Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

did he plough. This statement appears to express both a collective memory of
a time when land was abundant but people and animals few and Husna’s own
appreciation of the importance of livestock, not only of land, in the working
capital of a household.
As a woman who had worked in farming Husna was forthcoming about
this domain, whereas several other women had only faint memories of older
cultivation practices. Each farmer held two plots, one strip to the west of the
village site on the slope down to the Jordan Valley and the other closer, although
over the years the exact physical location of the two plots would shift. In the
‘araqib, the distant lands, Husna recalled that they only ever planted winter
crops because the soil was ‘yellow’ and the climate too hot, whereas in the strip
nearer home (watat al-dar) cultivation was of both winter and summer crops.
For the winter season, the strip was divided to plant a mixture of wheat, barley
and lentils, the ploughing season extending from the beginning of November
to mid-January depending on the rains. For the summer season the soil was
ploughed three times, followed by planting after mid-March. Summer crops
were more varied: white sorghum from which bread was made, yellow sorghum
used as chicken feed, hairy cucumber (faqqus), watermelon, tomatoes, okra and
musk-melon (shammam). Besides her work in the fields Husna used to go with
other women to cut firewood in the woods above the village. And from her two
olive trees Husna provided the family with oil and olives, boiling the olives briefly
and then drying them on the roof, before taking them to the press of which there
was one in each quarter of the village.
Husna bore five daughters (‘Arifa, her first child born when she was 21, Fidda,
Fiddiya, Tamam and Fatima) and three sons, only one of whom, Mustafa, was
to survive. Her daughter ‘Arifa was married in 1934. In those years marriage
payments were between 10 and 30 liras, overall about 50 Jordanian dinars, divided
in principle into three parts: grain, livestock and money (habb, halal and nuqud).
But what ‘Arifa actually received was the headband (‘urja) decorated with gold
coins. The ‘cloak’ (‘aba’) given to the bride’s mother’s brother was in those days
either a shuwal of wheat or a quantity of olive oil.
In the farming families of middling means to which Husna belonged, shares in
the common lands of the village were transmitted primarily inter vivos between
men on an understanding of the entitlement of brothers and sons from a father.
In neither of the families did a father gift land to a woman and in neither were
the laws of inheritance to run their course. But women appear in relation to
agricultural property in two ways: first, Husna’s mahr of two olive trees and
the land on which they stood, close by the village site, and second, her brother
Hasan’s alienation of 1½ qirat of land to his son Muhammad’s bride, or more
likely in the first instance to her family, as her mahr. Such productive resources
did not generally go directly to the hand of the young bride. But mahr was in
the bride’s name: it was hers both ethically and legally, hence hers to claim. A
young couple was expected to struggle together as the fundamental unit of social
production. And sometimes, as in the case of her brother’s son, Muhammad, in
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Kufr `Awan