Peirce|121the region. But by 1541, officials from Istanbul were starting to arrive in slowly in-
creasing numbers. The judge who tried Haciye Sabah may have been the first who
was appointed to the province from Istanbul, taking over the office from local le-
gal experts who had been managing since Mamluk control of its provinces began
to decline. The local courthouse was expanded, and the volume of cases heard at
court began to rise. But if the judge brought a new stringency to Aintab’s legal
life, it worked to the benefit of some who had not fared as well under previous
judges. Numerous women, for example, now began to use the court to challenge
usurpation of their property by male relatives. Others like Matuk and Haciye
Sabah were less successful under the new regime.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Canbakal, Hulya. Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: Ayntab in the 17th Century.
Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006. This book studies social inequality and power
relations in Aintab during a period of long-term economic growth.
Peirce, Leslie. Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003. The ways women and men used their local
court to resolve disputes or deal with accusations of crime are described in this
book.
Petry, Carl. Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a
Great Power. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. This book gives an
account of the last two sultans of the Mamluk Empire and the fall of Egypt to the
Ottoman Empire.
Notes
I am grateful to the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul for permission to reprint with ad-
aptations this chapter, which appeared in one of its publications.
. See Gaziantep Seriyye Sicilleri [Gaziantep Court Records], Register no. 161, pp. 40b, 89c,
97c, 162d, 177a, 181e, Milli Kütüphane [National Library], Ankara, Turkey.
. Tapu Tahrir Defteri [Land-census register] no. 998, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi
[Ottoman Prime Ministry Archives], Istanbul.
. Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi seyahatnamesi.
. Ibid.
. Ibid.
. Ibid.
. Feridun Ahmed Bey, Mecmua-yi münşeat üs-selâtin, 1:427.
. For more discussion on this and other subjects, see Peirce, Morality Tales.
. Gaziantep Şeriyye Sicilleri [Gaziantep Court Records], Register no. 2, pp. 223b, 319a,
Milli Kütüphane [National Library], Ankara (my translation).
. Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi seyahatnamesi.
. Tapu Tahrir Defteri no. 301, pp. 18–19.
. Özdeğer, Onaltıncı asırda Ayıntâb livâsı, 377–378. Subsequent statistics are drawn from
this work.