Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part two | 7
however, is that all the land was registered in slightly different combinations of
the same names across the sixteen plots, with roughly half to Ibrahim Efendi Sa‘d
al-Din and the rest to his sons Quftan, Sa‘d, Ali, and Khalil and the grandsons
of his deceased brother Muhammad, Sa‘d al-Din, Salih and ‘Ali. 57
The registration of al-Rafid, the village where Ibrahim Sa‘d al-Din and his son
Sa‘d both had their houses (valued at 5,000 and 3,500 guruş respectively) was
done by the Special Commission in June 1883. Al-Rafid is in many respects the
central village of the territories of those known as the ‘Ubaidat today. According
to the register, al-Rafid itself has 64 per cent of its land in olives (this does not
preclude some cultivation of field crops amid the olives). Ibrahim Efendi Sa‘d
al-Din, his sons and one or two of his brothers dominate the lists of property
in the village, but do not exclude other holders in the manner of Hubras. Thus,
of the basic eight plots of village land in al-Rafid on three of which olives are
cultivated, divided into 36½ shares between 35 holders, Ibrahim Efendi holds
5, his brother Fayyad 3, his sons Faris 3, Quftan 2, Su‘ud 2, and ‘Ali 2, and his
brother ‘Ali’s son Funaijir ½ share. In short just under half of the main blocks
of land of the village, a total of some 11,700 old dönüms, is owned by Ibrahim
Efendi, his sons and his brother’s son. The ownership of the olive trees on the
three great olive plots is also given as shares in a total number of trees, but here
the holding groups differ.
There are three aspects of note to this pattern. First, the tax on the land on
which the olive trees stand is borne by a somewhat different group of persons,
including more persons outside the network known today as the ‘Ubaidat. The
owners of olive trees include members of ‘Ubaidat lines resident in other villages,
notably Kufr Saum for Muflih and Muhammad ibn Jabr and Yubla for Ibrahim
Abu Dani, as well as the important financial family of Sa‘d al-‘Ali and his brother
Sa‘id of al-Bariha. These combinations suggest that the development of olive
cultivation was a commercial operation in this area. No woman appears among
the owners of olive trees.
Second, unlike most villages of the region, residence and cultivation rights
are not co-terminous. Rights to the olive trees of al-Rafid belong not only to the
dominant figures of the village – Ibrahim Efendi Sa‘d al-Din and his sons – but
also to Da’ud Efendi ‘Abd al-Muhsin and sons based in Harta and to Muflih
ibn Jabr and brothers based in Kufr Saum. Of the ‘Ubaidat family lines whose
houses are in al-Rafid, the sons of Muhammad Sa‘d al-Din own grain land not
in al-Rafid but in Kufr Saum and, together with Ibrahim Efendi and five of his
sons, in Hubras; and the sons of Funaijir ibn ‘Ali ibn Sa‘d al-Din own grain land
in the mezraa al-Barashta along with the Da’ud Efendi ‘Abd al-Muhsin line of
Harta. Lastly, although the Ottoman registers contain no mention of Qarqush,
according to the Mandate cadastre it formed a mazra‘a of al-Rafid shared by
every al-Rafid landholder. 58
Exactly how this intertwining of rights arose is unclear; it surely involved
both the physical movement of family clusters and the practical construction of
these groups around dominant figures with access to finance and government
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