2019 Volume 54 Pages 7-22
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.
