The Institution of Appeal in The Legal System of The Ottoman Empire During The Transitional Period

Abstract

The institution of appeal was one of the fundamental organizational principles of the Ottoman Empire – and of the core institutions of the Islamic legal system – and was based on the concept of just rule, namely of legal security and universal access to justice for all subjects of the state. The decentralization of the Ottoman Empire during the transitional period (17th to 18th century) caused a change in the relations between the center and the periphery, where the institute of appeal through grievance administration underwent an abrupt expansion, especially after 1742. This paper is, on the one hand, an attempt to analyze the expansion process of the institution of appeal along with this institution’s actual role within the Ottoman legal system; on the other, the paper strives to determine the part appeals played in local proto-political struggles.