Network analysis can identify the crucial role that such social outcasts as Jews, Greeks, colonial subjects, and uprooted individuals played within the exclusive commercial networks of the Republic of Venice. These lower-rank merchants and brokers were able not only to manipulate legal, cultural, and religious categories to integrate themselves into the Venetian networks but also to abandon those networks when better economic opportunities arose.

Breaching the Bronze Wall deals with the idea that the words of honorable Muslims constitutes proof and that written documents and the words of non-Muslims are of inferior value. Thus, foreign merchants in cities such as Istanbul, Damascus or Alexandria could barely prove any claim, as neither their contracts nor their words were of any value if countered by Muslims. Francisco Apellániz explores how both groups labored to overcome the 'biases against non-Muslims' in Mamlūk Egypt's and Syria's courts and markets (14th-15th c.) and how the Ottoman conquest (1517) imposed a new, orthodox view on the problem. The book slips into the Middle Eastern archive and the Ottoman Dīvān, and scrutinizes sharīʿa's intricacies and their handling by consuls, dragomans, qaḍīs and other legal actors. ReadershipReaders of Ottoman and Mamlūk history, Islamic law and justice and anyone interested in the history of Venice and the East and Christian-Muslim relations, as well as cross-cultural relations more broadly.. For more information see brill.comOrder information: Order online at brill.com The Americas: 1 (860) 350 0041 | brillna@turpin-distribution.com Outside the Americas: 44 (0) 1767 604-954 | brill@turpin-distribution.com Submission information: brill.com/authors

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