Mamlūk Hanafis on the ijāra of iqtāʿ lands

Iqṭāʿ can be described in the most concise way as the assignment of the right on a real estate to individuals by the public authority. In the historical process, the term iqṭāʿ has different meanings such as transfer of the waste land's ownership to individuals, assignment of the tax on the land and assignment of the usufruct of the land possessed by the baytulmāl (public treasury). In the Mamluk period, iqṭāʿ mainly signified allocating a real estate belonging to the baytulmāl to the soldiers in such a way to generate income from it through agrarian contracts such ijāra, muzāraa and musāqāt. During the early Mamluk period a new legal discussion started in Damascus on the contracts on iqṭāʿ estates remaining on the agenda of jurists for a long time. The contributions of the jurists to this discussion provide important clues about their conceptions of law and legal production as well as the practice of iqṭāʿ during the period. In this study, which focused specifically on the Hanafī school, I will examine the Hanafi jurists' views on the iqtāʿ during the period in question, and thus shedding light on the structure of the "Mamluk Hanafism", and how they managed legal change. For this reason, in the first part, the historical process and characteristics of Mamluk Hanafism, in the second part, the historical process of iqtāʿ by considering its legal dimensions and Mamluk iqtāʿ practice and in the third chapter, the interpretations and evaluations of Mamluk Hanafis about land ownership and Mamluk iqtāʿ are examined.