This paper examines the strategies deployed and policies elaborated in the process of shoring up imperial sovereignty and finances through the development of the Sultan’s Lands in the countryside of Aleppo province. Since the earliest days of the Tanzimat, if not before, extending cultivation into the empire’s “empty lands” had been a priority of Ottoman administrators. The anticipated production from these lands was seen as one of the most promising ways to augment imperial revenues by increasing tithe income. This project took on increasing urgency in the wake of the 1875-76 imperial default and the formation of the Public Debt Administration when many of the most lucrative tithes were diverted to cover the empire’s debt and interest payments. Others were increasingly designated as kilometric guarantees to finance railroad construction. The literature has focused on the economically weak position of the empire’s financial institutions in this moment, but this paper contends that these circumstances were also generative. In the midst of these encroachments on one of the empire’s most secure sources of revenue, Ottoman officials sought to carve out spaces of fiscal sovereignty that would be less vulnerable to foreign creditors and concessionaires. The institution of the Privy Purse created one such space by acquiring vast properties across the empire that the Sultan held as his private property. Many of these properties were in the regions of “empty lands.” Although the institution had initially been established in the 1850s, the years following the default saw the Privy Purse administration ramp up considerably its efforts to acquire lands and maintain them in cultivation. In Aleppo, which would ultimately become one of the most lucrative provinces for the Privy Purse, these lands were located in relatively marginal areas for cultivation, posing challenges for farmers and administrators alike. Through an examination of the Privy Purse Administration’s files about Aleppo in the Ottoman Archives, including the original regulations governing their management, correspondence between the officials administering them, and cases involving counterclaims to their ownership, this paper will explore how administrators understood the role of these lands as a space both for establishing fiscal sovereignty and for testing potential policies and “best practices” for the developmentalist state. It argues that administrators walked a fine line between maximizing extraction and offering leniency and generous conditions to cultivators working in marginal ecologies, all while fending off efforts by local elites to acquire these lands for themselves.