rape to stem from young male adults, unmarried
and unsocialized (Heyd 1973). But young girls too
were raped and/or abducted, and rapists included
men of varied ages and social standing. There was
often a social gap between rapist and victim, the
latter’s lesser status sometimes exacerbating the dif-
ficulty of making an accusation stick. With boys
and young men, rape was not necessarily homo-
sexual in the modern understanding of the term,
since it was sometimes an aspect of establishing
heterosexual male hierarchies. In normative legal
discourses, the typical rape scenario envisioned
breaking into a house, but actual accusations
against rapists suggest that they found their victims
equally on the streets and in open spaces on the
perimeters of villages, towns, and cities. As for the
domestic rape of household servants and slaves, it
is difficult to estimate the extent of this hidden
phenomenon.
If we define rape to include instances more com-
plex than the isolated act of an individual, then
rape scenarios proliferate. Prostitution operations
where pimps (female as well as male) coerced indi-
viduals into sexual commerce were sometimes
taxed (and thus quasi-sanctioned) by the state
(Imber 1983). More common, forced sex was insti-
tutionalized through the practice of slavery: a
female slave owned by a male was by legal defini-
tion sexually licit to him. Although the law pre-
scribed harsh penalities for habitual sodomists and
pederasts, it did not formally regulate a man’s sex-
ual use of a male slave (paternity not being an
issue). Finally, the frequent wars fought by the
Ottomans furnished opportunities for rape and the
enslavement of captives. Evliya Çelebi, Ottoman
courtier and traveler, noted the outbreak of preg-
nancies among the women of Ferdenvar after Otto-
man forces attacked in 1661 (Dankoff 2004). The
£anafìschool of Islamic law, adopted by the
Ottoman sultans (but not necessarily by their
Muslim subjects), tacitly sanctioned wartime rape
by permitting the suspension of Sharì≠a for Muslims
outside “the domain of Islam” (in contrast, the
Màlikìand Shàfi≠ìschools required Muslims to fol-
low Sharì≠a – and thus avoid zinà– wherever they
found themselves) (Sonbol 1997).
Despite the recognition of rape as a serious crim-
inal offense, punishment of rapists was difficult to
accomplish. Even though the Sharì≠a requirement
of four witnesses to the act of penetration was rou-
tinely recognized as unrealistic (as it was in the legal
handbook of the £anafìjurist, al-Marghìnànì,
popular among the early-modern Ottomans) (al-
Marghìnànì1791), this strict standard influenced
prosecution of rape. When there werewitnesses,
the ottoman empire 701they typically chose to remain silent because a
defect in the testimony of one brought punishment
on all four (Peirce 2003). When the accuser could
not provide proof, the alleged rapist could be
acquitted by providing character witnesses, unless
he had a previous reputation for loose behavior.
This was a common phenomenon throughout the
empire. In 1621, witnesses for a Cairene man
accused of rape testified that the accuser herself was
immoral, with the result that she was banished
from her city quarter (Sonbol 1997). In 1681, five
men on the Aegean island of Samos testified to the
innocence of another when a woman accused him
of raping her in her house (all were Christians)
(Laiou forthcoming). Moreover, if an accusation
could not be substantiated, the accuser was likely
to be punished for slander (qadhf). Finally, under
the legal doctrine of shubha(resemblance), rapists
were sometimes pardoned by claiming belief that
their act was permissible, if it resembled licit sexual
behavior, for example, assuming (erroneously) that
they had a valid marriage contract with the raped
woman or that sex with the female slave of another
household member was lawful (Tucker 1998). In
such instances, legal practice was soft on rapists,
but it should be noted that this attitude was in keep-
ing with a long tradition in Muslim-ruled states of
avoiding routine use of corporal or capital punish-
ment (the Sharì≠a punishment for a married free-
born Muslim adulterer or rapist was death by
stoning).
However, the frequency of rape accusations dealt
with by the empire’s judges and muftis demon-
strates that such legal obstacles could be overcome.
Circumstantial evidence of various kinds was
accepted in lieu of the testimony of four witnesses,
for example, physical examination by midwives,
bystanders testifying to the victim’s distress even if
they did not witness the rape itself, or the believ-
ability and/or social prominence of the accuser. If
punishment was hard to bring about, compromise
solutions were not, although they varied according
to local legal customs. Marriage of a virgin to her
rapist (with her consent) was one; it is hard to know
how often rape was a ploy to precipitate a marriage
otherwise difficult to contract (desired at least by
the rapist). Compensation of the victim (diya) was
another compromise solution; for example, a man
pleading a mistaken belief that he had a valid mar-
riage contract with a virgin had to pay her the “fair
dower” amount in compensation. Here, rape was
seen as a violation or theft of a person’s rights
over his or her body (Sonbol 1997, Tucker 1998).
Finally, the numbers of patently unprovable rape
accusations made around the empire make it hard