Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

But it makes clear that the fight was between the two halves of the village, the
Hamuri section and the Bani Ta‘an section. After listing particular individuals
belonging to the first group as suspects in killing particular individuals belonging
to the second, other individuals of the Hamuri were listed as suspects in firing at
the ‘firqa Bani Ta‘an’ with intent to kill. Then reciprocally individuals belonging
to the Bani Ta‘an were accused of killing individuals of the Hamuri, and others
were accused of firing on the ‘firqat al-Hamuri’. 22 As a result of the criminal
investigation some fifteen people from each section were ordered to be prosecuted
under Sections 174 or 181 of the Criminal Code.
The exact sequence of events that led to the resettlement of tapu land rights
in 1921–22 is likewise obscure. It is possible that the newly mandated British
administration sought on its own initiative to clarify the situation. There had been
no mutation of the tapu register of Bait Ra’s since 1880. A complete resettlement
of land rights, bringing them into line with long-term payment of tax, was a
logical initiative for a new administration to take.
But equally the proceedings of the new settlement occurred more or less at the
same time as those of the criminal investigation into the fight, suggesting that the
two events were not unconnected. Four statements accompanied the new list of
landholders in the tapu register. The first two, dated 28 February 1921, referred to
a Legislative Council (al-majlis al-tashri‘i) ruling of 21 February and stated that
the village had now been measured, boundaries fixed and the cultivators registered
on the basis of either inheritance or long tenure (haqq al-qarar); ‘moreover
this had been done without objection from any heir or anyone in usufructuary
possession’. The lands were divided into four blocks (mawaqi‘) on the basis of
36 shares (864q), with 18 shares going to each section. The second statement,
signed by the official in charge of property registration (ma’mur al-tamlik) and
two members of the Legislative Council, requested that the register be approved
by the Council in order that it be entered in the standing record. 23
The third statement, dated almost a year later on 9 February 1922, referred
to a ruling of the Administrative Council of 19 November 1921. It said that the
village council and the headmen of both sides of the village had approved the
names of all those registered; but that the headman of the Hamuris maintained
that they should not be asked to pay the charges for proprietary title a second
time since they had already paid the charges in 1880. The final statement recorded
the ruling of the Administrative Council of 13 February 1922 that fees should be
collected from everyone and title deeds given accordingly. The Hamuri headman’s
plea of having paid the fees forty years earlier was implicitly disallowed.
Landholding in Bait Ra’s was now regularized. From 1922 onwards landholders
had recourse to the tapu office to register mutations of their holdings. The 1936
cadastre was essentially an updating of the 1921 settlement when holdings were
transformed from shares to fixed plots of land, each share corresponding to strips
in three or four blocks of land.
The exact basis on which rights were settled was not mentioned in the two
statements of February 1921. However, comparison between the tapu lists of
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Two plains villages