The following are briefly the restrictive provisions, which in actual practice encumber émirié lands, as well as the greaterportion of vacoufs .
The meadow land on these domains cannot be broken up and brought into cultivation without permission of the authorities.
The occupiers are forbidden to work these lands for the manufacture of bricks or tiles, without similar permission. Oncontravention of thin rule, they will have to pay the price of the land so used, according to its value in the district. Nooccupier may plant, on his authority, any vines or fruit trees to form a vineyard or garden. In case of contravention, theTreasury has, for three years, the power of removing the trees. After that time, the use of the fruit trees belongs to thosewho planted them, subject to an annual payment of tithe. In any case, trees, whether fruit-bearing or not, belong to the State,the occupier only taking the produce. No new buildings may be raised on émirié land, without previous permission from theproper authorities. If this rule is infringed, the administration may order the destruction of the buildings. The holder of landby tapou ( émirié property) may sell it to whomsoever he pleases, subject however to the express condition that he haspreviously obtained permission of the competent authority. Without such sanction, any sale of émirié land is null and void. Ifthe occupier of an estate, on which there are mulk trees, sells it to any other than the owner of such trees, the owner of themshall be entitled for six years to claim the land, and to recover it on payment of its value at the time he makes hisdemand.Land sold to an inhabitant of another village may be recovered, any time within a year, by the inhabitants of thevillage in which the land is situated, on re-payment of the purchase-money. This communal retrait has existed everywhere.
All land, which shall not be cultivated directly by the holder, or indirectly by way of loan or lease, and which shall remainidle for three consecutive years, shall be submitted to the formality of tapou , whether the holder be present or absent. Suchland shall be put up for sale, and adjudged to the highest bidder.
The holders of émirié and ineveoufé lands are not entitled to mines discovered on the property of which they areusufructuaries, nor to claim any share in them.Mussulman land cannot pass by descent to non-Mussulman relatives. Thesale and grant of émirié lands on conditions held to be illegal by the religious law shall not be valid. This sanctions all kindsof arbitrary and vexatious proceedings against non-Mussulmans, the religious law being very severe against them.
1. The data in this chapter are borrowed from a note of Colucci Bey on property in Egypt, in the Bulletin de l'Institutégyptien ; from a treatise of the advocate Gatteschi on the same subject, and from notes collected in Egypt in 1869.
2. Herodotus relates (Bk. ii. c. 109) that "Sesostris divided the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants, giving each a portion ofland of equal extent, and deriving his principal revenue from the rent which the occupiers had to pay every year."3. Histoire de l'Égypte sous le gouvernement de Mohamnzed-Ali , by F. Mengin.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY AND HEREDITARY PATRIMONY.
As we have seen, primitive nations, in obedience to an instinctive sentiment, recognized in every man a natural right tooccupy a portion of the soil, from which he might derive the means of subsistence by his labour; and, accordingly, theydivided the collective property of the tribe equally among all the heads of families.
This mode of regarding the right of property has been frequently touched upon, but, I think, it has been expounded by nonebetter than by two philosophers; one French, the other English, who, working independently, have made use of nearlyidentical terms. They are M. F. Huet in his work le Règne social du christianisme , Bk. III. c. v.: and Mr Herbert Spencer, inhis Social Statics , c. ix. (1)
M. Huet writes as follows:--
"Publicists, economists, and statesmen vie with one another m repeating that without property there can be no liberty.
Nothing is more unquestionable. Property, or the right of regarding as one's own a determinate portion of matter, ofenjoying it or disposing of it at will, without trenching on the rights of another, always constitutes an essential foundation ofa true form of society.
"Either words have no meaning or to place property among natural rights implies that the original title of investiture inlanded property is the quality of man; that the quality of man engenders of itself, directly, a right to a definite quantity ofsuch propertythe original property, which becomes for every one the source, the foundation and the means of obtainingevery other kind.
