Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part two | 7
Figure 7.1 Musha` landholdings of the Sharaida family in Tibna, 1883
with five other men. Lastly, yet another cousin, Sharaida ibn Ruba‘, held his
one-quarter share in the second block of land.
Brothers here do not always hold land together but may cooperate with others.
In Tibna the only large holdings belong to the two figures of political preeminence,
‘Abd al-Qadir Efendi and Muflih Efendi. A nephew may hold a share
equal to that of an uncle in a manner clearly not determined by inheritance. If
we compare holdings in the musha‘ to those in houses, we find that brothers who
share a house do not always farm musha‘ land together but may cultivate with
others. It is only in one small plot of 1½ dönüms that we find all the cousins,
sons of Yusuf and of Dhiyab, holding jointly. 51 Whereas inheritance appears the
generating principle of right in the small plots, in the musha‘ land rights follow
a different logic arising from the organization of production and the distribution
of tax liability across the area of Tibna. The full share of land held by a leader
such as ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Sharaida needs to be interpreted not as resulting from
anterior rights of ‘ownership’ as much as from his political capacity to mobilize
the other factors of production – human labour, animal power and seed – required
to cultivate a full share of land. Even so, ‘Abd al-Qadir Sharaida’s share in the
land represented only one share of the 43¾ shares in the lesser ‘half’ of the
village, less than 1½ per cent of all the grain lands of Tibna.
The tapu register of 1883 lists 10,914 olive trees in Tibna, each individually
owned, although the land on which they were planted formed part of the musha‘
lands of Tibna. 52 The taxes on the common land planted in olives appear to
have been allocated in line with the valuation of the olive trees, in a manner
more equitable than what we will see for villages of the Kafarat below. While
the holdings of ‘Abd al-Qadir Agha Yusuf Sharaida are important, one of 63
trees and another of 46, a total of 107 trees, this represents the eighth holding
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