Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part three | 9
not only as an index to the register but also as a check on accuracy, to make sure
that no plot had been left out. Identification of fields in the tapu registers followed
the time-honoured form of stating the names of those who held adjoining plots to
the south, north, west and east, or their nature (for instance ‘barren’ or ‘road’).
This technique did not require a map. The 1895 tax register has the appearance
of thoroughness but shows curious inattention to procedures of verification, not
only in the identification of plots but also in naming only one person liable for
the tax on a holding. Legal title was not the concern of the tax authorities. But
as we shall see, the 1895 tax register served to validate later claims to land title,
not only in Bait Ra’s. We now return to the question of those people listed in
1895 who had not been registered in 1880.
New landholders in 1895
Table 9.1 gives the complete holdings of those listed in the 1895 tax register
in comparison with 1880 holdings of houses and plough land (not of gardens or
cisterns) and 1921 holdings of plough land. The final column gives the households
associated with the 1895 tax-payer in the civil register of 1910. 17 The main points
to note are, first, the change of base from 30 shares to 36, which remained the
base up to 1936, and second the addition in 1895 of several new families with
substantial holdings not only of shares in plough land but also of houses and
gardens. It is these families which we have to consider in relation to the question
whether Hasan al-Sabbah’s group of the Bani Ta‘an was resident in Bait Ra’s at
the time of tapu registration in 1880.
The three relevant families are those of ‘Uwaida, Jum‘a and ‘Abdul-‘Aziz,
holding respectively 4½ (in two holdings), 3 and 4 shares out of 36 in 1895, just
less than one-third of the whole, a not insubstantial proportion for newcomers.
They also held houses, of as high value as any other in the village with the
exception only of ‘Ali Muhammad Husain Hamuri, as well as gardens. Simply
from the size of their shares in the common plough land and the extent of their
holdings, one would say that they were well established in the village by 1895
and that their holdings are unlikely to have come solely through purchase. Other
new holders of shares in 1895 were ‘Audatallah al-Khalil and his son ‘Ali, Salih
Dalqamuni, and Salim Abu Qasim of Hakama, he whom Da’ud ‘Abbada was said
to have wanted to act as headman instead of Hasan al-Sabbah. ‘Audatallah and
his son had gardens as well as arable land, but Salih Dalqamuni and Salim Abu
Qasim did not. All of them continued to hold land in 1921. But Hasan al-Sabbah
himself was not registered in 1895. It was not until the 1921 resettlement that his
own son and his brother Salih’s heirs obtained land rights in Bait Ra’s, although
the sons of both Hasan and Salih had held houses in the village at the time of
the 1910 household census.
The ‘Uwaida, Jum‘a and ‘Abdul-‘Aziz families continued to hold shares in
plough land in 1921, although not exactly the same shares as in 1895. Together
they held about half of the Bani Ta‘an section of the village in 1921 (215½q
out of 432). The holdings of seven other families in the same section (with
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