Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

question of ‘Ajaj Bey, the governor’s nephew, acting unofficially as tapu scribe
or yoklama scribe in various villages of the district including Bait Ra’s, and of
Da’ud ‘Abbada’s opposition to him. ‘Ajaj Bey himself was not called to answer
questions. Nor was anyone who might have opposed Hasan al-Sabbah’s claim to
have been a headman of Bait Ra’s, whether Salim Abu Qasim or a Hamuri.
The investigation reveals tensions during tapu registration over village leadership
and proof of title to land by hakk-ı karar or by bedel-i misl. It is here that the
question of residence arises. Hakk-ı karar signified ten years’ continuous tenure
as a cultivator. In a later part of the investigation Da’ud ‘Abbada said that most
people of Bait Ra’s were ‘ploughmen of the region’ (bilad-ı harise) and outsiders
(yabancı), thus not entitled to hakk-ı karar. 12 However, one of Hasan al-Sabbah’s
witnesses, Ahmad al-‘Ali, was awarded title yet told the committee that he had
only moved to live in Bait Ra’s two years previously. Hasan al-Sabbah and other
Bani Ta‘an families may have been trying to establish their title to land in Bait
Ra’s without being yet resident. In the particular case of Bait Ra’s, residence
appears to have been a condition for being awarded title to land. We turn now
to an analysis of the village’s tapu registers of 1880.
1880 tapu registration
There are four features of the tapu registration of Bait Ra’s in 1880 which
are unusual: (1) the concern by residents to register everything of potential value
in the village; this included one-dönüm plots on miri tenure in the village site,
and cisterns and wells on mülk tenure; (2) the coincidence of shareholdings and
householdings, each shareholding in the plough land corresponding to exactly
one house with the same composition of co-sharers; (3) registration of one-fifth
of the plough land in a joint holding of all individual shareholdings; and (4)
the allowance of two shares of plough land to the headman. We consider each
feature in turn.
(1) The 1880 list of landholdings for Bait Ra’s is divided into two parts, the
first listing 16 shareholdings on a single large field of 12,000 dönüms called khamis
wa-baiqa (biq‘a in later records, the two names together referring to the rich
lands to the south of the village site), the second listing 15 one-dönüm plots on
the village site. 13 The 16 shareholdings comprise 15 individual holdings totalling
24 shares and one of six shares held jointly by the first 15. With one difference,
the holdings of one-dönüm plots on the village site are the same as the first 15
shareholdings. Most of the shareholdings are of families which continued to hold
land in 1921 (see Table 9.1).
The registration of cisterns or wells too is unusual. Of the 55 entries in the list
of mülk, 19 are of houses and 36 of cisterns or wells (bir). The last four cisterns
in the list were for storing water and were common to the people of the village
(‘müşâ’ olarak umum-i kariye ahalisine meşrut eder ki’). The others were mostly
for storing wheat: five were for chaff and one for barley. Not every householding
had a cistern or share in a cistern (four being held jointly); and some had more
than others, notably ‘Ali Muhammad Hamuri and his brothers. The total value
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Two plains villages