Despite a few attempts of the Ottoman sultans to re-establish the classical image of the ghazi-sultan, conquest played a minimal role in the legitimization of Ottoman dynasty in the seventeenth century. Emphasis on piety and religious orthodoxy were among the new tools of sultanic legitimization. The ensuing rise of the sharia was also parallel to the post-classical socioeconomic transformations. In this paper, I will analyze the impacts of the legal transformat?ons in the second half of the seventeenth century on the lives and statuses of the women of Istanbul. I argue that the decline of the Ottoman kanun and the rise of the sharia in the seventeenth century had complicated impacts on women from different socio-economic backgrounds. On the one hand, the rise of the sharia and the decline of the timar-system increased middle- and higher-class women’s opportunity to amass considerable amount of wealth primarily through inheritance and family waqfs. On the other hand, the decline of the Ottoman criminal law based on the kanun left questions of transgressions against women’s body and sexuality in the jurisdiction of the sharia, which had more ambiguous rulings on the issues. The latter development influenced mostly the women of lower classes, who had to appear in the public areas to earn their livelihood. I base my arguments on the analysis of the Istanbul court records, the fatwa compilations of the seventeenth-century Ottoman ?eyhülislams, the complaint registers, and the mühimme defters.