New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East

Land was the major economic resource in the pre-modern Middle East. Questions of ownership, of access, of management and of control occupied a central role in administration, in law, and in rural practice over many centuries. And changes in land regimes, such as those which took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were bound to have significant repercussions at all levels of society.

Nevertheless, the subject of land and property relations is still not we…