Lawmaking on the Frontier: The Fatwas of an Ottoman Provincial Mufti, Ali Akkirmani (d. 1618) Fatwas played a major role in the formation of Ottoman legal norms. However, to date, Ottoman historians have largely limited their examination of these sources to the fatwas of the chief muftis (şeyhülislam). The role of provincial muftis (kenâr müftüsü) and their fatwas remains neglected. What role did these muftis play in the formation of legal norms at the edge of the empire? How did they engage with the central authority and local officers? What functions did their fatwas perform? And what was their authority and role in the legal process? In this paper, I address these questions through an analysis of the fatwas of Ali Akkirmani, an Ottoman imperial man, a scholar-bureaucrat, who received his education and began his teaching career in the madrasas of Istanbul before taking up a post as professor and mufti in his hometown, the frontier city of Akkirman, in 1592. He kept the post for about thirty years, until his death in 1618. As mufti, he issued fatwas on questions of various types posed to him by common people, notables, officers, judges, etc., which were collected posthumously in 1630 under the title Fetâvâ-yı Akkirmani. I explore how Akkirmani interpreted and adapted the learned sharia law and imperial law to augment his own juristic, imperial, and socio-political authority and to position himself as a critical player in the formation of legal norms on the Ottoman frontier focusing on examples drawn from that work’s chapter on international law (Kitâbu’s-Siyer). In his fatwas, he was careful to stay within the bounds of the Islamic jurisprudential tradition (fiqh), using its concepts and referring to its founding and later authorities; but he also drew heavily on the fatwas of the Ottoman chief muftis and the decrees of the sultans (ferman), thereby positioning himself as a scholar-bureaucrat and spokesperson for the imperial center. Relying on this authority, Akkirmani used his office to create an alternative legal platform distinct from the courts and the official legal hierarchy, intervening in the legal cases of everyone from commoners to local officials with his fatwas. Vis-à-vis the center he adopted a different strategy, augmenting his authority by reminding his interlocutors that he was a native of Akkirman and thus knew better than they how to localize juristic and imperial legal knowledge.