Abstract:
Starting in northwestern Anatolia in the late medieval period, the Ottomans gradually expanded their territories east and west to create one of the most expansive empires of the early modern age, extending from the western borders of Iran to Central Europe and from Yemen to Crimea. Law played a vital role in maintaining Ottoman political supremacy over this vast empire. In this lecture, Dr. Atçıl will discuss how different regions in Europe, Asia, and Africa with distinct administrative and legal traditions were incorporated into the empire, and how this went hand in hand with the promulgation of new legal rules and regulations and the establishment of new legal institutions that drew from both older Ottoman traditions and those of newly incorporated regions, a process he dubs inclusive lawmaking. The “inclusiveness” in this context refers to two related phenomena: (1) diverse normative understandings and practices, anterior to the establishment of Ottoman political supremacy in a particular region, found their way into new Ottoman imperial laws; and (2) diverse non-state and non-scholarly actors (political, religious, and others) participated in the process of making those new laws. In addition, Dr. Atçıl will share his observations on the parallel and diverging trajectories of lawmaking in the Ottoman Empire and European empires of the early modern period.