Midhat, by establishing government agencies in Iraq's…

Midhat, by establishing government agencies in Iraq's cities and by attempting to settle the tribes, alters the tribal-urban balance of power, which since the thirteenth century has been largely in favor of the tribes.

The most important element of Midhat's plan to extend Ottoman authority into the countryside had been the 1858 TAPU land law (named after the initials of the government office issuing it).

The new land reform has replaced the feudal system of land holdings and tax farms with legally sanctioned property rights.

It had been designed both to induce tribal sheikhs to settle and to give them a stake in the existing political order.

In practice, the TAPU laws have enabled the tribal sheikhs to become large landowners; tribesmen, fearing that the new law is an attempt to collect taxes more effectively or to impose conscription, register community-owned tribal lands in their sheikhs' names or sell them outright to urban speculators.

As a result, tribal sheikhs gradually are transformed into profit-seeking landlords while their tribesmen are relegated to the role of impoverished sharecroppers.