Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part three | 10
brothers remained united after their father’s death, others divided partially or
completely. It is important to see with which sons or stepsons a widow lived, if
she did not remarry, in order to trace the background to disputes about property.
The next section examines the pattern of holdings of shares in common plough
land in 1884.
Holdings of musha‘ land in 1884: allotment by zalama
Tapu registration in Kufr ‘Awan was done under the Special Commission in
August 1884. In addition to houses and shares in the common musha‘ plough
land, two other lists were prepared: individually held fields, gardens or orchards;
and plantings of olive or fruit trees. All four lists were registered sequentially,
individually held plots first (numbers 578–633), then musha‘ holdings (634–95),
then houses (696–750) and finally tree plantings (751–85). 4 The 31 musha‘ holdings
were listed as shares in two large blocks of land called qibliya and shamaliya
(southern and northern), each holding being listed twice. The individual plots
and plough land were miri while the houses and tree plantings were registered
as private property or mülk.
Table 10.1 gives the shareholders in musha‘ plough land with their different
holdings. Names are grouped by family (except when split between sections) and
the whole list is divided into three equal sections of 7¼ shares or 29 zalama each.
The basis for this larger division will be discussed in the next section. Excluded
from the list are the single person who had a house but no land and seven holdings
of individual arable plots not subject to reallotment, all held by non-residents.
The origin of these seven holdings is unknown. By 1939 they had all reverted to
families of the village. Several residents also had individual arable plots in addition
to their share in plough land, particularly ‘Abdul-Rahman Muhammad and his
two brothers (family-6, see Figure 10.3) who held seven such plots (584–90). These
holdings may have derived from a tax-free grant in recognition of religious status,
for several members of the group of families called Dahun, including family-6,
were registered in 1884 as sheikh (a religious title) or al-Qadiri. 5
In most cases there is no difficulty in identification between the different
tapu lists, although the order in which co-sharers were listed varied. Three
uncertain identifications involve possible fathers and sons. In two cases we make
the identification. 6 In the third case (family-30) Ahmad ‘Abdullah, last in the list,
is taken to be someone resident in the village who was allocated a quarter-share
in plough land but whose subsequent history is unclear.
With the above caveat there is no case in Kufr ‘Awan where father and son
were allocated separate shares in plough land at tapu registration (unlike two
cases in Khanzira). There are many cases of a man being allocated more than a
quarter-share because the unit of cultivation for which he received a tapu included
one or more sons. Even where a son was married and living in a separate house,
his share in plough land would be included in that of his father if the father
was still active, as with ‘Ali ‘Ubaid (family-28, Figure 10.1) whose son ‘Abdullah
was already 32 in 1884. There are a few cases of a father being registered as a
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