Wakako Kumakura

The Daftar Jayshī (Military Register) is a fourteen-volume Ottoman land register that records waqf landed properties and private lands authorized by the government in the middle of the sixteenth century. It provides us not only with records from the time when the register was compiled, but also with Mamluk-period records copied from the Mamluk registers, which gives the source some uncommon features. The present study highlights women's landholding in the Circassian period based on this source. Unlike studies based on waqf documents, it will analyze collective landholding data rather than detailed individual cases. Hence it is expected to reveal certain patterns and tendencies in women's landholding and the financial ties within their families. Various women who appear in the Daftar Jayshī, such as wives, mothers and daughters of sultans, mamluks and civilians, participated in landholding. Two patterns can be discerned in their financial activities: (1) acquisition of land that had originally been iqṭāʿ, and (2) acquisition of land that had originally been military rizaq (rizaq jayshiyya, military pension). After acquisition, either by purchase from the state treasury or from holders of private land and waqf, they usually turned them into waqf. Although such patterns and processes were similar with men's cases, the second pattern, acquisition of military rizaq, was more common among women. This indicates it was easy for women to obtain land from which they had benefited, whereas they needed their relatives' support and familial strategy to obtain land that had originally been iqṭāʿ. However, in all cases, the statistical results show that the women who were able to obtain landed property were only a small proportion of the wealthy and social elite.

Analysis of how taxation had been carried out, and who had been involved in them, are indispensable for studies of local governance and rural society in the Mamlūk period (1250–1517) and under the subsequent rule of the Ottomans in Egypt. However, the quantity of records and sources that we can reach has been insufficient. In these circumstances, a manuscript such as the one this article deals with might be useful to us. This article reveals tax survey records dated to the very first year of the Ottoman rule in Egypt. The records were contained in the Ayasofya manuscript with Ta’rīkh al-Fayyūm, a survey register compiled by Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Uthmān al-Nābulusī (d. 1261) in the Ayyubid period. The manuscript was presented to Jānim min Qaṣrūh, an mamlūk amīr (the commander of an army corps) who served as kāshif al-jusūr al-sulṭānīya (the inspector of the sultan’s embankments) in the Fayyūm and Bahnasāwīya district in the middle of the 16th century, to offer him basic information for the local governance.
  The tax records were dated the 923rd kharājī year, which corresponds to a year from the autumn of 1517 to the summer of 1518. This was the first year of the reign of Khāyrbak, the Ottoman governor of Egypt. The survey was conducted on 27 villages served as revenue sources for the dīwān al-dhakhīra, which administered resources under the direct control of the sultan, in Fayyūm. The records of each village contain unique information, lacking in other sources, such as the names of villagers who took responsibility for preparing reports of taxation, items of taxation and their breakdown, with special mention of the harvest and irrigation in that year. In addition, they reflect circumstances in the transition from Mamlūk to Ottoman rule. Therefore, this historical document can be considered as an important source for studies of local governance in 16th century Egypt.

This article analyzes the structure of the irrigation system in the medieval Nile Delta. In the period in which agricultural lands were irrigated by the Nile flood, the so-called Basin Irrigation System is considered to have been the basis of society. However, the Basin Irrigation System of the medieval period has not been thoroughly studied by historians, and therefore remains unknown. This study focuses on the “sultan’s banks” (jisr sulṭānī), which were the most significant irrigation works at the time. The objective of this study is to unveil the locations of the sultan’s banks and the structure of the irrigation system by using Ottoman archival sources. The analysis shows the locations of the sultan’s banks in Gharbīya province, located in the central part of the Nile Delta, their irrigation areas, as well as the surrounding environment. It demonstrates the centralized structure of the irrigation system. Finally, the study concludes that the sultanic administration of irrigation based on the supervision of the sultan’s banks played a crucial role in the rule of rural areas.