Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part two | 7
Da’ud ‘Abbada was to prove unlucky in his attempt to extend the prosecution
to Salim Bey, all the more finally as Salim Bey died before ‘Abbada’s appeal
reached its conclusion in the capital, rendering it impossible to re-examine the
case. Thus Da’ud ‘Abbada had to purge all his time in prison and raise the
very substantial sums for the fine imposed before he could be reappointed to
government service.
Only two years later a Special Commission for the Lands of Hauran was to
begin work in the district. 42 The scribe on that Commission was ‘Abd al-Fattah
Efendi, whom we have met in the course of the testimonies made to the investigating
committee. It is thus hard to avoid the sense that the dispatch of the Special
Commission was in part to correct unsystematic practices in land registration
described above. 43 The work of the Special Commission will be examined in the
next chapter; it marks a turning point in the administration of property in the
region. But first, drawing on some of the work of that same Commission, whose
greater systematicity allows a basis for comparison between villages and nahiyes,
we return to the two most important leaders to have presented charges against
Da’ud ‘Abbada: ‘Abd al-Qadir Sharaida of al-Kura and Ibrahim Sa‘d al-Din of
al-Kafarat to compare the economic bases of these two prominent leaders.
The properties of regional leaders
‘Abd al-Qadir Efendi Yusuf al-Sharaida of the Kura
‘Abd al-Qadir Sharaida, it will be recalled, was involved in a legal battle at
the provincial level, if not higher, to have his family’s rights over the area in
the Jordan Valley, Ghaur al-Arba‘in, below the villages of Tibna and Dair Abu
Sa‘id, recognized as his family’s property under the new tapu regime. 44 Livestock
and livestock taxes being valuable sources of cash income, the area was used
primarily as pasture, but it also included irrigated agriculture where wadi Ziqlab
entered the plain. 45 The struggle for ownership of the land was to last for almost
a decade. The final decision, communicated by the vilayet on 6 January 1889 to
the liva and from there to ‘Ajlun three days later, entailed a bedel-i muaccel of
117,000 guruş – transferred between the privy purse and the public treasury, for
lands never previously registered. 46 Thus Ghaur al-Arba‘in was eventually to be
judged imperial çiftlik and joined to the large çiftlik of Baisan on the west of
the river.
Concerning the claims of ‘Abd al-Qadir, Da’ud ‘Abbada merely noted that
the legal contest was fought at a level far above his jurisdiction. Unlike his accusation
of Muflih al-Zamil Abu Ra’s of Sama, Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim of al-Rafid,
and Muhammad Muflih al-Jabr of Kufr Saum, he does not charge ‘Abd al-Qadir
Sharaida with exploiting the common cultivator.
‘Abd al-Qadir’s attempt to gain ownership of lands, for which his father and
grandfather had acted as tax collectors, was of a rather grand order. It was to
fail. At home, in the Kura nahiye itself, his holdings and those of his family were
substantial but did not rival the property rights registered by the leaders of the
Kafarat. Beyond the Sharaida family’s holdings in the vast area of Tibna village,
90