Abstract:
This article examines a conflict within the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem between the Greek hierarchy and the Palestinian laity over property. Connecting historical scholarship with ethnography from the Old City of Jerusalem, it demonstrates how Orthodox ownership was transformed by the Ottoman definition of Church property as a family waqf. This legal change led Greeks and Palestinians to express their property rights in the idiom of custodianship: the ability to hold and transmit property as descendants of the Church. As a result, ownership in the Orthodox community became less tied to legal title and increasingly aligned with claims of kinship and descent.