Pashalik Entail

The Pashalik Entail was an Imperial legal process that occurred following the rediscovery of Illusa for the purposes of reintegrating the highly populated planet into the empire in an orderly manner. The rediscovery initially caused a severe controversy in the Landsraad and was the focus of wild speculation of new spice deposits, brinksmanship diplomacy within the Imperial court, and waves of barely-contained house conflict. To prevent open warfare the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV placed the fiefdom in an entail trust and announced a contest of sorts to determine who would be named the beneficiary of the trust. The Pashalik Entail, as it would be known, would be run by a dedicated Imperial corporation in the Pashalik Entail Trust Company (PETC), and would involve temporary land claims being distributed to minor houses. Ten Thousand minor houses would participate, but each required a large registration fee, meaning all but the wealthiest minor houses would require sponsorship by their lieges. Whoever was able to secure the totality of the land claims would then be named beneficiary, the trust dissolved and the title of Pasha of Illusa with its attendant fiefdom officially granted to the winner. Claim scrips, which represented the land claims of a given coordinate, would give miqta rights over that section, allowing taxation or revenue exploitation of the land immediately, with a percentage paid to the trust company. Scrips could be bought, sold, and otherwise traded freely, and almost any method for obtaining scrips from rival houses was sanctioned. Assassination or other forms of murder were grounds for immediate revocation of scrips by the trust company, though conquest, capture, and 'accidental' death were allowed. In practice there was a blind eye turned in many instances, particularly in the early days of the contest.

The Pashalik Entail contest led directly to the Eriad War.

Each Entail Claim Scrip (ECS) represents an area approximately 3 square kilometers and each scrip note included an indelible set of coordinates for the claim. Each initial participating house was allocated a bundle of 1,000 shares of contiguous territory through lottery. A marketplace was established at the Entail Claim Scrip Office in Shaddimark to allow buying, selling, or other forms of trading claim scrips.

A holder of a scrip had miqta rights on the land, i.e. had rights to tax and collect revenue from the land, but the ownership was still legally held in trust by the Entail and scrips could be revoked by the Siridar-Trustee or one of his appointed Judges of the Entail.