Plural Legalism in Mediterranean Port Cities: Capitulations, Commerce and Conversion in Galata

October 22, 2013

October 22, 2013

Fariba Zarinebaf, University of California

Abstract: I am currently working on Ottoman port cities as spaces of cultural, commercial and legal encounter with Europe within the framework of Capitulations. Contrary to the view of many historians who have regarded these treaties as the leading cause of European colonialism and Ottoman economic decline, I argue that they were based on the Ottoman and Muslim tradition of granting aman or protection to Christian traders at times of peace that can be traced back to Muslim Spain (Seville).  Based both on Islamic law and Ottoman kanun, they created a commercial legal framework like a pre-modern international law that provided protection ( life and property) , legal immunities, freedom of domicile, worship and trade that helped create free zones of trade in port cities.  In other words, they were not a western imposition but a local legal tradition that the Ottoman adopted and developed further from a position of economic strength. In fact, one may argue that there was also a Turko-Mongol tradition of allowing traders freedom of movement and domicile.  I will focus on the rise of Galata, the European port of Istanbul and the role of Capitulations or ahdnames in its development from a Medieval Genoese colony to a modern Western European port which also became the center of Ottoman modernization movement.

Bio: Fariba Zarinebaf obtained her PhD from the University of Chicago in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic history.  Her undergraduate training was in French and Russian history and political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She taught at Bilkent University in Turkey, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Virginia. She is currently an associate professor and the director of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at the University of California, Riverside.  She has published extensively on gender and law, the history of Ottoman -Safavid relations, Ottoman Greece, and crime and punishment in Istanbul as well as a comparative study of constitutionalism and modernity in Iran and Turkey. Her most recent publication is Crime and Punishment in Istanbul, 1700-1800, University of California Press, 2010. She is currently working on two book projects on Galata, a Mediterranean port city and Azerbaijan between two empires. Zarinebaf has received a number of fellowships for her recent book project. She is now a senior Fulbright fellow in Turkey.

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