Mecelle

(1822–1895), the lead author of the Mecelle The Mecelle was the civil code of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is the first codification of Sharia law by an Islamic nation.

]] (1822–1895), the lead author of the Mecelle]] The Mecelle was the civil code of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is the first codification of Sharia law by an Islamic nation.

Title

The Ottoman Turkish title of the code is ( , ), which derives from the Arabic ( ). The Arabic word ( ) can mean a law code or a bound text in general. It has also been transliterated in European languages as Mejelle, Majalla, Medjelle, or Meğelle. In French, it is known as the Medjellé ( ) or the Code civil ottoman.

History

Enactment

The code was prepared by a commission headed by Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, including a large team of scholars, issued in sixteen volumes (containing 1,851 articles) from 1869 to 1876 and entered into force in the year 1877. In its structure and approach it was clearly influenced by the earlier European codifications. Family law, which had been originally exempted and left in the domain of religious courts, eventually became a part of it in 1917, as the Law of Family Rights. It has been praised as the first successful rendition of Hanafi fiqh into legal civil code comprehensible to the layperson belonging to any religious ideology and not just to Islamic scholars. The substance of the code was based on the Hanafi legal tradition that enjoyed official status in the Empire, put into European code-form. However, using the method of preference (Istihsan), it also incorporated other legal opinions that were considered more appropriate to the time, including from non-Hanafis. As the Mecelle was eventually applied in the secular Nizamiye Courts ( ) as well as in the Sharia courts of the Empire, Jews and Christians were for the first time subjected to Islamic law instead of their own law, but could now be called as witnesses in court.

Post-Ottoman application

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the Mecelle remained a lasting influence in most of its successor states (except Egypt, where it was never in force). The Mecelle was long-lasting in most places since it was effective, coherent, and difficult to dislodge. It remained in force: in Turkey until 1926, when it was replaced by the Turkish Civil Code in Albania until 1928 in Lebanon until 1932 in Syria until 1949 in Iraq until 1953 in Cyprus until the 1960s in the British Mandate for Palestine and, later, Israel formally until 1984, although individual laws had gradually superseded it during the Mandate as well as in the 1960s and '70s In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Mecelle was slowly replaced with the Austrian General Civil Code after the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina began in 1878. But some provisions remained in force even after 1918, until the abolishment of state Sharia courts in 1946. The Mecelle also remained the basis of civil law in Jordan and Kuwait.

Translations

and Ioannis Vithynos]] The French version of the Mecelle is available in Législation ottomane, ou Recueil des lois, règlements, ordonnances, traités, capitulations et autres documents officiels de l´Empire ottoman, a collection of Ottoman law edited by Demetrius Nicolaides and published by Gregory Aristarchis. Mecelle is in volumes 6-7 , which do not include Aristarchis's name. According to Johann Strauss, author of "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire," these two volumes "seem to have been edited solely by Demetrius Nicolaides". G. Sinapian, a scholar of Turkish studies and a jurist of Armenian descent, translated the eight chapters of the Mecelle in volume 7. For Livre des Preuves he used work by Ohannes Bey Alexanian as a basis. L. Rota, a lawyer of Constantinople (now Istanbul), translated other parts, assisted by Alexander Adamides. A Greek version, Nomikoi kanones ētoi Astykos Kōdēx (Νομικοί κανόνες ήτοι Αστυκός Κώδηξ), was translated by Konstantinos Photiadis , and Ioannis Vithynos, and was released from 1873¹ to 1881. Both men were well-versed in Ottoman Turkish. Johann Strauss, author of "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages", wrote that "The translation [...] was a demanding task" which "required abundant notes." Nicolaides also made his own Greek translation; the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Abdulhamid II gave Nicolaides, through the Ottoman Internal Affairs fund, 5,000 piastres due to the translations of the legal documents. Nicolaides also wrote a document stating that he translated volumes of the Mecelle and the Düstur into Bulgarian. He lacked funds to publish the entire collection; vilayet council leaders agreed to fund the distribution of these volumes. He had translated two volumes which together had half of the Düstur and Mecelle laws at the time.

Notes

References

- Volume 12 of Bamberger Orientstudien (info page on book at Martin Luther University) Encyclopedia of World History, 6th. ed., online at bartleby.com, accessed January 2007

External links

AL-MAJALLA English translation - International Islamic University Malaysia Aristarchi, Gregoire (Bey) (1873, 1874, 1878, 1881) Legislation ottomane, : ou Recueil des lois, reglements, ordonnances, traités, capitulations et autres documents officiels de l'Émpire Ottoman. Constantinople: Imprimerie, Frères Nicolaides (in French) National Library of France (BnF) Gallica: Volumes 6 and 7 Also at University of Crete - Has downloadable PDF files Also at HeinOnline Copies of the Mecelle in Greek - University of Crete

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1361435172 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.