Handwritten Arabic title deed from Ottoman Madinah

Zik, Fakhri Luka el-. [Land deed (hoga) from Madina Monawara Court].

€ 1.500,00

A title deed issued by an Al Madinah Al Munawwarah court, stamped by the advocate Fakhri Luka el-Zik and franked with four Ottoman ten-para stamps.

By 1900, Ottoman land reforms in Arab areas had been at work for over forty years. In 1858 the government had introduced the Tapu Law which introduced title deed registration in the empire’s Arab provinces. This was part of an effort to apply the Ottoman Land Code proclaimed in the same year, and represented an Ottoman attempt to promote the ability of Arab nobles to rent out their land as income, thus (in Ottoman hopes) providing an influx of tax money for the empire. Some, however, avoided filing title deeds due to registration costs, or fear of conscription into the Ottoman military.

An interesting survival from the late Ottoman period in what would become Saudi Arabia.