Scholar calls for ‘deeper’ use of Ottoman tax registers in Mamluk archaeology

AMMAN — The archaeology of the Mamluk period, as practised today, is a form of historical archaeology heavily informed by anthropological models, according to an American professor, who said that one methodological development of the last decade has been in the engagement with the written record.

The combination of written and material sources is the greatest challenge of any archaeology of historical periods, particularly so with the Mamluk period, which produced a wealth of texts, Professor Bethany Walker said, adding that many excavations and survey reports now include an explanation, however brief, of how historical sources are used.

“There has been a very gradual shift from dependence on texts for interpreting archaeological data to creating a dialogue between the two in ways that inform project design,” Walker said.

Because written sources and archaeological data answer different sets of questions about human behaviour and can differ in chronological scale of inquiry, they can and should be used in tandem to write a multi-faceted history of Mamluk societies, Walker emphasised.

"In short, one data set can inform the other. The challenge is to decide which kinds of sources are most appropriate to the subject at hand and to write a coherent, analytical narrative that uses them in complement with one another," Walker highlighted.

Walker added that archaeologists of the Mamluk period ("Middle Islamic" period in archaeological terminology) have generally relied on written sources that are geographically and chronologically useful and readily available in print form (and frequently translated into European languages).

Narrative sources (primarily chronicles and geographies) and administrative manuals help identify sites and provide a historical framework for their physical development. When used responsibly, such sources, in combination with archaeological evidence, can produce a rich narrative of Mamluk history.

"What has been largely missing is an engagement with contemporary documentary sources. One notable exception is the early Ottoman tax registers (singular, daftar-i mufassal) of the ninth/sixteenth century."

"During the first century of Ottoman rule in Syria, many elements of the Mamluks' administration in the region were retained, including the general administrative structure, some personnel, and many of the larger landed endowments [waqf],”Walker noted.

The registers document anticipated income from taxable commodities, though not actual taxes collected, and describe in some detail the status of rural property, whether a settled village (qaryah), a village formerly settled but now abandoned (kharāb), a piece of cultivated land (such as a garden, qiṭʿah), or a tract of cultivated land not associated with a village (mazraʿah).

Tax-liable commodities (summer crops, winter crops, livestock, processed agricultural goods and animal by-products such as honey, endowments) are listed along with their estimated revenues, Walker elaborated.

Specific references to land tenure and use, along with incidental information, such as how a plot of land was acquired and what its access was to water, are occasionally included. The registers, moreover, are organised according to tax districts, yielding important details on the administrative structure of the region. The registers of 1534, 1538–39, 1551–52 and 1596–97 are preserved in manuscript form, and from these several segments have been published for Palestine and Jordan. The majority of the publications are in Turkish with Arabic summary and commentary; the most widely cited one, though, is in English.

"Unfortunately, these sources have not been used as fully as they could be: The general trend has been to look up an individual site name and determine whether the place was inhabited and its land continued to be cultivated after Ottoman annexation. The registers, however, yield much more important place-specific data than this," Walker observed.

She added that the estimated number of households in each location is included and the dhimmīs liable for the jizyah are mentioned in each entry of a qaryah.

Although the numbers are not reliable for population statistics, they do reflect the religious composition of villages, a demographic characteristic that is not readily recognisable in the archaeological record. The registers note, though inconsistently, abandoned villages, the location of roads and waterways, and the existence of facilities such as mills.

"Their potential for studying environmental and land use has not been realised. Furthermore, because the Ottomans taxed many landed awqāf at a rate of 10 per cent, endowments made during Mamluk rule that were retained as such by the Ottoman state are also named in the registers," Walker explained.

She concluded that in many cases these are the only references we have to these local endowments of grain fields, orchards, and gardens, as they have not been thus far identified in Mamluk-era waqfīyāt or chronicles.

They attest to the continued economic viability of agricultural land in the region and provide invaluable data on cropping patterns during the transition from Mamluk to Ottoman rule; the value of this data has been largely overlooked, Walker emphasised.