Translating Ottoman Justice: Ragusan Dragomans as Experts in Ottoman Islamic Law

According to diplomatic agreements which regulated Ottoman-Ragusan bilateral relationships, Ragusan citizens enjoyed a particular dual legal subjectivity. On the one hand, they were entitled to use the autonomous religious and civil Ragusan courts and thus exercise their independence from the Ottomans legal system. On the other hand, they had the right to seek justice at various Ottoman-Islamic legal institutions, whenever they felt that their rights as privileged subjects of the Ottoman Sultan were violated. Considering the abundant evidence of the presence of Ragusan citizens at various Ottoman Islamic legal institutions, in particular at the Ottoman Islamic courts in the Republic of Ragusa and in the neighboring Ottoman Province of Bosnia, two questions come to mind: How did Catholic Ragusans, who did not read or speak Ottoman Turkish or Arabic, participate in the Ottoman legal discourse? How did they acquire the knowledge and strategies necessary for the successful negotiation of Ottoman justice at various Ottoman Islamic legal institutions?

This paper examines a selection of eighteenth-century Ottoman legal documents - court summaries (hujjets), judges’ reports (ilams) and expert legal opinions (fetvas) – from the Republic of Ragusa’s Collection Acta Turcarum in order to examine the multiple roles which Ragusan dragomans played while mediating between Catholic Ragusans and Ottoman legal practitioners. The overarching goal is to shed light on a particular function of Ragusan dragomans - that of experts and/or consultants on Ottoman Islamic law – which so far has not been discussed in extant works on the Ragusan dragomanate. After establishing that the training of Ragusan dragomans included the study of Ottoman Islamic law, I progress to examine the ways in which they used that field of knowledge in the context of Ottoman Islamic courts, where they often drafted pre-prepared statements or lent their voices to Ragusan litigants  during court hearings.