Securing Soil, Building Harmony: A Review of Malissa Taylor's Land and Legal Texts in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire.

"Land and Legal Texts in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire: Harmonization, Property Rights and Sovereignty" by Malissa Taylor is a book that examines the development of property rights in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The author challenges the notion that the kanunnames of Süleyman I represented the peak of the classical Ottoman land regime. Instead, Taylor argues that property rights in the mid-sixteenth century were shaped by the Ottoman state's efforts to control land and secure it for peasants. The book explores how land rights gradually extended to urban investors and military elites, as well as the theoretical foundations and spread of this process. The text also delves into the Kanunname of Candia and its role in resisting the institutionalization of the miri regime, with a focus on figures like Vani Mehmed Efendi and the Kad¿zadeli movement. However, the author notes that this resistance was limited to Candia and the Aegean islands, while the process of harmonizing sultanic and sharia law continued in other regions. The text further examines the development of land rights and the expansion of the harmony tradition in the eighteenth century, culminating in the 1858 Land Code. While the book is praised for its use of diverse sources and conceptual tools, some inconsistencies and omissions are also pointed out. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into Ottoman property rights and legal history. [Extracted from the article]