Abstract

Historians of the Khanate of Khiva have long disagreed about the legal and fiscal status of certain categories of land ownership known as atā’ī mulk and yārlīqlī mulk. In the present article, I try to offer a new reading of these categories. In so doing, I challenge the influential arguments of Russian scholars such as O. Škapskij, V. Giršfel’d, A. Galkin, whose conceptualisations of yārlīqlī mulk reflect a number of interpretative errors and confusions between various different legal and fiscal practices. By analysing in detail the edicts of khans’ yārlīqs and tax registries, I attempt to demonstrate that the lands identified by Russian authors as yārlīqlī mulk enjoyed complete fiscal immunity, and that they were commonly referred to in vernacular usage as mulk-i hālis.