page_title: Qadi
section_title: Ottoman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Qadi / Local usage / Ottoman Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: "An unhappy wife is complaining to the Kaddi about her husband's impotence. Her evidence is a zibik (dildo)" Français&#160;: Une femme se plaint auprès du cadi de l'impuissance de son mari. Sa pièce à conviction, un zibik.
context_page_description: A Qadi is the magistrate or judge of a Shariʿa court, who also exercises extrajudicial functions, such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and minors, and supervision and auditing of public works.
context_section_description: In the Ottoman Empire, qadis were appointed by the Veliyu l-Emr. With the reform movements, secular courts have replaced qadis, but they formerly held wide-ranging responsibilities:
  ... During Ottoman period, [qadi] was responsible for the city services. The charged people such as Subasi, Bocekbasi, Copluk Subasisi, Mimarbasi and Police assisted the qadi, who coordinated all the services." [From History of Istanbul Municipality, Istanbul Municipality (in Turkish).]
  The role of the Qadi in the Ottoman legal system changed as the Empire progressed through history. The 19th century brought a great deal of political and legal reform to the Ottoman Empire in an effort to modernize the nation in the face of a shifting power balance in Europe and the interventions in Ottoman territories that followed. In territories such as the Khedivate of Egypt, attempts were made at merging the existing Hanafi system with French-influenced secular laws in an attempt to reduce the influence of local Qadis and their rulings. Such efforts were met with mixed success as the Ottoman-drafted reforms often still left fields such as civil law open to a Qadi's rulings based on the previously used Hanafi systems in sharia-influenced courts. 
  In the Ottoman Empire, a Kadiluk – the district covered by a kadı – was an administrative subdivision, smaller than a Sanjak.
caption: An unhappy wife is complaining to the kadı about her husband's impotence. Ottoman miniature.
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