The Muslim Pious Foundations and Real Estates in Palestine. Gaza, al-Quds al-Sharif, Safed, Nablus and Ajlun Districts According to 16th Century Ottoman Tahrir Registers

IRCICA is pleased to present this study on Muslims’ pious foundations and real estates in Palestine based mainly on the Ottoman Tapu Tahrir Defteri (land ownership and tax register) no. 522 from the 16th century which contains important information on the properties and endowments of Muslims dating, in particular, from the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods and the beginning of the Ottoman period and located in Gaza, al-Quds al-Sharif, Safed, Nablus and Ajlun. The book is the second edition of the study by the well-known scholar of Ottoman history Prof. Dr. Mehmed İpşirli and IRCICA’s expert Mr. Mohammed Daoud al-Tamimi published by IRCICA in 1982. The first book was also IRCICA’s very first publication. It was not long after that the book ran out of print and requests started to be received by IRCICA to reprint it.

The book begins with a general presentation of the waqf institution in Islamic civilization in general and the waqf system of the Ottoman state in particular, followed by information on the process of recording the waqfs of Palestine which involved land surveys, population census, and the preparation of the registers. Then, the authors focus specifically on the said register, which is preserved in the Ottoman Archive in Istanbul, and evaluate its contents from a historical point of view after thoroughly studying, transcribing, and inputting its data in an electronic format. The book concludes with images from the register.