Kark, R. and Galileo, E. (2006). Land privatization in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman and Mandatory periods: land ownership and cultivation of landowners in northern Samaria in the Yizrael Valley. In Y. Eshel (ed.), Judea and Samaria Research Studies (Vol. 15, pp. 203-214). Ariel: Ariel College (Hebrew with summary in English). The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, prepared by the Tanzimat Council, was an original Ottoman creation, neither European nor fully Islamic. It was based on traditional land practices and included categories of land listed in Islamic law.

[7] Department of Geography, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand Most uninhabited and uncultivated land has been defined as “mewat” (dead) land. According to Article 6 of the Ottoman Land Code, the land “Mewat” was land “at such a distance from a village or city from which a loud human voice cannot be heard at the nearest point where there are inhabited places, that is, a mile and a half or about half an hour away from such.” Similarly, Article 103 defined Mewat as “a dead land . [That is] undeveloped lands (Khali), such as mountains, rocks, stony fields, Pernallik and pastures, which are not allotted to anyone by title deed or ab antique for the use of the inhabitants of a town or village and which are at such a distance from towns and villages from which a human voice cannot be heard in the nearest inhabited place.” Excerpt from Kedar (2001): “The legal transformation of ethnic geography: Israeli law and the Palestinian landholder 1948-1967”, New York University Journal of International Law and Politics Quarterly, 33, pp. 923-1000. This translation of the Ottoman Land Code is based on Goadby and Doukhan (1935): The Land Law of Palestine, Tel Aviv: Shoshani Printing Co. (reprint Holmes Beach: 1998 by Gaunt). Kark, R. (2004). The Sultan`s Lands – Recently discovered Ottoman cadastral maps in Palestine. In D. Loupis & G. Tolias (eds.), Mediterranean cartographies (pp.

197-222). Athens: Neo-Hellenic Research Institute INR/NHRF. In contrast, Justice Tute asserts that after the abolition of “feudal relations” in the Ottoman land revenue system after 1839, a confiscatory and corrupt system of fiscal agriculture emerged that harmed tenants and reduced state revenues.12 “It was. to restore the prosperity of farmers, Tute writes, that the Land Code of 1858 was drafted. It is clear that this legislation can only be implemented through the establishment of a land registry system. 13 When the British took control of Palestine in late 1917 with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, they applied the Ottoman laws of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 to all inhabitants. [23] The laws in force at that time were officially recognized by Article 46 of the King`s Address (issued on behalf of King George V on August 10, 1922, Palestine Order in the Council), according to which the validity of Ottoman law, which existed in Palestine on November 1, 1914, was recognized and subject from that moment on to orders and regulations issued by the mandatory government. [24] . The landscape and the Ottoman land law of 1858 favored the development of private property, agricultural production for the world market, the decline of tribal social organization, population growth and the enrichment of remarkable families. When the Ottomans became the new army, the community, the judiciary and. Poliak, A.

N. (1940). Geschichte der Landbeziehungen in Ägypten, Syria und Palästina: Spätmittelalter und Neuzeit. Jerusalem (in Hebrew). El-Eini, R. (2003). Mandated landscape, British imperial rule in Palestine 1929-1948. New York and London: Routledge. Mülk, Miri, Matruke and Mawat – the last three were state land, using amendments enacted by the British Mandate authority such as the Mawat Land Ordinance of 1921.

[16] The Jordanian government has never considered the latter three to be state land, and only a very small part of the West Bank has been registered as such under Jordanian rule. [31] The local Palestinian tradition, underpinned by both Ottoman and British law, held that the land belonged to God or the sultan: families could preserve the land, but the notion of private property was alien, despite efforts since 1858 to introduce it. [19] Until British rule, which redistributed land to individual family units, village land was collectively held by the Hamula clan. [20] The Ottoman system and all subsequent governments until 1967 recognized that the land around the village was intended either for common grazing or for the future development of the village for the use of its inhabitants. The villagers had neither the need nor the opportunity to register their land. They knew among themselves which of the lands in the village belonged to which families and which were common (mashaa). [21] Under the British, however, the usual practice was revised to consider all areas within the village and city boundaries no longer as miri, but as mülk. [22] The registration process itself was susceptible to falsification. Land collectively owned by villagers was registered in the name of a single landowner, with local Ottoman merchants and administrators registering large tracts of land in their own name. The result was land that became the legal property of people who may never have lived there, while the inhabitants, even those who had lived on the land for generations, became tenants of absentee landlords. [2] Laws on registration and the concomitant concentration of land ownership contributed in several ways to the conflict between Jews and Arabs. Eisenman notes that the frequent failure of individuals to gain recognition of their land rights (when they finally discovered that they needed such recognition) was a major root cause of the “hostile sentiments and antagonisms that would later erupt between Arabs and Jews during the Mandate.” 32 The effects of these laws on registration have been described as “catastrophic”.

28 The practice of registering land in the name of a fictitious or deceased person and the inaccuracy and incompleteness of the records made the farmer`s claim of ownership uncertain. Perhaps worst of all, local city merchants or city magnates often subjugated entire villages or a number of villages on their own behalf. “The transfer of the application of the law [of the Ottoman country] [of 1858] to the local administration. made a mockery of the legislator`s intentions. Instead of strengthening the state`s rights to Mīrī land and the rights of farmers, a`yān [dignitaries] managed to register large tracts of land in their own name. 29 On the whole, laws have contributed significantly to the concentration of title deeds in the hands of a few individuals and the state.30 One author notes about the Code that “long before the Balfour Declaration, which is often considered the source of all disputes over Palestine, the inarticulate but ancient peasantry had slipped a rung down the ladder, which was to lead them to the refugee camps in 1948.” 31 These “hostile sentiments and antagonisms” developed not only as a result of the “numerous and protracted trials” over land ownership,33 but even more directly as a result of the eviction of hundreds of tenant families from the land they considered their own, when the large landowners sold their property to the Jews.