Anticorruption in History from Antiquity to the Modern Era, eds. R. Kroeze, A. Vitoria, and G. Geltner, 2017
In this chapter, Iris Agmon employs the nexus of state and family as lens for examining the quest... more In this chapter, Iris Agmon employs the nexus of state and family as lens for examining the question of corruption/anticorruption in the Ottoman modernization reforms of the 'long nineteenth century'. By exploring the methods used by the government for preventing corruption at the novel state institution for handling property inherited by orphans she learns about the involvement of the Ottoman state in the private sphere of the family in the age of intensive modernization and centralization. While stressing the globalized nature of the transformation of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century Agmon demonstrates the unique features of Ottoman political culture that shaped these processes as well. She emphasizes that the reforms transformed the Ottoman Empire into a modern centralized state and that preventing corruption was a major issue on the reformers' agenda. She also claims that embedded in a different historical circumstances anticorruption was an important issue in earlier periods in the Ottoman Empire. The article critically discusses the methodological problems concerning the historiography on corruption/anticorruption in the early-modern Ottoman Empire and the challenge Eurocentric depictions of the Ottoman Empire have posed to historians. Agmon concludes that continuity was a major feature of the profound change the Ottoman state underwent in the nineteenth century stressing that continuity and change are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary tools for comprehending the dynamics of historical transformation.
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Opening comment
The text in Hebrew below was published recently in Jama’a, an interdisciplinary journal in Middle East Studies (Jama’a 26, 2023). This short article serves as an introduction to an article translated from French on family in Islam. The title of my piece, “Thoughts about Family History,” highlights its reflective nature. It deals with methods and aspects of historical thinking in Family History, combined with my experience in the field.
ABSTRACT
This article was written following a ruling of the Israeli High Court of Justice on an appeal by a woman who asked to appoint on her behalf another woman to serve as an arbitrator in her marriage dispute. The court's discussions in the case referred to the question of legal continuity with the "Ottoman Law of Family Rights" of 1917. This article examines the circumstances in which it was legislated, arguing that both the concept of legal continuity, in the name of which two instances of the Sharia Courts rejected the petitioner's appeal, and the construction of legal continuity attributed to this Law are misconceived. The article explains the methodological importance of the historical context for understanding the meaning of the Family Law and the need to revise the common wisdom about this law. The Ottoman Family Law constituted an essential link in a series of Ottoman legal reforms in the 19th century, which sought to design a centralized and territorial legal system. The codification of family law was intended to complete the unification of the judicial system, to render it applicable to all the citizens of the Empire and to strengthen state control by constructing family patterns in accordance with the vision of Ottoman modernity. The British overturned this trend when they applied the Family Law on Muslims only, thereby contradicting their claim that they were continuing the Ottoman tradition. Analysis of the provisions relating to arbitration in marital disputes in the Ottoman Family Law, which lay at the centre of the decision of the High Court of Justice, serves as a point of departure for advancing the present argument, namely that the Ottoman law was originally intended to provide the state with legal tools for re-fashioning family patterns.
Iris Agmon
Theory and Criticism, 49 (Winter, 2017), 235-246.
This essay argues that the historiography of World War I is written as if from the end – the inevitable end of the Ottoman Empire – and that this Europocentric perspective leads to a number of blind spots. The author’s present study on the publication of the Ottoman “family code” in October 1917 illustrates the need to examine the processes that occurred in the Ottoman Empire during the war and the preceding decades from the perspective of historic players who acted without knowing that the centuries-old empire was about to collapse
within a few years.
Opening comment
The text in Hebrew below was published recently in Jama’a, an interdisciplinary journal in Middle East Studies (Jama’a 26, 2023). This short article serves as an introduction to an article translated from French on family in Islam. The title of my piece, “Thoughts about Family History,” highlights its reflective nature. It deals with methods and aspects of historical thinking in Family History, combined with my experience in the field.
ABSTRACT
This article was written following a ruling of the Israeli High Court of Justice on an appeal by a woman who asked to appoint on her behalf another woman to serve as an arbitrator in her marriage dispute. The court's discussions in the case referred to the question of legal continuity with the "Ottoman Law of Family Rights" of 1917. This article examines the circumstances in which it was legislated, arguing that both the concept of legal continuity, in the name of which two instances of the Sharia Courts rejected the petitioner's appeal, and the construction of legal continuity attributed to this Law are misconceived. The article explains the methodological importance of the historical context for understanding the meaning of the Family Law and the need to revise the common wisdom about this law. The Ottoman Family Law constituted an essential link in a series of Ottoman legal reforms in the 19th century, which sought to design a centralized and territorial legal system. The codification of family law was intended to complete the unification of the judicial system, to render it applicable to all the citizens of the Empire and to strengthen state control by constructing family patterns in accordance with the vision of Ottoman modernity. The British overturned this trend when they applied the Family Law on Muslims only, thereby contradicting their claim that they were continuing the Ottoman tradition. Analysis of the provisions relating to arbitration in marital disputes in the Ottoman Family Law, which lay at the centre of the decision of the High Court of Justice, serves as a point of departure for advancing the present argument, namely that the Ottoman law was originally intended to provide the state with legal tools for re-fashioning family patterns.
Iris Agmon
Theory and Criticism, 49 (Winter, 2017), 235-246.
This essay argues that the historiography of World War I is written as if from the end – the inevitable end of the Ottoman Empire – and that this Europocentric perspective leads to a number of blind spots. The author’s present study on the publication of the Ottoman “family code” in October 1917 illustrates the need to examine the processes that occurred in the Ottoman Empire during the war and the preceding decades from the perspective of historic players who acted without knowing that the centuries-old empire was about to collapse
within a few years.