5-Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle - Hakikat Kitabevi

to a waqf, its kharâj must still be given. If a tenement with ’ushr
is bought by a zimmî, that is, a non-Muslim, the tenement
becomes land of kharâj. It is written on the two hundred and
sixty-fifth page of the third volume, “If the president of the state
donates the kharâj to the Muslim who is the owner of the
tenement, the owner uses it personally if he has due rights
demandable from the Beytulmâl [1] . If he has not those rights, he
gives it to someone who has the rights. If the president donates
the ’ushr it is not permissible. ’Ushr is not excusable by the
state’s pardoning. In that case the owner of the tenement has to
give his ’ushr to those who have due rights demandable from
the Beytulmâl.”
It is written in the second volume, “Those land areas that are
not liable to kharâj or ’ushr, such as mountains and forests, are
to be counted as lands of ’ushr.” If one is sent some presents by
a land owner who one knows has not given their ’ushr, it is
good for one to spare one-tenth of them for the poor and to eat
the rest.
One of the explanations of the superseded Land Laws,
which prescribed the management of the Beytulmâl, that is, the
mîrî land areas, is a book printed in 1319 [hijrî], by Âtıf Bey, who
was a teacher of the civil code in the school of political
sciences. It is written in its introductory section:
If a country is conquered by war, one-fifth of the land
belongs to the Beytulmâl. One of the following three cases may
be applied to the rest:
1 - It is divided and distributed to the soldiers or to other
Muslims. Such land areas become the property of these people.
Such land is taxed with ’ushr, which is collected yearly.
2 - The land is left to the disbelievers. Such land is taxed
with kharâj.
3 - The chief of the state does not give the land to anyone,
but gives it to the Beytulmâl. Such land is also called mîrî land.
If the owner of land of ’ushr or of kharâj dies and if he has no
heirs, the land belongs to the Beytulmâl. It becomes mîrî land. It
will be sold or rented at a rate determined by the sultân (chief of
[1] The Beyt-ul-mâl is the treasury of an Islamic government. On pages
ahead there is detailed information about the Beyt-ul-mâl. By reading
those pages, the readers will know what is meant by “people who have
due rights demandable from the Beyt-ul-mâl.”
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