Oppression and Salvation: Annotated Legal Documents from the Ottoman Book of Complaints of 1675.

• Author: Ergene, Bogac
• Position: Book review

Oppression and Salvation: Annotated Legal Documents from the Ottoman Book of Complaints of 1675. By HAIM GERBER. Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Turkvolker, vol. 27. Berlin: KLAUS SCHWARZ, 2018. Pp. 188. [euro]68.

This volume presents Haim Gerber's commentary on Ottoman law and legal practice accompanied by a selection of 145 entries from a late seventeenth-century complaint register (sikayet defteri) that he translated into English. The original register contains about 2,800 entries pertaining to complaints reported to the Imperial Council (divan-i humayun) in Istanbul, composed of the grand vizier and high-level judicial and administrative officials. These entries provide clues about how the council addressed issues concerning (but not limited to) private disputes over property, crimes against property and persons, threats to public safety such as banditry, concerns about taxation and other forms of revenue extraction, and abusive and corrupt actions by government functionaries.

The register was originally published by Hans G. Majer and a team of collaborators in facsimile accompanied by geographical indices (Das osmanische "Registerbuch der Beschwerden" ([section]ikayet Defteri) vom Jahre 1675 [Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984]). Gerber has translated about five percent of the register, in particular those entries related to the legal and administrative functions of the kadi and other judicial-administrative officials in the provinces, acts of oppression and brigandage, and complaints about corruption and abuse by government officials. It is not clear from Gerber's discussion whether the translated entries comprise all the documentation in the register relevant to these areas and, if not, why he chose the ones he did.

Gerber's volume opens with an introduction followed by two main sections. The first section ("Part I: Background Studies") is intended to provide the contextual information necessary to interpret the annotated translations presented in the second section ("Part II: Documents"). The volume also includes a glossary and bibliography, but no index.

For Gerber, a correct interpretation of the translated documents requires an appreciation of Ottoman exceptionalism in Islamic and Middle East history. Accordingly, the Ottoman polity, which sought ideological legitimacy and was motivated to ensure the long-term stability of its tax base, built a complex, rational, and generally...