Ottoman Cairo's legal system was a complex mesh of institutions, produced by the combination of the long evolution of the fiqh juristic tradition and the Ottoman variant of the Turco–Persian imperial tradition. As a mix of sometimes antagonistic traditions, the Ottoman legal system was typical of early modern empires, which accumulated traditions as they grew over centuries, and used different idioms of legitimation for different constituencies. Searching for neat order in such polities is anachronistic. This was a plural legal system; exhibiting pluralism both in the bodies of legal doctrine on which judgments could be based, and in the judicial forums which litigants could approach. The doctrinal pluralism consisted of the plurality of madhhabs. The four madhhabs had coexisted in Cairo's courts since 1265, but under Ottoman rule this was not a straightforward case of legal pluralism where litigants could choose freely: the Ottoman government shaped and restricted the choices available. The pluralism of judicial forums—the main ones being the sharīca courts, the Dīwān al-cĀlī, and the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn—was more open. This was due to the lack of clear jurisdictional boundaries between these institutions, itself a result of the amalgamation of the sharīca and the Persianate imperial tradition, which both claimed universal sovereignty.

While the Ottoman legal system drew on several elements, it was produced and practiced by a society that saw itself, its government, and its law as Islamic. This study has followed recent literature in Islamic legal studies by expanding the scope of the subject beyond fiqh. While fiqh, and the ulema who produced it and studied it, were very closely identified with Islamic law, elements from outside this tradition were incorporated and indigenized throughout Islamic legal history. The authority of fiqh never stood alone, but was always in dialogue with other sources of authority, in particular the authority of kings and emperors. This dialogue and incorporation was not seen as problematic, in principle, by most of the people who produced, enforced, and lived under pre-modern Islamic legal regimes.