Ottoman or ‘Turkish’ prisons regularly conjure images of Oriental brutality in Western imaginations. Contrary to this stereotypical image, Ottoman prisons were sights of immense reform and contestation during the nineteenth century. In fact, prisons were key components for Ottoman nation-state construction and acted as ‘microcosms of modernity’ wherein many of the pressing questions of Ottoman modernity played out. These included administrative centralisation, the rationalisation of Islamic criminal law and punishment, issues of gender and childhood, prisoner rehabilitation, bureaucratic profe ... More

Ottoman or ‘Turkish’ prisons regularly conjure images of Oriental brutality in Western imaginations. Contrary to this stereotypical image, Ottoman prisons were sights of immense reform and contestation during the nineteenth century. In fact, prisons were key components for Ottoman nation-state construction and acted as ‘microcosms of modernity’ wherein many of the pressing questions of Ottoman modernity played out. These included administrative centralisation, the rationalisation of Islamic criminal law and punishment, issues of gender and childhood, prisoner rehabilitation, bureaucratic professionalization, identity, and social engineering. This work juxtaposes state mandated reform with the reality of prison life and investigates how these reforms affected the lives of local prison officials and inmates. These individuals actively conformed, contested, and manipulated new penal policies and practices for their own benefit. This work, therefore, heavily critiques Michele Foucault’s approach to punishment, state power, and society by demonstrating that penal institutions are not just instruments of social control and domination, but are complex social institutions that act as effective windows into broader cultural, ideological, and social issues during this volatile time in late Ottoman history. Key issues dealt with in this book include juvenile delinquents, female prisoners and gendered incarceration, corruption and prisoner abuse, and the transformation of Islamic criminal law.