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In t . J . Midd le Eus t S tud . 12 (1980),245 - 2 7 5 Printed in the Uni ted Stutes o j 'Americci

Kenneth M . Cuno

T H E O R I G I N S O F P R I V A T E O W N E R S H I PO F L A N D I N E G Y P T : A R E A P P R A I S A L

In the his toriography of Egypt i t has long been accepted that private ow nershipof land was introduced in the nineteenth century . ' T his develo pm ent in s tatutelaw has of ten been l inked analyt ically to a process of "m o de rn i~ at io n. "~ od-ernization theory posits a fundamental dichotomy between two ideal- type so-ciet ies , the tradit ional and mo dern, which implies an equally sh arp discontinu-i ty between his torical eras : before and after the beginning of modern ization. Inthis view, traditional societies lack the potential for gene rating significant socialchange from within. Change results rather from the expansion of communica-t ions and diversif ication of technology worldwide from modem Europe andNorth America. In the process of modernization, tradit ional norms and struc-ture s break dow n in the host societ ies , and n ew, rat ional values and inst itut ionsem erge in their place. The dev elopm ent of Egypt 's new land regime is usuallycons idered on e such change.In most his torical s tudies to date, the impact of Europe and/or the r ise ofpowerful reformers influenced by E uropea n ideas have been seen a s crucial tothe beginnings of modernization in the M iddle East . F or Eg ypt, the two e ven tsmost sym bolic of this are the F rench occup ation of 1798-1801 and the reign ofMuhammad Ali Pasha, 1805- 1 8 4 8 , th e "foun der of m o de m E g ~ p t . " ~n closerexamination of the sources, ho wev er, the evidence sh ow s not his torical discon-tinuity but i ts opposite; not the shatter ing and replacem ent of insti tutions butthei r dynamic evolut ion, due a s much to indigenous forces a s to outs ide influ-e n c e ~ . ~his calls for a reappraisal of socioeconomic change in Egypt, of itsrelationship to Eu rope an influences, and of the significance to it of reform legis-lation.THE TRANS F ORMATI ON O F P ROPERTY RELATIONS

Con trary to the received tradit ion in most his tory tex ts , the transformation ofproperty relat ions in Egypt and other Ottoman lands was already underway,and had led to the ap pearanc e of forms of private ow nership of land, long be-fore the famo us reforms of the nineteen th century. Th is becom es eviden t uponexamination of the behavior of landholding elements in the eighteenth an d nine-teenth centuries , of their s truggles to acquire o r maintain control of the land atthree levels : as a source of revenue , as a disposable source of income, and as ameans of production and subsis tence.@ 1980 Cumbridge Universi ty Prr 7s oozo-7438/8o/ojo2~j-~r02.50


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246 Kennrth M . ClrnoAs these different levels of utility of the land indicate, a hierarchy of shared

rights or claims to it and/or its produce existed in the period before MuhammadAli's rise to power, similar to other precapitalist orders in Europe and Asia.5Political, economic, and social relations were intimately connected with prop-erty relations. Or to put it another way, property relations were social relationsin the broadest sense of the term, sanctified in law.

The establishment of private ownership of land in place of this system wasnot the creation of "rights" where none existed before, nor simply a matter oftheir transfer from the state to individuals. Rather it involved the consolidationof these shared claims into one sphere and their appropriation by individuals. Itrepresents the establishment of exclusive control of the land by individuals asthe prevailing system of property relations in place of shared control.

Ottoman administration of land tenure in Egypt embodied the principle ofshared right^.^ The sultan (i.e., the state) was by law "owner" of most agricul-tural land. State authority over the land was in fact limited to taxation and en-forced maintenance of the irrigation works through use of the corvee. Second,to carry out taxation and administration in the countryside, the s tate had turnedto a variety of intermediaries who were made responsible for one or more vil-lages, and who received a portion of the revenues from them and from privatelyheld sections of land in them in return for their services. Finally, peasants heldtraditional rights to till the land and remain on it.

In Lower Egypt and parts of Middle Egypt peasants held their land sectionsfor life, and passed them on to their heirs, a s long as taxes were paid (hence theterm uthur or u th ar i y y a , loosely: "that which remains"). The annual Nile floodcaused more extreme variations in the area of cultivable land in Upper Egyptand the remainder of Middle Egypt, and so land here was annually surveyedand redivided within the village community ( a rd m i s i h a , "survey land"). Thusindividual security of tenure was guaranteed the holder of athar land, and vil-lage clans must have maintained a similar continuous claim to their due portionof missha land. Neither the s tate nor intermediaries interfered in the productionprocess except indirectly, through tax demands and irrigation works.

J. C . Scott has noted that peasants value greatest and defend most tena-ciously these two conditions: security of tenure and control of decisionmakingin the production process. The peasant community's direct control of land andproduction is its means of maintaining security in face of unpredictable forces-such as weather, or a market economy - and of guaranteeing to itself a cul-turally defined, minimum, acceptable subsistence. Interference with these tra-ditional rights, or rigid taxirent demands which threaten to push peasants belowthe acceptable subsistence level, are more resented and more likely resistedthan systems of exploitation which are more flexible but which siphon off agreater amount Ottoman law, significantly, providedf their s ~ r p l u s . ~ forlowered taxes in years of drought or disastrous floods, and also guaranteed theterms of traditional peasant t e n ~ r e . ~

Ottoman regulations likewise provided for checks on the intermediaries, toprevent them from tyrannizing the peasantry, from usurping state prerogativesin control of the land, and from pocketing more than their legal share of reve-


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Origins of 'Pril~rrtrOkvnership of'Lurid in Egypt 247nues. Salaried officials were originally employed to oversee cultivation and thecollection of taxes. During the seventeenth century tax farms, iltizums, ap-~ e a r e d . ~hey were acquired for a year o r more through an auction held by theTreasury. With the iltiziim, its holder, the multuzim, received a tax-free sectionof land, isyu, which he had cultivated for his own profit by wage or corveelabor, or which he rented out. His personal profit,fifh-'id, from usya land andexcess taxes collected could come to four or five times the taxes remitted, indi-cating the profitability of iltiziims.I0

Law must be backed by force to be effective, however, and in a situationsuch as this where the state is weak, its formal regulations provide little indica-tion of actual practices. Each party to the shared rights to the land of OttomanEgypt, as elsewhere, could assert or defend them only according to its com-mand of means of coercion - its political power. As Ottoman authority in theprovinces weakened, its land laws became increasingly irrelevant, while inter-mediaries gained increasing control of the land at the state's expense. By theearly eighteenth century they had acquired landholding rights in Egypt that es-tablished them as landlords in every sense of the term. These included: ( 1 ) life-time possession of the iltiziim, as long as taxes were paid; (2 ) inheritance of itby descendants, wives, or white slaves; (3) the ability to convert land intowaqf, thereby guaranteeing the family's continued possession of it; (4) the abil-ity to mortage the land, (5 ) to pawn it, or (6) to sell it outright."

These criteria are precisely those used in previous studies of nineteenth-cen-tury Egypt to show a movement toward private ownership.12 Paradigms thatsee private ownership as appearing in Egypt during the nineteenth century atthe earliest should thus be discarded.

The intermediaries' usurpation of state authority over the land was markedby a proliferation of legal fictions used to get around the formal, legally inalien-able status of the land. Mortgage and pawning were conducted under the eu-phemism of "transfer," isqut; sales were called "indefinite transfer," is qi t ilaul-ubud. l3 Similar fictions were employed in transactions involving waqf land.I4The resort to legal fictions should not be surprising since they were used in vari-ous times and places, for example, to circumvent Qur'iinic prohibitions of risk-taking and interest,I5 and were also used to circumvent restrictions on land-ownership in parts of contemporary Europe.16 Developments that caused landto be treated a s an alienable commodity led to the use of these fictions, but thecontinuation of old legal terminology for land tenure on the surface has ob-scured this transformation.

The reestablishment of a strong state in nineteenth-century Egypt arrestedthe development toward private ownership in part. Yet, paradoxically, it facili-tated this movement over the long term. The state concentrated control of theland as never before in a single sphere, in its own hands. Second, it violated thetraditional terms of peasant tenure by interfering in production and transferringtenures as it saw fit. Finally, the weakening of the state after 1840 allowed anew generation of intermediaries and privileged landholders it had created toinfluence land tenure policies to their own benefit.

If land tenure issues can be appreciated in terms of competition or struggle


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248 Kenneth M . Cunoamo ng various ac tors over the land and i ts product, then deve lopmen ts in thenineteenth century appear a s but a continuation of trends in the eighteenth cen-tury. The legislation of private ownership of land came toward the end of thislong-term struggle for control of the land. It legitimized the new order thisstruggle had wro ugh t, firmly establishing the positions of those w ho had gainedin the proce ss: th e large landow ners in particu lar, but also a stratum of wealthypeasants. Finally, it represents a late stage in the transition from shared to ex-clusive rights to the land.The circumstances that led to this transformation will require extensive in-vestigation in the future. Here is presented evidence that this process was, infact , in train, as well a s the factors that a ppe ar to ha ve influenced i t and i ts ou t-com e. L ocal and regional econom ic trends are considered, a s well as changesin the nature of the state and its ability to regulate land tenure. The changingrelationships among peasants, intermediaries/landlords, and the s tate, and be-tween them and the land are also followed.

Th e lands of the easte rn Mediterranean un der Ottom an rule, while separatedpoli tically a nd culturally from Euro pe, ap pea r to hav e been l inked to i t as partof a larger region subject to similar broad economic and demographic trends.The Ottoman Empire fel t the effects of the s ixteenth-century "price revolu-tion" and exp erienc ed a rise in population then at approximately th e sam e timea s did Eu rope . Population in Euro pe, a t least , began to increase again in theeighteenth c entu ry.I7 This and the beginnings of industrial revolution led to anearly century-long rise in the absolu te price of agricultural comm odities w hichis vis ible in both Europe and th e M iddle Eas t . Th e price of land increased inturn , and spe culativ e trading in it - eve n where legally prohibited -app eare d inboth regions.18 Ne w elem ents sho uldere d their way in among the landh oldingclasses, and local landholding and/o r comm ercial ar is tocracies often w ere a bleto increase their political strength vis-a-vis their monarch and peasantry.The changing composit ion of landowning classes is marked in Europe bycommoners acquir ing noble estates - sometimes openly - even where i t wasprohibited by law, and in the Ottoman Em pire by the entry of mercha nts intolandholding.l9 Lan ded a ristocrac ies (or their equivalents) were enticed by ris-ing prices and enabled by weakened state authori ty to increase their controlover their holdings. The established sociopoli t ical orders , connected closelywith property relat ions, were being underm ined, and at the same t ime state au-thority ov er land tenure was being whitt led aw ay. B oth developm ents laid thebases for institutional change at a later date.In the sixteenth cen tury , rising prices in the M editerra nea n region had led toincreased exports of foodstuffs and raw materials from the Ottoman Empire.Venetian ships loaded grain in Egyp t 's ports at m idcentury. Thereafter the Em -pire 's population seem s to have caught up with production, and the exp ort ofgrain to the West wa s prohibited. T he Greek archipelago then became a c ente rfor contraband grain trade which flourished in the eighteenth century.20 Egyp-


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Origins of Private Oulnership of Land in Egypt 249tian wheat, rice, and beans found their way to the West according to shiftingmarket dem and and the relative ability of the Porte t o enforce its trade regula-t ions.Industrial crops - wool, silk, cotton, flax, leather, oils, and dyestuffs - ac-quired a new importance in the eighteenth century owing to Eu rope's industriale x p a n s i ~ n . ~ ~n addition, both regional and European demand for the L evant 'sfine cotto ns and silks, and for its spun cot ton and wo ol, led to increased textileproduction in certain are as. All of this resulted in expande d c ash crop produ c-tion, especially in cotton , producing yet a nothe r effect: a trend tow ard g reaterregional specialization. T he planting of mulberry tr ees in the L ebano n and Ma-cedon ia and expan sion of cotton cultivation in M acedo nia, Anatolia, and P ales-t ine were accomp anied by the development of food and vegetable dye produc-tion in other areas. The Biqa ' and H aw ran became important grain-producingregions fought over by the amirs of the Lebanon and the walls of Sidon andDamascus. Egyptian foodstuffs supplied Syria, Macedonia, and Istanbul, aswell as being marketed in Egy pt and the W est. Eg ypt also produced indigo andsafflower dy es for internal and expo rt ma rkets. C rop specialization in Egyp t issomew hat problematic, as more than one crop per year could be raised in manyareas. Different districts did tend to specialize, however, in cotton, flax, dye-stuffs , oilseeds, sugar cane, o r food crops.22While only a small part of Egypt's externa l trade was con ducted directly w iththe W est, price m ovements in Cairo during this century clearly show that th ecountry was feeling the effects of the overall increase in trade and the rise inagricultural comm odity prices, suggesting that the factors behind the price risemay have been generalized, and not simply a matter of Eu rop e's influence. T heprice of beans , wh eat , rice, catt le, and camels rose tw o and a half times duringthe century. Mutton increased three t imes. Butter , oils , cheese, sugar, andhoney rose twofold. Industrial commodities also show price increases: theprice of raw cotton increased nearly fivefold, while the price of flax and spuncotton d oubled .23 Th e expo rt price of safflower dy e increased n early thre e-fold.24 n Egypt a s elsewhere, r is ing prices enhanced the value placed on lan d, amajor factor in its transformation into private property .In the sixteenth century the Otto ma ns had begun to convert Balkan and A na-tolian timar lands into iltizams which court circles and urban "commercial-usury capital" acquire d. At the sa me time these elem ents began to illegally pur-chase t imars. Weakening state control and economic opportunit ies also ledthose t imti r l~swho c ould, to con ver t their holdings, illegally, into iltizams. T heseventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the appearance of life-term taxfarm s, mu likines , following the developmen t of a speculative market in land-holdings. Th ese centu ries also saw the ap pearan ce of the Balkan c$tliks, pri-vately ow ned commercial estates devoid of any obligations to the state. The ~ i f t -lik holder owned the land outright, and often the tools, animals, and seeds histenants H ere , the process of usurpation of s tate control was com plete,and the terms of peasant tenure had also been altered. Ciftliks spread rapidlythroughout the Balkans in the late eighteenth century, associated closely with"the diffusion of the cultivation of new colonial produ cts: c otto n and maize."26


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250 Kenneth M. C u n oThe production and trade of such cash crops were the economic basis of therise of p ow erfu l p ro vin cia l n ota ble s, th e ~ ' y a n . ~ ~

In the L eba non , the expansion of sericulture was organized by M aronite andDruze shaykhs and the M aroni te m onas t ic orders . As in the Balkans , the con-centrat ion of land in fewer hands an d the increased ex ploitat ion of tena nts areassociated w ith the spread of mark et-oriented agriculture. In both regions thecon vers ion of holdings into waqf - property set aside for the ostensible su ppo rtof pious works -playe d an imp ortant role in the al ienation and concen trat ion ofland.28Th e r ise of Shayk h Ziihir al-'Um ar in Palestine is associated w ith the spreadof cotton cult ivation. A s multazims, Ziihir and oth er shayk hs were ab le to mo-nopolize cot ton by serving as middlemen between p easants and French mer-chan ts . H is successor as local s trongman , the Wali of Sidon Ahmad Pasha al-Jazziir , sough t to acq uire as much land as possible in the form of malikhne. H ismonopolization of al l production and trade a nticipates the m ethods of Muham -mad Ali.29Ottoman officials were aware of the fiscal and political dangers of develop-me nts in landholding, though n ot alw ays able to s top them . A ttempts to reformthe land regime which app ear "modern" in inspirat ion were actually efforts toreestablish a greater degree of s tate control over the land. In the seventeenthcentury, reform-minded Ottomans cri t icized the malikhne system, and i t wasdecreed abolished under Ahmad I11 in 1 7 1 4 / 1 7 1 5 . ~ ~i li tary reverses w eaken edhis posit ion and led to the decree's reversal three years later . He later at-tempted yet another reform, turning malikhne lands back into short- termiltiziims and placing some under the administration of salaried state officials.Also, "for the f irst time in ove r a century extensive cad astral surve ys weremade . . . ."31Efforts to c urb the pow er of local notables and reestablish s tate control ove rthe land w ere rev ived und er S ultan s Mu stafa 111 and Abd ulham id I.32 Adm inis-trat ive and mili tary reforms were always accompanied by f iscal reforms af-fecting landholding: the well-known reforms of Selim I11 and Mahmud I1 fol-lowed this pattern. T o study Ottom an landholding in this period is to s tudy amultifaceted s truggle for the land i tself , both betw een the poli tical ce nter an dthe provinces , and among the ac tors in each locale .T H E SITUATION IN E G Y P T

While the agrarian history of Eg ypt in this period ha s yet to receive detailedexamination, it is possible to reconstruct a partial picture of it from the evi-dence already available. The two, more-or-less constant poli t ical-economicfactors favoring change in late Ottoma n Egypt we re the secular rise in agricul-tural prices and the w eakne ss of s tate authori ty. But if condit ions favor change,it is still human action and interaction which determines its course and out-co me .Un der the condit ions of the eighteenth centu ry, intermediaries and p eas antsresponded in a variety of ways affecting landholding and land use. Parallel to


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Origins of Private Otilnership of Lund in E g y p t 251changes elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, multazims in Egypt succeeded intransforming th eir iltiziims into a for m of priva te prope rty in land. Early in theeighteenth c entu ry, their new rights of disposit ion w ere expressed in the term"malikine," indicating that l ifetime tenu re had becom e comm on . Con versionof the land into waqf, and bequest, mortgage, pawning, or sale of it - throughthe device of isqiit - were within the multazim's power. The earliest registerdev oted to isqiit in Egypt da tes from 1728 , indicating that by this time this legalfiction was commonly used in transactions involving landholding^.^^Cairo's merchants appear among the holders and purchasers of iltiziims inthese registers , and speculative transactions appear to have often occurredwithin an ab sente e landholding class there. A merchant appears in court rec-ord s as a holder of three vi llages in Daqahliyya province a s early as 1 6 7 3 , ~ ~ndthe Sharii ' ibi merchant dynasty in particular increased their landholdingsthrough out the eighteenth century .35T . Walz 's s tud y of the gullabu merchants ,those engaged in the Sudan trade, shows that some lesser merchants also ac-quired iltiziims. Others rented section s of iltiziim or waqf la nds, o r held mort-gages of fallah land.36 Eg ypt's wealthier u lama w ere also a ctive in acquiringiltiziims, primarily in their hom e districts, in addition to their adm inistration ofwaqf lands.37Th e wealthy merchan ts ' involvement in land w as part of a general trend ofinvestmen t in urban and rural properties and tax farms.38Th e wealthiest ulamaare hardly distinguishable from the large merchants in these financial deal-i n g ~ . ~ ~uch investm ents made sens e. The relative stagnation of coffee and tex-tile prices underm ined the mo st profitable com me rce in the h and s of indigenousmerchants,40while agricultural com mo dity prices ros e. It is presently impossi-ble to ascertain the extent of merchant involvement in landholding. A. A. A bdal-Rahim's figures show merc han ts comprising only slightly more than o ne per-cent of the total number of multazims on the eve of the French invasion, asoppo sed to n one a century and a half earlier .41Bu t the size of their holdings isunfortunately not indicated, nor is the nu mb er and ex tent of the mortgages thatthey undoubtedly held.The evidence is also inconclusive concerning the accumulation of iltiziims.Many holdings appear to have been small and scattered: between 1658- 1660and 1797 the total num ber of multazims increased by more than 250 percent ,although the extent of fractionalization of their holdings varied from on e are a tothe next.42On the oth er hand, so me m ultazims were con verting fallah land intousya land,43a process reminiscent of the engrossment of d e m e s n e holdings incontemporary eastern Europe, under similar conditions.Th e conversion of holdings into waqf is another exam ple of the growth of defac to private property in land through the u se of legal fictions. Waqf lands paidonly a "protection tax" in this period to safeguard their statu s. Legally, theycould not be divided or sold, nor w ere they com mo nly subject to confiscation."Family," or uhl i , waqfs, furthermore, remained in the possession of themakers ' desc end ants. They received the bequest 's income until the extinctionof the l ine, and only then did the revenues from an ahli waqf revert to th e desig-nated charitable work . Thus conversion of land into ahli waqf guaranteed th e


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252 Kenne th M . Cunc.family's continued possession of i t , a long with imp ortant tax exemp tions, andmany multazims w ere able to co nve rt their i isya holdings into waqf. H ere, t oo ,the grow th of a market in land resulted in the exchan ge of waqf lands - despitethe law -b y what amo unted to sale . Waqf lands were exploited in a way similarto i isya lands: the nazir , administrator, e i ther leased them to a village shaykh o rhad them cultivated by means of wage labor.44Jabarti reports that waqf lands surveyed in 1813 cam e to 600,ooo faddans inUp per E gypt and the Cairo vicinity. Th us the amount of land converted to waqfin these area s alone came to so me 20 perce nt of all of Egyp t's cultivated land ,45a m easure of the exte nt to which land w as taken out of the state 's control in thisperiod. If Jabarti 's remarks a re any guide, the concentration of waqf lands inthe hands of wealthy nizirs and notables was indeed common. He mentionson e Sha ms al-Din b. Ha mu da, a sh ayk h of the village of Birmii, Minufiyya, wh otold him that his family held I ,000 faddans of waqf land for which no tax waspaid, in addition to other lands for which he paid a nominal amount.46Despite the consolidation of property r ights and a tenden cy toward concen-tration of the land , multazims and nazirs d o not app ear to have been directlyengaged in agricultural production no r did they attem pt to alter the relations ofproduction . Un der the r ight conditions, investmen t to raise the productivity ofland would have been a plausible response to the era 's price trends. But theadequately large income that many il t iz ims appear to have offered, and thepossibility of losing an iltizim with a change of rulers in Cairo, probably dis-couraged investm ent. As occurred in the Balkans, the evidence so far indicatesthat increased exploitation rather than an increase in surplus production wasthe most common result of these rentiers' a c t i v i t i e ~ . ~ ~At the village level a variety of responses to the conditions of this centurycan also be observed. T hese enc om pass not only competit ion for control of theland, but also activities in the sphere of production which indicate a potentialfor agricultural developm ent. At the present s tate of our knowledge i t will haveto suffice to present three si tuations il lustrating these responses.In Giza and much of the central D elta the M amluk beys w ere able to maintainthe greatest autho rity, indicated by the p resence of "Mamluk housesM - resi-dences for their local representatives - in th e villages.48 Th ese regions pro-duced a variety of crops for the m arket - cotto n, f lax, oilseeds, dyestuffs , andvarious foo d c rops.4 9 H er e, social stratification wa s visible at the time of theFrench occupation, the result of control of local political and economic re-sources. Local police and administrative offices were monopolized by thewealthier village families and ten ded to be hered itary, starting with the po sitionof village sh ay kh . He usually rep resente d th e most po werful clan in the villageand was the sup reme police and judicial authority in the village.50In villages wh ere the multazim rented out his usya land , it was leased by o neof the village shaykhs at a price reflecting the market in land. This varied ac-cording to i ts quality and proximity to a m arket town: the i isya lands near B ulaqwent at the highest rate. If the multazim had the iisya cultivated for his ownaccount through wage labor or cor vee , the shaykhs and kh i l i s were responsiblefor assigning the land and were paid for their services. The khiili, an official


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Origirzs of Private Octvnrrship of Land in Egyp t 2 5 3drawn from th e village, was also charged with checking the survey an d assess-ment of village land s performed by t he multazim's officials - a position of con-siderable power and potential wealth.51Th e econom ic posit ion of the wealthy families w as also strengthen ed throughimportant tax exemptions. The shaykhs, khii l is , and shuhids (local, profes-sional witnesses for tax purpo ses) were ex empt from barruni taxes on por t ionsof their land. These were extraordinary taxes in kind which the multazimslevied in different villages acco rding to th eir ability to im pos e them an d th e vil-lagers ' abili ty to pay . Butter , she ep, chees e, grain, ho ney , chickens, and othe rfarm products were taken, all of who se prices were increasing in absolute term sand drastically so in terms of the continually debased coinage. Barrani ac-counts appear in the tax registers from the seventeenth century on, but alongwith oth er taxes they increased greatly during the eighteenth.52The financial and political power of these families also enabled them to ac-quire additional lands which w ere kep t off the tax registers with the conniv anceof oth er local officials.53Th is wa s facilitated by th e land sy stem in the villagesof Lo we r Eg ypt, s ince transactions also took place at this level, though legallyonly concerning usufructuary r ights . In these distr icts , then , a wealthy peasantstratum in alliance with the ruling elite used its political and economic re-sou rces to acquire additional lands and tax ex emption s, and were also in a posi-t ion to rent land from absentee hold ers, e i ther to prod uce m ore for the marketor to profit from the rising price of land by subleasing.A quite different pheno meno n was the ap pearance of what could be termedmilitant peasantries in certain areas. As a poli t ical-economic phenomenon,these peasants were protecting and sometimes extending their control overareas of market-oriented agriculture and commerce, as well as using theirstrength to resist the increasing burden of taxes and fees levied by th e m ulta-zims and the provincial administration. As a sociological phenomenon, this de-velopment is associated with the sedentarization of certain bedouin tr ibes.Once they have beco me cultivators, bedouin are nearly indistinguishable frompeasants - some even adopted the fallahin's brown woolen dress. Sti l l , theyretained a tribal identity and solidarity vis-a-vis outsiders. "Bedouin influ-ence" seem s to have been the com mon fac tor in those areas which m aintaineda quasi-independence from the beys.54In parts of lower Sharqiyya and Daqahliyya a sort of bedouin-fallah sym-biosis occu rred. North of Bilbays, bedouin were described as the "caste pre-ponderante . . . sans ktre le plus nom breuse. . . ."55 Th ey camped adjacentto fallah villages, engaging in stockbreeding and cultivation as well as in es-cort ing caravans a long the rou te to Syr ia and the Hijaz . French o bservers de-scribed this region as rich in various field crops, orchards, and especially dategroves. The peninsula of Manzala rivaled Damietta as a rice-growing region.56Th e mutual inte rests of the bedou in a nd fallahin h ere led to military allia nces."Village wars" were jointly c on duc ted against neighboring distric ts, and th efrequent mention of peasants carrying arms to the fields and of fortified townsand villages attes t to this strife.57Despite such conflict these reports are si lentabout any resultant "devastation." Village wars were fought for control of


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254 Kenneth M . Cunowater and land , no doub t provoked by the increasing value of land and herdsand by occasional variations in the flood level.An equ ally importa nt dimension of this symbiosis was th e ability to resist thebey's exactions. Tax pay ments and o ther relations w ere a matter of negotiationb et we en th e b ed ou in sh ay k hs a nd th e M a m l u k ~ . ~ ~nlike the central Delta re-gion, there is no mention of "Mamluk houses ' ' for lower Sharqiyya and Daqah-liyya, indicating that the beys and their subordinates could establish n o perma-nent presence there .Th e presence of a mili tant peasantry in M iddle E gypt also app ears to be re-lated to the increasing importance of cash crop s, but here the settled bedou in,"arabes cultivateurs," subjugated the fallahin and usurped their land. Fromabout the middle of the century one tribe had established itself and taken upcultivation on the right bank of the Nile in the regions of Atfih, Ashm unin , andManfaifit. At the time of Jomard 's obs ervatio ns ( 1799- 1801 ) hey w ere expand-ing their contro l of land acro ss the river. Already they held mo st of the islandsof M iddle Egyp t and a str ip of land a qua rter league wide o n the left bank. T heland seized was planted in tobac co, indigo, sugar cane , date palms, and foragecrop s, as well as m elons, grains, and legumes. The first group of crops w as themost imp ortan t, grown for local and regional markets. Su gar, indigo, an d woolwere the principal industries of the villages, and these as well as dates weresold to Cairo merchants . Large tracts of forage crops were also planted, assumm er cultivation required a supply of cattle to turn the w aterwheels , and themili tary power and communications of these vil lages depended upon largeherds of horses and camels.59In these and oth er bedouin vil lages of Middle and U pper E gypt the sh ayk hsacquired a prep ond erant political and eco nom ic role. It is primarily in the se re-gions that small am oun ts of village shay khs ' masmih land app eared , land heldby them free of any tax, said to be "vols faits par d es Arabes qui so nt etablispar force dans divers villages," and passed o n to their heirs.60This observationlays bare the way in which privileged landh olding rights could be crea ted a t thevillage level through the exe rcise of local political pow er. T he disp lacem ent offallahin by bedouin in these districts is one of the most obvious forms that thestruggle or competit ion for land between cult ivators took . I t w as no less real ,how ever, wh ere wealthy peasan ts , here o r in the D elta , acquired land throughreceiving pawns or mortgages, or through purchase of usufructuary r ights -again, aided by their command of local political and economic resources.In the militant peasa nt districts of Middle Eg ypt, "Mamluk houses" werealso unknown, and at the t ime of the French occupation taxes were collectedfrom them with difficulty or not at He re and in lower Sharqiyy a the exten tof the bey's authority versus the villagers ' independ ence mu st have been fluid,depending on the mili tary strength either s ide could marshal at any t ime. Titleto the land in these areas remained in the hands of multazims and tax es werepaid,=*although these peasants may well have escaped the full weight of theperiod's increasing taxation, which would have enabled th em to benefit morefrom the secular price r ise .In Damietta 's rice-growing region, Girard's reports indicate that peasant


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Ori gin s oj'Pri\vrrte O tt ~n er sh ip f Lcrnd in Egypt 255farmers were responding posit ively to the market opportunities of the t ime.Peasants leased land from the m ultazims for either a cash rent pe r faddan o r aportion of the h arves t , the farmer being responsible for all costs . A s r ice farm-ing required considerable working capital for waterwh eels , animals and driversto turn them, canal maintenance, and planting, thinning, and harvesting, thefarmer next turned t o Dam ietta 's r ice merchan ts for a loan at interest . After theharvest these m erchants purchased the crop , had i t milled, and placed i t on th emarket. Th e farmer employed a p ermanen t work fo rce as well as seasonal mi-grant labor, a ll of whom w ere paid wages. Girard noted that by such arrange-ments, "the exploitation of the r ice farms resembles m ore o r less that of ou rfarm s of E ~ r o p e . " ~ T h i ss the clearest example of peasant entrepreneurshipand d evelopm ent toward a capitalis t organization of the relations of productionin agriculture.T o summ arize, peasants b ehaved under the conditions of the t imes in a vari-ety of ways which reflected their material interests. Peasants acquired andlorpro tected their holdings through the ex ercise of local pow er, including at timesarmed force. Security of tenure may not have seemed threatened to Dam ietta 'sr ice farmers, s ince predictable f lood waters and the steady demand for r icemust have ensured satisfaction of rental and credit arrangements, and musthave made their automatic renewal relatively easy . This, a t any rate , is indi-cate d by their willingness to go heavily into deb t at the beginning of each sea-son . In each ca se, peasants retained or enforced security of tenur e, and suffi-cient freedom of action in production to take advantage of the opportunitiesoffered by the rising prices of commodities and land.P O L I T I C S A N D L A N D T E N U R E :F R O M A L I B E Y T O M U H A M M A D A L I

Both the O ttomans and their local rivals for pow er in Egypt co nfronted land-holding and commercial interests , and attem pted to enlis t their support througha mixture of coercion and coop tion. But to the ex tent that these interests werethereby strengthen ed, the rulers were correspondingly weaken ed through lossof revenues and at t imes the loss of control of the countryside. To the extentthat the rulers sup pressed them , howe ver, they undermined their own polit icaland financial bases of suppo rt. It was a dilemm a that Eg ypt's rulers would alsoface in the nineteenth century.The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a struggle for Egypt 'srevenues on two levels. Intermediaries were largely successful in acquiringrights to the land, reducing the fiscal and administrative control of the state.Second, the contest between the w5li of Cairo and local political forces woulddetermine who controlled and exploited the urban and rural tax structures.In the seventeenth an d early eighteenth centu ries, a num ber of s trong wiil iswere able to adjust s tate taxes to inflation, to extend them to land that had beenconcealed from the registers , and to reduce diversions of imperial revenu es bymiddlemen, all of which raised state revenues for a time.64 In the period ofMamluk asc end ancy , when strong rulers were able to establish them selves in


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256 K e n ne th M . C u n oCairo, the tendency was also to attempt to t ighten control ov er and take a largershare of the lands ' revenues.With Ali Bey al-K abir (ruled 1760 -1772 ,with inte rrup tions) cam e the first of anumber of attempts at poli t ical and economic centralization. Control of cus-toms and land-tax collection was the economic basis of his power. He inter-vened in the custo ms houses, ou sting the Jewish agents and turning them o ve rto Syrian merchant allies .65As for land tax es, the treasury now received themas a result o f direct negotiations between the VLli and the Seyh ul-Beled [ of Cairo, defacto ruler o f Egypt] o f the time rather than by the [former] ystem o f imposition andcollection. [Assessment]and collection o f the taxes from the cultivators was controlledand executed entirely by the Seyh ul-Beled and his MamlQks,who delivered to the Impe-rial Treasury the amounts agreed on in the negotiation^.^^Ali Bey and his successors also increased the n umb er and weight of extraordi-nary taxes levied in the towns and rural areas. ' j7As efforts to establish greater cen tral control affected land tenure, they tookthe form of replacing multazims of the opposition party with one 's ow n follow-ers . Ali Bey had his rivals banished o r killed, and distrib uted their landholding samon g his follow ers, an un prece den ted interferen ce in th e land regime?"hetightening of co ntrol ov er the intermediaries - while still working throug h them- was a strategy also followed in the short-l ived attem pts of Hasan Pasha (1786 )and Yusuf Pasha ( 1 8 0 1 )to reassert Im perial control ov er the province, as i t wasin Na pole on's reorganization. ' j9 Mu hamm ad Ali followed a similar route in hisfirst years as wili until the fruition of these short-term policies and new eco-nomic circumstances allowed and induced him to take more drastic measures.T he pa ce of his reform of the land regime, part of an overall drive for centra l-ization, varied according to the balance of political forces in the country, as ithad under his predecessors. But sh ort- term econom ic and political conditionsalso pushed policy in the direction of centralization. More than tw o decad es ofwa r in E uro pe proved a windfall for the rulers of this food-exporting co untr y.T hus Mura d B ey had p ro fite d f rom the w a r o f t he F ir st C ~ a l i t i o n , ~ ~nd Mu-hamm ad Ali was in a similar position w hen w ar broke ou t ane w . Egyp tian grainbegan to flow to M alta in 1808, the v olume increasing two years later when theexport price of wheat rose from 26 to 80 piasters per ard eb in less than twelvemonths under the Pasha 's new monopoly. Wheat prices in Cairo at the t imeranged from 1 2 to 1 8piasters. In 181I the export price reached IOO piasters andremained high until 1813 . In 1 8 1 6 -1 8 1 7 ,due to Europ ean crop fa i lures , the ex-port price of wheat rose again, during a short export boom , from 60 to I 20 pias-ters per ardebb.71 Sec ond , the w ar in Arabia required a transport f leet andmaintenance of a large force of mercenaries, adding urgency to the search fornew revenues.

Th e boom in grain sales no dou bt enabled M uhammad Ali to pursue his prep-arations for the H ijaz expedition more q uickly, and helped finance the conclud-ing phases of his struggle with the Mamluk amirs. In addition to the Mamluks'dealings with the English, their control of the grain of Upper Egypt must havedrawn him into putting an early en d to the m. T he Citadel massacre followed the


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Orig ins of Pr i v~ l t eOwnersh ip of Lan d in Egyp t 257Mamluks ' repeated violat ion of agreements to pay tr ibute - in wheat.72T h u sthe trade boom strengthene d the Pasha's han d, and along with the costs of mili-tary preparation s accelerated his program of central ization. But major chang esin the land regime we re likely t o be at tempted in any ev ent. Th at they w ere o nthe way is indicated by the gradual t ightening of control over the land whichbegan in 1806, and by th e imp ortance tha t control of the land had tak en in thestruggles of the previous cen tury .As the a rea of Egypt under his control expa nded , Muhamm ad Ali fo l lowed apolicy tow ard land tenu re which - on the surface - may app ear con t rad ic to ry ,owing to the double-edged s t ra tegy of coercion and coo pt ion. On the o ne h and,he allowed the iltiziim system to remain during his first ten years in power,granting i lt iziims anew to his family and followers. On the othe r , he pursued apolicy aimed at undermining the autho ri ty of the m ultazims o ve r the fal lahin,collecting some taxes directly from the lat ter , and encouraging them to voiceth eir g ri ev an c es a ga in st t he m ~ l t a z i m s . ~ ~he appearance of randomness in theland policy belies the polit ical s trategy e mp loyed. T he aim w as con trol of al l thecoun try 's resource s , but in order to accomplish th is , it was necessary to piecetogether a ruling el i te of family, off icers , bureaucrats , and merch ants , m any ofwhom we re placed in charge of tax farms and tracts of land unde r varying ar-rangem ents , including in som e case s an obligation to restore uncult ivated landto productivity. Consolidation of power also involved coming to terms withoth er polit ical forces to o powerful o r indispensable to suppress en tirely - cer-tain ulam a, the village sha ykh s, and certain bedouin sh ayk hs. Piecemeal movesto extend his authori ty ref lect Muhamm ad Ali 's understanding that any w hole-sale changes would have encountered too much resis tance. Instead, he pro-ceeded against the weaker targets f irs t , temporizing when strong opposit ionwas met, in order to keep a united opposit ion from forming.In 1806, half the m ultazims' fii 'id w as claimed . By 1807, masmiih land s werebeing taxe d. Tow ard the end of the sam e year , Jabarti rep orts that lands held bythe ulama and those under their protection were put under the regular tax. In1808, receiving reports that m any multazims were unab le to pay the sum s de-manded, Muhammad Ali had their villages reassigned to his family and follow-ers . Many of these were in underpopulated Buhayra province. To correct thelabor shortage, town dwellers bearing nisb as from that p rovince's vi llages wereforcibly relocated there.74In 1809, the Pasha ordered the com piling of a register for the taxation of waqfand i isya lands and at temp ted to apply i t f irst in B uhay ra. Along with new mar-ket taxes, this measure brought a protest from some of the ulama. On morethan one occas ion deputat ions were assured that the new taxes would not beimpo sed, but the persis tence of the delegations indicates that som e in fact mayhave been c ollected. Land tax es w ere thus selectively and unequally app lied inthis period , a legacy from the p revio us cen tury an d a reflection of political reali-t ies . Jabart i records a meeting of ulama, off icers , and notables convened thefol lowing year to cons ider means of improving the country 's revenues . Theshaykh s were enraged a t the suggestion that their lands be taxed a t a rate eq ualwith that of the others . Yet short ly thereafter , regis ters were drawn up to in-


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258 Kenne th M. Cunoclude all land for taxation, including usya, waqf, and land held by the villageshaykhs untaxed until then.75

After 1 8 1 0the reorganization of the land regime and agriculture entered amore intensive phase. Even before this t ime, multazims had faced extremepressure t o m eet their tax obligations o n t ime, even if i t meant paying out oftheir pockets or borrowing at interest . If a multazim was unable to meet hisobligations he had to surrender the land without being freed of his debt. In1812 ,with the con quest of Up per Egyp t, nearly all lands there were seized bythe s tate and taxed directly. Waqf lands attached to mo sques w ere taxed at halfrate . The se taxes were taken in kind, and w heat was already being accepted inplace of cash paym ents in othe r parts of the cou ntry . Wheat not taken in taxa-tion was subject to a s tate monopoly. Rice was monopolized from 1 8 1 2 .T h erice-producing lands were put under the supervision of salaried officials whotook the p lace of merchants in advancing capital to the peasants and purchasingtheir harvests .76The cadas tra l survey of Lower Egypt , 1 8 1 3 - 1 8 1 4 ,was the culmination ofthis phase of centralization. All cult ivated and uncultivated land was su rvey ed.Land was recorded in the names of i ts holders, or cult ivators, or those indi-ca ted as tenan ts a t the t ime - that is, the names of all with a claim to the landw ere r e g i ~ t e r e d . ~ ~he surveyors used a standard faddan reportedly smallerthan most custom ary o nes which ranged in size from 200 t o 400 s qua re qus a b a s(a l inear measu re originally taken from a sugar cane); the new faddan eq ualed333 ' 1 3 qasa bas. Lan d w as classified according to i ts fert il i ty and a correspo nd-ing scale of taxation set.78 At the ca das ter's com pletio n, most interm ediarylandholders were to be dispossessed fo r a promised pension .Th e organization of a pyramidal adm inistration w as com pleted along with thecadaster and the land confiscations. All officials above the village level weresalaried. Th ey w ere charged w ith public security, mainten ance of the irr igationsyste m, and supervision of cultivation - including the allocation of seeds, im-plements , and animals as needed - as well as collection of taxes , and the pur-c h as e of c ro p s s ub je ct t o s ta te m o n o p o l i e ~ . ~ ~ax es were unified but no t neces-sarily reduced, and the old intermediate structure, a lready partly bypassed,was eliminated.During 1814 the m ultazims were allowed to collect the harvest on th eir usyalands, although they found that the p easants had heard of the confiscations andnow resisted the corvee. The bureau charged with reviewing ahli waqfs re-quired their holders to present their deeds with supporting statements. Thosewith titles verified after the Ottom an re con que st of 1801were to be taxed at halfrate . W aqfs assigned t o charitable works w ere incorpo rated into vil lage landsand tax ed a c c ~ r d i n g l y . ~ ~he rigorous proced ure of verif ication no d ou bt w asdesigned to bring the maximum amount of land under government control.I t appears that many of M uhammad Ali 's mercen aries and their wives hadacquired iltiziims by 1 8 1 5 .Their confiscation that y ear, and an attemp t to intro-du ce Eu ropean-style dril l , caused several units in Cairo to mutiny and t o r iot .As o ne result , many of these m ultazims w ere allowed to retain their iisya lands,but without any of the old r ights to corvee labor to farm them.*l These and


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Origins of Prit~~ltewnership o f Lund in Egypt 259othe r multazims were promised a pension in compen sation for their lost lands,but i t was smaller than expected and slow in coming. Us ya lands were to be taxfree, yet Amin Sam i's account of the 181711818 udget show s these being taxedat the full rate. Finally, in the case of all lands retained by the old interme-diaries, they found that their holdings had shrunk d ue to the new, smaller fed-dan employed in the survey.82Helen Rivlin has noted the similarity of Muhammad Ali's reorganization toprevious plans for reform. "T he revolution in Egyp tian land tenu re, envisionedin part by Selim 111, Napo leon, and Menou," she writes, "had been exec utedby Muhammad Ali . . . ."""n fact , this wa s mo re a resu rrec tion of the Ot to-man land system originally established in E gypt. Th at system had also been de-signed to maximize the f low of revenue to the capital . I t had also con sisted ofan administrative structure of salaried officials who collected taxes and over-s a w i r r i g a t i o n a n d c ~ l t i v a t i o n . ~ ~ttoman attempts to reverse the process ofloosening central control in various pro vinces during the sev enteenth and eigh-teenth c entu ries had aimed at curtailing if not abolishing tax farming, to returnto something l ike the original system . But the O ttomans lacked the strength tocarry this reform through. Instead they w ere forced to seek the su pport of thesame elements who had usurped state authority ov er the land, in their efforts tosup pres s the M amluk beys. Only vestiges of the original Ottom an land sys temsurvived in Eg ypt by the late eighteenth centu ry, but th e scribes who collabo-rated with the French undoubtedly drew inspiration from that system inhelping the French devise their "new" system .Muhammad Ali's administrative centralization was revolutionary in that itcomp letely altered the stru cture of political pow er in Eg ypt. T he notion th at inits method s i t was som ething fundamentally new o r Europ ean-inspired, how -ever, should be discarded. I t was bu t a phase in the recurring pattern of a cen-tral authority 's struggle with local rivals for con trol of the land re ven ues of th ecountry.

Agrarian policy under Muhammad Ali was part of a program of economicexp ansio n in all sphe res. At the sa me time , financial straits resulting from cam -paigns, diplomatic crises, and fluctuations in international m arkets added to thepressure on the agricultural secto r, a lways the chief sourc e of revenues.The relationship of s tate commerce and industry to agriculture cannot beoverem phasized. Muham mad A li 's t ightening of control ov er the land followedand complimented his control of commerce. He acquired control of Cairo'scustoms in I 805, and the M editerranean ports ' customs in I 807, with the additionof these cit ies to his domain. The development of the state as a commercialenterprise is symbolized by th e caree r of Boghos Yusufian of Izmir, a m emberof one of the era's far-flung Armenian merchant families. In Muhammad Ali'sservice he rose from m erchant and farm er of Alexandria 's customs to "minis-ter ' ' of com me rce and foreign affairs by the mid 182os, in st ep with the dev elop -m en t of E gy ptia n st at e a d m i n i ~ t r a t i o n . ~ ~


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260 Kenne th M . CunoTh e Pasha himself brought to E gypt a conside rable knowledge of the ea sternMe diterranean's co mm erce and polit ics. A s one who com bined the roles of sol-

die r and m erch ant in Cavalla, Mac edo nia, he was typical of his times.86Once incontrol of Egy pt, he set about organizing state and parastatal commerce a s op-portunity permitted. Egypt's Mediterranean fleet was from the beginning ame rchan t fleet, the acquisition of large warships dating from the G reek revolt of1821.87 By patronizing a group of Arm enian, Gre ek, Syrian, Maghribi , and localmerchants, Muhammad Ali received important financial services, and tied intoa network of comm ercial and diplomatic intelligence." Before "modern" sta tebanking and diplomatic structures appeared, then, their functions were beingperformed by such associates. T he f low of information permitted the Pasha tomanipulate ex ports and exp ort pr ices to his advantage, and t o devise policies-including agrarian policies - in light of international conditions.Nonm ili tary industr ial projects were undertaken with just such knowledge ofpast and contemporary economic t rends. S ta te effor ts to develop E gypt 's tex-t ile industr ies led to , the introduction of ser iculture and the e xpansion of cotto nand indigo productio n. Th is entailed the d eepening of old cana ls and the diggingof new o nes for summe r irrigation, eve n before the discovery of "Jumel" long-f iber cotto n. A ccording to Mustafa Fahm y's f igures, of the total cotton-proc-essing capacity instal led (not accounting for replace ment) , 49 percent of thecards , 22 percent of the mule jennies, and 57 percent of Egypt 's looms were setup in 1817- 1821 . Five of nine bleaching w orks an d the o nly tw o printing wo rkswere a lso est ab li shed befo re 1821 , the firs t yea r o f Jumel p r o d u ~ t i o n . ~ ~ll ofthis indicates an early intent to modernize and expand cotton texti le produc-t ion.Food crops and other tradit ional crops such as f lax and oil seeds remainedimportant for internal consumption, industry, and export . In addit ion, largenew tracts of ol ives and vines were planted, opium culture was revived, andmerino sheep were imported to supply a new woolen industry. Skil ledforeigners w ere employed to establish o r improve the production of si lk, in-digo, and opium .g0Land was granted tax f ree , as r izyu bi-lu mu/, to those w howould plant ei ther acacia trees o r horticultural garde ns along the new Ma hmu -diyya Canal . Acacias produced a hardwood used in construction. Tax exemp-tions o n date palms were similar ly intend ed to enc ourage their cultivation. Ex-periments were also made in acclimatizing coffee, cochineal , and teak, butw e r e d i ~ a p p o i n t i n g . ~ 'A variety of sou rces contain est imates and off icial accou nts of the a rea of landunder cult ivat ion, or taxed , in this period. M ost reliable ac cou nts for the period1800-1850 indicate that the total cu lt ivated area wa s betwee n 3 and 4 millionfadda ns (see table I ) . All eviden ce points to increasing are as of land culti-vated during this period. Th ree projects which ex tended the are a of cult ivat ionwere com pleted by 1820: the M ahm udiyya C anal , running from the R osettabranch of the Nile to Alexandria, the repair of the sea dike near Alexandria,and the reclamation of the Wadi Tum aylat for sericu lture, which alone involvedthe construction of I ,000 saqiyas waterwheel^).^^Ho w did the agrarian and land tenure systems evolve in this period? Once the


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Origins o f Privute Ownership of Land in Egypt 261T A B L E I Accounts of Egypt ' s cu l t iva ted and taxed land, 1880- 1952~

TaxedLower Egypt Upper Egypt Total "Cultivated" "Cultivable"

a In 1,000s of faddans. Cf. Patrick O'Brien, "The Long-Term Growth of Agricultural Product ionin Egypt," in P. M. Holt , ed ., P ol i t i c a land Soc ia lCh ange in M ode rn Egy p t (Oxford, 1968), p. 172,table.Sourc e s :1800: Pierre Jacotin, "Tableau de la superficie de I'Egypt," Descript ion de I 'Egypte , Eratm o d e r n e , XVIII, 2, pp. 102-105. Note that by Jacotin's method, his figures are subject to a largedegree of error, after any inaccuracies in the preparation of the French maps of Egypt. The figuresused here have been modified by Helen Rivlin to equal "new" faddans (The Agricultural Po licy o fMuhammad Al i in Egypt [Cambridge, Mass ., 19611, p. 265).1813 ( I ) :Omar Toussoun, Lri G kograph ie d e I 'Egy p te ir I' i p o q u e A r a b e , Memoires de la SocieteRoyale de Geographie d'Egypte , VIII, 3 (Cairo, 1928), p. 508.

1813 (2): Yacoub Artin, La PropriP t i fonciPre en Eg ypte (Cairo, 1883), p. 325.1813 (3): Idem, "Essai sur les causes de rencherissement de la vie materielle au Caire dans lecourant du XlXe siecle," Mem oires presen tees a I 'lns ti tut Egyp t ien , V, 2 (Cairo, 1907), 67.181511816:Ali Barakat, Tatawwur al -Milkiyya 01-Zira' iyya fi Misr wa Atharuh 'old 01-Harakaa / - S i y d s i y y a 1813-1914 (Cairo, 1977). pp. 26-28. See also n. 103.181711818:Sami, T a q w i m a l - N i l , 11, 266-270.18~011821:arakat, T a f a w w u r a / - M i l k i y y a , pp. 26-28.1822: Sami, Taqn, im 01-Ni l , 11, 298-302. The increase for Upper Egypt is due at least in part tothe extension of the land tax to areas where previously only trees and water lifting devices weretaxed.1835: John Bowring, "Report on Egypt and Candia," P ar l iame n tary P ape rs 1840, XXI, as citedin O'Brien, "Long-Term Growth of Agricultural Production," p. 172.1830s: A. B. Clot, Apercu gPnPral sur I'Egypte (2 vols.; Paris, 1840), 11, 264-265.

1840: Artin, "Essai," p. 68.1843: de Regny, Stat i s t ique de I 'Egypte (Alexandria, 1870), as cited in O'Brien, "Long-TermGrowth of Agricultural Production," p. 172.

1852: Butros Ghali, "Rapport presente a la commission d'enqukte de I'impbt foncier en 1880,"cited in Artin, "Essai," p. 68, for the area taxed. The area cultivated is Artin's own figure.


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262 Kenneth M . Clrnocadaster of 1813-1814 had been completed, and with a pattern of extensivestate involvement in commerce and industry taking shape, pivotal changes inthe agrarian regime were a short and complimentary step. In 1816, state mo-nopolies were extended: the fallahin were forbidden to sell their harvests ofhemp, sesame, indigo, cotton, wheat, beans, and barley to anyone but govern-ment agents. These were taken to government warehouses in each village,bought at a fixed price, and credited to each peasant's account after deductionsof taxes. The rice monopoly continued along the lines previously set.g"

That year the state also entered directly into production - planting and culti-vation - as evidenced by an order to the mudirs to see to the doubling of thearea devoted to hemp, chick-peas, sesame, and cotton, although the order wasunevenly enforced. Scribes were charged with keeping track of crops on thestalk, and were to follow them through each stage of cultivation - not becausethe fallahin needed instruction but to thwart the thievery which was their re-sponse to the new controls. This system was continued through the late 1830s,although the internal trade in grain was freed in 1 8 3 0 . ~ ~

Land tenure in this period took several forms, with different motives andconsequences. State policy was influenced by a desire to increase production,to take from it the maximum surplus possible, but also to insure the loyalty ofbureaucratic and military cadres. It was not Muhammad Ali's policy to rewardhis followers' services with land: ". . . j'en ai trouve le moyen en leur pro-diguant l'argent et les presents, mais en les empkchant de devenir proprietaireset de se creer eux-mCmes une influence personelle sur la p o p ~ l a t i o n . " ~ ~

Yet a certain amount of land was alienated. The contradictory aspect of landgrants to individuals in a period of increased central control of the land againhighlights the compromises necessary to offset opposition to the new order andto attach indispensable elements to it. And the state could confidently grantlimited amounts of land as long as it was capable of dictating the terms of landtenure. This, of course, in no way contradicts the thesis that many grants in thisperiod were also aimed at encouraging agricultural investment, experimenta-tion, and land reclamation.

Grants of rizqa bi-15 mril were offered from 1827. Much of the area along theMahmudiyya Canal had lost population, and cultivation there had declined dur-ing the previous century. The capital required to set up waterwheels and planttrees means that these grants must have gone to wealthier individuals.

Uncultivated land, surveyed in the cadasters but not included in the tax reg-isters (hence the term i h 'ud i yya , "set apart") was granted under two differentsets of circumstances. One type was granted to individuals who would bringthem into production. They were given a deed entitling them to lifetime tenure,although the land was to revert to the state upon their death. The first suchgrant occurred in 1826: they appear to have been granted both as tax exempt forlife and tax exempt for the first few years. They were undertaken by officials,officers, and foreigners, the latter forfeiting any capitulatory privileges. By1837, these lands came to 103,175 addans, and by 1848, to 164,960 faddans,nearly exclusively in Middle Egypt. In the registers inspected by Ali Barakat,nearly all recipients of these grants occupied high administrative or military po-


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Origin.\ of Pri1,atc. Owlnrrs hip of Lrrnd in Egypt 263~ i t i o n s . ~ ~small amount of cult ivated, ma'mur, land was also granted: 8,703f eddans be tw e e n 1827 a nd 1 8 4 8 . ~ ~Bedou in pastoralists w ere also gran ted land s classified a s ib'fidiyya, a s an in-ducement to sett l ing, on condition that they cult ivate them. But these tr ibesoften found it more conven ient to sub let to tenants . Decrees in 1837, 1846, andlater prohibited this practice. Bedouin ib'fidiyya grants involved no title deed,but only the Pasha 's promise not to tax the bedouin directly, nor to subjectth em t o co rv ee o r c o n s ~ r i p t i o n . ~ ~y such arrangements these grants appear tohave been a kind of treaty: in return fo r their special s tatus, bedouin served asauxiliaries in the arm y. Their revolt and migration were p rovoked by A bb as 'sand Sa id ' s e f for ts to tax thei r l ands in the 1 8 5 0 s . ~ ~Personal esta tes held by me mb ers of th e ruling family cam e to be called jifliks(~ift l iks) . heir extent in this period is unknown, but i t was probably l imiteddu e to the alienation of revenues invo lved. Contemp orary so urces mention es-tates held by Muham mad Ali, for exam ple, at Sh ubr a, Ibrahim's e state on RtidaIsland, and others.loOThese early estates d o not app ear in the registers of j i-fliks, all dating from 1838, which Bara kat examined (discu ssed in the followingsection). In th e case of the early personal esta tes and the new jifl iks grantedfrom 1838, the principle of land given a m em ber of the ruling family is the sa m e.But the later grants w ere part of a s trategy of continuing state control of agricul-ture in the wake of the Treaty of Balta Liman the same year. The different cir-cumstances and intent of the new jifliks account for the separate registers.While Muhammad Ali's reorganization had established a salaried bureau-cracy in the countryside, state administration at the village level continued tobe carried o ut by prom inent villagers much as it had un der the old regime. Vil-lage shayk hs were appointed from amon g the wealthier families as before. N ota few such families must have held the office und er the beys. lol Und er M uham -mad Ali, the village shay khs received gran ts of tax-free land , masmiih, in lieu ofsalaries. Grants of masmiih were made in Upp er Egyp t a s early as 1813.12 Th ecada ster of Lo wer Egy pt was not com pleted until 1814 , and w hether masmiihland s were granted the re at the time is unc ertain. Jaba rti first mentions masmiihin reference to th e cadaster of I 820- I 82 I .lo"Tw o types of masmiih were granted, masmuh u l-m ash eik h and masmuhal-mastuba. The former was intended as compensation for official duties ex-plained below. T he latter , sometimes assigned to the sam e individual, was tosupport the costs of visitors' and officials ' lodging and board. Most shaykhsreceived fou r to five faddans of land a s masmiih out of every 105 fadd ans ofma 'mur land be longing to the vi llage . The most prom inent shay khs , or muqad -di m s, received 10 faddans out of every I O O faddans of ma'miir in the village.lo4Differing local con dition s and t he d ifferent periodicity and mo des of fiscal andadministrative reorganization, however, preclude an assumption of completeuniformity in this system's application. The quality of the masmiih lands theshaykh s received, andlor their activit ies in improving the m , caused these land sto be assessed at the highest rates in the vil lages when Said taxed them in1857.15In addition to their acquisition of the se lands, the shay kh s, their families and


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264 Kenne t h M . Cunoproteges continued to be in a position to amass wealth and accumulate addi-tional land, despite the more stringent supervision of land registration and ex-ploitation than before. With the increased involvement of the state in produc-tion, the shaykhs' power increased. They were made responsible for assessingand collecting taxes (as in the past), for reassigning athar land on a fallah'sdeath or conscription, for apportioning corvee duty, and for assigning the culti-vation of cash crops among the fallahin once the quota to be grown had beenfixed.lo6The shaykhs' abuse of their role in reassigning lands is said to have ledSaid to transfer this function to the provincial governments in 1854.17 t wasthese families, the wealthy peasantry, whose members were recruited when thelower provincial offices were opened to native Egyptians in the 1 8 3 0 s . ~ ~ ~a-mont reports that one such official who rose in the provincial administration ofTanta held some 500 to 600 faddans of ib'fidiyya land in 1839. It was found that300 faddans of this land had been "stolen" from one of Abbas Pasha's jifliksseveral years earlier.logWhether a victim of political intrigue, a real villain, orboth, this fallah's career indicates the scale of wealth that a few of the rural elitecould reach.

In 1837, noting that there were many landless fallahin in the villages whoworked as day laborers, Duhamel observed that ". . .il n'est pas rare detrouver des Sceiks, qui possedent. . .mille et plus de feddans. . . ." of atharland.l1 This was an exaggeration in terms of the typical amount of land held,but further testifies to the existence of a distinct stratum of wealthy peasantswhich, despite the changes in the land regime, was able to maintain and evenimprove its position.

How did the condition of the peasantry change in this period? To say thatunder the Mamluk beys the peasants were sheltered from direct contact withthe state, implying that this made life easier for them,"' is to misunderstand thenature of the old and new regimes. Both exploited the peasantry. Under both apeasant family's ability to withstand the burdens imposed and/or to shift themonto others' shoulders was a matter of relative strength. The weak, poor, andunprotected fared the worst in face of the state and the rural elite in both peri-ods. One rough indicator of overall conditions in this period is an upturn in pop-ulation. "Civil order," in the opinion of a recent writer, accounts for loweredmortality.l12 On the other hand, the gains made by wealthy peasants could onlyhave come at their poorer neighbors' expense. In addition, peasants were ex-propriated in the creation of large estates in the 1840s, and reduced there towage laborers and tenants.

The new regime did affect the fallah's life more directly in many ways, withthe introduction of conscription, the organization of corvee labor for distantprojects, the relocation of population on reclaimed land, and the control of agri-culture and village industries. Taxation increased and was more effectively en-forced. But these new demands did not go without resistance. The later yearsof Jabarti's chronicle contain references to black marketing and strenuous ef-forts to suppress it.l13 Resistance to increasing demands on the populace tookthe form of indifferent work or sabotage in factories and on the farms, and self-mutilization, endemic stealing, or outright revolt.l14


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Orig ins of P r i l ~ i t r wn t. r. c.hip o f L an d in E gy p t 265Revolt occurs less from absolutely intolerable conditions than from con di-t ions perceived to be intolerable - th at is , one 's condition and response to i t arematters of subjective appraisal. Adequately fed peasa nts w ho have recently im-proved their lot or have something to gain are more l ikely to revolt than tho sewho a re completely ground down.l15 Th e great peasant revolts of Upp er E gyptand the on e in S harqiyya occurred in areas which h ad enjoyed a quasi-auton -omy a generation earlier . Th ese revolts followed the m ore thorough cad aster of1820- 1821and an increase in rural taxation , and w ere set off by the beginningof conscription.

T H E G R O W T H A N D E N T R E N C H M E N T O F P R I V I L E G E DL A N D H O L D I N G S F R O M 1838

The landholding system as i t developed between the f irs t cadaster and thelate 1830s wa s not uniform in regard t o the principle of ow nersh ip, but r ath er itreflected the priorities of the state: to increase production, both to fuel theeconom y an d provide reven ues, and to provide for and conciliate certain ele-ments indispensable to maintaining the state . The bulk of vil lage lands weretaxed and administered directly through the bureaucracy in cooperation withprominent vil lage families. Ex em pt from taxation w ere the masmuh lands in thehands of the shaykhs, bedouin ib'adiyya grants, rizqa bi-15 ma1 and ib'adiyyagrants belonging to officers, officials, and other wealthy individuals, and theperso nal e stat es of royal family m em bers an d a few high officers and officials.As long as the sta te created by Muham mad Ali remained strong it could resistany pressure to remove these lands from its ult imate control. Once created,however, the new bureaucratic machinery was potentially at the disposal oflanded interests , should they gain control ov er i t .Th e changes in Egypt 's land regime during Muham mad Ali's f inal deca de re-flect the w eakening of the state due t o the defeat in Syria (1840) and the imposi-t ion of free trade according to the provisions of the Treaty of Balta Liman(1838). T he stat e had also been we aken ed by a fiscal crisis.Th e increasing dem ands of capital investmen t, a growing military establish-ment and co nstan t wars, a long with a far from perfect bureaucracy , epidem ics,and a capricious Nile, had caused many villages to fall into tax arre ars by thistime.l16 Agriculture and the land tax accounted for the lion's share of revenueand had to be m aintained. At f irs t , a short- l ived attempt was made to m erge theresponsibilities of villages in a rrea rs with th ose still able to meet their obliga-tions.l17 Finally in 1840, a dec ree w as issued wh ich in esse nc e resurrecte d theiltizam system of old, in the form of ' u h d a grants: high officers, officials, andfamily mem bers w ere required t o take ove r responsibil ity for the bankru pt vil-lages, paying the arrears , and collecting and forwarding each year 's taxes

thereafter . They w ere charged with providing working capital as needed by thefallahin, with supervising cultivation an d h arvesting, and were t o act a s localarbiters, replacing the middle level of state bureaucracy in these capacities.The creation of the 'uhdas accomplished a forced contribution from thewealthy with the paym ent of the arrears , and was designed to insure future rev-


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enues, while at the same time cutt ing administrative costs . Peasants on the'uhd as were also thereby relieved of the accumulation of tax arrea rs . The recip-ients of these grants , the mutu 'uhh ids, received a section of land in each 'uhd ato cultivate for their o wn profit.lIsFollowing the Treaty of Balta Liman and the de feat in S yria , an accelerationof jiflik g rants also took p lace, and th ese ar e said to h ave included the best cot-ton lands in the c o ~ n t r y . " ~ uhammad Ali h imsel f acquired mos t of these ,239 ,426 of a total of 334,216 fad da ns grante d betw een 1838 and 1846. Nearly allthe new jifliks created were in L ow er Egyp t.Iz0Ad min istration of the new jiflikswas patterned after the bureaucratic regime previously established o ver the en -tire cou ntry, and all peasants on these estates were redu ced to tenancy o r wagelabor.I2l

Both the 'uhdas and new jif l iks enabled Muhammad Ali to circumvent theintent of Balta Liman tariffs, which would henceforth prevent use of the cus-toms to control the imp ort-export trade, o r the use of trade monopolies to ma-nipulate comm odity prices. No w that these o ptions were closed, the Pasha re-treated into the sphere of production in order to maintain the monopoly ofcomm odities in a new form. A s evidence of this he acquired by far the largestam ou nt of his new jifliks in 184 1- 184 5, only on e jiflik grant in this period goingto someone else.122Peasants on 'uhd as a lso were expropria ted. Th e muta 'ahhids were requiredto take ov er athar lands which desti tute peasants lacked th e mean s to cult ivate,with the st ipulation that a s their condition improved th ese peasants would re-gain direct responsibility for their lands step by step.123 t app ear s in fact th atlittle effort was made to improve the fallahin's lot. Th e pressure on m uta'ahh idsto meet tax p aymen ts worked against this in any ev ent, and m any fallahin onthese estates found themselves reduced to tenancy. Barakat found that of the'uh da s held by the royal family in 1846- 1847, only 99,301 of a total of 228,461feddans were recorded as remaining in peasant hands. '24Th e apparent lack of resistance to these changes in their s tatus may reflectthe truly d espe rate straits of peas ants o n 'uhd a and jifl ik lands, in which relieffrom tax arrears and a continued guaranteed l ivelihood as tena nts and laborerswould seem to them an improv ement. But this rather tranquil picture may a lsoreflect the inadequ acy of ou r sources in showing the peasants ' respo nse.In addition to the o bvious f iscal mo tivations, the pattern of land grants in the1840s may also reflect court factionalism, which becam e m ore pron ounced , anda desire to attach the political elite more firmly to the Pasha, in light of thisdivision. N ew jif lik grants are recorded for the Pasha 's two dau ghters , anephew, sons Said and Halim, and grandson Abbas, but none for Tbrahim.lZ5While the aim of encouraging investm ent was never abse nt from policy , Iz6 heextension of ib'iidiyya holders' rights may also have been a political conce ssionto the m. Th ese lands had b een made inheritable in 1836; in 1842, full rights ofdisposit ion over them were granted. lZ7Aside from ib'iidiyya lands an d th e new jifliks, furt he r forfeiture of con trol ofthe land was avoided. No rights of disposal were given the muta 'ahhids. Thelaw of 1846 codified som e of the fallahin's traditional rights o ve r their land -including its tran sfer - and may hav e been intended in part as a counterpoise t o


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Orig ins of P r i ~ ~ u t c .wnc.r.ship of L un d in E g ~ p t 267the mu ta'ahhid's pow er. By reaff irming the fal lah's r ight to return to at ha r landhe had abandoned i t appears designed to lure back fugit ives, and i t dovetailswith the intent that desti tute pea sants we re to take back land taken o ve r by themuta 'ahhids as soon a s they w ere able .lZ8This blend of old and new arran gem ents indicates that while the adm inistra-t ion of land tenure w as adjusted to m eet new exigen cies , the aims of policy re-mained essentially as before: maximization of production and reven ue withtight s ta te control ove r the land . Although the genesis of the land regime of thenext generation - with its large estates - i s appa rent here , such w as not the in-tent. If the state had been able to maintain its policies and to regain sufficientauthori ty over the landholders i t had created, then landholding in Egypt af termid-century would have evolved differently from the way in which it actuallyd id .

U N R E S O L V E D C O N T R A D I C T I O N SThe fu rthe r legislation of formal lan dow nership r ights in nineteen th-centuryEgy pt resulted not only from the tend ency of larger landho lders to take an d askfor more, but also from rulers ' efforts to resolve a basic contradiction in thevery proc ess of s tate formation . I t was the same dilemma faced earl ier by O tto-man reform ers and their local rivals in Cairo. Maxim ization of revenue w as the

sine qu a non of building and m aintaining a s trong stat e, whether o ne considersOttom an policy o r the efforts of local s trongmen attemp ting to build suc cess orstates . This requirement l ies behind the variety of f iscal reform schemes theperiod witnesse d, and i t tended to push policy in the direction of adm inistrat ivecentral ization, the el imination of tax-farming middlemen, and t ighter , m ore di-rect control of the land. The same pr inciple appl ied to com me rce, as expre ssedin s ta te policy in regard to appaltos and tax farms of the cu stom s. Th us adm in-istrative and fiscal reform wen t hand in hand with "military reform," the cre a-t ion of forces capable of dominating the countryside and of el iminating inde-pendent focuses of power .On the other hand, the process of reviving a s tate or of building one anewalso required the collaboration of indispensable elements in the society: villagesha ykh s, merc hants , bureau crats , off icers, and so on , many if not all of whomheld lands and lor tax-farming offices . T o the exte nt that the s tate had to rely o ntheir suppo rt i t could not afford to confiscate o r tighten con trol over their land-holdings, m ercantile activities, o r offices - at least not without significant con-cess ions and exempt ions . But to the extent that revenues were needed, theruler was draw n in this direction, into direct confrontation with landed interestsin particular.Egyp t 's rulers sough t to resolve this dilemm a in two w ays . On e was to estab-

l ish military dom inance in the c oun trysid e, and then to al low s upp orter s andcollaborators to establish them selves, o r remain, as landlords. But this s trategysimply reprodu ced the contradiction in a new form , postponing i ts resolution.Thus under Ali Bey and his successors , and in Muhammad Ali 's early years ,such a policy was accompanied by increased tax pressure on the landholders .


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268 Kenne th M . ClrnoSimilarly, we read of the seemingly erratic behavior of rulers who alternately"favored" a merchan t group and subjected them to degrees of extortion.129

Th e second way ou t was mili tary exp ansion. I t is not proposed here that thisis the on ly factor behind exp ansio n. B ut successful con qu est might help fill thestate 's coffers in the sho rt run through boo ty, and in the long run through co n-trol of trade routes and the exploitation of imperial possessions, the latter re-lieving - at least temporarily - the pressure to ra ise grea ter revenues a t hom e.Th e role of different rulers ' merchan t allies in E gypt 's expansion thus d eserv esattention. They knew the regions worth conquering and exploit ing, they pos-sessed the ex pertise with which t o milk the m, and they had an interest in reliev-ing pressure on themselves at home and in trading in conquered terri toriesunder s ta te patronage.I3O Ex pan sion also involved - and could pay for - an ex-panded military, which would enhance the ruler 's ability to apply coercion athome.Conquest, however, was a r isky affair . The returns were potentially great,but only if conquered terri tory could be held and adm inistered without m ajorcos t .Th us the P owers ' intervention in 1840 to confine Muham mad Ali's forces toEgypt takes on an added dimension of importance. This event has been s een asconfirming the region's m ovem ent along the road to econ omic depend ence andunderdev elopmen t. The substantial truth of this proposit ion, should not, how -eve r, be allowed to ob scure the importance of sociopolitical processes withinEgyp t which reinforced this trend. Efforts to retain co ntrol of the land an d o b-struct free trade after 1840 indicate that Egy pt 's rulers had no t given up thegame. Administrative reform, education , exp loration for minerals , and the irr i-gation works - that is , the creation of a modern state -con tinue d under A bbasand Said. As b efore, such activit ies were intended t o meet the requ irements ofcontem porary conditions and w ere su bject to the shift ing strength of the rulersand different polit ical factions. Both Abb as and Said sought to conso lidate theirposit ions, to increase the state 's control of the land, and to raise revenues.Reminiscent of Muhammad Ali , Abbas confiscated from two-thirds to three-quar ters of the 'uhdas for nonpayment of taxes , and a t tempted to tax bedouinib'adiyya lands. He was also accused of attempting to recreate MuhammadAli's monopolies.131Yet by th e late 1840s the s tate had lost its ability t o milk com mer ce throu ghthe customs, i ts army had been reduced, and future mili tary expansion wasruled out except in the direction of Africa. Such constraints limited the inde-penden t maneuverabili ty of E gyp t 's rulers and enhan ced the relative power ofindigenous political interests , as reflected in the ov biou s use of land grants fo rp o l i t i c a l ~ a t r 0 n a g e . I ~ ~hese group s in turn sought to consolidate their posit ionsa s landho lders, from me mb ers of the ruling family and high officials at the t opto the rural elite which increasingly rose in the middle levels of the bureau-cracy . The value attached to land increased, especially in the 1850s, the resultof the irrigation w orks and rising export prices for cotto n and grain.133A s oneindication of the wealthy land hold ers' increased leverage o n the state , the rightof fallahin to return to ath ar land they had abando ned w as reduced step by ste pin this deca de. Fu rthermore, the fallahin's ab andon ment of land to the state for


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Origins of Prit'cl te Ownc~rship f Land in Egypt 269s al e t o inve stor s w a s f a ~ i1 i t a t e d . l~ ~oth measures were a signficant reversal oftraditional state policy which hastened the concentration of land in fewerhands .Among all grou ps able to influence sta te policy, th ere w as a direct interest infree trade and a mo re liberal definition of landholders' rights. Indeed , as B aerwrites, there was "a need . . . felt to facili ta te land transactions," but n ot, a she s ta te s , s imply " to encourage the deve lopment of a g r i ~ u l t u re . " '~ ~centuryearlier , de facto r ights of ownership had appeared in usage, the result of theipcreased value attached to land in a s i tuation where the state was unable tomaintain effective control o ve r i ts disposit ion. Agricultural developm ent inten-sified in the nineteenth century, but in a situation where the state 's authorityhad considerably increased and where many of the larger landholders them-selves were high sta te officials. Thu s the aren a where the struggle for land w asplayed out shifted to the state, and its results were expressed in legislation.New fiscal ne ed s, large tracts of land alienated by earlier grants, and the c on -tinued concealment of athar land from the tax registers led Said to take thewell-known measures of the 1850 s,which had th e effect of furthe r defining andstrengthening landholders' rights. H e imposed a mild tax , the ' u s hur , on jilflik,ib' iidiyya, and on the remaining 'uhda lands, but at the price of granting fullownership r ights to the ir h0 1d er s . l ~~ e succeeded in subjec ting bedouinib'iidiyya lands to the much h igher k h a r ~ jax, w hich required a series of expe-ditions to coe rce the tribes. M asmiih land s were sub jected to the khariij in 1857and assim ilated to village lands in 1858. But the sh ayk hs retained m ost of theirlocal prerogatives, including the duty to assess lands for taxation138- that is ,they remained able to protect what they held and acquire more - while tradi-t ional r ights of disposit ion ov er peasant lands were confirmed but not extendedto absolute private ownership.Th e legislation of 1854- 1858 reflects the asc en da nc y, once ag ain, of landedclasses in Egypt, able to influence land-tenure policy in their own interests.These classes were to prove more powerful and enduring than their counter-parts of the eighteenth cen tury . Th ey w ere able to pros per, the more powerfulgaining formal ownership r ights ov er large estates in exchange for ex tremelylow rates of t a ~ a t i 0 n . l ~ ~his, and Egypt 's lack of control over customs rates,meant that the full weight of the st ate 's increasing fiscal need s was bo rn by thesmall peasantry. Despite the increased exploitation of the peasantry, s tate ex-penditures ou tstr ipped revenues. Said and Ismail were obliged t o look outsideof Egypt for f inancing, to the point of heavy borrowing and eventualbankruptcy.U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , L OS A N G E L E S

N O T E SA u t h o r' s N o t e : I wish t o thank Dr. Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot and Y ahya Sad owski for theirmany helpful s uggestions and criticisms during the succ ess ive drafts o f this paper.' Se a Gabriel Baer, "The Deve lopmen t of Private Ow nership of the Land ," in his Studies in the

Sociul History of M ode rn Egypt (Chicago, 1969);and idem, A His to ry o f lan d o wn er sh ip in M o d e r nEgypt 1800-1950 (Oxford, 1962).


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For a more extensive discussion of modernization theory and its inadequacies, see Samuel P.Huntington, "The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics," C o m p a r a t i v ePol i t ics , 3, 3 (April 1971),283-322. A statement of the theory and its application in an Egyptiancontext is foundin Robert Tignor, Modern iza t ion an d Br it ish C olonia l Rule in Egypt 1880-1914(Princeton, 1966). Writers of this school have differed over whether a change in values is primary,or whether technological change first produces the necessary change from traditional t o modernvalues. See, e.g., Manfred Halpern, The Pol i t ics o j Socia l Cha ng

cuno private land

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