Medjellé

The Mecelle-i Ahkâm-ı Adliye (مجلۀ احكام عدلیە), or the Mecelle in short, was the civil code of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is the first codification of Sharia law by an Islamic nation. The Ottoman Turkish name of the code is Mecelle-ʾi Aḥkām-ı ʿAdlīye, which derives from the Arabic مجلة الأحكام العدلية, Majallah el-Ahkam-i-Adliya. In European languages, it has also been transliterated as Mejelle, Majalla, Medjelle, or Meğelle. In French, it is known as Medjéllé or as the Code Civil Ottoman. The code was prepared by a commission headed by Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, including a large team of scholars, issued in sixteen volumes (containing 1,851 articles) from 1869 to 1876 and entered into force in the year 1877. In its structure and approach it was clearly influenced by the earlier European codifications. Family law, which had been originally exempted and left in the domain of religious courts, eventually became a part of it in 1917, as the Law of Family Rights. It has been praised as the first successful rendition of Hanafi fiqh into legal civil code comprehensible to the layperson belonging to any religious ideology and not just to Islamic scholars. The substance of the code was based on the Hanafi legal tradition that enjoyed official status in the Empire, put into European code-form. However, using the method of preference (Istihsan), it also incorporated other legal opinions that were considered more appropriate to the time, including from non-Hanafis. As the Mecelle was eventually applied in the secular (nizamiye) courts as well as in the Sharia courts of the Empire, Jews and Christians were for the first time subjected to Islamic law instead of their own law, but could now be called as witnesses in court. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the Mecelle remained a lasting influence in most of its successor states (except Egypt, where it was never in force). The Mecelle was long-lasting in most places since it was effective, coherent, and difficult to dislodge.