Description
Book SynopsisIn Politics of Honor, Başak Tuğ examines moral and gender order through the glance of legal litigations and petitions in mid-eighteenth century Anatolia. By juxtaposing the Anatolian petitionary registers, subjects’ petitions, and Ankara and Bursa court records, she analyzes the institutional framework of legal scrutiny of sexual order. Through a revisionist interpretation, Tuğ demonstrates that a more bureaucratized system of petitioning, a farther hierarchically organized judicial review mechanism, and a more centrally organized penal system of the mid-eighteenth century reinforced the existing mechanisms of social surveillance by the community and the co-existing “discretionary authority” of the Ottoman state over sexual crimes to overcome imperial anxieties about provincial “disorder”.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Maps and Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1 Social and Legal Order in the Eighteenth Century Justice, Imperial Public Order, and Ottoman Politico-Judicial Authority Oligarchic Rule and Local Notables in the Eighteenth Century The Kanun as Legal Practice in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 2 Petitioning and Intervention: A Question of Power The Imperial Council and Petitions as a Reflection of Imperial Law in Legal Practice Petitionary (Ahkam) Registers and Socio-Legal Surveillance Reporting Sexual Violence Actors, Strategies, and Rhetoric Petitions as a Mirror of Local Cleavages Chapter 3 Banditry, Sexual Violence and Honor Sexual Violence as a Sign of “Habitualness” to Violence Sexual Violence, Honor and the Imperial State Chapter 4 The Repertoire of Sexual Crimes in the Courts Why fi‛l-i şeni‛ (Indecent Act), but not zina Other Expressions Used in the Registers to Describe Sexual Assaults Chapter 5 The Penal Order of Eighteenth-Century Anatolia The Enigma of Crime and Punishment in the Court Records Social and Institutional Limits to the Authority of Local Judges Under Whose Discretion was Sexual and Moral Order? In Lieu of Conclusion: Silence and Outcry in the Records Conclusion Bibliography Index
