Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

nu‘mana as fodder. As a summer crop they might plant two ratl of sorghum, not
broadcast like the other grains but sown with a kind of pipe. For olive oil, like
others of the village, they would go in the autumn to purchase supplies in the
Jabal ‘Ajlun. They sold their grain to traders who came to the village, especially
from Palestine, either directly at the threshing grounds or from the house, the
price of a mudd of wheat varying between ten and fourteen qurush when ‘Abdul-
Rahman was young. 16 But they bought little in those days, the family buying a
tanaka of paraffin only once a year to light one tiny lamp.
The two brothers continued to live together after Qâsim had married his first
wife, the daughter of his uncle ‘Isa al-Ahmad. (Qâsim was later in life to marry
two further wives, a Ghazzawiya from the Jordan Valley and then a Palestinian.)
It was only after ‘Abdul-Rahman married, to the daughter of another uncle Salih,
that the brothers divided everything, the land and the animals. 17 Having thus only
one ox, ‘Abdul-Rahman bought a second and built up his own flock of sheep. His
mother stayed with him, the younger son being the favourite (al-saghir mahbub).
His first marriage ended in divorce, the spouses not getting along; he then married
another cousin, daughter of ‘Isa al-Ahmad, in a happier marriage. In his
description of the household of his youth, ‘Abdul-Rahman made no mention of
his older half-brother Salim. As elder brother from a different mother, Salim had
established a separate household before ‘Abdul-Rahman entered the world.
‘Abdul-Rahman remained in farming. We can see from his account how a
great household was partitioned among sons, usually along sets from different
mothers. His was a successful farming family where income from animal raising
and farming had allowed for the acquisition of land. Yet the generation of his
grandfather was quite different from his own. ‘Abdul-Rahman’s life was that of
a more modest farmer, who married within the family.
Khadija ‘Abdullah Muhammad ‘Abdul-Rahman al-Jammal
Khadija’s father’s family is said to have come from the region of Nazareth
and to have moved to Kitim in the Jabal ‘Ajlun where they were associated with
a family named Duwairiya and acquired the name Jammal since they traded in
camels. The family had developed marriage relations with Yafa village in the
district of Nazareth. Muhammad ‘Abdul-Rahman married twice, first to Hasun
from Yafat al-Nasira, who bore him three sons, ‘Abdullah, Hamad and Salih,
and a daughter Zahra, and then to Nasra al-‘Ubini of Hawwara who bore him
‘Abdul-Rahman. 18 See Figure 11.2 (where Nasra is given as Khadra as in the shar‘i
court records). Zahra married a man in Yafa, but when he died she returned with
her two sons to live in Hawwara. According to Khadija three of her father’s
brothers married women from the ‘Assaf family of Yafa: her father ‘Abdullah
taking as first wife Amina Ahmad al-‘Assaf; ‘Abdul-Rahman marrying Amina’s
sister Hamda; and Hamad marrying Warda al-‘Assaf. Such a cluster of marriages
back to her home village would appear to have been the work of Muhammad
‘Abdul-Rahman’s senior wife, Hasun. But we would be mistaken to think that
such marriage exchange was not accompanied by movement of menfolk also:
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Hawwara