Since the 1980s, written documents generated by the Ottoman law courts constitute the single most frequently used primary source by historians of Ottoman Bilad al-Sham. The diverse studies collected in this edited volume present a wide range of documents issued in legal practice. They disclose the process of deciphering manuscripts, and set forth the differing readings and informal usages of this kind of source. The contributors reveal the difficulties and questions they face in reading and interpreting handwritten documents, often carelessly recorded in a formulaic and elliptical language.