It is now common knowledge that many Ottoman fatwas found their way into local sharia courts, where they were brought by litigants who wished to bolster their claims and attain a favorable resolution to their legal problems. Evidence of such practices can be best gauged from various Ottoman court records, where these fatwas were partially copied and inscribed into the text of the case summaries themselves. In this paper, I make use of six such fatwas, originating from the archive of the sharia court of Ottoman Sarajevo (1802-1804), in order to demonstrate that the amalgamation of these two distinct legal texts (the case summary and the fatwa) into a single narrative lends itself to new interpretive possibilities of both the ‘world’ described in the court summaries, and the law behind the mufti’s expert-opinions. My interest in the analysis of these court case summaries-cum-fatwas is hence twofold: textual and contextual. On the one hand, I examine the ways in which these two otherwise different genres of legal text influence and transform each other. For example, I investigate how background information about the litigants, apparent in the case summaries, allows for a contextual reinterpretation of fatwas at hand. At the same time, I seek to explain the judge’s rulings in the light of the legal reasoning which is provided by the muftis who issued the fatwas. On the other hand, I investigate under what circumstances litigants came to the court equipped with fatwas in order to substantiate their claims over a disputed inheritance. This line of investigation provides a solid ground for an analysis of complicated webs of familial relationships, as well as of different types of property which prompted close relatives to take each other to the court.