The Probate Regime: Enchanted Bureaucracy, Islamic Law, and the Capital of Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
Keywords:
Probate regime Ottoman Egypt Khedivial administration Islamic inheritance law QadiAbstract
AbstractIn this article, we explore the “probate regime,” an administrative field of government activity of legally transferring, taxing, and administering bequests. As an example, we study the changes of the Egyptian probate regime in a longue durée perspective, with a focus on the nineteenth century when Egypt was a sub-Ottoman “khedivate.” We argue that the rationalization and expansion of the previously Ottoman administration of bequests, unlike Western bureaucracies, retained religious norms in the 1850s-1860s. In the context of Egyptian legal transformation, the change in the probate regime represents a case when Islamic norms became contested between administrative bodies of the government and the Muslim judge (qadi). Drawing on novel archival research in Egypt and elsewhere, we first consider the institutions of the Ottoman probate regime (probate judge, fees, and a probate bureau). Next, we zoom in on the way the khedivial probate bureau became a large, de-Ottomanized, Muslim administration of death by the 1870s in a partnership between khedives and local jurists. The khedives also considered the orphans’ wealth under the care of the bureau a source of government capitalism. Despite the abolishment of the probate bureau in 1896, the khedivial transformation ensured that Muslim principles remained normative during the British occupation which ushered in a new division of law into “religious” and “civil” legal domains.
References
1
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2
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8
Today in the United States of America an estate can be transferred by contract, by trust, by law (surviving owners), and by probate. Strictly speaking, the category of the probate regime would only apply to the last case, but agencies of the government also ensure that the other types remain valid, executed, taxed, and recognized. Hence, we suggest that any postmortem estate transfer may be considered as falling within the category of the probate regime.
9
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10
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11
Even survey articles on death studies ignore the postmortem economy, Minkin, Shane, “History from Six-feet Below: Death Studies and the Field of Modern Middle East History,” History Compass 11 (2013): 632–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12
For the khedivate's bureaucracy, Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 1805–1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999); Kenneth Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Alleaume, Ghislaine, “Les sources de l'histoire économique de l’Égypte moderne aux Archives nationales du Caire, 1: le Bureau du commerce et des ventes,” Annales Islamologiques 27 (1993): 269–90Google Scholar; Khaled Fahmy, In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018); and Mestyan, Adam, “Seeing Like a Khedivate: Taxing Endowed Agricultural Land, Proofs of Ownership, and the Land Administration in Egypt, 1869,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63 (2020): 743–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13
Max Weber, Economy and Society 2 vols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 2:1400–1401.
14
Albert DeLange, “Origin and Growth of Probate Procedure,” American Bar Association – Section of Real Property, Probate and Trust Law (1938): 102–4; Lewis M. Simes and Paul E. Basye, “The Organization of the Probate Court in America: I,” Michigan Law Review 42 (1944): 965–1008; Lewis M. Simes and Paul E. Basye, “The Organization of the Probate Court in America: II,” Michigan Law Review 43 (1944): 113–54; Adeline Daumard, “Paris et les archives de l'Enregistrement,” Annales – Économies, sociétés, civilisations 13 (1958): 289–303; Steiner Philippe, “L'héritage au XIXe siècle en France - Loi, intérêt de sentiment et intérêts économiques,” Revue économique 59 (2008): 75–97; and Licini, Stefania, “Assessing Female Wealth in Nineteenth-Century Milan, Italy,” Accounting History 16 (2011): 35–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15
Jens Beckert, Inherited Wealth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 4–5.
16
Yossef Rapaport, “Royal Justice and Religious Law: Siyasah and Shari‘ah under the Mamluks,” Mamluk Studies Review 16 (2012): 71–102; and James Baldwin, Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 68–71; see more examples in Fahmy, In Quest of Justice, 126–27.
17
We follow the afore-cited works of Fekete and Barkan, plus Claudia Römer, “Zu Verlassenschaften und ihrer fiskalischen Bearbeitung im Osmanischen Reich des 16. Jhs,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 88 (1998): 185–211; Pál Fodor, The Business of State - Ottoman Finance Administration and Ruling Elites in Transition (1580s –1615) (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz Verlag, 2018), 125–73.
18
Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj, ed. Muhammad Ibrahim al-Banna (Cairo: Dar al-Islah, 1981), 176, 189; Abu Ya‘la b. al-Farra’ al-Qadi al-Hanbali, Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya, ed. Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqi (Cairo: Maktabat wa-Matba‘at Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi wa-Awladihi, 1938), 235; Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent: The Peasants’ Loss of Property Rights as Interpreted in the Hanafite Legal Literature of the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 8–9, 89–91; Adam Sabra, “Public Policy or Private Charity? The Ambivalent Character of Islamic Charitable Endowments,” in Stiftungen in Christentum, Judentum und Islam vor der Moderne, ed. Michael Borgolte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009), 95–108, at 106.
19
The ultimate model of the fatherless orphan in Islam is the Prophet Muhammad himself.
20
Jean Deny, Sommaire des archives turques du Caire (Cairo: Ifao, 1930), 115; Encyclopaedia of Islam – First Edition (hereafter EI1), “bait al-mal” (C.H. Becker ); Encyclopaedia of Islam – Second Edition (hereafter EI2), “bayt al-mal” (N.J. Coulson et al. ) ; Nicolas Michel, L’Égypte des villages autour du seizième siècle (Louvain : Peeters, 2018), 130. This doctrine has some similarities with how medieval Christian jurists understood the fiscus. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 177–88, but the concept of bayt al-mal represented the community against the government until Ottoman jurists identified it with the government in the sixteenth century.
21
The Saudi probate bureau in Mecca handled holdings to the value of approximately $45,000,000 in 2018. Sabq, November 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y622ldgs (November 8, 2020).
22
These are the principles of the Shafi‘i and Maliki versions of Islamic legal interpretation, on which the Ottomans relied despite their preference for Hanafi rules in other administrative issues. Hanafi and Hanbali jurists deny that the fisc is the owner and argue for its mere guardianship. Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-Kharaj, 361; Al-Dawudi (ed. Farhat al-Dishrawi), “Kitab fi al-Amwal wa-l-Makasib,” Hawliyyat al-Jami‘a al-Tunisiyya 4 (1967): 83–100, at 85; Ibn Mammati, Kitab Qawanin al-Dawanin (Cairo: al-Jamʻiyya al-Ziraʻiyya al-Malakiyya, 1943), 319; Hasan Khalil Muhammad, “Sijillat Mahkamat al-Qisma al-‘Arabiyya, 1560–1880” (MA thesis, Cairo University, 1997), 201. Some incorrectly claim that all Sunni schools agree that the bayt al-mal is the guardian of heirless estates. Ahmad al-Daghistani, Al-Mawarith fi al-Shari‘a al-Islamiyya ‘Ala al-Madhahib al-Arba‘ wa-l-‘Amal ‘Alayhi fi al-Mahakim al-Misriyya (Cairo: Jami‘at al-Azhar, 2002), 96.
23
We build our study on the pioneering work of two Egyptian historians: ‘Imad Badr al-Din Abu Ghazi, “Watha'iq Bayt al-Mal fi al-Arshif al-Misri,” Majallat Kulliyat al-Adab (1997): 135–79; and ‘Isam Ahmad Husayn ‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal fi Misr fi al-Fatra Min 1252/1836 Ila 1320/1902” 2 vols (PhD diss., Cairo University, 2001). Next to our own research, we rely on ‘Isawi's work, which is a unique, rich descriptive source. Historians of orphans somewhat misleadingly translate majlis hasbi as “probate court,” see Mine Ener, Managing Egypt's Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Jacqueline Gibbons, “Orphanages in Egypt,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 40 (2005): 261–85; Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014); and Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, Child Custody in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice in Egypt since the Sixteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 165–91.
24
Fodor, The Business of State, 125–70; Yasin Arslantaş, “Making Sense of Müsadere Practice, State Confiscation of Elite Wealth, in the Ottoman Empire, circa 1453–1839,” History Compass 17 (2019): 1–11.
25
David S. Powers, “The Islamic Inheritance System: A Socio-Historical Approach,” Arab Law Quarterly 8 (1993): 13–29; and Mahmoud Yazbak, “Muslim Orphans and the Shari‘a in Ottoman Palestine According to Sijill Records,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44 (2001): 123–40.
26
Although earlier researchers interpreted these offices as “treasury,” this was clearly not the case. Hassanein Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 146–49; and Huda Lutfi, Al-Quds al-Mamlukiyya – A History of Mamluk Jerusalem Based on the Haram Documents (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz Verlag, 1985), 180. Historians in recent years cautiously use “public treasury” such as Tsugitaka Sato, State and Rural Society in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 189, 226; Sabra, “Public Policy or Private Charity?” 100; Abu Ghazi, “Watha'iq Bayt al-Mal”; and Christian Müller, “Constats d'héritages dans la Jérusalem mamelouke: les témoins du cadi dans un document inédit du Haram al-Sharif,” Annales Islamologiques 35 (2001): 291–319, at 293. Müller still calls this institution Staatskasse at times; for instance, in his Der Kadi und seine Zeugen: Studie der Mamlukischen Haram-Dokumente aus Jerusalem (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 450 ff. For documentary evidence, see Lutfi, Al-Quds al-Mamlukiyya, 186–92; ‘Imad Badr al-Din Abu Ghazi, “Mulahizat ‘ala Ikhtisasat al-‘Amilin fi Bayt al-Mal wa-Musammiyatihim fi ‘Asr al-Mamalik al-Jarkasiyya,” Annales Islamologiques 33 (1999): 17–44 (Arabic pages); Imad Badr al-Din Abu Ghazi, Tatawwur al-Hiyaza al-Zira‘iyya fi Misr Zaman al-Mamalik al-Jarkasiyya (Cairo: ‘Ayn li-l-Dirasat, 2000); and Michel, L’Égypte, 138–40.
27
For instance, document n. 181, recto left column (B), line 37: mayyita la zawj la-ha warithuha bayt al-mal in Müller, “Constats d'héritages,” 309; and Muhammad Nasr ‘Abd al-Rahman, “Ta‘limat al-Qada'iyya,” Annales Islamologiques 50 (2016): 343–63.
28
The theory of Abu Ghazi, Tatawwur al-Hiyaza al-Zira‘iyya, 18 about the sale of lands by a probate bureau as state privatization was rejected by Adam Sabra, “The Rise of a New Class? Land Tenure in Fifteenth-Century Egypt: A Review Article,” Mamluk Studies Journal 8 (2004): 203–10.
29
Ali Yaycıoğlu notes that the Ottoman understanding of bequest (tereke/muhallefat) included all postmortem acts related to the bequest, not only the probate process. Lecture at Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton, February 23, 2022, cited with permission; see his forthcoming Order of Debt: Wealth, Power and Death in the Ottoman Empire.
30
Said Öztürk, “Osmanlı İlmiye Teşkilatında Kassamlık Müessesesi,” İÜ Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 15 (1997): 393–429; see the sultanic instructions for a beytülmal in the Niğpolu (Nikopol) Kanunname in the year of 1516, Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri 11 vols (Istanbul: Osmanlı Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1990–2016), 3: 429–30.
31
For general background, Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: the Rise of the Qazdağlis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and the masterpiece, Michel, L’Égypte. The records of the pre-nineteenth-century Egyptian beytülmal bureau were possibly destroyed in a fire in Cairo's Citadel in 1820. Studies on similar bureaus in other provinces include Lajos Fekete and Gyula Káldy-Nagy, Budai török számadáskönyvek (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1962), 607–9 (the Budin – Buda, Hungary – province); Isabelle Grangaud, “Le Bayt al-mâl, les héritiers et les étrangers. Droits de succession et droits d'appartenance à Alger à l’époque modern,” in Appartenance locale et propriété au nord et au sud de la Méditerranée (Aix-en-Provence: IREMAM, 2015) http://books.openedition.org/iremam/3512 (August 18, 2021) (the Algerian province).
32
Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, 6:2: 180–81.
33
Stanford J. Shaw, Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 171–73; and Daniel Crecelius, The Roots of Modern Egypt: A Study of the Regimes of ʻAli Bey Al-Kabir and Muhammad Bey Abu Al-Dhahab, 1760–1775 (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1981), 112. The troops also had their own beytülmal bureau. Ahmad Damurdashi, Al-Durra al-Musana, ed. ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Abd al-Rahman ‘Abd al-Rahim (Cairo: Ifao, 1989), 202; and Muhammad, “Sijillat Mahkamat al-Qisma,” 14.
34
Galal El-Nahal, The Judicial Administration of Ottoman Egypt (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979), 21.
35
Daniel Crecelius, “The Waqf of Muhammad Bey Abu Al-Dhahab in Historical Perspective,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 57–81, at 60; and El-Nahal, The Judicial Administration, 49.
36
Al-Jabarti, ‘Aja'ib al-Athar fi al-Tarajim wa-l-Akhbar, ed. Shmuel Moreh, 5 vols (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2013), 1:30 (Muharram 1107).
37
The first military qassam register is dated hijri 961 (1553–54), the first ‘arabi is from hijri 970 (1562–63) in the Egyptian National Archives (hereafter DWQ), Raymond, Artisans et commerçants, 1:xxi–lii.
38
‘Abd al-Raziq Ibrahim ‘Isa, Tarikh al-Qada’ fi Misr al-‘Uthmani (Cairo: al-Hay'a al-Misriyya li-l-Kitab, 1998), 103–15; and Muhammad, “Sijillat Mahkamat al-Qisma,” 14.
39
Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri, 6:2:186–87.
40
Raymond, Artisans et commerçants, 2: ch. 14. There remain unclear issues; for instance, it appears that members of troops were heirs to other social groups, Damurdashi, Al-Durra, 202.
41
Stanford J. Shaw, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 67.
42
Raymond, Artisans et commerçants, 2: ch. 14.
43
Martin-Roch-Xavier Estève, “Mémoire sur les finances de l’Égypte, depuis la conquête de ce pays par le sultan Sélim Ier jusqu’à celle du général en chef Bonaparte,” in Description de l’Égypte, vol. 12 (Paris: C.L.F. Panckoucke, 1822), 150–51.
44
Shaw, Ottoman Egypt, 144, 163.
45
F. Robert Hunter, Egypt Under the Khedives; Ehud R. Toledano, State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants; Felix Konrad, Der Hof der Khediven von Ägypten: Herrscherhaushalt, Hofgesellschaft und Hofhaltung 1840–1880 (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2008); Khaled Fahmy, Mehmed Ali: from Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009); Adam Mestyan, Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); and Omar Cheta and Kathryn A. Schwartz, “A Printer's Odd Plea to Reform Legal Pluralism in Khedival Egypt,” Past & Present 252 (2021): 179–211.
46
‘Imad Ahmad Hilal, Al-Ifta’ al-Misri (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 2016), vols. 4 and 5; and Rudolph Peters, “Muhammad al-‘Abbasi al-Mahdi (d. 1897), Grand Mufti of Egypt, and His al-Fatawa al-Mahdiyya,” Islamic Law and Society 1 (1994): 66–82.
47
Muslim jurists did notarize foreign bequests but the consulate of the deceased, and not the probate bureau, was in charge of the probate procedure. For instance, Muslim jurists certified a French doctor's bequest in Mehmed Ali's army, see, for instance, bequest S. Devaux (d. 1838 in the Hijaz), 354PO/2/29, Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes. It is, however, possible that the bureau intervened in the case of non-Ottoman Muslim bequests, such as those of Moroccans and Persians.
48
Mestyan, “Seeing Like a Khedivate,” 772–4.
49
Al-Jabarti, ‘Aja'ib al-Athar, 4: 203 (Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1228).
50
For instance, correspondence in warshat al-yawmiyya in the hijri year of 1281 (1864–65), 3002–032409, DWQ.
51
Deny, Sommaire des archives, 115; and ‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 1:1.
52
Amin Sami, Taqwim al-Nil (Cairo: Maktabat Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1928), 2:479; and ‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 1:35–36.
53
Sami, Taqwim al-Nil, 2:436.
54
Ibid.
55
‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 2:20 (Appendix 6).
56
Ibid., 1:6, n. 3; and Sami, Taqwim al-Nil, 2:484.
57
Rizq Hasan Nuri, Tujjar al-Qahira fi ‘Asr Muhammad ‘Ali (Cairo: Al-Hay'a al-‘Amma li-l-Kitab, 2018), 174.
58
Ahmad Fathi Zaghlul, Al-Muhama (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Ma‘arif, 1900), Appendices, 4–26.
59
‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 36Alif (Table 6, n. 9).
60
‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 2: 11–3 (Appendix 3: Asma’ umana’ bayt al-mal, 1829–1890).
61
This regulation and the changes in the early 1850s need more research. The document calls this fund sunduq al-yatama . It is a later Arabic translation (dated 28 Rajab 1288; October 13, 1871) of the original Ottoman Turkish order, issued on 8 Rabi‘ al-Akhar 1266 (February 21, 1850) from Majlis al-Khususi to Maliyya, in 096024–3002, DWQ.
62
‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 1:6–7, esp. n. 3.
63
Khalil al-Khuri, ed. Al-Dustur, trans. Nawfil Ni‘mat Allah Nawfil, (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1301), 104, 108–9; Yazbak, “Muslim Orphans and the Shari‘a,” 135–36.
64
Al-Dustur, 108.
65
Fahmy, In Quest of Justice, 153–68.
66
For siyasa in criminal law, see Fahmy, In Quest of Justice; and Rudolph Peters, “Islamic and Secular Criminal Law in Nineteenth Century Egypt: The Role and Function of the Qadi,” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 70–90.
67
La'ihat Bayt al-Mal al-Sadira fi 11 al-Hijja Sanat 1276 Hijriyya (Bulaq: al-Matba‘a al-Kubra al-Amiriyya, 1307), 3–26; and the same in Filib b. Yusuf Jallad, Qamus al-Idara wa-l-Qada , 7 vols (Alexandria: Al-Matba‘a al-Bukhariyya, 1890–1897), 2:5–19.
68
Kharijiyya to Muhafazat Misr, 7 Safar 1278 (August 14, 1861) in La'ihat Bayt al-Mal, 34–36; repeated in Greek patriarch's appointment firman (dated 1 Safar 1286/May 13, 1869) in Haïm Nahoum, Recueil de Firmans Impériaux Ottomans adressés aux Valis et aux Khédives d’Égypte 1006 H.-1322 H. (1597 J.-C.-1904 J.-C.) (Cairo: Ifao, 1934), 305; and Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, 2:25.
69
“Dhayl La'ihat Bayt al-Mal,” in La'ihat Bayt al-Mal, 28–31.
70
In shortage of space we cannot analyze this text here. La'ihat Ijra'at Diwan Bayt al-Mal wa-Sunduq al-Aytam (Bulaq: Matba‘at Bulaq, 1282).
71
“Qayd tarikat al-qussar bi-maslahat Bayt Mal Misr – 1588,” 230–31, 3002–105803 , DWQ.
72
For instance, Diwan al-Khidiwi to al-Majlis al-‘Ali, 11 Dhu al-Qa'ida 1247 (April 12, 1832), wathiqa 581, daftar 870, al-Ma‘iyya al-Khidivi Turki (Bitaqat al-Dar), DWQ.
73
Mehmed Ali to Abbas, 18 Jumada al-Awwal 1258 (June 27, 1842), wathiqa 344, daftar 286, Diwan Shura Ma‘awuna (Bitaqat al-Dar), DWQ.
74
Filib b. Yusuf Jallad, Qamus al-Idara wa-l-Qada, 7 vols (Alexandria: Al-Matba‘a al-Bukhariyya, 1890–1897), 2:30–31.
75
For instance, Muhammad al-‘Abbasi al-Mahdi, Al-Fatawa al-Mahdiyya (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Azhariyya, 1301) 2:258 (doctrine of bayt al-mal, fatwa dated 27 Sha‘ban 1274); 2:264 (the bureau can sell properties if heirs are not known and if the qadi allows it, fatwa dated 11 Jumada al-Thaniyya 1265).
76
Hilal, Al-Ifta’ al-Misri, 4:1995–2000 claims that the khedivial probate bureau did not have its own mufti but the journal al-Waqa'i‘ al-Misriyya, November 21, 1887, 1307–9 indicates that there was one.
77
Even his last fatwa from 1882 in the Book of the Disappeared emphasizes this principle, Al-‘Abbasi al-Mahdi, al-Fatawa al-Mahdiyya, 2:281.
78
Baldwin, Islamic Law and Empire, 68–69.
79
Fahmy, In Quest of Justice, 96–97; 102; 117.
80
Ekrem Buğra Ekinci, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri: Tanzimat ve Sonrası (Istanbul: Ari Sanat, 2004), 241–45; Avi Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Jun Akiba, “Shari‘a Judges in the Ottoman Nizamiye Courts, 1864–1908,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları / The Journal of Ottoman Studies, LI (2018), 209–37.
81
Omar Youssef Cheta, “Rule of Merchants: The Practice of Commerce and Law in Late Ottoman Egypt, 1841–1876” (PhD diss., New York University, 2014). The ahli courts are the least researched in Egyptian legal history; Rudolph Peters, “Administrators and Magistrates: The Development of a Secular Judiciary in Egypt, 1842–1871,” Die Welt des Islams 39 (1999): 378–97; ‘Aziz Khanki, Al-Mahakim al-Mukhtalita wa-l-Mahakim al-Ahliyya (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1939); and Fahmy, In Quest of Justice, ch. 2.
82
Will Hanley, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and Egyptians in Alexandria (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
83
Majallat al-Ahkam al-Shar‘iyya, April 24, 1902, 8–9. For the French conseil de famille, see Bernard Schnapper, “La correction paternelle et le mouvement des idées au dix-neuvième siècle (1789–1935),” Revue Historique 263 (1980): 319–49, at 322.
84
‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 1:8.
85
Qararat al-Majlis al-Khususi, n. 178 (5 Safar 1290 / April 4, 1873), daftar 81, 105–8, DWQ. See also ‘Isawi, “Sijillat Bayt al-Mal,” 1: 10.
86
Muhammad, “Sijillat Mahkamat al-Qisma,” 14. The last registry book out of the 683 qisma registry books is dated hijri 1292 (1875) according to the electronic catalogue in DWQ, and according to Ghazaleh, Fortunes, 1:62, n. 99.
87
In the Ottoman Ministry of Imperial Pious Endowments, the qassam even received a new role in adjudicating matters of pious endowments. Ekinci, Osmanlı Mahkemeleri, 310.
88
Al-Ahkam al-Shakhsiyya fi al-Ahwal al-Shahsiyya ‘Ala Madhab al-Imam Abi Hanifa al-Nu‘man, vol. 1 (Bulaq: al-Matba‘a al-Saniyya, 1292); and Hans-Georg Ebert, Die Qadrî-Pâshâ-Kodifikation: Islamisches Personalstatut Der Hanafitischen Rechtsschule (Frankfurt Am Main: P. Lang, 2010), 18–19.
89
More research is needed on the sultanic-khedivial legal reform in this period. Mardin, Şerif, “Some Explanatory Notes on the Origins of the ‘Mecelle’ (Medjelle) – Second Installement,” The Muslim World 51 (1961): 274–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ayoub, Samy, “The Mecelle: Sharīʿa, and Ottoman State: Fashioning and Refashioning of Islamic Law in the 19th – 20th Century CE,” The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 2 (2015): 121–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90
Khanki, Al-Mahakim, 92–93.
91
Rudolph Peters, “From Jurists’ Law to Statute Law or What Happens When the Shari‘a is Codified,” Mediterranean Politics 7 (2002): 82–95.
92
Filip Jallad, al-Qamus al-‘Amm li-l-Idara wa-l-Qada’ (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Ma'arif, 1908), 7:30–34.
93
Ibid., 2:28, 30, 32.
94
Beckert, Inherited Wealth, 50–64 (German inheritance law), 245–53 (French taxation).
95
M. J. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: the Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 242–45.
96
Al-Ahram, November 21, 1890, 2.
97
Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt 2 vols (New York: MacMillan Company, 1916), 1:53–54.
98
Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, 2:37–38.
99
“Budget pour exercice 1888,” HIL 436/1/122, Special Collections, Durham University Library.
100
Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, 2:44.
101
Ibid., 2:46.
102
Case dated January 26, 1886, Al-Huquq, May 15, 1886, 106–8.
103
Jallad, Qamus al-Idara, 2:42–43; for the rise of Muslim family law in Egypt, see Kenneth M. Cuno, Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015).
104
Al-Waqa'i‘ al-Misriyya, November 21, 1887, 1307–9.
105
Al-Waqa'i‘ al-Misriyya, December 12, 1887, 1420–21.
106
Al-Ahram, September 25, 1893, 2.
107
Al-Ahram, July 10, 1896, 2.
108
Wizarat al-Haqqaniya, Amr ‘Ali bi-Ilgha’ Aqlam Bayt al-Mal wa-Bi-Tartib al-Majalis al-Hasbiyya (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Amiriyya, 1916).
109
Ibid.
110
For the full story of these councils, see Asma’ ‘Abd al-Tawab Majli, “Al-Majalis al-Hasbiyya fi Misr, 1873–1947” (PhD diss., Cairo University, 2022).
111
Cuno, Modernizing Marriage, 74–75; see anecdotal evidence in Aaron Jakes, Egypt's Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), 100, and notes 74–78. Lawsuits in marital matters in the 1900s could be brought in the qadi's court and in the ahli court, and there is even a vivid example of a French consular court applying Qadri's code of Muslim family law (although finally their verdict was not enforced) in the 1900s. Cuno, Modernizing Marriage, 188–91.
