Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

egistration ‘Abdullah had no children (according to the 1910 census, although of
course there might have been children who died before 1910 or who had married
outside the village). He had a plot of his own with 20 olive trees. ‘Uthman too
had no children at the time of tapu registration: the son and daughter living in
the village in 1910 were born a little after 1884. In 1884 ‘Abdullah and ‘Uthman
were thus two newly married men without brothers. 10
Two points need emphasis. Whatever other considerations may have entered
the allocation of shares, the norm of a quarter-share for a married man and half
that for a teenage son or bachelor does appear to have been followed. Second,
the principle underlying partnerships of cultivation is not always clear, some
men already having sufficient labour among sons to manage a farm without
involving partnerships with non-agnates. It is perhaps here that a third point is
relevant, the extent of household partition. The household was the basic unit of
production and reproduction, though a man would seldom cultivate a holding on
plough land alone, teaming up with someone else. ‘Ali ‘Ubaid and his brothers
Mansur and Muhammad no doubt in some senses belonged to the same line of
patrilineal descent. But at any point in time a family might be dispersed between
different households. In 1884 the three ‘Ubaid brothers no longer shared any
holding, although marriages would later be arranged between the children of at
least two of them.
Without the 1895 tax register it is not possible to tell how long cultivating
partnerships of 1884 endured. Registration at the cadastral settlement in 1939
did not capture working arrangements at a particular moment of time in the
same way that tapu registration had in 1884. From 64 shareholders in 31 units
in 1884, 262 landholders were registered in 160 units in 1939. There was greater
individuation of holdings; the population had grown and holding sizes were much
smaller. Individuation also now extended to women. Almost all partnerships in
1939 not derived from a set of siblings involved women, typically a man with his
wife or brothers with one of their wives. Of the 69 joint holdings, 15 were held
by a man and a female non-agnate (probably the man’s wife), four were shared
by a man and his father’s brother’s daughter (who was also his wife), and two
were shared by women who were not related through their fathers. Only five
involved partnerships between men who were not agnates (of which three also
included women). 11 A later section will examine women’s claims upon property
at the 1939 cadastre. We now turn to a higher level of formation of shareholding
groups into village sections.
Composition of village sections
Table 10.1 divides shareholders in plough land into three equal sections of
7¼ shares. This division was not official. There is no evidence that the Ottoman
government recognized village subdivisions anywhere in the region. At the 1939
cadastre there was a formal division of landholdings into four equal sections
(not three) which corresponded roughly with four named social groupings. Some
division of the body of cultivators seems thus to have been necessary to laying
163
Two hill villages