Abstract:

Although there was a religious distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, which had a multinational structure, there was not distinction in the law and in the implementation of justice. In the face of various problems occurring in society, the state has tried to ensure a fair trial and to implement an appropriate penal system. Although the non-Muslim people were dependent on their own belief systems in matters such as worship, marriage or inheritance, they were subject to Ottoman law in which the rules of shar’i and customary law were valid in terms of criminal law. The reason for this is that there are certain rules against the elements that disrupt the peace and order of the society, and that there must be certain penalties in order to treat everyone equally if these rules are not followed. In this study, it is discussed cases that can be an example of criminal law related to non- Muslims in the 17th century. These were obtained by the transcription of various archive documents consist of crime examples such as murder, assault, theft, adultery and rape. Although the place of non-Muslims in criminal law is known from different studies, the number of independent studies on crime-punishment or on sample data on criminal law is few. The aims of the study are to determine that there is no distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims in the implementation of Ottoman criminal law, which cases are more common between the two groups, and what kind of punishments were given to crimes committed in the 17th century. Thus, it was preferred to examine examples of crimes and punishments from documents related to non-Muslims, both in the local court and in the center, and it was aimed to clarify these issues through examples.

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