Millet (Ottoman Empire)
In the Ottoman Empire, a millet (Turkish: [millet]; Ottoman Turkish: ملت, Arabic: مِلَّة) was an independent court of law pertaining to "personal law" under which a confessional community (a group abiding by the laws of Muslim sharia, Christian canon law, or Jewish halakha) was allowed to rule itself under its own laws. Despite frequently being referred to as a "system", before the nineteenth century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire was not at all systematic.