Nocturnal Encounters: Drinking and Social Control in Galata during the Eighteenth Century While the urban landscape of Ottoman ports offered public spaces where members of different ethno-religious communities ( usually males) could interact freely (the market place, workshops), residential neighborhoods promoted settlement around places of worship and a level of segregation. The port of Galata was the enclave of European as well as non- Muslim communities and had an important Muslim core around the Arab Cami. But as international trade expanded and migration grew,p, residential quarters became more mixed and diverse in the eighteenth century. This paper will examine the impact of Muslim- zimmi cohabitation on the nightlife of Galata during the long eighteenth century. Based on Islamic court records as well as police registers and Ottoman accounts, I will argue that while non- Muslim and European communities enjoyed a degree of cultural autonomy in Galata, the state and communal leaders protected the gender and communal boundaries at times of social and economic crisis. The state created a community watch system to punish breaches of moral code, violation of bans on drinking as well as sumptuary laws. But often these bans were ineffective and Muslims as well as non- Muslims enjoyed the nocturnal life of Galata in taverns and coffeehouses together even when from time to time moralism became a trend and taverns and coffeehouses were shut down as dens of ‘ immoral life’ and dissent at times of political upheavals.