Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part three | 10
units B–F was in turn made up of two or more smaller units, like a set of brothers
or of cousins who held a house or plough land together. Only in the holding of
individual plots did such large combinations occur. Such combinations might have
arisen as the result of a set of individuals in a previous generation having come
together to open up a new plot of land, followed by inheritance. The question
cannot be answered from the written records alone.
Since the location of every plot is given in the tapu list and the people who
hold the neighbouring plots are also named, it should be possible to reconstruct
a layout of individual plots by correlating descriptions of borders and working
backwards from the field map of the cadastral settlement of 1939. But despite
the continuity of the landholding population, there are too many undocumented
discontinuities for this to be done without the knowledge of someone on the ground.
The 1895 tax register only adds further complexity. For, as we have mentioned
before, in contrast to tapu registration in which the names of co-sharers were
recorded, only one name was recorded in the tax register for each holding. The
1895 list gives the field name in which each plot lay, as in the 1884 tapu list. But
this is insufficient for a link to be made between the two lists. Moreover, in the
1895 list no distinction was made between plots and tree-plantings. Olive groves
were numbered in one sequence (1 to 238) and were rated by what grew on them,
presumably from counting the trees in some way, with values varying from 50
to 3,775 guruş. 31 Arable plots (tarla), gardens (bağ) and orchards (incirlik) were
numbered in a second sequence (1–213) and were rated at between 50 and 250
guruş per dönüm. Even what should be a simple task of tallying one person’s
holding in 1884 with his or her holding in 1895 turns out to be far from simple,
for the tax survey seems to have registered more individual plots, including perhaps
some on the village site which had been excluded from tapu registration. 32
The variety and complexity of partnerships on individual plots indicate sophisticated
mechanisms of co-cultivation operating long before tapu registration.
People of Khanzira were clearly concerned that their various arrangements of
cultivation be recorded exactly, and this was done within the limitations of
registration. Contributions to production were not registered as so much labour
from one party, animal or human, so many ploughings from another, so much
seed from a third; they were reduced to uniform shares. One has to imagine why
five people were needed for one kind of task, or why two people shared a plot
in the ratio three to one rather than equally. 33
Holdings of women The analysis of landholding in Kufr ‘Awan showed that women
began to be registered as inheriting daughters in tapu mutations of shares in plough
land from around 1907, and at the cadastral settlement of 1939 women did hold
small amounts of land, sometimes only after pressing claims to rights. But at the
initial tapu registration in 1884 no woman was registered holding either land or
olive trees. By contrast, in Khanzira women were registered in 1884, particularly
as owners of olive trees. One woman held an individual plot on her own as well
as olive trees on village common land; a second woman owned six olive trees
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