Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part three | 10
named, was unusual for normally the share of a father would include that of
his sons without the latter being named. In both cases, only the father’s name
was specified as holding plough land in the 1895 tax list with a ¾-share (¼
for the father and ¼ for each son), but a subsequent tapu mutation after one
father’s death shows a son retaining his own share in the musha‘ holding as well
as inheriting a part of his father’s share. 25 Nine joint holdings involved equal
partnerships between members of families not closely related, usually two men
each with a quarter-share. Perhaps some were related affinally, as in Kufr ‘Awan.
But for Khanzira affinal networks between families cannot be drawn from the
records because the 1910 civil register of the village has not survived except for
the Christian population. In only one case, listed separately in the Table, was a
fourth co-sharer described as the sister’s son (ZS) of three brothers; the man’s
share would later revert first to his mother, then by sale to her brothers. A
third form of partnership is distinctive, whereby a fourth unrelated person was
brought in to make up a shareholding unit. Six out of seven were of one-share
holdings; the seventh was of 1¼ shared between three brothers holding ½,
and an unrelated fourth man, his brother’s son and a sixth man, unrelated to
anyone else in the village, holding ¾. 26 In two of these cases the fourth partner
was Christian, perhaps recently resident and not yet fully incorporated into the
community, unlike other Christians who held shares in plough land on their
own. Both men’s families were registered in 1910. There is a sub-story to be told
about the Christian community in Khanzira for they were not occupationally
specialized but held land, and they may have had links with Nazareth across the
Jordan River as much as with ‘Ajlun or al-Husn. The other four cases similarly
involved a single male attached to a well-established family of the village. That
their names were registered at all testifies to the zalama ideal.
An indication of the permanence of partnerships between unrelated people
is whether they endured to 1895. The 1895 tax list was individualized, with only
one name specified per holding. A measure of whether a partnership was still
operative in 1895, even if the partners were listed separately, is if their musha‘
plots were next to each other in numbering (every musha‘ holding having a plot
in four fields, each plot with the same number). Of the nine holdings in 1884
classified in Table 10.2 as equal partnerships involving 21 men, everyone had the
same share in 1895 but in only three cases were the plots of former partners
contiguous or nearly contiguous. This implies that the partnerships in 1884 were
entered into for short-term reasons such as temporary labour shortage. As for the
seven unequal partnerships, the two Christians no longer held land in 1895, but
for four others the plot of the dependent co-sharer lay adjacent or next-but-one
to that of a former partner, suggesting that the relationship of dependence had
affected the allotment of land.
Partnerships in gardens The most striking feature of landholding in Khanzira in
1884, by comparison with Kufr ‘Awan, is the number of plots held independently
of any common interest, many with associated plantings of fruit trees, vines or
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