During the year 1155 of the Islamic calendar (March 1742–February 1743) al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā,Footnote 2 a resident of a town called Ziftā in Lower Egypt,Footnote 3 sent a petition to the Sultan complaining of a Christian neighbour called Banūb. Muṣṭafā claimed that Banūb had built his house, which was located in the Muslim quarter, to a level taller than those of his Muslim neighbours. This act, Muṣṭafā claimed, violated established custom.Footnote 4 Muṣṭafā requested the issue of an imperial decree to the governor of Egypt ordering that Banūb's house be lowered to the level of the neighbouring Muslim-owned houses, or else be sold to a Muslim. He claimed to possess a fatwa (legal opinion) from the Şeyhülislām, the chief justice of the Ottoman Empire, supporting his demand.Footnote 5
Why did Muṣṭafā choose to take a petty dispute between neighbours all the way from the Egyptian delta to the imperial palace in Istanbul? There were sharīʿa courts in Egypt that could have dealt with the case; there was even one in Muṣṭafā's home town of Ziftā.Footnote 6 The legal basis for Muṣṭafā's claim was straightforward – a non-Muslim was not supposed to own houses that were taller than the Muslim-owned houses in his or her town – and Muṣṭafā had a fatwa from the Şeyhülislām confirming this.Footnote 7 Meanwhile, petitioning the Sultan in Istanbul would have been a complicated and lengthy process. Unless he was Turkish-speaking, literate and familiar with the formulae and conventions of petitions, he would have had to pay someone to write the petition in correct, formal Turkish. He would have had either to make the journey to Istanbul himself or to send the petition by courier. And he would have had to wait a considerable time for the petition to reach Istanbul and be processed, and for the response to make it back to Egypt, before he could resolve his dispute with Banūb. Moreover, this response would probably have been, on the face of it, unexciting. The orders issued by the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn in response to petitions almost invariably referred the matter to the local kadi or governor.Footnote 8
Muṣṭafā's petition is not unusual: many Ottoman subjects sent petitions to the Sultan concerning private, often petty, disputes during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This article attempts to answer the question why Ottoman subjects of this period went to the trouble of presenting their petty grievances to the Sultan in Istanbul when they had access to local sharīʿa courts charged with resolving disputes. While the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn occasionally intervened directly in a dispute, I will argue that most petitioners would not have expected this. Rather, I will suggest that by sending a petition, most petitioners hoped to secure the supervision of the resulting sharīʿa court case by the provincial governor. This oversight could serve a number of purposes: to prevent the kadi's corruption and to make the coercive force of the governor available to enforce the kadi's judgment. In addition, I will argue that the physical document issued by the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn – the emr-i şerīf – had a symbolic value in itself, with which litigants sought to influence the social and psychological dynamics of the courtroom.
The role of petitioning in the Ottoman empire's legal system has not received sufficient attention from historians, yet it is a fascinating and important subject for several reasons.Footnote 9 First, as an instance of direct communication between provincial subjects and the imperial government, petitioning offers unique insight into the lives of ordinary subjects who otherwise left few documentary traces of their activities. Studying petitioning allows us to see how subjects attempted to use the power of the imperial government for their own ends: it shows us what such subjects expected of the Sultan's government.
Second, the institution of petitioning reveals much about the imperial government's attitude to the provinces. It is a commonplace of modern historiography that the Ottoman government's main interest in Egypt lay in maximizing the revenue it extracted from this agriculturally rich province. The petitioning records, however, show the central government of this sprawling empire engaging in the minutiae of social life – including neighbourly quarrels over the relative heights of houses – of one of its most distant provinces. Attention to the communication between provincial subjects and the imperial government is particularly important in the case of Ottoman Egypt. The traditional narrative of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries portrays Egypt slipping inexorably away from Istanbul's control and towards autonomy.Footnote 10 Recent scholars have challenged this image of the increasing irrelevance of Istanbul from several angles.Footnote 11 In this article I show that in the sphere of legal practice Egypt remained closely tied to Istanbul during this period. Although Egypt's provincial elite grew increasingly powerful, the Sultan's government did not simply disappear from the province. By contrast, the imperial palace remained an important legal resource for Egyptians well into the eighteenth century.
Third, petitioning has important implications for our understanding of the Ottoman legal system. In particular, it has implications for our understanding of the relationship between the kadis who staffed the sharīʿa courts and the political authorities. The sharīʿa court was the most widespread and important institution of Ottoman justice. Several historians have argued that sharīʿa court kadis enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, and did not suffer interference in their decisions by the political authorities. Specifically, the claim is that judicial autonomy was both normative and generally achieved, and therefore those instances of interference that have been observed, which were usually perpetrated by provincial governors and their men, were illegitimate aberrations.Footnote 12 The evidence I present in this article challenges this notion of judicial autonomy. The petitioning records show that the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, in the name of the Sultan, sometimes directed the kadi to reach a particular decision in a particular case. Interference by the Sultan in the judicial process was neither an aberration nor a violation of norms: it was seen as a legitimate exercise of the Sultan's authority, and it was expected in certain circumstances. While a direct order to the kadi to reach a particular decision was not the most common response to a petition, such orders were issued regularly and as such constituted a significant limitation on the autonomy of the empire's kadis.
What follows is divided into two parts. In part 1, “Petitions and the petitioning process”, I survey the various records available for the study of petitioning and then describe the petitioning process, beginning with the composition of a petition in Egypt, through its journey to Istanbul and progress through the palace bureaucracy, and resulting in the issuance of an imperial order. I reconstruct the procedure followed by the palace through a close examination of a particular petition which bears annotations in several different hands that mark its progress through the palace bureaucracy. A photograph and transcription of this petition are appended to the article. In part 2, “Why petition?”, I examine the various ways in which an imperial order could affect the sharīʿa court case that usually followed a petition. In other words, I will look at what petitioners hoped to gain by sending their petitions.
Part 1: Petitions and the petitioning process
Sources: Ottoman record-keeping and the Turkish Prime Ministry Archive
The Ottoman section of the Prime Ministry Archive in Istanbul contains a wealth of material for the study of petitioning. The type of material preserved and its organization in the archive owes much to the concerns of the palace bureaucracy, and so offers informative clues about the imperial government's attitude to petitions. While introducing the sources that are the basis for this article, I will also give an overview of developments in the palace's handling of petitions from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century.
Prior to the mid-seventeenth century, the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn kept copies of its responses to petitions in the Mühimme Defterleri (Registers of Important Affairs). These registers contain copies of outgoing correspondence on many different aspects of imperial business, as well as responses to petitions, and have been one of the major sources for modern historians of the empire. In the mid-seventeenth century the palace began to keep a second series of registers devoted exclusively to responses to petitions – the Şikayet Defterleri (Registers of Complaints).Footnote 13 The creation of this new archival unit may represent a decision by the palace to pay greater attention to petitions; it could also have been the result of an increase in the number of petitions that were sent.Footnote 14 Most likely, both these causes were involved and were symbiotically related: the palace may have responded to increasing numbers of petitions by reforming its procedures for handling them, and the improved efficiency of the palace's processes may have encouraged more people to petition.
The imperial orders logged in the Şikayet Defterleri contain often terse summaries of the petitions to which they responded, followed by the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn's command. The purpose of these registers was to keep records of all orders that were issued, so that these could later be verified. I will give an example of the palace using its archives in this way below. For historians, these registers are vital.Footnote 15 For a start, we must assume that these registers were fairly comprehensive, giving us an overview of the type and frequency of petitions received in a particular year.Footnote 16 The registers also show us how the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn responded to petitions, revealing what petitioners got out of petitioning. These orders, however, show only the end result of the petitioning process. We learn nothing about the bureaucratic procedures that led to the issue of an order, nor anything about how petitioners composed their petitions and phrased their demands. To answer such questions it is necessary to examine original petitions – something which, for the most part, previous scholars working on petitioning have not done.Footnote 17
During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, while the imperial palace took great care to archive its own orders, it was not so meticulous in preserving petitions themselves. The assumption of some scholars that original petitions have not survived is, however, mistaken.Footnote 18 Plenty of original petitions are available in the Prime Ministry Archive, in a series of uncatalogued boxes labelled Divan Kalemi. This series houses assorted loose documents connected with the business of the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, and incoming petitions are found alongside various kinds of outgoing correspondence and notes used for internal communication between the different departments of the bureaucracy. From 1742, the number of surviving petitions increases dramatically, as the result of another shift in Ottoman record-keeping practices. In this year the palace created a new department specifically to handle incoming petitions, and many thousands of these petitions are found in the series of boxes bearing its name – Şikayet Kalemi (Complaints Department). The creation of a special department to process and archive petitions coincided with the emergence of another new series of registers: the Vilayet Ahkam Defterleri (Registers of Provincial Orders). This series was a further refinement of the system for archiving the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn's responses to petitions, consisting of several separate sub-series for orders resulting from the more important provinces. These bureaucratic and archival reforms seem to have been part of another effort to improve the imperial government's responsiveness to its subjects, that could have both been prompted by and further encouraged a growing stream of petitions.
The boxes of petitions in the Prime Ministry Archive constitute a significant body of material written by, or at the behest of, ordinary Ottoman subjects. As such, they deserve greater attention from scholars. Ottoman historiography is often criticized for being state-centric: a quality that results from historians’ overwhelming reliance on sources produced by the state and its institutions. While petitions were written to conform with these institutions’ norms, they nevertheless represent the initiative and agency of Ottoman subjects, helping us to see how they attempted to use the imperial government's power, and what they saw as the imperial government's proper role. They allow us to study the imperial government from the perspective of the provincial subject.
By using original petitions we can also better tell the story of the petition's journey to and through the imperial palace in Istanbul. They not only give insight into how petitions were composed, and the constraints under which petitioners operated, but they also bear marks of the bureaucratic process they underwent at the palace. The paper bearing the petition was annotated by different officials as it made its way through the various palace departments. In the following sections I trace the progress of a petition from its composition in Egypt, through its conveyance to the palace in Istanbul, and through the palace's bureaucracy.
The life of a petition, stage 1: composition
Petitions are uniformly written in formal Ottoman Turkish and are highly formulaic. All petitions consisted of a variant of the following formula:
1) A prayer for the Sultan's health, with appropriate honorifics (e.g. devletlü, merḥametlü, Sulṭānım ḥażretleri sağ olsun).
2) A phrase in the third person, usually describing the petitioner as a slave, introducing the petition (typically ʿarż-ı bende budur ki or ʿarżuḥāl-ı ḳulları budur ki).
3) A description of the petitioner's problem.
4) A request, usually for the issue of a document (emr-i şerīf ricā olunur).
5) The phrase “the decision remains yours, my Sultan” (emr ü fermān Sulṭānımındır).
6) A signature, in which the petitioner again describes him or herself as a slave (bende fulān).
In Egypt, even highly literate petitioners would often have had to hire a scribe to compose their petition in a language that was foreign to most Egyptians. Many Turkish-speakers would also have required assistance if they were not familiar with the formal register and the necessary formulae. The existence of professional petition-writers known as ʿarżuḥālcis in the Ottoman empire is well known, although this group of people is not particularly well understood. Richard Wittmann suggests that most ʿarżuḥālcis in Istanbul were retired scribes from the imperial bureaucracy.Footnote 19 The Ottoman traveller Evliyā Çelebi, describing Cairo in the 1670s, claimed that there were 45 professional ʿarżuḥālcis, among whom were many highly proficient Turks from the central lands of the empire.Footnote 20 Perhaps such scribes had come to Cairo in the service of Ottoman governors or other officials and settled there, finding an outlet for their skills in private practice. It is also possible that kadis in Egypt composed petitions on behalf of those under their jurisdiction. Many of the kadis employed in Cairo and in the Egyptian sub-provinces were products of the imperial college system and would have been competent writers of Turkish; petition-writing may have been an important function of kadis, especially in the smaller towns. While most petitioners probably sought professional help, there are enough petitions containing scrappy handwriting or grammatical errors to suggest that some did not bother, or relied on people with a tenuous claim to professionalism. ʿArżuḥālcis were not as indispensable to legal life as lawyers are today.
How did a petitioner make his or her case? In the example given at the start of this article, al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā based his demand that his Christian neighbour Banūb be prevented from living in a house taller than his by appealing to customary practice, rather than to a point of law. Banūb's offence was to have altered the status quo: vażʿ-ı ḳadīmini tağyīr eyleyüb. This is despite the fact that there were clear legal grounds on which Muṣṭafā could have made a complaint: Islamic law prohibited non-Muslims from owning buildings taller than those of the Muslims living in the same town. The fatwa obtained by Muṣṭafā from the Şeyhülislām, if it gave the basis for the opinion (many fatwas do not), would have referred to the relevant legal texts. Muṣṭafā's choice shows the power of tradition as a legitimizing factor in Ottoman society.Footnote 21 Of course, whether Muṣṭafā himself really felt a deep concern for tradition, or whether he simply recognized it as a rhetorical strategy that could produce the desired result, is another question. As well as tradition, petitioners would often claim that their adversaries were violating the sharīʿa, or sometimes the sharīʿa and the ḳānūn (Sultanic law). Petitioners never explicitly identified particular points of law on which to base their claims, however: they simply claimed that the law had been violated.
The life of a petition, stage 2: conveyance to the palace
Once an Egyptian petitioner had produced a petition, how did he or she deliver it to the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn? The idealized image of the petitioning process was of the Sultan receiving petitions personally while riding to mosque or on campaign. In the sprawling Ottoman empire of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this function was necessarily delegated and the process bureaucratized. A litigant could present a petition in person, but it would be received by an official on the Sultan's behalf and then passed on to the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn. According to Colin Imber, during the seventeenth century the chief white eunuch was charged with receiving petitions at the outer door to the palace grounds.Footnote 22
Many petitioners did present their petitions in person, and the accounts of European travellers describe a dramatic ritual in which petitioners would run through the palace grounds holding a burning mat above their heads, the smoke of which would alert the Sultan to the injustice they suffered.Footnote 23 Similar rituals – the performance of a prescribed and prominent act in order to bring something to the sovereign's attention – were associated with petitioning in other pre-modern societies. Examples include the “chain of justice” of ancient Persian epics, pulled to ring a bell in the ruler's quarters and in use in Mughal India, and the Norman cry of “Haro! Haro! Haro! A l'aide, mon prince, on me fait tort”, which, if pronounced on bended knee with arms held aloft, would immediately suspend any argument and have it transferred to the ducal court.Footnote 24 Political theatre such as this was an integral part of ideologies of the just prince, in which injustice was necessarily the result of the ruler's ignorance. But while rituals like these are colourful, they should not obscure the fact that in the Ottoman empire petitioning was at heart a bureaucratic encounter. Public performance of a ritual was not necessary: submission of the written document was all that was required.
Despite the expense and danger of travel, some provincial petitioners, including some from as far as Egypt, journeyed to Istanbul to present their petitions in person. Contemporary chronicles provide examples of petitioners making this choice when the stakes were particularly high. The eighteenth-century soldier-chronicler Damurdāshī records that during 1698–99 the people of Banī Suwayf and al-Bahnasā in Upper Egypt sent a petition to Istanbul complaining that they suffered frequent bedouin raids, and that the local authorities were turning a blind eye due to bribes from the bedouin. They elected a local shaykh called Muḥammad to submit their petition, and he sailed to Istanbul in a merchant ship from Alexandria.Footnote 25 Damurdāshī also relates an event from the governorship of Ḥasan Pasha al-Silāḥdār (1707–09) in which the six Cairo regiments other than the Janissaries sent a petition complaining about the Janissaries’ monopolization of urban tax-farms and their protection of certain merchants against the city's authorities.Footnote 26 The regiments selected six people, one representing each regiment, to travel to Istanbul and submit the petition. The Janissary officers got wind of their plot, and composed their own petition that listed the various offices held by their rivals. They demanded that if they were to lose any of their privileges then their rivals should lose something too. The Janissary counter-petition was also submitted in person, by a Janissary of Istanbul origin. According to Damurdāshī, he bumped into the six rival petitioners in Alexandria and they ended up travelling on the same boat.Footnote 27
Most petitioners, however, and particularly those engaged in mundane disputes, would not have travelled to Istanbul in person, but would have relied on courier networks to transport their petitions to the palace. In order to understand how great a burden the sending of a petition represented, it would be useful to know how much courier services cost, and how long it took a letter to arrive. Unfortunately, scholarly work on Ottoman postal communications is sparse. Colin Heywood has studied the official network of post-stations in Rumelia, but his work focuses on land transport, and the faster and more usual route between Egypt and Istanbul was by sea.Footnote 28 It is not clear whether there was an official post on this route as systematic as that on the main land routes in Rumelia and Anatolia. Nor is it clear whether the official postal system was open to ordinary petitioners. It seems likely that at least some petitioners would have relied on private couriers connected with merchant networks to deliver their petitions, but it is not possible to say how expensive this might have been.Footnote 29
It is easier to comment on how long petitions would have taken to reach Istanbul. The sea journey from Alexandria to Istanbul took twelve days.Footnote 30 From Cairo, there was the additional journey by river to Rosetta, and then along the coast to Alexandria. There would also have been delays waiting for transport at each interchange. The chronicler Aḥmad Shalabī reports that the news of Sultan Aḥmed III's accession to the throne on 27 Rebīʿü’l-evvel 1115 (10 August 1703) arrived in Cairo during Rebīʿü’s-sānī: he does not give the day of arrival, but this at least shows that messages could arrive within a lunar month.Footnote 31 A new Sultan was major news, and a few scattered examples suggest that official mail was usually somewhat slower. Imperial orders were often copied into the registers of al-Bāb al-ʿĀlī, Cairo's main sharīʿa court. Unfortunately, the scribes did not usually note the date of arrival,Footnote 32 but on occasion they did, allowing comparison with the date of the order itself. An order issued on 5 Cemāẕiyü’l-evvel 1075 (24 November 1664) arrived in Cairo on 19 Receb (5 February 1665); another dated late Şevvāl 1092 (3–11 November 1681) arrived on 23 Ẕī’l-ḥicce (3 January 1682).Footnote 33 This suggests that non-urgent mail may have taken around two months to make the journey one-way. This means that petitioners in Egypt could have expected to wait more than four months for a reply: there would have been a further delay as the petition was processed by the palace. And, of course, given the nature of early modern travel there was always the potential for lengthier, unexpected delays. Petitioning added considerably both to the cost of a lawsuit and to its length: litigants approaching the sharīʿa court directly could expect to have their disputes resolved swiftly, often on the same day.
The life of a petition, stage 3: procedure at the palace
The procedure followed by the palace when responding to petitions was bureaucratic rather than judicial. There was no public or private hearing attended by the parties to the dispute. Even if the petitioner travelled to the palace in person, he or she would not usually be granted an audience: the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn based its decisions on the paperwork alone.Footnote 34 Only the petitioner's case was considered: his or her adversary did not have a chance to respond.Footnote 35 It is not surprising, therefore, that the orders issued in response to petitions rarely gave definitive instructions, and often simply instructed the local kadi or governor to deal with the matter according to the sharīʿa. While the procedure was bureaucratic rather than judicial, however, it could still contain an investigative component. When the petitioner referred to a fact that could be verified in the palace's archives, the official conducting the initial review of the petition would check the petitioner's claim and annotate a copy of the relevant document by the side of the petition before passing it on.
The palace's procedures are illustrated well by the petition reproduced in the appendix. This petition, concerning a dispute over the supervisorship of a vaḳıf (endowment), was sent by Muṣṭafā ibn al-Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad of Cairo during the first half of 1676.Footnote 36
Muṣṭafā's petition itself was confined to the lower left-hand part of the paper. This convention was universally observed and allowed for substantial annotation to be made by palace bureaucrats. When the petition reached the palace, the first official annotation simply noted the date of its arrival: late Rebīʿü’s-sānī 1087 (3–11 July 1676).
The petition was then reviewed by a junior official. Muṣṭafā claimed that he was the rightful supervisor of the endowment of Muḥammad Abū ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī, and that this position had been granted to him and his descendants by the Sultan in recognition of his having repaired the endowment's buildings, mosque and finances after the endowment had become impoverished through mismanagement. He claimed to possess four appointment deeds (berāts) and an imperial decree (fermān) from Istanbul confirming his position, as well as an order issued by the governor in Egypt; his post was also recorded in the official register in Cairo. Nevertheless, people who bore “grudges and ill-will” were interfering and attempting to take his position from him. Muṣṭafā asked for a further decree guaranteeing his position and that of his descendants.
As it rested on title granted by the palace, Muṣṭafā's claim could be verified using the palace's archives. Muṣṭafā identified the fermān already in his possession by its date – mid Rebīʿü’l-evvel 1077 (11–20 September 1666). The junior official reviewing his petition duly looked up the copy of this fermān that was filed at the palace. This previous fermān, as Muṣṭafā claimed, confirmed that the supervisorship of the endowment belonged to Muṣṭafā and his descendants. The junior official annotated the text of the fermān at the top right of the petition, before passing it on to the next bureaucrat in the process.
This senior official was the decision maker. Who exactly the decision-making official was is not clear. The petitions themselves were always addressed to “my Sultan”. Of course, the petitions were in fact handled not by the Sultan himself but by his Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, which was presided over by the Grand Vizier. But given the enormous quantity of petitions, and the humdrum nature of many of them, it seems unlikely that the Grand Vizier was involved in every one. Decisions on most petitions would have been made by a lower-ranking member of the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn's staff, with only the most important being shown to the Grand Vizier. The official with responsibility for deciding which petitions were sent higher up clearly wielded considerable influence, but unfortunately this stage of the process is invisible.
The senior official first reviewed the petition and the annotations made by the junior official. On Muṣṭafā's petition, we can see that he confirmed that Muṣṭafā's claim was genuine on the strength of the fermān that the junior official had copied on to the paper, and he signified this by scribbling “correct” (ṣaḥīḥdir) above it. On this basis, the official decided to issue an imperial order in Muṣṭafā's favour, reconfirming his right, and his descendants’ right, to the supervisorship of the endowment. The official wrote an instruction to this effect at the top left of the paper. This instruction was written in large letters with a thick pen. Often, though not in the case of Muṣṭafā's petition, the official would scatter gold flakes on to the still-wet ink.
The document was then passed on to the scribe whose job it was to draw up the imperial order. Although I have not seen the particular imperial order that resulted from this petition, based on the virtual uniformity of other such orders sent to Egypt I can say that it would have been addressed to both the governor and the chief kadi in Cairo. The palace would have ordered the governor and the kadi to ensure that Muṣṭafā's right was not compromised. Prior to sending the order, a copy would have been made for the palace's records. Upon its arrival in Cairo, a further copy may have been made in the registers of Cairo's main sharīʿa court, al-Bāb al-ʿĀlī.
Part 2: Why petition?
For an Ottoman subject living in Egypt, sending a petition to Istanbul would have involved a significant investment of money and time. Most petitioners would have paid a professional to write the petition. Some would then have carried it to Istanbul themselves; others would have employed a courier service. All would have had to wait for the petition to reach Istanbul and to pass through the palace's bureaucracy, and then for the response to make its way back. The Dīvān-i Hümāyūn usually referred the matter to the kadi and the governor back in Cairo, whom the petitioner could have approached directly. Why, then, did petitioners make this investment? What was in it for them? We must assume that an imperial order issued in response to a petition impacted, or at least had the potential to impact, the outcome of the resulting court case. In this part of the article, I discuss what kinds of impact such an imperial order could have.
Explicit instruction
In some cases, the imperial order issued in response to a petition explicitly instructed the kadi to reach a particular decision: in what follows I call these specific orders. I begin my analysis with specific orders, as these are the most obvious way that an order could impact the subsequent court hearing. The Dīvān-i Hümāyūn did not, however, usually issue specific orders. The most common order was an instruction simply to hear the matter according to the sharīʿa, which I will call an unspecific order.Footnote 37 As discussed above, the palace dealt with petitions using a bureaucratic rather than a judicial procedure: there was no hearing, and only the petitioner was able to present his or her case. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn usually issued an unspecific order, delegating to the kadi the tasks of ascertaining whether the petitioner's claim was true and judging accordingly. What requires explanation is the fact that the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, having heard from only one party to a dispute, did sometimes issue a specific order, directing the kadi to reach a particular judgment.
During the second half of 1085 (late 1674 to early 1675), a man called Aḥmad Nūr al-Dīn sent a petition to the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn. Ahmad had endowed a mosque and two colleges in Cairo, and had stipulated in the endowment deed that the supervisor of the endowment should be appointed from his male line.Footnote 38 His father ʿAlīm had held the position of supervisor, but when he died a replacement had been appointed from outside his family, contrary to the stipulations of the endowment. Aḥmad had previously obtained an order from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, and the case had been heard by a kadi, who had issued Aḥmad with a legal deed (ḥuccet) in his favour. Aḥmad had also procured a fatwa in support of his claim. Apparently, people from outside his family had continued to interfere in the endowment, which had led Aḥmad to approach the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn a second time. The imperial order resulting from this petition explicitly directed the kadi and the governor in Cairo to enforce the terms of the deed and the previous order, and to prevent any further interference from outsiders in Aḥmad's endowment.Footnote 39
Another example of a specific order is the response to a petition submitted by Yūsuf ibn Shaykh ʿAbd al-Jawād, Shaykh Sarāmī and Shaykh Maḥmūd Ḥamūdī in early 1140 (late 1727 to early 1728). Yūsuf, Sarāmī and Maḥmūd had been appointed joint supervisors of the Sufi lodge of ʿĀbidīn and Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn in the Lower Egyptian town of Bilbays, a small mosque in the village of Santīḥ, and the endowments of Sayyid Aḥmad, Abū Shaʿbān and Sayyid ʿĀlī in the village of Mūfa. They had an imperial appointment deed (berāt) confirming their positions. However, they claimed that unnamed individuals were preventing them from taking control of these institutions and endowments. The order issued by the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn in response to their petition explicitly instructed the kadi and the governor in Cairo that the three men must be given control in accordance with their appointment deed.Footnote 40
Similarly, in late Cemāẕiyü’l-evvel 1109 (5–14 December 1697), a woman called ʿĀyisha sent a petition and obtained an imperial order explicitly ordering the kadi and the governor in Cairo to grant possession of a merchant hostel, several shops and some properties in the vicinity of the Khān al-Khalīlī market in Cairo to an agent she had appointed. ʿĀyisha held the usufruct of these properties, as had her ancestors, and she had a deed authorizing her to assume possession of them.Footnote 41
What the cases of Aḥmad Nūr al-Dīn, Yūsuf and his friends, and ʿĀyisha had in common was that all revolved around claims that were verifiable with documents. It was this that allowed the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn to issue specific orders. All three cases centred on a person's right to supervise an endowment or on a person's title to property. These rights had all previously been established or confirmed by an authority that had issued the petitioner with a document.
Yūsuf and his friends had been issued with an imperial appointment deed (berāt). While they were far away in Lower Egypt, the imperial government in Istanbul would have kept a copy of the appointment deed, as it did with all documentation that it issued. The Dīvān-i Hümāyūn's staff would have looked up the appointment deed in the palace's archives to check the veracity of Yūsuf's claim. I illustrated this process in part 1, with the example of Muṣṭafā ibn al-Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad, the supervisor of the endowment of Muḥammad Abū ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī.
Aḥmad Nūr al-Dīn referred to a previously issued imperial order in his petition, as did Muṣṭafā ibn al-Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad. Likewise, palace bureaucrats would have been able to locate a copy of this document in their archives and check Aḥmad's claim. Aḥmad also had a deed issued by a kadi (ḥuccet) as a result of an earlier litigation, although it is not clear whether the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn would have been able to consult this. Furthermore, as Aḥmad's endowment was of considerable size, it is possible that the palace archives held a copy of the endowment deed. As the issue at stake was the stipulations of the endowment deed, a palace bureaucrat could also have used this to verify Aḥmad's claim.
ʿĀyisha, on the other hand, did not refer to a previously issued imperial order or appointment deed. She did, however, have a deed issued by a kadi (ḥuccet), either as a result of a previous litigation, or because she had gone to the kadi and provided him with evidence of her right in order to obtain an authoritative document. This document had not been issued by the central government in Istanbul, and so a copy would not necessarily have been available in the palace's archives. ʿĀyisha, however, presented her petition in person, and so may have brought her own copy of the deed with her.Footnote 42
In these three cases, the facts had already been established by an authoritative body: either the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn itself, another arm of the palace bureaucracy, or a kadi. The role of the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn was not to adjudicate: the Dīvān did not have to determine whether the claim of the petitioner was true. Its role was rather to enforce the consequences of a right that had already been established. The Dīvān-i Hümāyūn was ordering its subordinates – the governor and the chief kadi of Egypt – to ensure that these consequences were realized.
Oversight
In some cases, then, the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn issued specific orders directing the kadi to reach a particular judgment. In such cases it is easy to see the appeal of petitioning for the petitioner: he or she received a judgment in his or her favour from the highest authority in the empire. However, the majority of orders issued in response to petitions were unspecific: they contained simply the generic instruction that the kadi should hear the matter according to the sharīʿa. What did the petitioner gain from such an order that justified the time and expense involved in sending a petition? One possible answer is that all petitioners hoped for a specific order, but that most were unlucky. This seems unlikely: as explained above, the decision whether to issue a specific or an unspecific order was based on transparent factors that would have allowed a petitioner to gauge with some degree of accuracy what kind of order he or she would be likely to receive. In what follows, I will suggest that even an unspecific order could have been a desirable outcome for the petitioner.
Ḥācī Muṣṭafā, a veteran of the Bostancı regiment, sent a petition to the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn during early 1086 (early to mid 1675). Ḥācī Muṣṭafā claimed that Ḥaydar and Dāwīd, two money changers in Cairo, had borrowed from him 322,000 Egyptian para and had given him a sealed deed (memhūr temessük) confirming the debt. Subsequently, they had repaid 75,000 para but were refusing to return the remainder.Footnote 43 Ḥācī Muṣṭafā requested that the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn order the immediate repayment of the debt, but the Dīvān ordered simply that the matter be heard according to the sharīʿa.Footnote 44 Ḥācī Muṣṭafā possessed a document confirming the original loan, but proof that a debt had once existed could not prove that it still existed. Ḥaydar and Dāwīd might claim that they had repaid the entire sum, or at least more than the 75,000 para that Ḥācī Muṣṭafā admitted. Regardless of what Ḥācī Muṣṭafā requested in his petition, if he was familiar with the legal process then he cannot have expected to be issued with a specific order in his favour.
If Ḥācī Muṣṭafā's petition resulted only in an order to the kadi in Egypt to hear the matter according to the sharīʿa, what good did it do Ḥācī Muṣṭafā? One impact the order had was to inform the Egyptian governor of the case. This was routine with orders sent to Egypt. All of those I found were jointly addressed: usually to the governor and the chief kadi in Cairo, sometimes to the governor and the kadi of another Egyptian town. Even if the case was ultimately resolved in the sharīʿa court by the kadi, a jointly addressed order made the governor responsible for ensuring that it was carried out satisfactorily. By sending a petition, a litigant could involve multiple authorities in his or her case.
There are two main reasons why a litigant might want to involve the governor as well as the kadi in his or her dispute. One possibility is that the litigant might anticipate not receiving a fair hearing before the kadi. The litigant might suspect the kadi of being corrupt. Or, if the litigant's adversary was a powerful person locally, the litigant might fear that the kadi would find it difficult to resist the adversary's influence.
The second possibility is that the litigant might doubt the kadi's ability to have his judgment enforced. The fact that Ottoman kadis had weak enforcement powers has been noted elsewhere.Footnote 45 Petitioning records provide documentary evidence that even when a litigant had obtained a favourable settlement in a sharīʿa court, he or she might still be led to petition the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn – probably to try to have the kadi's judgment enforced. Even when a petition does not claim that the dispute had previously been heard by a kadi, the decision to send the petition may still have been prompted by the kadi's lack of enforcement powers. Experienced litigants would have been well aware of the limits of the kadi's powers. They may have petitioned, thereby involving the governor who had coercive force at his disposal, when they anticipated that otherwise their adversary would simply ignore the kadi's judgment.
The example I use here is difficult to follow as it involves three different people called Muṣṭafā. They are distinguishable, however, as one has the prefixed title “al-Ḥājj” and another has the suffixed military rank “Çorbacı”; the third I will call by his name only. This case is an example of a person sending a petition to Istanbul after a favourable sharīʿa court judgment failed to resolve the dispute. In early 1109 (mid to late 1697), Muṣṭafā sent a petition to the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn. He reported that Sīdī ʿUthmān, a resident of the Egyptian port of Rosetta and the manumitted slave of his late uncle al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā, had died without leaving any children. In the absence of prior heirs, ʿUthmān's estate should have passed to al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā, as his former owner, and thence to Muṣṭafā, as al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā's heir.Footnote 46 Moreover, ʿUthmān's wife had also died without children, and so her estate should have passed to ʿUthmān, and thence to Muṣṭafā. However, Muṣṭafā had not been present in Rosetta in order to claim his right, and both ʿUthmān's and his wife's estates had been seized by Muṣṭafā Çorbacı. Muṣṭafā Çorbacı claimed the estates on behalf of his wife, on the grounds that she was also a manumitted slave of the same owner. Muṣṭafā claimed that he had legally established his claim to the estates, and that he had received a legal deed (ḥuccet) confirming this.Footnote 47 Nevertheless, Muṣṭafā Çorbacı continued to refuse to hand over the estates. In response to Muṣṭafā's petition, the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn ordered the kadi and governor in Cairo that the matter be heard according to the sharīʿa.Footnote 48
Prior to sending his petition, Muṣṭafā had won a lawsuit against Muṣṭafā Çorbacı in a sharīʿa court: he stated that he had established his claim and received a ḥuccet confirming this. Probably, this first lawsuit was conducted in the sharīʿa court of Rosetta. Despite victory in court, the dispute had dragged on, as Muṣṭafā Çorbacı had ignored the verdict, so Muṣṭafā sent a petition. The Dīvān-i Hümāyūn responded with an unspecific order, as we would expect, since they only had Muṣṭafā's word that his story was accurate.Footnote 49 However, by addressing the order to the governor as well as to the chief kadi, the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn charged him with ensuring that the dispute was resolved. The governor had coercive force at his disposal, and so assuming that Muṣṭafā's story turned out to be true, he could compel Muṣṭafā Çorbacı to comply with the kadi's judgment.
Petitioning the Sultan could, then, have a direct impact on the course of the resulting court case. In some circumstances, a petitioner could hope that the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn would explicitly back his or her claim. If this was not possible, the intervention of the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn would at least involve the governor of Egypt in the case, which could both prevent judicial corruption and ensure enforcement of the kadi's judgment. Beyond such direct impacts, however, petitioning could also produce less tangible benefits for the petitioner. To understand these, we need to consider the nature of Ottoman judicial procedure and the social and psychological dynamics of disputing.
Intimidation through documentation
Many petitioners assembled multiple documents in pursuit of their claims. The resentful neighbour who introduced this article, al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā of Ziftā, obtained a fatwa from the Şeyhülislām and then requested an imperial decree from the Sultan in his campaign to have the top floor removed from his neighbour Banūb's house. Aḥmad Nūr al-Dīn obtained a fatwa before he sought the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn's help in his attempt to regain control of his endowment. Muṣṭafā ibn al-Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad, the supervisor of the endowment of Abū ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī, had already obtained a decree from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn and an order from the governor of Egypt to accompany his four appointment deeds, and had registered his position at Cairo's sharīʿa court, before he petitioned Istanbul for a further order in his favour.
The amassing of authoritative documents by Ottoman litigants has been noted by other scholars. Several of the Greek Orthodox clerics studied by Michael Ursinus paired a fatwa with an order from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn; one third of the petitioners in Richard Wittmann's study of the legal activities of Istanbul's non-Muslim population did so.Footnote 50 Leslie Peirce described litigants in sixteenth-century ʿAyntāb assembling collections of a variety of types of document in support of their claims – fatwas, orders from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, a decree from an Istanbul kadi, orders from the provincial governor-general in Marʿaş, and the imperial “edicts of justice” called ʿadāletnāmes.Footnote 51
From the perspective of a historian, one possible response to Ottoman subjects’ evident enthusiasm for bolstering their legal claims with documents would be to try to delineate the procedural place and the legal impact of each genre of document within the judicial process. But this line of enquiry is of limited use in explaining the attraction of documents for Ottoman litigants. While deeds issued by kadis and imperial appointment deeds could be used to establish facts such as title to property or appointment to an official position, fatwas and orders from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn were technically of little value in adjudication. A fatwa merely gave the mufti's opinion of the legal implications of a hypothetical situation: the plaintiff still had to prove that the situation outlined in the fatwa was an accurate representation of the facts.Footnote 52 Likewise, an imperial order could usually only order further investigation by a kadi, as the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn had only heard one side of the story. From a technical legal perspective, then, a litigant's collection of fatwas and imperial orders served no purpose: it amounted to “redundancy in documentation”, in Peirce's phrase.Footnote 53
Peirce also suggested that in sixteenth-century ʿAyntāb people perceived documents as being arranged in a hierarchy, some more powerful than others.Footnote 54 That such a perception would have been, from a legal perspective, inaccurate, is not important. It is worth considering whether certain documents, regardless of their technical value as evidence or authority, could have had an impact on the social dynamics of the courtroom.
In imagining such an impact, it is important to bear in mind the nature of Ottoman judicial procedure. The crucial point is that Ottoman sharīʿa courts – or indeed any courts adhering to sharīʿa procedure – were adversarial rather than inquisitive. The kadi's role was not to investigate, but rather to provide a procedural framework in which two litigants were able to conduct a dispute. If one of the litigants was able to establish his or her case within the procedural and evidentiary boundaries that the kadi enforced, then the kadi would issue a judgment in his or her favour.Footnote 55 Responsibility for the progress of the adjudication, then, rested with the litigants. In fact, individual litigants bore a far greater degree of responsibility than do their counterparts in modern adversarial legal systems such as that of the United States. There was no office of prosecutor, and so victims of crime had to conduct the prosecution themselves.Footnote 56 There was no professional intermediary class of lawyers, and so litigants had to construct their cases and assemble evidence themselves.Footnote 57 Similarly, the defendant bore the responsibility for his or her defence. Once the plaintiff had issued a suit, it was up to the defendant to admit or deny the plaintiff's claim. If the defendant denied the claim, and the plaintiff responded by producing evidence, it was up to the defendant to issue a counter-claim and provide evidence for that if he or she wanted to continue to resist.
In this context, a barrage of authoritative documents could have had a significant intimidating effect on a legal adversary. Particularly in situations in which a plaintiff faced a less experienced defendant, such a tactic could accentuate the power dynamic. Authoritative documents could be used to intimidate the defendant into conceding defeat. The imperial order a petitioner received was a symbolic representation of the Sultan's power. The document would have been illegible to most litigants in Cairo: in a language foreign to most Egyptians, and in any case written in the dīvānī script, designed to look elegant rather than to read easily, and impenetrable to the uninitiated. But crowned with a ṭuğra, the Sultan's stylized signature, and with flakes of gold scattered across the ink, it was a document designed to impress. That such documents were sought and valued by Cairenes says much for the continued prestige of the Ottoman Sultanate.
We should also consider the performative nature of the act of petitioning. By going to the trouble and expense of sending a petition, and by appearing to know how to work the system, a litigant could convey an impression of him or herself as possessing legal knowledge and as having sufficient resources to pursue a legal battle aggressively. The act of petitioning not only produced a document but also indicated that the petitioner had financial means and determination, and that continued resistance would not result in peace. This might encourage the defendant to concede; it might also convince him or her to comply with the kadi's verdict.Footnote 58 As illustrated above with the case of the three Muṣṭafās, a successful sharīʿa court hearing was often only one stage in a litigant's dispute – enforcement was another battle. The meaning of authoritative documents, such as the imperial orders procured by petitioners, can only be fully understood if we consider not just their technical legal value, but also their role in the broader culture of disputing.
Conclusion
The traditional narrative of Ottoman–Egyptian history portrays the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a period during which Ottoman influence waned and Egypt became increasingly autonomous. Law and legal practice has played a prominent role in this narrative. Michael Winter contrasted the large numbers of “Ottoman Turkish” kadis in the sixteenth century with the situation in 1798, when “only six qadis were Ottoman Turks, the rest being Arabs”.Footnote 59 Muḥammad Nūr Faraḥāt, in his history of the Ottoman–Egyptian legal system, declared that by the eighteenth century the Ottoman governor was “merely an ambassador from Istanbul”.Footnote 60
These statements are misleading: Winter's focus on ethnicity is anachronistic,Footnote 61 and the archival evidence shows that the Ottoman governor was far more intimately involved in Cairene life in the eighteenth century than Faraḥāt supposed.Footnote 62 But regardless of the cultural background of Egyptian kadis and the power of Ottoman governors, a study of petitioning shows that Egypt's legal system was still procedurally, institutionally and culturally tied to a wider Ottoman system of justice. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many Ottoman subjects in Egypt sent petitions concerning their private legal disputes to the Sultan in Istanbul, despite the cost in time and money. The Sultan, represented by the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn, continued to exercise one of the crucial functions of sovereignty as the ultimate guarantor of justice, and continued to be seen as such by the Egyptians who petitioned him.
The arrival of an imperial order from the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn could have a real impact on the progress of a dispute. On some occasions the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn gave the kadi in Egypt a specific order to reach a certain judgment. Judicial autonomy in the Ottoman empire only went so far: while the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn did not interfere in sharīʿa court adjudication as a matter of course, this option was available. The Sultan had both the right and the ultimate responsibility to dispense justice, following in the Islamic tradition of the maẓālim jurisdiction. In the more numerous cases when the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn sent an unspecific order, this order still had an impact. The orders sent in response to petitions from Egypt always involved the governor in the case, adding an extra tier of oversight that could serve two purposes – to guard against the kadi's corruption, or to assist in enforcing the kadi's judgment. Moreover, the order itself was an impressive and powerful document that a litigant could use to emphasize his or her commitment to the case, or to dissuade the adversary from resisting. Beyond the actual coercive power that they represented, imperial orders were clearly desirable documents that Egyptians such as al-Ḥājj Muṣṭafā, who resented the height of his neighbour's house, saw as a useful tool for pursuing disputes. Ottoman power and Ottoman legitimacy were recognized and valued by late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Egyptians, and remained vital components of the province's legal system.
Appendix
Figure 1. (Colour online) PMA, Divan Kalemi, box 77, folder 64. Reproduced with the permission of T.C. Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü
Transcription
A: Muṣṭafā's petition (lower left section of paper):
1. درکاه فلک مدار وبرکاه کردون اقتدار لا زال عالیا الی یوم القرار ترابنه عرض داعی
2. بودر که بو داعیلری اوقات خمسه لری وقرأت قرآن عظیم الشان وذکر وتوحید وحضرت سیدنا محمد مصطفي
3. صلي 
علیه وسلم حضرتلرینه صلوات شریف کتوردکده ودام ایام عمر ودولت پادشاهی ادعیه سنه مداومت
4. اوزره اولوب حق تعالی قبول ایدوب مهابتلو پادشاهمز پادشاه کردون خلدت خلافته الی یوم یبعثون حضرتلرینه
5. عمرني ودولتني زیاد بر زیاد ایدوب اعدای دین ودولت اوزرینه منصور ومظفر ایلیه والطاف خفیۀ
6. الهیه وعنایت جلیلۀ ربانیه ایله عالم ظهور وبطونده محروس ومحفوظ اوله امین یا رب العالمین حالیا
7. مصر اوقافلرندن حضرت قطب الوجود سیدي محمد ابو السعود الجارحي قدس سره العزیزک
8. وقفي فقیر واون بش سنه دن برو خراب ایکن تبرکا مقام شریفک خذمتي ایله مشرف وجامعک ووقف
9. یرلرینک عماریله مقید اولمامز ایچون نظارت وتولیتي بو داعیلرینه توجیه اولمغین بحسب الارکان جامعک
10. اکثر یرلري وعقاراتلري عمار واحیا ایلیوب وبوندن اقدم صدقات پادشاهیدن بو داعیلري واوندن صکره
11. اولادي واولادینک اولادي عزیز مشار الیهک [وقفینک] نظارت و تولیتنده قید حیاتله ابقا ومقرر اولمق بابنده
12. تواریخ مختلفه ایله دورت دفعا برات شریف همایون وبر دفعا فرمان عالیشان صدقه وعنایت بیوریلوب
13. وموجبلرنجه دیوان مصردن بیورلدیلر ویریلوب ومحروسۀ مصرده تمسکات شرعیه ایله سجل محفوظه قید اولنوب
14. وبو انعام بیوریلان فرمان پادشاهینک بري بیک یتمش یدي سنه نک ماه ربیع الاول اواسطنده مورخ وتواریخ
15. مختلفه ایله اولان تقریر حجتلرینک بري بیک یتمش یدي سنه نک ماه شوال اوایلي ایله مورخه وضبط تصرفمده
16. ایکن حالیا بعض غرض وبغض صاحبلري هر بار بو داعیلرینه معارضه ایدوب نظارتي المق صددیله رنجیده دن
17. خالي المدوقلري اجلدن عواطف علیۀ شاهانه دن رجا اولنور که یدمده اولان برات همایون وامر شریف
18. عالیشان موجبنجه بو داعیلري واوندن صکره اولادي واولادینک اولادي قید حیات ایله عزیز مشار الیهک وقفي
19. نظارت وتولیتنده کما کان ابقا ومقرر اولمق بابنده فرمان همایون ایله خط شریف عالیشان صدقه وعنایت بیورلمق
20. رجاسنه در دولت مداره عرض اولندي باقي امر [و] فرمان درکاه معلانکدر والصلاه والسلام علی سید المرسلین سیدنا محمد وعلی اله وصحبه الطاهرین وعلی عباد الصالحین والحمد 
العالمین من الحقیر الفقیر الی ربه العلی الکبیر الداعی مصطفی بن الشیخ احمد محمد ابّار
B: Note of date of arrival (bottom right corner):
فی اواخر ر سنه ۸۷Footnote 63
C: Previous fermān cited by Muṣṭafā, checked and copied out by palace official (upper right section):
1. نظارت اوقاف سید محمد ابو السعود جارحی در محروسۀ مصر
2. مصر پاشاسنه ومنلاسنه حکم که مشایخ کرامدن شیخ احمد محمد ابار اوغلی [????]Footnote 64 شیخ مصطفی کلوب
3. محروسۀ مصرده واقع اجدادینک زاویه سنده زاویه دار اولوب دوام عمر ودولتم ادعیه سنه مداومت
4. اوزره اولمغله مصرده واقع سید محمد ابو السعود جارحی قدس سره العزیزک اوقافی نظارتی برات
5. برات(sic) شریفله اوزره اولوب بعد الیوم کندو قید حیات ایله متصرف ووفاتندن صکره اولاد اولادی
6. متصرف اولمق اوزره نظارت مزبور مومی الیهه النده اولان برات وتمسکاته موجبنجه ابقا ومقرر
7. قلنوب اخردن مداخله اولنمامق بابنده عنایت رجا ایتمکده وجه مشروح اوزره النده اولان
8. برات وتمسکاته موجبنجه ابقا ومقرر قلنوب یازلمشدر فی اواسط را سنه ۷۷Footnote 65
D: Annotation, by the same official, immediately below fermān (possibly, this phrase was accidentally omitted by the scribe from the previous line, prior to 
):
قید حیات
E: Annotation by senior official, above fermān:
صحیحدر
F: Instruction, from senior official, to issue a new imperial order (upper left section):
قیدی موجبنجه ضبطیچون صورت حکم بیورلدی
Translation
A:
The petition of the claimant, to the dust at the throne that revolves the heavens, the court that has power over fortune, may it remain exalted, is as follows:
This petitioner has given prayers for the five prayer times, for the glorious Quran, for the remembrance of God, for God's unity, and for our leader Muḥammad, may the peace and prayers of God be upon him. May God accept the prayers for the continuation of the life and the rule of the Sultan. May the caliphate of our majestic Sultan last until the day of judgment, may his life and rule be extended, and may he be victorious over the enemies of religion and the state. May both the apparent and the hidden worlds be protected by God's imperceptible mercies and his great grace. Amen, oh lord of the worlds.
One of the vaḳıfs Footnote 66 of Egypt is the vaḳıf of the chief of existence, Sīdī Muḥammad Abū ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī, may God sanctify his secret. This vaḳıf is poor, and since it fell into ruin fifteen years ago, because I have diligently undertaken repairs of the mosque and the vaḳıf's buildings as an act of piety and in service of the holy places, I have been appointed supervisor of the vaḳıf. I have restored other parts of the mosque, and earlier the Sultan confirmed the assignation of the position of supervisor with life tenure to myself and then to my sons and their sons. At various times, four noble imperial berāts Footnote 67 and one exalted fermān Footnote 68 have kindly been issued, and in accordance with these the Dīvān of Egypt has given a buyuruldu,Footnote 69 and in Cairo a temessük Footnote 70 has been recorded in the official register. The fermān with which the Sultan bestowed this favour was dated mid Rebīʿü’l-evvel 1077 (11–20 September 1666), and of the variously dated ḥuccets,Footnote 71 one was dated early Şevvāl 1077 (27 March–5 April 1667).
However, while this vaḳıf has been under my control, various people who bear grudges and ill-will towards me have been constantly interfering. Because I cannot be free of the injuries these people are doing to me with the intention of taking my position, I request from your exalted imperial kindnesses that, in accordance with the imperial berāt and the exalted, noble emr Footnote 72 in my possession, an imperial fermān signed by your exalted, noble hand kindly be issued confirming my and after me my sons’ and their sons’ right to life tenure in the position of supervisor of the aforementioned vaḳıf. This petition has been submitted to he who is the centre of greatness. The decision rests with the exalted throne. Prayers and peace be upon the leader of the prophets, our leader Muḥammad, and on his family and his pure companions, and on the righteous worshippers of God. Thanks be to God, the lord of the worlds.
From he who is wretched and poor before his great and exalted Lord, Muṣṭafā, son of al-Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad Abbār.
B:
Late Rebīʿü’s-sānī of the year 1087 (3–11 July 1676).
C:
The position of supervisor of the vaḳıf of Sayyid Muḥammad Abu ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī in Egypt.
This order is to the governor and the judge of Egypt:
Shaykh Muṣṭafā, the son of Shaykh Aḥmad Muḥammad Abbār of the illustrious shaykhs, came [to the palace to petition the Sultan]. He is the guardian of a zāviye Footnote 73 founded by his forefathers in Egypt, in which prayers are said for the continuation of my life and rule. According to a noble berāt, Muṣṭafā has been granted the position of supervisor of the vaḳıf of Sayyid Muḥammad Abu ’l-Saʿūd al-Jāriḥī, may God sanctify his secret, located in Egypt, with life tenure, and after his death his sons’ sons will have the right to this position. In order that no one interfere with his position, he has requested my favour, to confirm his supervision of the vaḳıf in accordance with the berāt and the temessük that he holds. With respect to the above, I have ordered that [his supervision of the vaḳıf] be confirmed in accordance with the berāt and temessük that he holds.
Mid Rebīʿü’l-evvel of the year 1077 (11–20 September 1666).
D:
Life tenure.
E:
Correct.
F:
In accordance with the record, it is commanded that an order be issued to guarantee his possession.
