Entitlement to landed property was one the core legal concepts perpetuating colonial rule across the world. In the case of French colonial “Protectorate” Morocco (1912-1956), the intense focus on reforming land law attests to its centrality to France’s so-called mission civilisatrice. This paper examines the colonial encounter with Islamic legal forms of documenting land transactions in early Protectorate Morocco. It argues that practices of establishing proof—in this case, through authentic notarized documents—emerged as the central point of colonial engagement with Islamic (shari’a) court practice in Morocco. Whereas many colonial powers forced all land to be subject to titles in a public register, French authorities in Morocco made property registration (Fr., immatriculation; Ar., tahfiz) optional. As a result, shari’a courts remained competent for any unregistered property dispute—even for those involving European litigants. How then did French administrators “respect” Islamic legal practice while encouraging European purchase of unregistered land in the hands of Moroccan Muslims? I examine this question through the private Islamic legal contract of property entitlement (milkiyya). In doing so, I examine original court archives to show that French administrators intensely focused their procedures for drafting Islamic legal documents in an attempt to recast the milkiyya as an Islamic legal analogue for property title. After first pointing to the rich Islamic legal traditions of documentation, I show that French authorities declared documentation practice outside the “religious” domain of Islamic law that they promised to protect. By forcing notaries to register these documents in court registers, French officials attempted to subject Islamic legal criteria for establishing documentary fact—namely reliable testimony and notarization—to central state mediation. By extension, this process placed the localized criteria for testimony at the forefront of confrontations between shari’a court personnel and French colonial surveillance. In the end, I suggest that processes of property documentation provide immense untapped insight into the court-level impact of colonial legalities on Islamic law in courts.