Historians of the Ottoman legal system agree that the basic precepts of Islamic law (the shari a) were, as a matter of principle, to apply fully to the Muslim inhabitants of the empire on all matters civil, personal, and marital. Customary law (örf or adet) was, in personal and civil matters, always subordinate to it. Public law imposed by the Ottoman political authority (kanun andörf-i sultani) was promulgated on the authority of the state and reflected, first and foremost, the priorities and values of the imperial system. 1 Penal law was one other particular area where the Ottoman peculiarity in the implementation of the shari a found expression. The powers of the religious judge, the kadı, were extended to include some supervisory duties, such as the policing of guilds and the regulation and control of markets. Urban security was also placed under his authority, with officers to help implement his decisions. In penal or commercial matters, the law that was effectively put into practice might have been an amalgam of shari a, imperial fiat, and custom, the particular outcome being the result of the interplay of political and social forces. But this was certainly not the case for issues strictly in the personal domain, such as marriage, family, and inheritance. Notwithstanding the discrepancies-mostly in matters of detail-among the four main schools of Islamic legal interpretation, it was the precepts of the shari a that were supposed to govern the family lives of Ottoman Muslims. 2 In the central lands of the empire and in Istanbul, the basic legal underpinnings of marriage and divorce of Muslims were provided by orthodox Islamic jurisprudence (more specifically, by the Hanafi school of law). There might indeed have existed many local variations. Everyday Ottoman legal practice, obviously a combination of law and life, often did deviate from strict Islamic precepts, 3 and the incongruities between legal norm and practice were perhaps more widespread than Ottoman historians usually admit. Still, on matters of marriage, divorce, family, and inheritance, the shari a was the law that on the whole prevailed. 4 And it had no alternative. 5 The drive toward codification and modernization of the Tanzimat period culminated with a massive legal compilation (the