From the Pages of the Defter (ص 50)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 50)

المحتوى

taken place, their statements (those of the alienor and the alienee) will be
taken in the presence of the mudir of the country (mUudtir-! memleket), if
the statements are made at the district (qada) offices, or in the presence
of the financial officers (ma/ me’murlari) located at either the provincial
(liwa) offices or at the seat of the vilayet government...’”
Transfers of land title between two (or more) individuals now required a certificate of
ownership that had been stamped by both the imam and mukhtars of the seller’s
neighborhood or village. This certificate was to specify the location of the property, describe
its boundaries, enumerate its size in dunams and include the sale price in kurus. With this
certificate in hand, the seller and buyer were to proceed to government offices to officially
register the sale and change of land title.°® The innovations of this law were, first, the
establishment of an arm of government to record land transactions and, secondly, the
stipulation that land must be measured according to the standard of the dunam. Historical
documents show that aside from the use of dunams, land sales recorded in the sharia courts
of Jerusalem and Hebron had already been following these procedures before the Land Code
was introduced.”
97 Tapu Nizamnamesi of 1859, 3" Article. (The translation is mine.) Ugur Unal et al., Tanzimat Sonrasi Arazi
ve Tapu, 35 Numaral! Kanun-! Kalemiye Defteri [ve] 40 Numarali Kanunname-i Arazi Defteri,
Transkripsiyon / Tipkibasim (Land and Tapu after the Tanzimat, Book of Written Laws No. 35 [and] Land
Code Book, No. 40. Transcription / Facsimile), (Istanbul: T.C. Basbakanlik Develet Arsivleri Genel
Mudurlugu Osmanli Arsivi Daire Baskanligi1, Publication No.135, 2014), 130.
°8 Ibid.. Regarding the historical development of Ottoman thought on ownership of agricultural land, see
Martha Mundy and John Saumarez-Smith, Governing Property, Making the Modern State: Law,
Administration, and Production in Ottoman Syria (London and New York: |.B. Tauris, 2007): Chapters 2-4.
>? See, for example, the document issued by Hebron’s sharia court in 1839 (Introduction, Image 1). The
borders of the two land parcels are relatively defined; no quantitative measurement of size is provided.
33

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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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