Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

which later was to be subdivided into a number of villages, ‘Abd al-Qadir Efendi
al-Sharaida owned land in the villages of Zubiya and Kufr Abil – one share of
the fifteen shares of the 2,700 dönüms registered in Zubiya and four shares of
the 47 shares in the 16,000 dönüms registered in Kufr Abil. 47
The structure of the 1883 property registration for Tibna includes separate
lists of houses, musha‘ land, olive trees on musha‘ land, small plots and plantings.
48 Tibna embraced the largest of village territories in the district, although
‘Ain Janna and ‘Inba also stretched over large areas across what became several
villages in the 1920s. See Map 5.3. Just to the east of the village site of Tibna
lay a great common plot planted with just under 11,000 individually owned olive
trees. The musha‘ land on which the private olive trees stood appears to have
been evaluated by a combined measure of the value of the trees and the ground
on which they stood. By contrast, the grain musha‘ land and the important areas
of more individualized small plots were valued at only six guruş per dönüm. This
relatively low rate may well have reflected not only the mediocre quality of the
land but also the power of leaders of the Sharaida family to obtain relatively
good terms from the government officials. The musha‘ was divided into two vast
blocks: the first, divided into 43¾ shares, included the land of Rukhaym 13,563
dönüms, Dair Abu Sa‘id 12,950 dönüms, Sawan 8,014 dönüms, and Ghubayra 219
dönüms; the second divided into 44⅛ shares included the land of Kufr al-Ma’
22,293 dönüms, Rahaba 15,753 dönüms and Mahrama 1,323 dönüms. These
blocks stretch across what is today the land of six villages. The scale of this
territory corresponds to complex forms of holding land: there is an average of
eight holders to a share. If registration reflected how land was worked in those
years, then cultivators must have moved to stay for periods of time in the different
zones, whether or not they had built houses there. A share meant holding land
in different areas some distance apart and with different quality of soil. By the
early twentieth century there were several residential settlements within the lands
of Tibna. This may also have been true in the 1880s but there is no evidence for
such dispersed settlement in the tapu records. 49
In the musha‘ grain lands, the leader ‘Abd al-Qadir Efendi Yusuf al-Sharaida
held a full share and his brother’s son, Muflih Efendi Jabr three-quarters of a
share. 50 See Figure 7.1. By contrast, the rest of ‘Abd al-Qadir’s brothers did not
hold exceptionally large shares and held their land jointly with other men not
immediately patrilineally related. Thus brothers Talal and Sudi had a half share
along with a third man, ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman (see holding 3); and along with
three men, ‘Awad and Muhammad al-Khalil and Muhammad ibn Khamis, two
other brothers, Jurdan and Klaib, held five-eighths of a share (holding 4). These
shares fell in the first great block of land of Tibna (A) whereas the remaining
brother and brother’s son, Mahmud and Ibrahim ibn Ahmad, held shares in the
second block of land (B) together with their three cousins, Fandi, Salih, and
Mithqal sons of Dhiyab, two second cousins, Dhiyab and Mudhib sons of Faisal
al-Dhiyab, and an eighth man, Muhammad ibn Ghaith. The three other cousins,
Fari‘, Nayif and ‘Ali al-Dhiyab had their share in the first block of land together
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Regional leadership