From the Pages of the Defter (ص 230)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 230)

المحتوى

and write Turkish as well as Arabic, was in charge of (collecting?) the sheep and ‘ushr (tithe
397 The Ja’abri brothers will be discussed further below. 7”
on harvests) taxes.
The purpose of the court session was to record the villagers’ testimony of the fact of
their sale of the lands and to appoint an agent (waki/) to handle the mortgage transaction
for them at the Commission of Transactions and Settlements (Qumisiyun al-mubaya’a wa’!-
igrar). This was in accordance with the law concerning mortgages (rehn) of 21 Rabi ‘ al-Akhir
1287 (21 July 1870).°”°
397 ISA, 1905 nufus registers for Hebron, defter 187, hane #142.
398 In 1900, Shaykh Ahmad b. Darwish and his wife, Khadija bt. Muhammad Salman al-Ja’abri, would give
birth to Muhammad ‘Ali (Ahmad Darwish) al-J’aabri, (b. 1900 / d. 1980). Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ali appears
in the 1905 population registers as the fifth of Shaykh Ahmad’s five sons; his older brothers were ‘Ali,
Salman, Sadiq, and Muhammad Rashid. The family’s household, of which Ahmad’s brother Khalid was
also a member, was registered as # 142 in the Mushariqa neighborhood of Hebron.
Al-Bishtawi, in his biography of Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ali, concurs that the shaykh’s father’s and
grandfather’s names are these (19) .However, Ahmad and Khalid’s roles in late-Ottoman society appear
to be a forgotten part of family history. In the course of his research, al-Bishtawi interviewed three of
Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ali’s sons and had recourse to the shaykh’s private archive of papers. Yet, regarding
the Ja’abri family in the Ottoman period he concludes that “one notes the absence of the family name
among those who held religious, judicial or administrative posts in the city of Hebron.” (21).
°° article 116 of the 1858 Land Code (See lbid., 62-63) explains that although miri land cannot be
mortgaged (rehn), it can be alienated against a debt, by means of vefa, which is what occurred in this
case Article 1 of the 1870 law on mortgages details the procedure that was to be followed in mortgaging
land. A certificate from the village mukhtar(s), stating that the land was eligible for mortgage, was to be
shown in the sharia court, and it was the court’s role to issue a judgment (hujjet) of mortgage. (Ongley,
180.) It would appear that testimony in this case was used in place of a mukhtar’s certificate to verify
the status of the land and its eligibility for mortgage. Evidence from other contemporary cases further
shows that sharia court documents served as documentary proof of land ownership or land transactions
at the tapu office. For example, in late 1890 Ahmad b. Mahmud Salhab of Hebron appeared in court
with Salim and ‘Ayesha, two adult children of al-Hajj Sulayman al-Dweik, also of Hebron. Ahmad
complained that five days previous he had purchased from the Dweik siblings two-thirds of a feddan ina
vineyard (karm) in Sibta, featuring a storage pit (fawra). This sale was to be permanent (b/’ bat). The
agreed-upon price was sixty riyals mecidi (equivalent to 1,200 qirsh), of which Ahmad had given at that
time a down payment of five mecidis. According to him, it was agreed he would pay the remainder at
213

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From the Pages of the Defter

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Susynne McElrone

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