Ottoman Justice and Political Economy of Empires: Venetian Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Courts

Abstract This article examines the interrelations between the political economies of the Ottoman Empire and the administration of justice for European merchants in Ottoman cities during the seventeenth century. By focusing on the sultan’s court of justice, the Imperial Council ( divan-ı hümayun) , and the Venetian merchants who appealed to it, this piece illustrates how Ottoman commercial interests and political concerns influenced the production and application of Islamic law (Sharia) in Ottoman courts for European merchants. To promote international trade, Ottoman political and legal authorities introduced new norms and procedures in matters of legal evidence and court jurisdiction in commercial cases between Venetian and Ottoman subjects, and they encouraged settlements in favor of foreign merchants and Ottoman-Venetian trade. These politics of justice, I argue, demonstrate the dynamism of the Ottoman legal system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period characterized by global commercial development and Ottoman military and political ascendancy in the Mediterranean.