State, Society, and Land in Jordan

STATE, SOCIETY AND LAND IN JORDAN SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND ASIA (S.E.P.S.M.E.A.)...

Author: Michael R. Fischbach

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STATE, SOCIETY AND LAND IN JORDAN

SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND ASIA (S.E.P.S.M.E.A.) (Founding editor: C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze)

Editor R E I N H A R D SCHULZE Advisory Board Dale Eickelman (Dartmouth College) Roger Owen (Harvard University) Judith Tucker (Georgetown University) Yann Richard (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

VOLUME 75

STATE, SOCIETY AND LAND IN JORDAN BY

MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN 2000

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fischbach, Michael R. State, society and land in Jordan / by Michael R. Fischbach. p. cm. — (Social, economic, and political studies of the Middle East and Asia ; v. 75) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004119124 (alk. paper : hard cover) 1. Land tenure—-Jordan—History—19th century. 2. Land tenure—Jordan-History—20th century. 3. Land use—Jordan—History—19th century. 4. Land use—Jordan—History—20th century. 5. Land value taxation—History—19th century. 6. Land value taxation—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. HD851.F57 2000 333'.0095695—dc21 00-037934 GIF Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufhahme

State, society and land in Jordan / by Michael R. Fischbach. - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill, 2000 (Social, economic, and political studies of the Middle East & Asia ; Vol 75) ISBN 90-04-11912-4

ISSN 1385-3376 ISBN 9004119124 © Copyright 2000 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 DanversA'IA01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

To Tara, Grace, and Lisa

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Abbreviations List of Tables

xi xiii xv xvii

Introduction

1

Chapter One: Ottoman and Local Conceptualizations of Land Introduction The Land Local Conceptualization of Land Prior to Direct Ottoman Rule The Onset of Ottoman Rule The Bases of Ottoman Land and Taxation Policy Implementation of Ottoman Land Policy in Transjordan Conclusion

7 7 8 10 17 20 29 34

Chapter Two: Land in the Wake of Ottoman Policies Introduction Popular Responses to Ottoman Land Policies Popular Conceptualizations of Land at the Twilight of Ottoman Rule Growth of a Large Landowning Class Indebtedness and Usury Conclusion Chapter Three: Land in the Early Years of the Emirate Introduction Transjordan After the Ottomans Land and Land Tenure in the 1920s Land and Taxation Policies in the 1920s Conclusion

36 36 37 49 54 59 63 ....

64 64 64 68 70 76

Vlll

CONTENTS

Chapter Four: The British Land Program Introduction Origins of the Land Program The Fiscal Survey Land Tax Law of 1933 Test Case for Dowson's Program: The Bam Hasan Partition and Taxation Laws Land Settlement State Lands Policy Conclusion

78 78 79 86 95 99 104 116 123

Chapter Five: Results of the Land Program Introduction Developmental Results Fiscal Results Effects on the Land Indebtedness Conclusion

124 124 125 127 130 138 145

Chapter Six: Land Policy, Socio-Economic Structures, and Politics Introduction Effects on Small-Scale Cultivators Effects on Other Social Actors State-Societal Cooperation and Regime Support Zionism and the Land Program in Jordan Jordanian Land Policy in the West Bank Conclusion

147 147 148 164 170 178 187 194

Chapter Seven: Land and the Conceptualization of Jordan Introduction Spatial Dimensions of the Country: Conceptualizing Jordan and its Villages New Conceptualizations of Property Creating a Western-Style Bureaucracy Conclusion

196 201 202 207

Conclusion

209

196 196

CONTENTS

IX

Bibliography

213

Index

227

Illustrations


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the directors and staff of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, both past and present, for permission to spend long hours examining documents over a six-year period. Particular thanks go to Mr. Husam cAzar, Ms. Hala Hijazfn, Mr. Kamil Nasrawr, Mr. Ahmad Nawfal, and Mr. cAbd al-Fattah Khawaja. I will certainly never forget the many kindnesses extended by the charming ladies of the public relations and statistics sections at the land department. Research in Jordan was also facilitated greatly by other individuals and institutions. I am grateful for the crucial assistance extended to me by Dr. Mohammad Adnan Al-Bakhit, now president of AL al-Bayt University, and to Dr. Nawfan al-Humud and others from the University of Jordan's Center for Manuscripts and Documents. The staff of the Jordanian Ministry of Culture's National Library/ Center for Documents and Documentation accomodated by requests most cheerfully, especially Ms. Majd Ma'ayita, Ms. Muntaha Qaytuqa and Ms. Rima Hagho. Thanks as well to the assistance and helpful comments over the years of Mr. Moraiwid at-Tell and Mr. Tariq Tell. I will always remain grateful for al-Marhum Muhammad Ahmad Husayn al-cAmawi, who shared his Jordan with me and taught me its lore. I am especially grateful to Mr. Yoav Allon and E.J. Brill's anonymous referee for their insightful reading of the manuscript. Particular thanks go to Ms. Trudy Kamperveen and Mr. Jan Fehrmann at Brill, who were always most gracious and patient. Research in Jordan and the United Kingdom would not have been possible without the financial aid extended by several sources. I am indebted to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, the United States Department of Education Fulbright Student Program, the Walter Williams Craigie Teaching Endowment Fund of Randolph-Macon College, and the Maurice L. Mednick Memorial Fellowship of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks go out to the many friends and family members who have extended their ideas, support, and encouragement over the many years that went into this study.


NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

I have used the Arabic transliteration system recommended by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. I chose to transliterate proper names according to their written form in modern standard Arabic, and not according to how they are pronounced in Jordan. I am not trying to force Jordanian history into an official mode or impose a "hegemonic discourse" on Jordanians. Rather, I arn merely trying to ease the process of identifying persons and villages. For example, the reader will find the village of "Qumaym" transliterated based on the formal Arabic spelling of the village's name: qaf, mini, yd, mim. However, the village is locally called "Igmeim." Turkish words, Arabic loan words in Turkish, and Hebrew names are translated consistently but less precisely. Throughout, I have made English plurals from Arabic words for the sake of simplicity. Hence, "shqykhs" instead of "shiyukh."


ABBREVIATIONS

Annual Report

Great Britain, Colonial Office, Annual Report to the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Transjordan CO Great Britain, Colonial Office records DLS Annual Report Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, Annual Report DLS/diwan Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, records of the diwdn Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, DLS/settlement land settlement records FO Great Britain, Foreign Office records NLCDD Jordan, Ministry of Culture, National Library and Center for Documents and Documentation OG Transjordan/Jordan, al-Janda al-Rasmiyya [Official Gazette] SAC Oxford University, St Antony's College, Middle East Centre, Private Papers Collection


LIST OF TABLES

1. Op Collected in Transjordan, 1912-1913 33 2. Population Growth in late Ottoman 'Ajlun 43 3. Assets of the Ottoman Agricultural Bank in Transjordan, 1918 62 4. Fertility of Grain Growing Hawds for Taxation Purposes, 1931 89 5. Sample of Land Prices in Kura Region of 'Ajlun According to the Fiscal Survey 90 6. Progress of Fiscal Survey, 1928-1933 92 7. Registration Transactions in 1931 94 8. Land Taxation Rates by Land Category, 1935 99 9. Pace of Land Settlement 114 10. Statistics on Land Settlement, 1933-1950 115 11. Agricultural Production, 1927-1953 127 12. Annual Land Tax Assessments by Amount, 1938 128 13. Growth in Numbers of Landowners, 1934-1952 134 14. Declining Size in Average Landholding, 1934-1952 136 15. Level of Indebtedness in Selected Villages in cAjlun, 1935-1949 139 16. Loans Extended by Agricultural Bank during 1937-1938 141 17. Indebtedness and Mortgages in Five Villages in cAjlun, 1953 144 18. Indebtedness in East Bank Districts in 1954 144 19. Average Surface Area of Villages in Dunums 150 20. Average Size of Landholding per Owner, 1950 150 21. Size of Landholdings in 1950 151 22. Numbers of Landowners vs. Non-Owners in Selected Villages in 'Ajlun 158 23. Average Surface Area of Villages by Governorate 159 24. Population Growth in Selected Villages in 'Ajlun, 19th Century Through 1948 173 25. West Bank Indebtedness, 1954-1967 191 26. Jewish Land in the West Bank Controlled by Jordan,

1948-1967 27. Directors of the Department of Lands and Survey

193 207


INTRODUCTION

This is at once a book about tangibles and intangibles. Land in modern Jordan is tangible, whether in the form of rolling hills or rich grainfields or open desert spaces. The socio-economic and political implications of tenure and usufructuary rights, however, are intangible and mutable. So too is the dynamic relationship between those complex issues and the forces that comprise state and society. By examining the relationship between state and society through a study of how each conceptualized and approached issues relating to land, and how each interacted with the other in the process, we are in a position to draw wider conclusions about the process of state-building in modern Jordan from the late Ottoman period (1851—1918), the period of the British mandate (1921 46), and early independence (from 1946-1960s). In a predominantly agricultural society as Jordan was during the period under study, land and the control of its fruits are powerful factors in determining the socio-economic and political contours of state and society. To no small degree social forces in modern Jordan have been linked to land and land tenure. Despite the image sometimes propogated that it was a "bedouin" society, Jordan from the 1850s—1950s remained at heart a country of small-scale, settled cultivators for whom private control of land defined life. Similarly, the ultimate success and longevity of the Anglo-Hashemite regime installed in 1921 on the remains of the Ottoman state apparati came to rest both upon its ability to extract taxes from the land while simultaneously securing the cultivators' loyalty by upholding their claims to land. The relationship between the state and the cultivators was characterized on the whole by cooperation, not conflict. In the process, both the shape of state-societal discourse and the conceptualizations of "property" and of "Jordan" itself were defined by the state, which was in turn constrained, however, by its commitment to safeguarding the cultivators' land. Several decades after reimposing their direct authority, Ottoman authorities began applying their new Tanzimat-era land policies to the regions of Transjordan. At the heart of these lay the new 1858 Land Code, a system of land registration, and the establishment of

2,

INTRODUCTION

a new land taxation regime. The Ottoman period is important for this study for three basic reasons. First, the mixture of the bureaucratic state land policies with local understandings would serve as the basis for land law and policy for over a century. Second, it marked the first direct contact between a European-style vision of the state's role in landed affairs and the indigenous social conceptualizations of such affairs in modern Jordan. Third, the tone and consequences of this meeting of two different ideas about land tenure would set the stage for state-societal relations well into the 20th century. Starting in late 1927 and continuing until 1952, the Transjordanian government that succeeded the Ottomans undertook an even more massive land program that took it literally into every village in the country. This British-designed program surveyed all cultivable land and assessed it for a new taxation regime, delineated village boundaries, established individual rights to land, partitioned socially-controlled land, and secured the state's rights to so-called state lands. This remarkable colonial land program was of far greater importance to the history of the new state of Transjordan than merely what it did for land tenure. Indeed, its effects on society, economy, and politics in the country would be profound and long-lasting. This work argues several main points. The first is that land policies undertaken by the Ottomans, the Emirate of Transjordan, and later the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan served to uphold a land tenure system largely marked by small cultivator control of subsistence level plots. This tenure situation stood in marked contrast to that found in neighboring Arab lands during the period under study. Some large estates existed, largely the property of shaykks, and investors. While growing in the early to mid-20th century, landlessness never became a serious problem. Overall, this essentially equitable tenure situation meant that Jordan lacked the class of large absentee landowners that often formed the nucleus of the old order Arab nationalist regimes that emerged in neighboring Arab countries following independence in the period of the 1920s-1940s. It also meant that the country escaped the social and political problems that frequently resulted from a tenure system dominated by such a class. State land policies played an important role in securing the lot of small cultivators.1 1

Haim Gerber argues to this effect in The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, and London: Mansell Publishing, Ltd., 1987).

INTRODUCTION

6

Secondly, regime consolidation in modern Jordan was in no small way linked to a partnership between the state and society that emerged around the issues of land ownership and land taxation. The main Ottoman point of contact with the populace involved land and land taxation. The first and by far the most important and intrusive policies undertaken by the state from the 1920s—50s also involved land. While motivated by its own political, fiscal, and developmental priorities, the Transjordanian state implanted in 1921 and its British overseers took steps that peasant society understood as supportive of its needs. This was so even though certain features of the tenure system were changed dramatically and cultivators strenuously objected to other aspects of the state's land program. State land policies did not lead to a total aggrandizement on the part of shaykhs, and urban efendi investors as elsewhere in the Middle East but generally preserved ownership rights as they existed. Additionally, land taxes were individualized. In the process, the state secured the political loyalties of an important sector of local society, the peasantry, at a time when the peasantries of surrounding countries were embroiled in deep socio-economic and political tensions. Thirdly, this study argues that state land policies were essential in the construction of the idea of a modern state of Jordan. The first major articulation of the state's relationship to society in Jordan lay in its land policies and society's reaction to them. This began with the Ottoman period and lasted well into the 20th century. In no other colonial setting in the Middle East did the state so thoroughly intervene in and restructure land matters by the 1940s, and the introduction of European concepts of land ownership and exploitation went far toward contributing to the development not only of the country's economy but of its identity and self-conceptualization as well. This Western-designed campaign to survey land, establish and register definitive land rights, and its creation of a new system of land taxation, were thus of vital importance in creating the very nature of modern 'Jordan." In the first place, these state programs linked the state with society's need to secure private individual property rights at the expense of collective village rights at a crucial period of time. The state came to occupy a role, alongside the village, the family, and the shaykh, as a main arbiter of a peasant's access to land rights. The state also was perceived as a positive force in society by upholding individual claims even if it dealt a blow to corporate village claims; land was now owned through a state-issued

4

INTRODUCTION

deed, not just through village custom. Persons of low socio-economic status, women, and others often used state procedures to their advantage and secured claims to land long denied them by more powerful social actors. A sense of "Jordan" was also created by state-societal interaction in land matters. Property by the 1950s was no longer defined merely by conceptualizations of a share of the village's land but by stateissued maps and deeds. The state entered forcefully into the equation. In surveying land and registering land rights systematically, the state was reconceptualizing the spatial dimensions of the country as well.2 Village boundaries were also literally drawn by the state on maps. Popular notions of space were being changed by the government. These processes were done in consultation with the villagers, but their result was that villages conceived of their socio-economic space in terms of reference created by the state along Western lines. In the process of examining how the state and society defined their relationship and defined Jordan around around the question of land, this study demonstrates how the way land was owned, mapped, registered, and taxed in Jordan offers valuable wider insights into some of the central issues related to modern Jordanian history. Haim Gerber has postulated the connection between Jordan's land regime and its history, although in general terms.3 For instance, why did the Jordanian state established in 1921 survive over the decades despite its small size, lack of natural resources, and regional vulnerability? Why was the country largely spared the turmoils of revolution and military coups d'etat that raged throughout the Middle East from the 1920s-1950s? The answers to these and other questions dealing with modern Jordanian history have often been answered by psycho-political analyses of the acumen of the country's Hashemite rulers, by reference to Jordan's vital geo-strategic position in the Middle East, by citing Western and Israeli political support, or by studying the country in terms of its relationship with the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict. That all of these constitute important 2 I am indebted to the work of Marthy Mundy for pointing out to me the difference between the state's conceptualization of surface area and property and that of social actors. See Martha Mundy, "Shareholders and the State: Representing the Village in Late 19th Century Land Registers of the Southern Hawran" in Thomas Philipp, ed., The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), pp. 219^238. 3 Gerber Social Origins, pp. 100, 159.

INTRODUCTION

0

ingredients in modern Jordanian history cannot be denied. What is objectionable however is the almost exclusive focus upon these factors in answering such vital questions to the exclusion of a study of the basic social and economic roots of the country's history. The regime ultimately survived, quite simply, because it "worked": it established a system which addressed the basic socio-economic interests of the country's peasant majority during decades of tremendous peasant upheaval in the rest of the Middle East while at the same time furthering the interests of the state.4 This study deals with Jordan from the onset of Ottoman rule in 1851, through British mandatory rule in the Emirate of Transjordan, to the completion of the British land program on the East Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1952. In the case of Jordanian land policies in the West Bank, it covers the period up to 1967. Chapter one discusses the view of land tenure held by both the Ottomans and local Transjordanian society on the eve of Ottoman rule as well as the implementation of imperial land policies. The second chapter explores land and society in the wake of the Ottoman efforts. Chapter three discusses the systems of land tenure and land taxation as they existed at the advent of the emirate and the early steps taken by state authorities to change them in the 1920s. Chapter four details the massive British-designed land program that was eventually applied to every village on the East Bank by 1952 and in some one-half of West Bank villages by 1967. Chapter five examines the ways in which this program changed the face of tenure, taxation, and other features of socio-economic life associated with land. Chapter six discusses the effects of land policies upon social actors and the relationship between state and society as each dealt with the other during the course of these initiatives. It also notes the attitudes of both state and society toward Zionist interest in Jordanian land and the extension of Jordanian land policies into the West Bank. Lastly, chapter seven analyzes how state land policies and the interaction between state and society defined and conceptualized what 'Jordan" meant, both spatially and in terms of how peasant cultivators

4

Many thanks to Tariq Tell for pointing out to me the connection between Jordan's political longevity with the fact that it "worked" for its citizens. Tariq coedited a volume focusing on the socio-economic roots of modern Jordan: Eugene L. Rogan and Tariq Tell, eds., Village, Steppe & State: The Social Origins of Jordan (London and New York: British Academic Press, 1994).

D

INTRODUCTION

understood the state's role in their socio-economic lives. It also notes how the land department served to deepen a Western sense of bureaucracy in Jordan through its British staff members and logic. The present study is based largely upon Arabic-language land records housed at the central office of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey in Amman. Two record groups were particularly helpful: the records of the diwdn, or administrative offices of the department, and the massive land settlement (Arabic: taswiyat alarddi] files. The author also consulted records of the British Colonial and Foreign Offices and the private papers of colonial officials at the Public Records Office in London and at the University of Jordan's Center for Manuscripts and Documents. The Jordanian government documents housed at the National Library and Center for Documents and Documentation in Amman and at the Ministry of Finance were also valuable, as were records at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. Other primary sources include Islamic court records, U.S. diplomatic archives, accounts of Western travelers and explorers, government reports, and contemporary newspapers and journals. Other record groups and secondary sources are listed in the bibliography.

CHAPTER ONE

OTTOMAN AND LOCAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LAND

Introduction The story of the state-societal relationship around issues of land ownership and taxation in modern Jordanian history dates from the onset of direct Ottoman rule in the region in 1851. In that year, authorities of the Ottoman empire established a qadd3 (sub-governorate) in the northern Transjordanian region of £Ajlun that was subordinate to the long-established province of Syria headquartered at Damascus. With the imposition of direct Ottoman rule, which expanded southwards into the regions of al-Balqa5, al-Karak, and Macan throughout the last half of the 19th century, came the onset of the new Ottoman land legislation that started with the Land Code of 1858. As Ottoman land registry and land taxation officials came into contact with Transjordanian cultivators, their logic and interests came face to face with indigenous conceptualizations of land ownership. The resulting relationship varied from region to region in Transjordan, but on the whole this first significant test of the state-societal relationship around land ownership causes us to reevaluate many widelyheld beliefs about the state-societal relationship in the Middle East at this time. The important period of late Ottoman rule in Transjordan (1851— 1918) thus provides the deep canyon against which the echo of statesocietal relations would continue to be heard long into the period of modern Jordanian history. Not only would British and later Jordanian officials maintain Ottoman land legislation as the basis for the country's land regime into the 21st century, but the nature of social interactions with bureaucratic authority first outlined during the late Ottoman period would impact subsequent relations between social groups and the successor regimes of the Ottoman empire. Any understanding of state, society, and land in Jordan must thus begin with the study of the Ottoman presence in Transjordan.

8

CHAPTER ONE

The Land

The regions that came to be called "Transjordan" by the 1920s had long existed on the periphery of the Ottoman regions of southern Syria and the northern Hijaz. This area never possessed its own independent national or even regional identity in modern history, but was part of the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Hijaz after the Ottoman conquest of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt in 1516-17. The Ottomans established mechanisms for government in the region, which was inhabited both by settled agricultural communities and pastoral bedouin.1 Following their typical fashion the Ottomans quickly carried out a survey of the area for the purposes of collecting taxes.2 What came to be called "Transjordan" refers to the areas lying east of the Jordan River in eastern Palestine, south of the Hawran and Jabal al-Duruz areas of southern Syria, and north of the Hijaz. The Ottomans' main concern in this sparsely-populated frontier region bordering on the desert to the east was guaranteeing the safe passage of the annual Syrian hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) caravans that traversed the route from Damascus to Medina and Mecca.3 To do this required them to pay annual subsidies to the important bedouin tribes inhabiting the region to guarantee the pilgrims' safety from bedouin attack. Outside of this, however, the Ottomans did not establish permanent government administrators or troops in the area with the result that direct Ottoman rule had lapsed in all but name by the 18th century. This was part of a wider phenomenon by which the power of the Ottoman central government waned in comparison to local power elites throughout the empire. In the case of the Syrian provinces, these elites included local rulers like Fakhr al-Dln 1 See Wolf-Dieter Hiitteroth and Karnal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Frankischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 1977) for information on this period. '2 For two studies of Ottoman rule and land policies in northern Transjordan during this period, see Muhammad cAdnan al-Bakhlt, Nahiyat Bam Kinana (Shamdl al-Urdunn) fi'l-Qarn al-'Ashir al-Hijri/al-Sadis cAshir al-Mlladi [The District of Ban! Kinana (Northern Jordan) in the 10th Century Hijn/I6th Century A.D.] (Amman: al-Jamica al-Urdunmyya, 1989), and Muhammad 'Adnan al-Bakhlt and Nawfan Raja al-Humud, Dqftar Mufassal Liwa' 'Ajlun [Tapu Defter-i 970, Istanbul] [Land Register of cAjlun Province (Tapu Register 970, Istanbul)] (Amman: al-Jamica al-Urdunmyya, 1989). 3 For a superb study of Ottoman policy toward the hajj, see Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims & Sultans. The Hajj Under the Ottomans, 1517-1683 (London and New York: I.E. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 1994).


9

al-Macnf II, Zahir al-cUmar al-Zaydani, and, later, 'Aqlla Agha alHasl. Also included were powerful outsiders who served as Ottoman governnors such as Ahmad Jazzar Pasha. The third source of influential overlords were shqykhs of major Bedouin tribes like the Ban! Sakhr, the Ruwala, the Sirhan, and the Huwaytat. All three of these types of overlords in turn found allies in local Transjordanian shaikhs, both among the settled agricultural population and the lesser bedouin tribes. The Transjordanian topography varied from region to region. The northern regions comprised an extension of the plains of Hawran and the highlands of the Golan Heights. The former included the Irbid plain south of Darca and west of the desert line. Predictable and plentiful rainfall became more tenuous the further east one traveled, with the result that permanently settled villages clung to the western fringes of the plain. The hills of Golan extended beyond the Yarmuk River valley to the Zarqa3 River. This upland region came to be called 'Ajlun—the Biblical land of Gilead—and boasted the largest population of any Transjordanian region in from the 16th century into the 20th century. South of cAjlun lay the region that came to be known as al-Balqa3, which included the Biblical regions of Heshbon and Ammon. This largely rainfed plains area boasted Transjordan's only real "town" of any size, al-Salt, and stretched southward to Wad! (Valley) al-Hasa. South of al-Balqa3 lay what came to be called al-Karak (the Biblical Moab) and Macan (Edom), which boasted few permanent settlements. As a frontier region between the "desert and the sown"4 that boasted few towns, the regions of Transjordan survived largely by agriculture and pastoralism on the eve of the reimposition of Ottoman rule in the mid-19th century. Rain-fed agriculture was the mainstay of the settled population. The major crops were cereals like wheat and barley, along with fodder. But Transjordan was home to several well-watered regions that lent themselves to irrigation, both through streams and springs. This was particularly true in the hill regions of c Ajlun as well as its stream valleys, the hills of al-Balqa' near al-Salt, and several areas further south in al-Karak. Here the energetic could produce fruits and vegetables near these sources of 4 See Norman N. Lewis, Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan, 1800-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) for details on the relationship between settled agriculturalists and bedouin pastoralists in this region.

10

CHAPTER ONE

water. Additionally, olives were grown in the northern parts of the region, especially in £ Ajlun.

Local Conceptualization of Land Prior to Direct Ottoman Rule

The land regime also varied from region to region and from epoch to epoch as the frontier of cultivation ebbed and flowed and the power of the bedouin waxed and waned. Overall, we can characterize the land regime prior to the onset of direct Ottoman rule in the mid-19th century as one with a high degree of local social control over the ownership and exploitation of land in the absence of government apparati. In the more populous regions of c Ajlun in the north, it appears at this time that such social control took the form of local, village-wide or region-wide collective ownership known as mushdc (described more fully below). Comments by the English explorer James Silk Buckingham in the second decade of the 19th century seem to describe the familiar pattern of late-19th century mushdc by which village cultivators divided up collectively-owned lands among themselves every two or three years.3 This situation was no doubt analgous to that found further north in Hawran during the same period, where villagers also divided up their lands every second or third year and each cultivator took as much land as they could farm. The land was remeasured whenever newcomers settled in the area seeking land. The boundaries of individual fields in Hawran were marked with stones.6 In 'Ajlun, the most important sources of social power and authority that governed land and cultivation were influential village shqykhs. Wealth and property were obtained and maintained by force in this frontier region, and strong shqykhs led their villagers in attacking weaker ones. They also fought to defend themselves against powerful bedouin tribes who raided villages and extorted protection money known as khuwa from the inhabitants. But social struggles did not always take the form of settled vs. bedouin. On some occasions, village shqykhs and their followers joined with the bedouin in attacking

3 James Silk Buckingham, Travels in Palestine (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Ormes and Brown, 1821), p. 329. 6 John L. Burckhardt, Travels in .Syria and the Holy Land (London: John Murray, 1822), p. 300.


11

other settled communities, such as when the Barakat section of the Furayhat family of Kufranja joined with the cAdwan and Ban! Hasan bedouin in battle again the Shurayda family of Tubna, which was itself allied with the Ban! Sakhr and cAbbad bedouin.7 This political flexibility would prove to be an important factor in shaping the relationship between the population and the Ottoman state that later entered the region, especially in terms of their respective views of land and how its ownership should be organized. Village shqykhs played an important role in shaping the contours of land ownership and cultivation in cAjlun. Land was plentiful in the early 19th century, for many villages had been abandoned in the face of bedouin raids. Those shqykhs strong enough to take up land and defend it could choose where they and their followers wished to plant. When they desired land that was already settled, they sometimes simply took it by force. This is how Furayhat family acquired their home village of Kufranja. They originally hailed from nearby Khirbat al-Wahadina but coveted the lands of Kufranja belonging to the village of cAnjara. They conquered Kufranja after a bloody battled toward the end of the eighteenth century, and later seized Rajib, al-Shikara, and much of al-Jazzaza. Once they established themselves in villages, the shqykhs then organized how land was distributed among the villagers. When Shaykh Jabr al-Warda arrived in the ruined village of cAmrawa from Tafas, in Hawran, he claimed all of the land for himself and obliged all others to work for him as sharecroppers.8 Falah al-Rusan took a large share of Umm Qays at the time he led his followers into the deserted village but did leave the rest to the other settlers.9 At the pinnacle of the powerful shqykhs of cAjlun by mid-19th century were the Furayhat and Shurayda families. The Furayhats were esconced in the hilly Jabal c Ajlun district in southern cAjlun, particularly the village of Kufranja and its nearby castle known as Qalcat al-Rabad. Their rivals were ' The battle, which took place ca. 1825, involved other tribes as well. See Frederick G. Peake, Ta'rlkh Sharq al-Urdunn wa Qaba'iliha [The History of Transjordan and its Tribes], trans. Baha' al-Dm Tuqan (Amman: al-Dar al-'Arabl li'l-Tawz!' wa'lNashr, n.d.), p. 418, and Ahmad Sidqi Shuqayrat, al-Masjad al-âyddm fl Tubna [The Zaydani Mosque in Tubna] (Amman: n.p., 1988), pp. 35-36. 8 Gottlieb Schumacher, Abila of the Decapolis (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1889), pp. 15, 18-19). 9 Seteney Shami, "Umm Qeis—A Northern Jordanian Village in Context," Adnan Hadid, ed., Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan III (Amman: Department of Antiquities, 1987), p. 212.

12

CHAPTER ONE

the Shuraydas of Tubna, who by the 1860s could field 500 armed men (and women) in the al-Kura region further north.10 Both families had served as local tax collectors for various distant Ottoman governors in Damascus in the 19th century. By and large, shaykks, like the Furayhats and Shuraydas did not always feel the need to amass large personal estates for themselves at this time. Control over economic surplus was what mattered, not titular rights to ownership. Since shaykhs were able to use their position to expropriate tribute payments in the form of grain and animals from their protegees, they saw no need to rely solely upon personal agricultural exploitation for survival. In turn, these settled shaykhs were still sometimes subject to extortions from even more powerful bedouin tribes like the cAdwan and Bam Sakhr. Other shqykhs in cAjlun acquired land when they were invited to settled lands. In the early nineteenth century, the Ghanamat family of al-Husn invited the powerful Khasawina family to move into their village and help them defend against bedouin attacks. In return, they granted the Khasawina one-third of the crops each year.'' After the Ottoman government expelled the Khasawina and their allies from al-Husn in 1869, they settled in al-Nucayma, where they and the inhabitants divided the land into four sections ca. 1875 in return for their help in defending against the Ban! Sakhr.12 The Ottoman government introduced Circassian settlers into the Roman ruins of Jarash in 1878. The land was divided into two sections, one for each of the newcomers' two main leaders. The eastern portion of the village was assigned to cAbd al-Hamfd Bey bin Nuh Bey, while the western half went to Hamfd Bey.13 And when the government provided the Bam Hasan bedouin with land in eastern cAjlun on which to 10 Henry Baker Tristram The Land of Israel; a Journal of Travels in Palestine, 2nd edition (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1866), pp. 471, 474. 11 This is according to local tradition. Ishaq Yacoub Qutub, "The Impact of the Rural Thrift and Credit Cooperative Societies on the Traditional Social and Economic Structure of Rural Jordan—A Study of Three Villages (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1966), pp. 171-172. 12 The Khasawina and Hindawl family, which was originally part of the Khasawina, were each assigned one-quarter of the village land for a total of one-half. Raouf Sacd Abujaber, Pioneers Over Jordan. The Frontier of Settlement in Transjordan, 1850-1914, 2nd ed. (London: I.E. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 1989), ch. 9, and records from the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey, records of the land settlement process (hereafter, "DLS/settlement"). Al-Nucayma files, various documents. 13 D. Carl Steurnagel, "Der 'Adschlun," êitschrift des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins 48 (1925), p. 203.


13

settle in the late 19th century, their shaykh were granted extra shares of land, called kabara (from the Arabic "to become larger"). For example, the head shaykh of the Bam Hasan was personally granted 265 dunums, in al-cAluk.14 Finally, we must note that not all shaykh?, who controlled land in c Ajlun derived their status and land from martial qualities. An important category of shaykh were those who were religious figures. Most of these were sufl leaders, often called fuqara' (Arabic singular: faqir, "poor." The Persian equivalent is dervish). These persons were members of religious brotherhoods associated with the tomb of a saint, called a maqam or well, that had acquired control of land surrounding the tomb. The Ottomans sometimes even exempted them from paying taxes in honor of their status, guaranteeing them a profitable return on the lands that they controlled, which they rented out to sharecroppers. The Jarrah family claimed descent from one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad named cAmir bin 'Abdullah al-Jarrah, nicknamed Abu cUbayda. The family tended his tomb at "Ammata in the region of the Jordan Valley that came to be known as Ghawr AbT 'Ubayda. The family claimed the land as waqf and collected both rents and barakat (Arabic, "blessings") donated to Abu c Ubayda's memory from nearby cultivators and merchants visiting the nearby summer market. Other religious figures included the Qiyam family, who tended the tomb of Macadh bin Jabal; the cUman, or Massadfn, family of Kufr Asad, who used their landholdings surrounding the maqam of cUmar al-cAzfmf to keep the cultivators of the village in "bondage";'3 the Malkawl family in Malka, a family of respected sufis associated with the tomb of Shaykh cUmar.;16 and the Zucbl family of al-Ramtha, who tended the tomb of Shaykh Rashid Ibrahim Mustafa al-ZucbI. No matter how the major shaykh of cAjlun acquired their land, they tried to obtain the most valuable land possible, not necessarily the greatest amount possible. They were particularly anxious to

14 Wafa 5 Qutaifan, "al-'Aluk," Martha Mundy and Richard Saumarez Smith, eds., Part-Time Farming. Agricultural Development in the Zjirqa River Basin, Jordan (Irbid: Yarmuk University, Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1990), p. 75. lD Gottlieb Schumacher, Northern 'Ajlun, Within the Decapolis" (London: Alexander P. Watt, 1890), p. 121. lb The Malkawfs wore distinctive turbans. One of them, Shaykh clsa al-Ahmad al-'Abd al-Qadir al-Malkawi, established a kuttdb school in Irbid in 1289 hyri/ 1872-1873. See the the unpublished memoirs of Salih Mustafa al-Tall, p. 176.

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CHAPTER ONE

control irrigated land for planting fruit or olive trees. Shaykh from both the Dargham and Barakat branches of the Furayhat family, like Rashid al-KhuzacI and Hasan Barakat, owned a good deal of land in the well-watered district of Jabal cAjlun. The Shurayda shqykhs, like Yusuf al-Rabbac al-Shurayda and his son, Kulayb al-Yusuf alShurayda, controlled land in the olive country of al-Kura district and irrigable land in the Jordan Valley. Sallm al-Da5ud al-cAbd alMuhsin of the 'Ubaydat shaykhs of the Kafarat district owned Hubras, a well-watered village, as well as one-third of the olives trees in Harta.17 Al-Kitta, home to Shaykh Majalli al-cAbd al-Rahfm of the Rawashida family, was home to olive groves and grape orchards. In the regions of al-Balqa5, al-Karak, and Macan further south, land was similarly socially controlled by influential shaykh prior to the onset of direct Ottoman rule. In these more sparsely population regions the various bedouin shaykh were particularly significant. The major tribes of the central and southern regions of Transjordan were the cAbbad, 'Adwan, 'Ajarima, Dacja, al-Balqawfyya, Ban! Hamfda, Ban! Sakhr, and Huwaytat. These were stratified into different clans and families. Thus, the cAdwan had two major sections, the elder branch of the Dhiyab and the junior known as the Nimr. There were several major sections of the Ban! Sakhr, including the Fayiz, Khuraysha, Zabn, Khadfr, and Huqaysh among others. Likewise, the Huwaytat were subdivided among sections such as the Ibn JazI and Tawayiha (or Abu Tayih). The tribes controlled their own ranges, or dims. Grazing areas within the dim were under corporate control, and was called ard shamsiyya ("sunny land"). But an individual shaykh could claim his own personal land if it were unsuitable for grazing by simply thrusting his lance into ground and declaring it to be his own individual property. It then became ard hamlyya ("protected land").18 Sometimes the bedouin chiefs owned entire villages, as was the case among the Bani Sakhr. Some of the major large landowning bedouin shaykh in the more sparsely-settled central and southern regions of Transjordan included cAlf al-Dhiyab, the paramount shaykh of the cAdwan, and Sultan al-cAdwan, who owned much land

17 Records of the Islamic court of Irbid, vol. 2, p. 198, case 226 (29 Muharram 1333 %n/1914). 18 Antonin Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes au Pays de Moab [Customs of the Arabs in the Lands of Moab] (Paris: V. Lecoffre, 1908; reprint edition, Paris: AdrienMaisonneuve, 1948), pp. 136, 237.


15

in the Jordan Valley in Ghawr Kafrayn, Ghawr Nimrfn, Suwayma, and al-Shuna. Among the Bam Sakhr, Fandi al-Fayiz was granted the village of Barazayn by the Ottomans in the 1870s. His son Sattam al-Fayiz and grandson Mithqal al-Fayiz were also large landowners. The few settled communities in central and southern Transjordan, such as al-Salt, al-Karak, Shawbak, al-Tafila, and Macan, were similarly internally stratified along family lines headed by shqykhs, who played an important role in land tenure. Town politics in al-Salt were dominated by the rivalry between two confederations: that headed by the cAwamila and Qutayshat families in the town center collectively called "al-Hara" ("neighborhood"), and that headed by competing families (including the 'Arabiyat, Khuraysat, Nusur, Hiyarat, etc.) called "al-Akrad," from Wadi al-Akrad ("Valley of the Kurds") outside the town center.19 In al-Karak, the rival factions were grouped into three confederations, the "Gharaba" ("Westerners") led by the Majall family, "Sharaqa" ("Easterners") led by the Tarawina family, and "Masfhiyun" ("Christians"). These three had divided the land equally among themselves in the late 18th century. Within each section, land was assigned equally among married males regardless of how many children they had.20 Usually these kinship groupings and the shqykhs who led them always existed in some form of relations with a powerful bedouin tribe of the edges of the desert. Al-Salt's population paid khuwa to the cAdwan until the late 1860s but did not allow them to enter the town armed.21 An American explorer found in 1848 that the Christian families of al-Karak lived inside the town's walls and paid a form of tribute to the Muslim Majall family living outside.22 Other communities paid them too. But the Majalls were in turn subject to the Ban! Sakhr, to whom they paid khuwa in the form of grain and wool. The inhabitants of Macan handed over one-half of the grain they produced to the Huwaytat bedouin. The agricultural entrepreneurs from the Abu Jabir family of al-Salt entered into a similar 19 For details, see Lars Wahlin, Tribal Society in .Northern al-Balqa\ Jordan. An Historical Geographical Survey (Stockholm: Stockholm University, Department of Human Geography, 1993). 20 Mustafa B. Hamarneh, "Social and Economic Transformation of Trans-Jordan 1921-1946" (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1985), pp. 76-77. 21 Tristram Land of Israel, p. 560. 22 William Francis Lynch, Narrative of the United States Elxpedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), p. 351.

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CHAPTER ONE

arrangement with Shaykh Rumayh al-Sulayman al-Fayiz of the Ban! Sakhr, an arrangement known as futuh al-ard ("opening the land"), at the site known as al-Yaduda ca. I860.23 Sattam al-Fandl al-Fayiz allowed 15 Palestinian families from Dayr Dibwan, Sur Bahir, and Abu Dfs settle in a ruined village. He protecteded them in return for one-fifth of of their harvest.24 And Hanna Farah of the cAzayzat family of Madaba entered into an agreement with Sattam's son, Shaykh Nawwaf al-Sattam al-Fayiz, to open the land of Zuwayza ca. 1905. He would thereafter give one-half of the land to Nawwaf.21 These arrangements indicate the growing acceptance of agriculture as an honorable livelihood among the bedouin. The presence of government troops and the railroad had crippled their older economic patterns; troops guarded against tribal raiding, while the railroad allowed hajj pilgrims to travel through the region in greater safety and reduced the need for the government to pay the bedouin tribes. Other reasons included providing land to newcomers out of hospitality and their desire to emulate the agricultural success of entrepreneurs like Salih Abu Jabir. The cAjarima had allegedly become wealthy by 1872 from their fields of grain, which they sold to southern branches of the cAniza bedouin confederation.26 Still, "noble" tribes such as the Banf Sakhr, cAdwan, and Huwaytat did not actually cultivate the soil themselves but relied upon peasant cultivators or slaves. Others, like the Hamayida and Balqawfyya tribes did engage in actual cultivation themselves. These village and bedouin shaykhs in central and southern Transjordan not only played important roles in local land matters but in regional divisions of land as well. Several important regional divisions of land occured in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The cAdwan divided up their lands among their constituent sections ca. 1760.27 Around the same time the cAdwan, the cAbbad, and the settled families of al-Salt divided up the western part of al-Balqa5 into what eventually became several dozen villages. The various sec-

23

Abujaber Pioneers Over Jordan, pp. 138-139. Abujaber offers an excellent study of the relationship between families and land in Transjordan. 24 Jaussen Coutumes des Arabes, p. 243, f.n. 1. 25 DLS/settlement, Zuwayza files, land settlement court case 2/29 (18 May 1939). 26 Henry Baker Tristram, The Land of Moab. Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan (New York: Harper & Bros., Publishers, 1873), p. 178. 27 Ibid., p. 68.


17

tions of the Bam Sakhr also divided up their vast holdings among themselves. The early 19th century was thus a time in which local social control, through settled and bedouin family groupings headed by shqykhs, exerted control over land. Formal government control was non-existent, and while individually-controlled land did exist, family control of this resource was paramount. The coming of the new Ottoman age was to affect this situation in several profound ways.

The Onset of Ottoman Rule

The reasons why the Ottoman empire decided to reimpose its direct control over the Transjordanian regions are familiar and a detailed study of them lies outside the scope of this study. In brief, the loss of the empire's control over its outlying provinces combined with the political, military, and economic intrusion of the West into the Middle East prompted the long series of Ottoman "reforms" that stretched from the late 18th century through the period of the Tanzimat (1839-1876) and into the late 19th century. As part of these reforms, the central government moved to reassert its authority throughout the empire. It accomplished this by curbing the independence of local rulers throughout the empire (and especially outlying regions like Transjordan), reimposing a new, more Western-style Ottoman bureaucratic and military presence, and extracting taxes to finance the creation of a Western-style military and bureaucracy. The relatively late move of the Ottomans into the Transjordanian region starting in 1851 also served to shore up the central government's control over the important hajj route, which expanded beyond religious importance alone when the Ottomans erected telegraph lines in the area in the late 19th century and later connected Damascus and Medina by rail in the first decade of the 20th century. When the Ottoman government decided to include the Transjordanian regions within the administrative apparati of its various provinces, most notably the province alternately known as Syria and Damascus, it set in motion a process that woud change the face of land ownership in the region forever. The major way it would do so was by introducing the state, with its logic, conceptualization of land and property, and its need for land taxes, into the land regime. The first region where direct Ottoman rule was established was in c Ajlun, in 1851.

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CHAPTER ONE

Financial concerns loomed large in the Ottomans' decision to expand their rule southwards from Damascus into 'Ajlun. The Egyptian occupation of the region under Ibrahim Pasha ended in 1840. In the power vacuum bedouin tribes that had been forced to abandon pastoralism and settle by the Egyptians reasserted their power and once again began demanding khuwa from vllages. Seeking to prevent the flight of villagers from bedouin extortion and anxious to collect their own taxes from them instead, as the Egyptians had done, the Ottomans initiated a series of military campaigns against the bedouin of Transjordan in the 1840s. At times armed villagers collaborated with Ottoman forces. In addition to preserving tax revenues from expropriation by the bedouin, the Ottomans' interest in extending their control into cAjlun stemmed from their increased efforts to control the Hawran, which eventually remained in various stages of revolt throughout the 19th century. It has also been argued that the Ottoman expansion into cAjlun and later al-Balqa3 was an attempt to offer powerful Damascene families (the aghas) new territories to exploit.28 In 1851, the Ottoman Jaysh Arabistan ("Army of Arabia") attacked the Qallab section of the Ban! Hasan and the Sirhan as part of the attempt to subdue cAjlun. Eugene Rogan has documented how the Ottomans eventually established a sub-governorate of cAjlun in 1851 with the help of some Algerian settlers although they did not post a sub-governor there permanently until later. The central government continued its push southward into al-Balqa3 1867 and 1869, bloodlessly taking control of al-Salt in 1867. By 1893, it controlled al-Karak. Most of the cultivable regions of today's Jordan were under direct Ottoman rule by the turn of the 20th century.29 The gradual extension of Ottoman control dramatically affected the power of influential shqykhs throughout Transjordan. Since much of their power had been based on martial values, important shqykhs in the villages and among the bedouin lost power to the military superiority of the Ottoman military. Bedouin chiefs in al-Balqa3 like Qublan of the Nimr section of the cAdwan pined for the old days 28 Linda Schatkowski Schilcher, "The Hauran Conflicts of the 1860s: a Chapter in the Rural History of Modern Syria," International Journal of Afiddle East Studies 13 (1981), p. 174. 29 For details, see Eugene Lawrence Rogan's exhaustive treatment of this subject in "Incorporating the Periphery: the Ottoman Extension of Direct Rule over Southeastern Syria (Transjordan), 1867-1914" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1991).


19

while bemoaning the new "degenerate, unwarlike days" of the 1870s.30 The shaykh of Kufr Asad in cAjlun similarly recounted the former days of combat with the bedouin with such glee that his eyes lit up when spinning his tales.31 Others like Sattam al-Fandl of the Ban! Sakhr accepted Ottoman positions. The Furayhats and Shuraydas of "Ajlun became district officials for the Ottoman government. Shaykh Mahmud al-Ascad of Kufr Yuba was punished by Ottoman authorities for not being gracious to a visiting Western Christian, prompting him too to lament the passing of the "old days."32 The attitude of the Majalls of al-Karak changed too. Whereas they formerly derided Ottoman rulers to a visiting Western traveler in 1872 by noting, "What can pashas do here? We are lords here and care less than nothing for pashas or sultans," they later became Ottoman officials.33 Other shaykh?, were included in the administrative councils that the Ottomans established in the region. This is not to suggest that the populace of Transjordan and their shaykh, meekly accepted the Ottoman onslaught. In 1877, the southern region of c Ajlun rose up in a tax revolt led by Hasan Barakat of the Barakat branch of the Furayhat. The revolt was bloodlessly suppressed by the governor of Hawran. Husayn cAwnf, the Circassian subgovernor of'Ajlun from 1884-1894, remarked to a Western traveler that he had experienced some "trouble" with the population when he first arrived but had solved it by imprisoning some 150 persons in Damascus, where 120 of them died.34 A more serious tax revolt broke out in al-Shawbak in 1895, led to the deaths often Ottoman troops and many more locals. Yet the most serious and sustained armed resistance to Ottoman rule occured in al-Karak in 1910. For nine days in December of that year, al-Karak was in open rebellion. A number of Ottoman officials were killed, the garrison besieged in the city's crusader castle, and numerous symbols of the government and outside merchants destroyed. The revolt spread to al-Taftla, and the railroad and telegraph lines at al-Qatrana station were damaged. Ottoman forces from Damascus finally quelled the unrest.33 30

Tristram Land of Moab, p. 353. Steurnagel "Der 'Adschlun," (1925), p. 193. 32 Schumacher Northern 'Ajlun, p. 36. 33 Tristram Land of Moab, p. 99. 34 Gray Hill, With the Beduins. A Narrative of Journeys and Adventures in Unfrequented Parts of Syria (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1891), p. 74. 35 For details, see Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 178-188. 31

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CHAPTER ONE

The Bases of Ottoman Land and Taxation Policy

While the subordination of the shqykhs by no means eliminated the social control of land resources, it opened the door for tremendous change in Transjordan's land regime. The two most important aspects of this were the introduction of laws regarding land registration and the imposition of regular systems of land taxation. The significance of these factors relating to land ownership for the new relationship between the state on the one hand and society on the other was profound. For rather than seeking to avoid cooperation with the new state authorities who tried to register and tax their land, the population of Transjordan by and large cooperated with the state out of selfinterest, the few armed revolts mentioned above not withstanding. Before examining this, we must pause to reflect upon the origins and nature of the new, reform-era Ottoman land policy. The empire's understanding of a proper land regime underwent a sea change during the 19th century, and the new land "reforms" that emerged were very much the result of the political and economic might of Europe impacting the empire. As Karpat and Inalcik have discussed in detail, the "classical" Ottoman land regime of the 16th century whereby the state assigned land grants known as timars to military officers who collected taxes to support themselves had been the basis of the Ottomans' entire political and fiscal system during its formative years. Starting in the 17th century, the state shifted to a system of tax farming, alternately called iltiâm or mukataa, by which the state auctioned the right to collect taxes to prominent local notables throughout the empire. Sometimes these rights were bought for life. The result was that the state saw its control over land wane as local notables became more wealthy and more powerful. This influence was enshrined in the 1808 agreement between the state and the notables called the Sened-i Ittifak, by which the state conceeded that the notables could keep legal control of the land they were tax-farming.36 With the deepening of Europe's commercial, financial, and later industrial penetration of the Middle East and the creation of a global 36 Kemal H. Karpat, "The Land Regime, Social Structure, and Modernization in the Ottoman Empire." William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers, eds., Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 69-90 and Halil Inalcik, "Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1700." Halil Inalcik, Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic History (London: Valorium Reprints, 1985), pp. 283—337.


21

capitalist economy centered in Europe that incorporated the region into it, several social actors in the empire felt the need for the state to adopt a new land policy that would serve their interests. These elites included not only the notables, but also urban elites anxious to obtain secure rights to land so they could produce agricultural commodities for export to European markets.37 For its part, the state too sought a new, "rational" approach to land management to improve its political and financial control over the empire. Sultan Mahmut II abolished all remaining timars in 1831 and reclaimed the land for the state, after which he had to develop a new system by which the state could begin reasserting its control over land taxation. The Ottoman reformer Sadik Rifaat Pasha urged the state to adopt a European-style land regime wherein the state would dispose of land to individuals who would obtain clear legal rights to the land's produce. In addition to benefitting the usufructuary, such a policy would stimulate production and thus lead to an increase in land taxes for the imperial treasury inasmuch as the taxes were based on production rather than an intrinsic value of the land itself.38 The era of the Tanzimat (1839 1876) saw the empire enact a wide series of land laws designed to "rationalize" land tenure and taxation. The overall thrust of this significant reassertion of the state's presence into the realm of landed affairs was for the state to assert its control over all land not clearly private freehold or religious endowment land, sell and register usufructuary rights to this land, and collect taxes on the land's value and its produce. To do this, the Ottoman government enacted a series of laws beginning in 1858, the year that its famous Land Code was enacted. The Land Code of 185839 served as the basic building block upon which subsequent 37

Karpat, "The Land Regime," pp. 71-72. Ibid., p. 85, and John Waterbury, "Peasants Defy Categorization (As Well as Landlords and the State," Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury, eds., Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991), PP;4"5. 39 English translations of the 1858 Land Code can be found in Richard C. Tute, The Ottoman Land Laws. With a Commentary on the Ottoman Land Code of 7th Ramadan 1274 (Jerusalem: 1927), and F. Ongley, trans., The Ottoman Land Code (London: William Clowes and Sons, Ltd., 1892). A French translation is contained in George Young, Corps de Droit Ottomans, Vol. 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906). Finally, an Arabic translation is found in Du'aybis al-Murr, Kitab Ahkam al-Arddl alMutabi'a fi'l-Bilad al-fArabiyya al-Munfasila can al-Sultana al-'Uthmanlyya [Book of Land Regulations Applied in the Successor Countries to the Ottoman Empire] (Jerusalem: 1923). 38

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CHAPTER ONE

land legislation was based, and would remain the basis of land law throughout the Middle East until today. But beyond categorizing the types of land found throughout the empire and establishing procedures for the state's regulation of it, the Land Code marked the beginning of an important and long-lasting intrusion of the Tanzimatera Ottoman state into the landed affairs of populations, like in Transjordan, where social (not state) control of land had long been paramount. The socio-economic and political impacts of this intrusion would alter the contours of both state and society well into the 21st century. Most of the literature on the 1858 Land Code has focused on these wider impacts, rather than upon the narrower issues of what the Code did for state management of land. Indeed, volumes have been produced in the past half-century trying to explain what the Code ultimately meant for the Middle East. Was the state really trying to reign in big landowners, or help them? Did the Code facilitate the growth of private land or hinder it? The various sides of this discussion have usually all agreed that the Code marked a turning point. Some scholars boldly proclaimed the Code to be a . . . milestone in the social history of the Middle East, both from the point of view of its relations to the government's financial policy and of its long range effects on social stratification.40

One school of thought contends that the Land Code represented a break with the past and initiated a new era in the Ottoman state's relationship to the empire's land. As such, the Code was the midwife for the birth of a "new social order" in the region.41 Other studies of the Code that postulate a theme of dynamic, state-initiated process of change have also emerged. One argument states that the Ottoman state intended to reduce the power of large landowners and shaykh's, by reasserting the state's control over land and reaping the benefits.42 On the other hand, some scholars have maintained that the 1858 Land Code actually strengthened the shaykhs^ and expanded the scope of 40

Karpat "The Land Regime," p. 46. Ibid., pp. 86, 89. 42 For example, see works by Doreen Warriner such as Land and Poverty in the Middle East (London and New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948), p. 17. and "Land Tenure in the Fertile Crescent," Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of the Middle East 1800-1914 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 73. 43 Sherry Lee Williams, "Ottoman Land Policy and Social Change: The Syrian Provinces," Ada Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 35 (1981), p. 114. 41


23

private, disposable property in the empire, often in the form of large estates, even though the law was in fact designed to consolidate state control over land and/or to raise tax revenues.44 These interpretations have come under challenge in recent years. Some have asserted that while the Ottoman state did in fact try to reassert its rights over land, it did not seek to support small cultivators against large landholding shaykks, just as it did not create private holdings through the Land Code.40 Linking the Land Code with the development of large landed estates in some areas has also been questioned by studies suggesting that this phenomenon has been exaggerated46 or that it pre-dated the Code and was thus not the result of it.47 Still others have asserted that other aspects of the pre1858 land regime remained unaffected by the Code as well.48 Scholars are therefore beginning to challenge the unilateral emphasis placed on the state and its policies when seeking to understand land ownership in the Middle East. They have also begun examining a traditional belief, rooted in fact to be sure, that small cultivators avoided registering their land for fear that the registration rolls would be used for taxation and/or conscription,49 or because they were too 44

Karpat "The Land Regime," pp. 86, 89. Haim Gerber postulates that the Land Code led to the establishment of large estates in certain areas of Greater Syria when the state sold large tracts of unoccupied lands to investors. Gerber Social Origins, pp. 80-81. 4j Peter Sluglett and Marion Farouk-Sluglett, "The Application of the 1858 Land Code in Greater Syria: Some Preliminary Observations," Tarif Khalidi, ed., Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1984), pp. 413 ff. In this article, the authors admit that while the 1858 Land Code did not create private properly in the Middle East, it certainly confirmed it and perhaps even helped to expand it by allowing influential persons to "create facts" and acquire land rights. See pp. 414-416. James Reilly's work on Damascus asserts that the Land Code did not create new classes of landowners there either. James Reilly, "Status Groups and Propertyholding in the Damascus Hinterland, 1828-1880," International Journal of Middle East Studies 21 (1989), p. 529. 46 Gerber Social Origins, p. 73. 47 Sluglett and Farouk-Sluglett "Application of the 1858 Land Code," p. 413. 48 Reilly "Status Groups," p. 531. 49 See Jacques Weulersse, Paysans de Syrie et de Proche-Orient, 6th ed. (n.p.: Librairie Gallimard, 1946), pp. 115-117; Gabriel Baer, "Landlord, Peasant, and the Government in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries," Economie et Societes dans I'Empire Ottoman (Fin du XVIII''-Debut du XX' siecle) (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983), pp. 268-269; Peter Sluglett and Marion Farouk-Sluglett, "The Transformation of Land Tenure and Rural Social Structure in Central and Southern Iraq, c. 1870-1958," International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983), pp. 494-495; and Doreen Warriner Land and Poverty, p. 18.

24

CHAPTER ONE

poor to pay the required registration fees.00 While this was true in some areas, scholars have begun to noted that cultivators in other regions—including Transjordan—were not at all hesitant to protect their land rights by registering them.3' The Land Code has also been viewed as the catalyst for the spread of large-scale urban penetration of the hinterland through land acquisition. Recent detailed studies of specific localities such as Damascus and the Jerusalem hills, however, suggest that the effects of the Land Code varied tremendously from region to region, and even within a region, and sometimes worked to strengthen small-scale rural ownership of land.52 Haim Gerber has postulated that the large estates that some investors did end up acquiring after 1858 were the result of the state disposing previously unoccupied and uncultivated land to them, not granting them rights to widely-populated regions.53 The application of the Land Code in Transjordan did lead to the growth of big landlords in some areas, but many of these were bedouin shqykhs who had already controlled the land. In other areas, the cultivators who had been toiling the land prior to the arrival of the Ottomans and their Land Code registered their land and maintained their control of it. In still other parts of Transjordan, the cultivators feared registering their land and resisted it strongly. The situation, thus, is far from uniform in the Transjordanian case. Nor does this study subscribe to the theory that the story of the Land Code's implementation is the story of the state implementing its vision of landed affairs upon a weak society. Our study of Transjordan reveals instead that state and society worked together, and that the eventual outcome of the imposition of new Ottoman—and later, Anglo-Hashemite—land policies was the more complex result of statesocietal interaction.

:

'° Gabriel Baer, "Landlord, Peasant, and the Government in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries," Economic et Societes dans I'Empire Ottoman (Fin due XVIIF-Debut du XXe siecle. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983), p. 269. 51 Reilly "Status Groups," p. 530; Gerber Social Origins, pp. 72~73; Donald Quataert, "Rural Unrest in the Ottoman Empire, 1830-1914," in Kazemi and Waterbury, Peasants and Politics in the Modem Middle East, p. 39. :)2 For Damascus, see Reilly "Status Groups" and "Origins of Peripheral Capitalism in the Damascus Region, 1840-1914" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1987). For the Jerusalem hills, see Gerber Social Origins and Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem 1890-1914 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985). 53 Gerber Social Origins, pp. 72, 80-81.


25

Departing from the wider impact of the 1858 Land Code, we return to the mechanics of the Code and subsequent legislation. At heart, Ottoman land legislation imparted the state's Tanzimat-era conceptualization of what property was, what the state's role in managing it was, and what the population needed to do to exploit it. The essence of the Ottomans' argument, as presented in the Land Code and the laws passed in its wake, was that the state would determine what kinds of land existed in the empire and how individuals could exploit it. Thus at its heart, the Code divided the empire's land into five legal categories. The first was milk. Milk was private freehold land. Its owner possessed clear legal title, or mqaba, to this land. According to the Code, there were three types of milk land: builtup areas within town and village limits and small plots adjacent to such areas; land which the state formerly owned but had transferred title to private hands through a decree called in Ottoman Turkish a mulkname; and two older forms of private land called (in Arabic) c ushnyya and kharajlyya.^ The second type of land outlined in the 1858 Land Code was mm. Unlike milk, the state and not private individuals possessed the raqaba, or legal title to mm land. Expanding upon older concepts of state ownership of most land, the Ottomans used mm to denote basically all land in the empire that was not milk or one of the other types of land described below. However, the Code provided for the state to grant usufructuary rights to those willing to work the land and pay taxes on it. Persons were assigned usufructure (tasarruf] after paying a fee called a tapu fee and issued a deed (in Turkish, sened hakkani}.53 Usufructuary rights were inheritable and could be bought and sold with the state's permission, with the result that mm very closely resembled milk for most practical purposes. However, the state reserved the right to revoke the right of usufructure in certain circumstances, most often failure to cultivate. In such cases, the land's status became known as mahlul (from the Arabic "dissolved") until the state reassigned the right of usufructure to someone else, whereupon the land reverted to its mm status. The Code also confirmed the existence of another older type of land, waqf land. Waqf (from the Arabic verb waqifa, "to stop") was land that had been endowed to support an institution, usually a >4

Transformation of land into milk through a milkname was later outlawed in 1874. •" This was according to the Regulations Regarding Tapu Seneds of 1860.

26

CHAPTER ONE

charitable or religious one. This "pure waqf" was referred to as waqf khaynyya. The title of the land was permanently "stopped" or frozen, and could not be transferred or subdivided. The income from the land was devoted to the purpose stated in the waqf's, charter, called a waqflyya. Income-producing buildings in urban waq/s were called musaqqqf while agricultural waqf land was called mustaghill. Often a person would endow land not to support a charity but as a trust to support his or her family in perpetuity, free from fear of seizure by the state or subdivision into small, uneconomical plots. This type of waqf was called waqf dhurnyya. The Land Code stipulated that only freehold milk could be dedicated as endowment land. This was referred to as waqf sahih ("true waqf"}. The state forbade a person from endowing mm land since the title rested with the state. However, the Ottomans did recognize that certain rights associated with mm land could be dedicated to a charitable purpose with the permission of the sultan. The title of the land would remain with the state, however, and its status would still technically be mm. This type of arrangement was called waqf ghayr sahih ("untrue waqf"} or mm mawqufa. The state allowed three ways in which rights associated with a plot of mm land could be endowed to charity. The first was for the state to dedicate the land's taxes to a charitable purpose while leaving the proceeds of the land to the person(s) occupying it just as with any other land. This common arrangement was known as takhsisat, and according to article four of the Land Code was the common form of waqf throughout the empire. The second arrangement was for the state to dedicate the right of usufructure (but not the taxes) to a charity. The organization then used the land and kept its proceeds, and paid taxes to the treasury like any other holder of usufructure. The final way was for the state to endow both usufructure and taxes to a charity, in which case all revenues and taxes associated with the land were directed to charitable purpose in question. It is worth noting that the different degree of state control over waqf land also varied. True waqf lands were governed by the imperial waqf administration, not the regulations contained in the Land Code. But even day-to-day administration of waqf land was sometimes handed over to the state. Sometimes the beneficiary of a waqf decided to turn over management of the property to the government, which appointed the waqf's trustees, known as mutawallis, with the approval of the beneficiary. These government controlled endowments were called waqf madbut. The trustees for more independent-


27

minded endowments were supervised by the state, but not directly selected by it. This arrangement was called waqf ghayr madbut. The fourth type of land discussed by the 1858 Land Code was matruka land, from the Arabic verb taraka ("to leave"). These lands were non-arable lands set aside for a public purpose. This included land devoted to the collective benefit of a specific village, town, or group of people such as pasture lands, threshing floors, areas used to collect animals for sale, sites used for markets, forest areas for collecting wood, and so forth. Another type was land set aside for the common good of public at large, such as roads. The Code forbade the use of matruk for agriculture. The final land category in the code was called mawdt, from the Arabic word for "dead." Mawdt lands were those which were unused or "dead," were thus not any one of the other four categories of land, and which lay far outside any town or village limits. The Code specific that this distance was the distance from which a person could not hear the sound of a loud voice calling from the closest inhabited point. But the state did allow a person to revitalize mawdt land and reclaim it for agriculture, in which case the tapu fee was waived. The land was then reclassified as mm. The essential basis for land law in modern-day Jordan and throughout the Arab east remains these Ottoman categorizations. This is so because the state moved to bring the empire into uniform conformity with the conceptualizations of land it laid out in the Land Code. The Regulations as to Title Deeds of 1859 forbade anyone from having possession of mm land without holding a deed. The legal authority to grant usufructuary rights first lay with the imperial treasury, but was later delegated to the imperial land registry, or defter hane hakkani. To ensure compliance, the state started dispatching land registration teams throughout its domains beginning in the 1860s to register land rights according to the Law on the Registration of Census and Properties of 1861. Registration commissions were dispatched to each province. Since most land that the state called mm was actually being farmed, the commissions gathered the villagers in each locale to decide who could legally claim usufructuary rights. The results of this process were written down in a registry known as a yoklama. Those in possession of some type of older deed or land document were not required to pay a tapu fee but merely a scribe's fee and a fee for the paper used for the deed that was issued to them. Those who could prove to the commission that they

28

CHAPTER ONE

had been in uncontested and continual usage of the land in question for at least ten years were required to pay a fee called a tapu misl ("land price") or bedl mis I ("fair price") of five percent of the land's value, plus the scribe's fee and the paper cost. All others who wanted to register land rights had to pay a ten percent tapu fee plus the scribal/paper fees. Upon registration and payment of fees, the holders of usufructure were issued a deed. In the early days, the commissions handed out a temporary document called a ko$an and sent a permanent deed, or sened hakkani from Istanbul later. This process was later abolished, and permanent deeds issued on the spot. But the Arabized name for kofan—kushdn—was colloquially used in Transjordan and elsewhere in the Arab east to refer to any type of government land deed. These requirements initially only applied to miri land. But soon legislation was passed requiring holders of other categories of land to register it and obtain deeds as well. Waqfwas first required to be registered not with the defter hane hakkani (imperial land registry) but with the waqf ministry, starting in 1864. In 1875, the defter hane hakkani began registering most types of waqf and the following year the office of deeds in the waqf ministry was transferred to the defter hane hakkani. Owners of milk were required to take out deeds with the defter hane hakkani starting in 1874. Beyond land registration, the other sphere in which the impact of the new Ottoman land policy made itself felt was land taxation. Registration of land was clearly linked to its taxation. By the time that the Ottoman government was carrying out registration in TransJordan it assessed two basic types of taxes on land. The first was a levy on produce of the land called 6§r (Arabic: cushr, or "tenth"). As part of the Tanzimat reorganizations, the treasury consolidated several types of land taxes into the ii§r. In 1840, its rate was established as ten percent of the value of the produce assessed. This rate was later raised, and stood at 12.5 percent by the end of Ottoman rule. The o§r was usually paid in kind, and collected by multazims (tax farmers) who had bid for the right to collect the tax in a specific fiscal area. They then forwarded the treasury its share of the tax and pocketed the rest that they managed to extract from the cultivators. The state changed this system several times, trying at various stages to abolish it and collect the 6§r directly through state tax collectors (a system known as emanef). In other areas, the osj was levied as a lump sum payable by each village and tribe. This sys-


29

tern was called in Arabic maqtu'a. Village and bedouin shqykks, then determined the amount owed by each cultivator. The other form of Ottoman land taxation at this time was the virgu (Arabic: wirku). This consisted of a tax on the value of the land itself, and was introduced in 1861. The value was determined by a committee that included representatives of the village in which the land was located. The amount assessed originally stood at 0.4 percent of the value of mm land and one percent of the value of milk. The government changed this rate as well, which by the close of the Ottoman era in Transjordan had risen to 2.5 percent of the value of any land that also paid the d§r and 11.4 percent of the value of land that was exempt from it.°6

Implementation of Ottoman Land Policy in Transjordan

Land registration, known in Arabic as tatwib^1 first came to the Transjordanian region in the mid to late-1870s. It had begun in Palestine 1867 and, according to one Syrian land official, in Syria in 1874.58 In 1869, the Ottoman administration in Damascus received orders from Istanbul to auction usufructuary rights to mm land in the southern portion of the governorate of Hawran, to which the new sub-governorate of cAjlun that had been established in 1851 was attached. Records indicate the presence of a land registry office for voluntary registrations in Irbid, the administrative center of cAjlun, at about that time. But it was not until the late 1870s that Ottoman authorities moved with alacrity to move out of Irbid and carry out the mandatory registration of land in 'Ajlun. Orders reached the local administrative authorities in Irbid in August 1876 to begin the process.19 That month land in the village of al-Nucayma was registered. * Great Britain, Naval Intelligence Division, A Handbook of Syria (Including Palestine) (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, n.d.), p. 246; Frederic M. Goadby and Moses J. Doukhan, The Land Law of Palestine (Tel Aviv: 1935), p. 364; MunTr alSharif, Qussat al-Ard f i Sunyya [The Story of Land in Syria] (Damascus: Wizarat alThiqafa wa'1-Irshad al-Qawmf, Mudlnyyat al-Ta'llf wa'1-Tarjima, 1961), pp. 48-49. 5/ This is a gerund derived from tabu, the Arabic pronunciation of the Turkish word tapu. >R Akram El-Racaby, "Land Tenure in Syria," K. Parsons, R. Penn, D. Raup, eds., Land Tenure (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), p. 87. 39 Mundy "Shareholders and the State," p. 235, f.n. 24. Mundy's account of the Ottoman registration in 'Ajlun remains the most thorough.

30

CHAPTER ONE

Tatwib operations thereafter proceeded slowly by local officials in Ajlun from 1876 until 1881, in part because of the population's suspicions. This came despite the alacrity with which the governor of Syria, the famous reformer Midhat Pasha, sought to register land in order to raise money for his provincial treasury. In January 1882, the new governor of Syria, Ahmet Hamdi Pasha, dispatched a special land commission to cAjlun headed by Hawran's land inspector, Ahmad Na'ila, to speed up the process.60 This commission's work continued with greater ease throughout the mid-1880s, but the Ottomans were still experiencing difficulties in registration in cAjlun as late as 1892. However, this seemed to stem more from the population's suspicions that they were being singled out for registration more than their compatriots further north in Hawran than from a general fear of the process.61 Registration was largely complete in cAjlun by 1900. In addition to the registry at Irbid, a second was opened at Jarash. Surveying activity continued thereafter in some areas that the Ottomans had missed or to register new properties given that the population generally avoided registering transfers and successions after the initial tatwib campaign. Survey parties were dispatched to certain villages for re-registration. Documents refer to these as tahnr (Arabic: "recording") parties that were particularly active in the years just prior to the First World, visiting Malka in 1909-10, al-Kitta in 1911, Kufranja in 1912, and cAjlun village in 1914.62 Ottoman registration of land further south in Transjordan was much less complete than in cAjlun. In fact, it does not appear as if the type of general tatwib campaign was ever even initiated in the rest of Transjordan. Land ownership and transfers continued along preexisting lines longer here than in cAjlun, with cultivators making less use of the Tanzimat-era land structure the Ottomans were tryc

60 See the newspaper Sunyya No. 994 (3 Kanun Thani 1300 ramf/1885), p. 1. The Ottoman rumi calendar was a fiscal calendar that operated alongside the Islamic, or hijri, calendar. 61 Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 174 and 310. 62 See DLS/settlement, Malka files. "al-Qadaya—Bayn al-Mufraz wa'l-Mushac" [Cases—Between Mafruz and Mushac]; document: deed of 30 April 1919, DLS/settlement, al-Kitta files. "al-Taqanr 1-209" [Reports 1~209]; report 126; DLS/settlement, 'Ajlun files. "al-Taqanr, Jild 2" [Reports, Vol. 2]; report 38, petition of 26 Kanun Awwal 1330 ramz/1914; and DLS, files of the diwdn [hereafter, "DLS/dfoxwz], file 6/22, "Aradf Sukhur al-Ghawr" [Lands of Sukhur al-Ghawr]; copy of agreement of 25 Shubat 1328 raro/1912.


31

ing to establish in the region. An English visitor in 1879 noted that no one possessed deeds for land in al-Balqa3, which was held by right and governed by social custom. Salih Abu Jabir's large estate at Yaduda was held without deeds.63 Powerful bedouin shqykhs sometimes still acquired land by stealth or theft. Shaykh Quftan of the alHamid section of the Ban! Sakhr simply took the land of Batan al-Bajal south of Madaba. Sattam al-Fandl and other members of the Fayiz section of the Ban! Sakhr encroached on land belonging to the cAdwan by moving the rocks and other methods used to delineate boundaries at night.64 Yet the situation began to change, and influential persons in alBalqa3 were soon convinced of the wisdom of cooperating with the Ottomans by voluntarily registering their land even though tatmb does not seem to have taken place. The reasons are discussed more fully below, and essentially revolved around fear: fear that their traditional land holdings were being threatened by disputes and by new immigrants. According to extant land registers, a register was drawn up in al-Salt in 1879 although a formal branch of the defter ham hakkani would wait until 1891 to be established. That same year, several major bedouin tribes traveled to the town to record their holdings. These included the Nimr, Salih, and Kayid sections of the c Adwan, the "Ajarima, the cAbbad, and the Da'ja, among others. In return for their cooperation, the Ottoman administration waived payment of the tapu fee.65 Rogan has noted that a full 589 of the 671 deeds (88 percent) issued as a result of registration at al-Salt from 1879-1886 were granted to bedouin.66 Less is known about land registration in the regions further south, in large part because the registers were destroyed along with other government documents in the 1910 revolt in al-Karak. Available evidence does point to registration activities in al-Karak in 1899, and al-Tafila and Macan in 1905, to accomodate voluntary registrations.67

03 Laurence Oliphant, The Land of Gilead. With Excursions in the Lebanon (Edinburgh & London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1880), pp. 206, 270. f>4

hf>

Jaussen Coutumes des Arabes, p. 137.

Rogan, "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 142, 313 ff. Ibid. p. 314. ll? For details, see Ibid., pp. 312—314, and Muhammad Sallm Ghithyan al-Tarawina, Ta'nfch Mantiqat al-Balqa3 wa Ma'an wa'l-Karak 1281-1337 h./1864-1918 [The History of the Region of al-Balqa3, Ma'an, and al-Karak 1281-1337 h./1864-1918] (Amman: Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Ministry of Culture, 1991), p. 139. 66

32

CHAPTER ONE

According to one contemporary source, mandatory tatwlb registration was started in al-Karak in 1909, precipitating the revolt of 1910.68 Implementation of Ottoman taxation policy similarly varied by region in Transjordan. In cAjlun, the government converted the 6§r into a lump sum figure. But about 1877, for reasons that may have been connected to the drain on personnel and finances caused by the Balkans War, the government reverted to the practice of auctioning tax farming rights (the iltizdm system). Winners of bids traveled to each village and assessed the o§r on its crops during the threshing season. By 1879, these tax farmers collected approximately £UK 7,000 in taxes from cAjlun.69 Armed and influential, these tax farmers drove part of the province to rebellion. As noted above, Hasan Barakat of the Furayhat family of shqykhs in the Jabal 'Ajlun district led a tax revolt in 1877 that was suppressed by the governor of the Hawran governorate, Akif Pasha. Two years later, Barakat endured the humiliation of being arrested by the governor of cAjlun, a Jewish convert to Islam named Da'ud 'Abbada.70 Perhaps in response to this uprising, the Ottomans stopped the practice of iltizam about 1879. The authorities decided to estimate the 6§r and dispatch government tax agents to collect it. The problem with this method was that it never managed to collect as much revenue as before, and necessitated an army of efficient and honest tax collectors which the province of Syria could not afford to hire. In 1884, the government again changed the system of assessing the o§r by adopting the maqtu'a system whereby a lump sum figure representing an average of the previous five years' tax was established for cAjlun. This figures was then divided among villages and tribes, each of which was assigned an amount. The village figure was then subdivided among landholders according to the amount of land they possessed. By 1913, the Ottoman government was collecting 26,270 Ottoman lira from cAjlun in o/r.71 The virgu tax on the value of land

68 W. Verkade, "Der Aufstand von Kerak," Das Heilige Land 55 (1911), pp. 138-149, in A. Konikoff, Transjordan: An Economic Survey (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency for Palestine, Economic Research Institute, 1946), p. 16. 69 Oliphant Land of Gilead, p. 129. 70 Michael Richard Fischbach, "State, Society, and Land in c Ajlun (Northern Transjordan), 1850-1950" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1992), p. 83. 71 Great Britain, Colonial Office [hereafter, "CO"], CO 733/76, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four.


33

in cAjlun was assessed by tax commissions and assigned to each village. The amount for each village was occasionally updated, and registered in special virgu registers. By the First World War, 'Ajlun was paying 8,114 Ottoman lira in virgu taxes.72 The practice in al-Balqa3 differed in the fact that the o§r was not always made into a lump sum after the consolidation of Ottoman tax policy by the 1890s.73 Here a "true o$r" was sometimes assessed on the value of crops on the threshing floor by tax farmers. By the end of Ottoman rule, this stood at 12.5 percent of the crops' value. In other years, the government estimated the tax revenues. In 1913, 30,000 lira were collected.74 The virgu in al-Balqa3 was applied at a rate of 2.5 percent of the value of land subject to the o§r and 11.4 percent for o/r-exempt lands. The tax situation in al-Karak approximated that of 'Ajlun. The Ottoman presence here wTas the most recent and most tenuous of all the regions of Transjordan. Perhaps to simplify this and please the larger landholding shqykhs, the Ottomans levied a lump sum o§r on the sub-governorate but instead of sub-dividing it according to the size of a person's landholdings, the total amount was divided equally among all households irrespective of holdings. The same patterns prevailed for the virgu as well. By the 1890s, al-Karak was paying 14,387,123 qirsh in annual o§r taxes.70 In 1913, the government collected 11,195 liras.76 By the end of the Ottoman period, o§r collections in Transjordan stood as follows: Table 1: O§r Collected in Transjordan, 1912-1913 Province c

Ajlun al-Balqa3 al-Karak

Amount Collected (Turkish lira)

26,270 30,000 11,195

Population (1912)

Lira per Capita

85,000 50,000 55,000

Source: CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four.

72

CO 733/140, Cox to chief secretary (13 February 1927). '3 Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 237-239. 74 CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four. /:) Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," p. 240. 7(i CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan," (30 September 1923), section four.

0.3 0.6 0.2

34

CHAPTER ONE

Finally, it is worth noting that the Ottoman government assessed a "true" osr on state lands that were leased to cultivators. By the turn of the century, many of the villages in the ciftlik (see chapter two) areas of the Jordan Valley had their taxes collected by multazims. Judging from Ottoman records that survived, it appears as if the pattern was for tax collector to be responsible for individual villages (not regions). Some appear to have been men from the efendi class of Palestine and/or Transjordan, such as Shakir Efendi cAttallah, who was one of two multazims for cAwja in 1902 and 1906, and one of two in Zuhayrat in 1902. In cAwja, he was responsible for collecting 11,444 qirsh and 20 para for the government in 1902 and 4,572 qirsh and 30 para in 1906. In Zuhayrat, he was responsible for one half of 13,275 qirsh and 20 para in 1902.77 An investor from Nablus with other land dealings in the Jordan Valley at that time, al-Hdjj c Abd al-Hadi cAbd al-Hadi, was the multazjm who collected the 2,288 qirsh and 25 para due from Busayla village, 133 qirsh and 15 para from Tabaqat Fahl, and 2,266 qirsh and 25 para from 'Awja in 1913. In other instances, the multazims were shqykhs of the settled bedouin cultivators living there. For instance, Zahir al-Mithqal, a prince of the Ghazawiyya was one of two tax collectors responsible for the 7,111 qirsh and 20 para assessed on Hamra in 1912. Bashfr al-Hasan, another leading shaykh of the Ghazawiyya, was multazim for al-Himma, Jurm, and part of cAwja in during 1912-1914. Lastly, the inhabitants of other villagers apparently bought their own tax collections rights inasmuch as they are listed as their own multazims. This was true in several of these same villages in 1915: Jurm, Hamrat alGharbfyya, al-Himma, al-Ghazawiyya, Tabaqat Fahl, 'Awja, Qalay'at, Busayla, and al-Baqura.78

Conclusion When the Ottoman empire reimposed its direct rule over the regions of Transjordan beginning in 1851, it represented the first step taken in the relationship between state and society, and between their respective visions of land tenure. Until that time, land was exploited 77 DLS/diwan, file 2/22, "Aradi Sukhur al-Ghawr" [Lands of Sukhur al-Ghawr]; documents: copies of tax lists from department of finance in Baysan. 78 Ibid.


35

by nomadic and semi-nomadic bedouin and village cultivators alike in the absence of direct governmental control and according to their own needs and conceptualizations. These centered around using land on a family basis for self-sufficient agricultural economy and paying tribute to their shqykhs and/or the shqykhs of the powerful bedouin tribes surrounding them. They did not understand surface area in terms of abstract measurements but rather in terms of units of production called fadddn: a field was measured by how many teams of oxen could plough it. The Ottomans, on the other hand, brought with them a more European-style vision both of land tenure and of the state's role in managing the tenure regime. They imposed the Land Code of 1858 and its subsequent legislation, which laid the basis for the beginnings of a drastically different understanding of land as well as a different conceptualization of the relationship between state, cultivator, and land. The Ottomans categorized land according to usage and title. They required that land be registered, although they often failed to enforce this. The state demanded not one but two different types of land taxes. It issued deeds and drew up land registers which became the final authority on who owned what in the eyes of the law. They imposed a vision of surface area based on measurements of space, not of labor. In short, they created a parallel vision of land that existed side-by-side with local Transjordanian visions, although the Ottoman vision took legal precedence. In the encounter between Ottoman authorities and Transjordanian society over land, the beginnings not only of a new land regime but also of a new relationship between state and society were created. Chapter two outlines the results of these new beginnings.

CHAPTER TWO

LAND IN THE WAKE OF OTTOMAN POLICIES

Introduction

Implentation of the Tanzimat-era Ottoman land policies set in motion an entire set of new developments in the realm of land tenure in Transjordan, as well as establishing the apparati of a state in a region long accustomed to local autonomy. The Ottoman presence, replete with its desire to transform the regime of land tenure and taxation in Transjordan, thus constituted a major turning point not only for the area's land regime but also along its road of state-societal interaction. The study of the Ottoman administration in Transjordan thus affords us an opportunity to observe the results of an unusual experience: the first major interaction of state, society, and the conceptualizations held by each about the proper way to hold and exploit land after centuries in which Transjordan was left largely to its own. What was the response of the population to the arrival of Ottoman land law? Did cultivators avoid cooperating with the state, as the traditional view holds? What changes to the land regime did the Ottoman presence usher in? The answers varied by region. Whereas Ottoman land policy was thoroughly applied in cAjlun, it was more haltingly applied the further south the Ottomans went. This was not merely the result of the fact that they pacified cAjlun sooner and thus had a longer period of time there in which to accomplish their goals. After all, they had long been in control of the Hawran, a region that was in armed revolt against them for much of the latter half of the 19th century. Rather, the degree to which society cooperated with the Ottoman authorities in implemening their land program depended upon the level of internal socio-economic problems facing the cultivators at that time. These included overpopulation and confusion over tax liabilities. In some regions, the cultivators worked with the Ottoman land regime not out of docile resignation to the new order but because they hoped it might help them solve some of these problems. In other regions that lacked these problems, the cultivators' reactions differed. Similarly, the effects of this new era upon the contours of land


37

tenure varied by region in Transjordan. All areas witnessed the continuation of a land regime largely characterized by small peasant landowners operating within a context of social control over land resources. The coming of the Land Code appears not to have heralded the beginning of a dramatically new and different tenure system as some scholars have held. However, it did intitiate the beginnings of some significant new developments, most particularly the emergence of a large landowning class comprised in the main of merchants and usurers of non-Transjordanian extraction. The coming of the First World War, however, halted the growth of this class before it had time to alter the shape of land tenure in Transjordan radically.

Popular Responses to Ottoman Land Policies

The overall response by the population of Transjordan to the implementation of Ottoman land policy varied from region to region, as well as from cooperation to armed resistance. How can we explain why the population in cAjlun by and large submitted to these new procedures, why the Ottomans do not appear to have moved with the same zeal in al-Balqa3, and while those living further south rose up in rebellion against registration? As for cAjlun, we witnessed an overall degree of cooperation between the cultivators and the authorities, despite the relative brevity of the Ottoman presence, shortage of troops, and fears of higher taxes and conscription resulting from land registration. What drove society to cooperate with the state in this significant intrusion into the essence of 'Ajlun's economic lifeline? The answer is simple: the populace considered it in its ultimate best interests, not out of fear of the Ottomans, but because land registration helped settle a number of mounting problems faced by the villagers. Despite the beliefs of many contemporary and modernday observers and scholars that small-scale cultivators feared land registration and sought to avoid it (see above), northern Transjordanian society embraced it to serve its needs. This is in keeping with scholarship positing that the relationship between states and society, especially tribes, is far more complex and fluid that former positions have posited.' This belief is also informed 1 For instance, see Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, eds., Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California

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by the long-standing debate between the "moral economy" and "rational choice" approaches to understanding peasant politics. Without going into great detail into these well-documented debates,2 the moral economy approach holds that small-scale cultivators hold a collective cultural worldview, and are stirred to political action whenever they feel it is threatened. The rational choice paradigm believes instead that they are driven to political action out of self-interest, not some atavistic view of themselves and their village. These debates about cultivators' relations with the state must also take into account whether or not a village is "closed" (relatively self-contained) or "open" (more connected to and dependent upon the surrounding world.3 By the 1870s, the villages of cAjlun were facing conflicts and internal difficulties that the population felt could be redressed by cooperation with the government's new land policies. One of these problems was the need to change the way that collectively-owned land called mushac was distributed under the pressure of population growth and the increased personalization of land rights. To understand this, we must reflect upon just what the mushdc system was. Mushdc represented a system whereby cultivators in a village possessed rights to cultivate the village's land in undivided collective ownership instead of owning separate, individually-owned plots of land. Those owning shares in the collective land were assigned specific plots to farm for a cycle of two to three years. The lands were then repartitioned after that cycle had been completed. Relatively little is known about the musha' "system" in the Middle East, and scholars like Mundy believe that its characteristics varied to the point that it is impossible to speak of a definite "system" of musha'. But for all its differences, the basic element of musha' as a system of both tenure and cultivation was that usufructuary rights to land were held in collective ownership, usually by members of a village community. Ya'akov Firestone's pioneering works on mushdc have challenged the common assumption that this type of tenure represented communal ownership, i.e., that the village as some type of corporate entity controlled the Press, 1990, and Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury, eds., Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991). 2 An excellent summary of the approaches is found in Nathan Brown, Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle Against the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 17-19. 3 Again, see Brown's succinct discussion in Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt, p. 13.


39

land. Rather, he postulates that mushdc simply entailed collective ownership by a large number of cultivators. It is for this reason that Firestone maintains that article eight of the 1858 Land Code, which forbade communal ownership or ownership by one person of rights to an entire village, did not therefore forbid holding land in collective mushdc tenure as most scholars have believed.4 He asserts that Western reports of Ottoman authorities carrying out mandatory partitions of mushac land unintentionally misrepresented what actually took place.' Firestone's argument is challenging, although portions of it do not fit conditions in some areas of Syria. He claims that as a simple system of collective ownership, it was entirely possible for an outsider to own shares in the musha' lands of a particular village. While this was certainly true in some villages in Transjordan by the late Ottoman period, others forbade the alienation of rights to mushdc land to anyone outside the village, strengthening the argument that mushdc represented something more than simple collective ownership. Overall, the village as a unit played a stronger theoretical role in organizing mushdc than Firestone allows, but more research is needed before we can begin to understand it fully. The second distinguishing characteristic of mushac was the periodic rotation of the land among those possessing shares in it according to one of several different systems. A cultivator worked certain plots during each rotation, which usually lasted between one and five years but sometimes longer. After the rotation was completed, the land was re-distributed and each cultivator was assigned new plots so that all shared equally in all categories and locations of land in the village. The villagers made collective decisions concerning planting and harvesting, and in some areas of Greater Syria could punish those who violated this regime. Several variations in the method of temporary partition were practiced. The first was known as dhukur (Arabic:

4 Firestone claims that the assumption that article eight banned musha' is due to a common mistranslation of the Ottoman Turkish which has made it appear as if the law required that all collectively-owned land be partitioned. In fact, Firestone asserts, only communally-owned land was required to be partitioned. Thus he claims musha' was not forbidden because it was a form of collective ownership, not communal ownership. Ya'akov Firestone, "The Land Equalizing Mushac Village—A Reassessment," Gad Gilbar, ed., Ottoman Palestine 1800-1914. Studies in Economic and Social Histmy (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1990), pp. 106-111. 5 Ibid., p. 111.

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"male"), in which shares were divided up equally among every male in the village, including infants. Families with many males obviously benefitted from this system. Some observers have concluded that this must be the original form of musha'. A second method was to divide up the land land only among those cultivators who owned plough animals. The villagers knew how many teams of oxen were needed to plough their lands. These units of labor were called fadddn. The third system involved dividing rights into a fixed number of shares, or hisas (singlular: hissd). In various parts of Transjordan, a hissa was also referred to as a sahm, a rubca, or a zelameh. The shares were then distributed in a fashion unique to each village, but in Transjordan they were usually divided among families or groups of families, not individuals. Since the number of shares held by each group remained constant, inheritance and sales led to persons owning fractions of shares. In such cases, shares were subdivided int parts, usually 24, each of which was called a qirdt. Regardless of which of these three methods for distributing mushac land rights was employed, the partitioning of the land among those who cultivated it every cycle was determined by one of two basic methods. The first way of determining which shareholders received which land was by lot. Europeans have described several ways in which selection of fields (Arabic: mawriths) was made, including pulling stones out of a bag or leaves out of mud.6 In other cases, the villagers decided upon partition not by lot but allowed village elders or representatives of those holding shares to decide. A distinctive feature of farming under mushac was that each temporary partition left each participating cultivator working several long, thin strips of land, one in each mawrith. This was done to ensure that a cultivator received land in each part of the village, from flat, fertile land to hilly, poorer quality land. These strips could sometimes reach ten meters width by five kilometers length, with each shareholder working up to fifteen strips throughout the village.7 As inheritance created a larger and larger pool of share-holders, shares were divided and sub-divided into ever-smaller fractions. The result 5 Samuel Bergheim, "Land Tenure in Palestine," Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (July 1894), pp. 193-194, and C.T. Wilson, Peasant Life in the Holy Land (London: John Murray, 1906), p. 189, in A. Granott, The Land System in Palestine. History and Structure, trans. M. Simon (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952), p. 229. 7 Granott Land System, pp. 201, 210; DLS/diwan, 16/3/2 dal, vol. 1; memo to British resident regarding activities of the land department during 1935.


41

was that individual cultivators' shares sometimes became too small to cultivate efficiently. In such cases, the shareholders either jointly tilled the land or rented it it others. They divided the harvest or the rent among themselves proportionately. Even olive orchards planted on mushac land were treated as collectively-owned property in some locales in c Ajlun. The entire olive crop would be harvested and divided up among the landowners according to the number of shares each one owned.8 This was true in villages like Sahm al-Kafarat, Malka, and Samma. In fact, Samma had 1,400 olive trees held in mushdc against only 160 or so privately owned.9 Several arguments have been advanced to explain why musha' first arose in Greater Syria. Commentators traditionally linked it with some kind of ancient tribal system. This view is found in the work of land experts like Dorreen Warriner, who boldly states that while "[i]n Europe it is difficult to overcome the peasants' deeply ingrained individualism . . . in the Arab world there is no such tradition."10 Avraham Granott states the view that mushdc represented the remnants of Arab nomadic communalism.11 But in one of his earlier studies, Firestone suggests that the development of musha' was in fact linked with tax liabilities, not with some inant sense of Arab communalism.12 He argues that villages facing intense tax pressures divided their land equally among all cultivators in order that each worked the same amount of land and paid the same amount of tax. Variations like the share method occurred eventually, and areas which were less subject to tax pressures moved in the direction of individual holdings. In addition to the alleged communal instincts and tax liabilities, we should also note the relationship between mushdc and agricultural patterns. In Transjordan, musha' was most common in cAjlun. In c Ajlun, individually-owned plots of land, or mqfruz land, usually lay in the areas containing orchards and irrigated lands. In these areas, 8

For more details, see Martha Mundy, "Village Land and Individual Title: Musha' and the Ottoman Land Registration in the 'Ajlun District," Eugene L. Rogan and Tariq Tell, eds., Village, Steppe and State. The Social Origins of Modem Jordan (London and New York: British Academic Press, 1994). 9 DLS/diwan, 21/40, "al-Taqnr al-'Umuml li-Samma" [General Report for Samma]. 10 Warriner Land and Poverty in the Middle East, p. 20. 11 Granott Land System, ch. five. 12 Ya'akov Firestone, "Land Equalization and Factor Scarcities: Holding Size and the Burden of Impositions in Imperial Central Russia and the Late Ottoman Levant," Journal of Economic History (December 1981).

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CHAPTER TWO

mqfruz plots facilitated the planting of fruit trees which required a great deal of sustained care over the years and which were less conducive to collective ownership. In the same way, villages in cAjlun (and regions further south) that excelled in rain-fed cereal cultivation always operated under some form of musha1. Yet we cannot definitively establish a link between agricultural patterns and this system. For instance, mushac lands were also found in hilly orchard districts of northern Transjordan where even the trees were owned communally, as noted above. During tatwib operations in Greater Syria, the Ottomans adopted different attitudes toward the question of how to register mushdc. We have already noted that Firestone challenges the reigning opinion that the 1858 Land Code outlawed holding and registering land in mushde tenure and claims that contemporary reports about forced partitions during registration may be exaggerated. However, the historical record suggests that the issue more complex than either the traditional or revisionist views allow. It seems clear that the Ottomans did partition mushdc in some areas of Greater Syria against the wishes of the populace. Contemporary reports note this for Palestine.13 As early as 1860-1861 in the Mt. Lebanon area, partition occurred hand-in-hand with the newly-introduced registration procedures.14 Yet in other areas, including Transjordan, mushac lands were left as they were and registered either in common by registering the number of shares owned by each person or en masse in the name of one or two influential persons. Ottoman policy also fluctuated. In the Jerusalem and Jaffa regions of Palestine, the imperial cabinet eventually reversed itself and decided to forbid the partition of mushd' to forstall the growing alienation of land into the hands of foreigners.l3 The presence of mushd' in cAjlun was important for a number of reasons. But for the purposes of understanding the degree of popular cooperation with Ottoman land policies, the important point to note is that population growth began to create difficulties in the way that mushd' lands were distributed there. Not only did the increased security afforded by Ottoman garrisons lead to the resettlement of villages, so did regional economic trends. Wheat prices soared in the 13

Bergheim "Land Tenure in Palestine," p. 195. George Post, "Essays on the Sects and Nationalities of Syria and Palestine," Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (April 1891), p. 105. lj Gerber Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, p. 215. 14


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1850s and 1860s as European wars stimulated demand for grain in the Ottoman empire, which in turn encouraged expanded cultivation. Beginning in the 1860s, the American civil war sent cotton prices skyrocketing as well, and the Ottoman offered tax incentives to boost cotton production. But to take advantage of the demand for wheat and cotton by extending cultivation, farmers in southern Syria needed to bring more land under cultivation. The frontier region of 'Ajlun offered land and refuge for cultivators seeking to open up new lands as well as for those squeezed out of other areas by overcrowding and indebtedness. European residents noted that indebted Palestinians would flee across the Jordan River into 'Ajlun at night to avoid their creditors.16 Nablus provided many immigrants seeking out vacant lands, and groups of ten to twelve families crossed the river to settle in villages like Umm Qays, Makhraba, and Dayr al-Sacna. Cultivators from Hawran also settled in the area. The resulting population growth is reflected in the following figures: Table 2: Population Growth in late Ottoman 'Ajluti Village

Dayr al-Sacna al-Tayyiba Samma Qumaym Irbid Bayt Ra's 'Al'al Kharja Harta Samar Jarash al-Shuna

Population, First Period 100 700 275 200 650 175 150 250 200 225 1,500 75

(1885) (1885) (1885) (1885) (1885) (1885) (1896) (1896) (1889) (1885) (1897) (1885)

Population, Second Period 140 950 350 375 1,250 250 350 750 750 275 1,600 105

(1901) (1896) (1901) (1901) (1894) (1894) (1913) (1913) (1913) (1896) (1902) (1901)

Source: Steurnagel "Der 'Adschlun" (1925), p. 192.

By 1912, 'Ajlun's population stood at some 85,000 persons. 17 Although details are sketchy, immigration and internal population growth began putting pressures on shrinking land resources in 'Ajlun.

16 Gottlieb Schumacher, "Der arabische Pflug," Zeitschrift des Deutschen PalastinaVereins 12 (1889), p. 165, in Granott Land System in Palestine, p. 61. 17 CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four.

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Boundaries dividing the lands of one village from another were fluid, marked by roads, valleys, rocks, and foot paths. These became the source of frequent disagreement. Many notable land disputes began breaking out at this time in the grain growing villages of northern and eastern cAjlun. From 1857-65, the Hashish clan of Tall Shihab in Hawran battled the Darabisha clan of al-Ramtha over land in the village of al-Turra.18 Al-Ramtha later fought with al-Nucayma in 1910 over land in the eastern part of al-Nucayma that the latter claimed to have cultivated for over thirty years.19 Two sections of the Ban! Hasan clashed over land in 1912. Within villages, rising population strained the system by which land was distributed. Ya'akov Firestone has postulated the connection between population growth and changes in the ways villages assigned cultivation rights in musha' villages, whereby villages shifted from using labor power to the number of men in each family when dividing up land.20 A growing number of shareholders in the collectively-owned land strained the method for apportioning shares. One reason that the population in cAjlun may have accepted Ottoman land registration is that it provided a fortuitous opportunity for villages facing such population pressures to transform their formulas for dividing up cultivation rights. Rather than fear state intervention in their land affairs, the villagers exploited the situation as an opportunity either to rearrange how shares were divided up or formalize it. The results were then registered in the Ottoman land registers. Evidence points to the fact that a number of large villages in northern Transjordan decided to adopt new and/or permanent formulas for assigning land rights, and that they used the Ottoman land registration campaign and other institutions of the state to codify these arrangements. This helps explain why the cultivators chose to cooperate: because it served their interests. Thus villagers in al-Kitta established a new system for apportioning land by dividing the collectively-owned musha' land permanently among families ca. 1889. They then registered the results with Ottoman authorities to make them official. In Malka, violent disputes broke out ca. 1875 over land. In 1882, the cultivators took the case to the newly-established 18 c niayancAbd al-Fattah al-Jaludl, "Qada5 cAjlun 1864-1918" [The Sub-Governorate of'AjlOn 1864-1918] (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Jordan, 1990), p. 351. 19 Ibid., pp. 351-352. 20 Firestone, "Land Equalizing Musha' Village," pp. 91-130.


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civil court at Irbid, and later utilized the good offices of Ottoman land authorities from Hawran and drew up an agreement in 1901.21 Another reason why villagers in "Ajlun may have cooperated with Ottoman land policies deals with taxation. Ya'akov Firestone has linked the development of mushac with tax liability.22 Martha Mundy's research into Ottoman land registration in cAjlun takes this further by noting a clear link between land registration and corporate tax liabilities in both official and popular perception.23 In this sense, the reason for the villagers' cooperation with the Ottomans may lie with their concern for devising and recording a new system clearly linking the division of the village's lump sum o§r payment among the cultivators to their division of village lands. The sudden shift of the tax from a regional lump sum figure to the iltizam tax farming system ca. 1877 and then back to the lump sum ca. 1879 (see chapter one) may have created chaos. It certainly led to high taxes and tax rebellion, as we have noted. It was also precisely at this time that tatwib operations slowed, undoubtedly because villagers became uncertain about how registering their lands would affect their worsening tax liabilities. This study submits that the sudden shifts in tax collection methods prompted the wide-spread cooperation with Ottoman land policies starting in the 1880s. Drawing upon Mundy's observation that both population and government linked registration with tax responsibilities, the villagers became anxious to re-record their system of dividing land rights with the government—and thus by extension, re-record their system of dividing up their corporate tax liabilities. This clarified once again exactly who would owe what when the time came to collect taxes, since the tax system in c Ajlun divided up the lump sum figure according to how much land each taxpayer cultivated. If popular cooperation with Ottoman land policies in cAjlun was linked to pressing internal socio-economic needs, can the absence of these needs explain why the Ottomans were largely unsuccessful in garnering such cooperation among cultivators in al-Balqa5 and regions further south? I believe so. The same type of pressing socio-economic

-' DLS/settlement, Malka files. "al-Qadaya—Bayn al-Mufraz wa'1-Musha0' [Cases— Between Mafruz and Mushac], court decision of 4 Safar 1300 hijn/\882 and agreement of 20 Shawwal 1319 hijn/1901. 22 Firestone "Land Equalization and Factor Scarcities," pp. 813-833. 2S See Mundy "Shareholders and the State."

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needs that prompted villagers to work with the Ottomans were much less present in the central and southern areas. On the surface, such needs might seem to have been present. There was some pressure on land. Rogan has correctly noted that the Ottomans policy of allowing settlers to take control of land lying within the dims of important bedouin tribes in al-Balqa5 did in fact push some to register their remaining land with the government. He argues that the first registrations of bedouin land at the new land registry at al-Salt in the late 1870s and early 1880s (see above) occurred for this reason.24 The arrival of Circassian, Chechen, Turcoman, and other immigrants into the areas of Amman, al-Rusayfa, Wad! al-Slr, Na c ur, Suwaylih, and al-Rumman within bedouin dmzs certainly must have caused distress. So too did expansion of certain Christian families from al-Karak northward into Madaba, part of the Bam Sakhr dim, in 188023 But these actions must not be understood merely in reference to land pressures but also also to the politics of the government's relationship with the bedouin. After all, even when the bedouin did register their lands this did not always mean that they were secure from seizure by immigrants. The cAbbad complained in 1884 that Circassians from Wad! al-Slr took some of their land even though they had duly registered it and taken out deeds.26 And to be sure, land disputes did break out and sometimes turned deadly. Two sections of the 'Adwan clashed near Amman in 1864, and a visitor noted the presence of land disputes in general in al-Balqa0.27 Outside of the interruption of bedouin land rights, the movement of new settlers, and some land disputes, overcrowding and land hunger created fewer problems in the more sparsely-populated plains of al-Balqa5 than in 'Ajlun. New settlers simply expanded outward into uninhabited villages. Much of the area surrounding al-Salt had been divided up among the people of al-Salt, the cAdwan, and the c Abbad bedouin. But settlers from al-Salt found no problem moving into this territory, as long as they remained in their region. Thus the village al-Rumaymln was settled after two residents of al-Salt, 24

See Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," ch. 3. See Abujaber Pioneers Over Jordan, ch. 12, and Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 126-138. 26 Gottlieb Schumacher, Across the Jordan: Being an Exploration and Survey of Part of Hauran and Jaulan (New York: Scribner and Welford, 1886), p. 316, and Steurnagel "Der cAdschlun" (1925), pp. 204-205. 27 Oliphant Land of Gilead, p. 206. 25


47

Husayn and Hasan, the sons of 'All Sallrn, moved to the area to reside there and farm their family's land there on a permanent basis.28 Al-Fuhays was permanently settled ca. 1870.29 In other cases, newcomers moved into areas with the permission of the bedouin in whose dim the land lay and by carrying out crop-sharing arrangments with them (see above). By 1912, there were only some 50,000 people in al-Balqa3 compared with 85,000 in cAjlun.30 This lack of overpopulation compared to cAjlun is striking. Another factor accounts for the difference in the attitude toward cooperation with Ottoman land policies in cAjlun and al-Balqa3. We noted above that cAjluni society was beset by confusion over taxation and individual land rights with collectively-controlled musha' land. But in al-Balqa5 and even further south into al-Karak and Macan, individually-owned plots of land (mafruz) were more common than mushdc. The extensive land of al-Salt and surrounding villages was privately held long before the onset of Tanzimat-era Ottoman land legislation,31 more proof that the 1858 Land Code did not "create" private property. By 1905, mqfruz land was also the norm in alKarak, the villages west of al-Karak, al-Tafila, Macan, and other southern areas as well.32 An exception was the land of the Bam Sakhr bedouin, which was owned by them collectively in mushac. The fact of the matter is that the absence of pressing problems of overpopulation helps explain the much greater reluctance of the populace of al-Balqa3 to cooperate with the government. They had much less need to cooperate with the intrusive land policies, because they did not need the government to help solve problems as much as in cAjlun. For their part, the Ottomans did not press the point. In fact, the authorities did not apparently even try to carry out tatwib operations. A branch of the defter hane hakkani was not even established in al-Salt until 1891. As for taxation, there was less of the confusion that plagued c Ajlun. As Firestone notes, musha1 developed out of tax pressures. We can take this further by stating that in the

28 Lars Wahlin, Back to Settled Life? Rural Change in the 'Allan Area of Jordan, 1867-1980: Assessment of a Research Project (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, Department of Human Geography, 1994), p. 11. -'' Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 106-107. 3(1 CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four. 31 Lars Wahlin, How Long Has Land Been Privately Held in Northern al-Balqa', Jordan? (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, Department of Human Geography, 1994). 32 Jaussen Coutumes des Arabes, p. 236.

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absence of such tax pressures, mafruz land prevailed. This was precisely the situation in al-Balqa5. Tax pressures were initially less in al-Balqa3, to the degree that the 6§r and virgu were actually the subject of negotiation with the government until they were regularized in the 1890s.33 In 1879, a Western visitor to al-Salt noted that the local population paid £UK 1,000 a year in taxes, but that this was only one-quarter of what was actually owed. The local Ottoman official, who had no troops at his disposal, got along well with the townspeople as long as he did not push them too hard.34 The regions of al-Karak and Macan offer even further proof of the assertion that the degree of social cooperation—or the lack thereof—with Ottoman land policies depended upon the extent to which the populace was experiencing internal problems that it felt could be resolved through state land procedures. Landlessness and overpopulation were not pressing problems. These were generally not densely settled regions: by 1912, some 55,000 persons lived there, compared with 85,000 in cAjlun.35 This in turn put little pressure on musha' land, which like in al-Balqa5 was generally rare in these regions anyway. The lack of such problems helps explain the resistance of many persons to cooperate with Ottoman land registration, taxation, and other policies. Mechanisms for registering land were not even installed until relatively late in the Ottoman period. The first indications of land registration do not appear in al-Karak until 1899, and al-Tafila and Macan in 1905. Both types of land taxes were levied as lump sums divided up equally among all households— a simple, unconfusing operation that benefitted the large landholding shqykhs who were spared their true share of the tax burden. Whenever they objected to certain tax levies, they rebelled. The Huwaytat shaykh cAwda Abu Tayih once claimed he and his brother paid a tribute to the government in 1908 but failed to obtain a receipt. When two soldiers were sent to get a second tribute in 1908, c Awda objected to double taxation and had the two troops killed.36 That same year, 40 leaders of the Huwaytat went to Ma'an to complain about the ending of payments to them for "protecting" the hajj pilgrims. They pressed their point by holding the local administra33

Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 237-238. Oliphant Land of Gilead, pp. 203-206. 35 CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four. 3(1 Alois Musil, The Northern Hegaz. A Topographical Itinerary (New York: American Geographical Society, 1926), pp. 8-9. 34


49

tive officer and everyone else in the town's administration building hostage for two days.37 The last straw in the region occurred when the government apparently tried to introduce mandatory tatwib registration in 1909 along with a census, but failed. This combined with a fear of disarmament and conscription set the stage for the major anti-Ottoman uprising in al-Karak in December 1910. The government lost significant numbers of troops, most of them ethnic Arabs, and all government offices and records—including land records— were destroyed by the insurgents. As noted above, the unrest spread. Order was eventually restored after nearly two weeks.38 Where, why, and to what degree Transjordanian society worked with or resisted the onset of Ottoman land policy thus depended upon circumstances. Overall, the more densely populated northern region that faced irregular tax extractions experienced a more thorough implementation of the new state land policies and paradoxically witnessed the greatest cooperation with Ottoman authorities. The less densely-populated sub-governorates further south where Ottoman rule and taxation was more recently extended and with fewer fluctuations underwent the much less thorough implementation of these procedures as well as a weaker degree of cooperation with the state.

Popular Conceptualizations of Land at the Twilight of Ottoman Rule

Finally, what observations can be made about the nature of land ownership in Transjordan in the wake of the new Ottoman land policies? The first deals with popular conceptualizations of land, tenure, and usufructuary rights as opposed to the "official" Ottoman land categories and procedures. The official breakdown of land into categories of mm, milk, and so forth meant little to a society that had long been accustomed to owning and farming land as it pleased. The cultivators possessed their own logic of differentiating between types of land, and these continued to operate side-by-side the Ottoman categories even after tatwib. For instance, the legal distinction between 37

Ibid., pp. 9-10. Verkade, "Der Aufstand" in Konikoff Transjordan; A. Forder, In Brigands' Hands and Turkish Prisons, 1914-1918 (London, New York: Marshall Bros., 1920), pp. 128-156. 38

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mm and milk seemed to matter little, and rarely appears in documents. The essential difference between them was concerned with the state's rights to title. In a region long accustomed to the absence of state control, this distinction meant nothing. Instead the major distinction was between what land was mushdc and what was mafruz. Even within mushac lands, it mattered which were part of the general village mushdc lands and which were "private mushdc (Arabic: musha' khass) for a certain family only. The absence of large tracts of waqf endowment land in Transjordan is another indication that Transjordanians operated according to their own conceptualizations of land, based on their own needs and experiences. Influential persons in Greater Syria often endowed land in order to keep it out of the hands of the state. With no effective state in Transjordan prior to the 1850s and 1860s, there had originally been little need for this type of dedication. This fact was born out during the 1930s and 1940s, when it was discovered that virtually no agricultural land had been dedicated as "true" waqf and that the number of "untrue" plots of waqf were few. What waqf did exist in Transjordan generally consisted of small plots set aside to provide for the maintenance of mosques. Given the cultivators' lack of concern for the fine points of Ottoman land regulations, land was usually endowed with little heed paid to the official rules which stipulated that only milk land could be endowed without first securing the treasury's permission. Even local court judges who granted waqf rights seemed oblivious to this law. We can learn about local application of waqf procedures through the case of the village of Malka in northern c Ajlun. The villagers there customarily settled land disputes by referring them to al-Hajj c Umar al-Yusuf al-Malkawi, of the important Malkawf family of sufis, for adjudication. In one particular instance, the control of certain lands was disputed by two parties. The custodian (mutawalll} of waqf in the village, Ahmad al-cAl! al-Salih, claimed the land as waqf. After consultation with Malkawi, the second claimant conceded and agreed to endow the land. MalkawT then proceeded to confirm the land's waqf status by arranging for it to be registered as such by the judge of the Islamic court at Irbid. But land officials in the 1930s discovered that the land in question had first been mm, and that Malkawf therefore did not possess the legal authority to dedicate it.39 In another This case almost certainly occurred during the Mandate, but is no doubt indica-


51

case, two Circassians dedicated six plots of land in Jarash in 1911 in the midst of a conflict over ownership with an Arab claimant in a case that similarly suggests the improper dedication of mm land.40 Another example of the continued presence of local concepts of land after the arrival of "official" Ottoman land procedures concerns units of measure used for surface area. The extent of each village's land was originally determined by how much was needed. But as population growth and the spread of agriculture brought villages and bedouin tribes into increasing contact with one another's territory, cultivators were forced to limit the amount of land they tilled and quantify its expanse. The method by which they did so was not determined by abstract surface area as the Ottomans tried to use in their registration documents, but by how much labor power was required to cultivate the land. The basic unit of measurement in this regard was the faddan, which was based on the amount of land one man could farm with a plough and a team of oxen. Sometimes villagers referred to surface expanse in terms of how much seed it took to plant the land.41 As Mundy has noted, this conflicted with Ottoman needs with the result that sometimes both systems appear in registration documents while at other times, only surface area, as expressed in dunums, is mentioned.42 The slow establishment of village boundaries between villages also left some with ownership rights to land lying some distance from the rest of the village lands. Such locations were called mazmcas, khirbas, or 'uzbrpyas. These were temporary villages which the cultivators only inhabited during the planting and harvesting seasons, after which they returned to their home village. This was the case at Qaraqosh, which belong to the village of al-Rafi~d in cAjlun. Sub-sections of the Khaza'ila tribe of the Ban! Hasan bedouin farmed the lands of cAyn one year and those of nearby Mu'ammarfyya the next year. AlFuhays in al-Balqa3 was originally farmed by cultivators from al-Salt. In time, these locations developed into villages in their own right.

tive of the situation in the late Ottoman era. DLS/settlement, Malka files, "Taqanr Basatm al-Sukkar" [Reports for the al-Sukkar Gardens] and "Taqrlr Niha'f can alIfraz li-Qariyat Malka" [Final Report on the Partition of Malka village]. 40 Records of the Islamic court of Irbid, vol. 2, page 7, case 55 (2 Rabic Awwal 1329 /zz/rf/1911). 41 This was expressed in mudd, with one mudd being approximately 18 kilograms. 42 Mundy "Shareholders and the State." The Ottoman dunum changed size during this period, but stood at 919.3 square meters by the end of Ottoman rule.

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A second observation concerns that way that lands were divided up among the populace, whether mushac or mafruz. Land in the Ottoman period was generally partitioned among family units, not individuals. These partitions reflected the internal power structures within each village or tribe. In villages like Umm Qays, the division of land into 62 shares spread over four fields was not an equal one, and some parties remained dissatisfied with their shares.43 In Malka, the land was divided among two groups in a division that was common in Transjordan: a part for the more powerful, and a part for the others. Often this dichotomy was expressed as shiyukh wafalldhin ("shqykhs and cultivators"), while in Malka and similar villages with powerful religious shaykhs, it was called fuqara' wafalldhin ("dervishes and cultivators"). Malka's land was divided into 83 shares in 1901, 63 shares in the southern part of the village for the fuqam\ headed by the Malkawf family, and 20 in the north for thefalldhm.^ In cAy, various sections of the Bararisha tribe divided the land into units each of which was called a khdna (Turkish: ham)*3 Similarly, tribal partitions of lands took place in locales like al-Sharah and WadI Musa, the latter being divided up by the Masha'ila, Hilalat, and Hasanat sections of the cAbfdIyyfn tribe.46 This pattern repeated itself in most villages. Another dimension of land ownership worth noting following the establishment of Ottoman land policies was the designation of vast tracts of land as "state land" (Arabic: amldk al-dawld). While not mentioned in the 1858 Land Code, state lands constituted an important category of land in Transjordan. State lands differed from mm land in that the state owned legal title to them, but did not sell usufructuary rights. Instead, it rented the land for short periods of land, usually one year, and thus retained greater control over them. The treasury also collected both taxes and rent on an annual basis, whereas it only benefitted from taxes in the case of mm. The two most significant types of state land in Transjordan were mahlul and mudaw-

43 DLS/diwan, 21 /50, "al-Taqrir al-cUmumi li-Umm Qays" [The General Report for Umm Qays]. 44 DLS/settlement, Malka village, "al-Qadaya—Bayn al-Mufraz wa'1-Musha0' [Cases—between Mafruz and Musha'], various documents. 45 DLS/settlement, cAy files, "al-Taqanr min Raqm 11 ila Raqm 120" [Reports from Number 11 to Number 120], report no. 54. 46 DLS/settlement, WadI Musa files, "al-Taqanr 1-72" [Reports 1-72], various documents.


53

warn. The former was land that had been originally mm that the state had reclaimed for some reason, usually for an alleged failure to cultivate for at least three consecutive years. On other occasions, land along the route of the Hijaz railroad was declared mahlul, as well as land that the treasury wanted to grant to Circassian and Chechen immigrants.47 Bedouin tribes like the Ban! Sakhr and cAdwan lost land to the treasury to this way as well. The second type of state land in Transjordan during the Ottoman era was mudawwara, from the Arabic word "turned." These lands had formerly been called ciftlik, and referred to land that had been the private property of Sultan Abdulhamit II prior to 1909. Most of these lands in Jordan were located in the Ghawr (Jordan River Valley), between Wad! Yabis in the south and the Yarmuk River in the north. How these lands came to be the sultan's property requires some explanation. Apparently these lands had been declared mahlul in 1870—1872 and steps were taken to auction usufructuary rights to them. In 1881, local authorities received a telegram from Istanbul ordering them to cease the auctions and to register the lands instead to the sultan. Abdulhamit II paid for some of the land and received the rest gratis. Stories circulated in the region in the late 1880s that a French company tried to buy this land from the sultan. The two sides reportedly agreed upon a price, but negotiations failed when the company demanded that the government station 1,000 soldiers in the area as protection.48 In 1883, more land that had been used by the Sukhur al-Ghawr and GhazawTyya tribes of settled bedouin were also transferred to the sultan. In early 1888, the extensive lands of the Ghawr al-Arbacfn region were incorporated in the ciftlik estates. This area had been in the possession of the influential Shurayda family of shqykhs, whose historical memory claims that the land had been granted to them by the influential Damascene Kurdish agha Mahmud Ajalyaqln but later improperly seized by the Ottomans following a dispute.49 One final registration of Jordan Valley land in Abdulhamit IPs name occurred in 1891, when 39,335 dunums of land cultivated by the Sukhur al-Ghawr, Bashatiwa, and Subayh tribes, 4/ G.F. Walpole, "Land Problems in Transjordan," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 35 (1948), p. 61, and Muhammad Ismail, Report on Settlement Operations & Survey in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with a Brief Mote on Property Before and After Settlement (n.p.: 1955) p. 4. 48 Hill, With the Bedums, p. 53. 49 Interview with 'Abdullah Pasha al-Kulayb al-Shurayda.

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registered to them in 1879 and 1881, were purchased by the managers of the sultan's estate for 50,000 qirsh.M There was one final stretch of ciftlik land in cAjlun with a fascinating history. This was land in the Ghawr belonging to the village of al-Tayyiba and known as the al-Malaha farm. This land, lying in the northern Jordan Valley, were taken from the village by the government and attached to the neighboring lands of the Sukhur alGhawr tribe ca. 1884. When these lands were sold to the sultan in 1891, the al-Malaha farm was included within the boundaries of the sale. But the cultivators fought the alienation of their land fiercely. The German explorer Gottlieb Schumacher noted that the populace of al-Tayyiba attacked an Ottoman official from cAkka during the latter's visit to the Ghawr in 1884 out of anger over losing some its best land to the sub-governorate of Tiberius—an obvious reference to al-Malaha, since it was thereafter administered from Tiberius, not Irbid.51 The sultan's ciftlik lands were later seized and assigned to the Ottoman treasury in the wake of the Committee for Union and Progress' coup d'etat of 1908. Abdiilhamit II was forced to transfer his private properties in September 1908, and was paid 1,000,000 lira to help him pay his personal debts.02 The land was thereafter called mudawwara, and registered to the ministry of finance in 1909. The government then rented the land to the tribes residing there.

Growth of a Large Landowning Class

The Ottoman presence in Transjordan also facilitated the development of a class of large landholders whom we can called efendis. These were by and large urban outsiders, from Palestine and Syria, 50 DLS/diwan, 16/6/1-72, appendix B, entitled "2/3, Amlak al-Dawla, Suwar Quyud Sukhur al-Ghawr" [2/3, State Land, Reproductions of Documents for Sukhur al-Ghawr]; document: copy of a page from an 1891 Ottoman land registry entry. See also DLS/diwan, 6/3 jim entitled "Aradl al-Sultan cAbd al-Harmd" [Lands of Sultan Abdiilhamit], copies of various registration documents. 51 See the copy of the registration in DLS/dfwan, "Mulhaqq bd' li'1-Raqm 16/6/1-72, 'Amlak al-Dawla'" [Appendix B to Number 16/6/1-72, 'State Land'"], and Schumacher Northern cAjlun, p. 123. 52 Mustafa al-Shihabl, "Bahth ff Amlak al-Dawla" [A Study in State Lands], alMashriq 30 (1932), p. 545. Another source puts the figure at half that. See Yusuf Hakim, Sunyya wa'l-'Ahd al-Uthmanl [Syria and the Ottoman Era] (Beirut: al-Matba'a al-Kathulikiyya, n.d.), p. 157.


55

usually Christian Arabs and non-Arab Muslims, who invested in agricultural land in Transjordan and often resided there as well. Many also occupied positions in the Ottoman administration. Much of the literature has spoken of Greater Syria belonging mostly to big landowners in the wrake of the 1858 Land Code.53 Yet this was not the case in many regions, among them Transjordan. In fact, most land was owned by the small-scale cultivators residing on it by the end of the Ottoman era. Part of the reason why was that the Ottoman presence in Transjordan was relatively new by the turn of the century, which gave these efendis less time to acquire land than elsewhere in Greater Syria. And with the coming of the First World War and the partition of Ottoman Syria thereafter, their fortunes changed dramatically. This in turn affected their continued ability to buy up land in Transjordan. A number of these efendis were Christian merchants who held administrative positions. Probably the largest efendi landowner in c Ajlun was Iskandar Ilyas Salfm Kassab, a Greek Orthodox merchant born in Damascus.04 Kassab moved to Haifa and became a grain trader and food contractor for the Ottoman military. He also served in the administration in al-Salt, where he was mudir al-mdl (chief fiscal officer) in 1879. Kassab became an active money lender in al-Balqa3 starting about 1886. But his most expansive purchases in Transjordan took place during the last decade of Ottoman rule, and were largely situated in the Jordan Valley. He acquired thousands of dunums of land in Ghawr Fara and Ghawr Wahadina in 1911, Ghawr Damiya and Shiqaq in 1910-1911, and Ghawr Rama in 1913.55 Other Christian officials included Habfb Ayyub Bahhuth, Niqola Hablb al-Jinnawf, Niqola Ilyas Shalhub, and Hanna Shuhada3 Yunis Farkuh. Habfb Ayyub Bahhuth was a Palestinian from Galilee residing in cAkka. He held several positions in the administration of the

'3 For example, see Weulersse Pay sans de Syrie. Much of this information was provided by his nephew, Nadim Mikha'fl Ilyas Kassab. r " Records of the Islamic court of Irbid, vol. 2, p. 35, case 10 (16 Shawwal 1329 Atjn/1911), and vol. 2, pp. 42~43, case 27 (19 Dhu al-Qicda 1329 Aj/n/1911); DLS/dlwan, 6/41, "al-Aradl al-Muddacf bi-innaha Waqf cAla Maqam Abl cUbayda" [The Lands Claimed as Waqf for the Tomb of Abu cUbayda], report of commission (7 June 1926); Rogan, "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 343-344; and alJaludi "Qada° 'Ajlun," p. 241. >4

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c

Akka governorate in the 1880s, including the property commission from 1881-1886.56 In June 1885, Bahhuth acquired control over one-half of the fertile lands of al-Mukhayba in the Yarmuk Valley of cAjlun by foreclosing on loans worth 27,000 qirsh taken out by the settled bedouin tribe of the cArab al-Mukhayba. Part of the land,, over 8,000 dunums, passed into his hands through outright sale and part through bay' bi'l-wqfd3, a type of mortgage in which the land is temporarily sold to the lender and returned upon repayment. Bahhuth's son Shukrl bought some of the rest of the land in 1902, after which Bahhuth transferred his own land rights to five other sons in 1910: Jad, Radf, Jabbur, Mikha'il, and Sallm.57 Niqola Hablb al-jinnawl acquired rights to over 3,000 dUnums, in Mandah. Al-Jinnawf was a Damascene who served as amin al-sunduq (treasurer) of the Hawran governorate in 1897-1899.°8 He inherited some of the land from his father Habfb, who had lent money to the villagers in 1886, when the elder al-Jinnawi died in 1908. He bought more land in Mandah for himself, as well as in the Mazracat al-Sahl region of nearby Zubdat al-Wustfyya.59 The Damascene merchant Niqola Ilyas Shalhub acquired land in al-Balqa3 during this period. Like Kassab, Shalhub served as mudir al-mal in al-Salt in the 1880s. He was also a money lender who acquired land in the region around al-Salt.60 Finally, Hanna Shuhada5 Yunis Farkuh hailed from a Greek Orthodox family from Hums. Posted as amin al-sunduq in Irbid in 1866, he eventually settled in Irbid. He acquired the 4,066 dunums of Zabda, probably during the 1870s. Thereafter and to this day the village has been known as Zabdat Farkuh.61 But Christian efendis who acquired land in Ottoman Transjordan were not all government officials, although like the officials, most were either Syrians or Palestinians. Salih Abu Jabir, discussed above,

36 Salname Vilayet Suriyya [Yearbook for the Province of Syria] 1299 /zz/n/1881-1881, p. 214, and Salname Vilayet Suriyya 1302 rwra/1886, p. 136. 57 DLS/settlement, al-Mukhayba files. File: "Awraq Bahhuth al-Muthabbata" [Certified Bahhuth Papers]; various documents; See also the file "al-Taqarfr" [Reports], general report (11 July 1938). 58 Salname Vilayet Suriyya [Yearbook for the Province of Syria] 1310 /zz/rf/1897-1898, p. 201. 39 DLS/settlement, Mandah files; "al-Taqarir" [Reports], report 12 (various documents), and DLS/dlwan, 21/41, "al-Taqnr al-cUmumi li-Zubdat al-Wustfyya wa Mazra'at al-Sahl" [General Report for Zubdat al-Wustiyya and the al-Sahl Farm]. 60 Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 286-287. 61 Interview with Iqbal Najib Farkuh.


57

was from al-Salt although his family had moved there from Nazareth in the early 19th century. He acquired the estate from the Ban! Sakhr, and became a significant grain trader between Transjordan and Palestine.62 Abu Jabir's nephew, Ibrahim al-Bishara al-Qirra, was a Nabulsi who also settled in al-Salt and acquired the estate of Umm al-Kundum. His five children Bishara, Rajl, Wasif, Shibll, and Shakir later inherited the land in 1909.63 Hanna Francis Batatu was a Jerusalemite who lent money in al-Balqa3, including to the Banf Sakhr shqykh Rumayh ibn Fayiz, known as Abu Junayb.64 As a result, he obtained over 16,300 dunurm in al-Tunayb. Batatu's fellow Jerusalmite Najib Matlyya Abu Suwwan also owned land in al-Tunayb totaling over 4,700 dunums. Hablb Faris owned over 2,700 dunums in the village, and may be the same figure as a Damascene by that name who served as mudir al-mdl in al-Balqa3 during the late Ottoman period.65 Another class of efendis, who obtained land in late Ottoman TransJordan were non-Arab Muslims, usually government officials. In 1882, the government appointed the Damascene Kurd Tahir Badr Khan as qa'immaqam (sub-governor) of cAjlun. His family eventually settled in cAjlun and acquired most of the deserted village of Sahm alKafarat and its associated plantation of Mazra'at Lahiya. Like other villages in that region, Sahm al-Kafarat was noted for its extensive olive groves—7,000 trees were eventually registered with the defter ham hakkani by the turn of the twentieth century—as well as its pomegranate gardens.66 It seems that his children registered the land in their names. By 1896, Zubayr Badr Khan was the "owner" of the village, while by 1909 the family's holdings were in the hands of a son, Tzz al-Dfn, and a daughter, Adlba.67 clzz al-Dln is recalled in local lore as an energetic reformer who acquired Sahm when it was

b

- For details, see Abujaber Pioneers Over Jordan, ch. 8. DLS/settlement, Umm al-Kundum files. "Idbarat Jadwal al-Iddi'a'at li-Qariyat Umm al-Kundum" [Schedule of Claims File for the Village of Umm al-Kundum]; document: "Jadwal al-Iddi'a'at" [Schedule of Claims]. t>3

>A

63

Abujaber Pioneers Over Jordan, p. 82.

DLS/settlement, al-Tunayb files. File: "Mafruz—Jadwal al-TasjIl" [Mafruz— Schedule of Registration]. 66 Gottlieb Schumacher, "Unsere Arbeiten in Ostjordanlande," êitschrift des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins 48 (1925), pp. 534, 542-543. (>/ Gottlieb Schumacher, "Das sudliche Basan," êitschrift des Deutschen PalastinaVereins 19-20 (1896-1897), p. 179; DLS/settlement, Sahm al-Kafarat files, "alTaqanr" [Reports], various documents.

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empty and brought in sharecroppers to work the land. Husayn cAwn! was a Circassian from the Webikh tribe who was posted as qa'immaqam from 1884—1893 who acquired the 18,114 dunums of al-Jazzaza. His sons CA1I, Ibrahim, and Nun settled permanently in the region and inherited the land. When forced into a partnership with Shaykh Rashid al-Khuzacf of the Dargham branch of the Furayhat and his brothers (who had seized the eastern portion of the village), the two sides agreed to a partition. The agreement left the Circassians with 12,724 dunums in the western portion of the village that they re-named alMajdal.68 Certainly the most famous non-Arab Muslim efendi who acquired land in Ottoman Transjordan was one of the largest landowners and most important government officials in all of Syria: cAbd al-Rahman Pasha bin Muhammad Pasha bin Ahmad Agha al-Yusuf, who at age 32 acquired the other half of al-Mukhayba village in the Yarmuk Valley in 1902 that had not been taken over by Habfb Bahhuth (see above). Al-Yusuf was a Kurd from the Salhlyya section of Damascus who descended from distinguished families on both his maternal and paternal sides. His paternal grandfather Ahmad Agha had served as governor of Hawran and amm al-hajj (coordinator of the hajj}. Al-Yusuf's father Muhammad later assumed this latter position as well. Al-Yusuf's maternal grandfather, Muhammad Sacfd Shamdin Pasha, occupied the same two positions as well as many other posts throughout Syria, including in cAjlun. In his own right c Abd al-Rahman al-Yusuf inherited the huge Shamdin family estates and became amm al-hajj himself starting in 1892. As heir to the vast Shamdfn landholdings, al-Yusuf became one of the largest landowners in Syria, owning many villages near Damascus as well as approximately one-quarter of the Golan region.69 It is unclear how al-Yusuf obtained the land in al-Mukhayba in 1903, but what is certain is that he registered it to his infant son Muhammad Sacrd.70 He soon arranged for apricot and lemon trees to be planted and irrigated, and required the sharecroppers working the land to hand over onefifth of their crop to him. There were of course Arab Muslim efendis from Palestine and Syria 68

DLS/setdement, al-Majdal files, "al-Taqarfr 1-12" [Reports 1-12], reports 7,8. Memoirs of Salih Yusuf al-Tall, p. 238. DLS/settlement, al-Mukhayba files, "al-Taqarir" [Reports], general report by settlement officer (11 July 1938). 69 70


59

who acquired extensive landholdings in Transjordan too. Many of these estates lay in al-Balqa3. Most of the village of Hisban was acquired by Muhammad al-Nabulsf, a resident of al-Salt who originally hailed from Nablus. Members of another Nablus family that settled in al-Salt, the al-Sharabfs, acquired land in al-Bunayat. Several members of the Abu Qura family of Damascus, also called the Khayr family, were landowners in al-Rajib.71 Nor were all the foreign Muslim Arab landowners persons we can call efendis. A number of villagers from Lifta, near Jerusalem, bought land in several locations in alBalqa3, including al-Bunayat, Nacur, and Barazayn.72

Indebtedness and Usury Many of these outside efendis acquired their land by way of usury. As Rogan has demonstrated, the onset of direct Ottoman rule facilitated the flow of outside capital into the region via loans to local farmers.'3 Villagers needed cash for social occasions like marriages as well as for seeds for planting. Rogan has also noted the connection between the rise of money lending and the onset of Ottoman land taxation. Sometimes cultivators borrowed money from local merchants and money lenders in their villages in return for a pledge to repay the loan at harvest time; the farmer's crops were pledged as collateral on the loan. For larger loans, farmers turned to wealthy efendis in the towns of Syria and Palestine like Damascus, Haifa, c Akka, and Tiberius. Money lenders used several methods for lending against land. A pure mortgage, or mhn, technically applied only to loans secured by milk land. Under the terms of rahn, the land was pledged as collateral and remained in the possession of the borrower during the period of the loan. The land could then be alienated to repay the loan in case of default. But lenders found another procedure that allowed them to lend against the more common mm land and gain control over the land immediately, without waiting for default. This arrangement was called bay' bi'l-wqfa3, or more technically, fardgh bi'l-wafa3. Under this system, the borrower and the lender signed a See DLS/settlement, files for Hisban, al-Bunayat, and al-Rajib. DLS/settlement, files from al-Bunayat, Na'ur, and Barazayn. Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery."

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contract whereby the borrower temporarily sold his land rights to the lender in return for a sum of money representing the price of the loan plus interest. An additional, unofficial contract was then signed stipulating that when the borrower repaid the sum plus interest, the lender would return the land to him. By gaining control of the land during the period of the loan, the lender was able to extract sharecropping rent from the borrower, which provided a steady income and further reduced the debtor's ability to pay off the loan. A curious aspect of bqyc bi'l-wafa* was that until the practice was later banned, Ottoman law forbade either the borrower or the lender from selling the land to a third party. The method by which lenders overcame this obstacle to liquidating the loan was to arrange for the borrower to appoint an agent (wakil} who was assigned the authority to dispose of the land in the event of default. The powers of attorney were registered with the local Islamic court, and generally irrevocable. In case of default on the loan, the wakil was then legallyempowered to sell the land, including to the lender. Thus Najlb Hanna Farkuh, son of the large landowner Hanna Farkuh and tapu clerk in cAjlun ca. 1905-1913, was appointed wakil to sell 800 dunums north of BaFama owned by 60 members of the Khawalida section of the Ban! Hasan.74 This procedure explains a phenomenon widely observed in Islamic court records but often misinterpreted by present-day scholars. Noting that land "sales" were many times arranged through a wakil who was granted authority to determine the price and buyer, some scholars have assumed that villagers were too ignorant of the complexities of law to understand them and entrusted the sale of their land to an agent. Actually, the appearance of wakih in Islamic court documents reveals that the "sales" were not sales at all but examples of bay' bi'l-wafa* loans. Indebtedness became a serious problem in Ottoman Transjordan, particularly in the areas where capital had penetrated the most, like 'Ajlun. In 1881, the Damascene money lender Ibrahim al-Sula foreclosed on a loan against land in Rajib belonging to no less a personage than Shaykh Hasan Barakat al-Furayhat and sold the land at auction in Damascus.70 Shaykh Quwaytm Agha of the settled bedouin tribe of the Sukhur al-Ghawr in the northern Jordan Valley, who 74

Records of the Islamic court of Irbid, Vol. 3, p. 24, case 80. The land was bought for 90,000 qirsh by Jubran Isbir. Suriyya No. 877 (18 Shawwal 1299 hijri/1881), p. 1, and No. 891 (3 Safar 1300 Ayn/1882), p. 1. 75


61

was the son of the famous cAq!la Agha al-Hasf of Galilee, owed a sizeable amount to another Syrian usurer.76 Kurdish money lenders impoverished the village of 'Ajlun and acquired land both there and in nearby Raymun.77 We have already noted how lenders like Habfb Ayyub Bahhuth and Hanna Francis Batatu took over land through foreclosures. In al-Balqa3, borrowers often turned to wealthy lenders from al-Salt, including not only foreigners but local residents. These include Niqola Ilyas Shalhub, Iskandar Ilyas Kassab and his brother Jurjl, Qastfn Zurayq, As'ad al-ShahalawI, Furayh Abu Jabir, Jiryis al-Farah, Hanna Faris, Raghib Shammut, Fayyad al-Nabulsf, Mustafa al-Da'ud, Mahmud al-Bustami, Da'ud cAbd al-Rahman Tuqan, and others.78 The Ottomans tried to assist indebted cultivators. They regulated private lending in several ways. While initially sanctioning bayc bi'lwafa\ they later banned the practice in 1913. They also set the maximum legal interest rate at nine percent per annum in 1887. Standard mortgage loan forms were printed, and provisions made for registering loans with the defter ham hakkani. Testimony from a case involving land in the village of al-Sarfh heard by the Islamic court of Irbid, however, indicates that most mortgages were not recorded at the land registries.79 The government also established an agricultural bank in 1866 to assist cultivators throughout the empire obtain credit and ease their dependence upon usurers. This bank was actually a series of cooperative organizations called sanadiq al-bilad (community chests), later called sanadiq al-munafi.™ The government took 10 percent of the o§r collected from each village and opened an account in the village's name in the local branch of the community chest. Interest of 1 percent per annum was paid to each village's account. The villagers could borrow from their accounts to pay for public

7b

Schumacher Northern 'Ajlun, p. 86. Steuernagel "Der cAdschlun" (1925), pp. 205, 208. Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," pp. 287-291. /f) Records of the Islamic court of Irbid, Vol. 3, p. 5, case of 20 Safar 1336 hyri/\9\7. 8(1 Jordan, Ministry of Culture, National Library and Center for Documents and Documentation [hereafter NLCDD]. Records of the prime ministry, file #875, "Taqanr Idanyya li'1-Masraf al-Ziraci al-Shahriyya wa'1-Sanawiyya" [Annual and Monthly Administrative Reports for the Agricultural Bank]; document: "Taqrir Idarat al-Masraf al-ZiracI fi Sharq al-Urdunn fT Ghayat Sanat 1937-1938 Maliyya" [Report on the Administration of the Agricultural Bank in Transjordan for the End of the Fiscal Year 1937-1938]. 77

78

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works projects, but only on the one day of the week when the bank was opened (whichever day the administrative center of the governorate held its market day). In 1886, the Ottomans closed the cooperatives and transferred their funds to a central Agricultural Bank (masraf zira'i) with provincial and sub-provincial branches. Instead of accepting consumer goods such as jewelry as collateral as before, the new bank only accepted land as collateral, except for short term loans extended to a group of cultivators in a village suffering from drought. In such cases the Agricultural Bank accepted the pledge of seeds in a type of collective loan called kqfdla mutasalsala. In Transjordan, these types of loans were only granted in mushaf areas. The government established branches of the Agricultural Bank in Irbid, al-Salt, and al-Karak. By March 1918, the accounts of these three branches stood as follows: Table 3: Assets of the Ottoman Agricultural Bank in Transjordan, 1918 1. Irbid Branch (in Lira— Qirsh} Notional Capital Ready Capital

Loans with Collateral

Loans via kafala

13,956-82

807-82

mutasalsala 979-36

'rsh} 2. al-Salt Branch (in Lira— Qirsh) Notional Capital Ready Capital


Loans via kafala

14,869-71

3,388-09

mutasalsala 0

3. al-Karak Branch (in Lira— Qirsh) Notional Capital Ready Capital


Loans via kafala

5,394-18

1,822-27

mutasalsala 574-82

TOTAL (in Lira—Qirsh} Notional Capital Ready Capital


Loans via kafala

34,220-71

6,018-22

mutasalsala 1,554-18

9,927-88

12,145-60

4,815-50

26,888-98

Source: CDD/PM, file 875, "Taqarir Idarfyya li'1-Masraf al-Ziracf al-Shahrfyya wa'lSanawryya" [Annual and Monthly Administrative Reports for the Agricultural Bank]; document: "Taqrlr Idarat al-Masraf al-Ziracr fi Sharq al-Urdunn ff Ghayat Sanat 1937-1938 Malfyya" [Report on the Administration of the Agricultural Bank in Transjordan for the End of the Fiscal Year 1937-1938].


63

Conclusion The Ottoman period in Transjordan is vitally important for understanding the relationship between state on the one hand and society on the other as the two approached the question of land ownership. This period is particularly instructive when we observe the various reactions to the imposition of Ottoman land policy exhibited by the population of Transjordan. In cAjlun, the Ottomans were able to carry out their land and taxation policies to the most thorough degree. True, their rule here was the longest-standing of any region of Transjordan. But this was not the only reason why cAjluni society by and large cooperated with them. The twin factors of population growth and uncertainty over taxation put increasing pressure on the mushdc system in northern Transjordan, the part of the region where it was most commonly found. Cultivators in 'Ajlun used the opportunity afforded by Ottoman tatimb campaigns to rectify these problems through use of government land officials and then register the results to record and preserve them. The central and southern regions of al-Balqa3, al-Karak, and Macan were conquered by the Ottomans later than cAjlun, and were largely characterized by a more sparse population in control not of mushdc land but of partitioned mqftuz, land, and a population not as threatened by fluctuations in the taxation system. This helps us understand why those parts of the region were less inclined to cooperate with Ottoman land policies and even rose in revolt. The example of state-societal relations under the Ottomans demonstrates that the cultivators of Transjordan did not reject the presence of the Ottoman state and its land policies outright. They did not avoid registration out of fear of taxation or conscription, as some have claimed for other parts of Greater Syria. They did not register the land in the names of more powerful figures. Instead, they used the system to safeguard and protect their rights in the face of the encroachment of a new political and socio-economic era. The example of this savvy ability to work with the state when it served them would resurface later in the period following Ottoman rule in Transjordan.

CHAPTER THREE LAND IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE EMIRATE

Introduction

Land was generally owned, registered, and taxed for the first six years of the Emirate of Transjordan, as the country was known during the period of the British mandate from 1921-46, as it had been during the waning years of the Ottoman administration. With notable exceptions, the tenure situation was fairly equitable, with land controlled by small-scale cultivators. Social intervention in and control over tenure like that found in the mushdc system continued to be strong. And as population growth continued, disputes over land and boundaries mounted. For its part, the new administration's connection with land lay largely in the realm of taxing the value and produce of land. Yet despite the emirate's new registration procedures and a zeal in collecting taxes that at times provoked armed rebellion in the 1920s, the tenure situation and the state's involvement in land matters were ultimately unsatisfactory in the minds of the British officials who guided the new country's affairs. The experiences and failures of the policies during the early 1920s were to lead to profound, stateled changes in the spheres of ownership, registration, and taxation beginning in the late 1920s. Out of these changes, discussed later in chapter four, would emerge the face of modern Jordan.

Transjordan After the Ottomans

The First World War ushered in profound changes in Transjordan as throughout the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire. The war years were extremely difficult for the population, which played host to Ottoman, German, and Austrian troops seeking to defend the area against both British commonwealth forces in the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces and, starting in 1916, Arab troops of the Arab Revolt led by the Hashemite family of Mecca. The war years were

LAND IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE EMIRATE

65

difficult. Famine lurked throughout Greater Syria, and considerable areas of northern Transjordan were denuded of trees by the Ottoman military. Disruptions were felt by certain of the population. For instance, al-Salt was briefly occupied by British forces in 1918, who were welcomed by the town's Christian population. Fearing Ottoman retribution, the Christians later fled to Palestine after the British had evacuated the city. The final Ottoman withdrawal from Transjordan in September 1918 witnessed the removal of important government documents, including land registers and records of the Agricultural Bank, by the retreating forces. While the victorious Allied powers decided upon the ultimate fate of the region, Arab nationalists declared an independent Syrian kingdom in Damascus in September 1919 under Emir Faysal bin Husayn of the Hashemites. This ephemeral kingdom included most of the regions of Transjordan. The Syrian kingdom posted administrative officials in Transjordan, assessed taxes in Syrian currency, and rehabilitated the preexisting Ottoman court and land registration systems. But it undertook nothing in the way of new land policies, and the French victory over Faysal at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920 ended what remained of the Faysali administration in Transjordan. One month later, British military authorities in Jerusalem decided to extend their control over Transjordan in order to check French ambitions in the north. Rather than occupy the Transjordanian regions directly, they chose to do so by establishing several "independent" Arab governing authorities instead. This policy was announced by Britain's high commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, at an August 1920 conference of shqykhs at al-Salt and reiterated further north by Maj. F.R. Somerset to the shqykhs of "Ajlun at a second conference at the village of Umm Qays in September.' Throughout the period 1920^21, several independent local governments existed in Transjordan. These included an administration at Irbid under CA1I Khulqf SharayrI; the "Government of Dayr Yusuf" in the al-Kura

1 Some of the best accounts of these years are found in Peake Ta'nkii Sharq alUrdunn; Mumb al-Madi and Sulayman Musa, Ta'rikh al-Urdunn fi'l-Qarn al-Tshnn [The History of Jordan in the 20th Century], second edition (Amman: Maktabat al-Muhtasib, 1988); Uriel Dann, Studies in the History of Transjordan, 1920-1949: The Making of a State (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1984); Benjamin Shwadran, Jordan: A State of Tension (New York: Council for Middle Eastern Affairs, 1959); and Macan Abu Nowar, The History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Vol. 1: The Creation and Development of Transjordan: 1920-1929 (Oxford: Ithaca Press, 1989).

66

CHAPTER

THREE

region of cAjlun under Najlb cAbd al-Qadir al-Shurayda; the "Government of Jabal 'Ajlun" under Rashid al-Khuzacf al-Dargham of the Furayhat; the semi-official government of Najf Mazld al-cAzzam in c Ajlun's district of al-Wustfyya; the administration at Jarash under the Kayid branch of the cUtum family of Suf; the administration in al-Ramtha under Nasir al-Fawwaz al-Barakat of the Zu c bf family; the larger government under Mazhar al-Raslan at al-Salt; the "Goverment of Moab" at al-Karak under Rufayfan al-Majalf; and a government at al-Tafila under Salih al-cUmran.2 Six British officers were posted in Transjordan to assist these governments in governing and maintaining order. As Abla Amawi has noted, the existence of these governments reflects that the fact that the at least part of the population of Transjordan had accepted the concept of a wider authority than just the village and the tribe. The continuity of governing apparati from the Ottoman and Faysali periods revealed the extent to which the concept of a "state"—and by extension, its connection to land administration—had managed to grow among the people of Transjordan.3 Britain's decision to scrap these "governments" and form instead a unified country called "Transjordan" under Emir FaysaPs brother, 'Abdullah, in March 1921 is well-known and has been discussed widely in the literature.4 This new country was formally entitled the "Emirate of Transjordan," with 'Abdullah ruling as Emir within the rubric of Britain's mandate for Palestine. The country was later granted a basic law in 1928 and held elections that year for a legislative council, but was legally and administratively part of the Palestine mandate and thus responsible to the British high commissioner in Jerusalem, who was simultaneously the high commissioner for Palestine and high commission for Transjordan. It was at this time that the country's physical expanse was established. Borders were officially delimited by virtue of agreements reached between Britain and the French in Syria and the Saudis in the Hijaz. These agreements also saw the widening definition of "Transjordan." In 1921, the French agreed to the transfer of the district of alRamtha from Syria to Transjordan, as did the Saudis regarding the 2 Abla Amawi, "State and Class in Transjordan: A Study in State Autonomy" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1992), pp. 122-139. 3 See her argument in Ibid., pp. 139-144. 4 For just two examples in English, see Abu Nowar History of the Hashemite Kingdom, pp. 29 ff., and Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 39 ff.


67

Ma'an and al-cAqaba regions in 1925. Transjordan thus comprised some 91,000 sq. km. of land, or 91,000,000 dunums.5 Most of this land was arid desert land. But the 10,008,000 dunurm that the fiscal survey of 1927—33 determined to be arable in the western part of the country was quite fertile. This belt of cultivable land was narrow, being a mere 65 km. across at its widest point in the north. It was here that peasant cultivators living in some 450 villages still tilled the land through rain-fed agriculture as during the Ottoman era. Like under the Ottomans, the country was initially divided into the provinces of'Ajlun, al-Balqa3, and al-Karak and, after 1925, Ma'an. Emir 'Abdullah's new government was relatively weak, and ultimate control—particularly of finances—was in the hands of the British. The local administration was staffed by Arabs, many of them Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians who had served in the Faysali administration or had been officers in the Arab Revolt. A security force, called the Reserve Force and later the Arab Legion, was also established. Although 'Abdullah's government was given control over the extraction of taxes as well as a share of customs tariffs levied at Palestinian boders and ports on goods traveling to Transjordan, its ultimate survival depended upon a British "grant-in-aid" supplied to it. To ensure that 'Abdullah used the grant to solidify his ultimate financial position, the British insisted that he reform the emirate's tax system and that he allow a "chief British resident" to advise him on behalf of the high commissioner. This person was granted "full authority to intervene in Transjordan's finances to such extent as he may consider necessary in order to ensure that those conditions [of accepting the grant-in-aid] are fulfilled."6 Following British displeasure at this spending habits, an ultimatum was delivered to 'Abdullah in August 1924 by which he was obliged to allow control of his entire budget to reside with the British financial advisor assigned to his government, the chief British resident, and eventually the secretary of state for colonies in London. As is described more fully in chapter four, the British would eventually insist upon a new land program that dramatically increased the interaction between state and society when it came to land tenure starting in the early 1930s.

5

The Ottomans changed the value of the dunum at some point in the 19th century. The "new" dunum was 919.3 sq. m., roughly three times as large as the "old." The British established the dunum at 1,000 sq. m. in 1927. 6 CO 733/49, Clayton to chief British resident (31 August 1923), in Amawi "State and Class in Transjordan," pp. 174-175.

68

CHAPTER THREE

Land and Land Tenure in the 1920s

While tenure patterns varied from region to region in Transjordan in the 1920s, a few generalizations can be drawn. It can generally be stated that the country continued to be characterized by small cultivator ownership. That is to say, the pattern by which land was usually held by small scale cultivators continued to hold. This was especially true in cAjlun and the western parts of al-Balqa3 and alKarak. There are no reliable statistics to document this generalization prior to the massive British land program that began in 1927, either in terms of the number of large landowners or the average size per plot of land. In 1879 the British adventurer Laurence Oliphant estimated the average landholding in the c Ajlun province, the most densely populated part of Transjordan, to be 40 dunums, per capita/ Certainly c Ajlun was home to some large estates in the 1920s, but these were the exception and were largely estates controlled by shaykhs, and some efendis. The same was true in the provinces of al-Balqa3 and al-Karak, where the exceptions once again were influential shaykhs and those merchants and usurers who had acquired land during the Ottoman era. Social control of land remained important. The mushac system was most prevalent in cAjlun and in the region of the Bam Sakhr bedouin of al-Balqa3, although it was also found in the alKarak province as well. 82 percent of c Ajlun villages were characterized completely or partly by mushac tenure, as were 22 percent of al-Balqa3 villages (mostly among the 20 Banf Sakhr villages), 26 percent of al-Karak villages, and none in Macan.8 Some districts within each province contained a higher percentage of mushdc villages than others. The other half of Transjordan's villages were characterized by individual ownership of land free from the social constraints of mushac. Such mafruz land was most prominent in the central and southern regions of al-Balqa3 (excluding the Bam Sakhr villages), alKarak, and Macan. Individual ownership was also found in the midst of mushdc villages in the northern cAjlun province, typically in irrigated areas or areas growing fruit and olives and often under the control of shaykhs or other prominent persons. 7

Oliphant, The Land of Gilead. With Excursions in the Lebanon. Edinburgh & London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1880, p. 194. 8 Jordan, Department of Lands and Survey, Department of Public Relations and Statistics, Sijill Misahat Qura al-Taswiya [Ledger of Surface Areas of Settlement Villages].


69

Beyond this, another important social constraint on land tenure included a desire among families to maintain their control over land, whether mushdc or mqfruz. One dimension of this took the form of male dominance over female ownership. In the Islamic Middle East, women were guaranteed the right to own property, with Islamic law (shari'a), the Ottoman civil code (Mejelle), and the 1858 Ottoman Land Code all addressing this point. For instance, both the Mejelle and the Land Code specified that female heirs must share in the inheritance of land. The Mejelle assigned female children of a deceased owner of milk that was only half as much as males, although the Land Code specified that males and females inherited equal shares of mm. However, social custom stripped away these rights in order that males own and inherit land and thus preserve family control over this resource.9 Various ways were employed to keep land in male hands, including denying females their inheritance rights or by men agreeing to support them if they handed over their inheritance rights. On the level beyond the family, the leading arbiters who maintained their influence in the matters of land ownership continued to be the shqykhs, both among the settled population and the bedouin. Shqykhs continued to oversee the shape of the annual redistribution of musha' land, such as the Hijazln shaykhs did in Samakiya. They were also called upon to settle land disputes. Shaykhs in central and southern Transjordan continued to do this well into mid-century. For instance, Rufayfan al-Majalf of al-Karak divided the Tuwal region of the village of cAy among the different families living there in 1942 and 1943.10 When the Khuraysha andjabur sections of the Ka'abina tribe of the Ban! Sakhr bedouin fought over the boundary between al-Muwaqqar and al-Naqayra villages, their respective Shaykhs Hadftha al-Khuraysha and Muhammad bin Zuhayr called upon the paramount shaykh of the Bam Sakhr, Mithqal al-Fayiz, to mediate." 9 Shanca and the Mejelle governed the inheritance of milk, whereby male children inherited a share in land twice that of female children. The Land Code related to mm land, and dictated that children of both sexes inherit equal shares. Keeping land out of women's hands was deemed necessary because families held that when a woman married, she "became" part of the husband's family and thus the land would pass to "his" children—that is, the children of the new family—upon the woman's death. 10 DLS/settlement. cAy files. File: "al-Taqarlr min Raqm 1 ila Raqm 120" [Reports from Number 1 to Number 120]; reports 54 and 63. 11 NLCDD, files of the prime ministry. File: 8/2/8, "ShakawT al-'Asha'ir cala alAracjT—Qadaya al-Aradi" [Complaints of the Tribes over Land—Land Cases]; various documents.

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CHAPTER THREE

These fundamental relationships also existed well into the mandate. The documents generated by the extensive British land program introduced in Transjordan beginning in late 1927 refer to the continued tribal nature of land ownership well into the 1950s and beyond. The documents relating especially to southern villages like al-Sharah make constant reference to aqsam 'asha'inyya (tribal divisions) that had divided the lands of the villages among its different kinship units, after which they were cultivated as mushd( khass (private musha'} by these units. In Wad! Musa, for example, different parts of the village were farmed this way by the Masha'ila, Hilalat, and Hasanat sections of the 'Abfdfyym tribe. While social life throughout TransJordan was tribal in nature, documents from the southern part of the country make much greater reference to tribal land divisions. Although the Ottomans had introduced land registration, land registration records were incomplete as the population often avoided officially registering subsequent transactions. While the number of shares in mushae that a person owned was generally known, the title to and boundaries of mafruz land were often disputed. The Ottomans neither produced cadastral maps nor recorded accurate boundaries and estimations of surface area in their documents. While these vagueries did not always seem to have been the hindrance to cultivation that later British observers felt they were, they did allow persons of influence—shqykhs, males, and others—to usurp the land rights of others. This is discussed more fully in subsequent chapters.

Land and Taxation Policies in the 1920s

It was against this background that the Transjordanian government approached its role in land affairs upon its creation in 1921. Given that the country's economy was still largely based upon agriculture, state administrators and their British overseers quickly realized that the emirate's future, from development of the agricultural sector to land taxes—the major indigenous source of state revenue—depended on the state's ability to stabilize tenure, cultivation, and taxation. Indeed the emirate's moves toward collecting land taxes beginning in 1921 marked one of the first major demonstrations of its new presence and further underscores the early importance of land matters in the formulation of state-societal interaction in Transjordan. More intrusive and significant ventures in these directions were to await


71

the late 1920s following the state's belief that these early programs had failed. The new Transjordanian government initially decided to move forward on land registration and taxation by maintaining the Ottoman land categories and systems of both land registration and land taxation it had inherited. In order to secure a base for assessing land taxes and to collect fees on land transactions, the Transjordanian government established a "registration department" (mudinyyat al-tasjil] in 1921 under a Lebanese who had served as governor of Amman during Faysal's Syrian kingdom, Emir Mahmud al-Shihabf. The land registration department was based on Ottoman procedures and records. In March 1922, the advisory council enacted a law governing land registration. Registries were reopened in seven towns by 1925: Irbid, c Ajlun, al-Salt, Madaba, Amman, al-Karak, and Macan. In 1926, the word "land" was added to the agency's name, which then became the "land registration department" (mudinyyat tasjil al-arddi). One of the department's earliest problems was the incomplete state of the preexisting Ottoman land registers. Fleeing Ottoman officials had taken various land records during their withdrawal from Transjordan in September 1918. Some records ended up in Damascus, in Adana, and parts of the Turkish interior. In March 1922, the TransJordanian advisory council issued a decision that the chief British resident be asked to intervene with the authorities of the Turkish government and obtain copies of relevant land documents that the Ottomans had sent to Istanbul. After a more thorough inventory of the department's records throughout the country carried out in 1926, al-Shihabfs replacement, future prime minister Tawfiq Abu'1-Huda, reported that the registration records were in poor shape. Under the terms of paragraph 149 of the Lausanne Convention of July 1924, successor states to the Ottoman empire were to receive all documents relevant to the administration of their areas. Abu'1-Huda suggested in late 1926 that copies of records relating to al-Salt, Macan, al-Karak, and al-Taffla be obtained from Turkish authorities in Istanbul. He traveled there the following year and brought back photographic copies of land, waqf and Agricultural Bank records. Abu'lHuda also suggested that the British assist him in acquiring land records for the al-Ramtha area from the French in Syria and for the regions of the Jordan Valley.12 What Abu'1-Huda did not realize 12

DLS/diwan, file: 4/12, "Mucahidat Lausanne" [Lausanne Convention]; doc-

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CHAPTER THREE

was that the records for al-Ramtha were destroyed in 1919-20 during the Hawran uprising.13 To ameliorate the effects of lost registers, the executive council in September 1926 passed an amendment to the 1922 registration law whereby if the land registration department's records relating to the registration of a particular piece of land were lost but the owner possessed his/her deed, that deed and the information contained therein would be considered valid despite the lack of official proof.14 Still, many landowners avoided paying registration fees by buying and selling land, inheriting land rights, etc., without registering the transactions. Having resurrected the mechanisms for registering land and assessing land taxes, the emirate moved to collect taxes in the spring of 1921 based on previous Ottoman tax figures. It not only sought to secure that year's taxes but those unpaid since 1918 as well. In al-Balqa3, authorities resorted to collecting taxes via multazims (tax farmers) as the Ottomans had. For example, Muhammad Sa c fd Khayr al-Shamf, the mayor of Amman, was a multazim responsible for paying 251,250 qirsh in Syrian currency in five monthly installments beginning in August 1922 for Amman, al-Rusayfa, and five other locations. His relative Hasan Abu Qura was multazim for Wadf al-Slr and one other location.lD By 1924, the British estimated that Transjordanian cultivators had paid the equivalent of nine and onehalf years' of Ottoman taxation as a result.16 Not only was the volume of taxes higher, so was the collection rate. British officials claimed that the £201,400 collected in Syrian currency in 1922-23 was twice the amount collected by the Ottomans in 1912.17 Such zeal was sometimes met with resistance on the part of the cultivators. Disputes over taxation played a role in a May 1921 uprising in the Kura district of cAjlun in which villagers loyal to Shaykh uments: Abu'1-Huda to financial advisor (13 December 1926) and prime minister to chief British resident (20 December 1926). 13 Oxford University, St Antony's College, Middle East Center, Private Papers Collection [hereafter, "SAC"]. Philby Papers, "Trans-Jordan Diary," vol. 3; entry for 4 April 1922. 14 Transjordan/Jordan, al-Janda al-Rasmlyya [Official Gazette; hereafter, "OG"] No. 139, p. 6. 11 DLS/settlement, al-Rajfb files. "al-Taqarfr [reports]"; report 26, copy of 1922 tax collection agreement and report 23, decision of Amman court of first instance, 10 April 1937. 16 H.StJ.B. Philby, "Trans-Jordan," Journal of the Royal Center Asian Society 10-12 (1923-24): 305. 17 CO 733/67, "Transjordan, Sept. 30, 1923."


73

Kulayb Yusuf al-Shurayda and the "independent" government of Dayr Yusuf, attacked police forces of the central government sent to collect taxes. The emirate was only able to reimpose its authority fully through troops sent in July 1922 and then with the help of a British airplane. The villagers of al-Kura thereafter not only were assessed taxes but were fined _£P 1,000 to cover the costs of the military campaign as well. After seeking refuge with Shaykh Hadftha al-Khuraysha of the Ban! Sakhr bedouin in al-Balqa5, Kulayb al-Shurayda was imprisoned in al-Salt along with his son 'Abdullah although they were released in 1923 after serving less than one year in prison. The Shurayda family and the people of al-Kura continued to face hard financial times into the early 1930s as a result of this as well as the poor harvests of the 1920s. By 1926, the family allegedly could not pay its debts nor purchase farm animals for planting.18 Beyond alKura, the September 1923 rebellion led by the leader of the cAdwan tribe of al-Balqa3, Shaykh Sultan al-cAdwan, was also at least partially motivated by concerns over taxation. That same month, the government decided to cancel any taxes from 1918-1920 that were owed to the government except amounts owed to multazims, and owed by multazims to the government. The controversial resumption of tax collection and the ultimate decision to back down convinced British authorities that tax revenues were still too low and that the problem lay not simply with collection. While admitting that al-Balqa0 was overtaxed, they felt that the 'Ajlun and al-Karak provinces were undertaxed. One 1923 report stated that taxes in £ Ajlun should be increased by 200 percent and by 400 percent in al-Karak.19 They blamed this situation on the preexisting Ottoman taxation regime. cAjlun was assessed a fixed sum of £P22,255 that was sub-divided on the basis of the amount of land tilled by each landowners. The British believed that an additional £P15,000 was due but not actually collected. In al-Karak, a lump sum was divided up equally among the entire population. Only in the al-Salt, Amman, and Madaba districts (excluding the Ban! Hamida bedouin region) was a true cushr (Arabic for 6§r) actually assessed.20 The British also believed that any serious attempt to raise 18 NLCDD, files of the prime ministry #761, file 15/8, "Ta'jrl al-Amwal alAmfnyya" [Postponement of State Taxes], various documents. 19 CO 733/67, "Trans-Jordan" (30 September 1923), section four. 20 CO 733/140, Cox to chief secretary (13 February 1927).

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the cushr would be stifled by large landowners who "remain in such high favor at [Emir 'Abdullah's] court."21 Outside of those few districts in al-Balqa5, the only areas where the British felt they were able to assess the "actual" cushr due to the treasury were state lands. Each year, cultivators who leased state lands from the treasury were required to pay cushr taxes that were assessed by a committee that inspected their crops at harvest time. The lessee could not sell his crops prior to their inspection. In the event that a lessee failed to pay his tax bill, a lien could be applied to any real estate he owned or even against the seeds he had kept aside for the next year's planting.22 On occasion, a lien could be applied even to movable property. The notable Salih cAbd al-Qadir al-Shurayda of the Shurayda family suffered this in 1935.23 The poor rainfalls of the 1920s worsened the situation of tax collection. The government moved to waive certain taxes because farmers were simply unable to pay given their poor harvests and precarious financial situation. In 1926, the financial advisor, a British official, was granted authority to delay the collection of any outstanding taxes from prior years. In 1927, the government cancelled any taxes still owed from 1921, 1922, and 1923. The British felt that undertaxation was exacerbated by incomplete land registration data. As during Ottoman times, not all land transfers were registered by the population despite the opening of registries in 1921 because it meant the payment of transactions fees. Incomplete registration data militated against the objective of determining and justifying an increase in taxation. The authorities were also concerned about the potential for violence in the country stemming from disputes over property rights and vague boundaries, both between villages and between owners of neighboring plots of land. Despite the difficult years of the First World War, Transjordan's population continued to rise during the early mandate, putting increased pressure on limited land resources and leading to conflict. British officials noted as early as 1921 that the "demand for land leads to endless quarrels and lawsuits" in districts like al-Siru and 21

CO 733/51, "Monthly Report on Trans-Jordan" (1923). NLCDD, files of the prime ministry #586, "al-Malryya: Takhmfn al-A'shar" [Department of Finance: Estimation of cUshr], various documents. 23 NLCDD, prime minister's file #586, "al-Malfyya: Takhmfn al-Acshar" [Department of Finance: Estimation of cUshr\; document: governor of cAjlun province to fourth district tax collector (23 February 1935). 22


75

al-Kafarat in cAjlun province.24 Disputes festured elsewhere in the country, and by 1927, Frederick Peake, the British officer who headed the Transjordanian security force known as the Arab Legion, spoke of an "uneasiness" regarding land tenure.20 The Transjordanian government therefore had several reasons to tighten up the situation facing land ownership in the 1920s. To be able to register and assess the value of land holdings more accurately, the government decided in October 1923 to carry out a general land registration campaign. Registration commissions were dispatched throughout the country to register land, estimate its surface area, and issue land certificates. They were not allowed to settle disputes over ownership, however, and the certificates did not carry the weight of actual deeds issued on the basis of the land registers, which remained the authoritative record of legal land rights. The registration campaign commenced in 1924, but failed to accomplish the desired results and in fact worsened an already uncertain tenure situation. The officials were not always trained in land matters, and the certificates they issued created problems when they sometimes contradicted information contained in the registers.26 Another way that the state tried to extend its authority over land and land taxes in the 1920s was its attempt to take over certain lands it believed had been improperly declared waqf. In certain places, the treasury decided that land popularly considered as endowment land possessed no documents to indicate its true status as waqf and thus should be registered as mm. This became a particularly important issue in two particular locales. The first was Ghawr Abl cUbayda. In this case, the controversy concerned a huge stretch of the 110,000 dunums lying in the Jordan Valley surrounding the tomb of one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (described in chapter two). The Transjordanian treasury argued that the land was not in fact waqf but mm and that those claiming custodial rights to the area, the Jarrah family, were exercising improper control over the land and its resources. A three-man investigatory commission headed by 24

SAC, Somerset Papers, "Observations on Dr. Weizmann's Letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies with Reference to Trans-Jordania" (14 March 1921 by F.G. Peake and F.R. Somerset). 25 CO 733/134, Peake to chief secretary (24 January 1927). 26 Problems particularly arose among the Bam Hasan bedouin in eastern cAjlun province. See DLS/'diwdn, file 12/7, "Lajnat Tahrfr al-Aradf" [Committee for Registering Lands].

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a British official, Cyril F. Reading, agreed with this conclusion in 1926 although the issue lingered until a special three-man court with another British member, C.R.W. Seton, was constituted to revisit the question in June 1928 and ruled once again in the treasury's favor. The land was registered as mm with usufructuary rights assigned to the cultivators working it. 2/ The second case involved Na c ur. In Na'ur, the controversy surrounded a much smaller plot of land—117 dunums,—purchased in the largely Circassian village at some point in history by Rashld Pasha, the former administrative head of al-Karak. He then dedicated the land for the upkeep of Nacur's mosque. The Transjordanian treasury and department of land registration later decided that the land was not waqf but mm, and should be declared mahlul with all rights reverting to the state inasmuch as Rashld died without heirs. Although the Islamic court of Amman confirmed as part of a suit brought against the government in 1925 that the land was in fact waqf, the government's executive council declared this ruling "irregular" and worthy of re-examination. But to prevent the loss of income to Nacur's mosque, the council decided in March 1928—only three months before the final decision in the Ghawr Abi 'Ubayda case— to register the land as waqf anyway since it had long been considered as such.28 Although the facts surrounding the case are not clear, this appears to have been a significant case given that a special executive council ordinance was passed to enshrine the results of the decision.

Conclusion Land tenure and policy during the early years of the emirate were characterized by two points. First, land continued to be owned and tilled much as it had been during late Ottoman times. Second, the

2/

A complete file on the controversy is found in DLS/diwan, file 41/6, "alAradi al-Mudda'i bi-innaha Waqf cala Maqam AbTcUbayda" [The Lands Claimed to be Waqf for the Tomb of Abi cUbayda]. See also Michael R. Fischbach, "Britain and the Ghawr Abi cUbayda Waqf Controversy in Transjordan" (unpublished manuscript). 28 Transjordan, Legislation of Transjordan, 1918-1930, by C.R.W. Seton (London: Crown Agents for the Transjordan Government, n.d.), pp. 235-236. The decision is also found in OG 186 (31 March 1928).


77

state's desire to extend its influence into society and increase revenues through registering and taxing land had largely failed. It did not achieve the desired results and only angered parts of the population. Yet at the same time the seeds of change were already germinating. British and Transjordanian officials began contemplating overhauling the country tenure system and policies of state land management with an eye to improving its fiscal situation. The result would be the most massive state intrusion ever conducted into the socio-economic details of Transjordanian cultivators' lives, a state intrusion that not only would change the way land was owned, registered, and taxed but also one that would solidify the very definitions of what "Transjordan"—and by extension, "Jordan"—meant. Yet what was also underway was a series of processes that would lead Transjordanian cultivators to work with this endeavor rather than against it.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BRITISH LAND PROGRAM

Introduction While the Transjordanian government's land registration and taxation policies of the 1920s represented a significant projection of the new emirate's presence into the lives of cultivators, they failed to realize their goals. Britain was anxious to secure Transjordan's fiscal viability outside of its annual grant-in-aid from the British treasury. In addition to improving the collection of land taxes, the largest source of indigenous revenue, British authorities also hoped to stimulate agricultural production and reduce violence and lawsuits stemming from land disputes. To accomplish these fiscal and developmental goals, the state initiated a series of sweeping changes that overhauled the ways that land previously had been owned, registered, and taxed. These policies were set in motion in 1927 and lasted, on the East Bank, until they were largely completed in 1952. These policies fundamentally altered numerous aspects of Transjordan's land regime and represented a massive intrusion by the state into the lives of the country's cultivators. Given the country's size and low land values, the program was completed relatively quickly and inexpensively, and represented one of the most thorough colonially-inspired land programs in the Arab world. The land program introduced by the Transjordanian government was British in origin and designed by an Anglo-Indian land expert hired from neighboring British-controlled Palestine. While certain aspects of this program resembled previous Ottoman patterns, the land program represented at heart the imposition of Western conceptualizations of tenure, agricultural exploitation, and the relationship between the state and the land regime. These conceptualizations would prove vitally important in the conceptualization and solidification of the very concept of Jordan by mid-century.


79

Origins of the Land Program

The origins of Transjordan's extensive land program of the 1930s and 1940s extend back not to indigenous models but to British colonial practice worldwide in the 18th and 19th centuries. As noted by John B. Glubb, commander the Arab Legion after Frederick Peake, "The development of countries in which the British have been the first to set up an administration has usually followed the same course."1 Transjordan was no exception, and the land policies brought to bear upon the British-sponsored emirate represented the accumulated knowledge of British surveyors and land officers throughout the world, particularly in India, Australia, Egypt, and Palestine. British colonial land policy was based on two fundamental assumptions. The first was that all land was owned by someone. The second was that land should be managed efficiently in order to maximize its productive potential.2 Where they established control around the world, then, British colonial administrators took steps both to determine WTIO owned the land and thence to encourage the owner to utilize it to its fullest, British-determined productive capacity. This view of land and the state's role in land matters reflected the ways in which the power of capitalism had long manifested itself on the level of the Western state. Yet the British sometimes found that their assumptions clashed with the indigenous conceptualizations of land tenure and policy in the areas they colonized. For instance, Indian society had "units of thought" about land that understood land tenure in terms of who possessed interests or claims to the land in question, rather than the Roman concept of unqualified possession. More than one person might therefore possess rights to the same piece of land.3 The difference between the British and Indian assumptions about land can been summed up as follows:

1

John Bagot Glubb, Britain and the Arabs. A Study of Fifty Tears 1908-1950 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1959), pp. 166-167. - Ainslie T. Embree, "Landholding in India and British Institutions." Robert Eric Frykenberg, ed.. Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History (Madison, Milwaukee, London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 15 and Walter C. Neale, "Land is to Rule," ibid., p. 13. 3 Embree "Landholding in India" ibid., pp. 45-47; and Thomas R. Metcalf, "Social Effects of British Land Policy in Oudh," ibid., pp. 143-144.

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FOUR

A moment's thought makes it clear that the European view is not itself objectively real, but is a way of relating a piece of the earth's surface to European methods of astral observation and to a technique of plotting observations on a plane surface . . . The European grid map . . . is a perception of the "natural" world in which people live.4

The British insistence that land be utilized "properly" was also a reflection of Western traditions and capitalist transformation. While economic efficiency, capital investment, and maximization of one's landholdings made sense to the British, many Indians viewed owning and farming land not merely as a source for private economic gain but also as a tool for attaining social prestige. An "inefficient" system might be one that proved socially advantageous to the owner, such as the case of hiring many tenant farmers (retainers) to work the land instead of buying agricultural equipment. Despite such conceptual differences with native societies, British colonial officials began applying Western concepts of land ownership throughout their dominions. Three particular regions provided the venue for the development of what came to become a common British approach to land management. The first wjas Australia, where the British concern for registering all land in a given locality emerged. In South Australia in the mid-19th century, Sir Robert Torrens established a registration system that later bore his name. The Torrens System was an alternative to the previous process known as registration of deeds, whereby only the specifics of individual land transactions were registered by the government on a piecemeal basis as such transactions were carried out. In the absence of a general registration process and accurate maps, the government possessed no definitive proof of who owned what throughout a territory. Torrens proposed instead conducting a general cadastral registration that registered all land and that made the land itself the unit of registration and tide, not its owner as before. New land registers would be opened noting who owned each plot of land. These would be stored in a central location and updated each time the plot was transfered to another. In such a way, the government registers would be the definitive source for resolving disputes.5 The Torrens System gradu-

4

Neale, "Land is to Rule", p. 4. C.K. Meek, Land Tenure and Custom in the Colonies (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 275. 5


81

ally spread beyond South Australia to British Honduras, Fiji, and other regions in the empire. The second region wherein the British perfected their ideas about colonial land practice was Egypt. It was in Egypt that British administrators began perfecting surveying and mapping techniques according to the latest Western scientific principles. Beginning in 1897, a new surveying system was introduced there that facilitated land registration by grouping plots of land into registration blocks and then determining their surface area mathematically rather than simply by measuring each and every plot. In addition, officials decided to expedite the process the following year by assigning provisional title to each plot of land during surveying; that is, they assumed that the present owner was in fact the true legal owner in the absence of contravening evidence.6 The British were less successful in applying the Torrens System to Egypt, however. An international commission that met from 1904-1908 recommended implementing the sytem, but Russia and France blocked the move. It was not until a second commission that met during the First World War from 1917-1920 recommended the Torrens System once again that the suggestion was approved.7 The final region in which the British applied their conceptualization of proper land management was Palestine. Following up on the example of Egypt, British authorities quickly set out to survey the country soon after the onset of British rule following the First World War. A survey department was established in Jaffa in 1920, and surveying was underway in February 1921. The former registrar-general of the Sudan was invited to Palestine in 1919 to initiate a new system of land registration as well, and new registries were opened in October 1920. The British were also concerned with the presence of mushac in the country, which they believed was an inefficient system that retarded agricultural production. In 1928, the Musha' Land Committee of 1923 surveyed 4,876,000 dunums, in 753 villages in Palestine, and determined that 56 percent was held in rnusha'. The area of the country south of the Jerusalem district had the highest percentage of its lands in mushac tenure (80 percent), followed by the northern

'' See H.G. Lyons, The Cadastral Survey of Egypt 1892-1907 (Cairo: Ministry of Finance, Survey Department, 1908) for details. ' SAC, Le Ray Papers. "Notes on Land Taxation, Cadastral Survey and Land Settlement in Palestine. (12 December 1923).

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regions (37 percent) and the Jerusalem district (5 percent). The Gaza district was later determined to consist of 23 percent musha'. This committee recommended establishing local committees to partition musha' holdings, promising the cultivators that their virgu taxes would not rise, and lowering registration fees associated with partition, although nothing was accomplished.8 In summary, the model for British colonial land management that had emerged by the end of the First World War was based on three main points: surveying the land and drawing cadastral maps, determining title or at least provisional title to specific plots of land and partitioning collectively-owned rnusha' land where possible, and recording information about property rights in central government land registers. The Transjordanian experience of the late 1920s through the early 1950s would be a copy of policies first implemented in the 1920s in neighboring Palestine on the advice of an Indian-born British administrator with considerable experience in land matters. Sir Ernest MacLeod Dowson spent most of his life working in the administration of Egypt, eventually serving as undersecretary of state for finance, financial advisor, and director general of surveys for the Egyptian government. He later chaired the international commission of 1917—1920 that recommend applying the Torrens System in Egypt.9 Mandatory officials in Jerusalem first hired Dowson in 1923 to devise an alternative to Ottoman land and land taxation policies in Palestine. He visited the country that November, interviewed officials, and visited the land registries in Jerusalem and Jaffa. He thereafter wrote a report entitled "Land Policy and Cadastral Survey in Palestine" on his way back to Egypt. He also produced a second report entitled "Notes on Land Taxation, Cadastral Survey and Land Settlement in Palestine" Dowson proposed applying a classic system of British land management in Palestine. He summarized the tenure and taxation system in Palestine as follows:

8

Granott Land System of Palestine, pp. 237-239. Dowson's biography has been reconstructed from the following three sources: CO 733/72, draft letter to Dowson, 17 September 1924; CO 733/128, high commissioner to Amery, 13 March 1926; SAC, Le Ray papers. "Notes on Land Taxation, Cadastral Survey and Land Settlement in Palestine"; and IVho's IVho 1947 (London: Adam & Charles Black; New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 775. Dowson later served in Iraq. 9


83

[while] on the one hand, the industry [agriculture] is seriously overtaxed, on the other the survival of uneconomic systems of land tenure and the prevailing uncertainty and insecurity of real rights, discourage enterprise and more particularly the improvement of the land.10

After a discussion with the director of land registries in Palestine, who informed him that he probably would not be able to locate a single plot of transferred land by using the existing Ottoman registers, Dowson proposed scrapping the Ottoman system altogether and adopting the Torrens Sytem instead. He urged implementation of his reforms as soon as possible to stimulate the economy. In fact, he urged the British to proceed with the Torrens System in Palestine first before doing it in Egypt, because he felt Egypt was a productive country that could afford to wait. Furthermore, he suggested that British authorities focus their energies only on Palestine's agricultural regions, not urban land. Dowson also recommended dividing village lands into blocks called hawds (a term used in Egypt) and producing maps no larger than 1/10,000 scale. His report mentioned that he had been told that cultivators would not mind if the official units of measuring land shifted from units of labor (the faddari) to units of surface area (the dunum) ". . . provided the correct boundaries on the ground are preserved."11 Dowson further recommended replacing the Ottoman dunum, which was 919.3 sq. m., with a metric dunum of 1,000 sq. m. The Palestine government was impressed, and decided to invite Dowson back in the winter of 1925 to produce a more detailed report. His ideas were so well received that he was asked to implement his recommendations as temporary commissioner of lands in Palestine. Believing that it contributed to economic stagnation and the insecurity of property rights, Dowson proposed changing the entire structure of Ottoman land policy in Palestine rather than reforming it. He proposed going further than merely surveying land but also carrying out a investigation and registration of legal title to all land according to the principles of the Torrens Sytem. A test of his ideas wras conducted in the Baysan area in 1926, and was deemed a success.12 Dowson was also concerned that state lands were being 111 SAC, Le Ray Papers, "Notes on Land Taxation, Cadastral Survey and Land Settlement in Palestine" (12 December 1923), p. 4. 11 Ibid. '- Great Britain, Colonial Office, Annual Report to the League of Nations on the

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improperly utilized, and that securing rent or sales for these areas would help reduce the costs of his program. He also proposed consolidating the various governmental agencies concerned with land tenure in Palestine, although this never was completely accomplished. Of interest to our discussion was the connection between Dowson's recommedations for Palestine and the situation in Transjordan. Dowson in fact considered Transjordan an integral part of Palestine and urged that his plan be implemented there.13 In 1925, colonial authorities set aside funds to commission Dowson to draw up a report on land policy reforms in Transjordan. Dowson visited the country for three weeks in early 1926, traveling to Irbid, al-Husn, cAjlun, Suf, Jarash, Madaba, and al-Karak. He spoke with district and local officials, as well as with ordinary landowners. Interesting, he claimed that cultivators expected that the partition of musha* and other aspects of his proposed reforms would lead to higher taxation, but that they believed that the expected increase in agricultural production would make up for this.14 He returned to Transjordan again in 1927, after which he issued a report which established the framework for the extensive land program that the British impressed upon the Transjordanian government, a report which spelled out the same kind of British colonial land thinking that he had recommended in Palestine. Dowson's 1927 report on Transjordan laid the basis for the entire land program discussed throughout this study, and was centered around four issues: surveying, registration, partitioning of mushdc lands, and taxation.15 The first step he proposed was for the emirate to survey all of the country's cultivable land on 1/10,000 scale maps. Village boundaries would be definitively demarcated from one another and lands within each village divided into registration blocks called hawds for administrative purposes. Secondly, Dowson recommended

Administration of Palestine and Transjordan 1926 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office 1927), p. 50. Hereafter, this source is referred to as "Annual Report." 13 SAC, Le Ray papers. "Notes on Land Taxation, Cadastral Survey and Land Settlement in Palestine." 14 CO 733/115, chief British resident to chief secretary (30 April 1926). 15 The actual report has never been located to the author's knowledge. Its contents can be reconstructed from references found in other sources, including CO 733/115, chief British resident to chief secretary, 30 April 1926, and CO 733/140, "Topographical Survey of Transjordan."


85

a thorough reorganization of land registration along the lines of the Torrens System. He complained about the existing Ottoman system by noting that: Throughout the length and breadth of the country there will hardly be found a handful of cases in which the Government can extract from the Land Register the name of the lawful possessor of any given parcel of mm land, or in which the occupant of such land can establish therefrom his right to lawful possession. Continuously everywhere the possession of mm land is being disposed of, inherited and seized in disregard of law and the Land Registries and without payment of the fees prescribed."'

Dowson's third recommendation was to partition collectively-owned mushac land. Dowson shared the British contempt for mushac, which was considered an inefficient system that stifled improvements in the land because no one person owned a specific plot of land in perpetuity. Cultivators often avoided improving the soil because the benefits of such action would be lost to them. Fourthly, he felt that too much state land had been occupied illegally. Finally, he urged a complete change in the system of taxing land. He considered the various systems of assessing and collecting cushr in place in Transjordan inherently flawed, and urged that they be abolished in favor of a better system. Survey operations would produce an accurate valuation of land to serve as the basis for a new land tax. Until this could be done, however, Dowson urged that the government continue to collect taxes along existing lines.17 Dowson betrayed his deep loyalty to the colonial vision for land management when he urged that his plan be executed under the supervision of British land officers, not Arabs. This was a typical British attitude, and was followed in Transjordan. The value of using British officials rather than Transjordanians is reflected in the following statement, written later in the mid-1930s by another Englishman posted in Transjordan: The Trans-Jordan government is carried on the backs of a very small number of competent officials and of these it is only the few Englishmen who are not subjected to political influences and can afford to be

"' Cited in Walpole "Land Problems in Transjordan," p. 53. 17 Annual Report 1933, p. 246, and CO 733/140, Cox to chief secretary (13 February' 1927).

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guided only by considerations of good administration. The Arab officials cannot stand alone but under the close supervision and encouragement of an energetic Englishman wonders can be done.18

This attitude mirrored that of Dowson, and epitomizes the British logic toward land policy in Transjordan and throughout the empire: British policy "worked" because it was rational, efficient, and guided merely by "considerations of good administration." British authorities in Jerusalem and London were immediately convinced that Dowson's recommendations were completely suitable to the country, and they were approved by Secretary of State for Colonies Leopold Amery in early 1927. Chief British Resident in Transjordan C.H.F. Cox then wrote a letter to Chief Minister Hasan Khalid Abu'1-Huda in February 1927 informing him of the outlines of Dowson's program, a program that he stated had already been approved by the Transjordanian government.19

The Fiscal Survey

Dowson had insisted that none of his ambitious plans could be implemented until experts first surveyed Transjordan's cultivable land for mapping purposes and determined its value. The first phase of the Transjordanian land program, the "fiscal survey," thus provided the important basis for all future aspects of the program, and was initiated with alacrity. As British officials noted at the time, It is proposed that the . . . survey in question should be undertaken with a view to a more exact determination of the amounts payable by the villagers and tribesmen in respect of the fixed tithe and werko.20

The Land Demarcation and Valuation Law of 1927 set the legal stage for the fiscal survey, after which the executive council appointed two committees to carry out the twin tasks of demarcation and valuation under the rubric of a new survey department attached to the department of land registration. Mandatory officials quickly hired a suitable British official to fill the position of director of surveys: an 18

DLS/diwan, 12/33, "Department of Development"; proposal for Colonial Development Fund to pay for a director of development in Transjordan, p. 2. 19 Great Britain, Foreign Office ["FO"] FO 816/36, Cox to prime minister (13 June 1931). 20 CO 733/140, Shuckburgh to Mitchell (10 October 1927).


87

energetic young surveyor named Andrew Park Mitchell who had earlier worked with the survey department in Egypt. He took up his duties in early 1928.21 During the first weeks of the fiscal survey, however, survey work was headed up by Richard Hughes, a land valuator seconded to Transjordan by the government of Palestine for a few7 days a month. The decision had been made early on to commence survey work in the important northern agricultural province of 'Ajlun. In December 1927, a five-man surveying commission started work both mapping and determining land values for taxation in the village of al-Baqura, in the northern Ghawr (Jordan Valley). The commission was headed by Hughes and consisted of Assistant Director of Agriculture Muhammad Shafiq, Assistant Director of State Lands Hamid Amln, and two surveyors, Sadiq al-Daghastanf and CA1I al-Kayid. Mitchell took over from Hughes upon his arrival in the country, and was at work by the following February. From there, the commission extended its work in the Ghawr before moving on to the Irbid plain and thence southward. Survey and valuation were carried out far enough eastwards into the desert to include areas not then under cultivation but which might be during years of bountiful rainfall. The most basic function of the fiscal survey was mapping the agricultural regions of Transjordan. The goal was not to produce topographical maps showing elevation and natural formations but to draw cadastral maps showing land ownership. It thus involved much more than mere mapping; it first required surveyors first to demarcate village boundaries one from another. The Ottomans never carried out such a mapping campaign in Transjordan, and as population had grown over the decades, villagers had come into increasing conflict with one another over the precise boundaries of their respective village lands. The fiscal survey commission thus played a crucial role in establishing the boundaries of modern Jordanian villages. Notices were sent to the mukhtdrs and other leaders of a group of villages at a time, informing them that survey work was proceeding in their villages and asking them to report to the surveyors' tent "without 21 While Mitchell's technical knowledge of surveying matters was more limited than colonial officials wanted, he could both read and speak Arabic (with an Egyptian accent). CO 733/140, "Topographical Survey of Trans-Jordan"; report of acting financial advisor, 20 September 1927, and ibid., Mitchell's biography. See also Who's mo 1973-75 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), p. 2248 and Palestine Civil List 1937 (Jerusalem: 1937), p. 166.

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delay" on a certain date to discuss demarcation of their common borders. Secondly, the commission draw maps that divided up each village's lands into fiscal blocks called hawds of no less than 250,000 sq.m. each to facilitate land valuation and to serve as a reference point when registering land. Because each hawd was drawn up to include land of approximately the same soil quality and value, the commission relied upon the expertise of the villagers in this matter. Iron marks imported from both Arab and Jewish firms in Palestine were driven into the ground to mark boundaries. Demarcating the boundaries of land the state considered its own, particularly state forests, was another important task carried out during the fiscal survey. In order to include as much forest land as possible as state land to prevent deforestation of regions like Jabal cAjlun, the commission was under instructions to assume that only those lands which were actually under cultivation were owned by villagers and to demarcate all other land as state land.22 The fiscal survey party employed the basic surveying and drafting instruments of the day, and was based on techometric methods. The main three devices for measuring and plotting distances were a planetable, a theodolite, and an alidade. The planetable was a table on which the surveyor placed a blank map. He then used the theodolite and alidade to sight distances and mark corresponding lines on the map. Using these, 1/10,000 maps showing village boundaries and hawd?, were drawn for each village. The second principal task of the fiscal survey was to determine the value of agricultural land within each village to serve as the basis for a new system of land taxation. This stage proceeded more slowly than surveying because it involved three steps: grading land according to fertility, estimating its annual crop return, and assigning a value to it according to the volume of crops it could produce and the reigning prices of agricultural produce as opposed to an abstract value of the land based on its market value. The actual unit of valuation was the hawd, not the individual plot, as the state had not yet determined definitively who owned what and because much land was still owned collectively in undivided plots according to the mushae system. The most fertile land in Transjordan was determined to be that which could produce a yield of 80 kg. of grain per dunum if 2a

DLS/diwan, 12/7, "Lajnat Tahnr al-Aradi" [Committee for Registering Land]; instructions of executive council to committee (8 February 1928).


89

sown with ten kg. of seed (ten kg./dunum was considered an average amount sown per dununi). Land was graded in units of five kg. down to 40 kg./dunum, the poorest quality land in the emirate.23 After grading for fertility, the commission then estimated the annual output of each hawd. Surveyors estimated the percentage of those hawds containing rocky areas that could be cultivated. For regions producing something other than grain—grapes, for instance—yields were determined differently. By 1931, they had created the following statistics showing the tax value of hawds, in four districts of Transjordan based on fertility. The value was determined by how many kilograms of cereal each hawd would like return: Table 4: Fertility of Grain Growing Hawth for Taxation Purposes, 1931 District

I. Irbid

Fertility of Hawd by Amount of Grain Produced (Kilograms/Dunum)

No. of Hawds in that Category

80 and up 50-80 50 and below

15 407 597

Average valuation: 52kg. II. Jarash


0 39 2

Average valuation: 50kg. III. Madaba


3 115 26

Average valuation: 65kg. IV. al-Karak

80 and up 50-80 50 and under

26 318 194

Average valuation: 55 kg. TOTAL


Source: CO 831/19/3, Cox to high commissioner (18 June 1932). CO 831/19/3, Cox to high commissioner (18 June 1932).

44 879 819

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Finally, surveyors then assigned a value to each hawd based on an average of recent years' prices of agricultural produce. This value would later be used as the basis for a new taxation scheme after 1933. British mandatory officials had decided by 1931 to valuate land on the basis of the following commodity prices: £P0.007/kg. of wheat or ^PO.OOS/kg. of grapes. These figures represented an average of prices for the years 1929-1931. Using these figures, survey officials determined the average value of a dunum of land in those areas of the cAjlun province where survey operations had been completed by 1931 as follows: £P0.360/dunum in the Irbid district and £PO.460/dunum in the Jarash district.24 We still possess figures indicating the value per dunum of land in each hawd in villages in the al-Kura region of cAjlun province. A sample follows: Table 5: Sample of Land Prices in al-Kura Region of 'Ajlun According to the Fiscal Survey Village

Name of Hawd

Price of One Dunum in that Hawd (£P)

1. Tubna al-Balad Ihraj al-Sanwayrf al-Farukhfyya Khallat al-Zarc Ihraj Iz'ayru Hayyun Wa'rat Shacb Qattum

0.100 0.050 0.150 0.150 0.050 0.200 0.075

al-Masla al-Balad al-Sahl al-Sha'fa Ra's al-cAmud al-Lahm al-Bayyad al-Qasabat Khallat Day' al-Duwayr Hadib

0.250 0.300 0.320 0.200 0.355 0.350 0.150 0.180 0.200 0.150 0.180

2. Khanzira

24

Annual Report 1931, p. 192.


91

Table 5 (cont.) Village

Name of Hawd

Price of One Dunum in that Hawd (£P)

al-Rum al-Mayasfr Khirbat Dayr al-cAsal

0.200 0.250 0.180

al-Mayshanyya al-Balad Kasarat al-Lawza

0.600 1.000 0.500

Zahr Abu al-Shawk Nusayr Ihraj al-Nahiya al-Nabaca Wahmat al-Dayr al-Shamallyya al-Zarqa3 al-Balad al-Hada'iq Balluta al-Murabbaca

0.100 0.150 0.100 0.225 0.100 0.300 0.250 0.335 0.500 0.600

3. Kufr Rakib

4. Kufr al-Ma3

Source: NLCDD, files of the prime ministry #811, file: 2/2/24, "Liwa' cAjlun— Nahiyat al-Kura" ['Ajlun Province—al-Kura District].

While the fiscal survey valued each hawd according to its productive capacity, there still remained the problem of estimating the percentage of each hawd was actually cultivated. Since the tax value of the hawd depended upon its cultivable area, areas that were too rocky, etc., to be planted needed to be deducted from the taxable area. The land department devised a system for estimating this figure. They then tested this system in nine villages in cAjlun's Irbid district—Samma, al-Mughayyir, al-Mazar, Hakama, Kufr Jayiz, Hubras, Tuqbul, cATal, and Maru—by first estimating the scope of cultivation according to the system and then actually surveying the area. The results were then compared. The variations in the two figures were found to vary from 16 percent too high to five percent too low, and the system was accordingly deemed a success.25 5

CO 831/19/3, Cox to high commissioner (18 June 1932).

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The fiscal survey commission initially spent a good deal of time in the hilly and solidly-agricultural region of northern cAjlun. After an entire year of work by December 1928, the commission had surveyed only 15 villages, 14 tribal areas and mudawwara areas, and valuated 12 villages. It then moved southward at a daily average speed of 350 dunums per surveyor by 1929, which increased to 735 diinums/day by 1930 as the commission gained more experience and moved into flatter regions. By 1930, a full 21 surveyors were at work in the field (19 Arabs and two British employees). Work was completed in the Irbid district by September 1930, and in the Jarash and Ban! Hasan tribal regions in the southern part of c Ajlun, and the Madaba district of al-Balqa3, by the end of 1931. Another reason for the delay was popular opposition to the policy of demarcating as much forest land as possible as state land. Resistance to the forest policy grew in heavily forested regions like Jabal cAjlun, and opposition to the policy even reached the floor of the legislative council in December 1930.26 Progress of the fiscal survey southwards is indicated by the following table: Table 6: Progress of Fiscal Survey, 1928-1933 Tear

1928 1929 1930 1931 1932

Dunums Surveyed

239,940 773,590 1,675,458 2,129,860 2,950,660

Villages Surveyed

State Lands Surveyed

Tribal Lands Surveyed

Villages Valued

15 63 93 119 88

12 12 (no data) (no data) (no data)

2 4 0 (no data) (no data)

12 (no data) (no data) (no data) (no data)

Source: Palestine Partition Commission Report, October 1938 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1938, p. 64.

To ensure that the iron boundary markers implanted in the villages remained intact, the Land Valuation and Demarcation Law mandated penalties for removal of markers and required villagers to report any stolen markers. In the case of tampering, the owner of

26 Minutes of the Transjordanian legislative council, in Supplement No. 42 to OG (18 January 1931).


93

the land in question would be responsible for notifying the authorities. If the marker stood on state land (specially colored markers were used for state forests), the mukhtdr of the nearest village or shaykh of the nearest tribe was responsible for reporting. Failure to report stolen marks could be punishable by a £P5 fine. If the perpetrators were not discovered, the entire male population of the village in question (or in the case of state land, the males members of the nearest village or tribe) would be held jointly and severally responsible for the payment of penalties of up to £P50 plus the cost of replacing the markers. By the end of the fiscal survey, 28,434 markers had been driven into the ground throughout the areas surveyed.27 Simultaneously with the surveying effort, the government tried to pressure landowners to register land voluntarily since the fiscal survey was not a full cadastral survey of landholdings. In 1929, the Land Registry Fees Amendment Law was passed in this hope. To encourage registration, the law waived registration fees for inherited land for a period of one year. This was later extended in 1931 to include the period up to 31 March 1933. Transfers as a result of sale, however, still required the payment of registration fees. On a sterner level, the government notified the public that any land transactions that had been carried out privately without registration must be registered prior to the last day of the year or face cancellation of the transaction. Of 382 transactions, some of which dated back to 1925, 218 were cancelled as a result.28 Finally, the Land Registry Fees Law of 1932 reduced registration fees by an average of 30 percent. But to help the government determine the value of land for tax purposes, the government was empowered to value any property before before registering it if the previous information was suspected of being incorrect or if it were missing altogether.29 The following sample reveals the level and types of transactions carried out in land registries for the year 1931:

-' Palestine Partition Commission Report, October 1938 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1938), p. 64. 28 OG 1930, p. 219. 29 Ibid.

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CHAPTER FOUR Table 7: Registration Transactions in 1931 Type of Transaction

Number

Sale Copying Registration data Exchanging old deed Inheritance Mortgage Partition Sale of state land First time registration Removal of lien Rectification of data Various

1,129 560 461 376 212 110 87 72 65 53 3

TOTAL

3,088

Source: Jordan, Department of Lands and Survey, Annual Report 1931 [hereafter, "DLS Annual Report"].

By 1933, the fiscal survey had been completed in 10,008,000 dunums (10,008 sq.km.) in 450 villages at a cost of £P44,000.30 Surveying was carried out in cAjlun province west of the Hijaz railroad, most of al-Balqa3 (parts of northern al-Balqa5 east of the railroad were included), al-Karak province west of the railroad, and a small part of Macan between the railroad and Wadi 'Araba. Of the land surveyed, 4,556,007 dunums—roughly 40 percent—were found to be under cultivation.31 Not all of the land that was under cultivation was privately-controlled. Some 600,000 dunums were state land. In fact, nearly 18 percent of the land in Transjordan surveyed during the fiscal survey of 1927—1933—some 1,781,000 dunurm—was some form of state land.32 Completion of the fiscal survey marked the first major step completed in Dowson's ambitious land program, and one marked by little opposition from the populace except against the forest policy. The reasons for this cooperation are discussed in chapter six. The government also took the step of unifying the separate survey and registration departments in 1928, and later merged this unified department with the state lands department into a new, centralized department called the Department of Lands and Survey Annual Report 1933, p. 246. Ibid., pp. 246 and 276. Annual Report 1936, p. 329.


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(Da'irat al-Aradi wa'l-Misdha] in 1929, elevating Mitchell to director of the entire new department. Both from within and outside of Transjordan, the British vision of colonial land policy was being implemented.

Land Tax Law of 1933 A major reason why mandatory officials turned to Ernest Dowson and his vision for "proper" land management in Transjordan was because they hoped to increase and regularize land taxation in the emirate. Having laid the basis for a new system for determining such taxes via the fiscal survey, mandatory officials quickly turned their efforts toward convincing Emir 'Abdullah's government to pass a new tax law in the immediate wake of the survey's completion. Their proposed law would drastically alter how land was taxed, although the British had to work hard to overcome the reticence of some of the big landowners in the Transjordanian legislative council who felt threatened by the legislation's implications. Dowson had proposed that all forms of land and road taxes be abolished and replaced by a single land tax representing a percentage of the estimated gross annual yield of the land. To accomplish this, the fiscal survey determined this figure for each hawd in each village. It was while the survey was still underway in 1931 that British mandatory officials then decided upon a taxation figure. They would tax six percent of the value of the yield of each hawd. They arrived at this by deciding that the old Ottoman virgu and cushr taxes had together amounted to approximately 12 percent of the annual production of land. Since it was common to leave one-half of one's fields fallow each planting season, they halved that figure to six percent due annually (even during the fallow year). So important was this matter that the Chief British Resident in Transjordan, C.H.F. Cox, even corresponded with British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald about the matter. He estimated in 1932 that promulgation of a new tax law based upon a six percent levy would realize £P 12~ 15,000 in additional tax revenues throughout Transjordan. The maximum amount of tax paid per dunum of unirrigated land under the new system would be £P0.336, and the average would by £P0.231. The maximum amount for irrigated land would be £P0.462 with an average of £P0.336/dunum. Finally, the maximum

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amount for areas planted with grape vines would be ^PO.144 according to the estimates he possessed at that time.33 Cox's rosy estimates were tempered by a major hurdle, however. The impact of the new land tax would be uneven in its effects throughout the country. The heavily-populated Irbid district was overtaxed and would actually receive a tax reduction. But the Karak province, the Ban! Hasan tribal region of the cAjlun province, and the Jarash district in cAjlun would pay substantially more than before. The latter's liability in fact would increase some 400 percent.34 The Ban! Hasan region had not only undergone a tremendous increase in grain cultivation since the era when the Ottoman tax figures were compiled, but had expanded the scope of its orchards as well, which would be taxed more heavily under the proposed law. The landowners in the legislative council were also quick to appreciate the implications of the law, and refused to enact the proposed legislation in 1931. Indirect British rule in Transjordan via the emir's government had its limits. Mandatory officials in Jerusalem and Amman continued their struggle to convince the council of the merits of the new tax plan for two more years. They partially succeeded in June 1932 when the council passed a compromise bill that applied the main aspects of the new tax system to the regions of al-Karak and the Ban! Hasan bedouin only (discussed further below). But their real triumph came in March 1933, when the council enacted the Land Tax Law of 1933 for the entire country, in part because of a British "divide and rule" strategy. Two pillars of the opposition to the original 1931 bill in the council had been Rufayfan al-Majalf and Husayn al-Tarawina of al-Karak. When Cox proposed the 1932 tax law for al-Karak and the Bam Hasan areas only, the majority of the council approved it as a compromise given that it did not affect them personally. However, the 1932 law immediately raised the personal tax liabilities of the two legislators from al-Karak quite considerably. The British claimed that these two later voted to pass the 1933 bill in order to spite their co-legislators.35 As a compromise, the new law stipulated that the total tax increase throughout the country would be limited to 33 FO 816/36, Cox to prime minister (13 June 1931); CO 831/19/3, Cox to high commissioner (18 June 1932). 34 CO 831/19/3, Cox to high commissioner (18 June 1932). 35 FO 816/37, Cox to Peake (25 March 1933), p. 34.


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,000 and that any person whose new tax burden was increased by 50 percent or more over the previous year's tax would be allowed to pay in installments over five years. The 1933 tax law, applicable throughout the nation, was the first major new tax law of any type enacted in Transjordan and changed the level and manner of assessing tax liabilities in the emirate. However, the change was not as complete as mandatory officials would have liked. The law assessed a six percent tax on the value of each hawd as determined by the fiscal survey. But since there remained considerable confusion over ownership rights, boundaries, etc.—not to mention the immense amount of land held collectively in mushac—there was no way for the land department to determine the tax liability of each individual holder of land rights mathematically. While the basic unit of taxation had now shifted to the hawd from the village or province as before (or in the case of al-Balqa5 from the system of assessing the cushr on the threshing floor), there was no accurate method of determining a relatively fair method of taxation. To deal with this problem, the Transjordanian government established tax distribution committees in each village consisting of mukhtdrs and shaykfa to determine how the tax would be divided up among those persons possessing rights within each hawd. While solving the problem of accurately assessing the tax in British eyes, this system left the question of equitable distribution of the tax burden unresolved because persons of influence within each village could escape paying their fair share. The land department tried to rectify this by allowing public inspection of the tax lists produced by the tax distribution committees. Once the valuations were published, villagers had one month to raise objections. Hearings would then be conducted by a special committee. In this manner, the land department not only tried to overcome improper tax distribution but also empower the villagers and make them feel a part of the new system, thereby reducing their objection to the new law. But since Dowson's proposal to settle all issues related to land ownership rights via a second massive campaign throughout the country was only a year away, mandatory officials decided they could be patient and wait for a better method. Despite passage of the 1933 law, its provisions could not be applied throughout the country because of resistance from taxpayers in the central regions of the country. This resistance was based on the fact that some regions, which had been undertaxed, stood to see their

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taxes increased. In fact, one village saw its taxes increased 79 percent, while another saw its reduced by 61 percent. Similarly, one particular landowner saw his tax burden rise from £P0.300 to £P200.36 Some villages in the Irbid district were quick to realize that their liabilities would be reduced and petitioned as early as December 1933 to have the new law expeditiously applied to their villages. But the law was first applied in September 1933 in al-Karak, Macan, and al-Tafila and in Madaba in December. By the time that it came to the rest of al-Balqa3 in 1934, so many villagers in the regions of Amman, al-Salt, and the Banf Hamfda tribal region began appealing their new, higher tax burdens to the land department by the spring of 1934 that the situation was, in Director of Lands Mitchell's opinion, "approaching chaos."37 Mitchell felt that applying the law to the 'Ajlun province in the midst of such chaos would only worsen the situation. In the first place, the department would be faced with the political problem of explaining to the most populous part of the emirate that the possibility of decreasing tax burdens that resulted in some villages would not be replicated elsewhere. Secondly, applying the law to too many villages with new, lower tax responsibilities would reduce overall net tax receipts given that so many taxes in the al-Balqa5 region were unpaid pending resolution of appeals— precisely the opposite of the desired effect. Mandatory officials therefore convinced the legislative council to forgo applying the new law in the cAjlun province until April 1935 and even then, it was applied in stages. In fact, 59 villages in the Irbid district would be forced to wait until the late 1930s for the new law, long after all other villages in Transjordan were operating under the new law by the end of 1935.38 In 1946, the government changed the law to assess an additional tax on land planted with fruit trees, so that such land thereafter paid a tax on the land itself as well on the trees planted on it. The following statistics reveal the scope of tax liabilities by category of land that had been established by 1935: 36 Muhammad Isma'il [al-cAttiyat], "Settlement Operations and Survey in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" Country Project No. 8 (Salahuddin, Iraq: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Center on Land Problems in the Near East, 1955), pp. 20^26. 37 CO 816/37, Mitchell to Cox (29 April 1934). 38 For details, see ibid., Mitchell to Cox (29 April 1934); Mitchell to A.L. Kirkbride (28 November 1933); Mitchell to A.L. Kirkbride (18 March 1934); and Annual Report 1935, p. 284.


99

Table 8: Land Taxation Rates by Land Category, 1935 Land Category Irrigated (Intensive Cultivation) Irrigated (Crop Rotation) Vineyards Cereal Land Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Grade 6 State Land and Uncultivable Land

Tax per Dunum (£P)

Area (Dunums)

0.078 0.042 0.060

4,394 191,839 75,802

0.032 0.028 0.023 0.017 0.012 0.007 n/a

199,474 532,048 1,395,687 1,005,817 247,052 273,161 6,082,751

TOTAL

10,008,025

Source: Annual Report 1935, p. 285.

The ultimate irony was that for all the effort spent in surveying the country, convincing the legislative council to pass the 1933 tax law, and applying the law amidst great controversy, tax revenues did not increase dramatically. Before introduction of the law in 1933, receipts throughout Transjordan stood at £P78,641. As is discussed in chapter three, tax receipts by 1946 were £P88,274—a difference of only £P9,606 or 12.2 percent.39 Wartime inflation during the 1940s reduced this number even more. This would not be the only disappointment awaiting the British as they pressed emirate authorities to adopt all aspects of Dowson's program.

Test Case for Dowson's Program: the Bam Hasan Partition and Taxation Laws

Almost two years into the fiscal survey in 1929, it was decided to apply some of Dowson's other proposals to the lands of the Ban! Hasan bedouin in eastern cAjlun. The experiment represented the first attempt to carry the land program to its conclusion: not just surveying land and valuating it, but settling some claims to land, making 39

DLS/diwan, 16/3/64, "Statistics; Quarterly Progress Reports"; document: "Statistics Progress Report for the Period 1/1/45-31/12/46", p. 2.

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a partial partition of musha' lands, and assigning a new, unified land tax. The Bam Hasan partition and tax laws proved vitally important in assessing the future success or failure of Dowson's proposals for Transjordan as a whole. While the results seemed initially promising, the British officials whose vision was to change the state-society discourse about land matters would soon discover the limits of "reform." For the British, the Ban! Hasan region north of the capital Amman was a prime example of how they believed that the "inefficiency" of the Ottoman land regime had stifled agricultural development and crippled the state's ability to collect its due in taxes. The Bam Hasan were a confederation of sub-tribes 15,000 strong who no longer roamed as a nomads but who lived in 37 villages stretching over 335 sq. km. Granted land to settle by Ottoman authorities ca. 1884, the lands of the Ban! Hasan were held in musha' tenure and officially registered in the names of several prominent shqykhs only.40 The Bam Hasan assigned a portion of the confederation's land to each of the six main tribes (Arabic: cashlm; plural: 'asha'ir). By the late 1920s, a great deal of confusion arose over ownership rights. Certain lands were assigned to individuals and never constituted part of the mushac. Others were originally part of the mushdc but developed into individually-partitioned and controlled plots (majru$. The survey campaign of 1924 complicated matters by partitioning some of the Ban! Hasan lands into yet other mqfruz plots. Because the registration parties of 1924 did not possess the legal authority to update the land registries, the partitions they engineered were unregistered and thus technically illegal. To add to the confusion, land registration officials in the mid-1920s began providing copies of the 1924 partition and "registration" documents to the bedouin as a convenience to assist in the many sales and inheritance cases that were taking place. Many of the cultivators came to regard these lists as legal documents demonstrating ownership, when in fact only the Ottoman registers were the legal arbiters of land rights under the law. They were later shocked to discover that the descendants of those persons to whom the land had been originally registered by the Ottomans could legally block land transfers which were made on the basis of the 1924 documents. Shortly before the onset of the fiscal survey in 1927, the govern40 DLS/diwan, 6/36, "Tahnr al-Aradi wa Ifrazuha" [Registration and Partition of Land]; qa'immaqam of Jarash to director of registration (29 November 1927).


101

nor of the Jarash district was moved to notify several government agencies of the numerous petitions he was receiving from the Ban! Hasan complaining about this confusing situation. He noted that insecurity of title was preventing them from investing in fruit and olive trees and even leading to tensions and security problems among the sub-tribes.41 Cox ordered an investigation into the problem, and issued a report to the Transjordanian chief minister in September 1929 in which he stated that he had detected a "universal desire" on the part of the Bam Hasan to partition their lands among themselves and solve the problem. Since Ottoman law required unanimous approval of all co-owners to a suitable partiton scheme or secure a court-ordered partition, the Ban! Hasan turned to the government to avoid the cost of the latter and to secure a neutral party to help with the task of the former. With the fiscal survey underway, mandatory officials decided to use the resources of Mitchell and the land department to help arrange details of the massive proposal to partition the land of the 37 villages among the Bam Hasan. In October 1929, the governor of the Jarash district met with 15 shqykhs of the BanI Hasan to discuss how to proceed. Before them lay two proposals developed by Mitchell: a personal partition, whereby each shareholder in the mushdc would be assigned a number of shares in each of the 37 villages, or a collective partition, whereby each sub-tribe would be assigned certain villages to own, but own collectively as undivided mushdc among its members. The shqykhs chose the latter method. Implementation of the plan was delayed until 1931 when the fiscal survey commission began surveying the Bam Hasan region and could provide accurate maps to assist with the collective partition of the villages among the sub-tribes. The complicated partition involved dividing up the 37 villages and their hawds among six tribes ('ashiras)., 32 Jiraqas, and 81 rabtas (two forms of sub-tribes) so that each subunit received specific villages and hawds for itself and relinquished all rights to land in others. The six main tribes of the Ban! Hasan were the Akhu Rashfda (also known as the al-Khaza'ila), al-Harahisha, al-Khawalida, al-Ziyud, al-cAmush, and al-Mashaqiba. The partition 41 For example, see the petition from leaders of the village of Bahla dated 29 November 1927 in ibid. See also ibid., qd'immaqam Jarash to director of treasury (12 February 1928), and Lord Raglan [F.R. Somerset], "Transjordania—and the Mandate Farce," The Nineteenth Century and After (1924): 835.

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was only a partial solution to the "problem" represented by mushac, for it divided the villages and hawds among the sub-tribes but did not in turn partition each hawd among the shareholders possessing rights within it. Each hawd was left as a type of private mushac among its shareholders. The Bam Hasan partition represented the first time that Mitchell and the land department could apply some of Dowson's land program to a large area. To enshrine the principles of the new system, several legal mechanisms were put into place which created a special legal regime solely for the Ban! Hasan lands. Land officials had learned from the 1924 campaign that special laws were required to effect any significant change in land tenure. The first such legal step was the Bam Hasan Partition Law, enacted in September 1931 to codify the partition and detail the steps that were still underway. Briefly, the law specified three stages designed to simplify the land department's task. The first involved posting the results of the partition and the names of the shareholders owning land rights within each hawd in the 37 villages at the land registry in Jarash, with copies distributed to the heads of the different rabtas. Following this, anyone could raise an objection with the governor of Jarash within 30 days. Thirdly, objections to the partition would be entertained by a special three-person court created outside of the regular court system specifically for this purpose. Its decisions were final. A second important legal step taken was the creation of a new set of land registers, based on the Torrens System, to record the results of the partition and facilitate issuing over 5,000 new land deeds. To assure the permanence of the partition and curtail legal objections to it, the Banf Hasan Partition Law specified that no court could ever entertain a challenge to the partition once the special Ban! Hasan court had ruled on all its cases. To narrow the scope of objections even further, the emir's special council mandated in December 1931 that the Banf Hasan court would only hear cases involving individuals' own land rights; wider complaints about the general division of land among the tribes could not be entertained. The court was appointed in November 1931, and consisted of cAbd al-Sattar al-Sandrusf, the Sub-Governor of Jarash Muhammad al-Husayn, and Director of State Lands (and future prime minister) Samfr al-RifacI. Following up on the heels of the partition program, mandatory authorities decided to test the new unified land tax idea proposed by Dowson on the Banf Hasan as well. As noted above, Cox had


103

been unable to prompt the legislative council to adopt the new legislation for the country as a whole, but did succeed in pushing through a new such law specifically for al-Karak and the Bam Hasan region. Thus the Law for the Distribution of Taxes in Qada3 Karak and the Bam Hasan Tribe was promulgated in June 1932. Yet it did not represent a total victory for Dowson's principles because the partition plan did not break up mushac among individuals but merely among sub-tribes, meaning that individual tax liabilities would still rest in the hands of village tax distribution committees. The July 1932 Regulations for the Distribution of Taxes in Qada5 al-Karak and the Ban! Hasan Tribe represented an attempt to rectify this by mandating that each shareholder pay only a share of the hawd's tax liability proportionate to the percentage of the shares s/he owned in it. Additionally, part of the compromise Cox agreed to was to limit the total amount collected from both al-Karak and the Ban! Hasan regions to a fixed amount. For all the hard work of the Department of Lands and Survey, the British and the Transjordanian government were presented with several problems with the Ban! Hasan partition and tax schemes. In the first place, members of the confederation began complaining as early as 1931 that the new laws would mean that the government could begin assessing higher taxes even while the partition was incomplete. While they seemed to support the partition in general as a way to stimulate production, they resented being presented with the negative consequences of partition so soon, before it was even complete. Some began complaining to the legislative council that they sought a return to the status quo ante. By November 1932, partition was still not complete although, just as the Bam Hasan had feared, the new tax law with its resulting higher taxes had already been put into effect.42 Beyond this political problem, land officials were unable to judge the success of the new tax plan because the collection of taxes was unusually low in 1932 due to a poor harvest and the migration of some of the Ban! Hasan. Lastly, the hawds were still held in mushac tenure by their shareholders—that hated symbol of Middle Eastern agricultural "inefficiency" in the minds of colonial 4 ~ See Minutes of the legislative council, third session (24 August 1931), in Supplement No. 58 to Official Gazette (2 September 1931) and Minutes of the fourth session (10 November 1932), in Supplement No. 101 to Official Gazette (21 November 1932).

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officials. It appeared that Dowson's program was not a panacea for Transjordan's problems. Still, the activities of the land department among the Ban! Hasan constituted the first instance in which they were able to follow up on the work of the fiscal survey by addressing some of the insecurities of tenure faced by a specific population and applying the new, unified land tax. The experiment also progressed according to new laws and procedures created specifically for that purpose, and led to the creation of new land registers. In these ways, this trial step emboldened the department to undertake an even larger campaign to apply Dowson's suggestions to the entire emirate beginning in 1933.

Land Settlement

A key aspect of Dowson's plan was the belief that the insecurity of title to land retarded efficient agricultural development. In the absence of clear knowledge of who owned what, investment would be stifled. This opinion represented quintessential British colonial thinking: the state's role in society should be to determine and protect individual land rights and take steps to encourage "efficient" use of land. This thinking was reflected succinctly in the words of mandatory officials, who described the next and most widespread phase of Dowson's program, land settlement, as ". . . part of a general plan to assist in the development of the country by stimulating cultivation and so increasing revenue."43 Other reasons why the British believed that land settlement would benefit Transjordan can be found in a document submitted by the land department to colonial officials in London in 1935. In it, they describe the benefits of settlement. First, they believed it would assist the general development of the country, a reference to reducing crime resulting from land disputes. Secondly, they hoped that settlement would increase revenue from land registration fees and, indirectly, from increased agricultural production (once mushdc was partitioned). Indeed, breaking up mushdc was one of the major goals of land settlement. As described by mandatory officials, "The final partition of these lands is a matter of urgency . . . This constitutes a most serious obstacle to development."44 43 CO 831/33/5, colonial office memo concerning application for Colonial Development Fund. 44 Annual Report 1935, p. 287.


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Like so much else in Dowson's program, land settlement was based on the British experience in Palestine. There, settlement had commenced in 1928. A major difference was in the progress of partitioning mushac. The work was difficult in mushac areas because of the very large number of shares. Also, land prices in Palestine were much higher than in Transjordan, with the result that disputes over land rights were more protracted since the land was worth more. In fact, from June 1928 until February 1932, successful partitions of rnusha' lands were carried out in a total of only 20,000 dunums in eight villages. Thereafter, settlement officers in Palestine stopped devising their own partition plans for mushac villages and relied instead upon plans arranged by the villagers themselves. Eventually, they stopped partitioning mushdc altogether. Land settlement in Transjordan would prove to be the most timeconsuming and complicated aspect of Dowson's land program, and represented in the final analysis the most intrusive government policy ever carried out in Transjordan. It extended the basic work of the fiscal survey by investigating every claim to land rights in the country and registering the results. In the process, all land disputes were resolved and deeds issued to those willing to pay registration fees. The land settlement campaign also partitioned mushdc lands permanently among those owning shares in it. By the onset of land settlement in 1933, mandatory officials and the Englishmen running the land department had identified a number of problems that they hoped could be solved through settlement. Title was insecure, they felt, because the land registers were out-ofdate and rarely used by the population, which bought and sold land without formally registering it. Purchasers sometimes found themselves in legal battles over title with the persons whose names were still legally registered as the owner, or with their heirs. Furthermore, the boundaries between individually-partitoned mafmz plots were vague and led to innumerable disputes. Ottoman and Islamic inheritance laws were disregarded so that stronger members of families could claim land for themselves at the expense of weaker heirs, particularly women. Beyond these issues, land officials sought to reduce the number of plots of land that were co-owned by a number of joint owners and to end the practice by which a plot of land and the olive or fruit trees growing on it might be owned by two different persons. In order to carry out the sweeping objective of sending land settlement parties to every village in Transjordan, the legislative council

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agreed to pass the Land Settlement Law of 1933, based on the land settlement laws in Palestine and the Sudan. As with the Bam Hasan partition law, the Land Settlement Law created a special legal regime outside of the regular land law that enabled the land department to wield special and sweeping powers in areas undergoing the land settlement process. For example, the law granted authority to Director of Lands Mitchell to determine the manner in which land claims would be investigated and settled. In practice, this enormous authority meant that Mitchell delegated on-the-spot authority to land officials known as settlement officers to act as judges where disputes arose over land rights. Settlement officers could call witnesses, ask claimants to swear oaths (copies of the Qur'an and the Bible were always carried for this purpose), and make final decisions based on any type of evidence, including oral testimony—a striking departure from Ottoman precedents, where written registers and deeds were deemed above reproach in any court. This extraordinary right to admit oral evidence was also granted to a special court established to entertain any objections to settlement, the land settlement court. This one-man court was to visit each village in which objections to the land settlement officers' final decisions had been lodged. The land settlement court was not bound by those passages of the Ottoman Land Code that declared that any transaction carried out without recourse to the land registries were invalid or that anyone possessing mm land for ten years without dispute could be granted the right of prescription without opposition. In this way, the court could declare that a person could indeed retain land purchased outside of the registers or set aside another person's rights to land even it s/he had in fact occupied it for ten years. The Land Settlement Law also granted authority to the settlement court to settle any case pending in a civil court relating to land within the area of settlement. The Transjordanian government initially asked mandatory authorities to locate a Muslim Arab for the position of land settlement judge. However, a Christian appeals court judge from al-Karak, Hanna cAmarfn, was eventually selected.45 The entire basis of Ottoman land law, with its prejudice in favor of written evidence and legality based upon governmental approval of land transactions, was thus temporarily set aside in the so-called

15

CO 831/25/14, high commissioner to secretary of state (6 June 1933).


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"settlement areas," only to return to validity upon completion of settlement. George F. Walpole, Mitchell's successor who served as director of lands from 1940-54, noted that land settlement aimed at finding whom the land department felt was the "rightful" or "real" owner to land, not necessarily the "legal" owners as recorded in the Ottoman-era registers: Under Article 10 of the Land Settlement Law, however, the judge was given the widest powers to determine the real ownership. He could admit any document that proved a sale, he could hear verbal evidence to the same effect, and he could ignore a title-deed produced in support of a claim if it was clear that the actual occupier of the land was another who had been in undisputed occupation for a reasonable period.46

In order to ensure that the results of land settlement were permanent and above reproach, settlement was created to be a one-time process, the results of which were to be permanently binding upon all concerned. The law repeated the provision found in the Ban! Hasan Partition Law that any claims to land not brought forth at the time of settlement without good cause would be considered to have been waived. Furthermore, it stipulated that once deeds had been issued following settlement, no court could hear a case questioning their validity. These clauses were designed to force a quick resolution of disputes to avoid lengthy legal battles in the future. The massive land settlement campaign was initiated in c Ajlun province in the summer of 1933. Work was underway in 'Anjara in the Jabal c Ajlun district in July and in Hawwara in the Irbid district beginning in September. Three settlement parties were initially active in the field, with each consisting of a settlement officer and three or four surveyors.47 After erecting tents, each settlement party began entertaining land claims, Director of Lands Mitchell having already published a declaration creating a "settlement area" for each village in question. In the case of mqfruz villages where land was individually-owned, the settlement party broke up, with each surveyor walking about a hawd asking "whose land is this?" If uncontested, the claim and the surface area involved would be recorded in a "schedule of claims" form under the name of the claimant(s). 46

Walpole "Land Problems," p. 54. The settlement officers were 'All al-Kayid al-Yusuf (of the influential 'Utum family of Suf), 'Abdullah clsa, and cAbd al-Rahman 'Aziz. 4/

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A number would be assigned to the plot and a 1/2,500 scale map of it drawn up using planetables, theodolites, and alidades for use when settling neighboring plots. In hilly areas, surface area was determined mathematically. In flatter areas, plots were actually measured with chains. If the land claim were contested, the settlement officer carried out an on-site investigation under the authority invested in him by the Land Settlement Law. Sometimes persons stepped forward to claim that a certain plot of land had been mortgaged to them. Still others claimed they had bought land from a person who instead argued that the "sale" in question was in fact merely a mortgage. Such investigations could be colorful events, with a variety of witnesses and experts presenting petitions (often "signed" with a fingerprint by illiterate petitioners), testimony, and documents. The settlement officer's decision could be appealed to the land settlement court after the final "schedule of rights" detailing all claims in the village was drawn up by the land department in Amman and sent back to the village and other locations and posted for public inspection. Following the proceedings of the court, all claims were officially recorded and deeds issued to those wishing to purchase them. Only decisions of the court involving land worth £P50 or more could be appealed to the court of appeal; all other decisions of the land settlement court were final. Villages were required to pay settlement fees to help defray the costs of the process. The last stage in the process was drawing up the final "schedule of registration" form for use in the local land registry. As it was settled, a new registry book was opened for each village according to the Torrens System. Each particular plot of land in the village was given its own page on which the plot's number, the hawd number, and the owner(s)' name(s) were written down. As changes occurred, the old names would be crossed out in red ink and the new names entered, along with the date of the transaction. Any mortgages pledged against that particular plot of land were noted on the back of the page. If a plot were ever subdivided in the future, the old page would be removed and the requisite number of new pages created and inserted. In order to reduce suspicions, the government initially kept the fees for registering land and receiving a deed after settlement low to encourage registration of settled property since it was optional (settled land was only required to be registered upon transfer). But in 1937 these fees were raised by 50 percent. The land department determined in that year that on average some 10 per-


109

cent of land in a village was registered each year after settlement occurred, meaning that within 10 years of settlement all land in each settled village would end up registered.48 And in truth, settlement always stimulated the number of registrations and deeds taken out. The average number of transactions registered in the four years prior to the beginning of settlement (1928 1933) was 704 transactions. By 1946, this figure had risen to 28,836.49 At the same time it determined land rights, the settlement party determined the tentative value of the plot as well so that the unit of measurement for the new 1933 tax law could be changed from the hawd to the plot. This value did not represent the market value of the land but like the procedure adopted during the fiscal survey merely served as a figure to be used for tax purposes. As was done during the fiscal survey, most plots were valuated in terms of their estimated annual production of wheat. Unirrigated land was estimated to produce anywhere between 40 and 80 kilograms of wheat per dunum in a growing season, while figures for irrigated land ranged from 80-120 kg./dunum. Plots of land with trees were valued differently, taking into account the number and type of trees planted thereon. The price of olive trees was set between £P0.5-1.5 per tree. The value of fruit trees was determined locally, but general estimates were as follows: pomegranate, £P0.2~0.3/tree; walnut, £P0.4-0.6/tree; others, £P0.3-0.5/tree. Orchards were valued by the dunum rather than by the individual tree, and experience would show that the average value of orchards in the Jabal cAjlun and Jarash regions ranged from -jCP2.5-4:.Q/dunum, depending upon factors such as the density of trees.00 The final value of each plot was determined at the land department headquarters in Amman. Tax distribution lists were then drawn up for each village, in accordance with the 1933 Land Tax Law, based not on the decisions of tax distribution committees in each village (as after the fiscal survey) but on the basis of the new land values and records produced by the settlement process. This was detailed in a 1934 amendment to the Land Tax Law. The amendment also stated that the former tax lists created during the 4H

Annual Report 1937, pp. 316-317. Walpole "Land Problems," p. 60. Taken from a manual for settlement officers issued by the land department, p. 31. The title and publication information was missing from the copy viewed by the author at the public relations department of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey. 49

M

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fiscal survey could be amended with the more detailed information obtained during land settlement but only if resulting difference did not exceed ten percent of the earlier assessed value and if the total tax due from each sub-province in the emirate remained the same. In mushcf villages, the settlement process described above proceeded differently. The first step carried out by settlement parties was to record the number of shares and portions of shares (called qirdts) owned by each of the shareholders. Typically, the leading families in each village had subdivided the total number of shares in the village's mushac lands among themselves and thence into sections. For example, the large northern village of Malka divided its lands into 83 shares in 1901. The 63 shares in the southern part of the village belonged collectively to a group of individuals known as the Fuqara' (the "poor," a reference to a sufi order). These, headed by the Malkawf family, were sufis who tended the tomb of a local saint. The 20 shares in the northern part of the Malka belonged to the Falldhin ("cultivators"). By the time that land settlement reached Malka in 1938, the Fuqard3 had subdivided their shares among three "sections" named after three prominent individuals, while the Falldhin had subdivided theirs into two. Settlement officers recorded the number of shares on a "schedule of claims," and eventually a final "schedule of rights," that were owned by each person in lists according to sections. Unlike mafruz villages, the "schedule of rights" was drawn up in the field. But like in mafruz villages, valuation immediately followed the settling of rights. In this instance, it was done on the basis of the value of each qirdt (24 qirats per share) in the hawd since the land still collectively-held at this point in the settlement process. Once this was completed, settlement officers turned to the more challenging part of settling mushd' villages: partitioning the collectively-held land into individual, mafmz plots. Shareholders possessed shares of land throughout the village, and many feared that dividing the land up permanently among them would lead to the best land ending up in the hands of privileged persons to the detriment of others. To allay such fears, and to reduce the time and costs of settlement, the land department decided at first to allow the cultivators themselves, by agreement of at least two-thirds of them, to arrange their own partition scheme and record it on a "schedule of partition" form—even if the settlement party considered the partition a poor one by their standards. This was a key decision because it allowed the cultivators to work with the process rather than have


1 11

it imposed on them from above. The first step in the partition involved dividing up the hawds among the different "sections" of families and individuals, and drawing up 1/10,000 scale maps of the village showing this division. This was done after at least 50 percent of the shareholders in the various sections signed an agreement. Thereafter, each hawd was partitioned among the individual shareholders in it and 1/2,500 scale maps drawn for each resulting plot. Drawing up the "schedule of registration" represented the final stage of the process. The partition created by the villagers in the first two mushac villages that were settled starting in 1933, Hawwara and al-Sarfh, created long, thin plots divided up among the shareholders in such a way that each one possessed at least one long plot in each part of the village. Shareholders in Hawwara received nine plots each, with some individuals receiving up to 18 plots. Walpole later decried the partition in Hawwara as "... a terrible example of bad partion."51 However, land officials were anxious to allay the villagers' fears about the novelty of the process, and left the partitions as they were. By 1934 and 1935, settlement parties were able to convince villages to partition land in such as way as to create fewer but what they felt were better-shaped plots for each shareholder. In al-Ramtha, they limited the number of plots assigned to each shareholder to four and eventually began cancelling village-devised partition plans altogether if they were dissatisfied with the shape of the proposed plots. In both mushac and mqfruz villages, settlement officers were not allowed to register land in one person's name and any trees planted on it in someone else's after passage of the 1935 Amendment to the Land Settlement Law. In such cases, both the owner of the land and of the trees would each be given some of the land and some of the trees, based on an agreement reflecting the relative value in the sum total of trees/land held by each person. Such an agreement had to be reached with at least two-thirds of the owners in question. This was a special concern in villages such as Hawar, Malka, Dayr Abl Sacid, Samma, and Sahm al-Kafarat—all in cAjlun province— where some olive trees were held in comon mushac ownership among many persons. Settlement thus ended a common Arab tradition of separate ownership of land and things erected on the land. :>1

Walpole, "Land Problems," p. 57. Hawwara and al-Sarih were re-settled later, the former in 1947 and the latter in 1979.

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Despite the initial problems faced in mushdc villages, settlement operations were accomplished much more quickly there than in mqfruz villages because the scope of possible disputes (over boundaries, for instance) was much greater in the latter. The only real source of dispute in mushac villages, where there initially were no boundaries, was over how many shares a person owned, and this was generally well-known within the village. Thus while settlement lasted seven months in Hawwara, the first musha' village settled, it took 13 months in cAnjara, the first mqfriiz village settled. Settlement in Kufranja, northern Transjordan's largest mqfriiz village, took a full two and one-half years to complete. The land settlement court began its first work following completion of the initial stages of settlement in Hawwara. In December 1933, Judge Hanna cAmarfn heard the three objections to the "schedule of rights" produced in Hawwara: two challenged the percentage of shares left to heirs, while in the third a claimant argued that a plot of mafruz land had not been properly entered in the schedule. Mitchell traveled to Hawwara to witness the proceedings. As villages were settled a copy of the new "schedules of registration" form that detailed every single plot of land in each village was sent to the district land registration office for use in dealing with future land transactions and another to the central office of the land department in Amman. Keeping two sets of documents not only prevented the loss or destrution of valuable land records but also militated against fraud because there were two copies, kept under lock and key by different parties. So fail-safe was this procedure that between 1935—55, not a single case of fraud was discovered using original land records nor was a single record lost.02 By 1936, settlement operations picked up speed as the settlement parties, the number of which had risen to five, worked their way southward amidst growing goodwill on the part of Transjordan's landowners. Mandatory officials noted that the land department was experiencing "little difficulty" in arranging partiton schemes in musha' villages thanks to increased cooperation on the part of villagers,53 and that settlement was "very popular."34 According to internal British 52

Isma'il "Settlement Operations and Survey," p. 20. Annual Report 1935, pp. 287-288. The land department claimed there was a 50 percent increase in settlement activity in 1935. 54 Annual Report 1934, p. 241. 53


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reports, cultivators were reportedly begging the land department to begin settlement operations in their villages by the end of the decade.33 In addition to ordinary cultivators, the big landowners in the legislative council began clamoring for the speedy extension of settlement as well. Other legislators as far back as 1931 had called for extending the work of the Bam Hasan partition plan into other mushdc areas.06 In 1934, the executive council passed an amendment to the Land Settlement Law of 1933 granting itself the power to give to power of settling land disputes not only to settlement officers but assistant settlement officers and even surveyors as well. To speed the process even more, settlement officers were thereafter authorized to approve land sales and mortgages during settlement operations. Formerly, all such transactions had been frozen during settlement. It was hoped that such measures would hasten the process, especially in mqfruz villages. Another scheme to speed things up was devised whereby the same settlement team would begin work in several neighboring rnusha' villages. They requested a partition plan from each, and commenced work in whichever village produced what they felt was the most appropriate plan. This was done to cut down on what the British called "village intrigue."37 The pace of settlement increased in 1936, when the lands department hired two additional settlement officers thanks to a grant from the Colonial Development Fund in London (for a total of five settlement parties).38 The Fund had provided the money following a recommendation of the Colonial Development Advisory Committee that £P 10,000 per annum be added to the land department's budget to speed up settlement. British officials requested a total of £P30,000 for this purpose. It is instructive to note their justification. They argued that speeding up settlement was important because land prices and population density were still low at that time. Were Jews to settle in Transjordan, they claimed, land prices will raise and make settlement much more difficult to accomplish (like in Palestine).

^5 DLS/diwan, 16/4/29, vol. 1, "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant"; report of work up to 31 March 1942. :>l> Minutes of the legislative council, session of 24 August 1931, in OG Supplement No. 58 (2 September 1931); session of 31 December 1931, in OG Supplement No. 71 (17 January 1932); session of 29 November 1934, in OG Supplement No. 146 (2 January 1935). S7 Annual Report 1934, p. 263. '8 The two new settlement officers were Jad Ghawf and Fawwaz al-Rusan.

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They also hoped that in hastening settlement, the loan would contribute to the general benefit of the country; increase land registration fees; improve agricultural yields; keep land prices stable; encourage the bedouin to settle; and lead to a fairer distribution of land taxes.59 Settlement operations moved southward out of the populous districts of the cAjlun province into al-Balqa3 province in 1939 although they slowed down during the years of the Second World War. Part of the reason why was that the private sector in Transjordan was booming thanks to mediants' and cultivators' wartime profits, and the government found it difficult to recruit civil servants into the land department. To ameliorate this, the Colonial Development Fund approved a second grant of -£P30,000 to hire employees in 1942 and a third of £P20,000 in 1945.60 But even after the war, the land department's staff remained reduced. In fact, 837,957 dunums of land were settled between 1946-50 by the only settlement officer the department had left, cAwda al-Zucmut.61 Land settlement was finally completed throughout rural areas in the country by 1952. Urban areas were initially exempted from settlement because of the time it would take to settle them. The pace of settlement is indicated below: Table 9: Pace of Land Settlement District

Jabal cAjlun Irbid Jarash Ban! Sakhr tribal region Amman Madaba al-Salt Ban! Hasan tribal region al-Karak al-Tafila Ma'an

Year Settlement Operations Commenced

1933 1933 1934 1934 (but mostly beginning in the late 1930s) 1939 1939 1940 1945 1945 1949 1949

Source: DLS Department of Public Relations and Statistics, Sijill Misahat Qurd alTaswiya [Ledger of Surface Area of Settlement Villages]. 59 DLS/diwan, 29/4/16, vol. 1, 2, "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant"; document: "Expansion of Land Department in Trans-Jordan" and other documents) 60 DLS/diwan, 29/4/16, vol. 1, 2 "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant." 61 DLS Annual Report 1950.


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Yet the completion of settlement also coincided with the largest number of cases ever brought before the land settlement court. In 1953, the court entertained a record 978 cases. Most of these involved land in al-Zarqa3. The massive influx of Palestinians following the first Arab-Israeli War and what the land department described as several years of land "speculation" led to huge numbers of disputes in the court.62 The following statistics record the progress of land settlement: Table 10: Statistics on Land Settlement, 1933-1950 Mushac Settled (Dunums)

Tear

No. Villages Settled

1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950

1 10 5 17 45 36 38 36 17 10 19 18 16 27 23 43 22 30

17,540 155,070 268,954 269,809 191,225 334,735 297,680 305,580 158,797 47,267 53,777 30,743 27,354 277,487 208,221 98,428 141,407 335,219

18,363 39,139 31,006 48,352 61,237 74,685 145,935 138,837 261,869 462,464 365,293 283,079 490,581 193,332 338,583 504,992 563,340 434,104

35,903 194,209 299,960 318,161 352,462 409,420 443,615 444,417 420,666 509,740 419,070 313,822 517,935 470,819 546,904 603,420 704,747 769,323

412

3,319,302

4,455,101

7,774,493

TOTAL

Mafruz Settled (Dunums)

Total (Dunums)

Source: DLS Annual Report 1950, p. 3.

British authorities were extremely pleased with the results of land settlement, which are detailed in chapter five. At a time when British interests in Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt were facing considerable challenges due to coups, domestic opposition, guerrilla warfare, and the exigencies of the Second World War, settlement proceeded apace in DLS Annual Report 1953, p. 3.

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Transjordan beyond the mandate and into the era of the independence of Jordan beginning in 1946. Considering that Palestine provided the model for settlement and so much of Dowson's entire program, it is interesting to note that settlement was faster and only one-third as costly in Jordan as in Palestine.63 For all intents and purposes, the completion of the massive intrustion into villagers' lives represented by settlement constituted the final stage in the implementation of Dowson's plan for the country. The implementation of the colonial logic of tenure and land management was complete.

State Lands Policy

One of the final main objectives of land settlement was to determine who "actually" owned land throughout Transjordan. This included securing rights to land possessed by the state itself. Article 60 of the July 1924 Lausanne Convention that had formalized peace between Turkey and the Allies required that Ottoman state property in successor states to the Ottoman empire be handed over without charge. At least according to British reasoning, this included mudawwara land that had formerly been the sultan's personal property and waqfland under the control of the sultan's personal treasury. Interestingly, some of Sultan Abdiilhamit IFs heirs later tried to recover some of their ancestor's lands by arguing that the Lausanne Convention did not require that the sultan's personal property be transferred to the successor states. They then claimed that some "state lands" taken over by the British were in fact "personal" property of the deceased sultan.64 Even before the onset of land settlement in 1933, mandatory 63 E.B. Worthington, Middle East Science. A Survey of Subjects Other Than Agriculture (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1946), pp. 14-15. 64 The original claim was made by 22 princes and princesses of the House of Osman. In February 1928, 14 family members sued the British government at the Anglo-Turkish Mixed Arbitral Tribunal. None of the land in question at that time lay in Transjordan, however. In May 1936, the Turkish embassy in London informed the British Foreign Office that the heirs of Mehmet Salim, himself an heir to Abdiilhamit II, were seeking to regain lands that included some in the Jordan Valley. The family sued in May 1937 before judges Cressall and Da'udi of the Land Court in Jaffa, Palestine. The legal battle last until 1946, when the family's case finally was dismissed by the Palestine Supreme Court, Judges Shaw, de Comarmond, and Curry presiding. The matter was apparently dropped, although not before the Turkish government raised it again in April 1951. See DL.S/dtwdn, 6/3/jim, "Aradr al-Sultan 'Abd al-Hamid" [Lands of Sultan Abdiilhamit].


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officials had already been actively interested in claiming ownership to land they argued were mahlul and mudawwara. These state lands were vast—over 500,000 dunums were eventually identified and sold by the early 1950s—and thus their value to the cash-strapped new emirate was considerable. They also included some of best land in the country for irrigated agriculture. Determining the exact extent of land inherited from the Ottoman state, securing the state's control over it, and fashioning a policy to maximize the state's revenues therefrom became a priority even before settlement. British officials seemed initially more concerned about the fate of these lands than others in the Transjordanian government. Mandatory authorities, especially Chief British Resident Cox, believed that the several years in which state control over the region was weak following the Ottoman defeat had prompted various persons to begin buying and/or cultivating the state land as if it were private land, thus denying the state rent and tax revenues. Adding to this was the problem that the exact boundaries of state lands were uncertain, as was the very question of whether or not the state actually owned some of these lands or not. Vague or missing Ottoman documents compounded British consternation. For instance, when the government tried to assert control over land it claimed was mudawwara in the northern Ghawr, it found that its case was weak. The problem lay with the inexact boundaries noted in Ottoman records secured by the government in 1926 and 1927 in Transjordan, Palestine, and Istanbul, where Director of Registration Tawffq Abu'1-Huda had traveled to secure documentation of the state's claims (see chapter three). The British were also concerned over several high-profile cases in the early 1920s in which politicians of non-Transjordanian origin and several prominent local figures obtained large tracts of land from the government at what the British considered low prices. The first of these came in 1921, when Emir 'Abdullah's government granted the 51,000 dunums of state land in al-Muwaqqar village to Hadltha al-Khuraysha, shaykh of the Khuraysha section of the influential Ban! Sakhr tribe, and a number of his fellow tribesmen. In early 1922, Rashld Talfa, a Lebanese who had formerly been Transjordan's chief minister, leased a huge stretch of state land, some 70,000 dimums in the Ghawr alKibd region of the Jordan Valley, on terms that included free use of the land for the first year. 'Abdullah also allowed Mithqal alFayiz, paramount shaykh of the Ban! Sakhr, to purchase between

1 18

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10,000 and 33,000 diinums of state land in al-Jfza for a modest amount of money. Mithqal claimed that he was merely reacquiring land that had been illegally confiscated by Ottoman authorities. In 1923, several political figures from al-Karak—cAtawf al-Majalf, Husayn al-Tarawina, and cAbd al-Mahdi al-Shamayila—were also granted land. In the fifth instance, a local investigatory commission in alBalqa3 awarded 17,800 diinums of state land in Ghawr al-Rama and Ghawr al-Kafrayn in the Jordan Valley to the Nimr section of the influential cAdwan tribe in 1925, land that the cAdwan also claimed had been improperly seized. Lastly, Akram bin cAlf Rida al-Rikabl, son of the Syrian-born chief minister cAlf Rida al-Rikabl, acquired a favorable lease from the Transjordanian ministry of waqfto a large tract of land in the Ghawr Abf cUbayda region of the Jordan Valley in 1924. The deal, while it did not involve state land, concerned disputed land and nonetheless raised once again the spectre of political favorites using their influence in the new emirate government to obtain "sweetheart deals" involving choice land. Mandatory authorities took vigorous action to forstall these transactions. The Talfca deal apparently was never completed. Cox investigated the sale of land to Mithqal al-Fayiz, and a 1926 commission nullified the lease of land in Ghawr Abi 'Ubayda to Akram al-Rikabi. The government ultimately failed to retrieve the lands in the Ghawr awarded to the 'Adwan. But in 1926, it declared that all land formerly declared mahlul by the Ottomans would thereafter be considered state land. The fiscal survey provided the perfect opportunity for the state to assert its claim to large amounts of territory throughout the emirate. Not only did the survey afford the chance to determine where the land lay, but subsequent legislation created mechanisms for its sale and lease. The 1928 State Lands (Recognition of Claims) Law and its subsequent modifications empowered the executive council to sell state lands. The Disposal of State Lands Law of 1929 created a system of local state land commissions that handled the details of such sales subject to the supervision of a central state lands commission that included Mitchell among its three members. Any such land sold was then converted to mm status. Only mahlul and small plots of state land were sold, usually to the cultivators who had been farming the land, for a sum equal to ten times the annual tax figure they had been assessed that was payable in installments over a ten-year period. To assure that the cultivators bought and farmed the land rather than quickly sell it to real estate specuclators, buyers were


1 19

forbidden to dispose of the land until all installments had been made. In other instances, land was sold to outside parties with the stipulation that they dig wells or irrigate the land in question. As a result, some 243,000 diinums of state land were sold during the fiscal survey alone.60 Much of this lay in villages along the eastern border between the desert and the cultivated zone: in 1931, 124,106 dunums were sold to persons in 11 villages, most of them in eastern 'Ajlun, for £P2,097.6fi Such sales continued thereafter. Mahlul land in alFuhays village in al-Balqa3, for instance, was sold to villagers starting in 1933, and both the Abu Tayih andjazl sections of the Huwaytat bedouin bought such land in al-Sharah in southern Transjordan. State land could only be sold to Transjordanian citizens. The state land laws of 1928 and 1929 initially did not allow the government to sell the expansive mudawwara lands in the Ghawr. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, the state's claim to certain lands there was weak, as noted above. Two villages, al-Tayyiba and Makhraba, claimed ownership of over 8,000 dunums in the valley that the government considered state land. In the case of the latter, even the courts sided with the villagers' claim in 1926.67 Secondly, the British feared that a large-scale transfer of state lands into the hands of the cultivators living there might result in their immediate re-sale to land speculators who would not develop the land sufficiently but wait for prices to rise. Since taxation was still based on a percentage of the crops grown, idle land would bring the treasury little in taxes. Thirdly, Cox and other British officials may have feared that the land could be re-sold by the cultivators to Zionists. The British decision to sell 6,000 dunums in the Sukhur alGhawr region of the Valley in 1927 to the Zionist-directed Palestine Electric Corporation and grant the company an exclusive electricity concession had generated considerable popular anger in Transjordan, and local British officials were no doubt anxious to allay further fears of Zionist land purchases. Thus until such time as it decided what to do, the government continued to collect rent and taxes from those working mudawwara land according to the preexisting Ottoman practice. b;>

Konikoff Transjordan: An Economic Survey, p. 34. DLS Annual Report 1931. ? Al-Tayyiba claimed an area known as Mazra'at al-Malaha, while Makhraba claimed a smaller area called al-Madrasa. See Michael R. Fischbach, "State, Society, and Land in cAjlun (Northern Transjordan), 1850-1950" (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1992), pp. 334-39. fifi

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The government finally decided to amend the Disposal of State Land Law in 1931 to allow for the sale of mudawwara land. This came after it successfully resolved the disputes between it and the villages of al-Tayyiba and Makhraba the previous year. The agreements saw the villagers concede that the land was state land in return for which the government sold them the areas in question for £P0.300/dunum and waived all claims to back taxes and rent. These sales proved a model for disposing of the rest of the mudawwara land in the Ghawr. Cultivators there were allowed to buy the land from the treasury at a sum equal to ten times what they had been paying in annual taxes, payable within ten years. Only Transjordanian citizens could purchase such lands, and only the original participants in the sale could control it during the period of the installments. No outsiders could become party to the agreement, whether through sale, mortgage, or joint ownership. The first such sale involved 46,016 dunums in Ghawr al-Arbacfn in 1931, most of which was cultivated by the Ghazawfyya tribe. The process of privatizing state land was known as tajwid, and included in the case of Ghawr al-Arbacfn in the mandatory partition of the area's mushac holdings in 1932—a year prior to the onset of land settlement, making it the first instance of the pardon of such lands in the country. The Ghazawiyya bought the land for £PQ.34:0/diinum for a total of £P\4,085, payable in ten installments. An additional 14,000 dunums were leased to persons in neighboring villages as well. Despite their initial pleasure with the tajwid, officials of the land department soon realized that members of the Ghazawfyya tribe were selling their new rights to land in 1933. Not only did this raise the fear of "speculators" or even Zionists buying land in the valley, but might have led to a drop in tax revenues given that Ghawr alArbacfn was still operating according to the previous system of taxation by which taxes on state lands were assigned as a percentage of the crops grown. Lands left idle by merchants hoping that land values would rise would thus deprive the government of badly-needed revenues. As a result, the department froze the entire tajwid of Ghawr al-Arbacm 1933 and cancelled it altogether in 1935. It was not until 1937 that the department once again entered into negotiations with the cultivators over the land. By that time, a second major tajwid had been completed, this time involving 18,068 dunums sold to four branches of the Sukhur al-Ghawr tribe in the region bearing that


121

name in the northern Ghawr. Like in Ghawr al-Arbacfn, the mushac land in the area was partitioned in 1934. The results of the state lands policy were considerable. Between 1931 and 1953, 212,686 dunurm of the non-forested land registered to the treasury had been sold in addition to the 243,000 dunums sold during the first years of the fiscal survey. This yielded ^P153,689 in revenue between 1924 49.68 Still, by 1953 the state possessed 2,639,580 dunums of state land in the East Bank that it had registered during settlement.69 It must be pointed out that one aspect of the government's policy toward state lands generated the most fierce opposition it encountered during the entire land program. This concerned the question of state forest land. We have noted earlier that the land fiscal survey's policy of demarcating as much forested land in the name of treasury as possible spawned a host of criticism, including in the legislative council. With the onset of land settlement, renewed fears that large areas of forest would fall into the hands of the government sparked a rapid increase in deforestation as villagers began clearing large areas of forest, planting the land with crops, and claiming it as their own before settlement parties could arrive. In one unsettled village alone, some 6,000 trees were cut down in an area of 1,000 dunums prior to the arrival of the settlement party.70 In fact, such popular fears were justified. The land department had instructed its field officers to register all woodlands as state forests initially, even those it knew were legally-registered to private owners, and then to negotiate with the villagers over which areas they could eventually keep for their own use. In practice, the treasury kept only the most extensive forest areas and allowed the villagers to retain the rest. But the fact that the villagers needed the forests to graze animals, as a reserve for future growth of cultivation, and because the state paid no compensation for these lands fueled popular resistance to the policy. The village of Dibbm, for example, lost a full 48.2 percent of its land due to the confiscation of its r>8 Figures for fiscal years 1924-25 through 1937-38 taken from the Annual Reports. Figures for 1938-39 through 1948-49 are taken from Jordan, Ministry of Finance and Economy, Directorate of General Statistics, al-Nashra al-ihsa'lyya alurdunnlyya 1950 [1950 Jordanian Statistical Yearbook] (n.d., n.p), pp. 128-129. 69 Jordan, Ministry of National Economy, Department of Statistics, 1953 Census of Agriculture (Amman, n.d.), p. 2. 70 CO 831/46,6, "Secret Report for the Month of March 1938.

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woodlands.71 Even Cox described the land department's policy as "repressive."72 Popular resistance to the state forest policy mounted in c Ajlun. Whereas villagers had formerly yielded over 40,000 dunums of their forests from 1933-3873 to avoid disputes with land officials, such a honeymoon period was over for the settlement parties by the late 1930s. In fact, resistance grew to such proportions that land settlement in heavily-forested villages was postponed in 1938 pending the development of a new policy. However, the government believed that massive deforestation had been checked by 1934 and in 1938 was convinced by Cox to transfer the forests department from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Department of Lands and Survey where Mitchell's staff could watch over the emirate's forests. By 1953, over 1,114,266 dunums of forest land were in government hands.74 It is also important to note that in addition to state land, settlement parties registered other types of land in the name of the treasury as they traveled throughout Transjordan. This included all Muslim and Christian waqfland and cemeteries, which were registered to the treasury on behalf of the Muslims (or Christians) of each particular village. Similarly, starting in 1937 they registered large areas of land set aside for common use (matruk land) in the name of the treasury as representative for whomever had been using the land. While technically registered to the treasury, the rights of the villagers to those areas were still protected. During the first year of doing so, settlement parties determined that 93.8 percent of matruk land registered to the treasury was pasture land.70 Settlement officers were also instructed to set aside plots of land of approximately 10 dunums within each village that had at least 50 students and register them in the name of the treasury for the eventual establishment of a public school. Finally, 842 dunums were registered to the state on behalf of the Hijaz railroad.76 71

Paul B.Johnson, "Land Study—Five Villages in Jordan" (unpublished, American Friends Service Committee, 1954), p. 4. 72 CO 831/33/5, Cox to high commissioner (3 May 1935). 73 E. Ray Casto and Oscar W. Dotson, "Economic Geography of Trans-Jordan" (Economic Geography 14 [1938]: 126. n 1953 Census of Agriculture, p. 2. 75 Annual Report 1938, p. 325. 76 Figures culled from Sijill Misahat Qurd al-Taswiya [Register of Surface Area of Settlement Villages] housed in the public relations department of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey in Amman.


123

Conclusion The extensive land program designed by Sir Ernest Dowson and implemented on the East Pank from 1927^52 marked the massive introduction of Western colonial land logic into Jordan. This land program marked the most intrusive state policy ever initiated east of the Jordan River, whether during Ottoman times, the mandate, or the period of early independence. The land program's ultimate aim was to improve the resource-poor country's economic and fiscal situation by securing individual rights to land, thus encouraging an increase in agricultural production, and boosting state revenues through improved methods of taxation and sale of state lands. As such the program represented classic British colonial logic regarding land tenure and the state's role in managing land, first developed far from Transjordan. But the fact that Transjordanians were familiar with a bureaucratic state intervening in its land matters certainly facilitated British goals, however much they felt they were departing from the pre-existing Ottoman patterns they inherited. While essentially fiscally and developmentally oriented, the land program was at the same time set in motion important developments that affected both land and people in the country. It also served a vital political purpose as well, as is discussed in the following chapters.

CHAPTER FIVE RESULTS OF THE LAND PROGRAM

Introduction Already by the mid to late-1930s, British officials working for the Transjordanian government as well as colonial authorities in London had begun boasting of the alleged benefits accruing to the country as a result of the massive land program in Transjordan. One such Englishman posted in Jerusalem claimed in 1945 that "land settlement has frequently been described by the people of Transjordan as the most valuable thing ever done by His Majesty's Government for that country."1 Another, based in London, commented on the department of lands and survey's 1938 annual report in this manner: If we should have occasion to need it, this kind of information about economic & technical progress, through the co-operation of the Mandatory Govt. & the Trans-Jordanian people, has (I think) a certain amount of publicity and "propaganda" value.2

British officials could also take comfort when comparing Transjordan to the lengthy land settlement operations in Palestine (still underway by the time of Britain's 1947 decision to withdraw from Palestine), as well as in Syria and Lebanon. In the latter, French authorities allowed the Bureau de Cadastre to survey and settle legal title to land as a private concession, not a governmental agency. It also did not partition mushac lands like the British did in Transjordan. Even then, settlement work was completed only in about one-half of the cultivated land in Syria by 1941.3 British boasting of their achievements in Transjordan was, of course, self-serving, as the British were anxious to prove to themselves and the Transjordanian government that their efforts had yielded significant results. But did the land program in fact succeed in the manner it 1

CO 831/60/5, assistant high commissioner to secretary of state (29 August 1945). ~ CO 831/54/7, note of John S. Bennett on the file's cover sheet. 3 FO 922/258, report 180728, pp. 23-25.

RESULTS OF THE LAND PROGRAM

125

intended? If the main goals had been developmental and fiscal, was the program a success? What indications and data we possess suggest in fact that the program largely did not yield the results coveted by those who designed and implemented it. In fact, the program led to a series of unanticipated negative consequences. Its more successful political results are discussed in chapter six.

Developmental Results

An essential belief among the British officials who developed and oversaw implementation of the land program in Transjordan was that securing and registering individual property rights, demarcating the boundaries of individual plots of land, and partitioning the large expanses of mushdc land would encourage individual cultivators to take steps to improve their land knowing that the fruits of such labor would accrue to them and them alone now that the "confusion" over property rights had ended. Does the evidence support this belief? Mandatory officials in Transjordan and others reported that cultivators in the former mushdc villages did in fact exert considerable efforts toward improving their new7, individualized land. Farmers began clearing stones from fields now that the land was theirs in perpetuity; formerly under the musha' system, they only farmed a particular piece of land for a few years before moving on. Time and expense at improving that plot allegedly had not been worth it to them because they would lose the benefits once they rotated plots. British officials also claimed that some persons who bought state lands began improving the land and cultivation technology.4 Certainly mechanization appeared: while there were only nine tractors in the country in 1939, of which six were sold and sent to Palestine during the Second World War, there were 59 in the country by 1951." But other Englishmen noted the overall lack of development. One noted in 1946 that ". . . many [cultivators]

+

Annual Report 1937, p. 309; Annual Report 1938, p. 300; Walpole "Land Problems," p. 57; Johnson, "Land Study—Five Villages in Jordan," p. 2. 1 Konikoff, Transjordan: An Economic Survey, p. 39, and Jordan, Ministry of Economy, Department of General Statistics, al-Nashra al-Ihsa'iyya al~Sanawiyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook] (Amman: 1952), p. 94. It should be noted that the presence of more tractors by 1951 may also have been the result of the increased capital accumulated in Transjordan thanks to profits made by merchants and others during the Second World War.

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CHAPTER FIVE

are still loath to try improvements. Propaganda for terracing, building walls, and contour ploughing has not so far met with the desired response amongst the numerous small landholders . . ."6 Even Walpole conceded that "There is no doubt that advantage is being taken of this new situation [security of title after settlement], not, it must be admitted, as quickly as one would wish, but in every settled village there are signs of development."7 The evidence is mixed, however, when it comes to determining whether or not this new alacrity at improving land led to higher agricultural yields. A contemporary British publication claimed that agricultural production increased 139 percent between 1930—32 and 1937—39.8 But drought years during the early 1930s skew these results. The Jordanian government carried out a study of agriculture in the Ghawr in the late 1950s and noted that production had in fact risen there after completion of the land program, although this and introduction of more modern agricultural techniques were only two of several reasons why (others included increased irrigation due to the beginning of the ambitious East Ghawr Canal Project in 1958, expanded work force due to Palestinian refugee farmers, etc.)9 Another study indicated that the land program led to such increased vegetable production in the Ghawr that imports from Syria eventually ended and the country began to export vegetables.10 Yet a private American study of five villages in the southern part of the cAjlun province revealed that the land program had produced neither new agricultural methods nor increased crop yields.11 This fact is important to bear in mind given that it reflects conditions in a part of the country that did not experience the influx of labor, irrigation, and attention that the Jordan Valley did after the land program. The following statistics reveal the irregular agricultural production levels of the period 1937 53 which, while making it difficult to assess whether or not the land program succeeded in stimulating agricul-

6 Marcus Mackenzie, "Transjordan," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 33 (July-October 1946): 262. ' Walpole "Land Problems," p. 57. 8 "Transjordan's Economy," The Economist [London] (16 October 1943), p. 523. 9 Jordan, Ministry of National Economy, Department of Statistics, The East Jordan Valley. A Social and Economic Survey (Amman: n.p., 1961), p. 139. 10 Hassan Abd El Kadir Saleh, "A Regional Study of the East Jordan Valley, with Special Relation to the Problem of Soil and Water Utilization", Vol. One (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Durham, 1969), p. 279. 11 Johnson "Land Study," pp. 1-2.


127

tural production, certainly suggest that overall production figures did not skyrocket after settlement as some may have hoped. Fluctuations can be explained by unpredictable rains, among other reasons: Table 11: Agricultural Production, 1927-1953 Year

1927 1932 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1949-50 1953

Wheat (Tons)

Barley (Tons)

35,000 41,700 40,800 113,000 85,100 168,400 171,000 71,000 113,000 100,000 106,031 94,032

12,000 10,000 16,800 53,000 45,000 98,300 58,000 31,000 51,000 55,000 41,406 29,847

All Grain (Tons)

N/A N/A N/A 117,300 139,320 271,040 234,070 103,710 169,600 161,350 184,250 150,698

Fruit (Tons)

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 16,546 66,143

Source: al-JVashra al-lhsa'iyya al-'Amma 1951 [1951 General Statistical Yearbook], p. 81; 1953 Census of Agriculture, pp. 39-40; Konikoff, Transjordan. An Economic Survey, p. 42; Statistical Handbook of Middle Eastern Countries. Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, the Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Turkey (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency for Palestine, Economic Research Institute, 1945), p. 120.

Overall, the land program produced mixed developmental results. No huge increase in agricultural production was realized, despite the hopes of those who created and implemented it.

Fiscal Results One of the major goals of the land program was to regularize and increase revenues from land taxation, the largest source of tax revenue in the country. This would go far in reducing Jordan's financial dependence on British aid. Statistics reveal that land tax revenues did in fact increase after completion of the land program, but only slightly. Total land tax revenues before land settlement began in 1933 stood at £P78,641. By 1946, they had risen to £P88,274—an increase of £P9,606 or 12.2 percent.12 Considering wartime inflation during the 12 DLS/diwan, 16/3/64, "Statistics: Quarterly Progress Reports"; document: "Statistics Progress Report for the Period 1/1/45-31/12/46), p. 2.

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CHAPTER FIVE

1940s, the figure was even less. As seen below, this was a tiny amount considering the cost of settlement. The following statistics from 1938 reveal tax liabilities among landowners based on the amount they paid: Table 12: Annual Land Tax Assessments by Amount, 1938 Amount of Assessment

Less than £P1 /"pi

o

/~PO

Q

£P3-4 More than £P4

Number of Taxpayers

10,581 3,103 1,047 567 662

Percentage of Total Taxpayers

66 19 7 4 4

Source: Annual Report 1938, p. 328.

Part of the reason why tax revenues did not always increase dramatically was a policy adopted by the government whereby land taxes could be remitted for villages suffering from poor crop yields due to drought. The Tax Remission Law of 1933 allowed the government to revise or even cancel tax assessments because of droughtrelated crop damage. Such damage was assessed on a percentage basis, and depended upon circumstances and region and thus varied from village to village. For instance, the government waived some of the taxes owed by 20 villages in c Ajlun province in July 1933, ranging from a 50 percent reduction to a full waiver in some instances. Over ^P 1,300 was waived again in 1935 because of drought. In 1942, £P3,999 in taxes were remitted from 65 villages in the Irbid district and £P 1,459 from 29 villages the following year. And in November 1948, the government forgave £P3,642 in taxes once again from the Irbid district in "Ajlun.13 While politically expedient and perhaps even generous, these policies reduced tax revenues and thus militated against the government's hopes to raise tax revenues. An additional source of revenue generated by the land program came from fees levied on landowners. Villages were assessed settlement fees to help the department of lands and survey defray the cost of the massive land settlement program. In the c Ajlun province

13

NLCDD, files of the prime ministry No. 47, "al-Kashf cala al-Ziracat al-Hasila" [Investigation into Agricultural Produce], numerous documents.


129

alone, £P8,649 in settlement fees were collected from 1933—38.14 Another departmental report stated that £P36,794 in settlement fees were collected from the entire country between 1933-45.l3 Even then, settlement was extremely expensive. The preceding fiscal survey of 1927-33 alone had cost £P44,000, and settlement involved far more work. Despite the amount collected in settlement fees, this figure was never the amount actually assessed. The land department collected only 25 percent of the fees it levied in 1945, for instance. The highest percentage collected was 88 percent, in 1943.16 To speed up the process of settlement and benefit from its fiscal enhancements, the government therefore solicited a grant from the Colonial Development Fund in London in 1936 to hire two additional settlement parties. The fund approved a £P30,000 grant dispersed over six years, and later awarded the government two additional grants of £P20,000 each in 1942 and 1945.17 So settlement fees, while helpful, certainly did not totally offset the costs of the land program. A final source of revenue stemming from the program came from registration fees. While registration of one's own land after completion of land settlement was optional, any subsequent sales or other transactions to another person were required to be registered and fees assessed. In the 'Ajlun province, the first to be settled, 15,923 land transactions took place between 1934-37. The government collected £P6,795 in associated fees. Combined, such transactions fees totaled £P 15,368 in cAjlun from 1933-38.18 The significance lies in the fact that the British land policy thus ensured a steady flow of registration fees into the state treasury. Overall, Dowson's ambitious land program did not lead to dramatically higher revenues flowing into the treasury. Considering that this was a major goal of the program, mandatory authorities could not have been pleased. 14 DLS/dwan, file 29/4/16, vol. 1, "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant"; document: report covering work 1 April 1938 through 31 March 1940, p. 3. 1;> DLS/dfwan, file 64/3/16, "Statistics Quarterly Progress Reports"; document: "Statistics Progress Report for the Period 1/1/45-31/12/46", p. 2. The figures relating to 'Ajlun in this document seem to vary from those cited immediately above. '" Ibid. 17 DLS/dfwan, file 29/4/16, vol. 1, 2, "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant"; numerous documents. 18 Ibid., vol. 1, document: report covering work 1 April 1938 through 31 March 1940, pp. 2-3.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Effects

on the Land

What of the effects of the land program upon the land itself? Here the land program had a far more profound effect on several levels. On the legal level, the land program kept the 1858 Ottoman Land Code and subsequent legislation as the basis for Jordanian land law, with the important modifications represented by the Land Settlement Law and other laws. For all the British hostility toward certain Ottoman land policies, the Ottomans' division of land into five legal categories (milk, mm, waqf, matruk, mawdt] plus state lands was essentially retained with some noteworthy exceptions. The first two categories were retained outright. Keeping the bulk of Jordan's land as mm meant that the state remained the titular landlord, although for all intents and purposes the distinction between milk and mm disappeared. The main distinction dealt with the fact that inheritance of the former was governed by civil procedure while that of the latter was governed by state land law (see chapter one). But the state did enact policies that expanded the scope of milk at the expense of mm. As the population began rising, towns and villages began building houses and other buildings on agricultural lands. This meant that municipal boundaries were expanding. Since the land law stated that land within municipal boundaries was classified as milk, the question arose, what becomes of mm agricultural lands that are subsequently incorporated within the borders of the built-up portion of a town or village? The state decided that the lands should become milk. The Law of Converting Lands from Mm to Milk No. 41 of 1953 stated that when municipal expansion into surrounding fields took place, the newly-incorporated lands in question would cease being mm and would become milk. Thus after 1953, the state began reducing the scope of mm land in Jordan as the population grew. Nowhere was the loss of mm agricultural lands to urban sprawl more noticeable than in the capital, Amman, where the huge influx of population after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War led to the massive growth in the city. Unlike the Land Code, which governed mm, the Mejelle civil code stated that female heir inherited a share in milk land only half as large as their brothers. This meant that an increasingly larger and larger share of Jordanian women, by virtue of their residence in the capital, were denied an equal share to land inheritance. The land program also maintained the existence of waqf land but again, with some important changes. By 1951, 2,106 dunums of waqf


131

land had been registered throughout the country except in Macan and al-Tafila, where settlement operations were still underway and data incomplete.19 But in a break with precedent, land settlement teams registered such land not as "independent" waqfbut rather, in the name of the state treasury as a form of state land "on behalf of the Muslims [or Christians] of so-and-so village." Long afterwards, in 1961, the government decided to register waqf in the name of director-general of the waqf department instead of the treasury, but this merely represented changing the registration from one government office to another. Under the policy of the 1930s, the state technically confiscated waqf lands and registered them in its name, although it was careful to record itself as the custodian of these lands with clear rights going to the populace in question. At times, the state was challenged. In Jarash, for instance, the settlement party registered a certain plot of land as waqf for the "Muslims of Jarash" in 1938. But the Circassian community raised an objection before the land settlement court claiming that the four plots of land in question had in fact been endowed specifically for the mosque belonging to the Circassian Muslim community and not the general Muslim population of Jarash. When representatives from the Arab population confirmed this, the court ordered that the "schedule of rights" be amended to note that the waqf question was for the Circassian Muslim community only.20 In yet other places, religious land was registered for the use of both Christians and Muslims. This occurred at the shrine known as Mazar al-Khadr in the village of Mahis, in al-Balqa5. Here, both the Muslims of Mahis and the Christians of neighboring al-Fuhays shared rights to the shrine.21 The latter case is also instructive in that it shows that not only waqf land but religious shrines and cemeteries were also registered in the name of the treasury on behalf of the local population possessing rights to them. The state not only took over waqf lands, it also reduced their scope by following a strict, legal definition of waqf as it had done earlier in the 1920s. Only land for which legal waqfyya documents could be produced was registered to the treasury as waqf. By following the

19

al-Nashra al-Ihsa'iyya al-Sanaunyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook], pp. 58-59. 20 DLS/settlement, Jarash files. Folders from the land settlement court, "Qadlya 6/175" [Case 6/175]. 21 DLS/settlement, Mahis files. "al-Taqarir" [Reports], report no. 84.

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strict logic applied in the 1920s in the Ghawr Abl cUbayda case discussed earlier in this study, the treasury took away plots of land that the populace in several localities had long considered waqf but for which no documents could be produced demonstrating that the land had been properly endowed. The land was then registered as mm. Malka, in northern cAjlun, possessed both a shrine and lands considered waqf. Persons such as the local waqf administrator, al-Hdjj c Umar al-Yusuf al-MalkawI, claimed several plots of land as endowment land only to be overruled during the land settlement process in 1938.22 And during settlement in Amman in 1944, the Circassian community lost several plots of land it had claimed as a type of waqf to the treasury because it lacked the proper documents to prove this. The settlement party did agree, however, to register the proceeds from these lands as endowment for the upkeep of the mosques in Hashirmyya and Shabsogh areas of the capital.23 A final example involves a huge stretch of some 12,600 diinums of waqf land known as the waqf of Khalis cUthman Efendl in Dayr Abl Sacld in c Ajlun that while apparently considered endowment land in Ottoman times was never registered as such by Transjordanian authorities, nor did any of the local population seem to object.24 The land program essentially did away with the former Ottoman categories of matruk and mawat land as well and registered such areas to the state treasury "on behalf" of those with rights to it. Areas of the former such as pasture lands were registered to the treasury this way, such as pasture land in Na c ur, in al-Balqa3 that was for the use of the Circassians in the village.25 In fact, there were 438,949 dunums of pasturage in state possession throughout Jordan by 1951, excluding the governorates of Macan and al-Tama.26 Threshing floors, 22 DLS/settlement, Malka files. File "Taqanr Basatin al-Sukkar" [Reports on the Sukkar Gardens], document "Taqnr Niha'i can al-Ifraz li-Qariyat Malka" [Final Report on the Partition of Malka Village]; document "Taqrir [Report] no. 26; and document "Qirar al-Hukm [Decision of Ruling] of 23 July 1939. 23 DLS/settlement, Amman files. File "Madinat 'Amman, Taqanr al-Taswiya— 3, min 108 to 125" [City of Amman, Settlement Reports—3, from 108 to 125], document: report no. 126. 24 For information on this land, see al-Jaludf "Qada5 c Ajlun 1864-1918" ['Ajlun Governorate 1864-1918], p. 225, and Rogan "Incorporating the Periphery," p. 65, f.n. 1. The Transjordanian settlement files from Dayr Abl Sacfd reveal no controversy surrounding the disappearance of this waqf. See DLS/settlement, Dayr Abi Sacrd files. 25 DLS/settlement, Na'ur files, file/document "Jadwal al-Huquq" [Schedule of Rights]. 26 al'Nashra al-Ihsa'lyya al-Sanawlyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook], p. 59.


133

pools and springs were also recorded as belonging to the treasury. Mawat similarly ceased to exist, although in the case of al-Salt governorate, 15,941 dunums of mawat were registered to the treasury for reasons unknown to the author. All other lands formerly considered mawat were either assigned to the cultivators occupying them, if they were cultivable, registered to the treasury if they had been used for grazing animals, forests, or registered to the treasury as unexploited land if no one was cultivating them (in which case they were called c utl lands). By 1952, land settlement had registered over one million dunums to the treasury, including waqf. Despite the sale of much state land during the land program, the "nationalization" of lands such as matruk and mawat led to massive accumulation of land into the state's hands. By 1958, the state owned 282,053 dunums of former matruk.21 The treasury came to control a huge amount of land throughout the country by the 1950s. State lands in 1953 consisted of 2,639,580 dunums, of which 1,114,266 dunums were state forest.28 By 1958, this figure stood at 3,098,032 dunums, of which 1,157,181 dunums were state forest.29 Such state lands took the form of land registered to the treasury on behalf of those possessing rights to it, land for the "public good," state forests, historic ruins, roads, national parks, and land for schools, among others. The treasury was still amenable to disposing of state lands even after completion of the program, through leases or, in the case of those who "revived" cutl lands through cultivation, sale by way of a nominal fee. Thus the land program led to two opposite results in terms of state vs. private land rights were concerned. On the one hand it strengthened individual rights to land by partitioning mushac and other forms of joint ownership, selling off certain types of cultivable state land, and by extending the scope of pure private freehold (milk) as municipal boundaries expanded. But on the other hand the treasury curtailed the legal independence of religious endowment land and brought socially controlled lands such as pastures under the rubric of state ownership. Beyond legal changes, the land program led to some profound

DLS Annual Report 1958, p. 11. 1953 Census of Agriculture, p. 2. DLS 1958, p. 11.

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CHAPTER FIVE

changes in the land itself. What the British creators of the land program were quickly forced to realize was that the "inefficient" and often collectively-determined aspects of land tenure in Transjordan had in fact served some useful purposes. Once they were removed and replaced with a more Western concept of unchallenged individual possession of a plot of ground, some unanticipated and quite negative consequences soon emerged. Nowhere was this seen more dramatically than in the shrinking size of plots and soil erosion. The land department quickly became concerned about the shrinking size of plots of land in the wake of the land program, and feared that continuation of this trend would lead to plots of land that were so small as to be uneconomical and incapable of yielding satisfactory agricultural produce. Several factors contributed to the phenomenon of plot fragmentation. The first had nothing to do with the land program: population growth. As Jordan's population grew, so did the number of heirs who inherited land. Since both civil law and the Land Code mandated that all heirs be assigned a share of Table 13: Growth in Numbers of Landowners, 1934—1952 Tear of Land Settlement

1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952

No. Owners in Villages in that Tear

2,769 2,221 3,947 6,190 4,362 9,197 5,429 2,789 4,836 627 9,216 8,962 1,799 6,518 5,742 9,436 8,293 924 3,429


No. Owners in Same Villages by 1954

4,966 4,084 4,924 8,131 5,983 9,350 6,404 3,236 5,153 671 9,084 9,237 1,831 6,713 5,836 9,631 10,821 977 2,518


135

the deceased's land, land became owned by an ever larger number of persons as revealed by the following statistics which show how the number of landowners in villages that were settled in each year of settlement had grown between that year and 1954. These statistics clearly demonstrate a trend that was underway by the 1950s: population growth, combined with the results of land settlement, led to an increasing number of persons owning a finite amount of land with the result that plot sizes began shrinking. The above-cited statistics show this most clearly for villages that were settled first. In the first place, they had more time for population growth between the year of settlement and 1954. Secondly, the villages settled in the early years (1933—39) lay in the cAjlun province, the most densely-populated region of the country. So the number of persons who owned land in "Ajluni villages that were settled in 1934, for instance (2,769 persons) had skyrocketed to 4,966 persons with ownership rights to the same amount of territory by 1954. Villages settled in later years lay in the less densely-populated regions of the south. The second factor contributing to increasing plot fragmentation had everything to do with the logic of the land program. Prior to settlement, land that had been owned collectively, either on a villagewide basis through mushdc or on a smaller scale by several co-owners of the same plot, had not always been physically partitioned into separate plots for each co-owner. Under mushd\ each shareholder received a share of the produce. In the case of a plot of mqfruz land co-owned by several persons, they sometimes left the plot undivided but rented it to someone else and divided up the rent money among themselves. But land settlement changed this. It forced villagers in mushdc villages to partition their collectively-owned land into individual plots. Similarly, settlement officers encouraged co-owners of individual plots to partition their plots among themselves so that each person had his/her own particular plot. Jordanian authorities soon realized that the old system of keeping land held in various forms of collective ownership had worked to prevent plot fragmentation. This was became there was no physical partition under mushac\ only shares in the land were subdivided. After the final partition of musha' during land settlement, those safeguards were gone. As land was inherited, each heir could (and often did) demand that the land be physically partitioned among all heirs. The result was that the size of plots began shrinking over the course of

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time. The Department of Lands and Survey estimated that the average size of landholdings in villages that had been settled in cAjlun from 1933-37 had shrunk a full 22 percent within ten years of settlement.30 The following statistics compare average size of holdings in Jordanian villages at the time they were settled with the average holding for those same villages in 1954, revealing the extent to which they had declined: Table 14: Declining Size in Average Landholding, 1934—1952 Tear of Land Settlement

1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952

Average Landholding (Dunums) at Time of Settlement

69 97 29 40 70 55 42 36 43 120 36 44 39 41 46 32 53 51 65

Average Landholding (Dunums) by 1954

38 53 23 26 66 47 32 31 40 111 35 41 38 40 45 31 51 49 69

Source'. DLS Annual Report 1954, p. 9.

The dramatic drop in plot sizes is most apparent in the villages that were settled first, since there was more time between those years and 1954. The former mushd' villages represented the greatest problem in this direction. Despite the settlement parties' efforts to the contrary, partition in such villages often produced up to four separate, disparate plots of land rather than a single large plot. This was due to Walpole "Land Problems," p. 59.


137

the fact that each shareholder invariably sought a plot in each of the most fertile portions of the village, no matter how small it may have been. Land officials often struggled in vain to convince the cultivators to settle for fewer but larger plots. The ultimate irony for those British officials who so vociferously condemned the alleged inefficiences of mushdc is that the system of undivided collective ownership had served to ensure that subsistence-level landholdings were maintained. The problem of shrinking plots sizes was not only that they would become too small to be tilled effectively but also that it reduced the total land resources at the disposal of Jordanian cultivators and seriously threatened their livelihood. Just how much land did the average subsistence-level cultivator need to survive? American sources in the 1930s claimed that the average Transjordanian farmer was capable of farming up to 300 dunums, in a season.31 A British investigatory commission determined that a family of four to six persons needed a total of some 500 dunums for subsistence-level grain farming in hilly areas, 350 dunums in the plains, or 120 dunums in the irrigable plains.32 Yet by 1940, the average family holding for the entire country was estimated in the late 1930s by a British official working for the Transjordanian government at only 85 dunums.33 But a more immediate and interesting result of shrinking plot sizes was that the owners of small, uneconomical plots rented them to the owners of larger, neighboring plots instead of farming them themselves. By 1953, a full 25.4 percent of all properties in 'Ajlun, scene of the smallest plot sizes, were rented out by the owner instead of farming it him/herself (7,302 of 28,807 holdings). The overwhelming majority of plots rented were small holdings of less than 10 dunums in size.34 The other immediate change in the land itself was the rising problem of soil erosion. In their great zeal to improve their newlyindividualized plots of land, cultivators in former musha' villages began tearing down the communal erosion banks and windbreaks that the 31 U.S. State Department records, decimal files, file 8901.00/10 (1931), document: "Economic and Political Situation in Transjordan," p. 19. 32 CO 831/34/8, recommendations of committee. 33 M.G. lonides, Report on the Water Resources of Transjordan and Their Development (London: Crown Agents for Colonies for the Transjordan Government, n.d.), pp. 5-6. 34 1953 Census of Agriculture, p. 1.

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villages had formerly maintained and ploughing the ground instead. This had already become a serious problem by the 1950s.

Indebtedness Surely one of the most serious unanticipated results of the land program for Jordanian landowners was growing indebtedness during the 1930s and 1940s as more and more of them began mortgaging their land. By the mid-1940s, the government was faced with the specter of massive amounts of land passing into the hands of merchants and moneylenders as cultivators began defaulting on their mortgages. The roots of the problem were twofold: the pressing need for cash among the cultivators and the ease with which cultivators could mortgage their lands after land settlement. Jordanian farmers had long needed cash. Chapter two discussed the growth of this issue during the Ottoman period, where the establishment of state structures and tax regimes and the incorporation of the region further into global markets not only intensified the need for coin but also facilitated the penetration of capital via money lenders. This process continued into the mandate. Agricultural production was extremely volatile during the drought years of the early 1930s and late 1940s, forcing cultivators to borrow money for paying taxes, buying seed and farm implements, marrying their children, etc. Smaller loans could be obtained from fellow villagers, shopkeepers, and soldiers from the Arab Legion and Transjordan Frontier Force who shrewdly lent out their salaries. Larger loans were extended by wealthy merchants and usurers from the towns and larger villages. The legal interest rate was set by the government at nine percent, but it often was set at 40 percent in practice. Failure to repay loans could lead to imprisonment or foreclosure and the loss of land. The amount of debt in a particular village depended upon a number of factors. These included the amount of rainfall, fertility of the soil, proximity of sources of irrigation, wealth of the landowners, and availability of capital. The following statistics detail the various levels of indebtedness found by settlement parties at the time they settled several randomly-selected villages in northern Transjordan. In some cases settlement officers found some outstanding loans in Ottoman

139


and European currency in addition to debts in Palestinian currency, which was the legal currency: Table 15: Level of Indebtedness in Selected Villages in cAjlun, 1935^-1949 Village

Settlement Dates

No. of Registered Loans

al-Majdal al-Nucayma

1935-36 1935-36

3 30

Barishita Dayr Abf SacTd Kufr Sawm

1937 1938-39 1937-38

1 2 59

Kufranja

1940-42

36

Zabdat Farkuh Malka

1937-38 1938-39

1 31

Qafqafa 'Ajlun

1945 1934-35

36 98

al-Kitta

1939-40

28

Sukhur al-Ghawr al-Tayyiba

1948-49 1937-39

79 21

Amount (£P)

Amount /loan (£P)

469.980 1,409.940 7.718 230.550 (plus £T28) 4.000 4.000 20.000 10.000 10.137 598.095 (plus £T17) 357.000 14.875 (plus £T11 plus 3,062 riyafe)

165.000 165.000 324.000 12.462 (plus £T115) 4,314.500 119.847 743.125 7.583 (plus £T11 plus 3,000 qirsh plus 120 riyak, plus 16 French francs) 228.070 8.447 (plus 62 riyak} 10,976.500 138.943 657.320 31.301

Source: Culled from DLS/settlement files for these villages.

One notes that while the problem was relatively minor in some villages, it was a major problem in others, especially those nearer to the desert like Qafqafa. It is instructive to note as well that in many villages, landowners borrowed from other villagers, not outside lenders. In fact, there were more loans from other villagers than outsiders in eight of the 14 villages listed above. The government's Agricultural Bank was of little help for several reasons. Re-established by the emirate in April 1922, the bank never became the lender of first choice among Transjordanian landowners. This was partly because of its distance from villages. While branches were established in Irbid, Amman, al-Salt, Jarash, and al-Karak by

140

CHAPTER FIVE

1924, only the Amman branch was left operating by 1935. Another serious problem was the popular impression that the bank only lent to the wealthy and influential. But the bank's most serious problem was that it was under-capitalized. The bank originally functioned under its former Ottoman regulations, and was funded by a grant of one per cent of the cushr tax collected by the government. But this was woefully insufficient. In 1925, the government of Palestine lent the government of Transjordan ^Pl0,000 to help the Agricultural Bank extend loans as a result of the drought that year (Transjordan paid back the loan in 1927, but the bank still owed some money to the Transjordanian treasury by the beginning of the 1930s). In 1928, the Transjordanian treasury lent the bank -£P4,000 that was left over from an earthquake relief loan extended by the British government the previous year. By March 1929, the bank's capital stood as approximately £P40,000.35 By the late 1920s, the treasury had ceased providing a percentage of tax revenues to the bank in favor of an annual payment of £P3,500. The bank's reserves were so small that American diplomats in 1931 dismissed the bank as existing merely "on paper."36 The dearth of funds available for the Agricultural Bank to lend extended into the drought-stricken 1930s. In 1935, the British government was obliged to lend the bank £P 15,000 so it could extend more loans. The need was certainly there: during fiscal year 1936-37, for instance, the bank lent a full £P 13,444 to cultivators in the cAjlun province alone.37 The vast majority of these loans were through the process of kafdla mutasalsala. This was the last major problem with the bank: as it had been during Ottoman times, kafdla mutasalsala was a short-term loan extended during difficult economic times to cultivators in mushac villages who pledged seeds as collateral and were collectively responsible for re-payment. Since they had no individual plots of land to mortgage as collateral, they were only able to obtain

35

Annual Report 1938, p. 339. U.S. State Department decimal file 8901.00/10 (1931), document: Despatch no. 594, "Economic and Political Situation in Transjordan" (15 September 1931). 37 NLCDD, files of the prime ministry, file No. 875, "Taqarir Idariyya li-Masraf al-Ziracr al-Shahriyya wa'1-SanawTyya" [Annual and Monthly Administrative Reports for the Agricultural Bank]: document: al-Taqrir al-Sanawi li'l-Masraf al-îra'i fl Sharq al-Urdunn can Sanat 1936-37 [Annual Report for the Agricultural Bank in Transjordan for the Year 1936-37], p. 4. 36


141

these small loans (£P10 at most) and only those who were taxpayers could qualify. Only a few loans were true mortgages wrhereby the cultivator pledged his/her mafruz land as collateral against a loan of nor more than 40 percent of the land's value. The loan ceiling was £P200, although this was later raised to £P300 and even larger loans could be arranged with special permission. The interest rate was fixed at nine percent. By the end of November 1935, the bank's capital stood at £P60,348.38 The following statistics show levels of indebtedness to the Agricultural Bank by governorate during the 1937-38 fiscal year: Table 16: Loans Extended by Agricultural Bank during 1937^1938 Governorate

Irbid Jarash Jabal c Ajlun Amman al-Salt Madaba al-Karak al-Tafila Macan (statistical settlement) TOTAL

Mortgages (£P)

Lent Through Kafala Mutasalsala (£P)

Total

6,807.000 461.700 2,074.500 5,824.500 3,881.400 3,007.850 741.000 0 32.700 2.910

0 0 0 560.000 1,451.500 0 0 88.000 0 38.514

6,807.000 461.700 2,074.500 6,384.500 5,332.900 3,007.850 741.000 88.000 32.700 41.424

22,833.560

2,183.014

24,971.574

Source: "Taqanr Idariyya li-Masraf al-Zirac! al-Shahriyya wa'1-Sanawiyya" [Annual and Monthly Administrative Reports for the Agricultural Bank]; document: "al-Taqrir al-Sanawi ti'l-Masraf al-tya'i f i Sharq al-Urdunn can Sanat 193&-1937" [Annual Report for the Agricultural Bank in Transjordan for the Year 1936-1937), p. 4.

Land settlement appeared to be a god-send to cash-strapped cultivators, for it allowed them to borrow much more money than before. First of all, it partitioned mushdc and thus created the individual plots needed for those who wanted to secure regular mortgage loans from the Agricultural Bank (in fact, the bank initially stopped lending kqfdla mutasalsala loans altogether). But more importantly, land that had

Annual Report 1938, p. 339.

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CHAPTER FIVE

been settled immediately rose in value. Settled land was legally secure because all disputes over land rights, boundaries, etc. had been cleared up. On the open market, the land was thereafter more valuable because potential buyers, or merchants wishing to lend money against it, could rest assured that the owner owned the land "clear and free." Lenders like the merchants in Amman who had been enriched during the Second World War became more willing to lend now that tide was secure and that the collateral (the land) was more valuable. The land department estimated that the capital value of land in the cAjlun province, the first to be settled, stood at over £P2,469,939 in 1946.39 And thirdly, registration, mortgage, and transfer procedures at branch land registry offices had been simplified as part of the land program. Mortgage transactions were thereafter easier to carry out, as were foreclosures and land alienation in cases of non-repayment. A good example of the effect of settlement, the availability of capital after the Second World War, and other factors such as drought that led to the increased need for capital among cultivators can be seen in the case of the village of Hawwara in the plains just east of Irbid, which was the first mushac village settled in Transjordan. This area was plagued by irregular rainfall, and cultivators were constantly in need of cash. Just how much higher the levels of indebtedness rose in the village is illustrated in the following two sets of figures. When the land settlement process recorded the amount of debt in the village in 1933, settlement officers found 27 debtors among the 185 land owners in the village, who together had borrowed £P260.500 taken out in 22 loans from 12 private lenders (in addition to six other loans in Ottoman currency totaling £T195). Hawwara was resettled in 1947, the year of a major drought that hit Jordan and 14 years after its first settlement had been completed. This time settlement officers recorded that 62 persons had borrowed ^P4,864.600 in 60 loans from 40 lenders, in addition to one loan of £T40 and 13 loans totaling -£P658 from the Agricultural Bank. In addition to the vast increase in total indebtedness from 1933—47, we note that the number of money lenders active in the village and the average amount each of them lent had increased as well, even considering inflation. There were 12 recorded lenders extending an average of

39

DLS/dfwan, 16/4/29, vol. 1,2, "Papers Relating to C.D.F. Grant"; document: memorandum of 15 April 1946.


143

£P28.944/lender in 1933; by 1947, this had grown to 40 lenders extending an average of £P 121.615/lender in 1947.40 The number of mortgages taken out against land began climbing throughout Transjordan in the wake of land settlement starting in the late 1930s. So eager were villagers to take advantage of the new simplified lending procedures and borrow money against their newlysettled, more valuable land that the land department was forced to double its staff at the registry office in Irbid to handle the new volume of mortgages. In fact, 75 percent of mortgages executed there dealt with 12 settled villages only.41 A committee investigating this problem in 1935 warned of rising indebtedness, and urged the creation of a special committee comprised of officials from the financial and legal departments and in consultation with merchants and farmers. Such a committee could help both cultivators and yet safeguard the interests of merchant lenders.42 Comparing debt figures from the time that settlement was well underway in the country by 1939 with figures from 1950 provides a sense of the scale of the rise in indebtedness. The total registered debt in Transjordan for all the years prior to 1939 was £P3,397. In 1939 alone, £P 195,919 was borrowed against land and by 1945, cultivators had accumulated a total indebtedness of £P815,628.43 From 1937-45, registered mortgages in Transjordan increased 460 percent, even though these were by and large years of bountiful harvests.44 The serious drought of 1947 worsened the mounting problem. In the village of Wad! Musa near the fabled ruins of Petra in the south, for example, 546 landowners borrowed money from the Agricultural Bank that year, which had returned to issuing kafdla mutasalsala loans. By 1948, villagers in Wad! Musa owed the bank -£P3,243. Villagers in Busayra borrowed £P2,127 from the bank in 1947 in the same fashion.4'

40

Figures taken from DLS/settlement, Hawwara files. CO 831/46/6, "Situation Report—October 1938." 42 CO 831/34/77114, recommendations of committee. 43 DLS Annual Report 1950, p. 5. Another source places the pre-1939 figure at £P2,727. See al-Nashm al-lhsa'lyya al-Sanomyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook], p. 70. 44 DLS Annual Report 1945, p. 5. 45 DLS/settlement, Wad! Musa files, file "al-Taqanr 1-72" [Reports 1-72]; document: letter of 15 November 1951; and DLS/settlement, Busayra files, file "Idbarat al-Taqarlr min 230-237—Jild 2" [File of Reports 230-237—Volume 2]; document: report 230. 41

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CHAPTER FIVE

By 1951, total registered debt in Jordan had risen to JD 1,068,514 [£P1 = JD1].46 In the East Bank in 1951, excluding the governorates of al-TafTla and Macan (where settlement had not yet been completed), 601,794 out of 2,760,317 dunums—a. full 21.8 percent—of all cultivable had been mortgaged.47 And by the end of 1954, registered debt in all East Bank districts had climbed to JD1,332,894.48 A study of five villages in southern 'Ajlun issued in 1953 by the American Friends Service Committee in conjunction with the land department revealed statistics showing that between 40—80 percent of land in each village was mortgaged: Table 17: Indebtedness and Mortgages in Five Villages in cAjlun, 1953 Village Nahla al-Jazzaza Raymun al-Kitta Dibbfn

Area of Private Ownership (Dun.) 2,139 3,763 3,498 21,969 2,069

No. of Owners

Area Mortgaged (Dunums)

% Total Area Mortgaged

111 69 214 491 60

840 3,104 1,833 8,045 1,099

39 82 51 36 50


The following statistics reveal the amount of mortgage debt owed by landowners in each East Bank district by 1954: Table 18: Indebtedness in East Bank Districts in 1954 District Irbid al-Kura Jarash Jabal 'Ajlun Amman al-Salt Madaba al-Karak

Amount of Debt (JD) 264,851 18,838 133,685 127,589 221,120 303,003 148,134 101,919

Area Mortgaged (Dunums) 135,053 7,361 77,461 29,926 119,903 101,109 63,434 48,342

JD/Dunum 1.961 2.573 1.726 4.263 1.844 2.997 2.335 2.108

46 al-Nashra al-Ihsd'lyya al-Sanawiyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook], pp. 70-71.

47

48

Ibid., pp. 58-59. DLS Annual Report 1954, p. 4.


145

Table 18 (cont.) District

al-Tafila Macan

Amount of Debt (JD)

Area Mortgaged (Dunums)

JD/ Dunum

13,610

15,921

0.855

45

33

1.364


Perhaps to the chagrin of those who had boasted about the progress of the land reforms in Transjordan compared to neighboring Palestine, the rise in indebtedness comprised a much larger problem in Transjordan than it did in Palestine. As will be noted in chapter six, money lenders began foreclosing on mortgages that could not be paid back, and large stretches of land in regions like al-Balqa3 and the Bam Hasan area began falling into their hands. A panicky government quickly stepped in to avoid this.

Conclusion The overall effects of the land program in Transjordan were at once both revolutionary and yet profoundly conservative. They were revolutionary in the sense that soil erosion, plot fragmentation, and indebtedness worsened precipitously. They were also revolutionary in the sense that some of the social dimensions of land ownership and land taxation such as musha' and province-wide tax liabilities were swept away and replaced with systems of individual control of plots and individual tax obligations. Yet the land program by and large did not lead to a fundamental change in the basic contours of tenure patterns in the country. The Jordan of the early-1950s was still a country of small, subsistence-level cultivators farming their own land, although some other steps taken by the government in the 1940s and 1950s helped to ensure this as well. This static revolution was summed up in the following way in reference to the village Kufr al-Ma3 in cAjlun: Today [1968], Kufr al-Ma [sic] cannot be regarded in any sense as a corporate village with control over economic resources. Land sales occur and may be to nonvillagers. However, the village has not yet passed from under the shadow of its corporate history despite the formal revolution in land tenure . . . Over the course of the last twenty years very little land has been alienated to nonvillagers . . . most sales are to neighbors on the land or to lineage mates and clansmen . . .

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CHAPTER FIVE

The registration of land [land settlement] destroyed the corporate nature of the village, at least in its economic aspect and, in a sense, freed individual households for enterprise within and mobility outside it. The remarkable fact is that despite the revolution in land tenure and despite the increase of occupation mobility, so little change has occurred in the village whether in the actual alienation of land outside it or the agglomeration of land within it.49

The land program's ultimate ability to keep small cultivators' land in their hands proved to be one of the most significant impacts of the entire land program, as is discussed in chapter six.

49

Richard T. Antoun, Arab Village. A Social Structural Study of a Transjordanian Peasant Community (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 24.

CHAPTER SIX

LAND POLICY, SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURES, AND POLITICS

Introduction The land program in Jordan represented the most massive intrusion into the population's lives ever introduced by a government on the East Bank to that point in recent history. Agriculture and the land that supported it was the basis of the economy, and the land program touched the lives of most employed persons in Jordan and by extension, their dependents. Examine the following statistics. In 1949, the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture estimated that 85 percent of the population was involved in agriculture.1 More detailed statistics from 1950 reveal that 89.4 percent of the 163,900 workers in rural areas (26.5 percent of the entire rural population) were employed in agriculture without the assistance of agricultural machinery.2 This overwhelmingly rural, agricultural population and their families saw few tangible signs of its government on a daily basis from the 1930s-50s. Not every village had a school. Few people possessed passports or visited the capital Amman. The country did not even possess its own currency until 1949. But by the early 1950s, 454 villages on the East Bank had undergone land settlement. Thousands of people had seen this very visible manifestation of the regime's existence with their own eyes. Thousands had seen the mounted police officer coming to collect the annual land taxes. In truth, government employees involved with land and land taxation offered the most visible expression of the state's existence, a state that had only existed (and then under British tutelage) since 1921. 1 Jordan, Ministry' of Commerce and Agriculture, Department of Customs, Trade & Industry, Administrative Report, Customs, Excise, Trade & Industry, Calendar Tear 1949. - al-Nashra al-Ihsa'lyya al-Urdunmyya 1950 [Jordanian Statistical Yearbook 1950], p. 26. The "rural" population cited in these figures is not equivalent to the "agricultural population." The figures include those persons living outside district centers and municipalities. Certainly there were persons living in those places who were also employed in the agricultural sector. Similarly, some people living in rural villages did not derive their income from agriculture.

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CHAPTER SIX

It is no exaggeration, then, that the relationship between state and society in regards to land was the first and most significant test of that relationship in Jordan. It brought state and citizen into direct and powerful contact with one another. The land program impacted and even altered various social actors and socio-economic structures in the country. It also affected the overall contours of the statesociety relationship, and did so in such a way as to allow the state to accrue considerable political capital during an important period of time. Beyond regime consolidation, the land program also affected Zionist interest in land in the East Bank, and dramatically impacted the lives of West Bank Palestinians after 1950. Beyond its effect on agricultural development, the fiscal situation, and the land itself, then, the land program proved tremendously significant in other socioeconomic and political aspects of modern Jordanian life as well. This chapter outlines some of the ways in which the land program affected social actors, from small cultivators to shaykfa to women. It also charts the political interaction between state and society by examining how these interacted with one another during the course of the land program. Finally, it examines how land program touched the issues of Zionist interest in Jordanian land and Jordan's occupation of the West Bank.

Effects

on Small-Scale Cultivators

Land policies in modern Jordan played a crucial role in guaranteeing the continued existence of a large class of subsistence-level cultivators with clear legal ownership rights to their own, small plots of land. To be sure, the land program created by Englishmen and administered by Jordanian authorities did not create such a class of persons. In fact, Jordan had long been home to a peasant majority in control of its own land in the absence of large holdings by "feudal" landlords.3 But while the state helped cultivators keep their land, it also created conditions that threatened the existence of this free peasantry and its control over land through the same land program.

See Fischbach "State, Society, and Land in cAjlun" for details.


149

Ironically, the state stepped in to reverse the process that it had itself set in motion. One of the main ways that the land program initially assisted small landowners hold onto their land was by allowing them to present and defend their land claims in the public fora offered by the land settlement processes. By and large, land settlement allowed both rich and poor alike to defend their claims to land. Even prisoners, foreigners, and persons residing outside the country could and did submit claims when they heard that settlement had reached villages where they possessed rights. The Syrian Niqola al-Jinnawf kept his land in Mandah and other locales in this manner. Numerous Palestinian Arabs submitted claims, as did Circassians from Palestine like SacTd and Khalid Ishaq al-Shamf who owned land in al-Baqura. British legations in Palestine and Syria sometimes notarized land claims that residents of those countries wished to submit to the land department when they heard of settlement activity in villages where they owned land. The public nature of the proceedings and the settlement officers' scrupulous adherence to procedures allowed small-scale peasants not only to hold onto their land but at times even to seek to retrieve land they argued had been improperly taken from them by shqykhs. Kufr Asad offers such an example. Villagers there claimed that the influential cAzzam family had usurped land and claimed it as private mushac. The settlement officer eventually denied the claim, however, citing the fact that the family had long farmed the land without objection.4 Members of the Hamarina and Farah families in Madaba similarly raised complaints against other, more prominent family members by alleging that they too had deprived the others of land. As a result, cultivators possessing rights to modest landholdings continued to characterize the country before and after land settlement. This is illustrated by statistics that show the average size of plots, average landholding per owner, and the total number of plots of various sizes. First, average plot sizes were generally small, and varied from region to region in the country. These figures show the average size in dunwm of villages for each governorate:

4 DLS/diwan, file 21/57, "al-Taqnr al-cUmumi li-Kufr Asad" [General Report for Kufr Asad].

150

CHAPTER SIX Table 19: Average Surface Area of Villages in Dunums

Governorate

Irbid* Jarash* Jabal 'Ajlun* Amman Madaba al-Salt al-Karak al-Tafila Ma'an

No. Former Mushac Villages

Av. Plot Size (D)

96 49

61 131 357 793 43 193 100 -

7 31 1 1 14 0 0

Mo. Former Mafruz Villages

17 10 11 35 45 34 45 8 12

Av. Plot Size (D)

78 27 27 88 57 66 45 36 125

* Denotes areas containing some mixed musha'-mafruz villages not included in statistics. Source: Sijill Misahat Qura al-Taswiya [Ledger of Surface Area of Settlement Villages].

These figures show that average plot sizes were generally modest, even downright small. In only one area was the average size of former mafmz villages larger than 100 dunums. Some exceptions were former musha' villages in the Jabal cAjlun, al-Salt, and Amman areas, where much of the land was divided among a few individuals. A basic generalization is that average plot size was larger in the southern regions of the country, given the fact that they were less densely populated and that rainfall was sometimes poorer and thus family farms needed to be larger to remain viable. Not only were individual plot sizes generally small, so too was the overall average size of total landholdings owned by any one person. The government gathered statistics in 1950 that revealed the following average size of landholding per owner: Table 20: Average Size of Landholding per Owner, 1950 Governorate

Irbid Jarash Jabal cAjlun Amman Madaba al-Salt al-Karak

No. of Owners

Area Owned by Them (Dunums)

30,630 6,924 8,224 11,408 7,551 10,995 11,169

1,240,024 407,636 286,907 1,017,236 604,913 641,494 914,019

Area (Dunums) Per Owner

40 59 34 89 80 57 82


151

Table 20 (cont.) Governorate

No. of Owners

Area Owned by TTiem (Dunums)

Area (Dunums) Per Owner

al-Taftla Ma'an

2,465 840

563,259 167,169

229 199

TOTAL

90,206

5,842,657

65

Source: al-Nashra al-Ihsa'lyya al-Urdunmyya 1950 [1950 Jordanian Statistical Yearbook], pp. 74-75.

Thus the nation-wide average holding per landowner was 65 dunums by 1950. This confirms statistics gathered in northern villages from 1933~39 by the department of lands and survey that indicated that in areas of good rainfall, the average area per owner was between 56—78 dunums, increasing to 120 dunums/owner in areas along the eastern desert.1 Other more detailed statistics from 1950 confirm that the total holdings possessed by most of the 90,206 landowners in Jordan amounted to less than 100 dunums each: Table 21: Size of Landholdings in 1950 Governorate

Less than 100 Dunums

100^200 Dunums

200-300 Dunums

300-500 Dunums

Over 500 Dunums

Jarash Jabal 'Ajlun Amman Madaba al-Salt al-Karak al-Tafila Macan

27,146 6,052 7,526 9,655 6,083 9,895 9,098 823 408

2,487 630 511 999 695 655 1,084 643 143

575 141 109 306 288 223 405 378 88

273 60 46 197 246 109 358 404 130

149 41 47 251 239 113 224 217 71

TOTAL

76,686

7,847

2,513

1,823

1,337

Irbid

Source: al-Nashra al-Ihsa'iyya al-Urdunmyya 1950 [1950 Jordanian Statistical Yearbook], pp. 74-77.

5

Walpole "Land Problems," p. 63.

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CHAPTER SIX

We can thus characterize Jordanian cultivators by-and-large as smallscale farmers possessing modest holdings made up of several small plots. According to these same statistics, there were only 1,220 large holdings throughout the country of between 500 2,000 dunums (1.37 percent of all owners), 100 holdings of 2,000 5,000 dunums (0.1 percent of all owners), and only 17 holdings of 5,000 or more dunums (0.01 percent of all owners). On the other hand, a full 25.16 percent of all land in Jordan that was privately owned was owned by persons who owned 500 or more dunums. Large landowners consisted of several types of people. Some were descendants of the merchants, usurers, shqykhs, and government officials who had acquired large tracts of land during the Ottoman period and who are discussed earlier in this study. Many individuals and their families maintained ownership in the villages acquired by the forebearers. Most of Hisban, for instance, remained owned by six sections of the Nabulsf family after inheriting it from Muhammad al-NabulsI. Shakib Muhammad al-SharabT and cArif cAbd al-Hamfd al-Sharabl, as well as the five sons of Fayyad al-NabulsT, still owned the land in al-Bunayat obtained by their ancestors.6 Others, however, suffered financially after the Ottoman defeat divided up the regions of Greater Syria. British sources in Palestine noted that " . . . [some] property owners, formerly wealthy, have in many cases been reduced to a state approaching destitution, and are unable to realise or find a market for their land."7 This was true in Transjordan as well. In cAjlun, clzz al-Dm Badr Khan lost a great deal of his land to creditors in Sahm al-Kafarat in 1932, 1935, and 1936.8 By the time of land settlement in 1937, Badr Khan still owned only 2,629 dunums in the village, mostly in partnership with the Agricultural Bank. Other large landowners from the Ottoman era suffered financially during the 1930s as well. The descendants of Husayn cAwnf, the Circassian official in al-Majdal, faced serious debt problems. By 1937, the government determined that the family owed a total of £P309 in back taxes, and dispatched a commission headed by Assistant Director of Lands George Walpole in June of that year to map 400

6

DLS/settlement, Hisban and al-Bunayat files. Annual Report 1920-1921, p. 9. a See the foreclosure notices in OG 371 (1 December 1932), p. 492; OG 440 (16 July 1934), p. 292; OG 471 (2 March 1935), pp. 165-166; OG 502 (16 November 1935), p. 479; and OG 535 (1 October 1936), pp. 351-352. 7


153

dunums, that would be sold to satisfy this tax debt.9 The land does not appear to have been sold. Some of the heirs of Hanna Farkuh's faced debt and tax problems as well. When the widow and infant daughter of Hanna Farkuh's son NajTb could not pay £P28 in back taxes, part of their land in Zabdat Farkuh was put up for auction by the treasury in March 1935 and eventually sold.10 The Bahhuth family of cAkka lost land in al-Mukhayba when the government sold some of it to satisfy their tax debts as well.11 Finally, the large estate of Iskandar Ilyas Kassab suffered when he found himself facing numerous debts and tax liabilities during the first decade of the emirate. In December 1928, some of his extensive lands in the Jordan Valley were placed on the auction bloc to satisfy tax debts, although no one purchased it.12 Kassab died childless in 1932, and 22 of his nephews inherited his land. Some of these quickly sold their shares of land in the Jordan Valley to Kassab's land agent there, clsa Qa'war of al-Salt.13 Yet perhaps the large landowners who suffered the greatest fall from grace were those who owned land in al-Mukhayba.14 A huge dispute broke out there when the Ottoman defeat and the establishment of the emirate separated several large landowners from their lands in the village. These owners included cAbd al-Rahman alYusuf, the Kurdish scion of the Shamdln and al-Yusuf families of Damascus who was discussed in chapter two; the heirs of Hablb Ayyub Bahhuth of cAkka (also discussed in chapter two), and Nasn Sulayman NasTf of Haifa, son of a Lebanese immigrant to Palestine who owned a concession to exploit the mineral hot springs at nearby al-Himma. Al-Yusuf cooperated with the new French administration in Syria established in the wake of Emir FaysaPs defeat at Maysalun and was killed as a collaborator by a crowd in Darca, Hawran, in August 1920. Al-Yusuf's death emboldened the cultivators of alMukhayba to cease paying rent to al-Yusuf's young son, Muhammad Sacid, who was in charge of the family's estate there. The cultivators 9

OG 570 (1 August 1937), pp. 464-465. OG 476 (1 April 1935), pp. 197-198. 11 OG 510 (1 January 1936), p. 7. 12 NLCDD, files of the prime ministry, file #579; 5/16, "al-Muzayida wa'lMunaqisat" [Auction and Awards to Bidders]; letter of 6 January 1929. 13 Interview with Nadfm Mikha'fl Ilyas Kassab, Iskandar's nephew. 14 For details, see Michael R. Fischbach, "Al-Mukhayba Village: A Tale of Shqykhs, Efendis, Peasants, and Land in Transjordan", Dirasat 21 A, 1 (February 1994): 46-71. 10

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were represented in their dispute with Sacfd by the influential shaykh of the al-Rusan family in cAjlun's al-Siru district, Sulayman al-Sudf. In return for his help and for his payment of the village's land taxes, al-Sudf began receiving the sharecropping rent that the villagers had formerly been paying to Muhammad Sacld. Muhammad Sacld defended his rights in the Transjordanian court system on five different occasions between 1920 and 1934. While the villagers claimed that he and his father had acquired the land illegally by violating Ottoman procedures, the courts upheld Muhammad Sacid's claim on four of the five occasions and stated that the rebellious villagers were trespassing on his land.15 But Muhammad Sa'fd ultimately lost his land. An infamous gambler, he had accumulated 12,000 Ottoman liras in debts by 1933.16 When two Syrian banks foreclosed on loans, Muhammad Sacfd was obliged to sell some of his vast landholdings. He placed his land in al-Mukhayba as collateral for a loan of £P2,800 from Nasrf Nasff in late 1933, and lost it the following year when Nasff foreclosed and bought the land at auction. With Muhammad Sacfd out of the picture, Shaykh Sulayman al-Sudf soon approached Nasif and tried to make his own deal with him, which they did. But the Bahhuth heirs in Palestine refused to go along with the deal. Eventually by 1938, all sides agreed to a final solution w'hereby Nasn Nasif and the Bahhuths gave Sulayman al-Sudf some 550 dunurm, in al-Mukhayba, while the Bahhuths gave some further land to Nasff. The episode of al-Mukhayba is illustrative of the difficulties faced by some efendi landowners following the end of the Ottoman rule and how local villagers and shay khz sought to benefit therefrom. Other large landowners in Transjordan were Christian Palestinians who acquired land in two localities in the Jordan Valley either late in the Ottoman period or early in the Mandate. These included Jurjf Ilyas Farazlf, a merchant from Haifa who owned over 960 dunurm in Ghawr al-Wahadina and more in Ghawr Fara. Iskandar Jallad was a Roman Catholic from Haifa who owned 1,480 dunurm in Ghawr al-Wahadina, at least some of which he held on behalf

15 DLS/settlement, al-Mukhayba files; file: "Sanadat Bahhuth wa Nasn Bek Nasif li-Taqanr 13" [Deeds of Bahhuth and Nasn Bey Nasff for Report 13], various documents. 16 Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1820-1945 (London: I.E. Tauris & Co., Ltd., 1987), pp. 445-448.


155

of Barclays Bank in Haifa. Du'aybis al-Murr was a lawyer who worked for the large landowner Iskandar Kassab and who later taught at the government law school in Jerusalem. He too owned land in Ghawr al-Wahadina: some 1,244 dunums. Finally, members of the al-Rayyis family, Christians from Nazareth who settled in Haifa, also owned land in these two villages as well. One was Raja Salim alRayyis. A partner and brother-in-law of Iskandar Kassab, he possessed considerable holdings in Palestine as well as 1,554 dunums in Ghawr al-Wahadina and others in Ghawr Fara. His sister Asma5 similarly owned 337 dunums in the former village and several shares of land in the latter.17 But other large landowners in Transjordan by the 1940s and 1950s were not the descendants of Ottoman-era landowners but newcomers, persons of wealth and influence who bought land during the mandate as investments. Key among these were Muslim and Christian merchants of Palestinian and Syrian origin who used the fantastic profits made in legitimate business activities and in smuggling during the Second World War. As Abla Amawi has demonstrated, these profits were traced to the fact that the British created a closed economic supply regime for the Middle East in 1941 called the Middle East Supply Centre (MESC).18 It controlled imports, exports, and the allocation of import-export licenses among local merchants in order to curb consumption of non-essential materials and ensure that valuable commodities important to the war effort were secured from the Middle East and sent to it. Transjordanian merchants managed to accumulate huge profits in several ways as a result of the war and the MESC. The MESC limited the number of import-export licenses available in Transjordan. International trade could only be carried out with such licenses. The MESC also established a quota system by which each country in the region was assigned a limited amount of any specific good(s) it could import. Transjordan was granted quotas and import-export

'' DLS/settlement, Ghawr al-Wahadina and Ghawr Fara files, various documents. 18 For details, see Abla M. Amawi, "The Consolidation of the Merchant Class in Transjordan during the Second World War," Eugene L. Rogan and Tariq Tell, Village, Steppe and State. The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (London and New York: British Academic Press, 1994, and "The Transjordanian State and the Enterprising Merchants of Amman," Jean Hannoyer and Seteney Shami, eds., Amman: The City and Its Society (Beirut: Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain, 1996).

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licenses that were often in excess of the needs of local consumption. Licenses were sold among influential circles in Amman and excess goods often smuggled into Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, where demand and thus prices were high. Through connections with Transjordan's import-export committee, the Ottoman Bank, and Emir 'Abdullah, a small group of merchants of largely Syrian and Palestinian origin made vast fortunes during the war. Indeed, their wealth transformed the very nature of the merchant class in Transjordan. Such merchants included Ibrahim and Hamdf Mango; Tawftq Qattan, cUmar Macalbaki, Muhammad Sabrf al-Tabbac, Wafa 3 al-Dajanl, Isma'Il alBilbaysf, Zakf Idlibi, Khalfl Malas, Muhammad cAlr Budayr, and Subhi al-Halabi, among others.19 These merchants' profits quickly affected land when several of them began buying land. The 1940s witnessed major land acquisitions in the Jordan Valley, the BanI Hasan region, and various parts of al-Balqa3 by merchants, moneylenders, and other investors. Examples include Subhi al-Hajj Hasan al-Maghribl and Sido al-cAlI alKurdi, who by the 1940s were the largest landowners in Amman. The merchants Muhammad Sabrf Tabbac, Khayro Muhammad alDfraniyya, Wafa5 Yusuf al-Dajani, and Tawfiq Amfn al-Jundf bought land in Mahis. The moneylender clsa cAyid al-Wirr of al-Salt ended up with considerable holdings among the Banf Hasan, including in villages like cAyn, Mu'ammarlyya, Jubba, Sarrut, and al-Mastaba. Land in the Jordan Valley was particularly prized by these investors beginning in the 1940s because of the relative ease with which it could be irrigated and its fair winter climate. The price of such land also rose to phenomenal levels. The Amman-based Syrian merchant Muhammad Sabrl al-Tabbac bought a plot of land near al-Shuna in Sukhur al-Ghawr in the northern part of the valley for £P300 in 1949. In late 1948, the Irbid money lender of Lebanese extraction Radi Barakat bought two other plots in the same village, one for £P460 and the other for £P600.20 By 1951, Ghawr Nimrm's ownership rosters included not only members of the original cAdwan tribe residing there but merchants like Shafiq bin Muhammad alHayik, Jawdat Ruhr Shacshaca, Tawfiq Matlyya Qattan, Muhammad 19

Amawi "State and Class in Transjordan," p. 480, f.n. 168. DLS/settlement, Sukhur al-Ghawr files, file: "Qariyat Sukhur al-Ghawr, alTaqarir" [Sukhur al-Ghawr Village, Reports]; document: land sale documents of 8 January 1949 and 17 December 1948. 20


157

c

Alf Budayr, Muhammad cAbd al-Rahman Madf, Yasfn Khalil alTalhum, Ibrahim Khalll Mango, Husnf Sa'id al-Kurdf, Muhammad C A1I Husayn al-Kurdr, and Ibrahim Nijm al-Dfn al-Kurdl. Ghawr al-Kafrayn in the same year included Shibll Bishara and Wafa3 alDajani among its owners. Land settlement in Dayr cAlla revealed land owned by merchants from the family of al-Mucashshir, just as members of the al-Musharbash family owned land in al-Tuwal.21 Statistics also reveal that landlessness was not yet a pressing problem by the time the land program was completed in 1952, although there are indications that it was growing. As early as 1946, British officials familiar with Jordan were noticing its rise.22 There were approximately 506,184 native East Bankers in Jordan in 195123 of whom approximately 53.8 percent were males. We noted above that there were 90,206 landowners in the various governorates, although some owned land in more than one district. But taking that number as representing total landowners, and given that most landowners were men, we find that 90,206 of 272,327 native East Bank males—33.1 percent—owned land by 1951. This number may in fact be low, for despite the fact that it assumes no female ownership, it also includes all males and not just adult males. Statistics from cAjlun reveal that at the time of settlement, 69.6 percent of village men in the Irbid district owned land in their villages, as did 79.8 percent of men in the Jabal cAjlun and Jarash districts combined.24 American diplomats similarly had estimated in 1931 that in an average Transjordanian village, between 80-90 percent of the men were owner-cultivators and the rest hired agricultural workers.23 So while both sets of figures are approximations, it appears as if landlessness was not yet a major problem but had begun to rise over the course of the 1930s~40s. The Department of Lands and Survey initially collected a number of useful statistics related to population, landlessness, and so forth during settlement. This was later discontinued. But we do possess

21

DLS/settlement, files from Ghawr Nimnn, Ghawr al-Kafrayn, Dayr 'Alia, and al-Tuwal. " Mackenzie "Transjordan," p. 262. 25 al-Nashra al-Ihsa}iyya al-Sanawiyya 1951 [1951 Annual Statistical Yearbook], p. 4. 24 Statistics from Sijill Misahat Qura al-Taswiya [Ledger of surface area in settlement villages]. 25 U.S. State Department, decimal files 8901.00/10 (1931), "Economic and Political Situation in Transjordan," pp. 22-24.

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statistics comparing the number of villagers who owned land versus those who did not for 47 villages in the c Ajlun province only. They are listed below. The "total population" of each village includes women and children; the "landowners" figure includes absentee landowners living outside the village: Table 22: Numbers of Landowners vs. Non-Owners in Selected Villages in 'Ajlun Village

Hawwara Aydun Kufr Sawm al-Tayyiba Mandah Makhraba Dayr al-Sacna Zubdat al-Wustfyya Samma Harta Fu'ara Hatim Hawar Ibdar Is'ara Malka Sawm Janm Sammuc Dawqara Kufr Kffiya al-Mazar Dayr Abf Sacld Abu'1-Qayn Zimal Saydur Jijjfn Kufr Asad Kufr al-Ma3 Juffayn Bayt Idis Kufr Rakib Khanzfra Kufr cAwan Umm Qays

Land Settlement

1933-34 1933-34 1937-38 1937-39 1937-38 1938-39 1938 1938 1937-38 1937-39 1938-39 1938-39 1938-39 1937-39 1938-39 1938-39 1937-39 1938-39 1939 1938-39 1938-39 1938-39 1938-39 1939 1939 1938-39 1937-39 1938-39 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1938-40

Total Pop.

Landowners

Non- Owners

1,268 1,420 1,239 1,708 122 202 609 63 948 900 371 550 219 175 86 1,667 887 510 618 497 89 1,974 424 59 542 169 211 892 664 419 545 418 1,017 838 898

185 258 180 422 30 37 132 13 209 146 76 77 53 52 24 292 213 127 170 140 130 664 99 9 250 48 32 186 133 115 152 129 285 259 82

269 329 425 307 42 26 111 1 126 214 26 145 20 3 6 380 221 75 157 38 0 1,170

75 5 16 25 0 141 35 3 55 11 70 90 387


159

Table 22 (cont.) Village

Zubiya Rihaba Kufr Abrl Tubna Judayta al-Kitta Umm Qantara Halawa Awsara Ba'un Sakhra Khirbat al-Wahadina

Land Settlement

Total Pop.

Landowners

Non-Owners

1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1939-40 1940-41 1939-40 1940 1939-41 1939-41 1940-42

235 831 732 708 1,630 1,016 215 595 271 676 1,540 1,134

59 160 187 167 418 234 34 117 79 308 367 238

13 70 0 109 143 52 17 73 13 126 33 0

Source: Sijill Misahat Qura al-Taswiya [Ledger of Surface Area of Settlement Villages].

It is fascinating to note the differences in the owner/non-owner equation throughout villages in the north. In some instances, there were no males without land, while in others the non-owners far outnumbered owners. In general, however, the yawning chasms between the numbers of owners versus non-owners present in some surrounding Arab countries were largely absent in Transjordan. The average size of villages varied from region to region as well. Settlement statistics show the following: Table 23: Average Surface Area of Villages by Govemorate Governorate

Irbid Jarash Jabal 'Ajlun Amman Madaba al-Salt al-Karak al-Tafila Ma'an

Tears of Settlement

No. of Villages

1933-40 1935-50 1933-42 1934-52 1939-49 1940-54 1945-52 1949-51 1949-52

126 62 19 66 46 35 59 8 12

Av. Size of Village (Dunurm) (Excluding State Land)

10,350 13,743 17,088 13,842 9,484 18,700 13,802 51,316 41,090

Source: Sijill Misahat Qura al-Taswiya [Ledger of Surface Area of Settlement Villages].

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For all we have said about small cultivator ownership by the early 1950s, it is important to note that the government played an important role in upholding this. The fact is that the land program initially set in motion processes that worked against this and in fact began leading to the alienation of large amounts of land out of small cultivators' hands. We noted that by 1950, one quarter of all private land was in the hands of persons who owned 500 or more dunurm. For all their displeasure about collectively-held land, insecurity of land tenure, and lack of Western concepts of law and order, some British officials grudgingly came to admit that traditional measures such as musha' had helped keep land speculators at bay and thus keep small-scale cultivators on their land. Now all that had begun to change. Land rights were more secure, borders were now known, transfer procedures simpler, land values higher, and the ability of peasants to threaten overbearing creditors diminished. The result by the mid-1940s was that the peasant debt secured by mortgages of their land described in chapter five began leading to large amounts of land slipping away from them and into the hands of urban merchants. The threat to the continued existence of small-scale peasantry via rising landlessness was real. The government decided to step in. The department of lands and survey came to fear the rise of peasant indebtedness by the early-1940s. Director of Lands George F. Walpole stated his regret that the state had privatized mudawwara lands in the Jordan Valley in the 1930s because many of the new owners promptly sold the land to urban investors and reduced themselves to sharecropping land they formerly owned.26 Even more serious than peasants selling their land was the specter of them losing their land through foreclosure on their mounting debts. In November 1944, Walpole sent a report to the government on the serious rise in debt throughout the country since the beginning of the Second World War. Chief Minister Samfr al-RifacI established an investigatory committee that recommended to the Agricultural Bank that it place staff in the land registry offices throughout the country to facilitate the granting of loans given the bank's inaccessibility to most villagers, which it did. Even colonial authorities in London were notified of the mounting problem. Walpole's concerns were shared by some but by no means all Walpole "Land Problems," p. 61.


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British administrators familiar with Transjordan. As far back as the 1930s, British Resident C.H.F. Cox had also striven to keep land out of the hands of "capitalists" who would use it only for speculatative purposes.27 Another British economic expert reported in 1946 that land settlement had come under criticism for leading to increased land alienation, while another expert on land and agriculture in the Middle East offered a remarkable mea culpa for the British inspired program by stating that it was in fact "necessary . . . to preserve the legal basis of tribal ownership" in Transjordan to prevent such alienation.28 But a noteworthy voice of dissent w7as that of P. Livingstone, head of the Transjordanian Department of Customs, Trade & Industry. Livingstone was not alarmed by the alienation of land out of the hands of small-scale cultivators and into those of urban investors. On the contrary, he recommended in 1944 that "every encouragement" be extended to merchants who were buying up lands and introducing modern farming techniques. He claimed that "real progress springs from such changes in land ownership."29 That Livingstone disagreed with Walpole and others was not surprising given that he was a close associate and confidant of a small group of rich merchants in Amman, some of whom were investing in agricultural land in al-Balqa3. Solving the problem of indebtedness was a major challenge. Foreclosures were of concern to the government as early as the mid-1920s. Small and large-scale landowners were affected. In 1928, for instance, cAbd al-Razzaq Anls al-Shurbaj! foreclosed on land in Umm al-cAmad pledged to him as collateral by three sons of the Ban! Sakhr shaykh Sattam al-Fandl al-Fayiz: Fawwaz, Fayiz, and cAwwad.30 In 1925, the Jabal cAjlun branch of the national economic committee noted that merchants wrere lending money to cultivators at 30-50 percent interest and taking their lands upon default in the wake of that year's drought. The sub-committee urged that the government refuse to recognize any foreclosure and seizure of land which

27

DLS/diwan, file 28/12, "Water Bores Scheme"; Cox to Mitchell (6 March 1935). 28 E.B. Worthington, Middle East Science. A Survey of Subjects Other Than Agriculture (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1946), p. 15, and Warriner, Land and Poverty in the Middle East, p. 79. 29 Administrative Report, Customs, Excise, Trade & Industry, Calendar Year 1944, p. 7. 30 DLS/settlement, Umm al-'Amad files, "Iddi'a'at wa TaqarTr" [Claims and Reports]; copy of registration document of August 1928.

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was not strictly carried out according to legal procedures.31 That same year, the government suspended the collection of private debts.32 In 1927, merchants were ordered to keep organized books to reduce fraud.33 That same year the Law Lifting Liens from Immovable Property allowed persons to petition for removal of Ottoman-era liens from their property given that the Ottoman documents stating why the liens had been placed were lost. The Law to Regulate Dealings between Merchants and Farmers of 1927 tried to regulate mortgage procedures. In 1928, cultivators were pleased by the Decision to Cancel Remaining Debts of the Agricultural Bank Granted during the Time of the Ottoman Government. Later, during land settlement in the 1930s and 1940s, the land department instructed its settlement officers to try to minimize the amount of land demanded as mortgage by creditors when they settled land rights in the villages. They were also instructed not to record any mortgage claims where the lender had not already registered his/her claim at the land registry, as required by law.34 In late 1933, the legislative council passed a law allowing a debtor whose land had been foreclosed upon by the Agricultural Bank to rent back the same land from the bank in order to maintain his/her livelihood. This was not completely out of kindness: the bank discovered that the neighbors of those whose land had been taken by the bank would stand in solidarity with them by refusing to buy the land when the bank put it up for sale at auction.35 As a result, 4,436 diinums were rented back to their former owners out of a total of 13,146 dunums that the bank had repossessed by 1934.36 The bank also began reducing the number of its foreclosure orders starting in 1934, when it ordered only 67 foreclosures out of 315 cases of default (compared with 214 out of 544 in 1935 and 160 out of 426 in 1933). Even then, few foreclosure orders were actually carried out and land seized: 19 in 1932, 1 in 1933, and 0 in 1934.37 31

OG 104 (18 May 1925). OG 113 (15 September 1925). 33 Annual Report 1927. 34 Tcflimat Tasjil al-Arddl [Instructions for Registering Land], p. 21. 35 NLCDD, files of the prime ministry #875,"Taqarfr Idanyya li-Masraf al-ZiracI al-Shahrfyya wa'1-Sanawfyya" [Annual and Monthly Administrative Reports for the Agricultural Bank]; document: Taqrir Iddrat al-Masraf al-Zj,raci fi Sharq al-Urdunn fl Ghdyat Sanat 1937-1938 al-Mallyya [Report of the Administration of the Agricultural Bank in Transjordan at the End of the Fiscal Year 1937-1938], p. 19. 36 Annual Report 1935, p. 337. 37 Ibid., p. 339. 32


163

Debt relief efforts and non-foreclosures were one thing, but measures to provide cultivators with more capital in the wake of the mad dash to borrow land after settlement were another and largely failed. The Agricultural Bank continued to have few funds at its disposal. In 1936, the bank lent £P9,055 to 31 villages in cAjlun alone.38 Nine years later during the drought of 1947, Walpole noted that the bank possessed a mere £P 130,000 at its disposal when it needed at least £P500,000 to lend a during normal year let alone a drought year.39 Since it could not provide massive amounts of credit, the government turned to other measures. The 1944 committee that investigated indebtedness recommended that since the Agricultural Bank only had one branch, in Amman, that it place staff members in the various land registries throughout the country to ease the process of applying for loans. It also encouraged the process to be simplified so that it took only one day.40 The government also tried to help by adopting legislation that would stem the hemmorhage of land alienation and reverse the tide of events set in motion by the land program. Starting in 1947, the government moved to enact legislation forbidding the alienation of land to moneylenders. The Mortgage (Suspension of Execution) Law of that year forbade anyone from foreclosing on a mortgage against mm agricultural land from 3 May 1947 until 1 September 1949. Even the Agricultural Bank could not foreclose on loans. The law also set the legal interest rate on debts at four percent per annum during this period. The grace period was later extended into the 1960s. Indebted peasants were saved from foreclosure. The immediate result of this remarkable legislation was that the alienation of land was checked, but the need for cash was not. In fact, borrowers suffered: mortgages were costlier after 1947 because lenders became more wary and more demanding. Since foreclosures were banned some cultivators exploited the situation by defaulting on their loans. To combat this, moneylenders began demanding that those desperate for cash actually transfer title to land to the lender as security in advance rather than simply mortgage it as before. In the case of default, the lender thus did not need to foreclose because 38 NLCDD, prime minister's files, cAqaba. file 2/2/24, "al-Qurud al-Ziraciyya" [Agricultural Loans]; document: announcement #36 from prime minister, 1936. 39 Walpole "Land Problems," p. 59. 40 Administrative Report, Customs, Excise, Trade and Industry, Calendar Year 1944, p. 5.

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the land was already technically registered in his/her name. Informal interest rates also climbed as a result of the legislation, sometimes reaching 500 percent per annum.41 As discussed above, the longer term effect of this legislation was to halt the inexorable alienation of land away from the class of small cultivators that the land program initially had helped by securing its land rights. Land settlement and the new land tax regime were applied equally to rich and poor, to small landholding peasants and to the few large landholding shqykhs and merchants. Initially at least the land department was somewhat egalitarian in its approach: it secured what land rights it found. Since small cultivators predominated, it was they who benefitted. But as noted, this same program set in motion a process by which this class was beginning to lose land. It was only action by the same government that later preserved that class. With fully-private, government-backed ownership and capitalist investment in land, a new era had dawned, but one in which the small cultivator needed government protection to survive. Glubb joined the growing list of British officials who began to wonder whether or not the modern efficiency and "law and order" imposed on Transjordan, its people, and its land regime, had really helped the average landowners or not. As Glubb lamented, There was less inequality in wealth and social position in the old insecure chaotic times than there was under the new theoretical "democracy." The establishment of law and order resulted in the rich becoming richer and the poor growing poorer. . . The establishment of public security deprived the farmer of the power to threaten the usurer with violence. The town merchant now not only possessed money but education and the ear of the authorities.42

Effects on Other Social Actors Beyond the large class of small cultivators, other rural actors with interests in land were also affected by the land policies of the 1920s-50s. One such group of actors were the shqykhs and mukhtdrs. 41 Johnson "Land Study," pp. 6, 8, and Ishaq Yacoub Qutub, "The Impact of the Rural Thrift and Credit Cooperative Societies on the Traditional Social and Economic Structures of Rural Jordan: a Study of Three Villages" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1966), pp. 53-54. 42 Glubb, Britain and the Arabs, pp. 173-174.


165

As we have already noted, certain shaikhs, among villagers, settled bedouin, and semi-nomadic bedouin, had exercised considerable influence over land matters in a Transjordan where family connections were still of vital importance to both social and economic matters. Some of these figures had controlled large estates prior to the land program. For these individuals, the land program was more uneven in its effects on them. How their interests were affected varied upon several factors. In general, Transjordanian land policies secured whatever preexisting rights the shqykhs possessed prior to land settlement. The land program did not involve the whole-scale expropriation of their land nor did it seek to aid their aggrandizement of such resources. Whenever shqykhs presented their claims to settlement officers or before the land settlement court, the documents indicate that their claims were considered with the same degree of dispassionate care as those of lesser persons. Settlement certainly left Mithqal al-Fayiz the largest landowner in the country, as before. But other prominent persons found that settlement did not always go their way. When Muhammad Pasha al-cAwda Abu Tayih of the Tawayha section of the Huwaytat failed to attend a session to resolve a dispute concerning land in al-Sharah al-Janublyya in 1952, for instance, the settlement officer ruled against him.43 In 1948 in cAy, a mukhtdr from the Kasasiba family, of the Ramadina section of the Bararisha tribe, attempted to hold onto land assigned to him during the fiscal survey in the face of opposition from others within the Kasasiba. An expert called in to testify pointed out to the settlement officer that the custom was that whenever such a person received land it was for the entire tribe, not just himself personally. The settlement officer therefore ruled against the mukhtdr.^ And in al-Rafid, Salmi Pasha al-Sacd al-Dln of the influential 'Ubaydat family and his brothers tried to claim a certain area of the village as their own private milk land, separate from the village mushac, but could not convince settlement officers because they lacked documentary evidence.40 Englishmen like Walpole felt that the partition of rnusha' land had 41 DLS/settlement, al-Sharah al-Janubiyya files; file "Idbarat al-Taqanr, Raqm 1, min 1~21" [Claims Folder, Number 1, From 1~21], report 19. 44 DLS/settlement, cAy files, file "al-Taqanr min Raqm 1 ila Raqm 120" [Reports from Number 1 to Number 120], report 54. 4) DLS/dTwan, file 21/21, "Taqrfr 'UmurnT li-Qariyat al-Rafid" [General Report for al-Rafid Village].

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thus ". . . loosened the hold of the tribal sheikhs on their tribesmen" and that is was ". . . no longer possible for the landowners with influence to encroach on the rights of lesser men."46 In fact, shqykhs continued to exercise considerable influence on land matters within their communities and even outside of their communities after the land program. Many still owned large estates, which were now their complete private property. Some continued to settle disputes arising from land. In cAy, settlement officers helped resolve a dispute between members of the Rawashida family and others from within the Ramadina section of the Bararisha tribe by bringing the two sides before tribal leaders in al-Karak.47 In general, settlement assisted shqykhs by allowing them to secure their land, which was worth more as a result. While this enriched some (particularly when they sold it in the years thereafter), some found that the land program hurt them financially in the short run because of the new land tax law. Tax liabilities affected some shqykhs much more precipitously than others. The worst hit were those in al-Balqa3 and al-Karak, who had paid lighter taxes prior to the new tax laws of the early 1930s. It was these figures who had led the opposition to promulgating the new tax law. Indeed, by 1940, British observers noted some "agitation" among large landowners because of their higher taxes.48 Some, like Mithqal al-Fayiz, mortgaged their land to Zionist interests in their desperation to obtain cash for taxes and to feed their kin (see below). But the high grain prices and others sources of profit during the Second World War later mitigated this initial discomfort. The land program also affected women's ability to control land resources in Jordan. One of the first ways it did so was by offering the opportunity for women to hold onto the rights that they had controlled over the years preceeding implementation of the program. Women had always had the right to own land in civil and sacred law. But social practice worked against this, and female inheritance rights were routinely denied them in order to keep land within the male family line. However, some women did in fact ensure that their rights were recorded during land settlement. These seemed mostly 46

Walpole "Land Problems," pp. 57-58. DLS/settlement, cAy files. File "al-Taqanr min Raqm 231 ila Raqm 387" [Reports from Number 231 to Number 387], report 316. 48 CO 831/55/7, "Situation Report March 1940." 47


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to be women of high status and particularly those of non-Jordanian, non-Arab, and/or non-Muslim backgrounds. In Hisban, settlement officers preserved the inheritance rights of several women from the al-Nabuls! family of al-Salt. The widow and several daughters of the Christian Palestinian merchant Hanna Francis Batatu preserved land they had inherited in al-Tunayb, as did several women of Syrian origin from the Abu Qura family in al-Rajib. Circassian women maintained their land in al-Majdal in c Ajlun, as did several women who inherited land in Zabdat Farkuh belonging to the Farkuh family. But others were of noted local Muslim Arab families, including Nacayim, daughter of Ban! Sakhr leader Mithqal al-Fayiz, who inherited land in her father's ancestral village of Umm al-cAmad. Other women used the opportunity presented by land settlement to step forward and present land claims. Some asserted that their male relatives had taken these rights away from them improperly, such as a women from the al-Qirra family (also known as the Bisharat family) from al-Salt, who regained land in Umm al-Kundum.49 Nucma al-clsa al-Dhiyab of Zimal successfuly argued that her nephew improperly registered their jointly-owned olive trees in Tubna in his name only.50 Still others boldly told settlement officers that male relatives had taken away land given to them as mahr, or bridal dowry and claimed it as their own. This included Christian women, as the practice of levying a bride price was found among both Muslims and Christians in Jordan.31 Overall the number of women who stepped forward were small. But the "neutral," bureaucratic logic of the land department did sometimes return land to women after they bravely insisted upon them in full public view. Not all women fared so well. British officials in the land department noted that males quickly understood that the new security of rights afforded by settlement meant that female rights to land would be hard to deny publicly. To avoid letting women inherit land, a typical pattern emerged by which men would register half their land in their name and half in the name of one of their sons during settlement. This legal maneuver reduced the extent of land that daughters could claim, for inasmuch as the land laws required division of w

DLS/settlement, Umm al-Kundum files. File: "al-Qadaya, 1/147" [Cases, 1/147]. )0 DLS/settlement, Tubna files. File: "al-Taqarir" [Reports]. Report 31. 31 DLS/settlement, Fuhays files. File: "Qada5 al-Salt, Qariyat al-Fuhays, Idbarat al-Taqanr" [al-Salt Governorate, Fuhays Village, Reports Folder]. Report 15.

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land among all children upon the owner's death, there was no legal hindrance to an owner giving away part or all of his land to his male children prior to death. Others raised objections but could not convince settlement officers of their veracity, or raised the claims after too many years had passed. This was the case in al-Kitta, where two sisters claimed their brother sold their share in land some 27 years earlier. The settlement officer overruled them, noting that too much time had passed and that they should have objected to this act much earlier.32 Other women refused to step forward at all, a fact attested by the relative lack of female owners' names in the final settlement records. Not even all women of high status were able to hold onto their land in Jordan. One famous case was that of Emir (later, King) 'Abdullah's controversial third wife, Nahida bint Uman. Nahida had originally been the daughter of one of 'Abdullah's black palace slaves, and his eventual marriage to her scandalized both his family and wider polite society in the country. Nahida began consolidating a considerable expanse of real estate. The British had granted 'Abdullah over 56,000 dunums of land in Ghawr al-Kibd in August 1931 and made the land waqf that November. The king later acquired more throughout the country. He gave Nahida land both in the Jordan Valley and other areas. Beyond this, the proceeds of 1,147 dunums of his waqf land in Ghawr Kattar were set aside for Nahida in April 1940. The disposition of 'Abdullah's property after his assassination in July 1951 was the subject of some dispute because of fear that Nahida, who was shunned by the rest of the family, might despose of much of 'Abdullah's property that was in her hands. The late king's largesse toward her provoked much anger for both 'Abdullah's son, King Talal, and the British. The fact that while 'Abdullah was still alive Nahida had sold the land on which the king's original diwdn had stood in downtown Amman to the owners of the next door Philadelphia Hotel had come both as a great shock to the rest of the family and served as an indication of what she might do now that 'Abdullah was dead.53 Walpole was quickly given the authority to restrict any 52

DLS/settlement, al-Kitta files. File: "al-Taqarfr 1-209" [Reports 1-209]. Report 55. 33 Adaia and Abraham Shumski, A Bridge Across the Jordan. The Friendship Between a Jewish Carpenter and the King of Jordan (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997), pp.


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attempted transactions involving the late monarch's land shortly after the assassination. Apparently to prevent Nahida from disposing of any rights to the waqf land in Ghawr al-Kibd, a special law was passed in January 1952 by which the state took the unusual and drastic step of "de-zwz^/mg" the land and making it mm, after which it was registered to 'Abdullah's other heirs—Talal and four other of 'Abdullah's children; 'Abdullah's Arab first wife, Queen Musbah bint al-Sharff Nasir; and his Turkish second wife, Princess Suzdfl bint 'All. Nahida was excluded. The heirs' jointly-owned land in Ghawr al-Kibd was later partitioned among them by a committee entitled the "Committee for Partitioning the Lands of Ghawr al-Kibd" that consisted of representatives of King Talal (son of 'Abdullah's first wife), his brother Prince Nayif (son of 'Abdullah's second wife), the Department of Lands and Survey, the Department of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Development. After commencing work in 1954, the committee finished its work in 1956. Other land owned by 'Abdullah was similarly divided. In Nahida's case, high position did not help her desire to control land. In the final analysis, the land program set the stage for undermining women's rights, both prominent women and those of humble origin, because it started a process by which female inheritance rights were eroded. This occurred both during the course of the program and thereafter. While settlement offered a small window of opportunity for women enterprising enough to seek redress for past wrongs, males in post-settlement Jordan realized that women's legal cases for claiming inheritance land would be more solid and thus took the above-discussed steps to ensure that property remained in the hands of male family members. The land program offered another setback for female ownership rights. The Law of Converting Lands from Mm to Milk No. 41 of 1953 changed the status of lands eaten up by urban sprawl from mm to milk. Since inheritance procedures for milk land differed from those of mm—they were governed by civil and religious law and not by the Land Code—they gave male descendants a share twice as large as that for females. Particularly as towns like Amman expanded into the surrounding farmland, women's inheritance shares in what land they did manage to inherit shrank.

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State-Societal Cooperation and Regime Support The land program marked the most significant point of contact between the populace and the state in Jordan during the period under study. Indeed it served as a microcosm of the entire statesocietal relationship in the country. In an overwhelmingly agricultural country like Jordan, how the new state created in 1921 dealt with land, land taxes, and the peasant majority became the most visible and significant test of its wider attitude toward the populace. Despite some significant tensions in a few areas, the state-societal relationship around land ownership was by and large one characterized by cooperation, and one that earned for the state a considerable degree of loyalty from the population. As we have noted, the Transjordanian government embarked upon the land program because of British concern for the country's economic and fiscal security. Securing the peasant population's gratitude or loyalty was not one of its initially-stated goals. Yet the way in which the state carried out the land program was one that stressed cooperation with the populace and one that earned its respect, with certain notable exceptions notwithstanding. Even this was not simply done out of charity; in truth, the land department needed the cooperation of the villagers because only they knew the details of their own lands necessary to carry out the extensive program with minimum staffpower. Whatever the reasons that prompted this cooperative attitude, the result was that the state cultivated the loyalty of a largely peasant population that felt that its cooperation had been secured and its interests served. One way by which the land department alleviated any potential distrust on the part of the population was by ordering surveyors and settlement officers to include landowners in the implementation of the land program and created mechanisms for raising objections. During the fiscal survey, surveyors would demarcate the boundaries of one village from another by calling together the elders from both villages and demarcating the boundary by using their expertise. Morever, the government established a committee in 1930 to entertain objections to the valuation of village lands for taxation purposes. The Land Tax Law of 1933 also created a process by which taxation lists were posted for one month during which time landowners could object to the amount levied. As noted in chapter two, so many villagers in the regions of Amman, al-Salt, and the Ban! Haimda


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region appealed by the spring of 1934 that they nearly overwhelmed the system. During land settlement, land officials similarly relied upon the villagers themselves, especially when partitioning mushac villages. Like with their taxes, landowners could raise objections to the "schedule of rights" forms posted in each village during the settlement process. As noted in chapter two, the land settlement court entertained such objections. In Tubna, for instance a man went before the land settlement court complaining that the land settlement process had assessed the value of his land for taxation much higher than it was really worth. After an investigation, the court agreed, and ordered a reduction in his assessment of some 20 percent.54 He was not alone: between 1933-54, 10,657 objections (2.8 percent of the 384,980 claims presented to settlement officers) were later contested before the court. Of these, the court upheld the complaint and ordered the "schedule of rights" amended in 32 percent of the cases (3,410 of 10,657 objections).53 The highest percentage of complaints occurred in the regions of al-Salt, Amman, and Madaba from 1941-46—the same regions that had objected vociferously to their new tax burdens. Shareholders were also consulted during the final partition of musha'. Shareholders elected delegations to accomplish this, as in the villages of Mazar and Sawm in cAjlun. Land settlement was also popular in that it helped resolve land standing disputes between villages. A German traveling in northern Transjordan at the turn of the 20th century noted that few villages had formally declared their boundaries.56 Borders were marked by stones, roads, tracks, and valleys. The exact location of the boundary often depended upon which village was being asked. Vaguelydefined boundaries led to disputes between villages during harvest time and when villagers grazed animals as we have noted. Pitched battles sometimes broke out. In other cases, areas seemed to shift from village to village. For example, the Wad! al-Azraq area of alSalt was once considered part of the lands of al-Fuhays. The fiscal survey established the boundaries definitively, and the settlement process later began registering matruk land to the treasury beginning in 1938 to reduce what the land department called "frivolous" court DLS/settlement, Tubna files. File: "al-Qadaya" [Cases], case 31/17. DLS Annual Report 1954, p. 8. Steurnagel "Der 'Adschlun," p. 208.

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actions among villagers. Land officials claimed that as a result of settlement, fewer disputes among villagers broke out and crime in the 'Ajlun province was reduced by 29 percent.37 Settlement even aimed to halt violence before it broke out. A settlement party left its work in 'Ajlun and went southward into al-Balqa3 in 1934 to settle al-Tunayb in order to resolve a major dispute that had erupted. Because of the high-profile nature of the dispute between Jarad alSayyid Rumayh Sulayman Abu Junayb, of the Fayiz section of the Ban! Sakhr, and the Palestinian landowner Najfb Matiyya Abu Suwwan, the land department dispatched Assistant Director of Lands Walter S.S. Moffatt to decide the case. Settlement officers left their work in the north once again to return to the Ban! Sakhr region and settle the villages of Barazayn, Umm al-cAmad, and al-Ghubayya in 1938 to clear up an old dispute between Shaykh TurkI bin Zabn of the Zabn section of the Ban! Sakhr and the people of Madaba. The settlement process also resolved disputes among different sections of the Ban! Sakhr, and shaykhs of the Fayiz and Zabn sections signed an agreement specifying the boundaries of their villages in 1945. Settlement also resolved difficult disputes within villages, to the benefit of the "neutral" government whose land officers aided in this task. Some villages were plagued by major and long-standing disagreements over who owned what. A common problem involved land in mushdc villages that some inhabitants claimed was their own, privately-controlled mafruz land. Often these lands were valuable irrigated land or land sown with olives, grapevines, or other fruit and often was claimed as mafruz by shqykhs and other influential persons. Malka was home to such a long-standing dispute. Land in the southern portion of the village was mushac land belonging to one of two factions in the Malka, the fuqard'. While representatives from the juqara' told the settlement officer in 1938 that their land was collectively-owned, a leading figure among the fuqard\ al-Hdjj cUmar bin al-Shaykh Yusuf al-Malkawi, claimed that some of it had been partitioned into mafmz land for over 40 years. Each side brought witnesses and documents, including Ottoman-era court documents from 1882 that made reference to an even earlier partition in 1875. Eventually, the settlement officer agreed that eight plots were indeed

>y

Walpole "Land Problems," p. 58.


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mafruz and arranged for both sides to sign an agreement testifying to this in July 1938.aB Because of simmering feuds in Barishita, shareholders in the mushac land tried to settle an old score by telling settlement officials that Muhammad al-cAlf al-Sacd al-Dfn and his nephew, Mansur al-Rashld al-cAlf, both of the influential cUbaydat family, had wrongfully partitioned land for themselves because they were important persons. Their claim was rejected when the settlement officer ruled it invalid since they had never raised it previously.19 Other villages were plagued by disputes over how many shares were in the collectively-owned land, or whether or not an outsider should be allowed to own land in the village, and so forth. The security of tide, of land boundaries and of village boundaries afforded by the land program was particularly helpful in reducing conflict because Transjordan's population continued to rise during the mandate and into independence. The result was growing pressure on limited land resources. Note the growth by the autumn of 1948 for the following villages in cAjlun: Table 24: Population Growth in Selected Villages in 'Ajlun, 19th Century Through 1948 Village

Dayr al-Sacna Samma Qumaym Irbid Bayt Ras 'ATal Kharja Harta Samar Jarash

Pop. First Period

100 275 200 650 175 150 250 200 225 1,500

(1885) (1885) (1885) (1885) (1885) (1896) (1896) (1889) (1885) (1897)

Pop. Second Period

140 350 375 1,250 250 350 750 750 275 1,600

(1901) (1901) (1901) (1894) (1894) (1913) (1913) (1913) (1896) (1902)

Pop. Autumn

1948

816 1,223 735 6,693 943 753 768 1,057 550 2,531

Source: Steurnagel "Der 'Adschlun," p. 192 and U.S. Department of State decimal file 8901.5011/1-1049 (10 January 1949).

Settlement officers considered some villages simply contrary by nature, and found them riven with a host of problems. So serious were they

58 DLS/settlement, Malka files. File: "al-Qadaya bayn al-Mafruza wa'1-Musha"' [Cases between Mafruz and Mushac]. Report on mafruz land (13 October 1938). >9 DLS/settlement, Barishita files. File: al-Taqanr" [Reports], report 4.

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that they prevented the cultivators from assisting in settlement. In summing up the numerous and fractious disputes among the different families and their uncooperative attitude toward the settlement party, the officer in charge of settlement in al-Salt opined in 1942 that: In general, the people of al-Salt did not help the work of settlement. . . This goes back to the mental deficiencies of many of them . . . I noticed that the tribes of Wadi'l-Akrad were more forgiving and understanding of one another than others from al-Salt, contrary to the common beliefs about them . . . In general, the people of al-Salt and its tribes are not in complete harmony, and there are many fights among them. They suffer from jealousy and hypocrisy, and the rich among them is jealous of his wealth and the poor among them is full of criticism.60 Including the villagers in the land program and resolving land standing social problems and disputes certainly proved useful to the government in winning over a sometimes sceptical populace. As noted above, cultivators eventually clamored for settlement and quickly realized the "benefits" of higher land values that it realized. On the other hand, Jordanian villagers did not accept all aspects of the land program out of gratitude to the government. They did not hesitate to reject those aspects of the land program to which they objected, such as the hated policy of confiscating the common forest areas. This illustrates the point that Jordan's cultivators cooperated with the land program because they felt that it served its interests. They neither rejected it out of hand, nor did they meekly submit to a state diktat. If small cultivators thus generally cooperated with the land program, to what extent did large landowners follow suit? Some of them who sat in the legislative council approved of the program and urged that it be implemented as quickly as possible. After the Bam Hasan partition was introduced in 1931 (see chapter four), legislators like Muhammad al-Sacd, Qasim al-Hindawf, and Salt! al-Ibrahfm alAyyub urged that the government extend the partition to the entire country.61 Others brought forward other suggestions, like that the land department should accept oral evidence when examining land disputes. The land department put both suggestions into action during settlement beginning in 1933. Still other legislators later called

60 DLS/settlement, al-Salt files. File: "al-Taqarir 2, li'1-Ahwad 78-96" [Reports 2, for Hawds 78-96]; document: "Taqrfr c Umumf" [General Report]. 61 OG No. 58 (2 September 1931) and No. 71 (17 January 1932).


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for civil courts to be granted the same privilege to accept oral evidence as the land settlement court, which occurred in 1936. In 1935, large landowners in the council like 'Abdullah al-Kulayb al-Shurayda urged that settlement be hastened to help the economy.62 On the other hand, some large landowners did not hesitate to raise objections to portions of the land program. A particular target was once again the government's seizure of forest land. 'Abdullah al-Shurayda complained about this in the legislative council during the fiscal survey and later raised an objection to forest land taken from him in Tubna during settlement before the land settlement court in 1941. He won his case.63 Others fought to prevent passage of the new land tax law, succeeding in 1932 but failing to halt promulgation of the law the following year. Lastly, the land program also benefitted Jordan's merchants, for it contributed to economic stability by maintaining a system of private property and creating a well-regulated real estate market. Even though the state was heavily involved in property matters and its overall control of the economy began to grow in the 1950s and 1960s, as Timothy Piro has studied, its interventions by regional standards are minor.64 In a region that has witnessed whole-scale confiscations of land through war and revolution, the land program can be characterized as a type of Jordanian laissez-faire. The only notable exception was the nationalization of land in the Jordan Valley as part of the East Ghawr Canal Project beginning in 1959. Merchants could buy and sell land freely in a non-socialist economy with practically no restrictions, except that they could not foreclose on mortgaged lands. Merchants also appreciated the efficient registration and surveying processes that emerged in the wake of the land program. Ownership rights were known and protected, secure deeds were available, and transfer procedures w7ere quick and unencumbered. This proved of great help to merchants not only as they bought land for shops and homes, but when they began investing in rural land and urban real estate for commercial and industrial purposes. This was particularly

"2 OG No. 146 (2 January 1935). "' OG No. 42 (18 January' 1931) and DLS/settlement, Tubna files. File: 'Jadwal al-Huquq al-Niha'f" [Final Schedule of Rights]. ''* Timothy.J. Piro, The Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan (Boulder, Colo.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998).

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true during industrialization and the massive building boom later in the 1970s, but one finds examples as far back as mandatory times. Muhammad Amm al-Jundl of Amman, for instance, acquired land in Mahis for mining a substance used in the manufacture of ceramics which he sold to Jewish companies in Palestine. He also grew tobacco in the village for processing in Transjordan's tobacco companies.63 These facts served to bolster overall economic stability in Jordan after the Second World War and assist the development of a powerful bourgeoisie. This stability also served as a magnet for domestic and Arab capital, labor, and talent later on starting in the 1950s. Palestinian business persons in particular found in Jordan a stable, non-socialist economic base for trade, industry, services, and investment after the loss of Palestine in 1948, with the well-known result that Jordan's economy today is dominated by Palestinian capital. Stability encouraged more and more East and West Bank expatriate workers to send money home. And the eventual growth of a real estate market generated considerable income both for the state in the form of registration fees and for the merchants, developers, and others who invested in real estate.66 The overall degree of state-societal cooperation around land issues among small landowners, large landowners, and merchants alike constitutes one of the major reasons why the Anglo-Hashemite regime in Jordan survived. The populace did not merely support "Abdullah and his successors because of the regime's strength (which initially was not very strong at all) or the Hashemites' descent from the Prophet Muhammad. A major explanation for the longevity of the regime stems from the fact that the country's peasant majority and its merchants overall appreciated the government's land program and felt that it served their interests. Even when the small cultivators' interests were threatened because of the program's results, such as the mounting indebtedness that resulted from land settlement, they once again saw their government step in and assist them through foreclosure protection. In the eyes of landowners, the system "worked" for them and protected their interests. The fact that they did not hesitate to resist those aspects of the land program that did not suit 1)3

DLS/settlement, Mahis files; various documents. Badrf Mulqf, "Zahirat Irtifa' As'ar al-Aradf wa'l-'Iqarat" [The Phenomenon of Rising Land and Real Estate Prices] (Amman: Department of Lands and Survey, Public Relations Section, n.d.), pp. 12-13. 1)6


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them (e.g., the forest policy) further demonstrates how self-interest shaped the cultivators' behavior. The result is that the Jordanian government and its Hashemite rulers could count on the loyalty of much of its population during challenging times when surrounding Arab countries were sometimes involved in full-scale revolt or revolution against their rulers and occupiers. Peasant landlessness and grievances about land fed into, among others, the Palestinian revolt of 1936—39 and the anti-Israeli resistance after 1948; the military coups that wracked Syria beginning in 1949; the 1952 coup in Egypt; the Iraqi revolution of 1958; and the Lebanese civil war of 1958 and beyond. As Haim Gerber has pointed out, unequal land regimes and peasant landlessness contributed to these periods of turmoil and challenge to the governments.67 Throughout the years of regional turmoil on its borders traced in part to land grievances, Jordan's peasants remained tranquil because their lot was considerably better. The British were quick to note this attitude. John Glubb attributed this loyalty to the benefits of an enlightened government working with Britain, and boasted that the Palestinian revolt of 1936—39 failed to spill over into northern Transjordan because the people were happy with their British-backed government. Other Englishmen cooed that Transjordan's people felt gratitude toward His Majesty's government. Nor was it only the British who took credit for TransJordan's relative stability: 'Abdullah credited himself with giving the populace what it needed when in the late 1930s he told a group of notables: We were not disappointed after the war. We enjoy freedom and independence. We have no Jews around our necks. We are freely allowed to carry our weapons. Not the English but I am your lord, and your sheiks are lords of your tribes. What more do you want?68

Yet the fact is that Jordan's overall stability and the contentment of its populace with the regime can be traced not to a naive popular appreciation for British rule nor even admiration of the Hashemites, although they have in fact been widely hailed, especially during the reign of 'Abdullah's grandson King Husayn (1953-99). Rather, this '" In The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East. Ladislas Farago, Palestine on the Eve (London: Putnam, 1936), pp. 266™67, cited in Adam M. Garfinkle, Israel and Jordan in the Shadow of War: Functional Ties and Futile Diplomacy in a Small Place (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 23. 1)8

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stability stems directly from the state's perceived ability to secure and protect the interests of the country's peasant majority throughout the 1930s-50s. As has been argued throughout this study, this was the segment of society that was numerically the largest, paid the most in taxes, and constituted thus the backbone of the country. In this lies a central feature of modern Jordanian history, and one that must not be overlooked.

and the Land Program in Jordan

The last dimension of the political aspect of the land policy that shall be explored here is its effect upon Zionist interest in land in Jordan and the question of Palestinian land rights under Jordanian rule in the West Bank. One of the most significant aspects of the land policy was the degree to which it ultimately hindered Zionist efforts to buy land in the country and the degree to which it assisted Palestinian landowners in the West Bank. Allegations have surfaced over the years that Jews purchased land in Transjordan during Ottoman times. This included both Zionist land purchasing institutions and individual investors. As for the former, scholars claim that the Jewish National Fund acquired land in Transjordan, although the author has never seen indications where.69 An Israeli study, based on documents and interviews, claims that individual Jews like the Jerusalem merchant Yitshak Aharon Blum also acquired land. Blum allegedly bought some 30,000 dunums of land south of Amman and east of Madaba from Sattam al-Fayiz, paramount leader of the Fayiz section of the Ban! Sakhr bedouin, in 1904.70 The establishment of the mandate and the new government's land program initially led to increased Zionist interest in and acquisition of land in Transjordan after the First World War for several rea-

b9

Jewish National Fund, "Report to the Thirteenth Congress," p. 68, in Walter Lehn, The Jewish National Fund (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1988), p. 73. Lehn claims that some of this land lay in Suwaylih. Interview with Walter Lehn, Toronto, 2 March 1996. 70 Zevi Ilan, "Nishyonot le-Rekhishat Adama ule Hityashvut Yehudit be-'Ever ha-Yarden ha-Mizrahi, 1871-1947" [Attempts by Jews to Purchase Lands and Settle in Transjordan, 1871-1947] (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Bar-Han University, 1981), pp. 407-408.


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sons. One was Britain's commitment to Zionism through the Balfour Declaration. In one noted case, British commitment to a leading Zionist industrialist led to his acquisition of a large amount of land in Transjordan. Pinhas Rutenberg's Palestine Electric Corporation owned the largest amount of land publicly owned by Jews in TransJordan. It lay in the Zawr al-Kinana region of Sukhur al-Ghawr in the far northern Jordan Valley. Mandatory authorities in Palestine had granted Rutenberg a concession to generate electricity in Palestine and Transjordan in 1921, and induced the Transjordanian government to sell Rutenberg 6,000 dunums in 1927 for £P12,965.71 This area was officially designated a village called Jisr al-Majamic by the government in June 1928 and the people living there were resettled. Rutenberg's possession was so extensive that he asked British authorities in Jerusalem in 1929 if he could sell some of the excess land to Jews and allow them to settle. The Transjordanian government objected on political grounds, and High Commissioner Sir John Chancellor told Rutenberg in March 1929 that he could only sell excess land back to the government. Rutenberg later allowed Jews to settle on the land without selling it to them. A second factor was the attitude of Emir 'Abdullah toward Zionist land purchases in Transjordan and the degree to which his acquiescence assisted Zionist purchasing efforts.72 British authorities opposed Jewish land purchases, stated that their commitment to Zionism through the Balfour Declaration was only effective in Palestine, not Transjordan, and announced that they could not guarantee the safety of Jews living in Transjordan. 'Abdullah, however, was intrigued with the possibilities of Zionist capital flowing into Transjordan. Individual Jews tried to acquire land in Transjordan during his reign, especially in the early 1930s. 'Abdullah was even involved in at least one episode personally. Two years after the British granted him over 56,000 dunums in GhawT al-Kibd in 1931, he extended an option to buy to two officials of the Jewish Agency, Emanuel Neumann and Joshua Farbstein, for £P500. He later received more money.73 71

CO 733/140, government house to secretary of state (1 April 1927). '~ For more information on 'Abdullah's relations with the Zionist movement, see Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan. King Abdullah, the îonist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), and Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan. 73 CO 831/45/1, "State Lands^Grant to Amir Abdullah"; CO 831/21/2, copy of option.

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A third factor explaining increased Zionist interest in buying land in Transjordan was the growing willingness of large landowners other than 'Abdullah to sell or mortgage land. The Dutch-born American Zionist Jacob de Haas claimed in 1936 that he had been offered 100,000 dunums for sale in 1924-25.74 Part of the reason why lay with the crippling droughts of the 1930s, which reduced many bedouin tribespeople to starvation. Their shaykhs sought ways to secure capital, including from Zionists. Another factor prompting. them to do this was the land program. As detailed earlier, the improved security of land led to higher land values. Large landowners could now sell or mortgage their land for more money than before. Additionally, the Land Tax Law of 1933 led to increased tax burdens for some, especially big landowners in the provinces of al-Balqa5 and al-Karak— some of the areas simultaneously hit hardest by the droughts. Chief British Resident Cox, however, chose to believe that large landowners in Transjordan were flirting with Zionist land purchasing agencies merely because they wanted to enrich themselves and not because of economic necessity.73 The result was that by the early 1930s, Transjordan and Palestine were awash in rumors of secret land deals involving cash-starved Transjordanian landowners and Zionist purchasers. Isaac Cohen, Jewish merchant from Jerusalem, allegedly met with four shaykhs of the cAdwan regarding buying land in Ghawr Kafrayn.76 Rumors began circulating that Mithqal al-Fayiz and Rufayfan al-Majall were negotiating to sell tens of thousands of dunums to wealthy Jews.77 In April 1933, Zionist official Chaim Arlosoroff hosted a dinner in Jerusalem in honor of Chaim Weizmann attended by several landowning Transjordanian notables, including Mithqal al-Fayiz, Rashid Khuzacl of the Furayhat family, Sallm Abu'l-Ghanam, Shams alDin Samf, and Mitrl Zurayqat. 78 Emir 'Abdullah told Cox that Rufayfan al-Majalr, Mithqal al-Fayiz, Rashid Khuza'f, Sacld Abu Jabir, and Sa'fd al-Muftf were negotiating to sell some of their lands to Jews because of the economic crisis.79 Arlosoroff and other Zionist /+

See his letter to the editor in the 7 July 1936 issue of The New York Times. U.S. state department, decimal file 8901.00/19 (1930s). U.S. state department, decimal file 890i.52 Jews/10. 77 Ibid., 890L52 Jews/9 (1933). 78 Palestine Post (10 April 1933). 79 CO 831/21/2//17702/33, envelope no. 1 to despatch of 27 January 1933, Cox to high commissioner (18 January 1933). 75

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officials told the high commissioner several months earlier that the Jewish Agency had received numerous offers to sell from landowners in Transjordan, including Rufayfan, Mithqal, Sultan al-cAdwan, and some Circassians.80 Colonial officials even produced a map showing areas of tens of thousands of dunums ". . . reported to have been offered for sale to Jewish groups".81 At least one shaykh did carry out a transaction with Jews: Mithqal al-Fayiz mortgaged land in Barazayn village to Jewish Agency officials in 1933. Nor were native Arab Transjordanians the only landowners who contemplated selling land to Zionist interests. Villagers of Turcoman descent living in al-Rumman wanted to liquidate their land and return to Turkey. The Turkish consul in Jerusalem, T. Kaya Alp, contacted the Jewish Agency to lease or buy 8,000 dunums in alRumman after he had approached the Supreme Muslim Council in Palestine seeking its interest."2 But the most mysterious foreigner owning land in Transjordan whom the historical record shows tried to sell land to Zionists was Richard Hughes. Hughes worked for the mandatory government ;n Palestine as a valuer of land for the rural land tax from 1926-34. During that time, he temporarily headed the fiscal survey's initial work in Transjordan in late 1927 and early 1928 prior to Mitchell's service as the first director of survey. But before that, Hughes acquired a huge stretch of land—20,918 dunums,— in the Hamra area of al-Salt. He bought some of it in March 1923 from Mansur bin Hilal al-Mu'ashshir, widower of Julie bint Niqola Shalhub. Her father Niqola was the Damascene who had been an Ottoman official, money lender, and landowner in Transjordan. Hughes also apparently lent money to Julie, because her widower was forced to auction the land. It was purchased by Fu'ad al-Hajj cAbd al-Hadf c Abd al-Hadl of Nablus in May 1925. He later gave it to Hughes, who registered it in January 1928 in a maneuver that clearly suggests collusion between cAbd al-Hadl and Hughes. Beyond that, Hughes bought 1,000 dunurm of state land in the Ghawr near Ghawr Kibd in December 1927.83 80 CO 831/21/3 interview between high commissioner and Emmanuel Neumann, Chaim Arlosoroff, Nahum Sokoloff (2 February 1933). 81 CO 831/22/10, map drawn by VV.R. Freeman. 8 - CO 831/21/3, acting high commissioner to secretary of state (21 September 1933), and Andrews to chief secretary (10 July 1933). !!i Jordanian department of lands and survey, Sijill al-Salt Raqm 10, Aylul 1920—Tislmn Tlidm 1929, Dabt [al-Salt Ledger No. 10, September 1920-January 1929, Dabt];

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What would a relatively low-level British civil servant in Jerusalem want with nearly one-tenth of the fertile lands of al-Salt, not to mention land in the Jordan Valley? Where did his capital to lend money and buy land come from? Contemporaries remember him as a man of modest means.84 Whether or not he obtained the capital to buy the land from Zionist interests, what is clear is that he tried thereafter to sell the land to the Zionist land purchasing agency, the Palestine Land Development Company (PLDC). Jewish Agency records indicate that by 1933, a "draft agreement with Mr. Hughes" had been reached and that a report on the land had been written. Hughes did not want to sign a mere option to sell his land but to sell it outright for £P15,000. He approached British Resident Cox to arrange for the sale and received an advance of -£P 1,000 from the PLDC. The matter even reached the level of High Commissioner Gen. Sir Arthur Wauchope, who met with Jewish Agency official Moshe Shertok in June 1935. Shertok informed Wauchope that Hughes was about to mortgage his land to the PLDC, which he did the following month.85 The PLDC intended to introduce Jews onto the land, and apparently undertook efforts to transfer the mortgage to the Jewish National Fund.86 The matter stimulated considerable concern among British officials, who informed the PLDC that Jews would not be allowed to settle in Transjordan. It was also noted that the Transjordanian government would certainly not allow7 the company, as a foreign entity, to register the land in its name. In the end, the land was never sold and Hughes' land was registered to him during land settlement in the 1940s and remained in his name until expropriated by the Jordanian government much later in July 1962. Nevertheless, the little-known story of Richard Hughes represents one of the most significant attempts by Zionist officials to acquire a large tract of land in Transjordan during the Mandate. The local reaction to Zionist landpurchasing efforts in Transjordan

Sijill al-Salt min Raqm 1 Tishnn Tham 1319 ila Raqm 19 Shubat 1325, Da'imi [al-Salt Ledger from No. 1 January 1319 to No. 19 February 1325, Da'imi]; NLCDD, file 8/9/11/5 mini ('ilmukhabar document of 24 May 1923); DLS/settlement, al-Salt files, numerous documents. 84 Interview with Sami Hadawi. Hadawi worked with Hughes in Palestine. 85 CZA S25/22774, various documents. Thanks to Yoav Alon for bringing these to my attention. 8 DLS Annual Report 1956, p. 6. 107 Jordan, Ministry of Finance,_file 2/l/aiif, "Darfbat al-Aradi" [2/1/A, Land Taxes]; doc.: "Danbat al-Aradl li-cAm 1964-1965" [Land Taxes for the Year 19641965]. 105

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Not only did Jordan's land program help West Bank landowners in terms of taxes and debts, it also proved of immense importance to them later during the long period of Israeli occupation after June 1967. Far from facilitating a Zionist takeover of their lands, the Jordanian land settlement program did just the opposite: it hindered Israeli efforts to take over West Bank land. The reason was that the Israeli high court of justice ruled in the Elon Moreh case in 1979 that the Israeli military authorities could not seize privately-owned Palestinian land and keep it indefinitely. This led to a shift in Israeli land confiscation policies. Thereafter, Israeli authorities began seizing what they called "state land" instead of registered private land. From 1979-81, the Israeli justice ministry carried out a survey of West Bank lands and determined that some 1,500,000 dunums of unregistered, uncultivated land could be classified "state land" according to their definition. The fact that the Jordanian settlement campaign had managed to settle rights, survey, and register private land rights in at least one-third of West Bank villages afforded those villages an invaluable aid in defending against such Israeli expropriations. The Jordanian government also found itself dealing with the legacy of the 1949 armistice lines, which cut a number of Palestinian villages in two and left them with part of their lands in Israel and part in the West Bank. In the cases where a village whose population remained in Israel but some of its agricultural lands lay in the West Bank, Jordanian authorities added these lands to existing West Bank villages for administrative purposes. On other occasions, the Jordanians simply gave a new village name to the lands they found in their territory. This occurred in the case of land lost by the village of alTayyiba in Israel. Its lands in the West Bank were renamed Khirbat Ijbara by the Jordanians.108 One final aspect of Jordanian land policy in the West Bank was the disposition of property that had been owned by Jews prior to the 1948 war. Like Rutenberg's land in the East Bank, any land owned by Israelis that the Jordanians discovered in the West Bank was placed under the guardian of enemy property. There were a variety of types of such land. By war's end, Jordanian forces controlled the land of several Jewish settlements and other inhabited sites during the fighting. These were the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's OG 1105 (16 April 1952), supplement no. 1 (23 April 1952), p. 187.


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Old City; the Gush cEtsiyon settlements of c Ein Tsurim, Kefar 'Etsiyon, Massu'ot Yitshak and Revadim between Bethlehem and Hebron; 'Atarot and Neve Yacakov north of Jerusalem; and the settlement of Beit ha-cArava, the hotel at Kaliya, and the Palestine Potash Company works at Rabbat Ashlag, all at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Beyond the lands of these settlements, Jordan's annexation of the West Bank brought under its control additional Jewish property, including land owned by Jewish individuals in Bayt Jala, Silwan, Hebron, and other locales. The guardian also controlled land owned by Jewish companies, such as property held in Silwan by the Mizrahi Land Improvement Company, Ltd. and the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), as well as land belonging to the Jewish National Fund in several locales. Institutional property like that of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was sequestered; as were Jewish waqfi, and cemeteries. These included the Vilna and Ashkenaz waqfs in Jerusalem, and a cemetery in Nablus. Even the land of Palestinians who found themselves under Israeli jurisdiction after 1948 was administered by the guardian. In total, Jordanian authorities informed the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine that they controlled 15,628 dunums of Jewish property in the West Bank in the following regions: Table 26: Jewish Land in the West Bank Controlled by Jordan, 1948—1967 District

Amount of Land (Dunums)

Jerusalem Bethlehem Hebron Nablus Ramallah Tulkarm

8,828.368 2,928.095 3,031.759 5.850 145.976 688.118

TOTAL

15,628.166

Source: United Nations Secretariat Archives, records of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine. Series: Land Identification and Valuation Office (Technical Office), 1952-1966; document: "UNCCP-Jewish Owned Property in Western Jordan, Schedule of by Sub District and Towns/Village."

The fate of these lands proved interesting. During the period 19481967, the Jordanian custodian of absentee property used the land for a variety of purposes. Some of it was rented to local Palestinians,

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such as two dunums rented by one Jawdat Salim al-Bakrf in Hebron.109 Other Jewish land was used for public purposes, including 68 dunums, in the destroyed settlement of cAtarot that was turned over to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA). Ths land was used by UNRWA to construct the Qalandiya Vocational Training Center, and while worth some 200 dinars/dunum in 1948 could fetch 1,000 dinars/dunum by 1961.110 This and other Jewish-owned land was later taken back by Israel following its June 1967 occupation of the West Bank, although interestingly most was not returned to its original owners. The Legal and Administrative Matters (Regulation) Law [Consolidated Version] of 1970 essentially allowed Jews to retrieve their property from the Israeli office of the general custodian. But land used by the Jordanian authorities for public purposes was generally not returned, although the former owners were paid compensation by the Israeli government. Other Jewish-owned land was expropriated by the Israeli government after 1967 for housing and urban renewal projects, especially in the Jerusalem area.''' Thus like in the East Bank, certain aspects of Jordanian land policy in the West Bank were decidedly beneficial to West Bank landowners, both during the Jordanian and Israeli eras.

Conclusion Jordan's land policies from the 1920s~50s represented the first and most significant test of the new state's relationship with its agricultural populace. The Anglo-Hashemite government's first interactions about land and land taxation with its citizens had spawned rebellions in the early 1920s. Yet the massive and intrusive land program granted the government considerable political benefits, for despite its occasional heavy-handedness with forest lands, it was carried out through the interaction and cooperation of landowners who felt their 109

NLCDD, governmental files, file 8/2/6, "Qadaya al-Aradf" [Land Cases]; document: 8/2/6/145, al-Bakn to prime minister (4 May 1967). 110 U.S. state department decimal file 325.84/2^761, Jerusalem to department of state (7 February 1961). 111 Eyal Benvenisti and Eyal Zamir, "Private Claims to Property Rights in Future Israeli-Palestinian Settlement." The American Journal of International Law 89:295 (1995), pp. 308-310, 313.


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interests wrere ultimately being served by the state in these instances. Even though many important social dimensions of landowning were abolished by the land program and capitalist penetration into the villages facilitated, the Jordanian government ultimately pursued policies regarding landowning that helped the small landowning cultivator hold onto his/her land in the face of rising indebtedness and accumulation of rural land by investors. The political implications of this during the turbulent era of the 1950s and 1960s in the Arab world were immense. The program also affected various other social actors in Jordan in different ways. Shaikhs' positions as landowners were generally upheld. While women's right to own land was similarly affirmed, their ability to inherit an equal share of their fathers' lands as their male relatives was dealt a blow. In the same fashion, West Bank Palestinian landowners generally benefitted from Jordanian land policies in several significant ways while Zionist attempts to buy up and retain control of land in Jordan were undercut. Until the growth of industry beginning in the 1960s, Jordan was largely a country of small-scale farmers. Land and its ownership was the central means of production in the economy. It constituted the main arena in which the state's relationship with its citizens was played out. The fact remains that for all the changes that it wrought, the Jordanian land program ultimately succeeded in securing the political loyalties of most East Bank farmers. The significance of this for modern Jordanian history cannot be overstated.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LAND AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF JORDAN

Introduction

Beyond affecting the tangible socio-economic and political contours of Jordan, the land program played a vital conceptual role in the country's history as well. The state defined the spatial dimensions of Jordan and its villages through the land program, just as it did for the understanding of real property. While it is true that the state worked with landowners in implementing the land program and did not merely impose it on a docile populace, it was the state's land department that played a singularly crucial role in determining the boundaries of the country, its villages, and thus the very idea of identity for the country's population. The reality of "Transjordan," and later "Jordan," as a distinct entity separate from "Syria," "Palestine," "Hijaz," and the "Ottoman empire," became a concrete reality for villagers because of the survey maps, the land registration documents, and the land tax lists drawn up by the land department. Where one village's boundaries ended and another's began was likewise formalized by the land department. The department even deepened the concept of property as a state-defined and registered reality separate from a mere social concept. In truth, the land program was instrumental in creating a tangible sense of what 'Jordan" and "property" meant in the country, and thus helped create and foster a sense of Jordanianness beyond mere tribal identity. The land department also went far in institutionalizing in Jordan a Western concept of bureaucracy, given that its methods and leaders were themselves Western.

Spatial Dimensions of the Country: Conceptualizing Jordan and its Villages

Much as ideas are given concrete form through words, the notion of a Transjordan separate from the rest of Greater Syria became

LAND AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF "JORDAN"

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tangible after the population could locate its new country concretely on a map. The first two generations of Jordanians probably did not come in much contact with maps. But the reality remains the same, for by the 1980s the outline of Jordan was a common feature on Jordanian television and the reality of a Jordan mapped in space was real. The physical outline of the country was drawn by survey maps. By establishing triangulation points linked to the existing Palestinian and Syrian mapping grids, Transjordanian surveyors were able to link the country to the wider world's mapping grid system. Transjordan's land department thus literally put the country on the map. Transjordan as a political construct possessed no abstract real form prior to the fiscal survey. The department of lands and survey's survey teams converted the abstract notion of "Transjordan" and its villages into a unidimensional expression of reality. In his influential work Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson argued that nationalism in the developing world was patterned on the development of nation states and nationalisms in Europe. But Anderson later revised his opinion in the second edition of that study. He noted instead that ". . . the immediate genealogy should be traced to the imaginings of the colonial state."1 By this Anderson meant that colonial states like the new Anglo-Hashemite entity in Transjordan undertook policies, including holding censuses, making maps, and establishing museums, that helped shape the growth of a distinct national feeling among a populace unaccustomed to thinking of themselves in terms of European nationalist paradigms. When speaking of the power of maps in creating a sense of identity among peoples of the developing world, Anderson notes that "[l]ike censuses, European-style maps worked on the basis of a totalizing classification, and led their bureaucratic producers and consumers towards policies with revolutionary consequences."2 These consequences included creating a new7 sense of place based not merely upon the land itself but the abstract representation of the land on a paper map drawn according to European concepts of cartography as well. Surveys and maps certainly are not neutral instruments. They are in fact wielded by social agents who use them to convince people 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London and New York: Verso, 1991), p. 163.

2

Ibid., p. 173.

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to accept a unique vision of reality, in this case, of land and property. Maps are cultural constructs, designed to transform and thus serve interests. This is so, argues Denis Wood, ". . . because the map is not apart from its culture but instead a part of its culture."3 And this culture—more specific to our case, the state—uses maps to "naturalize" that which is the product of "cultural energy," and in so doing serve its interests.4 Wood continues by refuting the concept of the neutrality of the logic behind map making: This is to say that maps work . . . by serving interests. Because these interests select what from the vast storehouse of knowledge about the earth the map will represent, these interests are embodied in the map as presences and absences. Every map shows this. . . but not that, and every map shows what it shows this way , . . but not the other [ellipses and emphasis in the original].5

Thus a map links a plot of ground with an entire set of assumptions, interests, and values that the state brings with it. In so doing, We see that this is what maps do: they mask the interests that bring them into being; this to make it the easier to accept what they say as ... unsaid. . . as . . . in the air [ellipses in the original].'' The fact that the Jordanian state used maps to create the very sense of Jordan and how property was defined in it is a fact that holds tremendous importance for the consolidation of Jordanian national identity and socio-economic culture. A key ingredient in the formulation of a modern nation state is the creation of an identity tied to a specific terrain. By mapping the land itself, from international borders to village boundaries, the land department created a physical representation of the nation. As Wood notes once again, "Maps construct—not reproduce—the World."7 In this case, land officials like colonial officials before them were creating Jordan, which became more real, less abstract, through surveying. Maps, land deeds, and land tax receipts bore the name "Emirate of Transjordan," reinforcing the concept among landowners that their property, their

3 Denis Wood with John Pels, "The Power of Maps (New York and London: The Guildord Press, 1992), p. 143. Emphasis in the original. 4 Ibid., p. 2.

5 6 7

Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 17.


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homes, and thus their identities, were constructs of the state handed to them via the land department. Beyond national identity, the land program constituted the process by which Transjordan's villages were definitively demarcated and mapped—and thus defined—by the state. This went far in consolidating the spatial reality of these villages in relation to one another and vis-a-vis the central government, for it was the state's maps and not social visions that constituted the final arbiter of village boundaries. The land program did not create these boundaries, and thus village identity, by fiat. When the fiscal survey delineated village borders it did so in conjunction with village elders. Representatives from villages whose lands abutted one another's were consulted simultaneously, such as when surveyors gathered elders from Samma, Macadh, Zubdat al-Wustiyya, Kufr Asad, al-Tayyiba, and Makhraba early in the fiscal survey in February 1928.8 But in a large way the program did play a fundamental role in sanctioning the physical expanse, and thus to a large degree the physical identity, of the 454 Transjordanian villages it touched. Since many Transjordanian villages were of relatively recent historical origin, having been settled by former nomadic and semi-nomadic bedouin or immigrants from Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and other regions in Transjordan, the process of establishing and surveying village boundaries was a significant step in creating a concrete sense of place for these inhabitants. It also served to reduce encroachment and disputes over ill-defined borders. All of this was accomplished through the intervention of the state and its land program. In the final analysis, then, whether or not a distinct village existed, where its boundaries and internal hawds lay, and thus what identity villagers carried, was determined by the state. The al-Kura region of c Ajlun witnessed one of the most widespread cases of the state determining both the boundaries of villages and the kinship units that would reside in each. The tribes of Ban! Bakr, Ban! clsa, Bam Yunis, Bam Yasfn, Bam cAbd al-Rahman, Ban! Dumf, and Banf cAmir that originally had settled in the village of Tubna were assigned land in surrounding areas in the region by the influential shaykh Yusuf al-Shurayda in the 19th century. This occurred because of overpopulation. These families thus spread out

8

DLS/diwan, appendix JOT to file "72-1/6/16, Sukhur al-Ghawr, Lajnat alTahrTr wa'1-Tathmln" [Sukhur al-Ghawr, Committee for Registration and Valuation].

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from Tubna into ten localities which became villages: Dayr Abl Sacfd, c lnba, Rihaba, Rukhaym, Marhaba, Janfn, al-Samt, Kufr al-Ma3, Zimal, and Abu'1-Qayn. However, this partition of land did not last unchallenged. Because of intermarriage, some land in the various villages came to be owned by relatives living in neighboring localties and confusion continued to reign. Social actors like shqykhs were unable to resolve this confusion. During the fiscal survey in 1930, government surveyors helped decide the matter by, for instance, delineating the boundaries of al-Samt so as to go to the Bam clsa and Marhaba to the Ban! Bakr. They also divided the lands of Dayr Abi Sacld into two separate villages: Dayr Abl Sacld al-Gharbl and Dayr Abl Sacid al-Sharqi. The land settlement process later impacted on identity several years later by changing the boundaries of certain villages as well. In the Kura region of c Ajlun, this occured once again. Because of the intermarriage and cross-ownership discussed above, settlement officers took a huge portion of Tubna village—6,987 dunums,—and assigned part to the village of Rihaba and part to Zubiya. They did so because the owners of these lands permanently resided in those two villages, and they felt that the land in question thus belonged not within Tubna but within them.9 But when the Bam Yunis, Bam Bakr, and Ban! clsa tribes in Marhaba, al-Samt, and Dayr Abi Sa'Id also tried to claim land in Tubna in 1939, they failed. In this case, they claimed rights to land in Tubna not because they actually owned it but because of their family ties and their Ottoman-era connection to Tubna. The settlement officer refused by citing the law of prescription, which stated that any land owned uncontested for ten or more years was considered legally owned.10 Their "new" village identity was reaffirmed by settlement officers. The land program also created new villages that had originally been uninhabited "satellite" villages cultivated by the inhabitants of a nearby village. For example, al-Kharaj in cAjlun had originally been part of the lands of Hawfa while Qaraqosh had been part of al-Raftd. These became their own distinct localities during the land program. When Pinhas Rutenberg's Palestine Electric Corporation bought 6,000 dunums in Sukhur al-Ghawr, the area was detached 9 DLS/settlement, Tubna files. File: "al-Taqnr al- c Umumi, Tubna" [General Report, Tubna]. 10 Ibid.


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from the bulk of the village lands and named Jisr al-Majamic in 1928. By the late 1950s, this area came to be called al-Mashruc. We have already noted how the land program "created" new villages in the West Bank as wrell, imparting a new identity to land (see preceeding chapter). The land program's fiscal survey also affected village identity by permanently enshrining the names of certain portions of each villages, names that survive until today. Surveyors gave each hawd a name during the fiscal survey of 1927—33 based on common village usage at that time. Long after the persons, events, etc. after which these hawds were named had disappeared, the villagers continued to use them inasmuch as they were officially registered in the records of the land department. Over the course of time, parts of the village or town came to be named after these hawd names because while the spatial dimensions of the village and its population may have changed, the names recorded by the land department did not. One locale where this has had a profound effect was Amman. The 57 hawd?, of the capital surveyed in 1933 later came to denote areas of town after urban sprawl had devoured Amman's agricultural land. Today's districts of Jabal al-Luwaybda, Umm Udhayna, c Abdun, Marj al-Hamam, and al-Shumaysa.nl bear the names of mandateera hawds.

New Conceptualizations of Property Yet another important way that the land program contributed to the contours of socio-economic life in Transjordan/Jordan was through the way it conceptualized property. Once again, the state took the lead in creating a new conceptualization of what property was and how private individuals preserved it. Land and property ownership had of course existing prior to the land program, when social forces were important arbiters of property relations. Shaykhs and other social actors divided land among villagers and exerted considerable influence over both property and the relationship between villagers and the Ottoman government. Especially in mushdc villages, property ownership was integrally linked with social relations. Persons owned abstract shares in the total village land, shares that had been originally determined as part of a collective village decision. The terms of reference for landed property were thus socially-constructed.

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One of the major accomplishments of the land program was how it reformulated this idea of property. What people owned was first transformed from a socially-constructed idea into a concrete reality by the land department: a specific plot of land, demarcated and drawn on a map. Whereas prior to the land program land was not only understood as a resource to be controlled but also a community or tribal resource which lay at the heart of the cultivators' lives. This was most clearly true in the case of mushd' land. But after the land program, land had become a thing to be owned by an individual, free from social constraint. Once again, we observe the power of the map in defining property: " . . . the land is there: it is the property [that] the map creates."11 Testifying to this ownership was a state-issued deed. Prior to the land program, villagers resorted to hand-drawn bills of sale and collective memory when noting who controlled what. The strict new registration laws enacted as part of the land program required that someone could only buy and sell or inherit land by recourse to the new land registries. All other land transactions were null and void. The state and its paper registers and deeds had thus become the regulator of property transfers, not collective memory. So pervasive was the logic that one owned something because s/he possessed a deed can be seen in the appropriation of the Turkish word tapu and its Arabized gerund, tatwib. Even today, the word tatwib is used by ordinary Jordanians to refer to registering anything with the government: one must arrange for tatwib of a new car, for example.

Creating a Western-Style Bureaucracy One of the other major ways in which the land program affected popular conceptualizations in Jordan was by deepening a Western concept of bureaucracy and of the state's relationship with the citizen. This took place for two fundamental reasons. The first was noted earlier: the logic behind implementation of the land program was quintessentially Western in its outlook on property and the state's role in managing land affairs. Yet beyond this, the nature of the department of lands and survey and the men who served in it also

Wood Power of Maps, p. 9. Emphasis in the original.


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instilled in the minds of citizens and employees alike a Western logic of government whose impact would continue to be felt long after the end of the mandate in 1946. The Jordanian department of lands and survey played a crucial role in setting the standards for bureaucratic institutions in the country, for it was the leading government department in the new country during the mandate outside of the security forces. Its presence and the standards of its precise operations were felt wherever its surveyors went and whenever persons visited a land registry. Procedures were generally applied uniformly. Employees were expected to be honest and hardworking. Disputes could be appealed and citizens' voices heard. Maps detailing individual landholdings were provided to citizens. Several copies of all records were made for safekeeping, and calculations for tax burdens were done mathematically at the department's headquarters in Amman. One official of the modern department of lands and survey once remarked, "It was the English who organized us."12 Even on the level of the creation of bureaucratic space was the department important: its central role in the Transjordanian bureaucracy was demonstrated by the fact that its imposing three-storey headquarters in the Jabal al-Luwaybda area of Amman that was opened in August 1938 was the first major public office building erected in Transjordan. It remains standing to this day. Beyond this, the department indelibly marked the socio-economic and political fabric of the country through the presence, skill, and determination exhibited by its British employees. Numerically, the number of Englishmen in the department was never more than two or three out of dozens of employees. At the height of the fiscal survey in 1930, for instance, there were only three (the director, the assistant director/director of survey, and one inspector of surveys). But their impact was tremendous in terms of example and training. We have already noted that mandatory officials were anxious that Sir Ernest M. Dowson's land program be implemented in Transjordan by a department headed by British officers. It was for this reason that mandatory officials hired Andrew Park Mitchell first as director of survey in late 1927. He then became director of the unified department of lands and survey department that emerged from the

12

Personal communication between the author and an employee of the land department.

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consolidation of the separate departments of registration, survey, and state lands in May 1929. Born in 1894, Mitchell had served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in France, India, and Egypt during the First World War and was captured in 1917. Thereafter, he worked as permanent inspector for the Survey of Egypt from 1919 until his appointment in 1927. He was noted by colonial officials for his expertise in making field maps, his energy and charm, and his ability to read and speak Arabic. The department's first assistant director, who also carried the title of director of survey, was Walter Sydney Shiliter Moffatt. Born in 1893, Moffatt also worked for the Egyptian government's survey department from 1910-20. He was a surveyor in Palestine from 1921-23, whereupon he returned to Egypt for a year in 1924. Moffatt was hired as assistant director of lands in 1929, and his presence in the field during the fiscal survey and the early years of settlement was so well-known that many old Jordanians still recall "Mister Mufid," an Arabic corruption of Moffatt's name. Moffatt left for work in the department of development in Palestine in September 1936 (whereupon he was assassinated in Jenin in August 1938 during the Palestinian revolt) and was permanently replaced in April 1940 by George F. Walpole, who in turn replaced Mitchell upon the latter's move to Palestine to become commissioner of surveys. More than any other British officer it was George Frederick Walpole, who created the ethos of the department of lands and survey. Born in 1892, Walpole served in the British military during the First World War in France and the Cameroons. He worked as an inspector of survey for the Egyptian government from 1921—36 during which time he surveyed the eastern and western deserts and the Sinai Peninsula, and prepared a 1/500,000 scale map of the country. Walpole cut an impressive figure. Unlike the diminutive Mitchell, Walpole was a large man. While unassuming in his dress he was aristocratic in his bearing and prone to public anger.13 He liked to speak Arabic and to travel in the field with his employees. Along with with British resident and the head of the Arab Legion, Walpole was the most influential British official in Transjordan/Jordan during the crucial years of 1940 54, which saw the Second World War, Jordanian independence, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the I:f

According to a Jordanian employee who worked with him, he once struck his wife in front of several witnesses. Interview with cAbd al-Razzaq al-Salama.


205

annexation of the West Bank, completion of land settlement in the East Bank, extension of the land regime to the West Bank, and the rule of three Hashemite monarchs. Under his directorship, Walpole served not only as director of lands but later director of irrigation (1948-52) and director of forests (1952-54). Being an Englishman in charge of land surveying, registration and settlement, as well as land taxation, forests, and irrigation, Walpole was a major figure during the late mandate and period of early independence. So influential was he that one leading Jordanian historian has called him the "uncrowned king of Jordan."14 His legacy would last long after his departure from the directorship in May 1954. Mitchell, Moffatt, Walpole, and the other Englishmen who served in the land department in some capacity like Alan Logan Kirkbride, J.W. Loxton, and A.M. Quennell were dedicated and hardworking professionals who set an example for the Jordanians working with them. This is not to say that they did not suffer, however. The life of a land official in Transjordan could be rigorous, particularly in the field wThere surveyors and settlement officials lived for months at end in tents, traveled on horseback, and labored both in the scorching sun and chilly winter rains. C. Morris Hucklesby, a surveyor hired in 1928, resigned in April 1931 during the fiscal survey because of the "exceptionally strenuous conditions" of survey work in TransJordan. 1 ' Inspector of Survey Hugh Aird Mercer committed suicide in April 1940 after three years of service. Life could also be dangerous: Head Forest Ranger R.G. Head was captured and robbed by armed persons in Dawqara village in February 1939, probably Palestinian guerrillas operating in northern Transjordan during the revolt against the British in Palestine. In fact, settlement operations were suspended in cAjlun north of Wadi Tayyiba in the late 1930s because of poor security conditions. We have already noted the attack by Palestinian guerrillas on surveyors in the Jordan Valley that left three dead in 1938. Security was thereafter increased to prevent future attacks. It was precisely such political concerns surrounding the decision to extend Transjordan's mapping activities south toward Aqaba, an area claimed by Saudi Arabia, during the Second World 14 Private communication with Dr. Mohammad Adnan al-Bakhit, now president of AL al-Bayt University in Mafraq, Jordan. '•"' DLS/d'iwan, 16/1/8, "C.M. Hucklesby"; Hucklesby to Mitchell (1 March 1931).

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War that led to over two dozen policemen being posted to guard the soldiers of the New Zealand army's 36th artillery survey battery who actually carried out the work in 1941. As one British military officer noted to Walpole at the time, "I am not forgetting the political side of this move!"16 In addition to its rigors and even dangers, life far from the comforts of home in the Western world could also be boring for those involved in the work of the land program. British officials in the land department passed their free time by reading books. An examination of their books, which were still lining the shelves of the land department's library over 40 years later, revealed a fascinating assortment of reading material. This included poetic works like The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, The Best Poems of 1937, and Rudyard Kipling's Verse. Inclusive Edition, 1885-^1918. These men also read for practical purposes. Thirty-two year-old Marcus Mackenzie, who assumed the duties of assistant director of lands from 1941-45, practiced reading the Greek he studied at Oxford wiiile Walpole practiced everything from calculating distances (Handbook of Artillery Instruments 1914} to birth control (Wise Parenthood. A Practical Sequel to "Married Love." A Book for Married People}. The professionalism of these British officers was not the only way that they influenced the bureaucratic culture of Jordan. Two Arab officials who worked in the land department later rose to become Transjordan's leading prime ministers from the late-1930s through the mid-1950s: Tawfiq Abu'1-Huda and Samlr al-Rifacf. British officials in the land department also influenced the bureaucracy closer to home by training their Arab successors within the department. In early 1928, Mitchell oversaw the establishment of the first survey school in the region as the fiscal survey was getting underway. It invited students handpicked by the ministry of education to train for three months as surveyors. By 1930, the department employed 19 Arab surveyors compared to only two Englishmen (MofTatt and Hucklesby). Two of these surveyors would later rise to become the first and second Arab directors of land following 26 years of British directorship: Muhammad IsmacTl al-cAttfyat (director from 1954—59) and Muhammad al-Khashman (1959—62). The department has been run by Arabs ever since Walpole's departure: 16 DLS/diwan, file 22/80, "Major Trig Points Amman-Aqaba"; document: Pain to Walpole, 8 August 1941. See other documents in the file as well.


207

Table 27: Directors of the Department of Lands and Survey 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Andrew Park Mitchell (1928-40) George Frederick Walpole (1940-54) Muhammad Isma'fl al-cAttfyat (1954 59) Muhammad al-Khashman (1959-62) Subhf al-Hasan (1962-71) Badri Mulqf (1971-89) Ahmad al-Gharayiba (1990-96) Ibrahim Mismar (1996-)

The legacy of Mitchell and Walpole lives on in the Department of Lands and Survey today, and not merely in the professionalism and Western standards of work that they inculcated. Even today, their portraits hang alongside the portraits of all other former directors of land in the department's headquarters in Amman. Even though a portrait of the Islamic leader Salah al-Dln hangs nearby, with a caption noting that he saved the Holy Land from the Crusaders, the portraits of two latter-day Europeans are still venerated by the land department's Arab employees as a testiment to their service.

Conclusion In addition to its socio-economic and political impact, land policy in Jordan since the 1920s served a variety of conceptual purposes in the country. The land program created things out of paper: maps delimited "Jordan," denned the limits and names of hawds and villages, and outlined an individual's property in unidimensional form. Paper deeds and registers became the final authorities on property rights. The government's land program thus helped define for ordinary Jordanians the spatial dimensions of their property, their villages, and their new country." This constituted one of the most significant ways in which the new state interacted with the populace, for the colonial state discussed by Benedict Anderson powerfully and graphically reproduced its visions of reality within Jordanian society. The land department also contributed to a growing bureaucratic culture in Jordan that stressed hard work and a keen sense of

'' Thanks to Riccardo Bocco for pointing out the impact that states have on creating identity through maps.

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order and public service. The example set by Englishmen like Mitchell, MofTatt, and Walpole lived on in Jordan's bureaucracy, not to mention its land regime. In these ways, land policy in Jordan did not just measure space: it also helped create space. This new space did not merely reflect hills and valleys and plains, but reflected 'Jordan." It did not merely represent soil, it represented "property." And even though the state worked with society in creating these visions, they nonetheless represent in the final analysis the implantation of a Western conceptualization of life in Arab Jordan.

CONCLUSION

In the introduction to their unique edited volume, two leading scholars of modern Jordan, Eugene L. Rogan a Tariq Tell, noted the following about the state of scholarship on modern Jordan: While much more has been written on the Mandate than on the Ottoman period, most of the current scholarship has been restricted to the high politics of Anglo-Hashemite relations and the Palestine question. The social history of Transjordan, the histories and politics of bedouin, cultivators and townspeople, and of their relation to the emerging state, is only now being written. The earlier neglect resulted in some predictable distortions.1

The present study has tried to move in the directions described by Rogan and Tell by examining both the socio-economic history of Transjordan/Jordan and the relationship between landowners and the state that emerged starting in 1851. In so doing, it has also examined the socio-economic roots of the Hashemite state's continued existence to this day. It has done so by examining how state and society related to one another from the late Ottoman period through the first crucial decades of Transjordan's existence in terms of their separate and mutual interests in the country's land regime. As the central means of production in an agricultural society, as the generator of most of the state's indeginous revenues, and as the essence of both state and popular conceptualization of what a state and a homeland is, land was the sine qua non for contextualizing and thus for understanding state-societal relations in Transjordan. Indeed, the study of land brings one to the essence not just of Jordanian history but of human history. The historian Lewis Namier succinctly noted the importance of land in history as follows: The relations of groups of men to plots of land, of organized communities to units of territory, form the basic content of political history. The conflicting territorial claims of communities constitute the greater part of conscious international history; social stratifications and convulsions, primarily arising from the relationship of men to land, Rogan and Tell Village, Steppe and State, p. xix.

2 10

CONCLUSION make the greater, not always fully conscious, part of the domestic history of nations . . .2

This work has delved into the history of land in modern Jordan, a political entity so historically new that one can still clearly see the impact of the first interactions of state and society of over a century ago in the historical record. In studying the state's involvement in the land regime of Jordan, we can thus understand a great deal about the contours of the state, of society and social actors, and of the state's relationship with the state and its citizens. Among the conclusions we can draw from this study of state, society, and land in Jordan are these. First, the introduction of Tanzimatera Ottoman land policy by and large confirmed the land tenure regime that had already existed, the emergence of a class of efendi landowners in some regions notwithstanding. The cultivators' reactions to the Ottomans ranged from cooperation to defiance, as determined by the extent to which different regions of Transjordan saw the coming of Ottoman land policy as a chance to rectify various socioeconomic problems they were experiencing. The traditional views of some scholars that the 1858 Land Code created a revolution in tenure conditions, as well as that cultivators avoided registering their land wherever possible, do not apply to the Transjordanian case. Second, the Jordanian government's massive British-conceived land program of 1927-52 affected Jordan's land and people like no other program during the mandate. The greatest result of the program was to secure the ownership rights of the country's small-scale cultivators according to a European vision of land management. The basic contours of the land tenure system continued to be private peasant ownership of small, subsistence-level plots covering most of Jordan's arable land. The land program also generally benefitted the land rights of shqykhs, merchants, and other large landowners but not to the complete detriment of small cultivators. But it did not dramatically improve the lot of female landowners and in fact, made it worse. Secondly, the political ramifications of this fact were profound. The essentially equitable tenure system uphold by the state meant that Jordan avoided the embittered agrarian relations and landless-

- Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963), p. 18.

CONCLUSION

21 1

ness experienced in surrounding Arab societies which led to revolution and upheaval in the 1940s-60s. The Anglo-Hashemite regime's ability to consolidate its rule was in no small way linked to the fact that Jordanian landowners—peasants, shaykhs, and merchants—felt that the state's land program served their basic interests. Since the land program was the most visible feature of the new state that landowners typically observed first-hand, this went far in securing at least their passive loyalty to the system. Thirdly, this study has argued that Jordanian land policies were instrumental beyond material considerations. They also forged a spatial conceptualization of what "Jordan" meant—how it was delineated, how large its villages were—as well as what "property" meant in the post-Ottoman era. Land policies linked the state with society's growing need to secure private, individual property rights at the expense of certain collective village rights. By the end of the land program, the state occupied an important position regarding property rights. All of this was accomplished through a land program that was designed and led by British officials who also imparted a powerful concept of Western bureaucratic method to native Jordanians. It is through studies such as these, based on indigenous records, that we can begin to understand Jordanian history as a product of internal forces. These were tempered by external ones to be sure; but Jordan is more than a history of foreign dynasts and great power politics. The recent passing of Jordan's longstanding King Husayn engendered a host of questions in the Western media: how stable was the political system? Would the deposed king's brother attempt a coup? At least some of us who tried to answer these worried interviewers encouraged them to look further back into Jordan's history for their answers. Regime stability in the Hashemite kingdom stands on much more than primordial loyalty to the person of a particular monarch (as beloved as he may have been) as the "head shqykh" of the nation. Indeed, Jordan's long track record of state-societal cooperation on such basic issues as securing an equitable land tenure system provides us with many of the answers to some of the basic questions about the modern history of Jordan. We need more studies not only of Jordan's land regime and how it has changed since the time period of this study, but also of other features of the country's socio-economic history. For instance, how have the issues presented in this work affected Jordan's transition from a country with a peasant majority to one where, by the year

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CONCLUSION

2000, most Jordanians were no longer farmers, and where sale" refers more often to urban real estate than rural What does this mean for future stability in the country? in the introduction, these questions deal with the space tangibles—the land—touch intangibles—the ever-mutable land tenure and state-societal relations.

"land for property? As stated in which nature of

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INDEX

c

Abbad tribe 11, 14, 16, 31, 46 division of land 46 'Abbada, Da'ud 32 c Abd al-Hadf family c Abd al-Hadi -h Tl

ft 3 o

w X

PALESTINE

State, Society, and Land in Jordan

Rethinking and NGO: Development, Donors and Civil Society in Jordan

State and Society in the Philippines (State and Society in East Asia)

The State in Capitalist Society

Jury, State, and Society in Medieval England

Jury, State, and Society in Medieval England

Church, State, And Society in Eastern Europe

Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State

Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State

Myanmar: State, Society and Ethnicity

Church, State and Civil Society

The State against Society

Jordan

Jordan

Jordan

Jordan

Russia and Islam: State, Society and Radicalism

Jordan

Jordan

Jordan

Jordan

Jordan

Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The Disabled State (Health, Society, And Policy)

Political Geography: Territory, State and Society

Political Geography: Territory, State and Society

State Crime (Crime and Society Series)

Social Theory, The State and Modern Society (Theorising Society Studies)

An Introduction to Politics, State and Society

State, Society, and Land in Jordan

Rethinking and NGO: Development, Donors and Civil Society in Jordan

State and Society in the Philippines (State and Society in East Asia)

The State in Capitalist Society

Jury, State, and Society in Medieval England

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