Jurisprudential Practice and the Rise of the Importance of Land Ownership in Tunisia and Egypt during the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The research attempts to highlight the important role that jurisprudence plays in the historical work. Because the jurisprudential blogs contain important information that deals with daily life and the practices and bets of social actors. We also tried to show the circumstantial relationship of the sixteenth century that the Mediterranean experienced, such as the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route, the discovery of the American continent, and the change of trade routes with the escalation of the importance of land exploitation and ownership, whether by the political authority in order to compensate for its losses resulting from the contraction of maritime trade, or by the population whether for farming or grazing. Through the study of land ownership in Tunisia and Egypt during the sixteenth century, we tried to identify the historical conditions and legislative techniques for the relationship of the social actor to the land. The research was divided into an introduction and four elements: the historical conditions for land ownership during the sixteenth century, ownership and terminology, legislation mechanisms, and forms of ownership exploitation. The research concluded that the circumstance of the sixteenth century had a negative impact on the entire Mediterranean field, including Tunisia. As for Egypt, its geographical advantages helped it, for a while, to avoid the complications of this circumstance, due to its commercial openness to Africa, the Roman nation, and Asia.