Margins of Legibility: Social Exclusion, Symbolic Regulation, and Negotiated Justice in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Bursa

This article examines the socio-legal construction of a marginal figure known as Cinci Arab, whose actions sparked judicial and communal controversy in 1641 Bursa. Drawing systematically on three archival documents-a lawsuit, an imperial decree, and an amicable settlement-this study employs a microhistorical approach to interrogate the interplay between local and imperial authorities and explores how selective visibility, reputational ambiguity, and mediated justice were strategically employed to manage social anxieties. Rather than aiming for empirical clarity, the analysis reveals how Ottoman governance frequently operated through symbolic regulation, classification, and negotiated resolution, highlighting the discursive mechanisms by which individuals were rendered legible or obscure. The case of Cinci Arab thus serves as a critical prism, which demonstrates that archival documents did not function as neutral repositories of truth but as sites where imperial authority was performatively inscribed through structured ambiguity and selective preservation. The findings and analyses presented in the article are grounded in a detailed textual and contextual examination of three entries, each situated within distinct sections of the Bursa qadi court register no. B 113.