From the Pages of the Defter (ص 37)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 37)

المحتوى

within his study the pre-Tanzimat history of land as a commodity in Jabal Nablus.” It is
important to recognize, as Doumani points out, that the Land Code institutionalized, through
the innovation of granting title deeds, the already-existing practice of treating land as a
commodity. State lands (miri) and piously endowed lands (waqf) could not technically be
owned by individuals. This was the situation both before and after the Land Code. However,
the buying, selling, and inheritance of the usufruct to these lands were not innovations of
the Tanzimat-era land reform. This pre-dates the Land Code. Transactions involving the
transfer of usufruct were sale (or inheritance) of these lands in all but name. This existent
practice was legally sanctioned by property-tenure reform laws issued in the 1850s and
1860s (see Chapter 1 of this dissertation). From this time forward, title deeds were issued for
usufruct. Ironically, the law proclaiming that title deeds would be issued for true private
property (md/k) would not be promulgated until the 1870s (See Chapter 1).
Transactions involving usufruct as a commodity were not limited to Jabal Nablus in
the decades before the Tanzimat. There is evidence that it was also sanctioned by the sharia
court of Hebron, at the southern end of Palestine’s mountain chain.” Kristin J. Alff likewise
has found in the north that the Sursugs and other powerful Beiruti merchants’ family-based
** Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900
(Berkeley: UC Press, 1995), 155-164.
*° See Image 5.1, in the Conclusion of this study, and accompanying discussion. The image is a photograph
of a document of one such sale of Hebron lands, recorded in the Hebron court in 1839.
20

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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

مجموعات العناصر

Generated Pages Set

Theses رسائل ماجستير ودكتوراه