Atāʾī-Mulk and Yārlīqlī-Mulk: Features of Land Tenure in Khiva, Der Islam, 88/2 (2012): 308-323

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Ata #ı-Mulk and Yarlıqlı-Mulk:Features of Land Tenure in Khiva

U l f a t b e k A b d u r a s u l o vInstitute of History – Tashkent

Abstract

Historians of the Khanate of Khiva have long disagreed about the legal and fis-cal status of certain categories of land ownership known as ata#i mulk and yarliqlimulk. In the present article, I try to offer a new reading of these categories. In sodoing, I challenge the influential arguments of Russian scholars such as O. S

ˇkaps-

kij, V. Girsfel’d, A. Galkin, whose conceptualisations of yarliqli mulk reflect anumber of interpretative errors and confusions between various different legal andfiscal practices. By analysing in detail the edicts of khans’ yarliqs and tax registries,I attempt to demonstrate that the lands identified by Russian authors as yarliqlimulk enjoyed complete fiscal immunity, and that they were commonly referred to invernacular usage as mulk-i äalis (or mulk-i äalisi).

Introduction

To this day, there remain many questions relating to the history of theKhivan Khanate in the 19th and early 20th centuries which have not been ad-equately addressed. Amongst these, several of the most fundamental ques-tions pertain to the crucial matter of landholding. Although successive gen-erations of Soviet and post-Soviet scholars have made the Khivan system oflandholding the subject of extensive research, there remain a number of dis-agreements and uncertainties, particularly regarding the legal and fiscalstatus of various categories of landownership (Ar. milk, mulk in the vernacu-lar Persian and Chagatay). In the present paper, I attempt to address oneparticular area of confusion. This is the question as to whether there existedin the khanate during this period a category of tax-exempt landholding, ofthe sort conventionally known as mulk-i äalis (or mulk-i äalisi).1

1) Milk-i äalis or milk-i hurr-i äalis, milk-i hurr, milk-i mutlaq – these formulaicexpressions, which ware widely attested in legal documents from Islamic Central

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Ata#i-Mulk and Yarliqli-Mulk 309

While it is conventionally recognized that such a tax-exempt categoryof landholding was widespread in the emirate of Bukhara, scholars haveoften argued that no such phenomenon ever existed in the Khivan khanate.The Soviet-era scholar A. Koscanov, for instance, voices a common viewwhen he states that the mulk lands which we encounter in our Khivan docu-ments are to be identified not as mulk-i äalis but as ata#i mulk and yar-liqli mulk: these latter forms of landholding, he argues, were very differentfrom mulk-i äalis, because the state imposed rental fees upon theirowners.2 In what follows, I propose to examine the two forms of landhold-ing in the Khivan Khanate which Koscanov and others identify as ata#imulk and yarliqli mulk, and to consider whether these were indeed both li-able to taxation. As I hope to show, while ‘ata#i mulk’ was indeed subject tofiscal assessment, there is strong evidence that property identified as ‘yar-liqli mulk’ enjoyed fiscal immunity: and that tax-exempt property existedin Khiva just as it did in Bukhara to its east.

1. Ata#i-Mulk

The first Russian writings about Khivan ‘ata#i-mulk’ (lit. “paternallands”) date from the very beginning of the 20th century. Tsarist authors

Asia, denote that the state did not have any fiscal rights on the property in ques-tion. See, Pavel P. Ivanov, Xozjajstvo juybarskix seyxov. K istorii feodal’nogo zem-levladenija v Srednej Azii v XVI–XVII vv. (Moscow – Leningrad: Nauka, 1954), 45;Maxkam A. Abduraimov, Ocerki agrarnyx otnosenij v Buxarskom xanstve v XVI –pervoj polovine XIX veka (Tashkent: Fan, 1970), 57–63, Elena A. Davidovic, “Feo-dal’nij zemel’nij milk v Srednej Azii v XV–XVIII vv.: suscnost’ i transformacija,”in Formy feodal’noj sobstvennosti i vladenija na Bliznem i Srednem Vostoke, Bar-tol’dovskie ctenija 1975 g., ed. B. G. Gafurov (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 39–62.

2) A. Koscanov, Iz istorii agrarnyx otnosenii v Xivinskom xanstve v konce XIX –nasale XX veka. Dissertacija na soiskanie ucenoj stepeni kandidata istoriceskixnauk (Taskent 1966), 110–11. Exception should be made with regard to AdibaSˇ

ajxova, most notably the first one to suggest that the tax-exempted lands in 19thcentury Khivan khanate, resulted from the sale of state lands to private individualson the basis of royal warrants, cf. Adiba S

ˇajxova, Juridiceskie dokumenty kak

istocnik po istorii social’no-ékonomiceskix (preimuscestvenno agrarnyx) otnosenii vXivinskom xanstve v XIX – nacale XX veka, Dissertacija na soiskanie ucenoj stepenikandidata istoriceskix nauk, (Taskent 1989), 73–4; Id., “Novye dokumenty ob obra-zovanii mul’kov xivinskix xanov, Obscestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane, 11 (1988), 44–7.Later the same view was adopted by Juri Bregel’, Documents from the Khanate ofKhiva (17th–19th centuries), Papers on Inner Asia No. 40 (Bloomington 2007), 4.

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writing in this period generally agree that ata#i-mulk constituted a cat-egory of privately-owned property which had subsequently been renderedsubject to land tax (salgut).3 In a work published in 1900, Orest S

ˇkapskij

states that the tax on ata#i-mulk had been established 100 years pre-viously;4 this view was echoed soon afterwards by Girsfel’d and Galkin,two officers from the Russian General Staff who were writing in 1902.“With the agreement of the khan”, they write, “a new land-audit was con-ducted at that time, of all these properties.”5 This chimes closely with whatwe find in the Firdaws al-Iqbal, a voluminous compendium of Khivan his-tory composed in the first half of the 19th century. The authors of thiswork, Shir Muhammad Mirab Munis and Muhammad Riza Mirab Agahi,state that Eltuzar Khan, Qongrat ruler of Khiva between 1804 and 1806,undertook during his reign a widespread programme of fiscal reform.6 Itseems likely that the imposition of the salgut tax on ata#i-mulk constitutedpart of this programme.

3) Salgut was the main state land tax-rent from privately owned lands. Mainlymoney was collected, and it comprised the main class of tax revenues of the statetreasury. Cf. Katalog xivinskix kazijskix dokumentov XIX–nacala XX vv., eds.A. Urunbaev, T. Xorikava, T. Fajziev, G. Dzuraeva, K. Isogaj (Tashkent–Kyoto: Izd-vo Mezdunarodnyi institut po izuceniju jazykov i mira Kiotoskogo uni-versiteta po izuceniju zarubeznyx stran 2001), 660.

4) O. Sˇ

kapskij, Amu-Dar’inskie ocerki. K agrarnomu voprosu na niznej Amu-Dar#e (Tashkent: Tipo-Litografija V. M. Il’ina, 1900), 108–109.

5) Voenno-statistiseskoe opisanie Xivinskogo oazisa. Sostavil general’nogo stabakapitan V. A. Girsfel’d. Pererabotano nacal’nikom Amu-Dar’inskogo otdela general-maiorom A. S. Galkinym, Part 1 (Taskent 1902), 36.

6) Shir Muhammad Mirab Munis and Muhammad Riza Mirab Agahi, Firdawsal-Iqbal: History of Khorezm. Translated from Caghatay and Annotated by YuriBregel (Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998), 183–4: “Tyrannous customs and unlawful in-novations (bida�), which are considered blameworthy by reason, divine law, naturaljustice and truth, perverse by [people of] different religions and various faiths andall nations, had been persistently practiced and spread in the country (diyar) ofKhorezm since the time of Abu’l-Ghazi Khan ibn �Arab Muhammad Khan, nay sincethe conquest of Chingiz Khan. Payments (waza#if) and special dues (marsumat) toimpious sultans and oppressive amirs were assigned from the property (amval) ofthe subjects (fuqara� va ra�aya), and everybody through usurpation and supremacy,would collect tax (salghut) from the subjects for himself and make them perform thecorée (bigar). His Majesty, the late [Eltuzar] khan […] put an end to such exactionby oppressors from the subjects and, by exalting the standard of justice and raisingthe banner of punishment, eliminated and erased the manifest tyranny and the sha-meful oppression (bid�at), which contravened Islamic law, from the surface of theearth.”



In order to understand why the first Qongrat rulers, Eltuzar Khan(1804–1806) and Muhammad Rahim Khan I (1806–1825) should have em-barked upon such a programme of fiscal reform in the early 1800s, it isperhaps useful here briefly to consider the situation which Eltuzar and hisQongrat kinsmen encountered upon their accession to power. Under theQongrats’ �Arabsahid predecessors, central authority in Khiva had beenextremely weak. Arriving in Khiva from the Dasht-i Qipchaq in the earlysixteenth century, the incoming Chinggisid �Arabsahids had brought withthem both a large nomadic population and a variety of traditionally no-madic political and administrative practices.7 Notable among these was anappanage system: for the nearly 200-year duration of �Arabsahid rule, theKhivan Khanate was divided up into autonomous appanages,8 each ofwhich was governed by a representative of the ruling house, with the nom-inally suzerain khan himself little more than a figurehead. This system hadgravely reduced the �Arabsahids’ ability to perform the traditional func-tions of central government. Prime among these functions was the main-tenance of an irrigation system. It had long been regarded as the centralruler’s responsibility to recruit and deploy large-scale labour forces to en-sure the maintenance of irrigation canals.9 This was a responsibility whichlocal appanage rulers were ill-placed to perform: although they mightmaintain the local canals which fell under their dominion, they rarely hadthe resources to ensure the maintenance of the main state canals, and theseoften fell into decline. Over the same period, the gradual sedentarization ofnomadic elements – both incomers from the Dasht-i Qipchaq and tribalgroups of Turkmen and Qaraqalpaq origin – further added to pressure onarable land and water supplies, this giving rise in turn to tensions both be-

7) As Bartol’d noted, “in Bukhara the military structure of a nomadic statedid not leave such a heavy imprint on the entire life of the country, as in Khorezm,”V. V. Bartol’d, Istorija kul’turnoi zizni Turkestana, in Id., Socinenija, vol. II/1(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vostocnoj literatury, 1963), 268.

8) Yuri Bregel argues that the khanate became “just a loose confederation ofseveral independent appanages of the �Arabsahid princes,” Firdaws al-Iqbal, ix.

9) The most important irrigation measures implemented by the �Arabsahids oc-cur in the period when political life was relatively stabilized and the position of thecentral authority was strengthened, in the second half of the 17th century, in therule of Abu#l-Gazi Khan (1644–1663) and Anusa Khan (1663–1689). In this period aseries of major irrigation canals were restored and put into operation, such as theSahabad, Yarmysh, Gaziabad, etc. See Ja. G. Guljamov, Istorija orosenija Xo-rezma s drevnejsix vremën do nasix dnej (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo AN Uz.SSR 1957,200–1). However, this irrigation activity was not of a systematic nature, and on thewhole it was uncharacteristic for �Arabsahid rule.


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tween rival nomadic elements and between nomadic and sedentary popu-lations.10 The situation worsened progressively over the course of the 18thcentury, until the first Qongrat rulers acceded to power.

Faced with this situation, the first Qongrat rulers, Eltuzar Khan andMuhammad Rahim Khan I and their immediate successors resolved tostrengthen the sway of central authority. They dismantled the centrifugalapparatus of the �Arabsahid-era apanage system, replacing this insteadwith an administrative system headed by office-holders with the titlebik and na#ib, who were directly appointed by the khan from his innermostcircle, and who were answerable for the re-establishment of the region’sbeleaguered irrigation system. At the same time, they undertook a pro-gramme to confiscate the landholdings of their political rivals, and to red-istribute this property amongst their own supporters, thus generating apowerful new constituency of allies at the same time as dispossessing theirmost threatening enemies.11 And, as S

ˇkapskij and the authors of the Fir-

daws al-Iqbal commonly agree, Eltuzar Khan and Muhammad RahimKhan I attempted to revise the Khivan fiscal system, thus in order to placethe new khanal regime on a sound financial footing. The imposition of sal-gut on ata#i-mulk lands appears to have been part of this programme.

When speaking of “ata#i-mulk” as a category of landholding in the Khi-van Khanate, some care is required. Although Tsarist authors regularlyuse the term to describe a discrete form of privately owned property,it does not actually appear in any of the native Khivan sources which I

10) In the rule of Abu#l-Gazi Khan there was an attempt to adopt a unique re-form, aimed at the distribution of basic land and water resources, and also at incor-porating tribal groups into the statewide administration (Firdaws al-Iqbal, 135–6).As would transpire from subsequent events, however, this did not bring the expectedstability in the long run, and what is more, it gave representatives of the hereditaryleadership additional administrative and economic resources, which later facilita-ted the escalation of a political crisis in the khanate.

11) In the Firdaws al-Iqbal we find a number of remarks about such measures.Thus, in particular, the court chronicles report that after the defeat of the most in-fluential opponent of the Qongrats – the governor of Aral, Tura Murad Sufi – “eachof them was granted vast cultivated lands (mazra �a-yi vasi�) out of the royal domain(aradi-i äassa-yi sultani), in order that these people, with their dependants, mightsettle in those pleasant places contended and live in peace and tranquility,” Firdawsal-Iqbal, 381. P. P. Ivanov characterized this process as “the disappearance of de-centralized land property,” which in his opinion “was typical for Khiva throughoutall its prior existence,” see his Arxiv xivinskix xanov XIX v. Issledovanie i opisaniedokumentov s istoriceskim vvedeniem, (Leningrad: Izdanie gosudarstvennoj pu-blicnoj biblioteki, 1940), 18.



have examined. In a few cases Khivan sources identify the sort of propertyoutlined above instead as “zar kharid mulk” (lit. mulk purchased withmoney).12 This should not lead us, however, simply to conclude that theterm “ata#i-mulk” was a Russian invention. The evidently local etymologyof the term, together with its resemblance to such conventional Khivanterms as “property that was left from our forefathers”,13 suggests that itexisted as a widespread informal usage, and that Tsarist-era authors mis-takenly took this usage to denote a formal category of landholding.

Another reason for care when reading Tsarist descriptions of ata#i-mulkis that authors appear to have misconstrued the process whereby a mulk-dar’s fiscal liability was assessed. S

ˇkapskij, Girsfel’d and Galkin

commonly agreed that liability depended not on the size or value ofthe ata#i-mulk that the mulkdar possessed, but on the ‘ranking’ – lower(adna), middle (awsat), or higher (a�la) – which was assigned to him. “Theowners of ata#i-mulk,” writes S

ˇkapskij, “paid salgut, not in proportion to

the amount of land property ascribed to them, but in conformity to theranking to which they belonged.”14

Sˇ

kapskij, claims that a mulkdar’sranking depended on the findings of an audit of ata#i-mulk lands whichtook place ever 20 years – the last of these having occurred in 1886 –“whereby ata#i mulkdars are reassigned from one rank to another, in con-formity to changes in their prosperity.”15 Writing in 1910, the diplomaticofficial A. Kal’mykov took a somewhat different view, stating that amulkdar’s fiscal ranking “is passed hereditarily from father to son, which isalso why the land is called ata#i-mulk.”16 In fact, however, the opinions ofSˇ

kapskij and Kal’mykov are undermined by the findings of Soviet andpost-Soviet scholars such as P. Ivanov, M. Yuldashev, Y. Bregel’ andO. Jalilov, who have examined some of the tax registers (daftar) produced

12) Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan (henceforth CGARUz),f. I-125, op. 2, d. 458. Juri Bregel’ claims that the record was composed by oneof the officials of the Khivan secretary for the Russian orientalist AlexanderKuhn: see his “K izuceniju zemel’nyx otnosenii v Xivinskom xanstve (Istocniki i ixpol’zovanie),” Pismennye pamjatniki Vostoka. Ezegodnik (1969) [Moscow 1972], 72[28–103].

13) Nasledstvennymi zemljami, this is the expression which the Russian admi-nistrator A. Kal’mykov employed in a report he drafted in 1910, cf. Dokladnajazapiska diplomaticeskogo cinovnika A. Kal’mykova, 1910 g., CGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1,d. 291, l. 112.

14) Sˇ

kapskij, Amu-Dar’inskie ocerki, 108.15) Ibid., 109.16) CGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 291, l. 112.


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by the Khivan chancellery. Although these registers confirm that ownersof such land were indeed divided for fiscal assessment purposes into threecategories, they make quite clear that the criterion for assessment wassimply the size of the mulkdar’s property. Mulkdars were placed, we find,into the lowest category (adna), paying 1 tilla in salgut, if their propertycomprised less than 5 tanab of land, into the middle (awsat), paying 2 tilla,if it comprised from 5 to 10 tanab, and into the highest (a�la), paying 3 tilla,if it extended over more than 10 tanab.17

Whatever confusion there may be as to the way in which tax was as-sessed on so-called ata#i-mulk property, Tsarist and post-Tsarist authorsalike are agreed that ‘ata#i-mulk’ was not a fiscally-exempt category oflandholding. Koscanov and others are thus quite correct to observe thatata#i-mulk should not be confused with mulk-i äalis.

2. Yarliqli-Mulk

The question as to whether ‘yarliqli mulk’ constituted a tax-exemptform of landholding literature as to what was actually meant by this termin 19th- and 20th-century Khiva. As with ‘ata#i-mulk’, so with ‘yarliqlimulk’ was Orest S

ˇkapskij one of the first Tsarist authors to address the

question. When referring to yarliqli mulk, Sˇ

kapskij referred to certainplots of land to which he found reference in a number of 19th-century docu-ments which he identified as yarliq, or royal warrants. As S

ˇkapskij noted,

these warrants authorized the sale of state lands into private ownership;they also stipulated that the property under transaction was henceforthto constitute mulk-i äalis, and was to retain this legal status for perpetuitythrough the application of the law of inheritance.18 But, S

ˇkapskij

17) CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2, d. 458. (Cf. Bregel’, K izuceniju zemel’nyx otnose-nii v Xivinskom xanstve, 72). Clearly, this record wholly reiterates the informationof the Russian authors and the data of the tax notebooks about the subdivision ofholders of ata�i-mulk into three categories, in proportion to their payment of thesalgut. What this suggests about the performance of duties is that, according to thisrecord and the information of the colonial authors, owners of ata�i-mulk lands hadto submit one worker (qazuci) from every household, regardless of its size.

18) For sake of claritiy it should be noted that Skapskij never mentions the ex-pression mulk-i äalis. It is known that the original royal warrants were not intelli-gible to Skapskij in the vernacular language and, hence, they were translated forhim. It is not clear, however, why exactly this legal formula was expunged from thetranslation, which in their other components seems to do justice to the originals.



claimed, this did not mean that such property, which he termed yarliqlimulk, was henceforth to be exempt from taxation: instead, it meant that itwas henceforth to be subject not to a tithe (dahyak)19 but instead for amonetary fiscal imposition in the form of salgut20.

Writing a couple of years after Sˇ

kapskij, Girsfel’d and Galkin tooka very similar view, suggesting that yarliqli mulk was in fact subject tothe same fiscal impositions – at the rate of one tilla for five tanab of land,or 72 kopeks for one tanab21 – as other mulk property which had devolvedfrom state ownership into private hands without the authority of ayarliq.22 The notion that yarliqli mulk was subject to salgut taxationremained widespread during the Soviet period. Writing in 1966, forexample, Koscanov described yarliqli mulk as ‘very close to being a pri-vately owned allotment’, while simultaneously retaining the status of stateland.23 Writing in 1972, meanwhile, A. Sadykov suggested that as afiscally assessable form of landholding yarliqli-mulk was simply anotherterm for mulk-i �ushri.24

19) In the 19th- and early 20th-century Khivan Khanate, holders of state landswere liable to pay the standard tax-rent, the dayak or dahyak. Although this termliterally means “one tenth”, the dahyak could be assessed at varying rates, accor-ding to the nature of the landscape, the fertility of the soil, and the condition ofits irrigation. Cf. Ivanov, Arxiv xivinskix xanov, 28–29. Arminius Vambery noted,for example, that the size of the standard tax levied from state lands made up one-third of the yield, see A. Vambery, “Ocerki Srednej Azii (Dopolnenie k putesestvijupo Srednej Azii),” Turkestanskij sbornik, 13 (1869), 219. In other instances, dahyakcould compose two-fifths of the agricultural yield: see CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2,d. 458.

20) Sˇ

kapskij, Amu-Dar’inskie ocerki, 102.21) Voenno-statisticeskoe opisanie Xivinskogo oazisa, 34.22) Ibid., 35. For the conversion of state land into private property without the

authority of a yarliq, see CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2, d. 458.23) “Yarliqli-mulk are those land allotments, which at different times were given

from the number of official lands by the äan’s yarliq into perpetual and hereditaryownership by private individuals for the performance of services or for other rea-sons …, that is, yarlycnye [sic] mulk was very close to being a privately owned allot-ment. However, they cannot at all be called indisputablely privately owned, due tothe fact that they represented [sic] one of the forms of state lands that were heredi-tarily used by this or that person, and their owners paid a land tax to the state trea-sury,” Koscanov, Iz istorii agrarnyx otnosenii, 111.

24) A. Sadykov, Rossija i Xiva v konce XIX – nacale XX veka, Tashkent: Fan,1972, 12. In the same passage, Sadykov suggests that ata#i-mulk was nothing otherthan mulk-i äalis.


316

Sˇ

kapskij’s claim that yarliqli-mulk was subject fiscal assessment wasevidently extremely influential. Unfortunately, it was also entirely un-founded, and wholly misleading. As I hope to show over the rest of thisarticle, there is no evidence in any of our Khivan material that the sortof landholding which S

ˇkapskij refers to as ‘yarliqli-mulk’ was ever liable

for tax.We may begin by considering again some of those sale authorisation

documents which Sˇ

kapskij identifies as ‘yarliqs’. Although we do not pos-sess these items themselves, the Uzbek State Archive in Tashkent containsa collection of approximately 70 documents which strongly resemble thosedescribed by S

ˇkapskij.25 The documents are issued in the name of various

members of the Khivan ruling house, namey the individuals who wereholding high-rank offices over the period from the end of the 18th centuryto the beginning of the 20th, and like S

ˇkapskij’s documents they com-

monly authorise the sale of state lands (variously described as mamlaka-yipadsahi, mamlaka-i padsahiga ta�alluq tapgan yirdin or mamlaka-i padsa-higha mudaf wa muta�alliq bulgan yirdin)26 into private ownership. Pace

25) The documents of this collection are divided chronologically as follow: oneyarliq of Abu#l-Gazi Khan IV (1790–1802); two yarliqs issued by Muhammad RahimKhan I (1806–1825); three yarliqs issued by Allah Quli Khan (1825–1842);five yarliqs of Rahim Quli Khan (1842–1845); ten yarliqs of Muhammad AminKhan (1845–1855); three yarliq of Sayyid Muhammad Khan (1856–1864); 38 yarliqsof Muhammad Rahim Khan II (1864–1910). The texts and facsimiles of tenyarliqs from this collection were published by Yuri Bregel, Documents fromthe Khanate of Khiva (17th–19th centuries), 30–41. Besides the collection of theCentral State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan, these documents are also keptin the collection of the Ichan-Qal’a Museum in Khiva. The descriptions and facsimi-les of four of these were published by Élër É. Karimov, Regesty kazijskix dokumen-tov i xanskix jarlykov Xivinskogo Xanstva XVII–nacala XIX v. (Tashkent: FAN,2007), 99–100. See also A. Urunbaev, Gh. Dzuraeva, S. Gulomov, “Katalogsredneaziatskix zalovannyx gramot iz fonda Instituta vostokovedenija im. AbuRaixana Beruni, Akademii Nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan,” OrientwissenschaftlicheHefte, 23 (2007), 48.

26) In the earliest documents from 1793, 1819 and 1822 (CGARUz, f. I-125,op. 2, d. 22, l. 1–2), it is mentioned that sale or transfer of land is done from the pos-sessions of crown land (äassa-yi sarifa), at a time when in all the later documents wehave a deed for sales of land from state holdings (mamlaka-yi padsahi). It should bementioned that in the scholarly literature there is not a single opinion about the sta-tus of äassa-yi sarifa lands in the Khivan Khanate. Thus, Ivanov argues that theterm äassa-yi sarifa is identical to the term mamlaka-yi padsahi, and it refers tostate lands (Ivanov, Arxiv xivinskix xanov, 24). He apparently arrived at this con-



Sˇ

kapskij, however, such items cannot really be described as yarliqs, atleast in the conventional sense. This is for several reasons. A conventionalyarliq constituted a grant of privilege upon an individual recipient.27 Itdid not constitute a sale, and the privilege which was thereby granted waslimited to the recipient himself, automatically reverting upon the recipi-ent’s death.28 Because the privilege was conferred upon the recipientrather than upon his property, the terms of a yarliq furthermore did no-thing to alter a property’s fiscal status.

This is very different from what we find in the approximately yarliq-type documents presently under discussion. Although these documents,like skapskij’s are framed as royal grants – they frequently state, for in-stance, that the khan has transferred the property in question into the re-cipient’s possession “for the mantainance of the guards” (az bara-yi mawa-gib-i nawkar; nawkar mawagibi ucun; mawagib-i nawkariya wa wazayif-i�askariya ucun) – their contents much more closely resemble what onemight find in a set of purchase deeds (wa©iqa-yi batt batat) produced ina sari�a court. Most obviously, perhaps, they generally include the word sat-duk (“we have sold”), which one would never find in a classical yarliq. Whatwe are reading in these documents are essentially purchase deeds, repletewith many of the conventional elements – barca huquq wa marafiq bila(“with all due rights and appurtenances”), ma# qabulihi iyyahu (“with theother party’s consent and endorsement”), a stated delimitation (tahdid) of

clusion on the grounds that, in the part of the archive of the Khivan Khan he stu-died khassa lands differ completely from privately owned lands (mulk), andthe term mamlaka-yi padsahi is not found at all. S

ˇajxova advanced the position

that at the beginning of the 19th century and earlier the term khassa or khassa-yisarifa denoted a particular kind of state lands, that were set aside for the personaluse of the khan (or set aside for special circumstances), apart from those privatelyowned (S

ˇajxova, Juridiceskie dokumenty, 49–51). Bregel supposed that this term

could also refer to personal (apanage) lands of the khan, which was the way thisterm was used analogously in the Bukharan and Khoqand Khanates, as well asIran: Bregel, Xorezmskiie turkmeny v XIX veke (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vostocnojliteratury, 1961), 95). In the Khivan chronicle Firdaws al-Iqbal, under the descrip-tion of events in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, khassa and khassa-yi sarifawere often used to mean crown land.

27) William Wood, A Collection of Tarkhan Yarliqs from the Khanate of Khiva,Papers on Inner Asia no. 38. (Bloomington, 2005), 30.

28) Ibid., 3–10. See also a yarliq dated 1809 bearing the three seals, which rene-wed consecutively its legal forces, Ichan-Qal’a Musem, Inv. No. KP 1381.


318

the property under transaction, a qadi’s seal affixed to the bottom of thetext29 – which one would find in a wa©iqa.

This curious splicing of genre types seems to represent an attempt onthe part of the early Qongrat rulers to justify the sale of state land into pri-vate hands. As noted above, the Qongrats were keen to oversee the sale ofconfiscated apanage lands amongst their own political sympathisers, as ameans both of generating income and of creating a loyal constituency ofclient landowners. In their desire to transfer state land into private owner-ship, however, the early Qongrats encountered a problem. Conventionalpractice held that the transfer of state property into private hands couldnot be achieved through the terms of a simple sales deed, on the groundsthat state land could not be treated as though it were private property:rather, any such transfer had to take the form of a royal grant in return forpublic service. In order to get around this problem, the early Qongratrulers introduced the expedient of a new category of transaction, to be de-tailed in a mixed-format document which approximated a yarliq in struc-ture and outline but which in its details and stipulations resembled awa©iqa; they were thus able to finesse what was in fact a sale of state prop-erty so that it appeared as though it were really a classic-type land grant.Our mixed-format yarliq documents thus contain a heavy rhetorical el-ement: not only do they record land sales, but they also justify them, rede-scribing each transaction in terms amenable to conventional legal practice.

According to Sˇ

kapskij the transactions represented by these royal war-rants were a legal fiction, as they conferred the rights of ownership uponindividuals who in fact were already possessing such lands. This kind oftransaction was thus, according to S

ˇkapskij, simply providing for legal

legitimacy, whereas the ownership existed de facto.30 While we do not rejectin principle this view, we are prone to assume that such transactions wereapplied widely by Qungrat rulers in order to grant lands to their accolitesand to individuals who distinguished themselves in the ruling sphere. These

29) This goes counter to the opinion of Yuri Bregel, with the exclusion of theboundaries of the property; the yarliqs examined did not contain the other formu-lae that were typical for wa©iqas (Documents from the Khanate, 5). However, weshould consider the absence of the some formulae, which are conventionally used insale deeds, employing the form of legal acknowledgments (iqrar-i mu�tabar-i sar�i),such as the formulations for the identification (ta�rif) of the person completing thedeclaration, the full declaration of sale expressed in the first person (e. g. man mu-qirr furuätam ba-bay�-i batt batat), the legality of the action (nafid-i lazim-i sar�i),the mentioning of the witnesses’ assembly (huddar-i maglis), etc.

30) Sˇ

kapskij, Amu-Dar’inskie ocerki, 100–1, 104.



grants consisted of newly irrigated areas as well as the private lands of theiropponents. In this way, the addressees of these royal warrants could also in-clude individuals who, up to the conferral of such grants, were not possess-ing de facto those lands. This situation is for example illustrated by a docu-ment, itself a rescript of an official to the ruling house in Khiva reportingabout the deliver of 20 tanab of state land to a certain Rahmatullah Hwaga(padsahliq yirning bir tarafidin) via a royal warrant. The transaction inquestion appeared to have become a source of dispute since the 20 tanabs fellwithin another area of 100 tanabs, which the ruler had previously granted toPahlawan Diwanbigi and was later endowed in favor of the waqf of (yarliqliyuz tanab mawqufa yiri) the Baba Niyaz Isan madrasa. As officials were in-structed to measure the two areas and check the contens of the two royalwarrants, it was clarified that the madrasa could count in fact on 97 tanabsof irrigated land, among which there was no soil left which could be handed-over to Rahmatullah Hwaga. The latter was evidently not in possession ofthe land, which he was assigned according to the royal warrant.31

As Sˇ

kapskij himself acknowledges, these mixed-format yarliq-typedocuments make quite clear that former mamlaka-yi padsahi propertywhen sold into private ownership was converted into a discrete landhold-ing category of mulk-i äalisi. They make clear also that such propertywould thereafter retain this revised status in perpetuity, even if transferredinto new ownership by sale or bequest. The presence of such stipulations ofcourse further undermine S

ˇkapskij’s contention that the documents in

question can be regarded simply as conventional yarliqs. More signifi-cantly for the purposes of this paper, however, such stipulations would ap-pear also to contradict Koscanov’s claim that mulk-i äalis did not exist inthe Khanate of Khiva. In view, however, of S

ˇkapskij’s claim that yarliqli-

mulk was liable for salgut, it may be helpful to look elsewhere beyond thesemixed-format yarliq-type documents for evidence as to whether or not inKhiva a category of landholding identified as mulk-i äalisi actually en-joyed tax-exempt status subsequent to its transfer into private hands.

As it happens, very few documents actually give any clue to the practi-cal fiscal status of Khivan mulk-i äalisi. Tax registers illustrate in detailthe process of the levy of salgut from a variety of landholders in 19th andearly 20th centuries. In these registers the salgut-payers can be dividedaccording to different criteria: the mosque community they belonged to,administrative units, their fiscal category (lower – adna, middle – awsat,superior – a�la) or on the basis of the form of landholding (if they were

31) Access to these documents was courtesy of Ibragim Nuriddin Qori, a resi-dent of the Keneges county in the Xo’jaeli district.


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working on waqf land). Each tax-payer was ascribed a sum, either besidehis name, or at the end of the list of tax-payers. In every case, the sum oftax to pay is quite substantial. Conversely, it should be noted that in theregisters concerning yarliq-holders (yarliqdar) and yarliq lands (yarliqliyiri), there are no indications referring to the payment of salgut nor to anyother kind of tax.32

Evidently, therefore, property in the Khivan Khanate might continueto be assessed as mulk-i äalis even substantially after its alienation. Nor, itappears, was such property burdened with other, subsidiary fiscal obli-gations. This emerges from the contents of a tax register compiled in 1907.The volume in question is identified on the title page as a “Register […] forthe collection of payments from the descendants of yarliq-holders, and forthe registration of yarliq lands”, and consists actually of two distinct reg-isters, each relating to a specific kind of ‘yarliq land’.33 The first registerrelates to property which by the terms of a classical yarliq has been madethe subject of a taräan grant;34 the second, as we shall see, relates bycontrast to property which has been acquired by the terms of a mixed-typeyarliq sale document. A reading of the first register indicates that recipi-ents of taräan grants were liable for two fees, respectively called yarliqanaand katibana diwan puli; the first of these relates to a sum of money col-lected upon the issue of a new royal deed or the renewal of an old yarliq,and the second was a payment for notary services. Among the named re-cipients of taräan grants in the register are 65 descendents of a certainSaykh Cin Baba. Of these, we read, 49 were ‘established’ yarliq-holders,and from each of these 4 tilla had been collected as yarliqana, togetherwith 2 tanga as katibana diwan puli. The remaining 16 family members, bycontrast, were recent recipients of new yarliq documents. Each of these in-

32) See for instance, a tax register from the Khazarasp province (1903–1920),CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 425.

33) 1325 tazadin yarliqdarlarning awladi kurulub wa yarlig yir bilib tanga alin-gan daftari, CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2, d. 491.

34) A taräan grant was a conferral of fiscal privileges. This procedure usually in-volved descent groups such as sayyids, isans, äwajas, and sayäs, cf. Wood, A Col-lection of Tarkhan Yarliqs, 30. The taräan grantholder were exempted from the pay-ment of various taxes, which instead fell on the rest of the population. Wood alsosuggests (ibid., 29) that taräan grantholders were also freed from the obligatoin tothe military service and it also confereed a sort of immunity with regard to a num-ber of infractions. Though many royal warrants for the conferral of taräan statushave been published, nothing is known of the way in which these grantholders ex-ploited their fiscal privileges and how they made use of them.



dividuals, we read, was assessed at twice the rate as an ‘established’ yarliq-holder, paying 8 tilla as yarliqana and 4 tanga as diwan puli.35

The individuals whom we encounter in the second register, by contrast,do not appear to have been liable for payment of either yarliqana or diwanpuli or any other kind of taxes. Instead, the register simply identifies thesize and demarcation of their properties, without any mention of assess-able fiscal burdens. The properties in question are identified as yarliqliyiri,36 which on the face of it may seem difficult to disambiguate from thetaräan-privileged properties which we encounter in the first register. Itbecomes apparent, however, that the plots referred to here as yarliqli yiriare those which had previously been acquired as mulk-i äalisi. This isfor two reasons. The first, somewhat circumstantial reason relates tothe register’s concern to define and demarcate the items of property inquestion. In the first register, emphasis is squarely on the identity ofthe yarliqdars, or taräan grantees, themselves: this of course reflectsthe afore-mentioned fact that taräan privileges were conferred not uponland but people. The emphasis in the second register, by contrast, is notupon people but land: the implication here that a property’s fiscal statusinhered in something other than the identity of its owner suggests that,in contradistinction to what we find in the first register, ‘yarliqli yiri’should here be understood as a fiscally discrete category of landholding,such as mulk-i äalisi itself as course was. The second reason for identifyingthe second register’s ‘yarliqli yiri’ as mulk-i äalisi is perhaps more com-pelling. By checking the contents of the second register against our mixed-format yarliq documents, we find that several plots of yarliqli yiri had pre-viously been sold from the royal demesne as mulk-i äalisi. The registernotes, for instance, that a certain Rahman-Birgan Yasawulbasi ownedtwo plots, measuring respectively 100 and 300 tanab in size, in Kunya-Urgench:

Yarliq lands (yarliqli yiri) of Rahman-Birgan Yasavulbasi in Kuhna Urganc,100 tanab in size. [Abutting] in the east onto mulk [lands], granted from theholdings of the state (mamlaka-yi padsahi), in the north onto the canal (yaf)

35) Ll. 28ob.–29ob: Qam�i altmis bis nafar kisi. Sundin qirq tuqquz kuhna yar-liqdar din yarliqana wa katibana diwan puli ucun turt tilla ikki tanga din ikki yuzalti tilla yitti tanga. Un alti tazasidan yarliqana wa diwan puli sakkiz tilla turt tan-gadin bir yuz dagi utuz bis tilla bir tanga alindi

36) In certain cases the statement that the lands described are yarliq lands(yarliqli yiri) is given in the text itself. In others it is given in the form of a post-script to the list, yarliqli.


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of Qara Äwaqa, in the west onto lands granted from the holdings of the state(mamlaka-yi padsahi) to Ukuz Äalifa, and in the south onto a canal (yaf).37

This closely chimes with what we find in one of our mixed-format yarliqdocuments, dating from 1874. The document in question states thatSayyid Muhammad Khan sold (satduq) 100 tanab of state land in Kunya-Urgench to Rahman-Birgan as mulk-i äalisi for 100 tilla, and the delimi-tations of the area under transaction correspond fully with what we find inthe register.38

And one more plot of yarliqli yiri of Rahman-Birgan Yasawulbasi, 300tanab in size, in Kunya-Urgench:

Another plot of yarliq land (yarliqli yiri) of Rahman-Birgan Yasawulbasi,in Kuhna Urganc, 300 tanab. [Abutting] in the north onto [the property] ofMuhammad Qan Äwaga and part of a road along which herds pass (fada yuli),in the east onto a road, from beginning to end, in the west onto a canal for pub-lic use, and in the south onto the recipient’s own property.39

The description of this plot is identical to that of the plot sold by theKhivan ruler Sayyid Muhammad Khan to Rahman-Birgan Yasawulbasi,by the terms of a mixed-format yarliq document dating from 1301.40

A comparison of the two tax registers indicates, therefore, that by ac-quiring mulk-i äalisi – or ‘yarliqli yiri’ – by the terms of a mixed-formatyarliq document, the purchaser acquired a fiscal exemption. It shouldbe noted, of course, that the second register lists only a relatively smallnumber of plots of ‘yarliqli yiri’: this fact, together with the limitednumber of extant mixed-type yarliq documents, suggests that the privatepurchase of state land was not a particularly widespread practice. It seemsquite likely, in fact, that throughout the 19th century the transfer of stateland into tax-exempt private ownership remained subject to politicalconsiderations as well as economic ones and that the right of acquisitionremained confined to that small group of people who not only possessed

37) Ibid., l. 163.38) CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 559, l. 1339) CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2, d. 491, l. 163. See similarly CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 2,

d. 491, l. 157, describing two properties belonging to a certain Rahmatullah Yasa-wulbasi, the first of these comprising 200 tanab and located in the vicinity of Kan-dum-qala, and the second comprising 50 tanab and located in Kuhna-Urganc. Thedescription chimes with with what we find in two mixed-format yarliq documentsdetailing the circumstances of their sale as mulk-i khalisi in 1847 (ibid., d. 15, l. 2.)and 1882 (ibid., op. 1, d. 559, l. 18) respectively.

40) CGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 559, l. 20.



the required financial resources for the purchase of property, but were alsosufficiently trusted by the Khivan Khans to be deemed loyal futurelandowners. Even if mulk-i khalisi land thus remained distinctly uncom-mon in the 19th and early 20th century Khanate of Khiva, however, itclearly existed: and it clearly enjoyed similar fiscal dispensations to thosewhich obtained in the Emirate of Bukhara. In this particular instance, theKhanate of Khiva was perhaps not as anomalous as S

ˇkapskij, Ivanov

and Koscanov seem to have assumed.41

41) This article was translated from the Russian by Luke Menzies.
