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“One of the most spectacular lawsuits ever launched”: Abdülhamid's heirs, his lands and the land case in Palestine, 1908-1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Ruth Kark  and
Seth J. Frantzman
Ruth Kark
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, mskark@mscc.huji.ac.il
Seth J. Frantzman
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sfrantzman@hotmail.com
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Abstract

This paper is a sequel to Fischel and Kark's study on the private lands owned by Sultan Abdülhamid II (1842-1918, ruled 1876-1909) in Palestine and analyzes their fate after his forced abdication. In particular, we examine the court cases that arose around these lands, cases which were initiated by his heirs after 1920. For 28 years the heirs, led by his eldest son, Mohammad Selim and his daughter Amina Namika, approached half a dozen governments in the Middle East and Europe to regain the properties they claimed. The appeals represented a test of the British colonial legal system as well as issues of land settlement and the role of foreign courts in interpreting Turkish and Ottoman law. We furthermore examine the disposition of the sultan's lands from his abdication in 1909 to the last attempts by his heirs to recover them from the State of Israel in 1950, the general context of his lands in the Middle East as a whole, and the legal precedent set by the Mandatory Palestine court cases.

Keywords

Abdülhamid II properties & heirsPalestineLand LawMuḥarraqa
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 42 , Spring 2010 , pp. 127 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2010

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