Crafting Compendiums, Making Law: Ottoman Legal Compendiums And The Reconfiguration Of Legal Authority In The Seventeenth Century

This study examines a late seventeenth-century Ottoman legal compendium (kânunmecmûası) comprising kânuns, fatwas, decrees, and excerpts from provincialkânunnâmes. Through an analysis of three manuscript copies—Manisa 5819, SarajevoOriental Institute R.3, and Istanbul Laleli 1263—it delineates a three-stageprocess of compendium-making: formation, expansion, and consolidation, with eachstage executed by a principal actor, respectively, author-compiler, glossator, andcopyist. This study discusses how textual variations across copies reflect active intellectualengagement rather than mechanical reproduction. It shows that marginalannotations, later integrated into the main text, reveal a dynamic process of legalknowledge production shaped by members of the learned hierarchy (ilmiye). Bytracing the accretion of marginalia across the three copies, the study demonstrateshow compendiums functioned as platforms for articulating and debating legal knowledge,particularly through the interaction between kânun and fatwa discourses. Theact of compendium-making reflects a distinct form of kânun consciousness amongscholar-bureaucrats, and it culminated in the development of the Ottoman fatwa asan official statement of law. This study ultimately argues that the legal compendiumemerged as a major legal genre that played a key role in shaping lawmaking beyondthe sultan’s chancery in the seventeenth century.