Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Notes to chapter 4
19 There is a difference between the
compilation of information on households,
as in the temettuat registers, and the
employment of such information in a statistical
reading of social morphology. This
distinction does not appear adequately
maintained in İslamoğlu: ‘Politics’.
20 Saumarez Smith, ‘Mapping landed
property’, in İslamoğlu (ed.): Constituting
Modernity, pp. 149–79.
21 Şener: Vergi Sistemi, pp. 94–6.
22 See the Law on the Registration of
Census and of Properties (tahrir-i nüfus
ve emlak) dated 14.Ca.1277/28 November
1860 in Ongley, The Ottoman Land Code
(1892), pp. 111–34. This proposes a system
of registration where both persons and
objects of taxation, and their mutations,
were somehow to be entered in a single
register. While the panoptic ambition of
this proposal is impressive, it is not surprising
that the Ottoman administration
was later to develop separate registers for
persons and taxable property.
23 Şener: Vergi Sistemi, pp. 101, 125
(with reference to 11.Ş.1277 ‘Varıdat-ı
öşriyyenin zürra-ı ehle ihalesi hakkında
nizamname’) and 138.
24 Şener: Vergi Sistemi does not go
beyond the 1870s, but so far as one can
see from local administrative sources,
application of the principles of Tanzimat
tax reform was finally achieved only after
that time. Taxation is a domain where the
gulf between legislative pronouncement
and practical application poses difficulties
to the historian, all the more so as many
documents of the financial administration
in Istanbul await classification and release
to researchers.
25 See Ortaylı, Tanzimat Devrinde
Osmanlı Mahalli İdareleri (2000),
pp. 28–45.
26 On such councils see Ortaylı:
Tanzimat Devrinde, pp. 19–21.
27 See BOA.Nizamat 37/35
Rebiyülevvel 1261AH entitled Zeametler
hakkında nizamname. The register
comprises entries concerning the transfer
254
of such estates the last of which is dated
1296AH/1878–79.
28 Ortaylı: Tanzimat Devrinde, p. 18
on retreat from abolishing iltizam taxfarming.
29 BOA.Nizamat 44/42. See note 35
below.
30 Khoury: State, pp. 105–7. Khoury
describes the nizamname as ‘the laws of
1840’ translated into Arabic as the first of
the Majmu‘at rasa’il fi ’l-aradi al-amiriya,
the Waqf Library of Mosul, the Hasan
Paşa al-Jalili Collection, 25/1. This nizamname
does not appear in the BOA Nizamat
Defterleri nor is it mentioned by historians
of Ottoman law, such as Karakoç,
Tahşiyeli Kavanin (1922–24), Cin: Miri
Arazi, Barkan: Türkiye’de Toprak Meselesi,
or Cin and Akgündüz, Türk Hukuk
Tarihi (1995). No copy of this nizamname
appeared in the Damascus collections, but
that is not surprising given that in 1840
Syria was just returning to Ottoman rule.
Presumably it will be found in the BOA
series of the Meclis-i Vala-yı Ahkam-ı
Adliye; this series was unfortunately closed
to researchers in 2001 when we carried out
research concerning land law for the years
between 1839 and 1858.
31 Khoury: State, p. 105.
32 Khoury: ibid., writes: ‘Lands were
to be reclassified as tapu land, subject to
a new system of taxation, and given to
cultivators for a price determined by the
market value of the land (mu’ajjal bi-’lmithl).’
33 Khoury: State, p. 107.
34 Ibid.
35 BOA Nizamat 44/42. This printed
collection of laws is dated 15.R.1267/18
February 1851. Besides the laws restructuring
succession to miri land, the kontrato
(a new law governing lease of land), tapu
regulations and a law establishing eyalet
councils discussed above, it contains laws
for developing agriculture, police statutes,
instructions for şer’î judges, a general rule
for good conduct among employees, establishment
of a unified ministry for vakıf