ABSTRACT
As research on Ottoman urban history demonstrates, there existed various manifestations of collective action at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods appeared to be managing many of their economic affairs from helping the destitute members of their community to fixing communal spaces. Yet, more significantly, neighbourhoods constitute one of the centres of power that existed within a web of other mechanisms of power in the Ottoman landscape. Hence, one of their salient responsibilities includes policing their members. One of the purposes of this chapter, therefore, is to examine those instances in which neighbourhood came together against those transgressing the limits of public morality. The sources for this study are the court records of 16th-century Istanbul. What emerges from these documents is that the cases involving illicit gender relations, consuming alcohol habitually and uttering indecent words against an individual publicly to destabilise a person’s honour in the community, constituted the best documented cases to bring those people to the court by the neighbourhoods. Honour functioned as “capital” to get the best outcome in various litigations. Nevertheless, the court functioned as an open arena even for those whose honour was seriously attainted and allowed them to negotiate the limits of their marginalisation.
