Was there a rule of law in the late ottoman empire?

The rule of law is a widely used term in scholarship on Ottoman legal reforms. Nevertheless, the actual meaning of this notion is rarely clarified in the writing on the late Ottoman Empire although theorists of law have discussed the ambiguity of this term. This article aims at examining the value of the rule of law as an analytical category when discussing socio-legal change in the late Ottoman Empire. The article demonstrates that the rule of law can be a meaningful category for historical analysis when conceived through a ‘cultural perspective’ to the law.