跨学科历史杂志, xliii:3 (冬天, 2013), 353–376.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTTOMAN TIMES

Metin M. Coqgel, Boíaç Ergene, Haggay Etkes, 托马斯·J. Miceli
Crime and Punishment in Ottoman Times:
Corruption and Fines Monetary ªnes have been common
throughout history as an instrument of law enforcement. 为了
certain crimes, governments have often preferred them over im-
prisonment or corporal punishment because they are less costly to
implement, 在
原则, and because they can help
to compensate victims or to repair social damage. Used alone or
in combination with other punishments, ªnes have proved to
be an effective deterrent to crime. Since Becker’s pioneering
work about the economics of crime in 1968, a signiªcant literature
about the theory and practice of levying ªnes to enforce the law
has emerged.1

至少

在实践中, 然而, ªnes are subject to corruption. Govern-
ments often pay agents, directly or indirectly, a share of the reve-
nue from the ªnes that they collect. Although tying agents’ in-
come to these ªnes may seem on the surface to be a legitimate
source of motivation, it may also lead to extortion, 受贿, 或者
theft. Recent studies have identiªed the cost and consequences of
rent seeking in law enforcement due to opportunistic behavior.

Metin M. Coqgel is Professor of Economics, 康涅狄格大学. 他是
“The Political Economy of Law and Economic Development in Islamic History,” in Jan
Luiten van Zanden and Debin Ma (编辑。), Law and Long-Term Economic Change (斯坦福大学,
2011), 158–177; “Conversations between Anthropologists and Economists,” in Stephen
Gudeman (编辑。), Economic Persuasions (纽约, 2009), 81–96.

Boíaç Ergene is Associate Professor of History, University of Vermont. 他是奥-
thor of Local Court, Provincial Society, and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute
Resolution in Çankjrj and Kastamonu (1652–1744) (Leiden, 2003).

Haggay Etkes is Lecturer, Tel Aviv University, and Economist, Research Dept., Bank

of Israel.

托马斯·J. Miceli is Professor of Economics, 康涅狄格大学. 他是奥-
thor of The Economic Theory of Eminent Domain: Private Property (纽约, 2011); The Eco-
nomic Approach to Law (斯坦福大学, 2009; orig. 酒吧. 2004).

1 Gary Becker, “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,” Journal of Political Econ-
奥米, LXXVI (1968), 169–217. For reviews of this literature, see Miceli, The Economic Approach
to Law (斯坦福大学, 2008), 283–336; Mitchell Polinsky and Steven Shavell, “The Eco-
nomic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law,” 经济文献杂志, XXXVIII
(2000), 45–77.

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354 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

Governments clearly must weigh the cost and beneªts of using
ªnes and agents against those of the alternatives.2

This article studies the use of ªnes and agents for law en-
forcement in the Ottoman Empire, as well as the institutional
mechanisms implemented to control corruption. Two objectives
guide the inquiry. The ªrst is to identify the basic components of
the classical Ottoman system of law enforcement. Ruling for more
than six centuries over lands that spanned three continents, 这
Ottomans developed a system that initially relied heavily on ªnes
and local agents. In the system that prevailed during the sixteenth
世纪, ªnes constituted the punishment for many offenses, 和
much of the revenue went to the local ofªcials in charge of identi-
fying suspects and punishing criminals. To prevent corruption, 这
personnel responsible for adjudicating criminals were not also re-
sponsible for punishing them, and periodically these public of-
ªcials rotated between regions. Their compensation consisted of
shares of criminal ªnes and local taxes. Insights from recent litera-
ture about law and economics reveal the details of how this system
deployed ªnes to deter crime and how it served to control corrup-
的.

转型; high levels of

Our second objective is to trace how and why the Ottoman
system changed over time. After the seventeenth century, it un-
derwent a signiªcant
inºation
undermined the effectiveness of ªxed ªne rates. 而且, impe-
rial decentralization in the provinces and the institution of long-
term tax farming altered the government’s relationship with local
law-enforcement agents, thereby reducing the effectiveness of
mechanisms that previously helped to control corruption. 这些
developments impelled the Ottomans to decrease their reliance on
ªnes for punishment in later periods.

This work is related to three historiographical strands. 这
ªrst is the growing literature on crime and punishment in the Ot-
toman Empire. Using rich Ottoman court records and other ar-
chival evidence as sources, a number of scholars have recently

2 Polinsky and Shavell, “Corruption and Optimal Law Enforcement,” Journal of Public Eco-
经济学, LXXXI (2001), 1–24; Nuno Garoupa and Daniel Klerman, “Optimal Law Enforce-
ment with a Rent-Seeking Government,” American Law and Economics Review, IV (2002),
116–140; Coqgel, Etkes, and Miceli, “Private Law Enforcement, Fine Sharing, and Tax Col-
lection: Theory and Historical Evidence,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (向前-
未来).

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 355

studied various aspects of this issue in the Ottoman Empire—for
例子, crime and punishment in Jstanbul, illicit sex (zina) 在
Aleppo, and law and gender in Aintab. The economic analysis of
Ottoman law enforcement herein contributes a new perspective
on these issues.

This article is also related to the literature about the relation-
ship between Ottoman and Byzantine institutions. Studying com-
monalities between the public institutions of these states, 例如
their systems of taxation and governance, historians have iden-
tiªed the origins of certain Ottoman institutions. Although it is
beyond the scope of this paper to examine the origins of law-
enforcement practices in the Ottoman Empire in any depth, 这
economic logic and the structure behind the practices discussed
herein draws attention to similarities in how these two states de-
ployed ªnes.

最后, our work is related to the enormous literature about
law enforcement in Europe during the same period, 特别
the evolution of the basic components and socioeconomic princi-
ples in European states. By providing a systematic analysis of the
evolution of Ottoman law enforcement, we facilitate comparisons
between the Ottoman Empire and other European states.3

ottoman law enforcement—fines and agents Although
ªnes were originally unrecognized in the criminal sections of the
Islamic law (shari’a), and some religious scholars disapproved of
them as dangerous innovations (bid’at), other scholars, 例如
eighth-century jurist Abu Yusuf, disagreed. Notwithstanding this
early legal hesitation, some of the previous Islamic peoples of

3 Fariba Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700–1800 (伯克利, 2010), 162; Elyse
Semerdjian, “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syra-
cuse, 2008); Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab
(伯克利, 2003); Anthony Bryer and Heath W. Lowry, Continuity and Change in Late
Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society: Papers Given at a Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks in May
1982 (华盛顿, 华盛顿特区, 1986); Halil Jnalcjk, “The Problem of the Relationship between
Byzantine and Ottoman Taxation,” in Michael A. 厨师 (编辑。), Akten Des XI: Internationalen
Byzantinisten-Kongresses (慕尼黑, 1960), 237–242; Clive Emsley, 犯罪, 警察, and Penal Pol-
icy: European Experiences 1750–1940 (纽约, 2007); David Levinson, Encyclopedia of Crime
and Punishment (千橡市, 2002); Julius R. 拉夫, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500–
1800 (纽约, 2001); Xavier Rousseaux, “Criminality and Criminal Justice History in
欧洲 (1250–1850): Bibliographical Essay,” Criminal Justice History, 十四(1993), 159–181;
David de La Croix, Xavier Rousseaux, and Jean-Pierre Urbain, To Fine or to Punish in the Late
Middle Ages (Louvain, 1994).

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356 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

Turkic heritage, such as the Seljuks and the Dulkadir, 通常
used ªnes for law enforcement. Ottoman jurists, 然而, gener-
ally approved of ªning offenders; the government adopted the
strategy as an integral component of the Ottoman criminal code,
applying it extensively and systematically in a variety of circum-
stances.4

During the ªfteenth and sixteenth centuries, Ottoman law
enforcement resorted to ªnes either alone or in conjunction with
other forms of punishment. Consistent with the practice in earlier
Muslim states, Ottoman law also prescribed discretionary measures
(ta’zir), such as ºogging, bastinada (falaka), banishment, and im-
监禁. A novel characteristic of the Ottoman criminal code
for certain offenses was to impose both a monetary ªne and chas-
tisement, possibly a practice borrowed from the Byzantine Em-
皮雷. In those cases, the ªne was linked by ªxed ratio to the num-
ber of strokes inºicted on an offender, usually one akçe for each
stroke. A far greater variety of offenses—including theft, fornica-
的, wine drinking, the sale of unstamped cloth, property damage
caused by stray animals, and hunting or disturbing animals on
ofªcial reserves—were often punished exclusively by ªnes.5

The economic theory of law enforcement provides a simple
basis for choosing ªnes as the most common form of punishment.
一般来说, the key difference between ªnes and imprisonment (或者
other forms of nonmonetary penalty) is expense. Since adding a
prison term imposes a cost not just on offenders but also on society
as a whole, ªnes make sense as the ªrst course of action (to the ex-
tent of offenders’ ability to pay) before resorting to prison. 笔记
that this point is based on the assumption commonly made in the
early literature that ªnes are costless (or cheaper) to implement. 如果
the social cost of implementing ªnes rises signiªcantly, 例如
when their collection leads to corruption, the strategy could fail, 作为
we elaborate later.6

The Ottomans’ extensive use of ªnes in the ªfteenth and six-
teenth centuries, an era often referred as the “classical” period, 是
consistent with the economic theory of law enforcement. 埃维-
dence on the Ottoman economy and society of this period sug-

4 Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (纽约, 1973); Rudolph Peters,
Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First
世纪 (纽约, 2005).
5 Heyd, 学习, 277; Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment, 162.
6 Becker, “Crime and Punishment”; Polinsky and Shavell, “Economic Theory.”

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 357

gests that ªnes were cheaper to implement than nonmonetary
forms of punishment. It is reasonable to expect the cost of impris-
onment to be prohibitively high in rural areas because of the low
population density and consequently low economies of scale in
the provision of prison services. Since the provincial soldiers who
were generally responsible for punishing offenders typically had
long periods of absence during war seasons, they were unable
to monitor prisons adequately. The irreversibility of certain non-
monetary forms of punishment, such as the death penalty or severe
corporal punishment, also raised their social cost, particularly in
the case of crimes for which the probability of accurate detection
was low. 相比之下, ªnes offered greater ºexibility in setting the
level of punishment, and they were, in principle reversible, 什么时候-
ever an error was made.

The consistency of Ottoman practice with the economic
theory of law enforcement does not mean that the Ottomans some-
how foresaw future theoretical developments in law and economics
or that they always deliberately sought to maximize efªciency. 我们
know too little about individual rulers and important ofªcials to
draw inferences about the knowledge or motivation that formed
the basis for all of their choices. But a cost-beneªt analysis would
certainly be useful for making sense of trends in patterns of punish-
蒙特. Although the proposition that examining costs and beneªts is
useful for explaining enforcement rules and institutions is not an
uncontroversial proposition, this analysis seeks to demonstrate that
its continuing vitality is a good indication of its validity. We proceed
by adopting the methodological position that Ottoman rulers, 子-
项目, and ofªcials tried to maximize their own well-being by mini-
mizing cost and maximizing revenue.7

The Ottomans’ use of ªnes is also consistent with a historical
precedent inherited from the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine
criminal system used ªnes extensively for punishment. 虽然
historians have studied many of the ªnancial and administrative
institutions that the Ottomans borrowed from Byzantium, 他们
have not systematically examined the parallels between their sys-
tems of law enforcement. It may not be a coincidence that the
Dulkadir, another Islamic polity that utilized ªnes as popular

7 Various social, 政治的, and historical constraints limited what the Ottomans could ac-
complish. For an analysis of the relationship between efªciency and constraints in taxation,
see Coqgel, “Efªciency and Continuity in Public Finance: The Ottoman System of Taxa-
的,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, XXXVII (2005), 567–586.

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358 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

methods of punishment, was also a former Byzantine territory. A
comparative evaluation of the Ottoman and Byzantine ªnes could
demonstrate the extent to which the Ottomans were inºuenced
by their Byzantine predecessors.8

Ottoman sultans issued criminal statutes that speciªed in great
detail the ªnes that applied to speciªc offenses. 桌子 1 节目
some of the criminal ªnes in the Ottoman Criminal Code of Sul-
tan Süleyman the Magniªcent, drafted in 1545. 不出所料,
ªnes varied signiªcantly among offenses, depending on the sever-
ity of the crime and the harm to the victim. 例如, the ªne
imposed for murder, unless punished by retaliation (see note be-
low Table 1), was generally much higher than that for wounding
with a knife or arrow. 相似地, the ªnes for stealing grain and
wounding with a knife or arrow were signiªcantly different. 这
considerably higher ªnes for fornication and sodomy by married
individuals presumably reºected the greater social harm caused by
these offenses.

桌子 1 also shows that ªnes depended not just on the sever-
ity of the offense or the harm to the victim but also on the
offenders’ability to pay, as determined by their wealth. The ªne
for killing a person, 例如, varied from 400 akçe for a rich
offender whose wealth exceeded 1,000 akçe, 到 200 akçe for a less
wealthy offender whose income was between 600 和 1,000 akçe,
to only 50 akçe for a poor offender with an income lower than
400 akçe.9

A discriminatory ªne structure based on offenders’ ability to
pay is consistent with the economic theory of law enforcement
and the notion of optimal deterrence. Becker ªrst established the
proposition that when punishment takes the form of monetary
ªnes and apprehension is uncertain, it is optimal to set the ªne as
high as possible while proportionately lowering the probability of
detection to achieve the desired “expected ªne” (and hence deter-
rence) at the lowest social cost. It follows that the ªne should be

8
J. Tokalak, Bizans—Osmanlj Sentezi: Bizans Kültürü ve Kurumlarjnjn Osmanlj Üzerindeki
Etkisi (Istanbul, 2006); Angeliki Laiou, “法律, 正义, and the Byzantine Historians: Ninth
to Twelfth Centuries,” in idem and Dieter Simon (编辑。), Law and Society in Byzantium,
Ninth–Twelfth Centuries (华盛顿, 华盛顿特区, 2004), 182; Paul Magdalino, “Justice and Finance
in the Byzantine State, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries,” in Laiou and Simon (编辑。), Law and Soci-
埃蒂, 96; Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (斯坦福大学, 1997), 179,
352.
9 Heyd, 学习, 104–110. Fine levels also depended on the legal/personal status of individu-
作为, such as whether they were free or slave, Muslim or non-Muslim, or adult or minor.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 359

桌子 1 Examples of Fines for Criminal Offenses (Akçes)

offender’s wealth

罪行

status of
offender

rich average

贫穷的

Murdera
Wounding with a knife/arrowb
Stealing grain
Concealing stray animals
Fornication

Sodomy

400
200
40
40
300
Married
Unmarried/widow 100
300
Married man
100
Unmarried man

200
100
20
20
200
50
200
50

100
50
10
10
100
30
100
30

非常
贫穷的

40–50

aAccording to the Code, “If a person kills a human being, retaliation (kis s) shall be carried
出去 [和] no ªne shall be collected.” The ªne for murder applies if “retaliation is not carried
out or the killing is not such as to require retaliation” (Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman
Criminal Law [纽约, 1973], 105).
bThe penalty for wounding also included strokes. The monetary ªne “shall be collected . . .
after he has been chastised” (Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law [纽约,
1973], 107).
source “Ottoman Criminal Code of Sultan Süleyman the Magniªcent,” in Uriel Heyd,
Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (纽约, 1973), 54–131 (Ottoman text with English
翻译).

set as equal to the offender’s wealth, which is the maximum
amount the offender could pay. Polinsky and Shavell extended this
logic to show that when offenders vary in their levels of wealth,
the optimal strategy involves ªnes that increase according to the
wealth of offenders, culminating in a maximum ªne below the
worth of the wealthiest person.10

In imperial records, expected ªne revenues were generally re-
corded in tax registers called tahrir defterleri, under the general
heading of “windfall” revenue (bad-i hava), or in reference to more
speciªc ªnes (cerime) expected from such widely observed misde-
meanors as crop damage caused by stray cattle. Further details
about the types and amounts of ªnes can be found in the surviving
records of actual revenues from these ªnes. A document pertain-
ing to the ªnes collected by Hüseyin Subaqj, an ofªcial in charge
of collecting ªnes in eight villages around the town of Ramle in

10 Becker, “Crime and Punishment”; Polinsky and Shavell, “A Note on Optimal Fines
When Wealth Varies Among Individuals,” 美国经济评论, LXXXI (1991), 618–
621. The economic logic is that if the maximum ªne were raised to the level of the wealthiest
人, and the probability of apprehension were lowered proportionately, individuals not so
wealthy would be undeterred because they would not be able to pay the full ªne.

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360 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

1586, shows thirty-three instances of crimes and misdemeanors
in the four months covered by the register, including ªghting
(with penalties ranging between 20 和 540 为了), stealing rice
(200 为了), and drinking wine (160 为了).11

The second basic component of Ottoman law enforcement
was the use of agents to apprehend and punish offenders. Prior to
the seventeenth century, during the so-called classical period, 这
local ofªcials entrusted with these tasks received a share of ªne
revenues as remuneration. The Empire consisted of several admin-
istrative levels that divided the Empire into provinces, the prov-
inces into districts, and the districts into ªefs. In the provinces
close to the imperial center, government agents also typically re-
ceived income directly from taxable sources assigned by the cen-
tral government. 例如, if a certain cavalryman (sipahi) 曾是
appointed as the ªefholder of a village, all of the peasants in that
village paid their taxes directly to him as his remuneration, 哪个
he shared with the local governor. In return for the right to collect
税收, he provided local protection to the peasants, men and arms
to the central government in times of war, and possibly main-
tained roads and bridges. The same ofªcial was often charged with
enforcing the law and collecting the ªne revenue in his region. 到
enforce the law in towns, the government similarly appointed lo-
cal ofªcials (例如, subaqj) who also received income from
ªne revenues. Since the Ottoman system of government separated
enforcement from adjudication (as we detail below), these agents
apprehended and punished offenders but left it to judges to deter-
mine guilt.12

incentives and corruption in law enforcement The resort
to agents for law enforcement introduced obvious issues for the

11 Coqgel, “Ottoman Tax Registers (Tahrir Defterleri),” Historical Methods, XXXVII (2004),
87–100; Amy Singer, “Marriages and Misdemeanors: A Record of ‘Resm-i’Arus ve Bad-j
Hava’,” Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, IV (1996), 138.
12 Glen W. 斯旺森, “The Ottoman Police,” Journal of Contemporary History, VII (1972),
243–260. The system was also ºexible enough to accommodate various regional arrange-
评论, especially in the distant corners of the Empire. 例如, in Kurdish territories,
tribal leaders performed law-enforcement responsibilities and collected the ªnes. In Egypt, 这
peasants paid their ªnes to their kashifs (local governors). See Heyd, “Jurm,” in P. J. Bearman
等人. (编辑。), Encyclopedia of Islam: A Dictionary of the Geography, Ethnography and Biography of the
Muhammadan Peoples (Leiden, 1978), IV, 604; Michael Winter, Egyptian Society under Ottoman
规则, 1517–1798 (伦敦, 1992), 90–91. This article focuses on the practices of the central
provinces.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 361

government to consider when choosing between ªnes and other
forms of punishment. There were two types of problems in imple-
menting a system of ªnes and organizing the personnel
为了
执法. The ªrst was the traditional principal–agent
problem—the extent of the agent’s commitment to enforcing the
法律. 例如, an agent might not devote much effort to iden-
tifying, apprehending, and punishing criminals if he did not inter-
nalize the full social beneªts from law enforcement. 尤其,
depending on his compensation scheme, he could fail to honor
the intended deterrence effect of his activities. The general source
of the problem was that agents had interests different from those
of rulers, and rulers could not easily observe agents’ actions in
speciªc cases because of their lack of information about local
conditions—the very reason why they employed local ofªcials in
the ªrst place. 而且, even if rulers were somehow able to
gather the required information, the cost of determining appropri-
ate courses of action in each case and to monitor ofªcials’ perfor-
mance would have been too high. The upshot is that decentralized
agents could under-enforce the law without easy detection under
any circumstances.

The second problem was the possibility of corruption in law
enforcement—agents accepting payment in exchange for not re-
porting a violation or either threatening to frame or actually fram-
ing an innocent person to extort money. An enforcement agent
motivated by rent seeking could engage in such behavior if the
beneªts of corruption exceeded the expected cost, 那是, 风险
的, and penalty for, being caught. Note that this type of problem is
not typically present in the standard principal–agent settings, 这样的
as sharecropping or wage contracts, which have been traditionally
examined in the literature. Whereas the typical concern in a stan-
dard principal–agent setting is the choice of how much effort the
agent should expend, the possibility of corruption in law enforce-
ment adds a new dimension to the agency problem. Corruption in
law enforcement is socially costly because it dilutes deterrence.
When innocent individuals are extorted or framed, they bear the
expected payment, which reduces the cost of committing the
犯罪.

The ªne-based criminal system created clear incentives for
Ottoman law-enforcement agents to detect criminals, 但它也
created a risk that they would implicate innocent subjects, 或者

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362 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

overcharge actual criminals. 例如, when a thief was caught
in the act inside a house in Aintab (C. 1540), the local tribal chief,
who served as the local police, claimed that the thief ’s intention
was rape, thus forcing him to pay a higher ªne. In another case,
ªne collectors incited unmarried men to assault women of high
social standing in order to subject these women to high ªnes for il-
licit sex. Such behavior was not limited to Aintab; the literature
provides numerous examples of unjust or excessive ªnes. 自从
enforcement ofªcials who were compensated solely by ªnes had
little interest in the deterrence effects of their actions, 腐败
could be a serious problem.13

It is nearly impossible to determine the severity of the prob-
莱姆, the extent to which it changed over time, or its relationship
to corruption in other societies. The fact that corruption, 由其
自然, does not leave traces in historical documents may well ex-
plain why Ottoman historians expressed conºicting views about
its signiªcance in the Empire. 例如, whereas Mumcu
found bribery and favoritism to be widespread during the ªfteenth
and sixteenth centuries, Gerber argued that the legal system func-
tioned relatively well during the same period. Although Rubin’s
recent research about Ottoman courts in the nineteenth century
indicates that the Ottoman government considered corruption to
be a serious and nagging problem during this period, he does not
indicate whether the problem worsened or improved over time.
Comparisons with other societies are even less certain. Some Eu-
ropean travelers made implicit or explicit comparisons between
their own systems and that of the Ottomans, but Prest, a historian
of judicial corruption in early modern England, found such com-
parisons to be unjustiªed.14

Historical evidence nevertheless suggests that corruption was
a signiªcant potential problem for law enforcement in the Otto-
man Empire. Imperial orders sent to provincial centers regularly
warned judicial and military ofªcials against acts of corruption and

13 Peirce, Morality Tales, 319. See Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Istanbul
(纽约, 2010), 115–116, 198, for a discussion of the creative ways in which Kara Hjzjr,
the subaqj (sub-governor) of Istanbul in the 1540s, extorted money, not only from the guilty
but also from the innocent.
14 Ahmet Mumcu, Osmanlj Devleti’nde Rüqvet: Özellikle Adli Rüqvet (Ankara, 1969); Haim
Gerber, 状态, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany, 1994);
Avi Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (伦敦, 2011); Wilfrid Prest, “Ju-
dicial Corruption in Early Modern England,” Past & 展示, 133 (1991), 67–95.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 363

oppression, indicating the presence of these practices as continual
担忧. In the same vein, European travelers’ accounts about the
Ottoman Empire that were composed between the seventeenth
and nineteenth centuries generally made special mention of cor-
破坏实践 (especially bribery) by both court functionaries and
law-enforcement ofªcials. Although we cannot be certain that im-
perial orders were followed or that Europeans’ assessments were
objective and free of anti-Ottoman bias, anecdotal evidence sug-
gests strongly that corruption was a problem.15

How did the Ottomans attempt to control agency problems
和腐败? The starting point was to deªne and outlaw
wrongdoing in law enforcement. The Ottoman legal system
clearly considered the possibilities of corruption and misconduct
as signiªcant concerns. According to the “circle of justice,” tra-
ditionally considered to be the basis for Ottoman political the-
奥里, economic prosperity depended on meting out justice to tax-
paying subjects. The sultans typically laid the legitimacy of their
rule on the protection of the subjects from abuse and corruption at
the hands of the military-administrative authorities, 包括
law enforcers. In drafting the legal code of a province (kanunname),
and in edicts regarding matters of justice (adaletnames) that the im-
perial center sent to the provinces on a regular basis, they generally
took great care to address and prohibit behavior that was deemed
corrupt, such as excessive taxes and illegal impositions of criminal
ªnes.16

mechanisms for controlling corruption Since merely de-
claring wrongdoing to be illegal would have been insufªcient, 这
Ottomans attempted to implement institutional safeguards and in-
centive mechanisms to ensure against such behavior. Three poli-
cies aimed at regulating rent-seeking behavior were the distinction

15 Boíaç, Local Court, Provincial Society, and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and
Dispute Resolution in Çankjrj and Kastamonu (1652–1744) (Leiden, 2003), 108–124; Christoph
Herzog, “Corruption and the Limits of the State in the Ottoman Province of Baghdad during
the 19th Century,” The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, 三、 (2003), 36–43. Herzog
insists that barring evidence to the contrary, European accounts should be considered strategi-
cally reliable, given the lack of comparable sources that provide ethnographic information.
Jnalcjk, “Adaletnameler,” TTK Belgeler, 二 (1965), 49–145. Ergene, “On Ottoman Jus-
16
泰斯: Interpretation in Conºict (1600–1800),” Islamic Law and Society, VIII (2001), 52–87, 骗局-
trasts the concept of justice promoted by the imperial center with a concept of justice
entailing mutual commitments and rights between the sultan and his servants, as advocated by
Ottoman ofªcials on the administrative or geographical periphery.

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364 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

between the personnel who adjudicated and those who punished
criminals, the periodic rotation of public ofªcials between regions,
and a compensation scheme that paid ofªcials shares of criminal
ªnes and local taxes. Insights from the literature about law and
economics shed light on how these mechanisms helped the Otto-
mans to prevent corruption and to ensure that law-enforcement
agents exerted optimal effort in catching criminals.

Separation of Adjudication and Punishment The Ottomans sep-
arated adjudication from punishment by using two classes of
ofªcials for criminal justice—judges and military/executive per-
索内尔. 原则, judges could try suspects and determine guilt
but not carry out their sentences. Only local military or executive
ofªcials (such as governors or sub-governors, sipahi or subaqj) 是
empowered to apprehend and punish criminals. 而且, 仅有的
the executives had the right to collect ªnes as part of their income.
The ultimate objective in this separation of powers was not just to
achieve complete specialization between these tasks but also to
prevent abuse of power. If the judges did not receive the ªne rev-
enue, they had no incentives to over-enforce the law to raise in-
来了. 相似地, if law-enforcement ofªcials were suspected of
abusing their power, they could be taken to court.17

The economic model of law enforcement generally assumes a
welfare-maximizing government that automatically chooses the
socially optimal scheme. 在这个设置下, no allowance needs to be
made for the possibility (likelihood) that police ofªcers would
shirk in their efforts to apprehend offenders, 或者更糟, to accept
bribes from offenders in return for letting them go. Given the
实际的
importance of these problems, 然而, Becker and
Stigler proposed that the compensation of enforcers be made de-
pendent on their performance, 例如, by paying them a re-
病房, or bounty, for those offenders that they apprehend, 从而
effectively “privatizing” the enforcement of law.18

Although this solution partially aligns the interests of enforc-

17 For the separation of powers between the judges and executive ofªcials, see Heyd,
学习, 208; Ronald C. Jennings, “Kadi, 法庭, and Legal Procedure in 17th-Century Otto-
man Kayseri,” Studia Islamica, XLVIII (1978), 133–172; Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants:
The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (纽约, 1983), 21–23;
Sami Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic World (纽约, 2003), 56–58.
18 Becker and George Stigler, “Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of En-
forcers,》法律研究杂志, 三、 (1974), 1–18; Polinsky and Shavell, “Corruption.” See the
survey of this literature by Reza Rajabiun, “Private Enforcement of Law,” in Garoupa (编辑。),
Criminal Law and Economics (切尔滕纳姆, 2009), 60–89.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 365

ers and society, it does not address the problem of wrongfully
ªning an innocent person. If no independent effort is made to as-
sess the guilt of offenders before collecting a ªne, private enforcers
would clearly maximize their net income by randomly appre-
hending individuals rather than by steadfastly locating actual of-
fenders. 如果, 然而, enforcers were well aware that independent
adjudicators were in place to evaluate the guilt of defendants be-
fore assessing ªnes, they would have a greater incentive to seek
out true offenders. 的确, it is easy to show that enforcers’ efforts
increase with the accuracy of adjudicators’ assessment of guilt.19
Evidence from Ottoman court records indicates that separat-
ing adjudication from punishment kept some of the corruption by
law-enforcement ofªcials under control. Numerous cases of abuse
brought before a judge saw corrupt ofªcials sentenced to various
forms of punishment. As Heyd states, guilty ofªcials had to return
the ªnes that they had falsely collected, and particularly oppressive
ofªcials were also ºogged. Based on his extensive study of legal
procedure in Kayseri, Jennings similarly found that when a law-
enforcement ofªcial was accused of corruption, “he was brought
to court immediately and subjected to the law like any other law
violator.” Although the existence of such court cases may not
completely prove that the separation of adjudication from punish-
ment was always successful, it does suggest that this approach
helped to control corruption in some cases by providing a mecha-
nism for people to bring corrupt ofªcials to justice.20

Separating adjudication and punishment was unlikely to elim-
inate the problem entirely, 然而, because the division of duties
could not always be complete. Not all criminal cases were handled
by the court system, and not everyone had easy access to courts,
especially in rural areas. Since establishing courts everywhere and

19 We can demonstrate this argument with a purely mathematical method: Let p(X) be the
probability that the enforcer locates the true offender, where x is his expenditure on effort,
和 p(西德:2) (西德:3) 0, p(西德:4) (西德:5) 0. Let f be the ªne and s the enforcer’s share of the ªne, so that s (西德:5) 1. We as-
sume that the adjudicator makes two types of error—a type one error (acquittal of the guilty)
and a type two error (conviction of the innocent). Let q1 be the probability of a type one er-
ror, and q2 the probability of a type 2 错误, where we assume that 1 (西德:6) q1
(西德:3) q2. The upshot is
that the adjudicator is more often right than wrong, in the sense that he convicts the guilty
more often than the innocent. 详情, see Keith Hylton, “Costly Litigation and Legal Er-
ror under Negligence,” Journal of Law, 经济学 & 组织, 六、 (1990), 433–452. The ex-
pected proªt of the enforcer becomes (西德:7) (西德:8) [p(X)(1 (西德:6) q2) (西德:9) (1 (西德:6) p(X))q1]sf (西德:6) X. The resulting
ªrst-order condition for x is p(西德:2)sf(1 (西德:6) q1
(西德:6) q2) (西德:6) 1 (西德:8) 0, from which it follows that the en-
forcer’s effort is positive but decreasing in the probability of both types of errors.
20 Heyd, 学习, 297; Jennings, “Kadi, 法庭,” 167.

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366 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

bringing all criminal cases before a judge would have been prohib-
itively expensive, Ottoman law-enforcement ofªcials handled a
variety of minor, sometimes even major, offenses directly without
the involvement of a judge. According to Islamic legal theory, 前任-
ecutive ofªcials could punish criminals who confessed or if the ev-
idence overwhelmingly indicated guilt, such as when a person was
caught drunk. Although the extent of such summary punishment
by executive ofªcials is unknown (since it was not recorded in court
registers), contemporary foreign observers generally reported that
many criminal cases never went before a judge. 因此, ofªcials
motivated by rent seeking still had numerous opportunities to raise
their incomes by ªning innocent people. The possibility of report-
ing abuses of that nature to courts would not have been possible in
certain instances because access to courts was too difªcult or
昂贵. 因此, although the attempt to separate adjudication and
punishment certainly limited the problem, it did not eliminate it.
Other mechanisms were needed to control it further.21

Rotation of Public Ofªcials The system of rotation among
public ofªcials, core elements of which could be found in pre-
vious Near Eastern states, mandated that provincial military and
administrative personnel—including judges and law-enforcement
ofªcials—relocate from one region to another on a more or less
regular schedule. The frequency and period of rotation varied by
地区, occupation, and time. Studying a sample of provincial cav-
alrymen in the mid-sixteenth century, Barkey found that “an av-
erage of 45 percent of ofªcials were rotated” during the three
snapshot years that she chose for sampling. Judges in eighteenth-
century Aleppo were rotated about every year. Whereas several
contemporary Western observers and modern historians have
noted the hardship that this system caused for public ofªcials,
Barkey described systematic rotation as an integral “part of the Ot-
toman state mode of social control.” By rotating public ofªcials in
and out of assignments, the Ottoman rulers ensured that these
ofªcials would not become ensconced in the provinces or develop
local ties and power.22

Systematic rotation could prevent corruption by limiting the

21 Heyd, 学习, 210–211; Zubaida, Law and Power, 57.
22 Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (伊萨卡岛,
1996), 470, 460; Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eigh-
teenth Century (纽约, 1989), 80–82.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 367

local interaction between judges and law-enforcement ofªcials,
helping to mitigate the imperfect separation of adjudication from
惩罚. Despite being separate in principle, rent-seeking
judges could develop alliances with agents in charge of punish-
蒙特, take part in their corruption, and share the proceeds of this
collaboration. The system of rotating ofªcials among the districts
decreased the opportunity. If judges and law-enforcement ofªcials
did not stay in a location long enough to build an alliance, 他们
could not easily engage in joint corruption.

Compensation of Enforcers The ªnal Ottoman mechanism for
controlling corruption was the compensation of law-enforcement
ofªcials with shares of ªnes and taxes. Unlike the previously dis-
cussed strategies, which functioned as external controls on behav-
ior, this method depended on agents’ self-interest. The discussion
herein follows from some of the recent developments in the law-
and-economics literature about efªcient law enforcement. 铝-
though compensating enforcers competitively with only a share of
the ªnes collected from offenders would certainly give enforcers
an incentive to invest in apprehension efforts, such a scheme
would not generally result in efªcient enforcement. Nor would
monopolizing ªne collection under a single agency. Although en-
forcers would care about collecting ªnes, they would not neces-
sarily be concerned with the social beneªts of their actions. 实际上,
enforcers would conceivably beneªt—that
increase their
revenue—if the crime rate were to increase. One way to resolve
这个问题, according to Garoupa and Klerman, is to combine
ªne sharing with a reward that is inversely related to the number
of offenses. 在这方面, Coqgel, Etkes, and Miceli showed that
such a scheme is achievable in practice by combining the tasks of
law enforcement and tax collection and compensating joint en-
forcer-collectors with shares of both ªne revenue and taxation.23

是,

Following the logic of this proposal, suppose that the tax base
is decreasing because of increased theft and other crimes. Tax col-
lectors whose payment depends on taxes would have a distinct in-
terest in reducing the crime rate, thereby being in accord, 至少
部分地, with the social beneªts of deterrence. Their motivations

23 William Landes and Richard Posner, “The Private Enforcement of Law,” Journal of Legal
学习, IV (1975), 1–46; Polinsky, “Private versus Public Enforcement of Fines,” ibid., IX
(1980), 105–127; Garoupa and Klerman, “Optimal Law Enforcement,” 131; Coqgel, Etkes,
and Miceli, “Private Law Enforcement.”

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368 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

would not be fully aligned with social welfare, 然而, 即使
they were to retain all of the collected taxes, because total tax rev-
enues represent only a fraction of aggregate wealth. 尽管如此,
this scheme represents a better reckoning of enforcers’ incentives
than the pure ªne-sharing scheme.

The Ottomans implemented just such a two-part mechanism
for compensating law-enforcement ofªcials. 如前所述, 他们
typically used local military-administrative ofªcials for local law
enforcement. These ofªcials usually performed a variety of other
functions for the state. As public servants, they protected their lo-
cal population against external threats, provided men and arms to
the ruler’s army in times of war, and possibly engaged in such
other services as the maintenance of roads and bridges. In ex-
改变, they received income from a share of the local tax reve-
nues. 例如, in return for serving in the army and protect-
ing peasants, cavalrymen (sipahi) could be appointed ªefholders of
a village, to whom all of the peasants there paid taxes directly as re-
muneration.

As the second component of a two-part scheme, the income
of law ofªcials included a share of the ªne revenue. The relegation
of taxes and ªnes to the same recipient was inherent in the funda-
mental Ottoman principle that ªnes “belong to the land [在
which an offense was committed]).” In accordance with this prin-
原则, law-enforcement agents received not just taxes but also a
share of the ªnes of the same taxable source. This rule applied di-
rectly to the “free” (serbest) lands, where the “landowner” (sahib-i
arz)—the high-ranking government ofªcial (such as the beylerbeyi,
sancakbeyi, or zaim)—who claimed the taxes and revenues gener-
ated by these areas, or his agents, received the ªnes in their en-
tirety. On the lands that were not categorized as “free” but were
technically state-owned (miri), the ªefholder shared the ªnes with
the governor, usually in an equal proportion.24

the demise of fines in ottoman law enforcement Fines be-
came less prevalent in the Ottoman Empire during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, a period of major social, 生态-
nomic, and administrative transformation. They do not appear in
several provincial kanunnames (law-codes) composed during this

24 Heyd, “Jurm,” 604; idem, 学习, 289; Peirce, Morality Tales, 324, for examples of how
ªne revenues were allocated.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 369

时期, and there is evidence that many offenders who could be
ªned were instead sent to the galleys or punished by forced labor.
The ªrst two modern Ottoman penal codes (1840 和 1850) 制作
no mention of ªnes as acceptable forms of punishment; in the sec-
ond one, they are explicitly forbidden.25

According to the economic approach to law enforcement de-
veloped above, the primary reason for the reduction in the use of
ªnes was the signiªcant rise in the cost of exacting them, due to
the changes in Ottoman society during this period. Inºation raised
the cost of implementing ªnes directly, and transformations in re-
gional administration and provincial society raised it indirectly by
eliminating or diminishing the effectiveness of the mechanisms
previously installed to combat corruption.

In a rural state as vast as the Ottoman Empire, at a time when
the means of communication were primitive, the efªciency of us-
ing ªnes for law enforcement in the provinces depended heavily
on revising the scale of ªnes frequently. In a static environment,
where the scale of ªnes did not change for long periods of time,
the cost could be low. But in an environment of rapidly changing
价格, increasing ªnes to keep up with inºation would be costly.
The central government would not only need timely information
about local prices to update the schedule of ªnes; it would also
need to convey this information immediately to local courts and
law-enforcement agencies. These “menu costs” could delay price
adjustments signiªcantly, especially in a centralized bureaucratic
环境. The higher cost of changing ªnes in an inºationary envi-
ronment may well explain why the rates remained largely un-
changed in the Ottoman Empire after the sixteenth century, 甚至
though prices increased about twenty-two times between the
1500s and the 1800s. Since the real rates of ªnes declined sig-
niªcantly, ªnes lost the ability to deter criminals. The inºationary
environment of this period may be one of the reasons why the Ot-
tomans relied less on ªnes after the sixteenth century.26

The question is whether the control mechanisms identiªed

25 Ariel Salzmann, “An Ancien Régime Revisited: ‘Privatization’ and Political Economy in
the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire,” Politics & 社会, XXI (1993), 393–423; idem,
“Measures of Empire: Tax Farmers and the Ottoman Ancien Régime, 1695–1807,” unpub.
博士. diss. (Columbia Univ., 1995); Heyd, “Jurm,” 604; Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment,
164.
26 For the change in prices, see Süleyman Özmucur and Qevket Pamuk, “Real Wages and
the Standards of Living in the Ottoman Empire, 1469–1914,” Journal of Economic History, LXII
(2002), 301.

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370 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

above—the periodic rotation of ofªcials, the separation of adjudi-
cation from punishment, and the use of ªnes and taxes to com-
pensate law-enforcement ofªcials—continued to check corrup-
tion from the mid-seventeenth century onward. The structural
transformation that the Ottoman Empire underwent during this
later period suggests otherwise. As Heyd observed, 衰退
in the revenue of law-enforcement agents who relied on ªnes
for income probably tempted many of them to ªnd ways to raise
rates unofªcially. Zarinebaf also noted that litigants and law en-
forcers often negotiated ªnes on their own. As the Ottoman polity
became increasingly decentralized, regional ofªcials (省级
military-administrative authorities, local notables, tribal
领导者,
ETC。) acquired a greater ability to inºuence social, 经济的, 政治-
伊卡尔, and administrative affairs in their regions. The causes or
phases of this complex development are well documented else-
在哪里; what matters most for this article is that the direct govern-
mental control of the provinces that transpired during the six-
teenth century was replaced by an arrangement that led to the
“localization” of political and administrative control. Barkey de-
scribes this process as the emergence of “local governance re-
gimes,” primarily dynasties of regional notables, which acted as
“small states.”27

Local Elites and the Breakdown of Justice By the late seven-
teenth and eighteenth century, the local elites “had usurped most
of the administrative and military posts in the provinces, 任何一个
through purchasing titles or membership into Ottoman military
and administrative provincial establishment, or through tax-
farmers.” As a result, it became increasingly difªcult for the gov-
ernment to rotate them and thus curb the creation of strong rela-
tionships and coalitions within particular jurisdictions. In many
地方, provincial ofªces became identiªed with speciªc families,
often transferred from one generation to the next. 而且,
法官 (kadjs), who occupied their positions for only a year or so,
gradually lost their ability to limit predatory activities within these

27 Heyd, “Jurm,” 604; Zarinebaf, Crime and Punishment, 163–164; Jnalcjk, “Centralization
and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration,” in Thomas Naff and Roger Owen (编辑。),
Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History (Carbondale, 1977), 27–52; Salzmann, “Ancien
Régime”; idem, “Measures of Empire”; Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Compara-
tive Perspective (纽约, 2008), 256–257; Dina Khoury, “The Ottoman Centre versus Pro-
vincial Power-holders: An Analysis of the Historiography,” in Suraiya Faroqhi (编辑。), 这
Cambridge History of Turkey (纽约, 2006), 1, 136–137.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 371

strongholds or to rectify the crimes of provincial authorities. 在
事实, many eighteenth-century magistrates assisted the illegal or il-
legitimate activities of local authorities. 例如, Strauss wrote
in detail about how Hacj Ali—a zabit, and the principal law-
enforcement agent of Athens in the late eighteenth-century—
coopted the local judge and manipulated the judicial processes to
his advantage. 相似地, documents that Talat Yaman published
from eighteenth-century Küre are rife with allegations about pro-
vincial judges and local notables joining forces to make false alle-
gations against rival provincial interests.28

representative of Molla Mehmed,

Local kadjs often failed, or chose not, to protect common
people against clear abuses by law enforcers. Court records of
Kastamonu show that local ofªcials could abuse their power for
personal gain even by interfering into private disputes among in-
habitants. According to an entry in the records, Ali Beqe, son of
Hüseyin, claimed in the presence of Elhac Mustafa, the father and
that “while Ümmü
合法的
Gülsüm was in Istanbul, she agreed to be my (Ali Beqe’s) wife. 在
15 Qevval 1147 (/10 行进 1735), our marriage was contracted.
然而, after her return to Kastamonu, she also agreed to give herself
to Molla Mehmed and contracted [a second] 婚姻 [illegiti-
马特利]. . . .” When questioned, the representative Elhac Mustafa
acknowledged that following her return from Istanbul, Ümmü
Gülsüm agreed to marry Molla Mehmed. He also reminded the
court that Ali Beqe made the same accusation before, in front of a
previous kadj, but he could not prove his claim. Elhac Mustafa
also stated that Ali Beqe had publicly declared in the ªrst trial, “我的
案件 [concerning Molla Mehmed and Ümmü Gülsüm’s marriage]
is based on falsehood.” Ali Beqe answered Elhac Mustafa’s rebuttal:
“At that time [of the ªrst trial] my opponents bribed the military
commander of Kastamonu, Bayrakdar Qaban Aía, who had me
imprisoned and used force on me to make me say these words.”

28 Khoury, “Ottoman Centre,” 136; Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats, 481; Jnalcjk, “Central-
ization and Decentralization,” 28; Johann Strauss, “Ottoman Rule Experienced and Remem-
bered: Remarks on Some Local Greek Chronicles of the Tourkokratia,” in Fikret Adanir and
Suraiya Faroqhi
(Leiden, 2002), 210–211; Talat
Yaman,”Küre Bakjr Madenine Dair Vesikalar,” Tarih Vesikalarj, 我 (1941), 266–282. The disap-
pearance of the checks and balances between adjudicative and law-enforcement agents might
have also led to abuse on the part of court ofªcials, who often claimed shares of ªne revenues
为了他们自己. Heyd, “Jaza’,” Encyclopedia of Islam, IV, argues, “In later periods qadis often ex-
acted ªnes for themselves” (518).

(编辑。), The Ottomans and the Balkans

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372 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

When asked about this claim, Elhac Mustafa acknowledged that
Ali Beqe’s previous statement was in fact forced. Afterward, Ali
Beqe brought to court witnesses who conªrmed his marriage to
Ümmü Gülsüm. 随后, the court ordered Ümmü Gülsüm
to “release” herself to Ali Beqe.29

The document is not clear about whether the ªrst kadj before
whom Ali Beqe brought his case knew about the actions of the
commander, who was undoubtedly responsible for law enforce-
ment in Kastamonu. But even if he did not, the fact that Ahmed
Beqe does not appear to have cited the commander’s abuse sug-
gests that accusation would have been futile. Nor is it clear why
Ahmed Beqe chose to bring the case to court two-and-a-half years
after the incident, perhaps because the commander was no longer
in ofªce. Whatever the reason, the records leave no indication
that the commander was investigated or punished for his actions.
Although such an example does not necessarily prove that the sys-
tem had decayed by the postclassical period, it does tend to justify
doubts about how well judicial agents restrained the predatory
tendencies of law enforcers.30

The effectiveness of the separation between adjudication and
punishment becomes more complicated in light of the fact that
provincial courts were not even the primary arbiters of criminal
cases during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 根据
to Ginio, during the fourteen months between June 1740 and July
1741, 184 cases were brought before the court of Salonica, 仅有的 13
of which were crime-related. In the ten-year period between 1781
和 1791, 仅有的 27 的 450 disputes brought before the court of
Kastamonu were crime-related. Many individuals resolved their
disputes out of court. Ergene demonstrated that many residents of
Çankjrj and Kastamonu in Anatolia during the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries avoided the courts, preferring in-
stead to petition the local military and administrative authorities.
Most of the time, the provincial authorities punished offenders
without a court judgment. 此外, Tucker indicated that

29 Kastamonu Court Records, 卷. 35, dated 3 Cemaziyelahir 1150 / 28 九月 1737.
The National Library in Ankara, Turkey, houses microªlmed copies of these documents.
30 Heyd, “Jaza’,” argues, “From the 11th/17th century . . . criminal justice was . . . admin-
istered by increasingly corrupt qadis or the arbitrary will of oppressive governors and their
subordinates. Ottoman criminal justice, praised by European observers in earlier periods for its
efªciency, degenerated completely” (519).

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 373

such sexual crimes as abduction or elopement were often settled
privately, especially in the countryside, where the offenders were
often punished by their own kin or the relatives of the harmed
派对. If the court were indeed a secondary alternative in criminal
cases during the postclassical period, its effectiveness to protect
the common people from local authorities must have been negli-
gible.31

Tax Farms and Law Enforcement The third mechanism
that had previously helped to control corruption—namely, 这
combined use of ªnes and taxes for the compensation of law-
enforcement agents—certainly suffered during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The ªscal and ªnancial transformation
of the seventeenth century forever altered the system of revenue
extraction, complicating ªne collection and related penal prac-
泰斯. As a part of this transformation, many state-owned estates
(timars, zeamets, 并且有) were auctioned to private entrepreneurs
as tax farms, initially for tenures renewable from one to three years
but after 1695, for much longer tenures, often for life. In these lo-
阳离子, the tax farmers, their local agents, or sub-contractors re-
placed the prebendal functionaries (such as sipahis) as ªne collec-
tors.32

This transformation may have been responsible for a number
of problems. 第一的, the institution of tax farming in the Ottoman
Empire led to the emergence of new groups of revenue extractors
in the provinces, aside from the ofªcial state functionaries. 铝-
though provincial authorities continued to rely on revenue
sources in the countryside, tax farming allowed the wealthier
members of imperial and provincial society, regardless of their po-
litical status, to invest in, and make claims to, ofªcial revenue
来源. 很遗憾, no available empirical study reveals how
the introduction of tax farming inºuenced the numbers of tax/
revenue extractors in the provinces or changed the tax/revenue
burden of local populations. 然而, any increase in the number
of revenue extractors because of tax farming would have led to

31 Eyal Ginio, “The Administration of Criminal Justice in Ottoman Selânik (Salonica) dur-
ing the Eighteenth Century,” Turcica, XXX (1998), 187–188; Ergene, Local Court; Judith
Tucker, In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (Berke-
ley, 1998). According to Heyd, “Jaza’,” “The clash between the authority of the qadi and the
governor in the administration of criminal justice remained a major problem throughout Ot-
toman history” (519).
32 Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, 97.

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374 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

intensiªed competition over scarce resources, as well as an inclina-
tion to over-exploit these resources in legitimate or illegitimate
ways.33

第二, although ªnes continued to “belong to land” in tax
farms, the people who ultimately became responsible for law en-
forcement in these jurisdictions, as well as their manner of con-
ducting it, remains unknown. One possibility is that tax farmers,
many of whom were investors from distant locations—or, 更多的
likely, their local representatives—policed their areas. 如果是这样, 这
duration of a tax-farming contract, as well as the duration of any
sub-contracts, must have inºuenced the extent to which these in-
dividuals enforced the law. In cases of longer-term tax-farming
contracts, such as malikane mukataas (life-term tax farms), tax farm-
ers could hardly have been interested in sacriªcing their long-term
interests to their short-term beneªts by over-enforcement. 如何-
曾经, in the majority of the mukataas, the tax farmers did not per-
sonally assume direct management of their revenue sources; 他们
sub-contracted them to local agents for shorter periods. 因此, 这
short-term considerations of these sub-contractors might have led
to excessive ªning.

或者, given the civilian backgrounds of many tax farm-
ers or their agents, the local military-administrative authorities—
such as the governors or sub-governors of the administrative units
that contained the tax farms, or the subaqjs of nearby towns—
sce-
might have assumed the policing responsibilities. 这
nario would explain why tax farmers often conºicted with local
military-administrative ofªcials about ªne revenues, as many his-
torical sources indicate. 例如, a series of archival docu-
ments published by Yaman reveals the tax farmers of the copper
mines in Küre (located in north-central Anatolia) and the sur-
rounding villages
for mining to have
complained incessantly about the local military-administrative au-
thorities commandeering the ªne revenues. Although Yaman’s
documents emphasize that the ªnes belonged to tax farmers, 他们
do not reveal the speciªc law-enforcement duties, 如果有的话, 那

that provided laborers

33 According to Pamuk, “The Evolution of Financial Institutions in the Ottoman Empire,
1600–1914,” Financial History Review, XI (2004), “Some 1,000 到 2,000 Istanbul based individ-
乌尔斯, together with some 5,000 到 10,000 individuals based in the provinces, as well as innu-
merable contractors, 代理人, ªnanciers, accountants and managers” became involved in
revenue extraction through tax-farming over the eighteenth century (17).

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN OTT OM AN TIM ES | 375

tax farmers performed. Nor do other historical sources indicate
whether local authorities, when subjecting provincial populations
to such payments, were in fact seeking compensation for services
that they actually performed.34

As mentioned above, complaints about ªne collection during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries might have led to its
eventual abandonment. 尽管如此, it is also easy to understand
why the imperial government did not expressly ban ªne collection
after the seventeenth century. 毕竟, ªnes constituted a source
of revenue that contributed to the proªts of tax farms. The need
to keep tax farms attractive for potential investors must have miti-
gated the desire to curb corruption by abolishing ªnes. 同样地,
the imperial government might have refrained from intervening in
disputes between tax farmers and local populations about excessive
ªne collection, lest its actions generate resentment among tax-
farmers and a disinclination to invest in provincial revenue sources.
Among other factors, contradictory impulses (the need to protect
the interests of taxpayers and the need to maximize returns to in-
vestment sources) might have led the imperial government to
adopt relatively passive and accommodative provincial policies
during the postclassical period.

The economic analysis herein focuses on the incentives
为了
would-be offenders to make efªcient decisions regarding the
commission of criminal acts (the notion of optimal deterrence)
and for law enforcers to engage in corruption. Insights from recent
literature about law and economics suggest that the procedures
that the Ottomans used to prevent corruption enhanced efªciency
in law enforcement. The Ottomans recognized the economic
beneªts of these strategies long before economists pointed them
out in theory.

The declining use of ªnes in penal processes coincided with
high inºation rates, the localization of political and administrative
控制, and the institution of life-term tax farming during the
postclassical period. The circumstances of the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries impaired the imperial government’s ability to
maintain the system of ªnes and to curb the potential abuses and
irregularities associated with it. As the inºationary environment

34 Yaman, “Küre Bakjr.”

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376 | COQGEL, ERG ENE, ET KES, AND M ICELI

raised the menu cost of price adjustments, the central government
was at pains to readjust the rates of ªnes on the periphery. 这
government also lost the capacity to rotate provincial authorities,
separate adjudication from punishment, and ensure that recipients
of ªnes also received tax revenues. Finding it less feasible to main-
tain a reasonably well functioning ªne system, the Ottomans in-
creasingly turned to other methods for punishment.

The question about whether the Ottoman ªne system had a
noticeable effect on the crime rate, at least in its heyday, is difªcult
to ascertain. 一方面, we do not have consistent statistics on
crime rates over time. Even if a crime trend were traceable, 它
would be difªcult to attribute distinct secular outcomes to the use
of ªnes because several other factors, such as migration, natural
状况, political crises, and macroeconomic cycles, could well
have affected crime simultaneously. An answer will have to await
reliable statistics and a more systematic analysis of such circum-
stances and patterns to isolate speciªc inºuences.

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