Kübra Nugay

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the ERC Advanced Grant project (De)Colonizing Shari’a? at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies, University of Erfurt. I received my BA and MA degrees from Cumhuriyet University (Sivas, Türkiye), and completed my PhD at Marmara University (Istanbul, Türkiye). My doctoral research examined the transformation of the Ottoman criminal legal system from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, drawing extensively on archival documents and manuscript sources.

Before my current appointment, I held a postdoctoral position in the MPrinT Project (Islamic Manuscript, Print and Practice: Textual Adaptations in Coastal East Africa, c. 1880–2020) at the University of Bergen (Norway).

My research lies at the intersection of Islamic law, Ottoman legal history, and comparative legal transformation. I specialize in criminal law, the Ottoman legal system, and the legal history of the East African coast, with a particular emphasis on the role of manuscripts and archival materials in tracing legal change across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

My current project examines the transformation of criminal legal systems in Oman and Zanzibar during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a comparative historical framework. It focuses on two distinct yet interconnected contexts: Oman, a polity that remained formally independent and was not subject to direct colonial rule, and Zanzibar, which, while serving as the capital of the Būsaʿīdī Sultanate, came under British colonial administration. The study analyzes two critical phases of legal transition: the shift from pre-colonial to colonial rule and the subsequent transition from colonial to post-colonial legal orders. Drawing primarily on archival documents, alongside other primary sources, the project seeks to elucidate how two different legal experiences shaped the development and transformation of criminal law in these regions. 

• “The Transformation of the Ottoman Criminal Law in the 19th Century: The Crime of Complicity”, ULUM Journal of Religious Inquiries, July 2019.
• “A Chain Extending from the Periphery to Dersaadet: Criminal Journals in the Ottoman Empire after 1846”, (Journal of Islamic Review, September 2021)
• Omri Paz, Who Killed Panayot?: Reforming Ottoman Legal Culture in the 19th Century, (Islam Arastirmalari Dergisi, 2023)
• The discretion of the İmâm”: Ârif Efendi’s Preface to His Translation of Dede Cöngi’s Siyâsetnâme (Cambridge Press, Islamic Legal Texts, December 2024)