Overview

Full Product Details

Author:   Malissa Taylor (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   I.B. Tauris
Dimensions:   Width: 15.40cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9780755647729

ISBN 10:   0755647726
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   29 May 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction Sources Harmonization and Sovereignty Property: Bundles and Layers 1. Lifelong tasarruf, Land Tenure Practices, and Law over the longue durée Ottoman territories and varieties of tenure for the military class Cultivator Tenure and its legal Systemization Military fiscal change and land tenure Land tenure rights trickle up The Old and the New 2. Conquering a New Terrain: Establishing the Sultan’s Legislative Authority Texts and Contexts “Preserved in the Bayt al-Mal”: Acquiring Land for the Treasury “Neither Tithe nor Kharaji”: The Status of the Land for Transaction and Tax Building a coherent law Conclusion 3. Canonical Voices: Discretion and analogy in the formation of the harmony tradition of land tenure Contexts of the Text Pir Mehmed and Sultanic Latitude The Formation of a Tradition: Deferential and not so Deferential Interpretation Conclusion 4. “The Books of Fiqh”: The Kanunname of Candia and the Consolidation of a New Doctrine in Hanafi Academic Texts Harmony at a crossroads The Kanunname of Candia as critique: Reinstituting the Hanafism of the “books” The Sultan as Legislator: texts, commentaries and fatwas The Change in Doctrine: the sultan has a choice Conclusion 5. The Age of the Mutasarrifs: Diffusion, Rights, and Discretion in the Eighteenth Century Background Convergence Expansive Transactions: Permission and Analogism Conclusion 6. From Harmony to Uniformity: Defensive Sovereignty and the Ottoman Nineteenth-Century Reforms Miri Tasarruf: Stability in a sea of change Creating a Normal Subject Codifying Islamic Law Defending Islam: From “built on the kanun” to “built on the fiqh” Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography

Reviews

A mind-blowing and innovative study of the supposedly dry subject of Ottoman land law, gracefully written and designed to overturn all your stereotypes of Islamic law, sultanic power, and Ottoman decline. Taylor is to be congratulated on her deeply original take on obscure but vitally important aspects of imperial legal modernization. * Linda T. Darling, Professor, University of Arizona, USA * This book shows how three centuries of legislation and legal interpretation, instead of a European model, underlay the Ottoman land code of 1858. Deeply researched and cogently argued, it upends much that we thought we knew about Ottoman history from the age of Süleyman to the Tanzimat era. * Kenneth M. Cuno, Professor, University of Illinois, USA * Taylor boldly reinterprets the foundational relationship among land/property rights, law/legal authorities and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. This ambitious, lucid and compact study recasts peasant cultivators as holding a “bundle of property rights” that slowly “trickled up” to model property rights among the highest-ranking property holders in the empire by the eighteenth century, enduring through land law reforms in the nineteenth. Whether accepted or challenged, Taylor’s reconceptualization of the Ottoman agrarian state and society offers a fulcrum for rethinking the entire history of the empire. _____________________________ * Amy Singer, Professor, Brandeis University, USA *

In Land and Legal Texts, the reader finds a sophisticated example of next-generation research in Ottoman legal history on a well-defined topic. * Journal of Islamic Studies * A mind-blowing and innovative study of the supposedly dry subject of Ottoman land law, gracefully written and designed to overturn all your stereotypes of Islamic law, sultanic power, and Ottoman decline. Taylor is to be congratulated on her deeply original take on obscure but vitally important aspects of imperial legal modernization. * Linda T. Darling, Professor, University of Arizona, USA * This book shows how three centuries of legislation and legal interpretation, instead of a European model, underlay the Ottoman land code of 1858. Deeply researched and cogently argued, it upends much that we thought we knew about Ottoman history from the age of Süleyman to the Tanzimat era. * Kenneth M. Cuno, Professor, University of Illinois, USA * Taylor boldly reinterprets the foundational relationship among land/property rights, law/legal authorities and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. This ambitious, lucid and compact study recasts peasant cultivators as holding a “bundle of property rights” that slowly “trickled up” to model property rights among the highest-ranking property holders in the empire by the eighteenth century, enduring through land law reforms in the nineteenth. Whether accepted or challenged, Taylor’s reconceptualization of the Ottoman agrarian state and society offers a fulcrum for rethinking the entire history of the empire. _____________________________ * Amy Singer, Professor, Brandeis University, USA *

"""A mind-blowing and innovative study of the supposedly dry subject of Ottoman land law, gracefully written and designed to overturn all your stereotypes of Islamic law, sultanic power, and Ottoman decline. Taylor is to be congratulated on her deeply original take on obscure but vitally important aspects of imperial legal modernization."" --Linda T. Darling, Professor, University of Arizona, USA ""This book shows how three centuries of legislation and legal interpretation, instead of a European model, underlay the Ottoman land code of 1858. Deeply researched and cogently argued, it upends much that we thought we knew about Ottoman history from the age of S�leyman to the Tanzimat era."" --Kenneth M. Cuno, Professor, University of Illinois, USA ""Taylor boldly reinterprets the foundational relationship among land/property rights, law/legal authorities and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. This ambitious, lucid and compact study recasts peasant cultivators as holding a ""bundle of property rights"" that slowly ""trickled up"" to model property rights among the highest-ranking property holders in the empire by the eighteenth century, enduring through land law reforms in the nineteenth. Whether accepted or challenged, Taylor's reconceptualization of the Ottoman agrarian state and society offers a fulcrum for rethinking the entire history of the empire. _____________________________"" --Amy Singer, Professor, Brandeis University, USA"

Author Information

Malissa Taylor is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her published articles have appeared in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and The Journal of Ottoman Studies.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions