Book Review
Wakako Kumakura. Chusei Ejiputo no Tochiseido to Nairukangai [NileIrrigation and Land System in Medieval Egypt] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku
Shuppankai, 2019). ISBN: 9784130261609. 304 pp. ¥9680 cloth.
Daisuke Igarashi
Waseda University(igarashidaisuke@waseda.jp)

From ancient to modern times, Egyptian society has been supported by irrigatedagriculture that took advantage of the Nile’s regular flood. In recent years, Egypt has
been attracting more attention as research into environmental history, focusing on therelationship between the environment and human society, gains prominence.1 The authorof this book, Wakako Kumakura, is a historian in this field who has published numerous
studies in both Japanese and English on the land and irrigation systems and agricultural
practices of Islamic Egypt. This book is based on her doctoral dissertation, submitted to
Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan, in 2011, with significant editorial revisions andupdated with her subsequent publications. This book has been highly acclaimed in Japanese
academic circles and received the Collegium Mediterranistarum Herend Prize 2020 and theJapan Consortium for Area Studies Award 2020.
The book covers the period of institutional transformation from the fifteenth to thesixteenth century, during which the iqṭāʿ system, the basic military and land system of theMamluk Sultanate of Egypt (1250–1517) declined and collapsed due to demographic changes
following the Black Death epidemic of the mid-fourteenth century. During the upheaval of
the iqṭāʿ system, the Circassian Mamluk regime (1382–1517), established by Sultan al-Ẓāhir
Barqūq was forced to remodel the military, financial, and administrative systems of thesultanate.2 In 1517, upon their conquest of Egypt, the Ottomans initially maintained theMamluk system of governance but gradually consolidated it into their own system. The
regime change from the Mamluks to the Ottomans has attracted much academic interestin recent years. Accordingly, this book examines, through a detailed review of historical
1. Nicolas Michel, “Recent Publications on the Environmental History of Egypt,” EGYLandscape Project,
Working Paper 3 (December 2020).
2. Daisuke Igarashi, Land Tenure, Fiscal Policy, and Imperial Power in Medieval Syro-Egypt (Chicago: Middle
East Documentation Center, University of Chicago, 2015).
© 2023 Daisuke Igarashi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, andonly so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.

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245 • Daisuke Igarashi
documents, the changes to the Mamluk land and Nile irrigation systems brought about by
the Ottomans. The sources consulted include Ottoman records in the National Archives
in Cairo, such as the Daftar jayshī (Military register), a land register, and the Dafātir
jusūr, a survey of irrigation dikes; al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya by Yaḥyā b. al-Jīʿān (d. 885/1480), a
Mamluk-era land survey; Ottoman-era laws and ordinances; and narrative sources, such as
geographies and chronicles, including manuscripts, from both dynasties.
The book is structured as follows:
Introduction: Toward a Continuous Understanding of the Transition of Rule

Part 1: Continuities and Discontinuities in the Administration of Records
Chapter 1: Establishment of the Daftar Jayshī
Chapter 2: From Dynasty to Dynasty: The Transfer of Land Records and Their Custodians
Chapter 3: Transferred Land Registers
Chapter 4: Rewritten Land Records

Part 2: Continuities and Discontinuities in Land Systems and Irrigation
Chapter 5: The Realities of Iqṭāʿ Holdings
Chapter 6: Irrigation and Its Maintenance
Chapter 7: Fayyum Villages in the First Year of Ottoman Rule
Chapter 8: The Establishment of the Ottoman Governance System and Changes in Water
Administration
Epilogue: Transformation of the Ruling System during the Period of Transition

The Introduction outlines the history of the land system in Egypt and presents the threeprincipal topics of the book: (1) the administration system of the records concerning theiqṭāʿ system, (2) the characteristics of the iqṭāʿ holders and form of the iqṭāʿ holdings during
the iqṭāʿ system’s transition, and (3) the irrigation system’s maintenance and management.
Part I, “Continuities and Discontinuities in the Administration of Records,” consisting offour chapters, focuses on the Daftar jayshī, the principal historical source of the book, andexamines the documentary administration of land under the Circassian Mamluk regime
and the transfer of Mamluk land records to the Ottoman government. The first chapter
examines the process of compiling the Daftar jayshī and its contents. After conquering
Egypt, the Ottoman government proceeded with land surveys, dispatching officials to theprovinces and scrutinizing land rights in Cairo: claimants’ rights to private, rizaq (allocatedby the government for charitable purposes or to families of military personnel, etc.), andwaqf (Islamic endowment) lands were either confirmed or confiscated.3 Then, in 1552–53,
thirty-five years after the conquest, a new rule (S. J. Shaw called this the Land Law)4 was
3. The author uses the term “land rights holder” to refer collectively to holders of iqṭāʿ, owners of private
lands, recipients of rizaq lands, and the beneficiaries of waqf lands. The essential point is those with thebeneficiary right to income from these lands, but some explanation for key terms such as “land rights” and“land rights holders” is required.
4. Stanford J. Shaw, “The Land Law of Ottoman Egypt (960/1553): A Contribution to the Study ofLandholding in the Early Years of Ottoman Rule in Egypt,” Der Islam 38 (1963): 106–37.
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Review of Chusei Ejiputo no Tochiseido to Nairukangai • 246
promulgated, establishing the procedure to review and determine land rights by referringto the rediscovered Circassian Mamluk registers. The results were compiled in a register,
the Daftar jayshī, which recorded lands determined by the Ottoman government to be waqf
or private lands.
The form and contents of the records in the Daftar jayshī are then explained. The Daftar
jayshī is composed of the records from the Mamluk registers and those from the Ottoman
cadastral survey of 1527–28. Each village record starts with a summary that includes thetotal area of arable land in the village and percentage shares of tax incomes assigned toeach type of land rights (e.g., a qīrāṭ or 1/24 for a waqf, three ʿushurs or 3/10 for two iqṭāʿs,etc.), followed by details of the rights holders’ names and deed dates for waqf and private
lands. The information transferred from Mamluk registers includes dates for when an iqṭāʿwas conferred and purchased from the treasury and names of the purchasers.5
Chapter 2, through careful analysis of contemporary narrative sources, identifies who
managed Egypt’s land records at the time of the Ottoman conquest and reveals that only
two bureaucratic families, the Jīʿān family, and their relatives by marriage, the Malakīfamily, performed this “official duty” during the Circassian Mamluk period, as a familybusiness.6
Chapter 3 presents records from the Daftar jayshī, revealing that ten different Mamluk
land registers were referred to in the examination of waqf and private land rights. This isvaluable in demonstrating one aspect of Mamluk land management and record keeping
as well as significant in identifying one of the sources of al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya by findinga partial match between a single register from the reign of the Mamluk sultan al-AshrafShaʿbān (r. 1363–77) and a record in al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya.
Chapter 4 is a study of al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya, which records the names of villages, area ofcultivated land, tax revenues, and names of land rights holders throughout Egypt. It wasedited by B. Moritz and published in 1898, and although it has been used in many studies,
the author highlights problems with this edition; by researching three existing manuscripts,
she concludes that the Bodleian Library manuscript (MS. Huntington 2) is the authentic
copy prepared and presented in 1478 by order of Yashbak min Mahdī, the chief executive(dawādār kabīr) responsible for local and financial administration. Then, by comparing
the records with those in the Daftar jayshī, she verifies that the information on the area ofcultivated land in each village reported in al-Tuḥfa al-saniyya is from the Nāṣirī cadastralsurvey (1313–25), while the amount of tax revenues from each village reported in al-Tuḥfa
al-saniyya are based on the 1376 records; thus, if the amounts have since been revised, themost recent figures as of 1478 are listed. This is important for future researchers using thishistorical source.7
5. An introduction to the Daftar jayshī is also given in Kumakura’s English article, “Patterns of Women’s
Landholding in the Late Mamluk Period: A Statistical Study Based on the Ottoman Land Register Daftar Jayshī,”
Orient 54 (2019): 7–22, at 8–9.
6. The English version of this chapter was published as “Who Handed over Mamluk Land Registers to
the Ottomans? A Study on the Administrators of Land Records in the Late Mamluk Period,” Mamlūk Studies
Review 18 (2016): 279–96.
7. The English version of this chapter was published as “Mamluk Land Records Being Updated andAl-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 31 (2023)

247 • Daisuke Igarashi
Part 2, “Continuities and Discontinuities in Land Systems and Irrigation,” extracts
specific insights into the mechanisms for maintaining and managing land and irrigation
systems from these historical sources. Chapter 5 examines the form of iqṭāʿ holdings in
the Circassian Mamluk land records in the Daftar jayshī. From the summary records, it isinferred that the iqṭāʿ system established in the Nāṣirī cadastral survey, such as the holding
and transfer of an iqṭāʿ according to the rank and office of Mamluk military officers andthe dispersed holding of multiple iqṭāʿs, was maintained during the Circassian period. A
subsequent analysis of 707 detailed records shows that 60% of the iqṭāʿs were held by awlādal-nās (descendants of Mamluks) and civilians, while 214 were held in multi-ownership, in
which many of the co-holders of an iqṭāʿ were related by blood (such as parents, children,and siblings). The author then concludes that the expansion of the “iqṭāʿ of beneficence,”
held by these awlād al-nās and civilians and not involving military service, facilitated theprivatization and “waqfization” of state lands.
While Chapter 5 focuses on land ownership in the Daftar jayshī, Chapters 6–8 centeron irrigation and its maintenance, using the Dafātir jusūr as the principal historicalsource. Chapter 6 examines the maintenance and management system for jusūr (sing.
jisr, dike) and the relationship between the government and village communities in the
Gharbiyya Province of the Nile Delta. The location of and area irrigated by each Sultani jisr
(government-managed irrigation dike) is mapped, demonstrating that between ten andthirty villages shared a single jisr. Specifically, the Dafātir jusūr reveals that each Sultani
jisr was divided into several administrative districts (darak); the number of personnel to beprovided for working on the jisr was allocated to the villages in charge of each administrative
district; the khawlī (administrator) of the jisr was selected from neighboring villages; andtheir duties were passed on among certain clans. In addition, details are provided of others
involved in the maintenance of the Sultani jisr, such as the government-appointed kāshif
sent to maintain the jisr and shaykhs of the local Arab tribes; thus, iqṭāʿ and other land
rights holders were not directly involved in maintaining the jisr.8
Chapter 7 analyzes the tax collection records for Fayyum Province during the first yearof Ottoman rule, found in the Ayasofya manuscript of Taʾrīkh al-Fayyūm (Suleymaniye
Library, MS. Ayasofya 2960), by an official of the Ayyubid dynasty, ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm
al-Nābulusī (d. 660/1262). The author discovered that these records were specifically for the
dīwān al-dhakhīra, which administered the revenue sources that were directly assigned to thesultan during the Circassian Mamluk period. She also learned that land rights of the villagesof the Fayyum were not related to parcels of land with clearly defined boundaries in specificlocations, but allocated as a proportion of the tax share, which raises an important issue
concerning the land tenure system.9
Distributed: A Study of Al-Tuḥfa al-Sanīya bi-Asmāʾ al-Bilād al-Miṣrīya,” Journal of Islamic Area Studies 10(2018): 17–29.
8. An earlier version of this chapter was published as “To Where Have the Sultan’s Banks Gone? An
Attempt to Reconstruct the Irrigation System of Medieval Egypt,” Journal of Asian Network for GIS-based
Historical Studies 2 (2014): 11–21.
9. The English version of this chapter was published as “The Tax Survey Record of the First Year of
Ottoman Rule in Egypt,” in The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition: Continuity and Change in Egypt and Bilād
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Review of Chusei Ejiputo no Tochiseido to Nairukangai • 248
Chapter 8 analyzes how the centralization of administrative power under the Ottoman
sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520–66) affected the irrigation system in the Egyptian provinces,using the Cadastral Survey Registers (Daftar al-tarbīʿ) and the Registers of the Amountof Water (Daftar irtifāʿ al-miyāh). During this period, the various irrigation records
previously maintained by specific local households and individuals were now compiled
into government registers, to which the qāḍīs dispatched from the central administration
to Egyptian local courts referred in order to carry out their duties systematically. Thissuggests a single process by which Egypt was incorporated into a centralized Ottoman
system of governance.10
The final chapter summarizes these findings: after the Ottoman conquest, the land system
was regulated through the Ottoman legal code, the Qānūnnāme, as well as the promulgationof new ones, and “a systemic shift from governance based on personal social relations to an
institutional system of governance through administrative agencies” (p. 270) was advanced
through the parallel compilation and maintenance of various registers.
To sum up, the most important feature of this book is the novelty and importance ofthe historical sources used. Although the significance of the Daftar jayshī has become
well known in recent years, its nature as a historical document has yet to be clarified,
and there are a limited number of studies in which it has been used due to difficulty withscripts and access. The author’s ability to use such a challenging historical document asa source is astonishing, allowing her to undertake a meticulous analysis to elucidate theimportant issue of the nature of documentary administration: how Mamluk land records
were preserved, conveyed, and then transferred to the Ottoman government. Her primaryachievement is that, through statistical analysis, she empirically clarifies the changes to theiqṭāʿ land system where military personnel were awarded land for their military service,
which was then was inherited by their descendants and eventually converted to waqf.
As agricultural irrigation in Egypt depended on the Nile, the management of jusūr was
critically important, but the details have remained unclear due to the limitations of thehistorical sources. However, the author addresses this issue by using both the Dafātir jusūr
and the Registers of the Amount of Water, also held by the National Archives of Egypt, as
historical sources. Her foresight in consulting these registers, which have been far lessthoroughly explored than the Daftar jayshī, is admirable. Her second achievement is ingoing beyond a meticulous analysis of these documents and identifying the jisr locations
by field research in rural Egypt, using GIS technology to perform position measurementand digital mapping of the jisr, then comparing the results with the written descriptions
to clarify the administration of jisr management. Such a cutting-edge study that combines
fieldwork and digital technology with archival analysis demonstrates not only originality inhistorical research but also the author’s extraordinary skills as a researcher.
al-Shām in the Sixteenth Century, 2, ed. S. Conermann and G. Şen, 273–306 (Göttingen: Bonn University Press,2022).
10. The English version of this chapter was published as “The Early Ottoman Rural Government System
and Its Development in Terms of Water Administration,” in The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition: Continuity andChange in Egypt and Bilad al-Sham in the Sixteenth Century, ed. S. Conermann and G. Şen, 87–114 (Göttingen:
Bonn University Press, 2017).
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249 • Daisuke IgarashiThis book, as already stated, is an excellent piece of research, but it is not without someproblems, which I am obliged as a reviewer to point out.
First, Chapter 5 is in an unsuitable position; since it covers the process of iqṭāʿ transition
to rizaq and waqf holdings in the late Mamluk period, most of the discussion, including
causes and implications, lies within the framework of Mamluk history. This detracts fromthe book’s theme: continuity and change during the regime transition from Mamluks to
Ottomans. Further, the author’s discussion in the concluding chapter about the changes
in the ties between the Mamluk sultans and their military officers, which she believes isthe cause of the iqṭāʿ transitions, is confusing due to its abruptness. A different approach,such as treating this section independently as a supplementary essay, would have been
preferable. Because, instead, the transition period is the theme of this book, it would havebeen better to compare the Mamluk and Ottoman records, using the Daftar jayshī, andanalyze how the land rights holders of the Mamluk period were or were not replaced in the
Ottoman period. This would have enabled the author to test the merits of and deepen thedebate on the view of ʿImād Abū Ghāzī, who, as a pioneer in the study of the Daftar jayshī,
concluded that although the awlād al-nās emerged as a landowning class in the late Mamluk
period, they were eradicated during the regime change, never to develop into a new socialgroup, which brought about change to Egyptian society.11
Second, although the author provides a thorough analysis of the contents of the register
records, her awareness of what was not recorded is relatively weak. This may be in part due
to the author not considering the question of whether a considerable part of the Mamluk
land records was lost before or after the Ottoman occupation or the Mamluk records wereincomplete in the first place. The author states that the surviving Daftar jayshī covers
approximately 30% of all villages in Egypt but also points out that there could be lost
volumes of the Daftar jayshī (pp. 51–53); however, if the register was “records of lands
administered by the dīwān al-jaysh (Army Bureau) during the Mamluk period that were
determined (by the Ottoman government) as waqf lands or private lands” (p. 42), then it ispossible that neither information on lands not under the dīwān al-jaysh nor information
on villages not including waqf or private lands were originally recorded. It is not surprisingthat there is little information on Giza and Manfalūṭ in the Daftar jayshī, though, as lands
in both provinces were designated as financial resources for the dīwān al-dawla or dīwānal-wizāra (the Finance Bureau or the Vizier’s Bureau) during the Mamluk period. Moreover,rather than stating that “much of the land that became waqf or private land during theMamluk period was originally iqṭāʿ or military rizaq lands, including a large amount ofbeneficence iqṭāʿ” (p. 162), it would be more accurate to say that most of the private andwaqf lands recognized by the Ottoman government were originally converted from iqṭāʿand military rizaq lands during the Mamluk period. In addition, the fact that the 1552–53
Land Law detailed the method of examination when land rights could not be verified in
the Circassian Mamluk registers may indicate that not all private and waqf lands wererecorded. The author also notes in Chapter 7 that a land rights holder only held a village’s
11. ʿImād Badr al-Dīn Abū Ghāzī, Taṭawwur al-ḥiyāza al-zirāʿiyya fī Miṣr zaman al-mamālīk al-jarākisa
(Cairo: ʿAyn li-l-Dirāsāt wa-al-Buḥūth al-Insāniyya wa-al-Ijtimāʿiyya, 2000), chap. 3.
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Review of Chusei Ejiputo no Tochiseido to Nairukangai • 250
share of taxes, not a specific parcel of land (p. 230). However, Mamluk waqf documents I
have studied indicate that parcels of land enclosed by clearly marked boundaries (north,east, south, and west) were often owned or set aside as waqfs, while only land rights to apercentage share of taxes may have been ascertained and recorded by the government.
Thus, further comparisons with other historical sources, such as waqf documents andsharīʿa court registers, is necessary.
Despite some issues, this is undoubtedly an outstanding piece of research that will
influence a wide range of fields, including medieval Arab and Islamic history, the historyof the Ottoman Empire, documentary research, administrative history in the Islamic world,
Egyptian agricultural history, and human and environmental history related to water
use and irrigation, to name a few. Although some chapters have already been translated
into English and published, I hope that the entire book will be translated into English andpublished as a monograph to disseminate its findings among the academic community
abroad.

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