Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Part three | 11
young men capable of guiding a plough team. By 1885 when he bought a full
share of land in two separate purchases, he may have been able to field three or
four plough teams from within the family. In 1895 he was registered with the
equivalent of three faddan. So long as Ahmad al-Mustafa ruled the compound,
the family did well.
We do not know whom Ahmad al-Mustafa married. See Figure 11.1 where
the names of wives’ villages are given in square brackets. In the generation of his
sons, marriages were contracted as much outside the village as within it, serial
marriage was common, and polygyny not infrequent. Family resources were to be
divided around the time of Ahmad al-Mustafa’s death in 1903. His son Mahmud
had bought land in his own name in 1901 (together with Muhammad ‘Abdul-
‘Aziz Ghazlan, as joint purchasers of half a share) and in 1903 ‘Abid bought a
quarter of a share. 12 By this time the older brothers presumably were farming
independently from younger brothers, Salih, ‘Isa and Khalaf. The final settlement
of inheritance of Ahmad al-Mustafa’s estate took place only in 1921 when a total
of two shares were declared: two half-shares formally purchased by Ahmad in
1885 and another two half-shares which the authorities granted them on the basis
of long cultivation and tax payment, although derived from holdings originally
in the names of others. Of the three daughters of Ahmad al-Mustafa, the 1921
settlement mentions only Thurayya; perhaps her marriage to a Gharaiba of the
opposing side of the village meant that her husband’s family had demanded that
she receive something for her rights. In any case she never took possession of her
land but at the time of the inheritance settlement, she was said to have sold her
part to her brothers and the sons of her two deceased brothers, Mahmud and
‘Abid; no price for the same was, however, given in the register. 13 By 1921 the rest
of the household appears also to have divided, since it was in March of the same
year that Salih al-Ahmad bought a small house in his own name. 14
Born in 1917, ‘Abdul-Rahman Mahmud never knew his father, who died when
he was less than two years old. When he was a child the household was composed
of his mother and his brother Qâsim about ten years his elder. 15 But his mother
was a strong woman (muruwwat-ha qawiya) who worked in sowing the fields,
tending animals and other phases of agriculture. Their house consisted of one
large arch with two rooms and a courtyard. They had a pair of oxen, one working
horse (kadish), two donkeys, four to five milk cows and about a hundred sheep.
The sheep went to pasture with the shepherd of their part of the village and the
cows with the cowherd.
The family farmed a quarter of a share of land. In 1933 at the time of the
cadastre ‘Abdul-Rahman and his brother Qâsim were to hold some seven qirat
of land each. During the years immediately after their father’s death they used
to employ a ploughman (harrath) for one-quarter of the crop and his keep, who
lived in the compound with them from October to July or until the threshing was
over (ta yutir al-bayadir). Every year it could be a different ploughman. On six
qirat of land they would sow some 15 mudd of wheat, the same of lentils, ten
thumna of kirsanna (a kind of vetch), four to five thumna of barley, and some
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