Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

payment. His case too is discussed under Figure 10.6. The third case is of two
elderly ‘Amaira landholders in their sixties; but they too had marriage connections
in the section to which they affiliated. Scratch the surface of relations in Kufr
‘Awan and shabaka networks of marriage appear. Indeed it would have been the
agent’s personal choice, which group to affiliate to for the allotment of land. But
structural factors influenced their choice.
The factors influencing affiliation look quite different from those influencing
the formation of shareholding groups in Hawwara. According to the tax list for
1895 two different models operated in Hawwara. On the one hand there was
that of khalit wa-sharik, co-partnership in the business of cultivation in which
everyone was equal and shares would be temporarily redistributed according
to capabilities and need. On the other hand was a more hierarchical model of
allegiance to leaders in closed solidary groups bound by kinship. Both required
extensive mobilization of labour to work the land. But whereas in one model
cultivators relied on each other, in the more hierarchical model those with title to
land built networks in local government and commerce, relying largely on hired
labour for agriculture. The one model was of self-sufficiency, the other of capital
accumulation. In Kufr ‘Awan, by contrast, agriculture was lighter – ploughing
could be done by mule rather than by teams of oxen – and there was no need
to mobilize labour from outside the community. The household was the unit of
agricultural production, two or more households cooperating with each other
to combine their different resources. Women’s labour in agriculture was valued.
Partnerships were between individual households rather than in the full-blown
model of khalit wa-sharik where collective discipline was paramount. For a fair
allotment of land, groups were formed largely around long-standing association
between families. But to make up a group with an exact allocation of shares was
not a big affair of bringing in new allies, as in Hawwara, for the links between
households and families through marriage were already multiple. There was greater
plasticity in the formation of shareholding groups in Kufr ‘Awan.
Between 1884 and 1939 the model of allocating shares by zalama underwent
a transformation. The population expanded, landholdings became smaller and
the calculation of women’s entitlement to land became more important. Land
transfers became a means of enabling both production and reproduction. Nothing
expresses this change more than the extent to which women fought claims to
land and were registered as landholders at the 1939 cadastre. In the final section
devoted to Kufr ‘Awan we look at the chronology of tapu mutations in relation
to women’s increasing entitlement to land.
Women’s claims to land, 1884–1939
The initial tapu lists of Kufr ‘Awan show diversity in the management of different
forms of property: houses, shares in jointly held plough land, individually held
plots and trees. The civil register of 1910 adds evidence on household formation
and networks of marriage. Mutations of the tapu register add further information
on family landholding histories. When we come to the cadastral settlement
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Two hill villages