ABSTRACT
When the British military administration decided to preserve the Ottoman laws in force in Palestine on the outbreak of the First World War, it did not inherit survey legislation, for such laws did not exist. Thus, the entire field of surveying and mapping remained unregulated and anarchic until the spring of 1920. The survey laws were a British innovation in the administration of Palestine. This new legislation was designed not primarily to create a legal basis for all surveying in the country, but to provide an obligatory professional framework only for land surveying.
