From the Pages of the Defter (ص 158)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 158)

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257
communal tenure.
Musha was not restricted to land. For example, one of the olive presses in
Bayt Natif was designated in the emlak register as musha.””®
Regarding land, when we recall that a tapu title deed to waqf and miri lands was
ownership of usufruct and not the land itself, the idea that one could own a musha share
without owning the land or even a fixed place on that land is not an unfathomable leap in logic.
Birgit Schaebler has argued musha “should be thought of more in terms of access to land than
in terms of land itself.””” | agree that the notions of “musha land” and “musha village” are
imprecise. However, musha shares themselves were, or at some point became, property in the
same way that usufruct was. So, for example, after the death of Mahmoud b. Salim Rifal‘a Abr
Sneine of Hebron, his inheritors appeared in the Hebron court room and, among his
possessions which they divided among themselves there, were seven parcels of land varying in
size from half a feddan to two feddans and “half a share (girat) of musha in the lands of Khirbet
Zayt”.?°
There is still confusion in scholarly literature about whether the Land Code and
subsequent reforms outlawed musha, as can be seen in the quoted passage above from the
Encyclopedia of Islam. This point is consequential because it has provided a foundation for
*°7 Martha Mundy, “La propriété dite musha’ en Syrie: a propos des travaux de Ya’akov Firestone”, Revue du
mnde musulman et de la Méditerranée, 79-80 (1996), 273-274.
*°8 Esas-1 Emlak entry #2636.
209 Schaebler, 246.
69 HR 13 / 70 / 401 (8 Jumadi II 1308 / 19 January 1891).
141

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Susynne McElrone

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