The reforms of the legal and judicial system during the so-called Tanzimat (lit. “reorganization”) period of the Ottoman Empire have been the focus of scholarly debate from a range of perspectives. While early scholars interpreted Ottoman development in the Tanzimat period through the westernization paradigm, from the 1970s onwards a new generation of historians started to reframe the reforms. They placed the Tanzimat within the context of the Ottoman government’s political programme and defined the reforms as part of a “statist policy of voluntary modernization”.¹ Still, there was a consensus in scholarship that the reforms were a “top-down and outside-in” enterprise that often failed to be implemented due to lack of “vigorous popular support”.²

A new turn in scholarship has given rise to innovative approaches to Ottoman judicial reforms, shifting the focus from the imperial centre to the provinces, and illuminating the crucial role that provincial elites and local Ottoman bureaucrats played in implementing and shaping 19th century reforms.³ Building on this growing body of scholarship, my blog post conceptualizes the establishment of the first commercial courts in the Ottoman Balkans as a dynamic process involving various social groups on both central and local levels.

Establishing Commercial Courts: The Role of Provincial Authorities

Following the establishment of the Istanbul commercial court in 1840, such specialized judicial bodies were gradually established in major commercial centres in the Ottoman Balkans, starting with Edirne and Salonica in 1847.⁴ Initially, the jurisdiction of these institutions was open only to foreigners and Ottoman privileged (beratlı) merchants.⁵ From the early 1850s onwards, commercial courts also began to appear in mid-sized Balkan towns, such as Tırnova, where one was created in 1852.

The initiative for the Tırnova court came from the local authorities, who justified their request with problems in the adjudication of commercial disputes in the local council (meclis) and the kadi court. Commercial disputes were not only taking too long to resolve, due to indecision and opposition (tereddüd ve muhalefetler), but decisions also often failed to comply with the newly adopted Ottoman Commercial Law (1850). As a result, local authorities claimed, merchants found themselves compelled to bring even insignificant cases to be settled in Istanbul, incurring considerable financial burden on both sides. To eliminate these problems, the head district official (kaymakam) proposed to establish a commercial court in their city to resolve disputes according to commercial law and not Islamic law.⁶

The most detailed information available so far about establishing early commercial courts in the Ottoman Balkans concerns the Varna Commercial Court. The request for the establishment of a commercial court came from the local customs official in March 1857. It pointed out that disputes between Ottoman and foreign merchants were being resolved by the customs official, but the growing number of cases required the establishment of a specialized judicial institution. The Varna commercial court was established in late 1857, closely following the model and organization of the Istanbul Commercial Court.⁷

When Local Politics Block Reform: The Sofia Case

In 1855, there was an attempt to establish a commercial court in Sofia. In January 1855, two Bulgarian merchants – Hadzhi Mano Stoyanov and Anastas Todorov – addressed the Ottoman Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances (Meclis-i Vâlâ-i Ahkâm-i Adliye) with a request to establish such an institution in their city.⁸

A letter from Castaing, the French diplomatic agent in Sofia, dated 21 April 1855, sheds light on the outcome of the initiative. It confirms that the driving force behind the demand were local Ottoman non-Muslim merchants (Christians and Jews). However, the initiative failed due to disagreement between non-Muslim notables and the head district official over the ethnoreligious composition of the court – the kaymakam insisted on a Muslim “predominance”, which was unacceptable to the Christians and the Jews.⁹

This example is indicative of the importance of local politics. While local support ensured the successful establishment of a commercial court in the cases described earlier, lack of consensus between local stakeholders in Sofia resulted in (temporarily) blocking the reform. Moreover, the case allows us to speculate that both Muslims and non-Muslims were very sensitive to who applied the law and whether their ethnoreligious group was fairly represented in judicial bodies.

In December 1856, the local council of Filibe (nowadays Plovdiv) also addressed the Sublime Porte with a request to open a commercial court in the city.¹⁰

Merchants as Reformers: The Case of Eski Zaara

A case that illustrates the role of merchants in commercial jurisdiction reforms in the Ottoman Balkans was the attempt to establish a commercial court in Eski Zaara (nowadays Stara Zagora). In January 1859, the local Bulgarian merchant A. Hadzhistoyanov informed two Bulgarian merchants residing in Constantinople that the local traders, “Turks, Christians, and Jews”, had jointly decided to petition the government with a request to open a commercial court in the town. The preliminary approval from the imperial centre, however, did not fully meet the expectations of the Eski Zaara merchants for a judicial institution open to all categories of merchants, and not only to beratlı merchants.¹¹ Local merchants lost interest in the initiative, and consequently, a commercial court was not established.

Despite its failure, the case has several interesting points. First, contrary to the Sofia case, here we see cross-communal collaboration. Moreover, it also points to the desire of provincial merchants to open some of the legal and judicial privileges of the beratlı merchants to the rest of the Ottoman mercantile class.

Agents of Reform in Their Own Right

Looking at the role Ottoman merchants, community leaders, and local authorities played in the transition to modern Western commercial law and the establishment of modern commercial litigation, they appear more as agents of reform in their own right than as mere passive recipients of a top-down reform. Their support was of paramount importance for the successful application of reforms, while opposition and dividedness resulted in failed or delayed implementation. Furthermore, examining the process of the establishment of early commercial courts in the Ottoman Balkans leads to the conclusion that the spread of the commercial courts network in the 1850s Balkans was driven by local demand rather than centrally mandated.

Though by no means exhaustive or systematic in nature, the evidence presented allows us to begin questioning the narrative of the Tanzimat reforms in commercial law and commercial jurisdiction as a “top-down and outside-in” enterprise that lacked “vigorous popular support”.¹² While not denying the crucial role of the Ottoman central government and its key reformist figures, nor that of Western diplomatic pressure, it nevertheless seems necessary to reassess their exclusivity. Taking into account the role of Ottoman merchants, community leaders, and provincial authorities would allow for a more nuanced and inclusive approach that more faithfully reflects the complexities of Ottoman reality, especially in the economic and commercial sphere, where actions and interactions on the local, imperial, and international levels have always been deeply entangled.

1. Kemal Karpat, “Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, no. 3 (1972): 258–9. ↩︎
2. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856-1876 (Gordian Press, 1963), 406. For another revisionist perspective on this concept, see: Milen Petrov, “Everyday Forms of Compliance: Subaltern Commentaries on Ottoman Reform, 1864–1868,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 4 (2004): 730–59. ↩︎
3. Mafalda Ade, “Ottoman Commerical Law and Its Application in Aleppo Province (1850-1880),” in Merchants in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi and Gilles Veinstein (Peeters, 2008), 243-58; Milen Petrov, “Tanzimat for the Countryside: Midhat Paşa and the Vilayet of Danube, 1864-1868” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2006); M. Safa Saraçoğlu, Nineteenth-Century Local Governance in Ottoman Bulgaria Politics in Provincial Councils (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018); Yonca Köksal, The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era: Provincial Perspectives from Ankara to Edirne (Routledge, 2019);  Zülâl Muslu, “Ottoman Mixed Commercial Courts,” in Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law, ed. Hélène Ruiz Fabri (Oxford University Press, 2023). ↩︎
4. Ekrem BuğraEkinci, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri: Tanzimat ve Sonrası (Arı Sanat, 2004), 103. ↩︎
5. In the early 1800s, the Ottoman government created two categories of privileged merchants: Avrupa tüccarı (for non-Muslims) and Hayriye tüccarı (for Muslims), granting them economic, legal and judicial rights similar to those of foreigners. For more information see: Bruce Masters, “The Sultan’s Entrepreneurs: The Avrupa Tüccaris and the Hayriye Tüccaris in Syria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, no. 4 (1992): 579–97. ↩︎
6. Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, Directorate of State Archives (BOA), collection Meclis-i Vâlâ, dossier 249, case 20. ↩︎
7. BOA, collection İrâde – Meclis-i Vâlâ, dossier 382, case 16745; BOA, collection Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi – Meclis-i Vâlâ, dossier 93, case 5; BOA, collection Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi – Nezâret ve Devâir, dossier 252, case 94; collection Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi – Mühimme Kalemi, dossier 128, case 31; ibid., dossier 124, case 20. ↩︎
8. BOA, collection Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi – Nezâret ve Devâir, dossier 130, case 35. ↩︎
9. Archives du Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes, 166PO/D85/1, p. 104. Letter from Castaing, French agent in Sofia, to Benedetti, chargé d’affaires of France in Constantinople. Letter no. 13, 21 April 1855. ↩︎
10. BOA, collection Sadâret Mektubî Kalemi – Nezâret ve Devâir, dossier 130, case 27. ↩︎
11. Bulgarian Historical Archive, National Library “Saints Cyril and Methodius”, fonds 6, archival units IA5115–IA5141; see also Evguenia Davidova, Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) (Brill, 2013): 166. ↩︎
12. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton Legacy Library, 2016): 406. ↩︎