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Posted on: December 11, 2023 at 10:42:05 CT

From the time of the Romans to the nineteenth century, the land tenure and land cultivation systems in Palestine had two main features: first, there were no laws or regulations on the management and cultivation of land in Palestine that were not completely out of date and, secondly, the big landowners owned nearly all the land. Most of the big landowners belonged to the privileged upper class (the "nobles") who generally lived away from their land; that is to say, they were absentee landlords whose agricultural land was cultivated by the fellahin for a pittance. This system of tenant farming, known as fief under the Turkish occupation, became less frequent towards 1858, when the authorities of the Ottoman Empire decided to establish a land registry, the Defterkhané, 1/ the main effect of which was to improve the management of land in Palestine so as to make it more profitable. One of the characteristics of this period is the relatively high land taxes the fellahin had to pay the Ottoman government and the big landowners. Side by side with this system of land cultivation, there were others under which the land was managed by the community (Mash'a) and the Moslem religious institutions (waqf). A third type of land ownership – and one that assumed considerable importance under the British Mandate, was that of the common lands, which were considered to be public property and were administered by the Mandatory Power.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208638/#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20estimated%20that,big%20Arab%20landowners%20of%20Palestine.