Comparative Analysis of the Aggregation of Offences under Ottoman Criminal Law during the Modernization Period and Current Turkish Positive Law: A Case Study of Insult

Under western influence, the Ottoman Empire began the practice of accumulation of legislation in its judicial system.\rThus, certain new concepts and technical issues, such as the aggregation of offences (ijtima), were coined in Ottoman\rlegal jargon. This concept, which attributes more than one crime to an individual, has similar meaning to tadahul in\rHanafi fiqh. However, there is a major difference between the two legal systems. Although the Ottoman judicial system\rgenerally tried to abide by Hanafi fiqh in its legislative activities during the Tanzimat period, it deviated from the fiqh\rsystem on some technical issues. To clearly consider this situation in practice, it is necessary to look at the court records\rof the period. Vakâyi-i Zabtiyye newspaper, which was in publication from 1286 to 1869, is an important source, as it\rcontains court records of the period. In this study, the aggregation system in the Ottoman Criminal Code, dated 1274–\r1858, which was in force at the time the newspaper was published, will be analysed. It will be compared with the case\rrecords under current Turkish positive law. The scope of the study is limited to the aggregation of offences through case\rrecords related to insult crime.