From the Pages of the Defter (ص 199)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 199)

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that he requested validation that his fellow villagers were legal inheritors of individuals who
held tapu certificates issued two decades previous. Secondly, it is observed that the
monetary stakes involved were likely not at the heart of the lawsuit. If, as is probable,
ownership was based on a system of shares, each litigant was to receive about fifty kurus
after the case. Although not an insignificant sum, this was no fortune. At the time, fifty kurus
would cover the cost of five-days’ rent of a store on the south row of the vegetable market
in the Muhtasibin quarter of Hebron,** or about one-and-a-half weeks’ wages for a clerk in
the regional Court of First Instance at the time,°*° or about three weeks’ of daily
maintenance-money (nafaga) loaned by the court at the time to women whose husbands
had left them temporarily without financial means.*””
Thirdly, the case appears in form and procedure to be what Zouhair Ghazzal has
characterized as fictitious litigations. Quite unrelated to bribery or corruption, fictitious
litigations were procedural fictions, which Ghazzal describes as “judicial inventiveness”,
spurious litigations brought about to engender a procedure (a court case) that would
produce a needed outcome (a documented ruling) which would validate the existence of an
335 HR 16/93/40 (3 Rajab 1312 / 31 December 1894).
33° WR 16 /2/2, 7 Sh ‘aban 1311 / 13 February 1894. The deceased clerk, ‘All b. Hassan Ghalma(?), was
owed six weeks’ salary, equivalent to 225 kurus.
37 Nafaqga loans granted by the Hebron court between the 1870s and 1914 averaged 2.5 kurus per day for
the women of Hebron. See, for example, HR 16 / 78 / 11 (24 Rabi‘ Il 1312 / 25 October 1894),.HR
18/55/70 (5 Rajab 1316 / 19 November1898), and HR 3/122/305 (25 al-Qada 1286 (26 February 1870),
and HR 16/78/11 (24 Rabi Il 1312 /25 October1894), and HR 4/19/476 (3 Rabi | 1287/ 3.6.1870).
182

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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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