Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

the three blocks of land seem to have become simply nominal, a convenient way
to express shares in land.
Whatever their relation to the three blocks of tapu registration, according to
the 1895 tax register plots were allotted in an extraordinarily systematic manner.
The range of holding sizes varies by not much more than in 1876, between half
a share and 2½, with an average of just under one (48/49): 19 x ½, 18 x 1, 8
x 1½, 3 x 2, and 1 x 2½. Instead of an idiom of tax farming or commercial
landlordism, we are back in an idiom of relatively egalitarian management of
individual resources, and of what could be worked by one or two plough teams.
Even Na’il Gharaiba’s individual holding was reduced to a manageable level by
redistributing part of what he had title to among his siblings. By comparison
with 1933, an average of one share for a family farm was still large, requiring
two full plough teams. A farm depended upon labour outside its own household,
of which there was much in the village.
If holdings are arranged in each field by their plot number, the systematic
grouping of holdings becomes apparent. First, holdings are divided into two
halves of 24 shares each, which we may call Shatnawi and Gharaiba as in 1933.
In 24 fields, the Gharaiba half has the first plots but in the other seven the
Shatnawi half does. The Shatnawi half comprises 26 holdings including the last
six (numbers 88–93), and the order of holdings in a field is always the same, even
in the seven fields where the Shatnawi plots come first: everyone’s neighbours
are always the same. The only exceptions concern, first, the last holding of all,
belonging to the man of the Bani Sakhr, who holds internal plot number 49
in every field; second, holding number 3 whose plot is at the beginning of the
Shatnawi sequence instead of at the end in field 20; and third, holding number 6
(belonging to Ahmad Tannash) whose plot is slightly out of place in field 21. There
are no sub-groups of holdings that would together make up a convenient fraction
of 24 shares. Regularities – such as the two Rumi holdings (numbers 32 and 84)
always occurring next to each other – do not make sub-groups. For instance, the
four Abu Kirsanna holdings occur at the beginning of Shatnawi plots – a sign of
their continuing importance in the village – and make up four shares with the
addition of holding number 81’s half a share; 56 but the next holdings add to 3½
or 4½ shares, not four, so together they cannot form a convenient sub-group of
eight shares for reordering holdings within the Shatnawi half. There are thus no
subdivisions in the Shatnawi half. The relevant group for reallotting the order of
plots in a field would be all 26 holdings. Since the far edge of a field might be
different in quality from the centre, equalization of plots (rearranging the order)
would have to be done regularly over time, that is to say diachronically.
For the Gharaiba half comprising 24 shares, by contrast, the order of plots
varies from field to field. However, holdings group into sets of four and eight
shares, and every field (except field-5 where two half-share holdings are out of
place) can be divided into thirds (of eight shares) made up of the same units.
Subdivision into sixths (of four shares) does not quite work because there are
small variations in order from field to field within a group of eight shares. For
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Two plains villages