Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

plough animals and male labour. Crop rotation was triennial: a grain crop (wheat
in ‘deep’ soil, and barley or nu‘mana, a native pea used for high-protein fodder,
in ‘shallow’ soil), a lentil crop, and a fallow or summer crop, the last primarily
sorghum or chickpeas (field vegetables or melons becoming important only after
the influx of Palestinians following 1948).
Hawwara’s major households not only farmed, they also kept several milk
cows, riding animals, and herds of sheep and goats. Yet the village had no pasture
lands of its own. Unlike the village of Ramtha whose vast lands permitted it to
set aside an area for pasture each year, Hawwara allotted only a limited space
near the village site for herds to be assembled. 3 The straw from grain production
was vital for livestock during the late summer and early autumn months when
grazing was poor, and herds needed to be fed in the large compounds of the village.
Although in winter and spring, grazing was good on the uncultivated lands
outside the village, by harvest time it was depleted. Villagers’ flocks, and also those
of bedouin who had come to work in the harvest, were then let on to the stubble
of the harvested fields. When asked whether anyone had ever burned the stubble
in a field, one farmer responded: ‘This is prohibited in the Koran since it is the
right of flocks to pasture on harvested land. If the watchman found anyone doing
such a thing, he would punish him.’ 4 Thus, in adjoining fields both sowing and
harvesting had to be coordinated. 5 Letting large numbers of livestock on to the
fields imposed considerable discipline on farmers:
Those with neighbouring fields all sowed the same crop in one block. Ploughmen
sometimes helped each other, if one finished ploughing a section long before
the adjoining strip. At harvest time the field watchman (mukhaddir) would go
round the houses in the evening announcing that the following day they were to
harvest a given plot. The harvesting would then proceed up the strips together. If
someone harvested beyond the others, the mukhaddir would take the nets where
the straw was loaded on the camels and impound them. Such collective discipline
– known as al-dabt wa-’l-rabt – made people happy. 6
Farmers paid for the services of the mukhaddir and of the haris (guard);
Mahmud al-Humaiyid recalled paying a sa‘ of wheat to each for the three-quarters
of a faddan he cultivated. The former was responsible for the livestock and crops
and the latter for working with the headman and government, notifying people
of any government business that concerned them. For example, the guard would
go round the houses saying that today the tax collector was coming (al-yaum
al-jabi). As a large village Hawwara had a mukhaddir and a haris in each half
of the village. 7
At the core of farming were plough teams and ploughmen. In prosperous
households women worked in the grain fields only at harvest, when they would
transport the cut grain, though they also worked in the planting and picking of
lentils. In less prosperous households they would seed and work in all parts of
cultivation save ploughing. Harvest was a time of labour shortage, many persons
coming to work in the harvest from the Jaulan, ‘Ajlun, and even Palestine. Most
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Hawwara