Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Introduction
The last chapter described change in the laws governing the nature and administration
of property right over the nineteenth century. Reforms were introduced in
various provinces of the empire at different points in the century. Since regional
political economies also differed, the results of reform inevitably varied across
the empire. The award of title was not made at the highest level of state but at
a lower level of administration where persons with a claim to property and legal
personae of the administration met. 1 Serving on the councils, leaders of regional
political and productive regimes shaped different outcomes.
In Tanzimat administration the district (kaza) formed the first-level unit for
formal administrative development and property registration. The first clause of
the 1859 Tapu Nizamnamesi states that ‘in the provinces, the finance employees,
that is the directors of the registry and finance and the directors of the districts,
being empowered to devolve and to transfer miri land, have the legal status of
the sahib-i arz’. 2 In this clause, several officers stand for the legal persona, the
sahib-i arz, assigned the ‘estate of administration’ in land.
In the district, officers of the central bureaucracy were joined by figures elected
to administrative, judicial and municipal councils. From the village to the district,
persons with local knowledge were to provide the information required to fill
the grids of the printed forms with the details of the property and tax liability
of individual subjects. These figures of local authority were simultaneously to
become familiar with the new laws. 3
Part two examines the administrative construction of the new state of property
in two dimensions: first, the integration of figures of regional importance into
elected offices and, second, the administration of title certification. It is our
objective to demonstrate the intertwining of these two processes central to the
political administration of the district. In Chapter 5 we sketch the economic
and political geography of the ‘Ajlun district as background to an understanding
of its leadership. This is done through cartography. In Chapter 6 we begin the
diachronic history of administrative development with a focus on the particular
settlement whereby land came to be registered in shares, not as plots on the
ground. Chapter 7 interrupts the diachronic account to describe a watershed in
the relations of regional leadership with the administration: a formal prosecution
of the district governor (kaimakam) that occurred during the early stages of
land registration. Chapter 8 completes the diachronic account of administrative
development and land registration to the end of the Ottoman period.
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