Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

Notes to chapter 12 and Epilogue
61 The estimate of Ahmad al-Musa’s
age is deduced from the age of his son
Mahmud and his widow ‘A’isha Dahaimish
as given in ANR.Kufr ‘Awan M11.
62 DLS.AT.Yoklama, August 1884,
p. 81, nos 729 and 730, and p. 80,
nos 710–11.
63 DLS.AT.Yoklama, 1305–07, July
1889, p. 10 or 20, unnumbered entries
(missing the first three) with a note of
transfer to tahsilat register of 11/1306
numbers 118–28. In a series of microfilms
in the Amman Department of Lands and
Surveys of tax registers that had originated
from ‘Ajlun, we found entries numbered
115–28 dated 11/1306 (register 1, page
90). Entry 115 concerns the 15 olive trees,
116 and 117 concern houses, and 118
concerns the land of the olive trees. These
correspond exactly in their borders, value,
and description to the properties registered
in 1884 in the name of Muflih al-Musa.
64 In a legal settlement of the early
1930s, Abdullah’s land is described as
reverting to his mother Mahra and thence
to his full siblings from Mahra: Nimr,
Waliya, Khazna, Tamam and Fatima (the
last also to die without issue) (ACR.SC sijill
12, 1929–1931 hasr al-irth, p. 163, case
83/177/4, 12 November 1930). However the
land may actually have passed in practice,
this report expresses a later rationalization
in line with the letter of the law. This said,
it appears that the children of Waliya did
inherit land through her, but it is not clear
whether those of Khazna did.
65 In the 1884 tapu lists her husband’s
father was registered as holding 20 olive
trees in this plot. Thus Yumna’s mahr
was of importance to the family. DLS.
AT.Yoklama, August 1884, p. 83, no. 765.
66 It would appear that having paid
such a big mahr to Khalil al-Nimr for his
niece, the husband’s family held back on
the other expenses.
288
67 Yumna maintained that they had
12 qirat but she had also said of Khalil’s
household that they had over twice what
either household could have held according
to any other source; perhaps she just
slipped her terms using faddan for zalama.
Yumna’s memory at several points elided
generations; the vagueness probably arises
from her not having worked much in the
fields, unlike Husna.
68 The standard loaf made with yeast
was called karadish; Yumna described
the making of it with water, in order for
it not to break up, and dusted with flour.
Another type of loaf was called tabtabiyat
and made over a griddle (saj). A third
undesirable quick kind of bread, mixed
only with water without yeast and stuffed
into the hot coals, was called ‘awa’is.
69 Yumna bore six sons of whom only
‘Abdullah survived, the rest dying before
they were two or three. Of the five girls
to whom she gave birth, four survived:
Fatima, Miriam, Fidda and Amina. The
girls married with mahr paid in cash save
for Amina who married in 1956 for ninety
dinars and four dunums of land.
Epilogue
1 See Moon, The Russian Peasantry
1600–1930 (1999), pp. 199–228 on village
communes and 228–30 on nineteenth-century
reform; on the latter compare Wcislo,
Reforming Rural Russia (1990), pp. 23–4.
2 Saumarez Smith: Rule by Records.
3 The development of cadastral
registration was even later in England than
in the Ottoman Empire: Pottage, ‘The
measure of land’, Modern Law Review,
li (1994), pp. 361–84 and ‘The originality
of registration’, Oxford Journal of Legal
Studies xv (1995), pp. 371–401.
4 DLS.CR Bait Ra’s, iddi‘a’at, taqrir
32c signed ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Abdullah Abu
Raji‘ of Irbid.