Evidentiary truth claims, imperial registers, and the Ottoman archive
Contending legal views of archival and record-keeping practices in Ottoman Greater Syria (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2790068 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Guy Burak (New York University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 233-254 |
| Publication date | 2016-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0041-977X • E-ISSN: 1474-0699 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0041977x16000082 |
| OpenAlex | W2322793882 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 16 |
The article reconstructs a debate between Hanafi jurists who operated throughout Ottoman Greater Syria (and beyond) from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries concerning the evidentiary status of the Ottoman imperial registers (defters). At the centre of the jurists' debate is the permissibility of using imperial registers as independent, uncorroborated evidence. It was a debate about who had the right to regulate and determine what constituted an authentic evidential document: while some jurists argued that it was almost exclusively the privilege of the jurists, others were willing to concede this authority, at least in part, to the Ottoman dynasty and its bureaucracy. Furthermore, the article contends that the debate about the evidentiary validity of the defters captures the complex relationship between Ottoman dynastic law and the Hanafi fiqh discourse. Finally, the debate sheds light on the legal "defterization" of other types of documents and texts, such as a chronicle (taʾrīkh) and court records (sijill
Ancient history · Archaeology · Bureaucracy · Fiqh · Islam · Ottoman empire · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing) · Sharia · African history and culture analysis · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classics · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law
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La colección de documentos legales del Haram al-Šarīf de Jerusalén
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Evidentiary truth claims, imperial registers, and the Ottoman archive
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| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,4 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |