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

influential argument based on internal sources from Ottoman Jewish communities (especially
responsa literature), showing that although Jews may have had some de jure autonomy, their de
facto autonomy was quite limited and subject to curtailment at any time. 58 Hacker concludes
that this lack of de facto autonomy helps explain Jews’ “very considerable use of Muslim
courts.” 59 Najwa Al-Qattan goes one step further, expressing skepticism that non-Muslim legal
institutions even existed in the Ottoman Empire. 60 She argues that not only did Jews (and
Christians) receive “consistent and fair treatment” in the sharī‘a courts, constituting a positive
explanation of their attraction to Islamic legal institutions, but that the almost certain absence of
their own courts of law provides a second, negative explanation. 61 The picture Al-Qattan paints
is one in which non-Muslims made extensive use of sharī‘a courts, both by choice and by
necessity. 62
Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Ronald C. Jennings, Christians and Muslims in Ottoman
Cyprus and the Mediterranean World, 1571-1640 (New York: New York University Press, 1993).
58
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 (Princeton: The
Darwin Press, 1994), especially 165-6. Hacker traces a number of cases in which Jews appealed to the Islamic
authorities in order to curtail the jurisdictional powers of a local Jewish judicial official. The response of the
authorities was typically to deny the Jewish judge the ability to rule on a range of subjects. (Hacker goes into detail
concerning the case of Rabbi Benjamin b. Matityah from Arta, though he also points out similar cases from Aleppo,
Safed, Jerusalem, Izmir, Istanbul, and Salonica.)
59
Ibid., 181. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that all scholarship had thus far “fall[en] short of explaining the
dimensions of this phenomenon, i.e., turning to the Muslim courts….” (ibid., 182).
60
Najwa Al-Qattan, “Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination,” International
Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 31, no. 3 (1999): 430-2. For the dissertation, see idem, “Dhimmis in the Muslim
Court: Documenting Justice in Ottoman Damascus, 1775-1860” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1996). Al-
Qattan argues that responsa literature, the main source of evidence for the existence of Jewish courts, “is
problematic and restricted to one century.” 60 While this particular claim is inaccurate—there is extensive responsa
literature from the Ottoman Empire from much of the early modern and modern periods—her general argument
might, at first, appear compelling. Al-Qattan refers only to Aryeh Shmuelevtiz’s study of responsa literature from
the sixteenth century; since she does not read Hebrew, it seems likely that she was simply unaware of the existence
of literature from later periods. For a similar argument concerning Christian courts in Ottoman Kayseri, see Ronald
C. 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, no. 3 (1978): 271.
61
Al-Qattan, “Dhimmis in the Muslim Court,” 436.
62
Other studies of non-Muslims in Ottoman şeriat courts include: Jennings, “Zimmis in the Sharia Court of
Kayseri”; Gerber, “Arkhiyon beit-ha-din ha-shara‘i shel Bursah”; Rossitsa Gradeva, “Orthodox Christians in the
Kadı Courts: The Practice of the Sofia Sheriat Court, Seventeenth Century,” Islamic Law and Society 4, no. 1
(1997); Çiçek, “A Quest for Justice”; Richard Wittmann, “Before Qadi and Vizier: Intra-Communal Dispute
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