ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the economy of Ottoman Palestine was essentially agrarian, land being the main form of wealth. Extensive tracts were under government ownership, and feudal-type political and social relations prevailed. One administrative measure, aiming at greater centralization, was the Ottoman Law of the Vilayets of 1864. A British Palestine government report of 1941 described the situation as follows: For, whereas the sheikh was a traditional leader with a position of independence in relation to Government, the mukhtar merely had the status of a subordinate officer of Government at the bottom of a ladder of direct control. In 1920, at the start of the British mandatory period that followed the Ottoman regime, the Arab population was approximately 600,000; there were 67,000 Jews. Turkish concern had been for a government representative mukhtar who could aid primarily in tax collection and secondarily in the maintenance of law and order; the British mandatory government reversed the order of importance.
