Civil Disputes Between the State and Individuals in the Ottoman Nizamiye Courts

This article is a first exploration of Ottoman civil litigation involving state agencies and private litigants, following the foundation of the Nizamiye court system in the second half of the nineteenth century. I argue that new judicial mechanisms allowed both the state and private individuals to contest each other in financial matters. Due to the high cost of the Nizamiye judicial process, however, the opportunity to challenge the state in the civil courts was limited to individuals who possessed significant financial assets. By the same token, the resources available to the state bolstered its ability to secure tax revenues by resorting to civil litigation.