Seven months later the colonel of the 8th Regiment died of hepatitis also in the hospital in Acre. Five days before he died Ala Eddin Ağa gave his eighteen-year-old servant five kises (2,500 piasters) against a stamped certificate and in the presence of various witnesses. When informed about this the divan doubted the authenticity of the certificate and laid claim on the money saying that the property of dead soldiers and officers should revert to the army. Seeing that the boy had a stamped certificate, however, the divan decided to deal with the issue through the local religious judge (qāḍī) who said that according to the sharī‘a it was illegal to make a will that exceeded one-third of the value of the deceased’s property. The case was more complicated than that, moreover, since it was also discovered that besides cash, Ala Eddin Ağa had also left the boy his horse. The divan, however, decided to confiscate two-thirds of the cash and to take the horse to deliver it to the cavalry, which was in short supply of horses. To add to the young lad’s grievance he himself was to be conscripted into the army. He then presented a petition to Ibrahim Pasha saying in it that he was a freed slave of Ala Eddin Ağa and would like to go to Cairo to serve his master’s young children. Again, “he was silenced and was given no answer” (sükut olunup cevap verilmedi).

DEFINE: Illustrates the one-third rule in Islamic inheritance law through a concrete estate dispute.

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1089