Acquisition by Use in Islamic Law: Iḥyāʾ al-Mawāt in Three Legal Opinions from Late Ottoman Egypt

This article presents three legal opinions by the Ḥanafī mufti Muḥammad al-ʿAbbāsī al-Mahdī in late Ottoman Egypt (the so-called “khedivate”) to explore the legal problem of what Muslim jurists call “reclaiming unused land,” literally bringing “dead” land back to life (iḥyāʾ al-mawāt). At the core of this legal problem is a norm which we can call “acquisition by use.” This norm prescribes that the use of unused land gives ownership rights to the user with certain conditions. The logic behind this principle is that the community’s interest in increasing the agricultural productivity of a given plot of land outweighs the government’s interest in maximizing the land-tax (rent) that can be yielded by the plot in question. The paper concludes that the norm of iḥyāʾ al-mawāt in its Ḥanafī interpretation served as a battleground for land ownership between the khedivial government and individuals.