Ottoman legislative reforms of the late nineteenth century have variously been narrated as top-down, modernizing, and the result of external pressures. These narratives have posed provincial actors, and especially rural provincial actors, as obstacles to such reforms rather than exploring their contributions to the process of framing new legislation. While recent research has noted cooperation between Ottoman provincial actors and policymakers in Istanbul in initiatives for transformative legislation, such research has focused overwhelmingly on urban centers. This paper will contribute to a growing effort to rethink the impetus for reform by exploring links between events in rural areas of the Ottoman provinces and new legislation emanating from Istanbul. I argue that one of the main obstacles to recognizing rural populations as key actors in imperial reform is a general lack of understanding of the mechanics of rural economies. By exploring the issue of animal theft, this paper will illuminate details of animal sales, identification, and taxation as key elements of rural economies in the late Ottoman period that shaped the language and intent of central reforms. This paper will utilize a case study from the rural district of Salt in the southern region of the province of Syria, where animals were a key element of the local economy in the late nineteenth century. Through a reading of the Salt Shari’a Court records (1880-1915), this paper will investigate the issue of animal theft, the pastoral nomads and merchants mainly involved in claims of animal theft and the court’s attempts to address the issue. I will also discuss what the court records tell us about animal markets, local methods for identifying animals and local actors who were especially involved in these activities. At the same time, this paper will delve into central state archival documents that outline an early twentieth century legislative attempt to curb animal theft, recognized as a key problem all over the empire. New legislation pinpointed the need to identify animals precisely and issue title deeds for use in local markets towards effective taxation and policing of animals as property. By showing the connections between the language of this central legislative initiative and attempts to address the issue of animal theft at the level of the rural provincial court, I will show how rural actors in one corner of the empire contributed to the processes and contours of imperial reform attempts.