This paper explores how the Ottomans considered and engaged practices that we label today as “corruption” among state functionaries between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the term has no direct equivalent in Ottoman language, practices that we commonly associate with it (including bribery, nepotism, extortion, and embezzlement) receive frequent references in historical sources of legal, administrative, and literary nature. By utilizing information in Ottoman kanunnames (law codes), court records, imperial and provincial bureaucratic documentation, and literary works, the paper discusses how the Ottomans characterized these practices and judged their moral, legal, and societal repercussions; what attempts they made to thwart their pervasiveness; and how relevant regulations and practices contributed to defining the relationship between subjects and ruling groups. A key aspect of the paper is its depiction of practices associated with corruption in their own (Ottoman) context(s) since the authors assume that religious, cultural, and political factors play significant roles in shaping perceptions regarding legitimate and illegitimate judiciary-administrative conduct. We consider these perceptions essential to define acceptable/necessary interventions by ruling groups and constitutive of imperial or provincial authority. To this end we wonder, for example, if and to what extent modern definitions of bribery correspond to Ottoman definitions. A contextually-based attempt to characterizing corruption also raises other fascinating but hitherto unexplored questions: What might have been the boundaries that separated bribery from customary gift-giving in the Ottoman setting and how were these boundaries negotiated by various social actors? How exactly did Ottomans differentiate family, kin, or ethnic solidarity from nepotism? To what extent did Ottoman administrative practices and traditions, given their various limitations, tolerate (or even promote) “embezzlement” on the part of state functionaries? Were such practices acceptable for certain groups and not others? And how did characterizations of various forms of corruption and policies to prevent such practices (including punishments) change between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries? In the latter regard, nineteenth-century modernization and the consequent redefinition of the boundaries that separated legitimate and illegitimate judicial-administrative conduct will receive special attention. More specifically, the paper will explore the debates around bribery in nineteenth century, its criminalization, and the associated procedures of punishment vis-à-vis other forms of misappropriation, and consider what they might reveal about the so called “modernization” or “secularization” of the Ottoman law. This is a joint presentation that we regard as “two papers in one” for the purposes of this panel.