The Ottoman archives contain no shortage of documents relating to various crimes against women, including murder and rape. These documents likely only represent a fraction of the total cases that could be found in the local court records, which probably do not fully represent the total number of such crimes committed. While such cases made their way to the courts often, justice was not always served.
In 1859, in a small town of the Ottoman province of Varna in modern-day Bulgaria, a government official from Trabzon named Salih attempted to rape a women named Esma (ırzına tasallut) at gunpoint. However, Esma got the best of him, inflicting fatal gunshot wounds on her assailant. Afterwords, she was arrested and stood trial for killing the man who attempted to rape her.
The court ruled that because Salih had cornered Esma in a room and locked the door, she had no choice but to defend herself (nefs-i müdafaa) and was therefore entirely pardoned of the crime and released from jail. According to the document, this pardoning was in accordance with the new criminal law code. She reached a monetary settlement of 1,000 kürüş with Salih's heirs for her part in the killing.
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