Joshua M White

Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Joshua M. White is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 376
• Erscheinungstermin: 28. November 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 154mm x 27mm
• Gewicht: 628g
• ISBN-13: 9781503602526
• ISBN-10: 1503602524
• Artikelnr.: 47770733

Autorenporträt

Joshua M. White is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Ottoman Pirates, Ottoman Victims
chapter abstract
This chapter chronicles the rise of Ottoman-on-Ottoman maritime violence in
the post-1570 period, accounting for its endurance and examining its
internal social and political significance for the Ottoman state and its
implications for our understanding of Ottoman power and center-periphery
relations. Introducing the Ottoman pirate "life cycle," it explores the
connections between "local" and "long-distance" manifestations of piracy
and the slippery distinctions between pirate and corsair, positing that
Ottoman subjects were the prey that sustained all pirates in the Ottoman
Mediterranean and enabled them to expand their operations. Because the
Ottoman central administration relied heavily on naval irregulars to
safeguard the coasts and provide intelligence on enemy movements, it was
forced to balance the demands of law and justice with its security needs
and the limits of its political and military capacity.
2The Kadi of Malta
chapter abstract
This chapter turns to the Ottoman victims of Catholic corsairs and pirates
who were carried off to Malta and Livorno to be sold as slaves and/or held
for ransom. It focuses on the Ottoman magistrates (kadis) who, as
judge-notaries, as captives, and as official mouthpieces of the Ottoman
state, were involved in every stage of the ransom slavery industry in the
eastern Mediterranean. From the late sixteenth century to the early
eighteenth century, a number of Ottoman judges could always be found
imprisoned in Maltese dungeons, where their legal expertise proved critical
for preparing surety agreements and ransom contracts acceptable in courts
throughout the Ottoman Mediterranean. The phenomenon of the kadis of Malta
reflects the essential paradox of the seventeenth-century Ottoman
Mediterranean: the inverse relationship between Ottoman maritime security
and the importance of Ottoman law as an almost universally acceptable legal
lingua franca from Istanbul to Malta.
3Piracy and Treaty Law
chapter abstract
Piracy was an early and constant subject of negotiation between the
Ottomans and their treaty partners, who developed a legal and diplomatic
framework prohibiting piracy and establishing the procedures for redress
when attacks did occur. Focusing primarily on Ottoman-Venetian relations,
this chapter parses the form and content of their treaties (ahdname),
examines how their antipiracy provisions were understood, and traces their
development from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth
century, by which point treaties with similar antipiracy clauses had been
extended to France (1569), England (1580), and the Netherlands (1612). The
antipiracy articles of these treaties were regularly expanded and modified
to address new challenges, including how to deal with and defend against
the proliferation of uncontrollable nonstate actors, but developments
around the turn of the seventeenth century threatened to bring down the
entire order on which the treaty regime was founded.
4Diplomatic Divergence
chapter abstract
This chapter discusses the political and religious-legal challenge that
North African corsairs posed to the Ottoman treaty regime in a
post-"Northern Invasion" Mediterranean, and explores the reasons for and
consequences of the diplomatic divergence of the 1620s, when England,
France, and the Netherlands began concluding treaties directly with the
North African port cities. It argues that the legal and diplomatic fallout
of a series of Algerian-Tunisian piratical raids in the 1620s and 1630s led
to a permanent restructuring of the imperial center's relationship with
North Africa. As a result, Istanbul washed its hands of responsibility for
the North African corsairs' predations, granting explicit permission to its
treaty partners to destroy any African corsairs who threatened them and
creating conditions that led to dozens of European punitive expeditions
against the North African port cities beginning in the 1660s and
culminating in the French invasion of Algiers in 1830.
5Piracy in Ottoman Islamic Jurisprudence
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the legal opinions (Arabic: fatwa, Turkish: fetva)
issued by the chief Islamic legal authorities of the empire (¿eyhülislam)
concerning maritime violence and explores the implications of their rulings
for judges and litigants throughout the empire and for the corsairs based
on its margins. Drawing on research in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
fetva collections, the chapter establishes the kinds of legal questions
that piracy and captivity posed for the Ottomans and how they were answered
as the intensity, frequency, and focus of Mediterranean piracy mutated in
sometimes alarming ways. Showing how secular, interstate, and Islamic law
were harmonized through fetvas, the chapter lays the groundwork for the
subsequent analysis of the convergence of theory and practice in Ottoman
courts.
6Piracy in the Courts
chapter abstract
Relying on Ottoman court records from Istanbul to Crete, this chapter shows
how merchants, monks, and mariners, Muslims, Christians, and Jews,
Ottomans, and foreigners used the Ottoman Islamic courts, how victims of
piracy sought restitution and sometimes revenge. It asks how complex
jurisdictional questions were addressed and how the legal theory introduced
in the previous chapter impacted the legal strategies of litigants, Ottoman
and foreign alike, in Ottoman courts. It explores examples of disputes over
ships and cargo seized by pirates, suits lodged by victims against their
alleged pirates, privateering arrangements contracted and disputed in
court, and prosecutions of alleged pirates. Telling these stories and
examining their outcomes, the chapter ties together the threads from the
preceding examination of the courts, Islamic law, the Ottomans' diplomatic
dealings, and Ottoman administrative responses to piracy.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
The conclusion recapitulates the book's key arguments, fast-forwarding to
the mid-eighteenth century to test the assertion that the Ottoman
Mediterranean was a legal space, defined in large part by the challenge of
piracy. Recounting an incident from the 1740s, in which Cretan seamen
traveled to Tripoli to acquire licenses to attack Venice-with which Tripoli
then considered itself at war-it reflects on the path by which Tripoli and
the rest of North Africa came to be excluded from the Ottoman Mediterranean
legal space, such that neither administrators in Istanbul nor sailors in
Candia considered Tripoli truly "Ottoman." It then reconsiders the
connections between legal corsairing/privateering and illegal piracy, and
the complex roles religion and subjecthood played in fixing the line
between them.
Introduction
chapter abstract
In September 1614, Ali bin Yusuf of Jerba lodged a lawsuit against a
Venetian merchant named Nicolo in the court of Galata, a suburb of
Istanbul. Ali accused Nicolo of having murdered his son, Süleyman, a ship
captain, and five of his son's shipmates in a piratical attack eight years
earlier. Ali's claims before the court, and his difficulty substantiating
them-for the Venetian pirate had murdered the Ottoman crew to eliminate
witnesses (one escaped, but two were required)-frame the fundamental
questions the book addresses, first and foremost: who, what, or when is a
pirate? The introduction also provides the historical context, surprisingly
absent from most studies of Mediterranean piracy, essential to
understanding why the period between 1570 and 1720 was one of pervasive
piracy.