In 1516-17 Ottoman armies defeated forces of the chief rival Sunni Muslim power, the Mamluk Sultanate, and in doing so destroyed a political order that had prevailed in Syria, Egypt, and western Arabia since 1250. Now doubled in size, the Ottoman Empire formed the major land power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Born, raised, and resident in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, the scholar Muhammad b. Ibrahim Ibn Hanbali witnessed this conquest and experienced the initial four decades of Ottoman rule. His two-volume biographical dictionary, Durr al-habab fi tarikh Halab, provides an expansive and unfolding portrait of his native city as it underwent a political and social transition to the Ottoman order. While used by many scholars as a source for the lives of individual figures, Durr al-Habab has not yet been the focus of a dedicated study examining Ibn al-Hanbali and his overall views of the new Ottoman regime. Ibn al-Hanbali explicitly tells readers in his introduction that he wrote Durr al-Habab to memorialize the greatness of Aleppo, expressing an urban pride that is in tension with Ottoman imperial claims. In his portrayal of Mamluk and Ottoman officialdom, principally governors, judges, and professional witnesses (pl. ‘udul), Ibn al-Hanbali evaluates the actions of these power elites, not only showing a scholar’s general discomfort with the rough-and-tumble of politics but also revealing his specific critique of the Ottoman methods of rule. In short, Durr al-habab can be seen as a kind of evolving journal of local attitudes to Ottoman government and legal practice, which displayed both change and continuity from Mamluk times. This paper will examine Ibn al-Hanbali’s representation of Mamluk and Ottoman governors and legal personnel in an effort to trace how Aleppans came to terms with new rulers and a more centralized legal system. Using anecdotes in the notices of both these and other notable persons, the paper will illustrate the interaction between an alien elite and the local population, an interaction that involved both resistance and selective co-optation. In surveying the portrayal of generations of Mamluk and Ottoman officials an attempt is made to identify enduring ideals of just government and the extent to which these was in turn re-shaped by a new political dispensation within the Sunni Muslim world.