Contesting Juridical Authority: Sharia, Marriage, and Morality in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Following the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia, the newly built administration integrated much of the existing plural Ottoman legal system into its own. The ensuing transformation of Sharia courts saw them given special jurisdiction in the areas of Muslim marriage and divorce, which, in turn, fueled several legal challenges, such as how (if at all) they could prosecute runaway wives und unlawful marriages. This article analyzes how such legal challenges were endemic to the translation and transposing of Ottoman concepts of law, marriage, and morality within the new administrative setting on the basis of Sharia court records. In examining these debates, contested on the one side by Bosnian qadis and on the other by Habsburg officials, it becomes clear that Islamic and Ottoman legal understandings were reinterpreted strategically to support different views as to how an Islamic judiciary could be best integrated into the (predominantly Christian) Habsburg monarchy.