celui du mort.
Islamic Law and Society-2019
This article traces the genealogies of the legal concept 'spreader of corruption'. Although some ... more This article traces the genealogies of the legal concept 'spreader of corruption'. Although some scholars working on Ottoman law consider this concept to be part of the Ottoman ḳānūn tradition, the history of its adaptation by Ottoman jurists actually dates back to the Qarakhanid period (eleventh century CE). It acquired its legal meaning as a result of jurisprudential debates among Ḥanafī jurists in the context of political turmoil and violent factionalism among madhhabs. Later, Seljuq and Golden Horde legal-textual traditions served as conduit for Ottoman jurists to adapt the concept in order to apply it to a variety of criminal acts. This article explores how the 'spreader of corruption' concept was reinterpreted over the centuries and how it contributed to the enforcement of law in the Ottoman context. Keywords Qarakhanid fiqh – Ottoman law – acts and persons – crimes against the state – state of emergency – Roman law (necessitas)
https://books.openedition.org/ifeagd/2334
Quaderni Storici-2017
This article focuses on domestic slavery, kinship, and the early modern market in 17 th-century O... more This article focuses on domestic slavery, kinship, and the early modern market in 17 th-century Ottoman Istanbul. By drawing on the notarial registers (sicils) kept by the legal courts of Istanbul as well as on jurisprudential (fiqh) works, this article dismantles the interplay amongst notions of freedom, kinship, and the economic value not only of slave bodies but also of their labour, which could be detachable from the body as an object of commercial contract. While grappling with these questions, the article also unravels the fictional capacity of Islamic jurisprudence in fabricating kinship ties between the master and the slave. Hence, this article aims at exploring the servile component of the market and the social in 17 th-century Istanbul.
This article analyses the role of provincial muftis and their fatwas in legitimizing the administ... more This article analyses the role of provincial muftis and their fatwas in legitimizing the administrative practices of the state in the 18th century, focusing on Amid, the Ottoman provincial capital of Diyarbekir. As a point of departure, the article examines a convoluted lawsuit that took place at the legal court of Amid, and peers into a legal debate between two men claiming rights over a piece of a vacant land (arz-ı mübâha) that emerged after the retreating waters of the Tigris. While Ottoman administrative practices, governed by the kanun, guarantee the State rights to the eminent domain (rakaba) on vacant lands, these practices always had to be legitimized by islamic law (sharia). This article, in turn, shows the ways in which the provincial mufti was able to align state practices with sharia by producing legal opinions in this particular legal debate. It also questions the sharp division that is generally drawn in the historiography between sharia and kanun, showing the interpenetration of these two sources of law in the XVIIIth century Imperial legal doctrine, formulated in certain hanafi texts.
Encyclopedia Entry by Yavuz Aykan
Dictionnaire de l'Empire ottoman, François Georgeon, Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, Paris, F... more Dictionnaire de l'Empire ottoman, François Georgeon, Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, Paris, Fayard, 2015.
Book Review by Yavuz Aykan
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2019
Blog Posts by Yavuz Aykan
Harvard Law School/Islamic Law Blog, 2023
In my essay series, I will focus on a complex lawsuit in order to raise questions that I find imp... more In my essay series, I will focus on a complex lawsuit in order to raise questions that I find important for studying the history of the Ḥanafī legal tradition in a longue durée perspective. I will do so by paying particular attention to the application of law in social praxis. I begin with an old question: Can the judgment of a qāḍī be overruled or challenged by the same qāḍī or by another one?
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Book by Yavuz Aykan
Reviews of "Rendre la justice à Amid" by Yavuz Aykan
Historiographical Discussion/Essay by Yavuz Aykan
From the historian’s perspective the artistic, cultural and intellectual worlds on both sides of the Mediterranean during the Renaissance were not isolated or disconnected from one another. Yet, the tension Pamuk deploys in his novel could be said to epitomize our present reification of concepts wherein Islam is associated with a ‘religion’, for which ‘Islamic’ is the adjective. By contrast, the West—be it Europe, or the Mediterranean, or even Eastern/Western Europe, depending on the context—is always associated with a geographical location. Be it as it may, these are politically charged, rather than epistemologically neutral associations. My contention here is that « Islamic » and « European » as categories are incommensurable. Such incommensurability is due as much to the constant juxtaposition of these concepts on the intellectual level, as to the fact that they refer to two heterogeneous aspects of reality. Thus, the question is a basic but a central one: How can we write the history of our common values and vocabularies without reifying a binary that is the product of our contemporary religious and/or political agendas?
Articles by Yavuz Aykan
Résumé
Cet article analyse un litige complexe porté au xviiie siècle devant le juge d’Amid, capitale de la province de Diyarbekir. L’objet du litige est la propriété d’une personne absente (gâib) qui, juridiquement, ne peut pas être considérée comme un héritage. Plus précisément, l’affaire porte sur un lopin de terre appar- tenant à un certain al-hajj Âdem, disparu de la ville trente-six ans auparavant. Les fatwas portées devant le tribunal ainsi que les relations agnatiques entre les acteurs de l’affaire révèlent la centralité de la doctrine juridique et l’importance des stratégies des acteurs du procès dans le cadre du règlement des litiges. Ce que ce cas spécifique permet d’entrevoir, c’est le défi que semble porter la personnalité juridique de l’absent aux classifications abstraites des juristes. Où se situe al-hajj Âdem, selon le droit ? Ce cas fait émerger un troisième espace fictif dans la juris- prudence: un espace habité par la personne disparue, un espace qui n’est ni celui du vivant, ni celui du mort.
Encyclopedia Entry by Yavuz Aykan
Book Review by Yavuz Aykan
Blog Posts by Yavuz Aykan
From the historian’s perspective the artistic, cultural and intellectual worlds on both sides of the Mediterranean during the Renaissance were not isolated or disconnected from one another. Yet, the tension Pamuk deploys in his novel could be said to epitomize our present reification of concepts wherein Islam is associated with a ‘religion’, for which ‘Islamic’ is the adjective. By contrast, the West—be it Europe, or the Mediterranean, or even Eastern/Western Europe, depending on the context—is always associated with a geographical location. Be it as it may, these are politically charged, rather than epistemologically neutral associations. My contention here is that « Islamic » and « European » as categories are incommensurable. Such incommensurability is due as much to the constant juxtaposition of these concepts on the intellectual level, as to the fact that they refer to two heterogeneous aspects of reality. Thus, the question is a basic but a central one: How can we write the history of our common values and vocabularies without reifying a binary that is the product of our contemporary religious and/or political agendas?
Résumé
Cet article analyse un litige complexe porté au xviiie siècle devant le juge d’Amid, capitale de la province de Diyarbekir. L’objet du litige est la propriété d’une personne absente (gâib) qui, juridiquement, ne peut pas être considérée comme un héritage. Plus précisément, l’affaire porte sur un lopin de terre appar- tenant à un certain al-hajj Âdem, disparu de la ville trente-six ans auparavant. Les fatwas portées devant le tribunal ainsi que les relations agnatiques entre les acteurs de l’affaire révèlent la centralité de la doctrine juridique et l’importance des stratégies des acteurs du procès dans le cadre du règlement des litiges. Ce que ce cas spécifique permet d’entrevoir, c’est le défi que semble porter la personnalité juridique de l’absent aux classifications abstraites des juristes. Où se situe al-hajj Âdem, selon le droit ? Ce cas fait émerger un troisième espace fictif dans la juris- prudence: un espace habité par la personne disparue, un espace qui n’est ni celui du vivant, ni celui du mort.
Prof. Mesut Yegen, Istanbul Sehir University
Since 2012, the European research program ConfigMed has been studying commercial disputes, legal pluralism, and intercultural trade in the Mediterranean, at the crossroads of different traditions, legal regimes and referents. In this context, our method helps to focus on the encounters, compromises and possible exchanges which resulted from conflicts involving economic actors from Europe to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa.
This workshop aims to continue this work and these reflections with a particular emphasis on the production and circulation of the elements of legal proof in the Mediterranean. Based on the examination of written certificates and declarations, we propose to examine their effect on both the commercial world and legal systems that are often seen as closed within itself.
One of the primary axes of this workshop will be the analysis of the procedures of dispute resolution through the production and circulation of certificates and written testimonies. The origins, formal diversity, materiality and logic of these artifacts should be able to provide food for thought on the nature and resolution of disputes, as well as the practical functions of institutions.
This will necessarily involve careful consideration of the circulation and use of evidence, for the reconstitution of the chain of correspondences between litigants, intermediaries and user or producer institutions of evidentiary elements. This should produce material to discuss the relevance of the boundaries usually drawn between worlds that seem to be permeable, such as those opposing the oral and the written, the private and the public.
By considering these evidentiary pieces as instruments, the workshop will address the role of evidence in the analysis of communication processes and interpret it as a privileged scenario of legal and cultural creativity in a trans-Mediterranean space formed by different resolutions of commercial litigations.
De plus, et peut-être principalement, la propriété est la base des prélèvements fiscaux qui sont souvent la première preuve de l’appartenance à une communauté. Enfin, c’est à travers l’acquisition de propriétés que peuvent se nouer ces relations de confiance qui introduisent au milieu des “locaux”. Ces différents exemples soulignent le lien entre l’appropriation des choses et les possibilités de créer des liens d'appartenance.
Pour interroger le poids des choses dans la construction de ces liens, trois axes principaux peuvent être considérés.
1) Un premier axe de réflexion portera donc sur ces droits personnels. Le problème est celui de comprendre comment ce droit à la propriété s’articule aux hiérarchies sociales et juridiques (pauvres, riches, jeunes, hommes, femmes, étrangers, locaux...) ; parallèlement, le problème est aussi de comprendre comment la possibilité d’accès à ce droit est en mesure de charpenter ces mêmes hiérarchies. Ce terrain ouvre des voies à la comparaison qui passent non pas par des catégoriés préétablies (les conditions de pauvre, de riche, de femme, d’étranger, etc.), mais par la reconstitution du processus de leur formation. Par exemple, comment la possibilité différentielle d’avoir accès à la propriété entre-t-elle dans la définition de ce qu’est un étranger (mais aussi une femme, un homme etc.) dans une société donnée ?
2) Le deuxième axe portera sur les droits réels, c’est à dire sur ces droits qui sont attachés aux choses et aux biens et qui, des choses et des biens, sont transposés aux individus. Par exemple, la fiscalité qui, dans une grande variété de situations géographiques et historiques, est liée à l'attribution des droits d’appartenance, est souvent axée sur les propriétés, et non pas sur les individus qui, par ce truchement, deviennent dépositaires de ces droits. De même, les individus sont investis de ces droits en fonction de leur position par rapport aux biens. Ainsi est-ce le bien qui fait d’une succession l’héritier ; ou encore est-ce l’usage, la proximité ou la familiarité reconnues avec un bien. Ce qui restitue aux pratiques sociales toute leurs capacités à produire des droits. On se demandera comment et sous quelles formes ces droits de propriété penvent agir dans la diversité de nos terrains d’études.
3) Choses, personnes, institutions : un troisième axe portera sur les interactions des droits personnels et réels au sein des institutions, autrement dit sur les conflits sociaux des droits personnels et réels. En effet, on peut lire les conflits sociaux autour des ressources locales comme des revendications concurrentes de droits d’appartenance. Le cadre institutionnel de la résolution de ces conflits représente belle et bien la scène de la politique locale. Les choses, donc, seront au centre de notre rencontre, ainsi que l’articulation entre personnes et choses, entre droits personnels et droit réels. Cela revient aussi à interroger la complexité et l’hétérogénéité des matériaux qui sont mobilisés dans la construction de l’appartenance locale.
Justice in Ottoman society was made through a complex configuration, sustained by the interaction of different sources of legal references (Sharia, Kanun and custom) as well as different institutions or actors, giving rise to a multiplicity of different practices. If the plurality of legal references in the operative field of justice (i.e. in the Ottoman qadi courts) has long occupied the attention of researchers, the study of the multiplicity of actors and institutions operating in the field of justice has remained rather on the margins of the interest of legal historians.
This workshop has been organized as a part of an ongoing seminar on the plurality of legal institutions and procedures in the Ottoman Society that has been held under the direction of Işık Tamdoğan at the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul since October 2011, under the title “La justice dans la société ottomane : institutions, acteurs et pratiques”.
The aim of the workshop is to contribute to a better understanding of the interaction of these various institutions and actors in the process of conflict resolution between individuals or in the larger context of making justice in general, as well as during/in the punishment process. It should also be underlined that in Ottoman society disputes and conflicts among individuals or groups could be resolved without resorting to any of the abovementioned institutions. This is particularly apparent on occasions when the society seeks to make justice of its own. Such judicial practices as amicable settlements or even direct revenge that were taking place outside of these legal institutions will be given a considerable place in our discussion in this workshop. Whether punitive or reconciliatory (as is the case in sulh) it is again the interaction between these different spheres of justice, (“informal” or more “official”) that will constitute the heart of our discussion.
These institutions and practices, which interacted in a complex and subtle manner are far from being uniform in space and time, throughout the Empire. It is for this reason that in this workshop we aim to approach their respective developments as well as their transformations over time (15th-19th centuries) and space (from Balkans to Arab provinces).
In order to approach this complex field of Ottoman justice, we propose to work around certain issues: :
1. The strategies of individuals:
- Did individuals have any leeway in choosing the institution by which they could settle their disputes? ?
- According to which criteria (personal status or the nature of the conflict) people selected these institutions (Qadi court or the imperial divan)?
2. The interaction of different institutions:
- When a legal process was under way, how did these different institutions could intervene and take a role in this process?
- What kind of a division of labor took place between the various bodies and institutions - such as the qadi and the provincial governor?
- The interaction between the legal courts and governors’ divan or Imperial divan will be of particular interest for our workshop but also a particular attention will be paid to the legal opinions (fatwas) of the provincial muftis during the juridical debates.
- Is it possible to argue that there existed a clearly defined hierarchy between these different institutions or were they operating in their own ways depending on the nature of the conflict in question, the status of the individuals in conflict or random choice of the plaintiffs? ?
3. 3. Legal practices outside the institutions:
-How were the conflicts resolved outside of these institutions? ?
- What kind of legitimacy had these “practices” vis-à-vis the legal and executive institutions (such as the qadi and governors)?
Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales