Historians of the Ottoman craft world have developed two differing interpretations of the relationship between artisans and the sultans’ government. Some scholars believe that by definition, the sultan -- and his bureaucrats-- represented the interests of the Islamic community and even to some extent, those of the sultans’ subjects at large. Other researchers assume that although the Islamic legitimacy of the sultans was never in doubt, there was some scope for craftsmen to develop initiatives of their own, including participation in rebellions when livelihoods were under threat. While adhering to the second option, I discuss why artisans apparently thought that compliance with officialdom was the royal road to success, and why such conformity notwithstanding, Ottoman guilds often defended the interests of the master craftsmen with a reasonable degree of success. While some historians view all artisan initiatives aiming at private gain as non-compliance with the social order deserving strict punishment, I think that this view is one-sided. The eighteenth-century sultans’ orders (nizams) used as the source basis for the present paper document different ways in which master artisans defended their concerns. The involvement of both qadi and grand vizier in mundane artisan conflicts permitted the now often discussed ‘forum shopping’ as complainants chose the venue best suiting their interests. Thus certain prosperous cloth manufacturers might agree to prevent competitors outside of their group from accessing scarce resources, thus hoping to monopolize sales in a given venue. Religious conflicts might intertwine with artisan disputes in the marketplace; and the Ottoman administration, while strongly committed to the right of all established craftspeople to make a living, might occasionally be inclined to place Muslims in lines of work previously dominated by their non-Muslim competitors. While invoking the sultan at every turn, certain master artisans were adept at using the sultans’ policies to promote their own interests. As artisan initiatives to further private gains were thus legitimized through constant reference to the sultan, craftspeople had little reason to call for the limitation of the ruler’s power. When deposing Selim III in 1807, soldiers and associated artisans acted because the ruler’s policies threatened livelihoods, not because the rebels wanted broader participation in policy decisions, or alternatively, because they blindly upheld a system that they viewed as traditional. The fall of Selim III thus differed fundamentally from what had happened in France in 1789