An Introduction to Islamic Law by Wael B. Hallaq Page A

structures andcodes (as well as reporting, statistics, centralized supervision and surveillance), but also in the significant fact that the Nizamiyye legal order generated – along with a distinctive legal culture of its own – an unprecedented and colossalprison system that was part of this culture and that could accommodate inmates for up to twenty years. This is to be contrasted with the fact that such prison terms and prison systems were entirely unknown to the Sharia.
    With the conclusion of theCrimean Wars of 1853–56, the Ottomans incurred further debtsto France andBritain, both politically (for their military support against theRussians) and financially (for the major loans the British made to Istanbul). These debts translated into further, intense hegemonic pressures on Istanbul, resulting in another series of concessions embodied in theHumayun Decree of 1856. Unlike its 1839 predecessor, which was compiled by Ottoman senior statesmen, the 1856 Decree was drafted after intensive consultation with the French, British and Austrian ambassadors. It moved further away from the Islamic principles of governance, not mentioning the Quran or the Sharia once, for instance. It emphasized European-style representative government, and furthermore gave non-Muslim minorities formal rights (again, defined by Western conceptions of governance) equal to those enjoyed by the Muslim subjects of the Empire. This was not only a European imposition, but an Ottoman strategy that aimed at appeasing and absorbing the nationalist sentiments that were making themselves known in the provinces. The constitution of the new Nizamiyye courts reflected this new reality no less than did the structural changes in the laws of evidence and procedure.
    The new wave of reforms led to the adoption of thePenal Code of 1858 and theLand Law of the same year. Likewise, a series ofFrench-inspired commercial codes, including amaritime commercial code, were promulgated for the benefit of theNew Courts. Similarly, the Land Law of 1858 required the cultivators of state land to register their lots under their names, a step intended to secure direct payment of taxes to the central government, thus eliminating the intermediaries who traditionally claimed a percentage of the revenue. InEgypt, the process had started earlier, but in all cases the land code, in both of its varieties, was also designed to implement a policy aimed at binding the peasants to the land. Although it was purported that these modernizing codes were conceived as a contribution to the emergence of private property, their effects on peasants (a large segment of the population) were disastrous in more ways than one. Fearing conscription and excessive taxes, they registered the lands they cultivated in the names of deceased family members, city magnates or rural notables. The end result was the conversion oftheir position from controllers of land to tenants who could be evicted at will.
    The new land code (in both the Ottoman Empire andEgypt) had the remarkable effect of producing, toward the end of the century, a landed class that rivaled the religious elite in terms of political and material power. The families who profited from the changes brought about by the new land and other codes, and by the emerging bureaucratic and administrative structures, were secular in orientation. Yet, some religious families also held large tracts of land, continued to hold on to their positions of power, and managed to partake in the advantages these land codes had created for members of the upper social strata. And in order to compete in the market of new economic realities, they inserted themselves in the secularbureaucracies of the state, gradually changing their “specialization” and identity as members of a privileged religious establishment. By the end of the century, the children of these families, both secular and originally religious, were largely integrated into thestate bureaucratic machinery and