From the Pages of the Defter (ص 222)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 222)

المحتوى

had been located. The plot in question was listed among the listings for Wadi al-Afranj. Its
borders were also listed: the mountain, the wall (ha’it) of Jamrura, and the portion of Idhna’s
village’s lands which had been registered by the Tumeiz! (in the court record, 5 JyLalall)
toward the end of the period being studied notes in the Hebron court records that judges referred back
to old court records to verify details and rulings relevant to current cases. For example, HR 14/141 /
455 (5 Dhu al-Qa’da 1309 / 1 June 1892) led the judge to consult the court record for the case found in
HR 2 / 163 / 739 (2 Dhu al-Hijja 1285 / 16 March 1869), and a week later, HR 14 / 145 / 466 (12 Dhu al-
Qa’da 1309 / 8 June 1892) led the judge to consult HR 9 / 52 / 98 (6 Ramadan 1293 / 25 September
1876).Although cases in the sicillat were not recorded in strictly chronological order, searching by date
was the only possible way to locate a case. Court cases were not recorded into the court register at the
time of the hearing , and an examination of registers shows that they were not always recorded on the
same day of the case. Litigants left the court room with a copy of the ruling, stamped and dated. In
these two cases, although it was not recorded in the court register that litigants produced in court
copies of the ruling (hujje) they had received on the original court date, without their knowledge of the
precise or approximate date of the case, the court staff’s search in the sicillat would have been
potentially quite burdensome.
Another recording innovation in the Hebron court registers worthy of note in this period is the
recording of the time and day of the week. In the first part of the court archive’s sici/ number one
(recorded in 1867), the scribe recorded the day of the week and the time that each court case took
place. (On the alaturka time system that was used, see Avner Wishnitzer, “ ‘Our Time’: On the Durability
of the Alaturka Hour System in the Late Ottoman Empire”, [International Journal of Turkish Studies, 16/1-
2 (2010), 47-69.) While it is unknown what happened to most of the court’s previous records — some
are in private collections of Hebronite families living in Jordan — the numbering of the (1867) sicil
number one as “one” would appear to indicate that this was the time the judicial reforms of the 1864
Provincial Law were implemented in Hebron. (The reform was applied in 1864 only to the province of
Tuna (Danube), as an experimental implementation. It was not until 1866 that the reform was applied
elsewhere. On the societal integration of the nizami court system there, see Milen V. Petrov, “Everyday
Forms of Compliance: Subaltern Commentaries on Ottoman Reform, 1864-1868”, Comparative Studies
in Society and History, 46/4 (October 2004): 730-759. ) The procedure of recording the day and time of
court cases has not been noted by other scholars who have studied late-Ottoman court records in
Palestine (e.g., Agmon on Haifa and Jaffa, Yazbak on Haifa, Phillip on Acre, Bussow on Jerusalem, and al-
Salim on Tulkarm). (Additionally, | am grateful to Iris Agmon for her communication with me on this
subject in February 2012.) Omri Paz has observed the procedure of recording time (using the same
alaturka system) in nizami courts in Eskisehir (KUtahya district) in his article, “Documenting Justice: New
Recording Practices and the Establinment of an Activist Criminal Court System in the Ottoman Provinces
(1840-late 1860s)”, Islamic Law and Society 21 (2014): 81-113.
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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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