Women in Ottoman Greece were present in a number of different courts of law, one being the so-called communal courts. These courts became increasingly important towards the end of the Ottoman period, especially in areas where there was little if any Muslim population, and they dealt with a great variety of cases ranging from property disputes to rape and crimes of morality. Women were very active in such courts, both as accusers and as accused, showing remarkable knowledge of the manner in which such courts functioned. They frequently chose to pursue cases in them, in part because communal courts were supportive of individuals in diffi cult circumstances such as widows, who form the bulk of the female petitioners. This was an outcome of the nature of these courts which were composed of the same individuals who exercised executive powers over their communities and who thus wanted to ensure tranquillity and the prosperity of their people. For that reason notables appear almost unconcerned with the stipulations of customary law in several of their judgments, seeking instead to achieve compromises, or what we could term the greater social good. Being local, easily accessible, and familiar to the members of each community, communal courts were attractive to women and men in the years leading to the emergence of the modern Greek state, forming one tier of the complex Ottoman 'system' of confl ict resolution.Christian men and women in the Ottoman period had a number of choices when it came to resolving disputes. One option was the kadi courts that Sophia Laiou has recently examined. 1 Another option were the ecclesiastical courts whose mandate could be quite broad depending on the region in question but which enjoyed particular prominence in matters that had religious implications such as divorce. 2 In some areas of the Ottoman 1 S. Laiou, 'Christian women in an Ottoman world: interpersonal and family cases brought before the sharia courts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', in A. Buturovic and I. C. Schick (eds.), Women in the Ottoman Balkans (New York 2007). 2 I. Visvizis, '∆ικαστικαί Αποφάσεις του 17ου Αιώνος εκ της Νήσου Μυκόνου', Επετηρίς του Αρχείου της Ιστορίας του Ελληνικού ∆ικαίου 7 (1957) 24.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.