CHAPTER VI
THE BUSINESS LIFE OF THE VILLAGE
The Palestine peasant can do hard work. When half starved, anemic, hounded and terror-stricken he naturally enough fails to be as brisk and as inventive as he might otherwise be, but with half a chance he is industrious and thrifty. There are the lazy and the active as in other countries. As a general rule it might be said that the Palestinian is accustomed to work hard, but not steadily; liking to rest occasionally, not understanding, nor benefiting by, a system of sharp espionage or, more properly, “nagging.” This latter frets him and destroys his efficiency, and ought not to be practised on him. A good-natured firmness that holds him to the letter of agreements in simple, plainly understood terms is much better.
FARMING IMPLEMENTS
1. Plow. 2. Threshing sledge, showing the under side. 3 and 4. Grain forks. 5. Wooden shovel or fan. 6. Seed-tube. 7. Sieve. 8. Dung basket. 9. Goad and share cleaner, the iron-shod end being used as the latter. 11. Yokes. Pruning knives and sickles are also seen in the picture. (From the Hartford Theological Seminary Collection.)
The country life of Western Palestine to-day is organized on the basis of farming. The original estate of the Arab is to own flocks and tents, with the auxiliary pastimes of raiding and hunting. This life is represented to-day by the nomad tribes of the Syrian desert and of Arabia. They still roam over Eastern Palestine and penetrate into Western Palestine, but their range is being narrowed in these regions by the pressure of the Turkish government, which is organizing the country more closely in favor of its own authority. The transition stage between herding and agriculture may be seen in the Jordan Valley and eastward, where the nomads and the village peasants go into partnership together to raise grain. Ordinarily a desert nomad scorns the farmer and villager, but there are Bedawîn farmers who are a sort of industrial bridge between the civilization of the villagers and the primitive freedom of the dwellers in tents farther east and south.[[126]] The breeding of horses and camels falls to the nomad, while the rearing of sheep, goats and cattle is the vocation of the villager. It is hardly necessary to say that a scattered farm life, with dwellings far apart, as in Europe and America, is not known in Palestine, since the country is not yet secure enough to encourage it.
The farmers (fellaḥîn) are the foundation of the village population. Their lands lie out around the village and may extend a considerable distance from it.[[127]] It will be well to understand the system of landholdings in Palestine. There are three kinds of landholdings to be distinguished, wakf, mulk and mîreh. Wakf land is land that is held in perpetual and inalienable right by some ecclesiastical establishment, as, for instance, the properties of the Jerusalem Mosk, “The Dome of the Rock,” or the landed properties of the Hebron Mosk, which is a very wealthy foundation. Or wakf land may belong to a school or other institution, or to a family. Wakf land is supposed never to change its character. If it belongs to a family there is an elder of the family or some representative who is the wakf administrator.
Mulk land is absolutely free and transferable land. It is usually in a city or a village, or it may be in a certain border around such a place of, say, forty yards in width. This is house and garden property for the actual needs of city or village life. It can be sold or otherwise transferred at the pleasure of its owners. Such a piece of property pays an extra tax where a house is built on it, as the occupancy of the land by a building prevents that land from yielding taxable produce.
Mîreh land is domanial or state land. The ultimate title is with the state, to whom it reverts in the event of the failure of proper heirs. There are nine degrees of heirs eligible as owners of such land, children, grandchildren, brothers’ children and grandchildren and so on; lastly the wife of the owner, if all the other degrees fail. If the land is sold, then the degrees count from the new owner and go right through the nine degrees from him. So it is very possible that mîreh land may be in continuous ownership other than the state’s.
Village cultivable lands are mîreh lands. In cases where they are village lands they are held as communal lands. In villages like Râm Allâh and el-Bîreh the land that is held thus in common as cultivable land is divided into three grades according to quality. Then each grade is divided into feddâns. A feddân is, in the first instance, a team or yoke; in Râm Allâh, four yoked cattle. Feddân then comes to mean the amount of land apportioned to the owner of such an equipment, which amount is presumably as much as the feddân of cattle could plow in a day. Finally the term feddân is used by the peasants to indicate the acknowledged right of a village farmer to own and work his plow and team and participate in the annual divisions of the arable land of the farming community. The feddân is the unit, but one feddân may be shared by several owners, each partner contributing his share to the outfit and being recorded as entitled to privileges in the feddân. These legal fellaḥîn, then, receive by lot as their assignment for the year some of each quality of land. Hence the man, or family, or company interested in one feddân may have land here, there and in a third place. A deep furrow, the width of a plow, marks the boundary between the different strips. Or a succession of small heaps of stones may mark the line.[[128]] The workers on such a strip or strips pay the government taxes or tithes on the produce of their land.