Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

weeks under the tree, and eventually his brother came and got him to ride home
on a donkey. It was another twenty days before he recovered. This happened the
year before he was engaged to his wife Rishda Mahmud.
‘Ali Qasim limited his flock to what one person could manage – with his wife
– about a hundred head, maximum 120. But this figure assumed that herding did
not require moving from place to place through cultivated areas, which is the pattern
nowadays and requires closer supervision. Sartaba was a good herding place
because there was always water available from the springs below at Tabaqat Fahl.
Sometimes he would sell his goats at Baisan but more often to a dealer (jallab).
The season for selling was in the spring, particularly May, when the young male
goats (jaddi) would be sold. In comparison with non-herders his family ate meat
more frequently. After the disaster in 1935 it took two or three years to build up the
flock. The tax on herds used to be five qurush per head, which would be collected
by the tax collector (tahsildar). Every year one had to report the number of goats,
and mounted policemen (fursan) would come to check the count.
Kull sarahat yaum tayasat sinna (every day a herdsman, a year of thickheadedness)
he said jokingly. 55 We asked how animals were rendered so disciplined
(alif). He said there were several ways: feeding animals by hand; selecting the
two best goats and putting bells on their necks in order to warn snakes of their
approach and the herder of thieves or jackals (dhib) at night, and to serve as
a guide to other goats of the herd. Sometimes he would give his favourite goat
water to drink from his own water-skin. He sold about 60 kids a year; he was
also selling clarified butter (samna) in Baisan. As the domestic economy was so
specialized – they never felt the need to buy olive oil, relying on samna instead
– we asked whether the inside of their house was constructed any differently
from others. ‘Ali Qasim responded indirectly, noting that his wife had spent much
of the time down at Sartaba with him and that she did the milking and all the
preparation of the clarified butter. 56 When samna was ready it would be put in
a very carefully tanned skin, from which all smell had been eliminated and the
skin had been impregnated with herbs. No cheese was made except for domestic
consumption, using fig leaves instead of rennet, though ‘Ali knew how to get
rennet from the stomach of a tiny lamb or kid that had died.
Muhammad died in 1967, at which point his widow and children divided
up the land, until then joint between the two brothers. After the land had been
divided ‘Ali Qasim planted trees on his portion. While the trees were growing he
would plant watermelon on the ground but later it was just trees, a mixture of
fruit and olives. The government closed Sartaba to herding in 1978; by then ‘Ali
Qasim had built his house outside the village site and had given up herding.
Yumna Mustafa Nimr al-Muflih: a farming family
We began this set of family histories with Husna Salih Hamdan who belonged
to a modest farming family without an elaborate network of marriage exchanges
into powerful families of the village. By contrast, Yumna Mustafa Nimr, with
whom we close this chapter, came from a larger and more prominent family of a
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Kufr `Awan