Under the auspices of the Abbasids, the Hanafi school flourished in Iraq and spread eastward, settling in Khorasan and Transoxians in the 9th century, where it enjoyed the support of local Samanid leaders. Turkish expansion introduced the school to the Indian subcontinent and Anatolia and was accepted as the most important legal school in the Ottoman Empire.[4] [5] 4In this article, I will try to discover the complexity of the historical process by which the Ottoman Hanafi doctrine developed. I will do this by placing the Ottoman provincial muftis (kenar müftüleri) and the historicity of Hanafi legal doctrine at the center of my narrative. I will try to answer three different but interrelated questions: Was the judgment of the Ottoman cadi determined by Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh)? What role did the provincial muftis and their fatwas play in the judicial proceedings? Finally, what can we learn from the collaboration between the Qadi and the Mufti in legal proceedings about the crystallization of a Hanafi doxa4 in the early modern period as a precursor to the codification era of the 19th century? 17A fatwa is a legal opinion formulated by a jurist (mufti) in response to legal questions from individuals (mustafti).16 In the Amdia Municipal Court, the use of fatwas by individuals shows that in complex legal cases, the fatwa`s role was to lead the litigants – including the judge – to a final verdict in favor of the person bringing the fatwa to court. In this sense, fatwas were mere abstractions of actual disputes. In a fatwa, people with pseudonyms such as Zeyd and Amr were identified. The questions put to the Mufti related to real issues that were to be discussed before the judge during a trial. Legal problems should be formulated in order to allow for yes or no answers.17 The first fatwa, formulated by the Hanafi mufti of Amid and presented to the case, reads as follows: 54In addition to the first major legal step of compensation, the creation of such a fund meant an even greater legal step. Admittedly, the creation of a «public» fund of private movable and immovable property was not an ordinary step, even according to Ottoman legal norms. In fact, such a decision meant «confiscating» private property and placing it in the public domain for the public good. Since the majority of Muslims are Hanafi, courts will assume that litigants are Hanafi unless otherwise found.

63It is interesting to note that nothing was mentioned at the time about interest on loans. After all, the purpose of this whole enterprise was to lend simultaneously to individuals and increase the volume of the fund. But since no interest rate has yet been proposed, Article Eight is a small surprise: «The surplus [faḍlah] and growth [numuww], which are the result of the profit [ribḥ] of the land of the [«orphans»] whose status of `ayn has remained [i.e. neither sold nor exchanged for money] and have been kept under the supervision of a guardian, In addition to growth, [Arbāḥ al-Darāhim al-Naqdiyya] should be deposited in the treasury every six months in the presence of the guard and the Majlis. Once everything is in place, the finances should be reviewed by opening the treasury and checking the surplus that remains after the money spent [for the subsistence of the «orphans»]. Thus, what has kept this fund alive and thriving are two different sources of income: (1) profit from land that was not sold and whose income came mainly from leases; and (2) profits made from the treasury fund itself through the collection of interest. Although a direct reference to interest rates was avoided, the situation here was similar to that of the 1852 company, which legalized a twelve-percent murābaḥa for cash loans (murābaḥa, a euphemism for interest rate or ribā if the interest rate is inflated, is first identified in Article 12 of this firman). The Majlis` policy on the orphans` fund now seems somewhat clearer.

Land that was supposed to generate sufficient income was retained and leased to farmers or multi-Nazis; Those considered potentially less attractive were sold and exchanged for cash to generate more money. However, not all social groups are treated equally: traders, for example, need a «strong pledge» and «several guarantors» (Article 14). 28[C 10-2] A firman received in Beirut and dated April 1852 aimed to regulate what was considered excessive profits from the lending of money and targeted excessive practices of ribā without ever mentioning them by name.