Book Chapter

Venetian creditors and Ottoman defaulters: handling bankruptcy in seventeenth-century Istanbul

  • Tommaso Stefini

Despite bankruptcies being a ubiquitous occurrence in European communities trading in the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period, they have aroused little scholarly interest so far. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing bankruptcy disputes between the Venetian and Ottoman merchants in Istanbul in the early seventeenth century. By examining the resolutions of these controversies through litigation in Ottoman Islamic courts and consular tribunals, as well as international diplomacy and out-of-court settlements, this piece demonstrates how Venetian and Ottoman authorities established an inter-polity system of courts and state obligations to prevent and manage bankruptcies among international merchants.

  • Keywords:
  • Ottoman Empire,
  • Islamic law,
  • bankruptcy,
  • Venetian trade,
  • Istanbul.,
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Tommaso Stefini

Sabancı University, Turkey - ORCID: 0000-0002-6847-5067

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  • Publication Year: 2026
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  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Venetian creditors and Ottoman defaulters: handling bankruptcy in seventeenth-century Istanbul

Authors

Tommaso Stefini

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0963-2.05

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2026

Copyright Information

© 2026 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Gestione del rischio, insolvenza e bancarotta nel mondo premoderno (secc. XIII-XVIII) / Risk management, insolvency, and bankruptcy in the pre-modern world (13th-18th centuries)

Editors

Angela Orlandi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

568

Publication Year

2026

Copyright Information

© 2026 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0963-2

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0962-5

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0963-2

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0964-9

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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