Petitions submitted by Ottoman subjects to the Imperial Council are very colorful and unique sources of social and legal history. They constitute unique moments where the researcher is able to come much closer to touching and hearing the historical subject. An analysis of the rhetorical language and of the content of the petitions, as well as of the actors involved in petitioning, provides us with incomparable information on social and legal affairs. This unique source has received almost no attention in studies on Ottoman history despite the fact that it has been widely utilized by researchers in European history. Another advantage that petitions—as well as the Imperial Council registers—give the researcher is that they provide a great deal of information about the experiences of non-Muslim subjects in the empire. Non-Muslim religious leaders and ordinary non-Muslims contacted the central government more often than they utilized the local kad? courts since they had their own community courts. My paper will explore the dynamics of non-Muslims’ petitioning the Imperial Council by following the case of Armenian priests who converted from Catholicism to Protestantism in mid-eighteenth-century Ankara. Documents concerning the case will allow us to see not only the relationship of the Armenian community and the patriarchate with the imperial center, but also the interplay of different legal actors and institutions that was triggered by petitioning. A series of criminal and notary registers as well as registers of imperial decrees concerning the priests, their relationship with the community as well as the punishments inflicted upon them will also provide valuable information on the workings of the early-modern penal system in general and regarding the non-Muslims and their conversion in particular. Furthermore, the case of Armenian priests will show how petitioning was an integral part of the Ottoman legal system by revealing the frequency of petitions that were referred in Ankara court records.