Criminal Codes, Crime, and the Transformation of Punishment in the Late Ottoman Empire

Thursday, November 19

Time: 1:30-3:30pm 

Location: Faculty House,

Columbia University

64 Morningside Drive, NY, NY 10027

Kent Schull

Associate Professor, Binghamton University

This presentation investigates the transformation of criminal law, practice, and punishment within the late Ottoman Empire.  It focuses closely on five intertwined aspects of the empire's extensively restructured criminal justice system, namely the concrete links between new penal codes, the extensive delineation of crimes, the adoption of incarceration as the primary form of criminal punishment, incarceration rates for particular crimes, and the deployment of Islamic legal norms and mores to legitimate these reforms.  

This event is sponsored by the University Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies.