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(a.), a term of Ottoman local administration. In the Ottoman system of local administration defined by the provincial administration laws of 23 Rabīʿ I 1284/25 July 1867 and S̲h̲awwāl 1287/1871, this term designated the chief administrative official of the sand̲j̲aḳ [ q.v.] or liwāʾ , the second highest in the hierarchy of administrative districts. The sand̲j̲aḳ had existed as an administrative ¶ district since early Ottoman times (Ortayli, İdare tarihi, 184-5). However, during the 10th/16th century, the functionary in charge had been known as the sand̲j̲aḳ begi, who was primaril…

(a.), court. The subject-matter of this article is the administration of justice, and the organisation of its administration, in the Muslim countries, the office of the judge being dealt with in the art. ḳāḍī . The following topics are covered: 1. General The judicial functions of the Prophet, which had been expressly attributed to him in the Ḳurʾān (IV, 65, 105; V, 42, 48-9; XXIV, 48, 51), were taken over after his death by the first caliphs, who administered the law in person in Medina. Already under ʿUmar, the expansion of the Islami…

(a.), literally, “accounting”. 1. In mystical theology. Here the term is more precisely muḥāsabat al-nafs , “inward accounting, spiritual accounting’’. The concept is connected both with the Ḳurʾānic symbolism of commerce and with that of the final end of man. It should be noted that, like all the verbal nouns of the mufāʿala type, linguistic creations in the fields of the Arab-Islamic sciences and of spirituality, the word muḥāsaba belongs neither to the lexicon of the Ḳurʾān nor to that of the Tradition. Ḳurʾānic vocabulary and the vocabu…

(a), in the usage of the late Ottoman empire and Turkish republic, “civil official”. Roughly at the end of the 18th century, this term began to appear in Ottoman Turkish, not only as a passive participle designating “one who is ordered or commissioned” to do something, but also as a substantive referring to an “official”, normally a “civil official”. As far as one can tell from research done to date, the change was a matter of gradual transition, and not the result of any clearly-marked shift in governmental …

In the Ottoman Empire and successor states. In the 19th and 20th centuries, this term has been used in Arabic and Turkish to refer to financial affairs and financial administration. In the Ottoman Empire, and in various of its successor states, the term has also acquired a more specific reference to the Ministry of Finance ( Māliyye Neẓāreti under the empire; Māliyye Wekāleti or bakanlığı under the Turkish Republic; Wizārat al-Māliyya in the Arab states). The history of financial institutions in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states sti…

(a. mad̲j̲alla ). Originally meaning a book or other writing containing wisdom, or even any book or writing, the term refers in its best-known application to the civil code in force in the Ottoman Empire, and briefly in the Turkish republic, from 1285/1869 to 1926. Known in full as the Med̲j̲elle-yi Aḥkām-i̊ ʿAdliyye , this covers contracts, torts and some principles of civil procedure. It reflects Western influence mainly in its division into numbered books, sections and articles, as in European codes. Critics have found a n…

(a.), designates, in Arabic, a title to property [see milk ], but the Turkish form mülkiyye , or more precisely idāre-i mülkiyye , became by roughly the 1830s the customary Ottoman term for civil administration [see maʾmūr on “civil officials”, meʾmūrīn-i mülkiyye). It is not clear exactly when mülkiyye acquired this sense. Muḥammad ʿAlī’s reforms in Egypt may have contributed to this development; he had separate dīwāns for civil and military affairs by the 1820s ( dīwān-i mülkiyye, dīwān-i d̲j̲ihādiyye; Deny, 108, 111-15). Since the term mülkiyye has associations with both land …

(a.), literally “chosen person”. In the late Ottoman Empire and some of its successor states, the term muk̲h̲tār refers to the headman of a quarter ( maḥalle ) or village. The first muk̲h̲tārs were appointed in 1245/1829-30, exclusively for Istanbul and its “three towns” or suburbs, Üsküdar, Galata, and Eyyūb. Each quarter had a first and a second muk̲h̲tār. As recorded by the official historiographer, Aḥmed Luṭfī, this was done in connection with a counting and registration of the male population of the city ( Der Saʿādetle Bilād-i T̲h̲elāt̲h̲e ahālī-i d̲h̲ükūri t̲h̲ebt-i sid̲j̲ill we…

(a.), a term used under the Anatolian Sald̲j̲ūḳs and Ottomans for various types of revenue collectors (Pakalın, OTD, ii, 569; Uzunçarsılı, passim ). It acquired special significance amid extensive Ottoman financial reforms of 1838-9. Bidding for European support against Muḥammad ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a of Egypt, the Ottomans began adopting classical liberal doctrine, starting with free trade in the Anglo-Ottoman commercial treaty of Balta Liman (1838; Hurewitz, i, 265-7), and then egalitarianism ¶ with the k̲h̲aṭṭ-i̊ s̲h̲erīf of Gül-k̲h̲āne (Ramaḍān 1255/November 1839; Düstūr …

, the name given to extraordinary, ad hoc consultative assemblies in the last century-and-a-half or so of the Ottoman empire. While it had long been customary in the Ottoman Empire, and in earlier Islamic states, to hold special consultations about urgent matters [see mas̲h̲wara ], such meetings appear to have become especially frequent among the Ottomans between the Russo-Ottoman War of 1182-88/1768-74 and, roughly, the abolition of the Janissaries in 1241/1826. Referred to by a variety of synonymous terms, such as med̲j̲lis-i s̲h̲ūrā , dār al-s̲h̲ūrā , med̲j̲lis-i mes̲h̲weret (or m…