Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter introduces the main historical actors of the book, the corpus of sources written by or about these men, and the author’s approach to these sources. It argues that the "Kara Feyzî file" written by officials across the empire about one man and his substantial criminal network sheds unprecedented light on Ottoman corruption by exploring chronic imbrications between imperial governance and transregional criminal networks. The book’s microhistorical examination of ‘middling’ social actors and intermediaries like Kara Feyzî and his heavily documented interactions with Ottoman state officials and society opens up the possibility of a macrohistorical inquiry about the nature of Ottoman governance and the state’s fraught relations with its Muslim and Christian subjects during this watershed moment of the empire’s long history. The chapter discusses how this microhistorical analysis goes deep into the pores of Ottoman political culture as well as the moral, emotional, and economic regimes that informed it.</jats:p>