The present study explores the role of the Davud Pasha court in the lives of late eighteenth-century Ottoman Istanbulites, particularly between 1782-1840. Situated in intra muros Istanbul, the court’s records were destroyed by a massive fire in 1781. The remaining documents indicate its unique position as a space for resolving matters related to marriage, divorce, and the family. ?nalc?k, who wrote on the functions of the shari’a court in the Ottoman capital, stated that certain courts specialized in a particular subject matter in the early modern era. For instance, the Eyüp court was where suits concerning the city’s water distribution were conducted due to the court’s location and proximity to water distribution channels. In Davud Pasha, the accumulation of matrimonial suits, and the attendance of claimants from both adjoining and distant neighborhoods illustrate the possibility of such a specialization. The paper traces the history of this specific court over the course of sixty years through an evaluation of how individuals strategized their usage of this space. The plaintiffs’ relationship to the court and its urban backdrop comprise an integral part of the inquiries that will be dealt with in the presentation. Thus, the objective of this study is twofold: while examining the unofficial yet specialized role of Davud Pasha court in the attendees’ lives, I will also explore the collective character of neighborhoods, and how ordinary individuals positioned themselves within specific networks that strengthened their solidarity. For instance, quite a number of women from the same neighborhood have registered their divorce in the same court, within days from each other. This kind of action seems to be triggered by either women speaking to each other, or hearing about each other from others. Hence the court becomes the very space where dynamics extent within these networks is revealed. Certain questions that will be problematized in the paper include the practice of using the court; how the communal identity of the neighborhood affected gender relations both at the level of individuals and families? Was there a specific code of conduct that defined each neighborhood? Who made the rules and broke them, and were they ever transformed through agency of petitioners? Through an analysis of case-specific shari’a court records of Davud Pasha, I will further discuss the multi-dimensional role of this court in late eighteenth-century Istanbul.