From a variety of sources — archives, village books, and academic publications — it is argued in this paper that for too long academics have misunderstood the meaning of the mush?? institution and its abolition. Their view was based on the still dominant, but factually unfounded preconception that it was a peasant commune ‘astonishingly similar to the Russian mir’ a mind-set that precluded historians from grasping the true role of the mush?? institution in this region. I argue that the mush?? land title represented merely the attachment of a specific community to specific plots of land. In this context, ‘community’ often meant nuclear and extended families in suprahouseholds, or even the entire village. People in these communities tended to derive income from land according to recognized arrangements such as joint cultivation, mutual use of grazing lands, or land redistribution agreements. The comparison with mir was relevant only to one form of the institution, repartitioned mush?? — the practice of parcels substitution among cultivators in peasant communities — in which land redistribution varied according to specific ‘factors of production’ or to informal and formal property rights in the land. Moreover, mush?? did not prove less efficient than the Western-style system of land management imported under the Mandates, and was possibly more effective in contending with the Land Law of 1858 allowing seizure of lands that had not been cultivated for three years. In addition, all forms of mush?? imposed greater communal mutual support and responsibility on those involved, which significantly reduced risks in times of crisis. The historiography of the abolition of repartitioned mush?? has mistakenly been traced back to the Ottoman Land Code of 1858. Neither that Code, nor the records of Ottoman land registration, intended mush?? to be abolished. It is true that from 1911 the Young Turks deleted many Articles from the Code. These included Articles 15 to 17, which explained how to record collectively held lands, but even then no abolition was legislated. Instead, it was the abolition ordinances of the British and French Mandatory governments during the 1920s that began a conflict over land titles.