Ottoman Land Research Articles

Factors influencing the location of the early Zionist settlements in Ottoman Palestine: 1880–1915

Most of the first Jewish rural settlements established in Ottoman Palestine in the late nineteenth century have something in common that has not yet been systematically analyzed. This common factor is their physical location: on low or high ground. Most of the first Jewish settlements were established in plains and valleys for several reasons, while Arab rural settlements were located in the hills and mountains. The article discusses how Palestinian notables (effendis) who purchase or leased the usufruct rights to state land after the promulgation of the Ottoman Land Code in 1858, subsequently sold all or part of their landholdings in the valleys and plains of Late Ottoman Palestine to Jewish purchasers until the British conquest of Palestine in 1917.

KAPTAN-I DERYA HASAN PAŞA’NIN ÖZİ SERDARLIĞI (1626-1627)

Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun doğuda ve batıda Safeviler ve Habsburglar gibi cesim siyasi yapılarla uğraştıkları bir dönemde, imparatorluğun kuzey serhaddindeki deniz akıncılarıyla, yani Kazak sorunuyla da ilgilenmeleri gerekmekteydi. Bu doğrultuda Osmanlı yönetimi 1626 yılında Kazaklara karşı Dinyeper Nehri üzerinde, Togan Geçidi’nde kale inşa ettirmek istemiştir. Bu amaçla Sultan IV. Murad saltanatının ilk yıllarında yükselen bir siyasi figür olan Kaptan-ı Derya Çatalcalı Hasan Paşa, Özi Eyaleti’ne karadan ve denizden gidecek Osmanlı kuvvetlerinin serdarı olarak tayin edilmiştir. Hasan Paşa 1627 yazında Özi serhaddine vardığında elindeki imkânların Togan Geçidi’nde kale yapımına imkân vermediğini fark etmiştir. Yine de seferber ettiği kaynaklardan istifade etmek isteyen paşa, Özi yerleşiminde mevcut bulunan istihkâmı kuvvetlendirme yoluna gitmiştir. Özi’de mevcut iki kaleyi tamir ettirmiş, kendi adını taşıyan bir kale ve palanka inşa ettirmiştir, ayrıca istihkâmlar arasına bir tersane ve kale duvarı da eklemiştir. Yapılan eklemeler sonucu Özi’de garnizon kuvvetleri ikiye katlanmıştır.

The Impression Writings in Servet-i Finûn About Iraq an Ottoman Land

Iraq which one of the most important centers of the Middle East, although it was under Ottoman rule for a very long time, it always remained in a position disconnected from Anatolia. Although it is a very important region for Muslims, not many people from Anatolia have been able to see these lands depending on the conditions of that day. There were important spiritual centers in the region. However, it was difficult to visit them. Media outlets tried to partially meet this need. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the only means of information about remote geographies where Turks and Muslims lived were printed publications such as newspapers, magazines and newsletters. One of these publications is Servet-i Finûn magazine. Servet-i Finûn, which the longest-lived magazine in the history of the Turkish press, has assigned a special reporter for its readers in this context, and conveyed Iraq lands and impressions to its readers.
 The aim of this study is to reveal how Servet-i Finûn magazine transferred important cities and some private places in Iraq territory to its readers. Within the scope of the study, the issues of Servet-i Finûn magazine published between the years 1896-1901 were examined and related articles were determined and evaluated. According to the findings obtained from the study, the journal informed its readers about the region by publishing travel-impression articles (32 pieces) about the city, place, some important developments and important personalities in Iraq during the said period.

The Integration of Social Anthropology and Historical Geography in the Study of Rural Agricultural Estates in Northern Israel in the Late Ottoman and Mandate Periods: 1879-1948

Anthropology and history employ two entirely different research methodologies: anthropological research is based on face-to-face interviews and direct observation, while historians eschew all forms of non-documented information, and generally assume that only the written word and maps are reliable. Exploiting the different relative advantages of these two disciplines, together with GIS (Geographic Information Systems), it was possible to locate and situate historical events from different periods in the physical landscape in which they took place. Such a “mixed methodological approach” yielded information that would otherwise not be found. This is illustrated in a study of the development of rural estates in the Galilee, consequent on the promulgation of the Ottoman Land Code in 1858.

European Imperial Rule through Ottoman Land Law: British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese, and French Mandatory Syria

AbstractThis paper focuses on the articulation between property, sovereignty, and the construction of new political subjectivities in post-Ottoman provinces. Drawing on the cases of British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese, and French Mandatory Syria, it shows that European sovereign claims on these territories were pursued through the perpetuation of Ottoman land laws and the reorganisation of the judicial system responsible for implementing them. Dictated by the enduring legal uncertainty regarding the international status of these three provinces, this peculiar path to imperium did not deter European officials from working towards the ambitious goal of creating a class of individual peasant-proprietors, protected in their rights by colonial courts. Acknowledging the differences between these projects, their mutual influences, as well as their relative failure, the article contends that they nonetheless impel us to envision the transition from “Ottoman” to “European” rule as a gradual, multilayered process, instead of a sudden break.

Isa Boletini (1864-1916): An Ottoman Albanian Figure of Twists and Turns

sa Boletini is one of the figures of Ottoman Empire with multiple identities and loyalties at the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in the village of Boletin near Mitroviçe during the transformation of the last Ottoman land in the Balkans into an independent state of Albania. He was one of the local figures who felt the foreign pressure in the region by the Great Powers and tackled them in his own ways which resulted in diplomatic crises between the Ottoman and Russian Empires. As a local power magnet, he was invited to the Palace to serve as a personal guard, tüfenkçi, to the Sultan Abdülhamid II. Endowed with privileges and concessions, he returned to his hometown where he became a gendarme of the Sultan and continued to exercise his authority within the limits. However, with the success of the 1908 Revolution by the Young Turks, the new regime targeted him and aimed to diminish the symbolism he carried as an old ally of the Sultan. Yet, in the tumultuous environment of the Balkans, perpetuating further violence turned the region into a more vulnerable land in the eyes of the Great Powers. This thesis aims to show the parallelism between the fluctuating events of the Balkans in nineteenth century and Isa Boletini’s multiple identities, in the light of the “Imperial Biography” approach, by making use of Ottoman archival material which was not yet incorporated into the study of his life.

ISA BOLETINI (1864-1916): AN OTTOMAN ALBANIAN FIGURE OF TWISTS AND TURNS

Isa Boletini is one of the figures of Ottoman Empire with multiple identities and loyalties at the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in the village of Boletin near Mitroviçe during the transformation of the last Ottoman land in the Balkans into an independent state of Albania. He was one of the local figures who felt the foreign pressure in the region by the Great Powers and tackled them in his own ways which resulted in diplomatic crises between the Ottoman and Russian Empires. As a local power magnet, he was invited to the Palace to serve as a personal guard, tüfenkçi, to the Sultan Abdülhamid II. Endowed with privileges and concessions, he returned to his hometown where he became a gendarme of the Sultan and continued to exercise his authority within the limits. However, with the success of the 1908 Revolution by the Young Turks, the new regime targeted him and aimed to diminish the symbolism he carried as an old ally of the Sultan. Yet, in the tumultuous environment of the Balkans, perpetuating further violence turned the region into a more vulnerable land in the eyes of the Great Powers. This thesis aims to show the parallelism between the fluctuating events of the Balkans in nineteenth century and Isa Boletini’s multiple identities, in the light of the “Imperial Biography” approach, by making use of Ottoman archival material which was not yet incorporated into the study of his life.

Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe by Emily Greble

Reviewed by: Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe by Emily Greble Robert M. Hayden Emily Greble Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 2021. xv + 354 Pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, and glossary. ISBN 978-0-1975388-0-7 This innovative study is the result of what an anthropologist might call a revelatory moment in fieldwork. Emily Greble set out to do a study of Muslims in Yugoslavia, but a colleague asked her what her narrative would look like if she were to focus on the perspective of Muslims rather than that of states. This "intellectual epiphany" (p. 13) led her to focus not on the Muslims of any one state, but rather to consider Muslims' views of their changing situations in southeastern Europe generally, starting with their displacement and disempowerment in 1878 with the subjugation of territories still nominally Ottoman to the paramountcy of the Austro-Hungarian, British or Russian Empires, or the independence of new states, defined by the Christian heritage of their majority populations/nations. The second innovation in Greble's approach is to focus on the ways that the category of "Muslim" was legally defined at and after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Muslims were promised citizenship, yet also granted "confessional self-governance … [and] authority over Islamic courts, schools and their pious endowments, and that Shari'a law continued to define collective legal norms and institutional structures," thus also shaping social and cultural norms (p. 14). Although recognition of religious autonomy over such issues as marriage, divorce, inheritance and religious endowments was granted to Muslim (and Hindu) subjects in European territories outside of Europe, Greble argues that the countries focused on in this study—Serbia, Montenegro, Austria-Hungary and the first Yugoslavia—grafted these religious rights onto citizenship status. [End Page 159] The cost, though, was to reify these citizens as being defined by Islam and thus as distinct from the Christianity of the majority populations that was ingrained into the identity and politics of those states (p. 15). Part I thus looks at the "long post-Ottoman transition" from 1878 through 1921, in what had been the European territories of the Empire. The transition was not just one of governance and ultimately state sovereignty, but a revolution in socio-economic relations, "a deliberate restructuring of Ottoman land tenure, economic networks and social classes that shifted power away from Muslims" (p. 10). This shift from a system of Muslim dominance to the positioning of Muslims as disfavored minorities in Christian-dominated states was accompanied by instances of localized massacres and forced population transfers that "produced a collective trauma" for those Muslims remaining in these states. Yet they struggled to maintain their "confessional sovereignty" throughout this period. This was facilitated by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which recognized the authority of shari'a courts, the first modern European state to do so on its home territories, as opposed to territories in their overseas empires. The development of nation-states from 1878 through the Balkans wars and the post-World War I settlements, all but Albania with Christian majorities, defined most Muslims as second-or third-class citizens. Part II is more focused territorially, on the ways Muslims experienced nation building in the first Yugoslav state, from 1918–41. This newly composed country combined territories from which Muslims had largely been driven (Serbia, Croatia) with those where Muslims remained numerous, even forming local majorities in some places. Yugoslavia, like its Austro-Hungarian predecessor in Bosnia-Herzegovina, recognized shari'a courts, even creating a hierarchy of them headed by an appeals court in Belgrade. Yet the Muslim populations in the new Yugoslavia were hardly uniform or united, following different traditions of Islam (mainly Sunni but also significant sufi/dervish orders), speaking different languages and with their own local patterns of interaction with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. Like the other peoples of Yugoslavia, they also had social class differences and differing progressive or conservative views on religion, society and politics. Muslims had organized political parties in Austro-Hungarian Bosnia, and they continued to take part in political life in the new state. Yet they were also resentful of their subordination to the...

Abstracts

Abstracts

Nomad’s Land: Pastoralism and French Environmental Policy in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World. By Andrea E. Duffy (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2019) 336 pp. $55.00 cloth and e-book

A transnational study of Mediterranean pastoralism, Nomad’s Land is also an ambitiously multidisciplinary and comparative study built upon an impressive depth of both published and archival sources found in France, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. While asserting the usefulness of the Mediterranean as a unit of analysis, Duffy does not attempt to paint with too broad a brushstroke; on the contrary, she shows connections and convergences in the modern histories of mobile, pastoral populations across three case studies—Provence, Algeria, and southwestern Anatolia. Duffy draws upon the literature of forestry, ecology, geography, and archaeology to tease out the behaviors and fates of what are surely among history’s most elusive actors. Pastoralists in all three regions shared histories of reciprocity with farmers and the use of forests as intermediate pastures; the three regions are also bound by a French connection.Duffy begins by tracing the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual currents that cast all mobile pastoralists as barbaric and environmentally destructive. Declensionist narratives attributed the degradation of the entire Mediterranean basin to pastoralism, from putatively wholesale forest clearance to the damage wrought by goats and sheep. Colonial perspectives then differentiated some pastoralists from others; Duffy argues that the newly coined word transhumance was applied to European pastoralists in order to distinguish them from their non-European counterparts, whose practices would be described by the loaded term nomadism. A European critique of the Ottoman Empire took aim at both the Ottomans’ poor use and poor conservation of resources, namely, forests.These critiques and understandings became concretized in French scientific forestry and the Forest Code of 1827. If Duffy’s discussion of these developments and their application to Provençal pastoralists does not break new ground, her emphasis on the highly elastic definition given to forest in the Code and its implications for pastoralists is germane and interesting. Early attempts to apply French forestry and forest law to Algeria foundered on extreme ignorance of the Algerian environment and lack of personnel. Duffy’s Anatolian case study offers a fascinating linkage to developments in France’s metropole and colonies. During the Tanzimat era of reform, Ottoman officials invited well-known French foresters to promote a hierarchical and law-driven forestry administration. From 1857 to 1878, their efforts in the Ottoman Empire, in parallel with the Algerian case, confronted the lack of state funding and the entrenchment of customary rights to the land.Besides the “soft power” (not always so soft) of forest law, the privatization of land contributed greatly to the terminal decline of Mediterranean pastoralism. The parallels between the privatization of the commons in France, colonial appropriation in Algeria, and the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 are striking: Pastoralists either leased expensive private pastures or became sedentary, in both cases intensifying grazing practices. Nineteenth-century officialdom was thus quick to blame imprudent, “malevolent” pastoralists for floods and fires in Provence, and fires in Anatolia and Algeria, where fire suppression became an explicit tool of empire. Having argued differently, this reviewer would have liked to see more evidence that France’s alpine restoration law of 1882 “sealed the fate of an already diminishing mountain population” (146).1Duffy then highlights contrasting reasons for decline that led to similar ecological outcomes across the three regions. If the forest regime was most heavy-handed in France and Algeria, Anatolian pastoralism retreated in the face of sedentarization campaigns, modernization (mining, agriculture, and railroads), and influxes of refugees. Provençal pastoralists uniquely were rehabilitated by sympathetic forester-sociologists and literary figures, yet even in Provence only larger, sedentary sheep enterprises survived. A consistent environmental legacy of soil degradation due to forced intensification and sedentarization underpins the three stories. By contrast with sedentary livestock raising or agriculture, the environmental impact of pastoralism appears minor.Several errors mar the text slightly. Duffy erroneously depicts the Revolutionary decree of June 1793 as securing the commons as such, whereas it allowed for their division and privatization. She misinterprets a law of 1890 as outlawing communal grazing, whereas it forbade grazing on unenclosed fields (vaine pâture). Finally, the seminal role played by rural depopulation in the reforestation of France goes unmentioned.

Ubeydullah b. Abdülganî’nin en-Nûrü’l-bâdî fî ahkâmi’l-arâzî Adlı Risâlesinin Tahkikli Neşri

Bu makale, XVIII. yüzyıl Osmanlı dönemi Mısır’ında yaşamış bir Hanefî hukukçusu olan Ubeydullah b. Abdülganî’nin (ö. 1211/1796’dan sonra) en-Nûrü’l-bâdî fî ahkâmi’l-arâzî adlı risalesinin tahkikli neşrinden oluşmaktadır. Klasik Osmanlı toprak rejiminde yer alan öşür, haraç ve mîrî toprakların tanımı ve hükümlerini konu edinen eser, esas itibariyle şu iki problemi tartışmaktadır: Anadolu, Mısır ve Bilâdüşşam topraklarının hukukî statüsü ve sultan, sipahi ve çiftçilerin mîrî topraklar üzerindeki haklarının doğası. Risale, ağırlıklı olarak Mısır ve Bilâdüşşam kökenli müteahhir dönem Hanefî hukukçularının konuya ilişkin görüşleri ile şeyhülislam fetvaları ve Osmanlı kanunlarının bir derlemesi niteliğindedir. Bu derleme, Osmanlı-Arap coğrafyasında yaşayan ve muhtemelen Arap asıllı olan bir Hanefî hukukçusunun şeyhülislam fetvalarına ve Osmanlı kanunlarına duyduğu ilgiyi göstermesi bakımından özel bir öneme sahiptir. Zira söz konusu coğrafyanın uleması tarafından toprak hukuku alanında yazılmış bu türden başka bir eserin varlığı bilinmemektedir. Risale, bu açıdan değerli olmakla birlikte çeşitli hatalar içermektedir. Bu hatalar, çalışmanın dirâse kısmında “fetva ve kanunların Arapça’ya yanlış tercüme edilmesi”, “fetvaların yanlış şahıslara nispet edilmesi”, “metinde çelişkili hükümlere yer verilmesi” ve “kanunlara aykırı fetvaların zikredilmesi” şeklinde türlerine göre gruplandırılarak örnekler üzerinden ayrıntılı bir biçimde incelenmiş ve ayrıca tahkikli metinde dipnotlarda tashih edilmiştir.

Beytülmakdis’te Memlük Vakıfları

تتناول هذه الدراسة البحث في الوقف المملوكي في بيت المقدس، حيث يعتبر الوقف المملوكي في بيت المقدس من أهم الفترات التي تم الوقف فيها، إذ عملت على استمرار منظومة المؤسسات المتكاملة في مختلف الميادين الحيوية للمجتمع من تعبدية وتعليمية وجهادية وصحية واجتماعية وغيرها، وتأمين كل ما يلزم لدعم هذه المؤسسات في الدولة، لنهوض بالمجتمع ورعاية أفراده وتوفير الخدمات المتنوعة. وقد تعددت الدراسات في موضوع الأوقاف المملوكية في بيت المقدس، لكن قليل منها من تفرد بدراسة متخصصة في موضوع الوقف المملوكي ودورها في مجالات الحياة، ودراسة الوقف لنساء المملوكيات، والدور الذي لعبته هذه الأوقاف في الجوانب الثقافية والدينية والاجتماعية والاقتصادية، خاصة بعد ما استجدّ ونشر من مصادر ووثائق خاصة في فلسطين بالعصر المملوكي كوثائق المسجد الأقصى (الحرم القدسي الشريف)، ودفاتر وسجلات الطابو العثمانية، وسجلات المحكمة الشرعية. ففي العصر المملوكي في بيت المقدس اختار كثير من السلاطين والأمراء والتجار وغيرهم المشاركة بجزء من ثرواتهم للنهوض بالمجتمع، فأقاموا المؤسسات المتنوعة وحبسوا عليها الأوقاف وارتبط كل وقف بحجة شرعية توضح أركانه والغرض منه وحجمه وكيفية الاستفادة من ريعه، ونوعية المستفيدين وعدد الموظفين والخدم والقائمين على رعاية شؤون المؤسسة، وغير ذلك من الجوانب التي توضح الإطار العام لنظام الوقف. كما استفاد المماليك من نظام الوقف في البلاد التي حكموها وخاصة بيت المقدس، لتدعيم حكمهم والجهاد ضد المغول والفرنجة، كما قام الظاهر بيبرس بوضع نظام جديد للأوقاف اختلف بمقتضاه ولأول مرة مدلول لفظ الأحباس عن مدلول لفظ الأوقاف في مصطلح الدواوين، وتطور نظام الوقف لثلاثة دواوين وهي: الأول ديوان لأوقاف الأهلية، والثاني لأوقاف المساجد، والثالث لأوقاف الحرمين الشريفين وجهات البر الأخرى. جاءت هذه الدراسة لتوضح بأسلوب التحليل ودراسة السجلات والحجج من السجلات والطابو العثماني وسجلات المحكمة الشرعية للوقف المملوكي في بيت المقدس، متركزة في جانبين للوقف في هذه الفترة: الجانب الثقافي: لوقف زوايا العلم، وانشاء المدارس، ومكاتب العلم، وخزانات الكتب في المساجد والمدارس. ووقف النساء المملوكيات في بيت المقدس: كوقف الست طنشق، وأغول خاتون.

Revisiting the anti-mushāʿ reforms in the levant: origins, scale and outcomes

ABSTRACT The historiography of the abolition of repartitioned mushāʿ—the practice of parcels substitution among cultivators in peasant communities—is mistakenly traced back to the Ottoman Land Code of 1858. Neither that Code, nor Ottoman land registration, attempted the abolition of this type of mushāʿ. It was instead the abolition ordinances of the British and French Mandatory governments during the 1920s which began a conflict over land titles. The common estimates of that time suggest about 50 per cent of the lands in the Levant were held under repartitioned mushāʿ, but this was an exaggeration for most localities. French officials in Syria and Lebanon were not unanimous in opposing mushāʿ and in practice resorted to a laissez-faire policy. The British, however, annulled the legal titles to large areas of repartitioned mushāʿ lands in Palestine and Transjordan, wrongly believing this would increase investment in and productivity of cultivated lands. Their view was backed by Zionist experts, possibly due to the realization that the abolition of mushāʿ would facilitate Jewish land purchases.

The Lloyd George Government of the UK: Balfour Declaration the Promise for a National Home to Jews (1916-1920)

Palestine, throughout modern known history has been geographically called "the least of all lands". Meanwhile because hosted holy shrines of three monotheistic religions, it was/is one of the most praised/precious small piece of land on the globe. Palestine came under Ottoman rule after Sultan Selim's Egyptian Campaign in 1517 and until the year of 1917 was an Ottoman land during 400 years. Before Ottomans, following old Roman experience, small colonies or administrations had been planted in Palestine with the express intention of preventing the political regeneration of the Jews. Under Ottoman rule, Jews and other two religions have been peacefully living in Palestine. In 1897 at Basel Congress, World Zionist Organization decided to establish a Jewish State in Palestine. They asked Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II for a national home in Palestine but could not achieve what they desired. Abdulhamid II also restricted Jewish pilgrimage to Palestine to prevent any possible de facto unpermitted foreign settlement of Jews. But, due to corruption and bribery of local rulers that rule could not be implemented properly. Nowadays addressing their future plans Zionists were asking to send high number of Jews to Palestine and the progress taken by bribery was not enough such kind of stream. The opportunity Zionists looking for emerged during WWI while British search of support for unsustainable war economy. In the year of 1916, a Zionist sympathizer Lloyd George became British Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of his Cabinet Arthur Balfour proclaimed his famous publication promising a national home hence Israeli State for Jews. To realize that aim Palestine had to be occupied and become a British colony. This paper will search archive documents and related second hand publications to shed light on Zionist activities and establishment process of Israel, special focus will be put on the role of Lloyd George Government. Arab reactions, especially the attitude of Sheriff Hussein and his son Faisal to the developments also will be discussed.

The Sultan's Domain: British Cyprus' Role in the Redefinition of Property Regimes in the Post-Ottoman Levant

ABSTRACTThis article argues that property law is the main means through which Britain built its imperial sovereignty on Cyprus and in the post-Ottoman Levant. It charts the development of an official British expertise in Ottoman land legislation following the so-called affair of the Sultan's claims to properties in Cyprus. To settle this matter in the island which they had obtained to ‘occupy’ and ‘administer’ through a treaty with the Sublime Porte, colonial authorities were compelled to become conversant with the 1858 Ottoman Land Code. Hence, the article argues that because of its ambiguous status – a province occupied and administered by Britain but under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan from 1878 to 1914 – Cyprus, as the first Ottoman territory to pass under direct Western rule, played a decisive role in the elaboration of a colonial knowledge in Ottoman land laws. And this, despite long-standing economic and political ties between Britain and the Ottoman Empire and exposure to other settings where layered land tenure systems prevailed. Published in treatises authored by British administrators of Cyprus, the legal expertise in Ottoman land law thus acquired was then transposed to other territories which passed under British rule, such as Palestine.

Medical Activities of American Board in Turkey (1833-1923)

In the 1820s, the American Board began with the sending of the first medical missionaries to the Ottoman land for medical practice. Further, the first medical missionaries were itinerant doctors. Although an itinerant practice system was still being set up at that time, the American Board was continuing with its work by setting up dispensaries for temporary interventions and prescribing medications to patients from other regions as well. Medical missionaries were trained to handle both medicinal and religious matters. In the 1880s, the American Board was institutionalized through the establishment of hospitals, medical schools, nursing schools, and pharmacies in provinces such as, Antep, Mardin, Talas, Merzifon, Van, Erzurum, Sivas, Adana, Konya, Diyarbakır, and İstanbul. Besides the medical practices, the first School of Medicine in Anatolia was opened in Antep by missionaries. Moreover, the missionaries also tried to reach the nearby regions of the centers where the hospitals were situated via mobile healthcare missionary practices. Even though there was a reaction against the religious and educational institutions in the Ottoman society, the insufficiencies in the state in terms of healthcare, and all people being able to benefit from health institutions, enabled missionaries to work in a more convenient way in this field. In “the medical missionary,” with the opportunities offered by their occupations, the healthcare organizations’ missionaries, such as hospitals and dispensaries, spread the message of Christianity to the wider population by building close relationships with people.

Global Land Grab and the Balkans: Continuity and Changes in a Unique Historical Context

Current developments concerning land grabs in the Balkans suggest that the region is re-experiencing in the post-socialist era what happened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries due to the decline of the Ottoman land tenure system, under identical conditions involving fundamental socio-political transformations and integration with global capitalism. These changes are emblematic of a transfer of common to individual ownership. Nowadays, small landholders in some parts of the region—mainly the former labourers on socialist agricultural cooperatives—are influenced by the accelerating trend of (re)concentrating landownership, which in some cases takes the form of land grabbing similar to that seen in Africa. This study examines the historical continuity between the Ottoman rule over fledgling nation-states and the post-socialist era by referring to widely discussed socio-economic and political developments regarding contemporary land grab processes.

Plantation: Modern-Vernacular Housing and Settlement in Ottoman Palestine, 1858-1918

The Palestinian vernacular is a key site for evaluating the messy dynamics between modern and vernacular architecture, suggesting a need for the re-conceptualization of the social and political implications of “vernacular” and its uses in historiography. This article explores the relationship between vernacular and modern dwelling environments by conducting close architectural analysis of certain key examples in Palestine following the Ottoman land modernization of 1858. The modernization of land ownership, cultivation, and registration produced a new built environment of wealth extraction and peasant dispossession that I identify here as “plantation.” Focusing inquiry on Acre and Jaffa’s plantation landscape, I examine rural mansions together with “back of the big house” worker dwellings and agricultural structures, which were all part and parcel of this landscape of extraction. I examine the architectural history of the Mazra’a and Hammed plantations and identify two housing forms as alterations of Palestine’s traditional-vernacular architecture: serf hut and landlord mansion. I show that plantation dwellings, created from the 1860s onwards, involved a change to construction methods and building materials found on-site or imported, and resulted in single-standing structures in campus settlement layout, where mud huts and multi-room mansions distinguished serfs from landlords. The plantation decomposition of the courtyard house typology produced a modern-vernacular built environment, calling into question the Manichean divide between “modern” and “vernacular” as two distinct and opposing frameworks. Pointing to the plantation as a modern vernacular—rather than aboriginal—typology, this article identifies the plantation as the materialization of the fragmentation of Palestinian society by modernity, a dynamic producing two opposing Palestinian national archetypes: a landed elite nationalism aiming to replace the Ottoman Empire, and a movement for land reform for dispossessed local peasants.

XVIII. Yüzyılda Uluslararası Bir Sorun Olarak Garp Ocakları’nın Akdeniz’deki Korsanlık Faaliyetleri

Through XVI and XX centuries Ottoman State called Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolis as Western Colonies (Garp Ocaklari). The Ottomans, for the first time, entered Algeria in 1516 owing to Captain Oruc; then in 1551 they took Tripolis and Tunisia in 1574. After those conquests, Algeria remained as Ottoman land between 1516 and 1830, Tripolis between 1574 and 1881 and Tunisia between 1574 and 1881. The most significant military force of the Western Colonies was the fleets. Those colonies, having a significant nautical power within the Mediterranean basin, made a great contribution to the naval forces of Ottoman state after they were captured. The Ottoman State governed here establishing a semi- independent policy. The appointed governors could rule independently when necessary. However, the reign of the Sultan of Ottoman State was always in power in those colonies like all other parts of the land. Friday sermons (khutbah) were given in the name of the Sultan and the coins were in the name of the Sultan also. The most considerable sources of income of those colonies were merchant shipping and piracy. The piracy activities especially in the Mediterranean basin were the main source. However, in time, that situation became a problem between Ottoman State and other states that deal with maritime commerce in Mediterranean. Within this frame, Western Colonies that did not obey the international pacts from time to time left Ottoman State in a difficult situation.

Land Rights in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman State Succession Treaties

Ottoman state practice in the field of state succession in the 19th century displayed strict adherence to the European notions of international law. This is evident from the ratification of cession treaties, attention to reciprocity, the use of mediation and reliance on the existing laws of war principles, including the legal effects of occupation, conquest and the rights and duties of belligerents. This article focuses on state succession treaties with Greece since they represented the paradigm for all future treaties, and it examines the Islamic origin of Ottoman land regulation. The Ottomans succeeded in attaching a further condition to their cession arrangements with the new Greek state, namely the latter's obligation to respect the property rights of Muslim citizens. This arrangement brought into play the application of Ottoman land law, to which Greece was under no obligation to succeed. This body of law, particularly the set of property rights bestowed under it, became a focal point in the ensuing state succession negotiations. It was the actual basis of Muslim property rights - a precursor to contemporary property rights - and a sine qua non element of Ottoman practice in the law of state succession. In this light, Ottoman land law and institutions should correctly be considered to be general principles of law - with origins from the Quran and the early caliphates - as well as regional custom, at least in the territories liberated from Ottoman rule, which continued to apply and enforce it not only among Muslims but also in the property relations of the indigenous ethnic communities.