LAND LAWS

: Land
Dr. Eng. Shireen Y. Ismael
3rd lecture

Land Laws – Dr.Eng. Shireen,2018

 Hammurabi Code
1810 – 1750 BC

 Land registration and property rights in Iraq have deep

historical foundations reaching back to the Hammurabic
period

 Dedicate to land tenure and registration and the

importance of agriculture land for Mesopotamian
economy. Controlling land and sale of private properties
were also addressed in the code.

 Evidence of the sale of private properties was noted as

early as 2700 BC from the city-states of Ur and Uruk.

 Different classes of property were noted in written tablets

of the Sumerian period. Land Registration:
a system of
 Under Hammurabi (1792–1750 BC), land classification registering land and
expanded and is referred to in the Hammurabic code.1 its owners
Thus, land registration has occurred in Iraq for millennia,
and Iraq could well be the origin of the concept of land as
private property.
Hammurabi Code
1810 – 1750 BC

 John P. Powelson (1988), The Story of Land: A History of Land Tenure and
Agrarian Reform, The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 26 Towbridge Street,
Cambridge, MA 02138 is the reference for Ur, Uruk, and the Hammurabic period.
An example of the Hammurabic code: “If a man has bestowed a field, a
plantation, or a house on his heir who finds favor in his sight [and] has drawn
up a sealed tablet for him, after the father goes to [his] fate, when the brothers
divide [the estate]. He shall take the gift that the father has given him, and
apart from it they shall take proportionate shares from the property of the
paternal estate.” References to Ur, Uruk, and Sumeria in Powelson are from
Diakonoff, I. M., 1974, “Slaves, Helots, and Serfs in Early Antiquity,” Acta Antigua
Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae
Reference (USAID Iraq Local Governance Program,2005)
 Hammurabi Code
Mesopotamia: Religious Beliefs Mesopotamians believed that
gods interfered in human affairs and they must pleased the gods to
survive. They were associated with forces of nature.
 Each city had its own principal god and a main temple at the
center of city, usually ziggurats- brick pyramids with ramps
and stairs. Priest had high standing and passed their
positions/knowledge to their sons Priests preformed rituals,
provided music, exorcised evil spirits, and interpreted dreams.
Afterlife was full of suffering.

 Women could own property, control their dowries, and

participate in trade, but men control political and religious life
 If anyone opens his ditches to water his crops, but is careless,
and the water floods the fields of his neighbour, then he shall
pay for the loss.
 If he does not plant the field that was given over to him as a
garden, if it be arable land, the gardener shall pay the owner
the produce of the field for the years that he let it lie fallow,
according to the product of neighboring fields, put the field in
arable condition and return it to its owner.
 Ottoman Empire
1831 - 1920

The tribal background was a working political alliance of clans based on social and religious
conceptions.
According to tribal rules, the tribal lands are private property and owned in the name of the
tribal sheikh, who was thereby presenting his tribe’s men (Yitzhak,1994; Shaikley, 2013).
• Land ownership according to tribal rules is converted between men only (Yitzhak, 1994),
• Land ownership was under the rural and tribal background, is a right of men. Shaikley (2013)
• Land tenure rights are influenced by gender regulations
• No land is without ownership
• large areas, cities, and complete villages were registered as one plot of land on one title
deed.
• Most of the lands were owned in a feudal system, by the powerful families of tribal lords
• The Ottman occupation of Iraq, altered the concept of land ownership to one that all belongs
to the state, 80% of the land was “Miri “and a small fraction was “Tapu”
• The state dose not have to prove this ownership with any document, including title deeds.
 Ottoman Empire
1831 - 1920

• The land tenure system under the Ottomans, and as modified by subsequent Iraqi
governments, provided little incentive to improve productivity. Most farming was conducted
by sharecroppers and tenants who received only a portion--often only a small proportion--of
the crop. Any increase in production favored owners disproportionately, which served as a
disincentive to farmers to produce at more than subsistence level. For their part, absentee
owners preferred to spend their money in acquiring more land, rather than to invest in
improving the land they had already accumulated.

• large areas of the Ameriya lands were allocated to powerful officials and individuals. Forgery
was another issue; it found its way to the TAPU registry. On the registry, any name could be
deleted and replaced by a new name. Moreover, documentation was poor and inefficient, thus
making it vulnerable to fraud and graft

 By World War I, only limited registration had been accomplished and land titles were
insecure, particularly under the system of tribal tenure through which the state retained
ownership of the land although tribes used it.
http://countrystudies.us/iraq/59.htm
 Land Right During the British Mandate(1917-1932)

The commanding general announced in the Declaration No. 15 (given December 18, 1918)
that the people who have title deeds for their possessions of Ameriya lands are considered to
be tenants for these lands. Institutions were to be established to examine those title deeds.
At the same time, the British authority distributed lands to some tribal leaders and feudalists
who had supported the British occupation.

Under the mandate, the British government realized the importance of clear real estate
registration and issued Declaration No. 24 (1920).
 Land Right During the British Mandate(1917-1932)

• By the early 1930s, large landowners became more interested in secure titles
because a period of agricultural expansion was underway. In the north, urban
merchants were investing in land development, and in the south tribes were
installing pumps and were otherwise improving land.
• In response, the government promulgated a law in 1932 empowering it to settle
title to land and to speed up the registration of titles. Under the law, a number of
tribal leaders and village headmen were granted title to the land that had been
worked by their communities. The effect, perhaps unintended, was to replace the
semi-communal system with a system of ownership that increased the
number of sharecroppers and tenants dramatically.
• A 1933 law provided that a sharecropper could not leave if he were indebted to
the landowner. Because landowners were usually the sole source of credit and
almost no sharecropper was free of debt, the law effectively bound many tenants
to the land.
Land Right During the British Mandate(1917-1932)

• Under British Mandate, Iraq's land was moved from communal land owned by
the tribe to tribal sheikhs that agreed to work with the British. Known as
compradors, these families controlled much of Iraq's arable land until the end of
British rule in 1958.

• Throughout the 1920s and 30s, more and more land began to be centered in the
hands of just a couple families.

• By 1958 eight individual families owned almost 1 million acres, 1

Acre=4048.8m2.

• The British did attempt to instill some reforms to increase the productivity of
the land in Iraq.

• In 1926 the Pump Law was introduced, essentially legislating that all newly
irrigated land would be tax free for 4 years. This led to some short term gains in
land productivity.

• If land was cultivated for 15 years, it then became the property of the person
who cultivated that land.
 1958 Revolution
• Promises of Reforming of land law
• Because the promise of land reform kindled part of the popular
enthusiasm for the 1958 revolution and because the powerful landlords
posed a potential threat to the new regime, agrarian reform was high on
the agenda of the new government, which started the process of land
reform within three months of taking power.
• The 1958 law, modeled after Egypt's law, limited the maximum amount
of land an individual owner could retain to 1,000 dunums (100 hectares)
of irrigated land or twice that amount of rain-fed land.
• Holdings above the maximum were expropriated by the government.
Compensation was to be paid in state bonds,
• But in 1969 the government absolved itself of all responsibility to
recompense owners. The law provided for the expropriation of 75
percent of all privately owned arable land.
 1958 Revolution
• The expropriated land, in parcels of between seven and fifteen hectares of irrigated land or double that
amount of rain-fed land, was to be distributed to individuals. The recipient was to repay the government
over a twenty-year period, and he was required to join a cooperative.

• The law also had temporary provisions maintaining the sharecropping system in the interim between
expropriation and redistribution of the land. Landlords were required to continue the management of the
land and to supply customary inputs to maintain production, but their share of the crop was reduced
considerably. This provision grew in importance as land became expropriated much more rapidly than it
was being distributed.
• By 1968, 10 years after agrarian reform was instituted, 1.7 million hectares had been expropriated, but
fewer than 440,000 hectares of sequestered land had been distributed. A total of 645,000 hectares had
been allocated to nearly 55,000 families, however, because several hundred thousand hectares of
government land were included in the distribution.
• The situation in the countryside became chaotic because the government lacked the personnel, funds, and
expertise to supply credit, seed, pumps, and marketing services--functions that had previously been
performed by landlords. Landlords tended to cut their production, and even the best-intentioned
landlords found it difficult to act as they had before the land reform because of hostility on all sides.
• Rural-to- urban migration increased as agricultural production stagnated, and a prolonged drought
coincided with these upheavals. Agricultural production fell steeply in the 1960s and never recovered
fully.
 The Ba’ath Regime
1968 - 1991
In the 1970s, agrarian reform was carried further. Legislation in 1970 reduced the maximum size of holdings to between 10
and 150 hectares of irrigated land (depending on the type of land and crop) and to between 250 and 500 hectares of
nonirrigated land. Holdings above the maximum were expropriated with compensation only for actual improvements such
as buildings, pumps, and trees.

The government also reserved the right of eminent domain in regard to lowering the holding ceiling and to dispossessing
new or old landholders for a variety of reasons.

In 1975 an additional reform law was enacted to break up the large estates of Kurdish tribal landowners.

Additional expropriations such as these exacerbated the government's land management problems. Although Iraq claimed to
have distributed nearly 2 million hectares by the late 1970s, independent observers regarded this figure as greatly
exaggerated. The government continued to hold a large proportion of arable land, which, because it was not distributed,
often lay fallow. Rural flight increased, and by the late 1970s, farm labor shortages had become so acute that Egyptian
farmers were being invited into the country.

The original purpose of the land reform had been to break up the large estates and to establish many small owner-operated
farms, but fragmentation of the farms made extensive mechanization and economies of scale difficult to achieve, despite the
expansion of the cooperative system. Therefore, in the 1970s, the government turned to collectivization as a solution.
 TAPU land system of registration,
Real Estate Registration Departments (RERD),