Scholarship today argues that the “Ottoman way” denotes the centralization of the ʿilmiye education and employment system under government patronage and the development of qanun to regulate the hierarchy and promotion of these protectors of the Shariʿa.” In this presentation, branching out from this analysis, I will examine the development of and responses to the “Ottoman way” within the context of sixteenth century Egypt. What was the “Ottoman way” and how was it implemented in Egypt? Following the region’s conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, a series of administrative-religious/judicial changes were introduced to the existing system that marked departures from the customary and religious laws in practice under Mamluk rule. Local representatives of Ottoman judicial bureaucracy played a major role in implementing the “Ottoman way”. In the narrative sources and chronicles of the period (Ibn Iyas’s Bada’i‘ al-Zuhur fī Waqa’i‘ al-Duhur and Diyarbekri’s Nevaridu’t-Tevarih) references underline the limits of the “Ottoman way” and the negative reactions of the people of Egypt. The resistance by the Egyptian ʿulama and ehl-i Mıṣr, for instance, were directed against what they perceived as ill-defined Ottoman innovations, customary laws, and the gradual forced ascendancy and application of the Hanefi law over the Shafiʿi one. The available studies focus briefly on the ad hoc changes made to the Mamluk system and its immediate results, showing how the Ottoman system gradually replaced the Mamluk one after the promulgation of the Law Code of Egypt in 1525. However, as evidence from chronicles and other narrative sources reflect, the administrative-judicial and social dynamics portray a far more complicated picture than what has been assumed. This presentation will explore this critical and complex transitional Mamluk/Ottoman period (1517-ca.1566) to show how the “Ottoman way” was negotiated in Egypt by various actors. It will also argue that rather than being implemented by the imperial “center” in Istanbul as a product of a well-defined and clearly articulated Ottoman imperial vision, the “Ottoman way” was a work-in-progress during the rule of Sultan Süleyman.