IN THE COURTS OF THE NATIONS - DataSpace - Princeton ...

and, for some individuals, appealing to the consulates of foreign states—not to mention the
courts run by religious minorities, including Jews and various Christian sects.
The sheer complexity of the Ottoman context makes it difficult to understand how these
various legal fora fit together. The size of the empire and the diversity of its subjects, both
ethnically and religiously, make generalizing almost impossible. Even a micro-historical
approach can pose challenges, including the sparse evidence for the functioning of non-sharī‘a
courts and the large number of languages required to work with sources from the empire’s many
religious communities. 27 Morocco, on the other hand, presents a far more simplified case. It is
smaller in size and less religiously diverse than the Ottoman Empire (since indigenous Christians
had either left or converted to Islam by the late medieval period), making it feasible to study the
various legal institutions which coexisted in Morocco at once. I further reduce the scope of my
inquiry by focusing on Jews, which allows me to understand how one category of legal actors
navigated the multiple legal orders available to them.
In order to explore the intersections between the different legal orders that existed in
Morocco I draw on the framework of legal pluralism. (I discuss my approach to legal pluralism
in detail below.) I am especially interested in the ways in which sharī‘a courts interacted with
the other legal institutions with which they coexisted and to some extent competed. In my
exploration of Jews’ use of sharī‘a courts, I examine how Jews moved back and forth between
these institutions and batei din (Jewish courts which applied halakhah, Jewish law). I argue that
not only did these two legal orders provide parallel services—often simultaneously—they also
actively cooperated with one another by upholding each other’s legal doctrines. In looking at the
27
On the scarcity of sources for non-sharī‘a courts, see idem, “Islamic Law in an Ottoman context,” 3-4. A study of
all the legal orders that existed in Ottoman Istanbul, for instance, would require knowledge of Ottoman, Hebrew,
Judeo-Spanish, Greek, Armenian, and various European languages.
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