PRACTICES OF NON-MUSLIM WOMEN FOR USING THE KADI COURTS IN THE OTTOMAN SOCIETY: THE VIDIN EXAMPLE (1700-1750)

The city of Vidin, located in the north-west of Bulgaria and south of the Danube River, was usually a border city during the period under the Ottoman rule. Therefore, majority of the settled population was comprised of military class members and the Muslim population lived together with the non-Muslim population. Another characteristic of Vidin was that it had many ？er‘iyye registers kept during the Ottoman rule. In this study, 12 ？er‘iyye registers from the Bulgarian Archive “Nationale Biblioteque” covering the years of 1700-1750 were used for putting forth the status of non-Muslim women in the Ottoman society as well as their reasons for using the community courts instead of the kadi courts. For this purpose, variety of cases that had to do with issues of their marriage, bride wealth-divorce, bailment, trustee-assignee and alimony appointment, credit-debt, inheritance, purchase-sale are analyzed