204 | Policing Morality
Ottoman governor, Osman Pasha, broke out in Tunis. The French consul re-
ported the rebellion to the embassy in Istanbul and provided some details on
the murder of a Muslim woman accused of adultery with an Italian trader dur-
ing this rebellion. According to Antoine Galland, the dragoman of the French
embassy in Istanbul, the rebels broke into the house of Antonio Pertuso, a native
of Sicily, who was found with a Muslim woman. They set his body on fire and
dragged it through the streets and then threw it over the walls of the fortress. The
rebels strangled the Muslim woman and threw her body into the sea on Decem-
ber 12, 1673. From Galland’s report, it is clear that there was no proper accusa-
tion, eyewitnesses, trial, or conviction of the couple for adultery by the Islamic
court or the kadi. Like the previous case, the two unlucky victims were dragged
out of their house by a mob in an act of violence and during a time of social
upheaval. The mob’s action was probably also directed against Italian traders af-
ter the conclusion of the empire’s war with Venice in 1669. The North African
provinces were deeply involved in corsair activities against European commer-
cial shipping in the Mediterranean, which often took on a religious character and
justification and led to profound tensions with European traders. Although this
event took place far away from the Ottoman capital where religious and social
tensions were at their peak, the residual effects were also felt in the periphery of
the empire. The crossing of religious boundaries was, thus, punished violently as
this case demonstrates.
Punishing Interfaith Sex
In the Ottoman Empire and Istanbul, where Muslims held a bare majority, com-
munities of faith (various Jewish and Christian sects) enjoyed considerable reli-
gious, legal, and social autonomy in return for the payment of a poll tax (cizye)
and second-class status. While residents’ homes often clustered around their
places of worship, many neighborhoods remained socially and religiously mixed.
Religious ghettos did not develop in Ottoman cities as they did throughout con-
temporary Europe. While there was greater diversity and peaceful cohabitation
in Istanbul in contrast to some European cities, from time to time religious and
social tensions resulted in the targeting of minorities and women who crossed
particular communal and religious boundaries. The communities of faith usu-
ally disciplined their members for immoral conduct, but occasionally they re-
ported repeat offenders and those who crossed communal boundaries in their
sexual conduct to state officials, such as police officers and Islamic court judges.
In mixed-religion communities, as long as members of particular faiths
avoided sexual intercourse, friction and tension were easier to overcome. At
times of crisis, however, cohabitation generated certain anxieties, leading to out-
breaks of collective violence that victimized women and minorities who crossed