Someone was telling me the Ottoman’s land system was the best (most functional feudal system) and this intriqued me as something I could potentially mention in an upcoming essay on the global economic effects of Columbus discovering America. Thinking this, I searched for it on Google and it seems so incredibly convoluted. Mulk, miri, deadlands, waqfs and some sort of loophole banking called cash-vakifs?
Then I find timar, emanet, blah blah blah. My head is spinning and before I go learning about something so incredibly difficult (well, maybe more foreign than difficult), can someone tell me if it was really all it’s cracked up to be?
Do you remember exactly which aspect of Ottoman property law your friend was so impressed with?
There are two possible things I can think of:
- The direct connection between state (Sultan) and individual in terms of property law. Centuries ago, most of the “Western” world was gradually disposing of its feudal system of property. In a pure feudal system, there’s an arrangement between a king and a baron / duke / earl etc, an arrangement between the baron and a local lord, and an arrangment between the local lord and the peasant. There could be even more steps. Thus, the peasant has very little rights over his land and has no connection with the real owner, the king.
In the Ottoman system, the “miri” (and two or three similar types, incl. “mawat” and “matruk”, I think) involved a direct connection between individual and state. You paid your taxes, you cultivated the land, you got most property rights over it, with the state (ie the sultan) holding “radical title”. These rights often transferred to heirs. It wasn’t perfect, and was very confusingly set up, but in this direct connection and the remaining possession of “radical title” by the state we can see great similarities to modern systems.
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Dude, your name is just disgusting. Have you ever considered changing it?
Hamsters ate no. 2. Let’s try this again -
- The Ottomans, in the middle of the 19th century, had one of the earliest systems of land registration. At the time, Britain and Australia (sorry, don’t know about US) had a system that involved tracing land back to its original owners - the king granted it to Baron X, who sold it to some person called Y, who eventually sold it to your family Z. To prove that you, Z, had rights in the land, you’d have to prove this unbroken chain of title from the state to yourself. Also, it was hard to define the exact boundaries of your land and so on.
Ottomans never really had the “chain of title” problems, but they did have the problems of uncertainty over who exactly owned what. This was partially resolved by the creation of a system of land registration. Again, this is similar to systems eventually introduced in the Western world.
Hope this answers your question…
Interesting thread.
I shall come back to this later. Need to find a bed now since we have already early morning overhere 
Salaam.A
AS
To start with I can help you with your confusion about words you can’t place.
- mulk : I guess you mean mülk which means “property”.
- miri : state property.
- Deadland : You need to give me more information on the context for me to place this.
- waqf : religious institution.
- vakif pl. evkaf : religious foundations, endowments ; Department/Ministry of Religious Foundations (Evkar Müdürlüğü/Nezareti organized first Oct.14, 1837 changed to Vakiflar Genel Müdürlüğü March 3 1924).
- timar : form of military compensation, popularly referred to as fief; timarli = timar holder
- emanet : in this context you probably refer to “emanet” in its meaning of “depot”.
As for helping you further:
You are in your OP much to vague for me to know what exactly it is you want information about and in which period you situate your research.
Can you be more specific about that for me to be able to give you the information you look for ?
Salaam. A