From the Pages of the Defter (ص 27)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 27)

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that there “was no survey”. The tapu land-registration commissions did not perform surveys
of the land. They worked with individuals’ claims to land, investigating these claims only in
case of need. A land survey would have been superfluous to their objective, which was to
register and issue title for properties that were owned and, doing so, to institutionalize a
mechanism that would help ensure that property taxes were paid. This mechanism was the
requirement that property could not be bought and sold without proof that taxes had been
paid. Tosun Aricanli has succinctly argued, “This [land-tenure reform] was nothing more than
a policy for the purpose of expanding a revenue base for the state without any conflict or
”'° This point is much debated. While | would
collusion between the central and local powers.
not be so quick to ascribe to a reform of these dimensions only an objective such as this,
there is no doubt that revenue from taxes and registration fees, as well as the ‘ushr tax
charged on the harvest, were needed by the Ottoman coffers and an important factor
motivating reform.*°
It should also be noted that the Ottomans did undertake land surveys, but these
appear to have been quite distinct from the tapu commissions. Too little is known about
these semsiyye commissions. They appear to be an important part of the story of large land
sales in the northern part of Palestine that resulted in many farmers being reduced to
* Aricanli, “Property, Land and Labor in Nineteenth-Century Anatolia”.
© Fora summary of this debate see in Donald Quataert, “Agriculture”, in Halil inalcik and Donald
Quataert, eds. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, reprinted 1996), 857- 859.
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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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Generated Pages Set

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