TURKISH LEGAL HISTORY
(By Prof. Dr. Halil CİN- Prof. Dr. Ahmed AKGÜNDÜZ)
It is apparent how difficult a task it is to have a general and integral study of thousands of years’ of legal histories of the Turkish Nation and the Turkish states, who – as of the most dynamic and mighty nations of the world history – had established many countries in three continents in those areas of divers cultures and civilizations. For such a study is closely concerned with legal notion and system, political and social structure, economic conditions, and most important of all one’s complete worldly views and beliefs. The legal and organizational histories of every single nation originating from Turkish ancestry are to be studied as a whole in consideration of those historical and geographical conditions those nations had lived in as well as their other characters as regards to their religious and worldly views and lifestyles.
This book has been written in order that it should serve as both a textbook for students of law and a key book for those who would carry out researches in the field of legal history, in the preparation whereof comprehensive reference has been made to original sources and archives documents. We have attempted to summarize the history of public law in Volume I, and the history of private law in Volume II.
A must reference book for those who would like to be acquainted with the Islamic Legislation and the fashion of application thereof by Muslim Turkish States like the Qarahanids, Saljuqids, Anatolian Saljuqids and the Ottoman State, particularly for theologians, jurists, historians, and devotees of knowledge and history that are zealous to learn about their Religion and history.
This work not only gives satisfactory replies to such questions as “What kind of legal system did our forefathers apply? Particularly, were the lives, goods and chastity of people between the two lips of the Sultans in the Ottoman State? Did the human rights and freedoms in the Turkish legal history first rise to agenda – as we have been told and inculcated – with the Firmans (Imperial Edicts) of Tanzimat (Reforms) and Islahat (Improvements)? Or rather were such rights and freedoms as have been accepted today accepted and practiced by our ancestors ten centuries ago?” and the like issues in a scientific and objective method but also has attempted to summarize those decrees pertaining to public and private laws we have been applying for centuries.
(2 volumes, each 450 pages)
