Jurisdictional Pluralism in a Litigious Sea (1590–1630)

microhistorical in-depth description of the dispute reveals cross-religious systems of patronage, protection and alliance that organize economic co-operation across geographical and political boundaries. At the same time, it shows how the vocabulary of religious hostility could be wilfully activated to harm the opposing party and try to disqualify it during the trial.

questions: what were the jurisdictional, political and diplomatic systems that allowed a Muslim, North African dignitary to demand the payment of a debt from a Catholic merchant in Italy during the early modern period? Apart from the differing statuses and religions of the parties involved, we find a second original detail when we look at the nature of the debt itself. Franchi had not borrowed a hundred crowns directly from Murād Bey, but rather from one of his 'slaves', +ājid Māmī, who had recently died. The bey of Tunis was thus demanding repayment of the debt in his role as +ājid Māmī's master and inheritor. The case brought before the civil tribunal of Livorno hinges on two interrelated questions. Is it true that a master inherits his slave's outstanding credits in North Africa? And, if this is the case, can this debt rightfully be reclaimed on 'Christian land' (to borrow the terms used in the legal documents themselves)?
This case thus tests the court's jurisdictional capacities by questioning the rules and customs in place in a Muslim normative context and their possible application in a country of jus commune. In other words, it is a 'hard case', to use the term employed in legal theory to define an affair in which the rules are not decided a priori and are therefore open to question and interpretation. 3 Though we consider that judges' room for manoeuvre and ability to exercise discretion and flexibility are fundamental to their métier, I define the hard case as one in which there is an explicit interpretative dimension to the legal decision-making process. In other words, the hard case always appears as an original configuration and an ongoing enigma to be solved, which forces judges to experiment and improvise. Hard cases are not statistically rare or marginal 'outliers', but the very raison d'être of courts and legal institutions.
As Jean-Claude Passeron and Jacques Revel put it, the case can be detected by its resistance: it 'is an obstacle', not a simple observed singularity, but a unique, disruptive and surprising one. 4 With the Pietro v. Franchi trial, the singularity becomes a hard case not only because of the exceptional nature of the request, but also because of its anomalous form and the abundant documentation it produced. For historians, such cases are valuable for several reasons. Indeed, they define a problem, with 'emic' terms and categories -that is, with the perspective of the actors involved in a specific historical context. 5 Put differently, the hard case functions both as a descriptive and as an analytical heuristic questionnaire: emic questions raised by hard cases require an in-depth description, that is, an inductive and qualitative investigation that allows us to reveal -or at least to better understand -the social and institutional conditions of possibility in which they occurred. 6 That is why 'thinking by (hard) cases' supposes a 'narrative constraint': 'to explain a case is necessarily to take into account a situation, a context. The particular framing of the plot where circumstances are inserted is what makes the case singular '. 7 In doing so with the Pietro v. Franchi case, my aim is to reconstruct what legal sociologists and anthropologists refer to as the 'uses of law', as well as the forms taken by the legal reasoning and the pragmatic functioning of early modern civil and commercial courts. 8 Investigated in all its complexity, the hard case allows us to articulate together the social, emotional and institutional history of law, and the technical and intellectual dimensions of legal operations and categories, two aspects that historiography often tends to study separately. 9 5 For a defence of an 'emic' perspective in history, with slightly different approaches, see Simona Cerutti, 'Microhistory: Social Relations vs. Cultural Models?', in Anna-Maija Castrén, Markku Lonkila and Matti Peltonen (eds.), Between Sociology and History: Essays on Microhistory, Collective Action and Nation-Building (Helsinki, 2004); Carlo Ginzburg, 'Our Words, and Theirs: A Reflection on the Historian's Craft, Today', Cromohs, xviii (2013). 6 Passeron and Revel, 'Penser par cas ', 11-13 and 22-7. That is why I do not consider relevant the opposition between source-and problem-driven history raised in Jan de Vries' contribution to this volume, 'Playing with Scales: The Global and the Micro, the Macro and the Nano'. 7 Philippe Lacour and Lucie Campos, 'Thinking by Cases, or: How to Put Social Sciences My approach to hard cases borrows several modes of enquiry from the field of microhistory. Firstly, a sustained attention to names, which can function as 'Ariadne's thread' and guide us through different collections and types of archives, from notary acts to minutes, from diplomatic correspondence to petitions, and from parish registers to material artefacts. 10 This microhistorical 'Ariadne's thread' shares many methodological similarities and intellectual affinities with the 'multi-sited ethnography' promoted by George Marcus, who called for the adoption of several 'tracking strategies' for doing anthropology in a global age (such as following the people, the thing, the metaphor, the plot, the biography, the conflict et cetera). 11 This multi-sited approach also requires in-depth descriptions of local sites to describe and understand the very nature of links and connections. 12 Following actors and tracking names in legal records and notarial deeds provide an efficient method to learn about the transformation of disputes and claims together normative sources, statutes, proceedings and ordinary legal practices.  Anthropology, xxiv (1995). For hints on the methodological proximity between microhistory and multi-sited ethnography, see Christian G. De Vito, 'Verso una microstoria translocale (micro-spatial history) ', Quaderni Storici, cl (2015), 821; Angelo Torre, 'Micro/macro: ¿local/global? El problema de la localidad en una historia espacializada', Historia Crítica, lxix (2018), 37-67, esp. 50; Romain Bertrand and Guillaume Calafat, 'La Microhistoire globale: affaire(s) à suivre', Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales, lxxiii (2018), 12-15. Christian De Vito convincingly developed this point in 'History Without Scale: The Micro-Spatial Perspective', in this volume. 12 As argued in particular in Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to in different legal arenas, regions, states and political entities. This approach unveils the complex web of jurisdictions in which social actors of the early modern period could navigate. The Pietro v. Franchi dispute was indeed a 'multi-sited' trial on a transregional scale, which circulated from Tunis in 1619 to Pisa in 1625, through different procedural stages in Corsica, Genoa and Tuscany. Instead of comparing a priori different legal institutions across the Mediterranean, with the risk of brutal and anachronistic analogy, 'following' in detail disputes in multiple jurisdictions helps to capture the same legal questions in different locations and contexts. 13 Secondly, the intensive analysis of the case and the trial, irrespective of its statistical frequency, permits us access to different kinds of interactionsinteractions preceding and surrounding litigation as well as those central to it -that reveal their necessarily multidimensional character: economic, relational, social, political, religious, emotional and affective. In order to avoid an irenic view of the relationship between litigants, courts and state authorities, my aim is to look at both the ways in which different legal institutions could operate, co-operate and compete, and the ways in which actors approached them. 14 By paying close scrutiny to proceedings, we can touch upon the socially negotiated forms of institutions and courts, which adds nuance to the analysis of their efficiency -and of their economic efficiency in particular, since this tends to be postulated and asserted rather than studied empirically. 15 A close reading and an in-depth description of this trial between the two Corsican merchants enables us to study the institutional and procedural mechanisms through which the circulation and translation of contention concretely operated across the religious, normative and political boundaries which divided the Mediterranean region in the seventeenth century. Indeed, the context of this case is that of a jurisdictional pluralism that has made the Mediterranean an essential laboratory for what the field of global history has come to refer to as 'cross-cultural trade', in order to define commercial cooperation between agents belonging to distinct political, legal and religious 13 Of course, I do not mean that comparisons are contextually vague and irrelevant. See, for a recent example of comparative methods attached to the 'specificity of cases and contexts', Simona Cerutti and Isabelle Grangaud, 'Sources and Contextualization: Comparing Eighteenth-Century North African and Western European Institutions', Comparative Studies in Society and History, lix (2017). 14 See esp. Trivellato, 'Sephardic Merchants between State and Rabbinic Courts', 628. 15 On the importance of procedure as an analytical tool to understand pre-modern conceptions of justice and uses of legal institutions, see esp. Renata Ago and Simona Cerutti, 'Premessa', special issue 'Procedure di giustizia ', Quaderni Storici, ci (1999). communities. 16 In this sense, the fragmentation of the Mediterranean region is interesting in that it catalyses commercial relations that are marked by permanent risk and intrinsic fragility on the one hand and by a significant 'connectivity' and regular interactions on the other. 17 By looking at a hard case that involves the recovery of a debt owed to a Muslim 'slave' in a 'Christian land', I borrow a host of questions raised by the field of global history about the mechanisms of regional integration and the multiple forms of its resistances at different scales. 18 Through the Pietro v. Franchi trial, I intend to show that the study of legal claims in particular locations can illuminate broader patterns about the functioning of litigation, the translation of rules and proofs, and access to justice between Islam and Christianity. 19 Indeed, I consider the global turn in history as an incentive to study the nature of cross-polity and cross-legal interrelations beyond conventional 16 For an historiographical outline and a research agenda on 'cross-cultural trade', see European political units. 20 As such, the complexity of (normative or cultural) interactions, frictions and exchanges should not be solely indexed to geographical long distance. 21 Despite the relative proximity of the two markets, transactions between Tuscany and Tunisia required highly complex economic preparation and legal arrangements that could easily be jeopardized at any time. The hard case tests precisely the fragile nature of these socioeconomic and political connections, at the crossroads between the microhistorical ethnography of judicial practices, and the global history of legal encounters and cross-polity interrelations. 22 The goal of this article is to use a close microhistorical analysis of a complex trial to account for not only the successful transactions, institutional interdependence and asymmetries, but also violent relationships between North Africa and Southern Europe. It will be concerned with the level at which jurisdictional and religious frontiers are not conjectured to be or defined a priori as stable entities, but rather are thought of in terms of social construction, generative processes and shifting interactions.
In the first section of this article, I will introduce the three main litigants of the Pietro v. Franchi hard case, namely Murād Bey, Anton Marco Pietro and Simone Francesco Franchi. Their short biographies will provide an account of the Corsican merchant milieu, family ties and networks, and systems of patronage across multiple sites in the western Mediterranean (especially Tunis, northern Corsica and Livorno). The second section will investigate the role of written documentation and oral proof in a context of jurisdictional pluralism. I will follow the multi-sited hard case in different magistracies and appeals courts, from Tunis to Pisa, focusing on the role of enforcement as a key issue to understanding long-lasting litigation in different jurisdictions. The third section will deal with the social uses of law as a constitutive and endogenous dimension of the hard case: emotion, humiliation and anger will take centre stage as a way to analyse the transformation of disputes and the 20 A way of 'moving laterally' and searching original and neglected configurations, as Sanjay question of legal qualifications. 23 Hostility between litigants will reveal mechanisms of political and economic intimidation in order to influence and even corrupt judges. Finally, the fourth section will focus on the translation of Muslim rules of succession between Tunisia and Tuscany: special attention will be paid to the role of witnesses and merchants' knowledge of practices and customs, but also to the vocabulary of religious antagonism as a way to discredit the opposing side.

Murād Bey Qūrsū
Let us introduce, one by one, the three main litigants involved in the Pietro v.
Franchi hard case, in order to better understand their histories, relationships, interactions and social positions. The first is Murād Bey, the principal creditor to whom the debt was owed. Murād was undeniably one of the main symbols of the economic and political ascension of certain mamluks in the Ottoman province of Tunis at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. These mamluks were former slaves who had become Islamized servants, whose dependence on their masters did not prevent them from enjoying a significant social, economic and political mobility in Tunis. 24 As suggested by his nisba -the place of origin usually attached to the name of the mamluk -Murād 'Qūrsū' was originally from Corsica, from the little village of Levie to the south of the island, which was at that time under the relatively loose rule of the Republic of Genoa. 25  'slaves of the Porte' (,api-,ulu) who were sent from Istanbul to rule the Ottoman provinces. 27 The bey of Tunis was tasked with levying taxes and maintaining order in the countryside by way of a ma$alla, a remnant militia of the Hafsid era (1229-1574) that regularly toured the province's interior as far as Ghadames to the west of the Libyan desert. This was a prominent political and military position which called for an efficient army and good relations with the province's leading figures and families. 28 During his tours, the bey would also collect gold and black slaves sold on Saharan routes. 29 As the Tunisian chronicler Ibn Abī Dīnār (1610-90) recorded, Ramanān Bey 'acquired a certain number of mamluks . . . In his lifetime, many men from amongst the ranks of these mamluks became great dignitaries. . . . Murād Bey was the most noble of character and the most illustrious'. 30 Ramanān Bey indeed awarded Murād an enviable place in his administration and gave him his daughter's hand in marriage. 31 From 1604 to 1609, Murād Qūrsū occupied the post of customs officer of Tunis, a strategic role that enabled him to build close ties with the Christian merchants of the province. Most likely with the permission of Yūsuf Dey (ruled 1610-37), considered in European sources as the true governor of the province of Tunis, Murād took over from his master in 1613 as the bey of Tunis. He led numerous military operations in the province's interior in order to quell dissident tribes and raise taxes. The Venetian envoy in Ottoman North Africa, Giovanni Battista Salvago, explains that 'Murat Bei' was amongst the province of Tunis' leading shipowners and describes him as the 'general of the land' (general di terra). 32 Bolstered by his military successes and his reputation across the province, his legitimacy was further consolidated when the Sublime Porte awarded him the 27  title of 'pasha' in 1631. 33 As the Ramanān Bey's successor, Murād Qūrsū inherited one of Tunis' most powerful households, made up of mamluks, devoted soldiers and slaves. The anthropological structure of the household suggests not only the broad notion of kinship upon which it was based but also, and more generally, a wide system of protection and patronage. 34 Murād nonetheless chose to pass on the title of bey to his biological son, #ammūda Bey, his child by a converted Corsican slave who was known as Yasmīnā. Until 1702, the Muradid beys were the masters of the province of Tunis, despite episodic rivalry amongst them. 35 Murād appears early on in the records of the chancellery of the consulate of France in Tunis. The task of this institution was to ensure the smooth running of French commerce -trade with Marseille, in the main -in this region of the Ottoman Empire, as well as to enforce compliance with the so-called 'Capitulations', a set of privileges granted by the Sultan to members of the 'French nation'. Archived from 1582 onwards and today conserved at the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques in Nantes, the records of the chancellery of Tunis were meticulously inventoried by Pierre Grandchamp in the 1920s and remain one of the richest sources for historical investigation of Tunisian foreign trade in the seventeenth century. 36 Until the arrival of a Dutch viceconsul in 1616, and then the appointment by the Levant Company of an English consul in 1622, French consular chancelleries were the sole bodies charged with certification and adjudication concerning certain goods or the recovery of debts owed by merchants dealing (mostly) with western Europe. The Muslim businessmen and shipowners of Tunis had recourse to the consul when chartering ships, when they were selling or exchanging captives, or when they had interests involving a transaction with European traders. Murād appears at first in these records as a customs officer, in the latter part of the first decade of the 1600s. Once he had assumed the title of bey, he is mentioned as the master of slaves and captives whom he sold to redeemers or to Corsican, Genoese, Neapolitan or Jewish brokers. 38 Murād's mamluks also possessed captives, such as the corsair +ājid Jaifar, also known as 'the Genoese', or +ājid Māmī Qūrsū, who held Corsican slaves that were bought back by Corsican merchants in Tunis and Livorno. 39 Murād Bey's household was not, however, exclusively Muslim. Several of his slaves, who had not renounced their Christianity, gravitated around the consulate of France in Tunis and ran businesses of their own. 40 Similarly, Murād Bey protected the Christian merchants with whom he did business.

Anton Marco Pietro
Among these merchants was Anton Marco Pietro (or sometimes Pietri), the second character involved in the hard case. Pietro appears for the first time in the records of the chancellery of the French consulate of Tunis in September 1613, which give his age as 23. 41 He was born in the port of Centuri in Cap Corse. 42 In the early 1610s, he travelled to Tunis and acted as an agent on behalf of several Corsican merchants based in Corsica, Livorno and Marseille. Pietro was charged with buying back captives, and with sales and transfers of money between North Africa, the Italian peninsula and southern France. 43 In fact, a spell in Tunis was a rite of apprenticeship for merchants from the Cap Corse specializing in trade with North Africa and especially in the coral trade. A good knowledge of the Tunisian merchant milieu and the workings of commerce there (encompassing maritime loans and obstacles, insurance and risk) was a means of proving one's worth and bolstering one's reputation and credibility. In 1613, Anton Marco Pietro sent wool and couscous to Bartolomei et al. (eds.), De l'utilitécommerciale des consuls; Jörg Ulbert, 'Qu'est-ce qu'un chancelier de consulat? Une approche par les textes de droit français', Mélanges de l'École française de Rome -Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines, cxxviii (2016). 38 Grandchamp, La France en Tunisie,iii,91,199,251,253,261,270,295. 39 Ibid.,114,118,137,175. 40  Marseille. Two years later, he supplied and insured ships on behalf of two prominent Jewish merchants in Livorno. In 1616, he purchased leather from Murād Bey for over 9,000 pieces of eight reales, a cargo again destined for Livorno. In subsequent years, he bought back Corsican and Provençal captives owned by Murād Bey and Yūsuf Dey, who were the two main political authorities in Tunis. In 1619, Pietro become the owner of a boat captured by Tunisian corsairs. 44 The many successes of Anton Marco Pietro -as an agent in the captive trade, and a shipowner and trader in his own right -show the opportunity for the rapid accumulation of wealth that Tunis offered to Corsican merchants in the early seventeenth century. They were able to advance large sums of money that were guaranteed by partners in Livorno or Marseille who already benefited from strong links or existing credit in the Ottoman province. 45 The amiable relations that Anton Marco Pietro enjoyed with the local authorities are evidenced by a dispute against a Catholic merchant in which the Corsican merchant was accused of benefiting from the 'favour and the force of the Turks'. 46 The complaint registered at the French consulate noted that Pietro lived in 'the home of the leading Turks of the land'. 47 The expression 'casa dei Turchi' mentioned in the records referred not to a place but most likely to a household in which Christians and Muslims cohabited.
The links between Anton Marco Pietro and Murād Bey are further attested to by letters sent by the bey of Tunis to the Tuscan Grand Dukes: in several letters written between 1621 and 1622, Murād Bey referred to Anton Marco Pietro with the affectionate term 'nipote', 'grandson' or more likely 'nephew'. 48 Though it is difficult to determine the exact nature of the family ties between the bey of Tunis and his Corsican 'nipote' from Centuri, it was far from impossible that Anton Marco Pietro was related to one of Murād's wives: we know that Murād QūrXū had married former slaves 44 Ibid.,94,234,319,326. 45  of Corsican origin. Furthermore, in September 1624 in Livorno, Pietro married Lucia di Santi, a member of the bey's original family; this marriage thus forged a new matrimonial alliance between the Pietri of Centuri and the Santi of Levie. 49 These affective relationships show that the conversion to Islam by no means meant the dissolution of family ties. It appears as if the co-presence of two different religions within the same transregional family was in no way considered exceptional, strange or contradictory. To some extent, this was likely because conversion was a common feature of Mediterranean societies in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, necessarily mixed by way of forced migrations, conflicts, slavery, captivity and economic crises. What is more, the religious border was doubtless more permeable than the sources might suggest. It seems to me as though whenever historiography looks to ascertain the degree of sincerity with which conversions were carried out, it falls into the traps set by the Inquisitors and the political authorities of the early modern age. By this I do not mean that the religious barrier was meaningless and had no military, diplomatic or cultural ramifications; I simply mean to underline that, in terms of practice and in the context of trans-Mediterranean families, there was a great deal of religious fluidity. The letters of Murād Bey are interesting with regard to this matter: in the same letter in which he supported Anton Marco Pietro, the bey of Tunis recommended a 12 year-old niece to the monastery of San Giovannino in Pisa. He asked the Grand Dukes of Tuscany to honour the young girl as they would honour him. 50 These links also shed new light on the familial and affective nature of the protection afforded by Murād Bey to Anton Marco Pietro, who seemingly were related on two levels.

Simone Francesco Franchi
The third character implicated in the hard case presents yet another type of profile. Simone Francesco Franchi was a native of Bastia, the main city in northern Corsica, and appears in the records of the French chancellery in Tunis for the first time in 1617. He was listed not as a merchant but as the consulate's chancellor, a role that he would perform until May 1618. 51 At the turn of the seventeenth century, the chancellor carried out a wide variety of functions under the consul: he was at once the clerk, bailiff, notary, secretary and archivist of the consulate. He was also charged with composing and undersigning records and designating the opposing parties in litigation. Like many Corsican merchants in Tunis, Franchi had likely cut his teeth in 49 Archivio Storico Diocesano, Livorno, Registro dei matrimoni, 1, fo. 116 r . 50 ASF, MdP, 6377, fos. 67 r -68 r . 51 CADN, Tunis, 'Chancellerie', 712PO/1/407 (VI), fos. 254 r -517 v .
the Coral Company, managed from Marseille by prominent families of French naturalized Corsican merchants. 52 His office suggests in any case good legal knowledge and mastering of the 'ars mercatoria' that would allow him to negotiate comfortably with the key local and European merchants of Tunis. Drawing up inventories and registering contracts, he would have acquired an intimate knowledge of the city's most significant cash flows, the products and the characters. The vast majority of the chancellery's documents were written in Italian, since for the most part they involved individuals and merchants linked to the states of the peninsula; as a result, a record from the chancellery could have a probative value in an Italianspeaking institutional and political framework. As several documents explicitly point out, the written record of a dispute or a contract from the consulate of Tunis could allow the creditor to call in debts or assert his rights 'in the land of the Christians'. 53 In this, consulates played an important role in harmonizing procedures in the Mediterranean, one that lent an ever-increasing importance to written proof in the arbitration of litigation. 54 In general terms, Italian was one of the most widely-spoken languages in the province of Tunis, but more than this, was an instrumental language for trade and diplomacy in the western Mediterranean. The letters sent by the Tunisian authorities to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and to the Chamber of Commerce in Marseille were all written in Italian, for example. 55 The presence of numerically significant numbers of converts, captives and slaves from the peninsula also explains that the lingua franca used in North Africa was strongly skewed towards Italian, all the more so  How did these three men decide to trade together? What were the reasons for the breach of their partnership? In other words, how did the dispute emerge and which institutions were mobilized by the litigants? The bitter litigation and the hard case will not only highlight the difficulty of legal enforcement in a complex web of jurisdictions, but also reveal the ambiguity of written documentation for the actors attempting to use it as proof in multi-sited trials.
In July 1619, Franchi partnered with Anton Marco Pietro and Alessandro di Santi (perhaps Pietro's brother-in-law), both Corsican and 'nephews' of Murād Bey. Together, the three Corsican merchants purchased, for a huge sum of 11,000 crowns, 286 cases of sugar of various kinds (likely plundered) from Ustā Murād 'the Genoese' (also known as Benedetto Rio), a famous ship captain and one of the leaders of the Ottoman province of Tunis, and protégé of Yūsuf Dey. 59 Such episodic commercial partnerships sought to share the risk of high-yield operations, and would be renewed if successful. Anton Marco Pietro sailed for Livorno with the sugar as well as several Christian captives whose freedom had been bought. He sold the sugar for 14,000 crowns, a profit of 27 per cent on the price paid in Tunis. With this money, Pietro purchased various goods in Tuscany as well as a buying back a number of Muslim captives, a deal with an estimated profit margin of 15 per cent. 60 This transaction demonstrates several ways in which Corsican merchants in Tunis were well positioned to amass significant fortunes. Firstly, they took advantage of their friendly relations with local authorities, and with Corsican and Ligurian converts in particular, to purchase goods spoiled by Tunisian corsairs. These purchases were legal to the extent that, once captured by corsairs, goods changed ownership according to the postliminium rule of Roman law and medieval customs. 61 Secondly, they were able to rapidly raise funds and obtain credit from Tunisian merchants. Ustā Murād loaned Pietro and his associates 8,000 of the 11,000 scudi used to purchase the sugar, to be reimbursed after the sale of the goods in Livorno. Murād Bey similarly lent 1,000 scudi to Franchi so that he could participate in this partnership (called compagnia). As Pietro's voyage shows, Corsican merchants and sailors were to be found at every step of the journey made by goods as they moved across the Mediterranean: they oversaw transport, sale and subsequent purchases, thus considerably reducing the various fees and transaction costs (be they in terms of distance, insurance, commission, information et cetera). Finally, by acting as intermediaries in the return of captives, the Corsicans not only made further trading profits but also benefited from an added security and safe passage that reduced their exposure to risk at sea. 62 Upon Anton Marco Pietro's return to Tunis in Spring 1620, he was faced with litigation brought against him by Simone Francesco Franchi. Pietro represented not only his own interests but those of Murād Bey, Franchi's creditor, and Alessandro di Santi. Franchi was in quite a predicament. He owed not only 1,000 crowns to Murād Bey, but also faced demands from Ustā Murād for the repayment of the loan of 8,000 crowns. Ustā Murād was threatening to throw him in jail alongside his slaves. Before the vice-consul of the French nation, the chancellor and two witnesses, Franchi asked Pietro to close the books of their compagnia, their commercial partnership. But Pietro in turn demanded that Franchi first provide a receipt confirming that he had received his third of the 14,000 crowns that their commercial association reaped in Livorno. Franchi contended that he did not receive his share, and at the same time demanded a much larger sum corresponding to the price of his commission and interest on the sale, which equated to at least double his initial investment. However, he ultimately consented to provide the receipt in exchange for a promise by Pietro to reimburse his creditors. 63 A document drawn up in February 1621 records a dialogue between the two parties in the home of the vice-consul: Franchi: You do these things because you benefit from the power of the Turks in this place. If you were in a Christian land, where justice reigns, you would not do such things. Pietro: Do as you will and do as you wish, but you will have from me neither balance nor payment of any kind without first providing me with this receipt. Franchi: But how am I to give you a receipt if you do not first pay me? 64 The nature of this receipt soon became the subject of complex litigation between the two men. 65 Was the receipt ultimately signed under duress? Or did it really mean that the balance had been paid to Franchi? These questions point to the limits of written certification. On the one hand, they were often demanded by merchants and institutions as proofs, in particular for highvalue transactions or ones that implied deferred payments and deadlines (such as bills of lading, account books, powers of attorney, bills of exchange 63 CADN, Tunis, 'Chancellerie', 712PO/1/408 (VII), fos. 302 v -303 r . 64 ASL, CGA, 'Atti Civili', 73, 90, fo. 1087 r : 'Allora il detto Simone Francesco Franchi disse S[igno]rie che vene pare di queste cose, che vole che io li faccia prima la quietanza che darmi conto ne pagamento di sorte alcuna dicendo ''tu fai queste cose come stante la forza de' turchi, che tu tieni in questo luogo, dicendo se fussino in terra di Christiani dove batte la giustitia, non faresti queste cose'', et il detto Anton Marco Pietro disse ''fa quanto voi, e di quello che ti piace, che da me non haverai ne conto, ne pagamento, di sorte alcuna, se prima non mi fai la quietanza gia detta'', et allora, il detto Simone Francesco Franchi disse ''S[igno]ri, me sarebbe testimoni per a loro e tempo come vole che io li faccia prima la quietanza senza darmi ne conto, ne pagamento'' '. 65 Ibid., fo. 1098 r : 'Deduce fede e copia valida d'uno instrumento celebrato in Tunis, sotto li 25 di maggio 1620 per il quale appare detto comparente haver fatto quietanza dalli detti 4667.15.9 a favor del detto Anton Marco Pietro spettanti a lui per il detto negozio et deduce fede et attestazioni valide per le quali si giustifica che detta quietanza presentata e fatta forzatamente'. and so on). This explains why, even as a tacit war simmered between France and Tunis between 1610 and 1616, the consulate of France continued to provide such functional and crucial certificates. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand the context in which written documents were drawn up without recourse to oral testimonies: nothing guaranteed that the institution responsible for recording and certifying these documents was free or impartial, to the extent that they could even have created important biases in the market.
Over the course of almost five years, Franchi would carry his burden of liability across several jurisdictions (see Map). After his association with the nephews of Murād Bey left him in difficulty, he sought the help of procurators to call in debts owed to him in Corsica, activating part of this vast network of debt and credit that structured the social and economic relationships of the early modern period. 66 He also ensured that all written traces related to the transaction were recorded in order to assert his rights. Above all, he sought to recover various sums of money that he considered Pietro owed him: the amounts varied significantly, from 880 pieces of eight in 1621, 1,221 crowns in 1622, and 1,717 crowns in 1624, as Franchi also sought damages and interest. 67 Pietro, meanwhile, maintained that his adversary's claims were unfounded. In Tunis, in February 1621, he denounced the case against him as 'vain, nul and void, invalid, extravagant . . . and impertinent', adding that Franchi 'ought not to believe his own dreams' and that he had been paid correctly. 68 The degree of conflict, hatred and personal animosity between the two men is remarkable, and contrasts sharply with the majority of records and minutes where the vocabulary tends towards compromise, a search for consensus and mutual good faith. The vehemence of the dispute, translated into conflictive and aggressive words, indicates the hard case: judges must not only apply a rule of law, but respond to a challenging social breach whose consequences must be assessed. Here, other than the high financial stakes, the reciprocal accusations had serious economic, social and moral implications for the 66  parties involved. In a society where one's credit and credibility were determined by one's good reputation (bona fama), an affair of this kind could have long-term negative ramifications for a merchant's career. 69 The emotional dimension of the hard case clearly had an impact not only on the length of the litigation but also on the choice of the legal authority, which tested both the capacity and the borders of jurisdictions.
Pietro accused Franchi outright of 'lies', 'falsehood' and 'perjury'; as such, Franchi ought to see all his 'vain and invalid demands' refused. Franchi meanwhile alleged that Pietro had used his backing from the 'Turks' to force his signature of the receipt, intimidating and even making threats on his life in Tunis. 70 He called upon several institutions in the hope of recovering his money. At first, we might imagine that Franchi engaged in what today's social scientists and historians refer to as 'forum-shopping', a practice that entails looking to take advantage of the plurality of available jurisdictions in a given normative space. 71 However, on closer inspection, it seems that Franchi was in fact looking to trace Pietro's assets in order to ensure that any eventual legal decision in his favour be enforced. Put simply, the litigant was not simply looking for an advantageous judgment within a unified, even jurisdictional offer, but was searching to identify and leverage the various institutions capable of physically seizing the money and the goods of his adversary. In principle, according to the maxim inherited from Roman law actor sequitur forum rei, the plaintiff had to bring his dispute before the court of the defendant. 72 Beyond the question of the geographic location of the trial, the main aim of this maxim was to protect the rights of the defendant, as well as deciding which was the competent jurisdiction to deal with the trial: this is precisely the meaning of the word forum which designates both a court and a jurisdiction. In practice, however, it was legal and common use to prosecute a debtor in the place of the contract (forum contractus), the place of injury (forum rei sitae) or at their place of residence (forum domicilii). 73 This flexibility was particularly sought after by merchants looking to bypass potential constraints linked to their high degree of mobility.
Franchi's litigation was an itinerant dispute: it began in Tunis and continued in Tuscany, moving on to Corsica and Genoa before returning once more to Tuscany, four crucial locations of the trading network of Corsican merchants in the western Mediterranean. To understand its stakes, we must follow the parties across a plurality of sites which involve diverse political, social and jurisdictional configurations (see Map). Franchi managed to extricate himself from Tunis around the start of 1621, but left several debts behind him that meant he was obliged to provide bonds (pegni) and leave his brother as a hostage in the Ottoman province -a practice that was not uncommon to prove one's good faith and give guarantees. Franchi sought justice in Tuscany firstly because the sugar transaction had been carried out in Livorno (forum rei sitae) and there were a number of witnesses in the port; secondly -and more importantly -because Anton Marco Pietro held a number of assets in Tuscany together with numerous associates, and was looking to establish himself there. 75 In Tuscany, Franchi's litigation was judged by the Sea Consuls of Pisa, a prestigious magistracy with extensive competence in commercial and maritime litigation, whose judges belonged to the Florentine aristocracy and were not doctors in law but rather  merchants, or at the very least had a good knowledge of commerce and of mercatura. 76 In March 1622, Franchi obtained a semi-favourable ruling from this court in which Pietro was ordered to pay him 359 crowns -of the 1272 sought by Franchi -and to better justify his statements. However, this ruling was revoked following a supplication filed in September 1622, in which Pietro explained that he was in Tunis and that his procurator in Tuscany did not have all the necessary elements that would allow the judges to make a decision. 77 Pietro subsequently obtained a favourable rescript in response to an appeal filed in the same tribunal. 78 The following month, Franchi sent a request to the governor of Corsica in Bastia concerning his case. A trace of this document can be found amongst the various records held by the Corsican tribunal. In Centuri, the brother of Anton Marco, Domenico Pietro, was informed on the square before the village church that he had to travel to Bastia to take care of his brother's affairs. Pietro's brother invoked the actor sequitur forum rei right in order to challenge the authority of the governor of Corsica to rule in the matter, asserting that the litigation ought to be decided by the lieutenant of Cap Corse, since the port of Centuri lay within his jurisdiction. 79 In the meantime, Anton Marco Pietro -whether as a precaution or in order to finance his installation in Livorno -had sold the goods that he owned on the island. 80 The close relationship between Pietro and Franchi tested the inner workings of litigation and legal recourse, and provides a highly revealing case with regard to the functioning of procedures and appeals. As with many transregional and mobile commercial litigations, the high financial stakes and the localization and collection of written and oral proofs complicated the trial further and gave rise to numerous appeals and re-evaluations. 76

DIPLOMATIC STAKES, INTIMIDATION AND SOCIAL HUMILIATION
How did the hostility, emotion and anger shown by litigants play a role in the transformation of disputes? To what extent did judges have to take into account the political and diplomatic implications at stake in the case? In his complaints and his reclamations, Franchi denounced the lack of impartiality in the justice process. In Livorno and in Pisa, he mentioned the intimidation that he faced in Tunis as well as the corruption of the French consulate. In Corsica, Franchi justified his recourse to the governor of the island by pointing to the fact that the contract at the centre of the litigation was drawn up in North Africa, between 'persons of various jurisdictions but subjects of the Most Serene Senate (of Genoa)'. He further states that he 'feared for his life' (timore di perdere la vita) in the Ottoman province. Clearly dissatisfied by the rulings in Pisa, he also accuses Tuscan judges of being 'incompetent' with regard to the litigation. 81 If the competence of the Tuscan jurisdiction is debatable with regard to this case, its impartiality is also to be questioned. In another letter sent to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, this time in November 1622, Murād Bey thanked the Florentine court for the warm welcome accorded to his nephew, Anton Marco Pietro, and in particular for having accepted to 'accord him particular favour in his trial (litte) and interests'. 82 In other words, if the litigation in Tunis appeared biased to Franchi, then the tribunals of Livorno and Pisa seemed equally corrupt, acting according to what could be likened to a 'reason of State'. The trial of the two Corsican merchants took on a diplomatic turn at a time when the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was looking to soothe relations with North Africa, a thaw that was attested to by a number of exchanges of captives and gifts between the two powers. 83 Around the same time, Murād Bey sent six mares, some lions and dates to the Medicis in Tuscany. 84 Exchanges with Tunis were a crucial factor in the economic growth of the new so-called 'free port' of Livorno. Friendly relations with the powerful bey of Tunis were prioritized, even if these benefited only the small group of merchants that made up the trade elite of the port of Livorno. The profitable trade with North Africa called for mutual favours and signs of friendship such as the freeing of slaves and captives here and there, and support of efforts to recover debts. This was the case for example in 1635 when Yūsuf Dey made implicit threats of reprisals against Tuscan merchants should his procurators fail to recover significant debts in Livorno. 86 Several factors explain, then, why Franchi sought justice in a number of jurisdictions or fora. The simplest explanation was that he believed that he had been seriously wronged and that he was looking to recover his money and at the same time restore his much-tarnished economic and social credibility. He would also have been unable to gauge the level of corruption of the Tuscan tribunals with regard to his litigation. Rarely attested to in written form, such bias often escapes historians, as do the multiple social, emotional and political factors which shape the origins of legal disputes and the proceedings and results of trials. In this case, even if it is difficult to fully account for every aspect of the litigation, by paying attention to the various institutions that were engaged, to the family ties and social positions at stake and to the surrounding economic and political context, we can reconstruct the legal and social configuration which could influence the judges' decisions.
When, in May 1624, Anton Marco Pietro appeared before the tribunal of the governor of Livorno to demand 100 crowns from Simone Francesco Franchi on behalf of Murād Bey, his adversary was already laden with debts. On 14 October 1623, Franchi was arrested and imprisoned in Livorno because of debts being called in simultaneously by a Greek cobbler (35 pieces of silver) and by the vice-consul of Tunis, together with Murād Bey (228 crowns). 87 On 30 January 1624, Bartolomeo Rio, the 'carnal brother' of Usta Murād, transferred a loan of 80 crowns owed by Franchi to Pietro. 88 The delicate situation of the Bastian merchant offers an example of how the accumulation of multiple debts could quickly ruin a merchant and lead to their downfall should these be called in simultaneously. This type of coordinated action by creditors against a debtor aimed at nothing less than the public humiliation of the indebted party: imprisonment represented an economic and social downgrade that relegated the insolvent debtor to the rank of a 'shameful pauper '. 89 Franchi remained in prison for six months. From his cell, he nonetheless continued to demand the money that he considered was owed to him by Anton Marco Pietro, and he revived the affair in February 1624 despite his 'destitute' situation (miseria). 90 Though he was in no position to cover the costs of the trial or to commission procurators, Franchi did not want the trial to be judged in a summary and oral (pettorale) fashion as his 'destitute' and helpless situation would have allowed in Livorno. 91 Producing the various documents, receipts, contracts and testimonials related to the trial was an extremely costly business: Franchi complained that he lacked the funds to pay for the copying of the necessary elements and their transport from Tunis as well as for his three lawyers. 92 Dissatisfied by the tribunals of Livorno and Pisa, he looked to appeal to the commercial court in Florence, the Sei della Mercanzia. 93 However, this line of action was unsuccessful: a number of recent decisions by the Grand Duke of Tuscany had confirmed the competence of the Sea Consuls of Pisa in terms of second-instance appeals relating to commercial and maritime questions. 94 Franchi could have made a further appeal to the Ruota Civile in Florence that was competent for third-instance appeal hearings. 95 Anton Marco Pietro meanwhile stuck to the same line of defence: he maintained that Franchi held 'mad pretentions' and was not telling the truth, pointing to the existing public documents and receipts which served as proof in such cases. Murād Bey's nephew thus drew on the proof-value of written documents -in particular with regard to legal obligations -in this case the records of the consular chancellery in Tunis. Moreover, he insisted that Franchi had chosen the wrong jurisdiction and that he ought not to roam from one tribunal to the next. 96 In short, he accused Franchi of 'chicanery', an expression which referred to the way in which one party could attempt to exhaust (defatigare) the other by bringing one appeal after another. Chicanery -which in Latin and Italian corresponds to the polysemic term calunniaimplied an intense degree of conflict between the litigants and also served as an excellent means of revealing the entanglement of jurisdictional competences and the numerous conflicts related to questions of law, jurisdiction and competence during the early modern period.
In order to prevent the sugar case from being heard once again, Pietro pointed out that the appeal could not be brought in such a fashion as to 'prejudice things already judged', as a grand-ducal rescript from June 1624 confirmed. 97 This meant that Franchi could not engage new proceedings without having first acquitted himself of the debts incurred in previous affairs. 98 Yet Franchi had brought the same accusations -deceitful ones, according to Pietro -before numerous tribunals, beginning with the viceconsul of the French nation in Tunis, and later the governor of Bastia and a court in Genoa (most likely the Rota Civile). He had finally brought the charge before courts in Tuscany, where two rulings had been handed down by the Sea Consuls of Pisa and another by the tribunal of the governor of Livorno. Two further records mention an arbitration decision (lodo) between the two men that was reached by 'mutual friends' (amicable composers) in summer 1624. 99 This is an interesting point as it shows how the choice of arbitration could intervene after the involvement of ordinary jurisdictions, and that it sometimes functioned as an ultimate recourse rather than as a preliminary stage that preceded recourse to tribunals. The disagreements as to the jurisdictions and procedures between the two litigants are asymmetrical: Pietro was advised by legal officers and counsels, while Franchi, as he stated in one of 96 ASL, CGA, 'Atti Civili', 73, 97, fo. 1248: 'se si pretende alcuna nullità deve ricorrere dalli predetti Signori Consoli, et non andar vagando, con gravissima spesa del comparente, in questa parte, et in quella, si che il comparente non pretende voler dir altro, ne opporre altro alle dette folle pretentioni, che le dette sententie insieme con la detta notula il che tutto corta nel presente processo'. 97 ASL, CGA, 'Atti Civili ', 73, 97, fo. 1249 r . 98 As affirmed by a decision of the Rota Civile of Genoa, one of the most prestigious and influential civil tribunals of early modern Europe: Decisiones Causarum executivareum Rotae Reipublicae Genuensis (Genoa, 1608), xxiv, 67-8: 'Instantia insufflata per Principem nulla expensa fatta mentione, potest per partem opponi quod non audiatur nisi prius refectis expentis'. 99 ASL, CGA, 'Atti Civili ',75,fo. 155 r ;ASP,CDM,'Atti Civili',128,n. 29. the petitions sent from his prison cell, no longer had the means to do so. 100 It is in the context of this uneven footing that Anton Marco Pietro demanded the debts owed to +ājid Māmī. Barely a month after his release from prison, Franchi found himself once more summoned to reimburse debts; this time all he could do was complain that he was the victim of persecution at the hands of Pietro who he said was 'harassing' and 'troubling [him] continuously '. 101 By autumn 1624, however, Franchi seemed to have recovered financially to a certain extent, doubtless thanks to the arbitration that established that Pietro owed him 400 crowns -a significantly smaller sum than the one he was seeking, however. No sooner was Franchi solvent than Pietro demanded the repayment of the 100 crowns owed to +ājid Māmī, in the name of Murād Bey. In and of itself, there was nothing strange about this request: Muslim merchants frequently had agents who were charged with recovering debts in 'Christian countries'. In 1627 Yūsuf Dey wrote to the Tuscan sovereign about the arrest of two Genoese debtors to be judged 'under good faith': the Tunisian ruler recommended to the protection of the Tuscan court four agents -two Muslim and two Christian procurators -that he sent to Livorno to try and recover a huge debt of 29,604 pieces of eight reales. 102 At the same time he exerted diplomatic pressure on the Tuscan rulers in order to ensure that his agents fulfilled their mission. The port of Livorno represented a particularly worrying hub for creditors since its statutes allowed for the granting of asylum to failed merchants: since 1591, a series of privileges accorded to the city by the Grand Duke of Tuscany with a view to bolstering the city's population permitted the annulment of debts accumulated in other countries for all merchants who wished to resettle in the Tuscan port and to move their businesses there. 103 Franchi himself had hoped to benefit from Livorno's statute of exemption, an attempt that Pietro would flag up as further proof of his 'falseness' and his 'wickedness'. The arbitration had done nothing to attenuate the highly personal nature of the conflict between the men, which continued to play out in a remarkably violent and aggressive vocabulary that ran contrary to the cardinal principle of 'good faith' that was meant to govern the settling of all civil and commercial disputes. 104 For the Tuscan judges, this was also a feature of the hard case.

MUSLIM RULE OF SUCCESSION, LEGAL TRANSLATION AND THE MAKING OF RELIGIOUS BOUNDARIES
Once again, the transposition of this conflict from the personal arena to the legal one proved costly. Not only did proof of Franchi's debt have to be gathered, but this was also to be a hard case: did Murād Bey have the right to demand repayment of a debt originally owed to his 'renegade slave', +ājid Māmī, in Livorno? How could legal enforcement work in such cases? The affair was judged in two phases and took almost a year to be deliberated, with the last recorded ruling being passed down in 1625. 105 In the first instance, the governor of Livorno and his court auditor condemned Franchi to repay the debt. 106 But this, of course, was not the end of the case: the Corsican merchant appealed several days later on the grounds that the ruling had been reached 'with precipitation', that Murād Bey was not the legitimate heir of +ājid Māmī, and that in any case he had repaid +ājid Māmī. 107 The second instance was pleaded at the tribunal of the Sea Consuls of Pisa. They were assisted by a chancellor who served as the real authority on the customs, practices and the 'style' of the court (stilus curiae). The summary procedure in which the court operated was flexible and supposedly adapted to the commercial sphere: the tribunal avoided formalism and allowed a significant degree of freedom to the parties involved in terms of the actions they could take, in order to shed light upon 'truth' and 'the matter of fact'. 108 However, unlike the 'very summary' procedure in which lawyers were excluded from the tribunal, in this case two procurators -a pair of Pisan notaries -advised the litigants before the Sea Consuls. 109 (Cambridge, 2000). At the trial, Pietro presented several receipts as well as testimonies (fedi) signed by merchants and sailors who dealt extensively with Tunis. These individuals had lent their names to a form of parere, an affidavit that explains a point of foreign law or a commercial practice that relates to customary rules involved in litigation. In this case, the affidavit stated that 'when a renegade dies in this region of Barbary, his masters are indeed heirs to the renegade. Thus is the custom and the practice in these parts of Barbary'. 110 By way of such affidavits, mercantile expertise played an important role in legal proceedings, since tribunals readily recognized practices and customs as sources of law. Amongst the signatories of the affidavit presented by Pietro were wealthy shipowners and traders in Livorno, members of the city's elite. It is important to note that the minutes translated 'mamluk' by 'rinnegato' to better emphasize the idea of religious betrayal over that of the servitude implied by the position. Similarly, the 'practices and customs' of Tunis are mentioned: nothing but a broad and generic evocation of the normative Islamic and Ottoman space about which the Tuscan judges seem to know very little.
To combat the written documents presented by Pietro, Franchi used another procedural tool, namely a series of twenty-four highly precise questions which he submitted in writing to the witnesses called by Anton Marco Pietro, who had all promised to tell the truth under pain of perjury. 111 The interrogation deals first with questions of identification: who were Ramanān Bey, Murād Bey and +ājid Māmī? The following questions focused on the system of inheritance between masters and mamluks as it is applied in Tunis and 'in Barbary'. Finally, the witnesses were questioned on their own business in North Africa and their links to the parties. Of the three witnesses interrogated, two were Greek captains based in Livorno, Stefano Saladiotto and Dimitri Cailla; the third was a Corsican merchant, Carlo di Lorenzo, who acted as a witness to Anton Marco Pietro's marriage to the niece of Murād Bey. 112 The responses to the interrogation offer precious information as to the history of the Ottoman province of Tunis, in particular with regards to the political ascension of Murād Bey. Carlo di Lorenzo explains how he came to know, over the course of his stays in Tunis and in Annaba at the end of the sixteenth century, both Ramanān Bey and Murād Bey. He explains that Ramanān Bey had many 'renegades' in his household, including one +ājid Murād, who 110  would later become Murād Bey through his marriage to his master's daughter. Murād Bey is described as the 'head general of all the militia of the countryside', an influential and powerful figure in Tunis. Dimitri Cailla, from Athens, also had extensive knowledge of the Ottoman provinces of North Africa, having frequently travelled and done business there. He was also an agent of Yūsuf Dey, and specialized in the commerce of captives. He knew that Murād Bey inherited half of the wealth of Ramanān Bey, that he was a wealthy merchant, with many slaves, amongst whom there was indeed a 'renegade' by the name of +ājid Māmī -although he could not say with certainty whether this is the figure to whom Franchi supposedly owed his debt. Franchi's questions further suggested several other details, for example alleging that +ājid Māmī had a brother and children, the implication being that these relatives could be his legitimate heirs rather than Murād Bey. 113 After this passage concerning the identification of the individuals involved, the heart of Franchi's written interrogation, from chapters 11 to 16, dealt with the inheritance rights of masters 'secondo la legge maomettana' ('according to Muhammadan law'). The three witnesses, who had all stated that 'masters [were] indeed the heirs to their renegades' would confirm their previous declarations. They explained that they had all had the opportunity to observe such practices during their time in Muslim lands, and the Greek sailor Saladiotto claimed to have himself been enslaved thirteen years earlier in Constantinople. There, he had seen at first hand his master inherit the possessions of his slaves. He claims that the practice is the same throughout 'Turkey', which we can interpret to mean the entire Ottoman Empire and even the Muslim world in general, since 'Turk' is often deployed as a synonym of 'Muslim' in western sources. Carlo di Lorenzo and Dimitri Cailla both declared that they possessed a good knowledge of North Africa, Tunis, Annaba and Algiers since they had lived there and traded with the territories' merchants. Their responses, more precise than those given by Saladiotto, are interesting not only in terms of the question of collateral and the descendants of 'renegades' but also in terms of the possible site of inheritance. 114 As we have seen, the term 'renegade' which is used in Franchi's interrogation referred to a former slave who had converted and been freed. 115  liberation nonetheless maintained a link of patronage between renegade and master, a relationship of proximity that was known in the Islamic theological and legal sphere as walāj. 116 This link of dependence conferred several rights upon the master upon the death of the mawlā, to use the Arabic term for the 'freeman'. The master became the guardian of any of the children of the mawlā not yet of age and would inherit the deceased's goods should he have no agnatic beneficiaries (iaXaba), that is, direct male heirs. In case of the death of the master, his sons also stood to inherit from the mawlā. If the master had no sons, then the goods of the mawlā were passed on to the bayt almāl, an institution charged with taking care of unclaimed inheritance. 117 The link of dependence that persisted despite the renegade's freedom recalls to a certain extent that of the Junian Latins in Rome: according to the lex Iunia Norbana passed under Tiberius, the Junian Latins lived free but died as slaves. 118 In other words, if +ājid Māmī was a mamluk, the mawlā of Murād Bey, and if he had no sons, then it was indeed Murād Bey who was his rightful heir. Carlo di Lorenzo and Dimitri Cailla described in precise detail these rules in their responses to Franchi's interrogation. They excluded the possibility of brothers or other collateral relatives inheriting the estate of the deceased renegade, whether these relatives were Christian or Muslim. The Greek captain did however specify that the sons of the renegade, should he have any, were indeed legitimate heirs. 119 These cross-examinations provide a rare insight into the practical and realworld knowledge of the rules of succession in place in Ottoman North Africa as observed by a small group of merchants and sailors in Tuscany. They show how the judges in Pisa drew upon mercantile knowledge to question Tunisian rules and principles that lay beyond their expertise (one of the aspects of the hard case). This was undoubtedly common practice in commercial tribunals that were used to questioning foreign usages, customs and laws. More than an example of the legal know-how of traders, these interrogations also reveal a 116 David Santillana, Istituzioni di diritto musulmano malichita con riguardo anche al sistema good deal about the nature of the circulation of legal knowledge at the start of the seventeenth century. The history of science has shown the structuring importance of port cities and places of commerce as sites of knowledge. 120 Legal and institutional history could similarly benefit from an exploration of these same spaces as sites of legal confluence. 121 In Pisa, for example, the proximity of the Sea Consuls and the university allowed for intellectual exchanges between merchants, sailors and learned lawyers. 122 The knowledge of Muslim rules acquired through practice and experience was also an important resource for traders who had to navigate between multiple normative and jurisdictional systems. From this point of view, the interrogations offer a clue to the legal dimension of mercantile knowledge -a dimension which they could doubtless turn into another source of profit amongst the many other sought-after forms of knowledge and practical know-how.
While nothing prevented Muslim rules from being questioned in the course of the litigation, the issue of the enforcement of these norms in a land of jus commune represented another debate entirely and another hard dimension of the case. Apart from the question of identification and family ties, which entailed the untangling of the links between Murād Bey and +ājid Māmī, one of the main questions raised by Franchi's interrogation centred on the possibility of inheriting these goods 'in Christianity'. In other words, was it valid to apply a rule of succession originating in the Islamic world in a Christian jurisdiction? The litigation not only was mixed in terms of the litigants (a Muslim plaintiff versus a Catholic defendant), but also because it raised the question of the applicability and the territorialization of a rule that no existing treaty between Tuscany and Tunis defined. The relationships between the grand duchy and the Ottoman province were founded on a fragile and variable principle of reciprocity; this principle was an incitement to reach topical rather than systematic judgments that aimed to resolve localized, distinct cases.
The arguments of Pietro and Franchi -formulated with the help of their procurators -adopt radically different approaches on this point. Pietro and his lawyers sought to underline the continuity between Muslim laws and Roman laws, wherein 'the master is the inheritor of his slave' (dominus sit heres servi original faith in Tunis. 'Animated by [his] piety' and 'fearing excommunication' should he not denounce Pérez, Franchi had the Moor arrested on suspicion of apostasy. A trial featuring numerous interrogations and a torture session was carried out by the tribunal of the Holy Office of Pisa between September 1624 and April 1625. 128 Ultimately, Pérez was only condemned to salutary penitence, and forced to recognize his errors, to travel to Rome and to visit the seven churches three times. 129 It is difficult to see the case brought by Franchi before the Inquisition as anything other than a threat and an act of revenge against his Corsican rivals. He was clearly ready to use every jurisdiction and legal tool available to damage his adversaries. In his deposition, he added that he had seen Pérez do business with 'Bartolomeo Rio [Ustā Murād's brother] and other Corsican merchants and traders in Tunis'. 130 Franchi thus forced his rivals to appear before the Inquisition to explain the nature of their relationships with the slave trader Pérez. Rio and Pietro were both called upon, and denied participating in any dishonourable commerce. 131 The trial reflected very badly upon Franchi, too: in the documents produced by Pérez in his defence, he described his detractor as 'a wicked, agitated, quarrelsome person, who has made it his profession to persecute others' by threatening legal action against them and slandering them. 132 The twentieth question of the case related to Franchi's litigation with Anton Marco Pietro: This same Simone Francesco had demanded 12,000 crowns from Pietro; this pretention was judged civilly as reckless and slanderous. For this reason, Simon Francesco spent a good deal of time in prison; daily, he invents slander, falsehoods and impenitence, and feeds and lives off these things; so much so that he has been left poor, a beggar and a vagabond, hated by all who know him, and that in his own Corsican nation, he is known as the disgrace (vituperio)  the outbreak of a violent plague in North Africa. Was Franchi still in Tuscany or had he fled in the face of social opprobrium? Upon his death in 1635, Anton Marco Pietro was a rich merchant based in Livorno, close to the trading elite and a member of the city's most influential Catholic secular confraternity of the city (the confraternity of Santa Giulia). He possessed a Moorish slave, Fatima; he had founded churches in Tuscany and Corsica; he bestowed upon his daughter a thousand pieces of eight, while his sons inherited significant amounts of wealth and property. Pietro's will mentions a number of ongoing trials, in Pisa and in Genoa, and charges his heirs and several procurators with their conclusion. Indeed, it was not unusual for a merchant to be outlived by a litigation in which he was involved. 137 By tracking the various transformations of the multi-sited litigation between Franchi and Pietro, from a trial in Tunis about cases of sugar unpaid for, to a case brought before the Holy Office of Pisa, I have attempted to reveal the inextricability of the social, economic, legal, diplomatic and religious stakes raised by hard cases. To do so, it is necessary to retrace the circulation of the merchants across a number of jurisdictional spaces as well as to read the proceedings of the legal trials and rulings against the extrajudicial and parajudicial trajectories and actions of the litigants. This allows us to account for the forms of intimidation, violence and emotion at various levels which invite us to look beyond the site of one trial, the statute books and the records in order to understand the litigants' motivations and procedural actions. This bitter litigation that was characterized by the transposition of an intimate dispute to the legal sphere, by insults and by chicanery tested the jurisdictional plurality of the mercantile space, as well as revealing transregional coalitions founded upon bi-religious family networks. As such it allows us to reflect upon the usages of law under the early modern period, upon the social implications of recourse to tribunals, and upon the conflicts in terms of laws, competences and legal enforcement between Islam and Christianity. The microhistorical approach not only helps to describe complex itinerant disputes and map competent jurisdictions, but explains why and how they could occur, evolve and circulate. It tests the impartiality of legal institutions -which often escapes the historian -and highlights the ambiguity of written proof in multi-sited litigation. From this point of view, this particular hard case is also a good indicator of the tension, fragility and latent violence of trade relations between Ottoman North Africa and southern Europe at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Interestingly, the 137 ASF, NMT, Matteo Ciupi, 14186, n. 43, fos. 110 r -118 r (27 Aug. 1635). microhistorical in-depth description of the dispute reveals cross-religious systems of patronage, protection and alliance that organize economic cooperation across geographical and political boundaries. At the same time, it shows how the vocabulary of religious hostility could be wilfully activated to harm the opposing party and try to disqualify it during the trial.