3. Allowances, Advances, and Credit
Allowances (rizaq)
Large villages allotted tax-free allowances (rizaq) of arable land to local officials, including village headmen and guardsmen, supervisors of the sugarcane network, carpenters in charge of maintaining waterwheels, as well as Christian and Muslim clerics.
Allowances were most commonly granted as tax-free plots of arable land, usually measured in feddans but sometimes in ploughshares (miḥrāth, pl. maḥārīth), a larger unit equal to perhaps a dozen feddans. These plots were exempt from the land-tax. Their surplus remained with the local beneficiaries and was not delivered to the iqṭāʿ-holder.[1] Since these plots were exempt from the lease contracts affecting other village lands, they were sometimes subject to a canonical land-tax on private property, called the tithe (ʿushr al-rizaq).[2]
The rationale for the allocation of tax-free allowances was that headmen and other officials provided services to the community which prevented them from attending to the land. The recording of these allowances by al-Nābulusī implies that the iqṭāʿ-holders approved these tax-free allowances, deducted from the overall fiscal revenue of the village.
In al-Nābulusī’s time there was no distinction between tax-free allowances for civilian and for religious functionaries. This would change a couple of decades later, when al-Ẓāhir Baybars created a separate category of endowed allowances (rizaq iḥbāsiyya) in support of Muslim religious institutions. After his reforms, allowances for guardsmen, headmen, and carpenters continued under a separate category, known as maṣāliḥ al-nāḥiya.[3]
Seed Advances
The Dīwān al-Māl provided annual seed advances (taqāwī) for next year’s sowing, largely in wheat and barley. The seeds were handed over to iqṭāʿ-holders or their agents, who controlled the actual distribution of the seeds to peasants. The iqṭāʿ-holder was then expected to reimburse the state with an equivalent amount of seeds at the end of his tenure.[4] The peasants received the seed advances as a loan for the sowing season, which they were supposed to return out of the yield of the spring harvest.
Al-Nābulusī cites from two separate registers of seed advances. One register was of seed advances as recorded (al-mukhallada) in the Dīwān. This was a record of the seeds that were to be issued to the iqṭāʿ-holders for the cultivation (ʿimāra) of the village. The second was a record of the seed advances actually distributed (al-muṭlaqa) by the iqṭāʿ-holders, according to local practice (ʿalā mā jarat al-ʿāda). These seed advances are said to come out of the income of the local iqṭāʿ-holders.
For most villages, al-Nābulusī reports either the figure obtained from the records of the Dīwān or the amount of seed advances actually distributed by the iqṭāʿ-holders, but not both.
When a village was left without an iqṭāʿ-holder, due to death or reassignment, seed advances were recorded under the category of al-maḥlūl (seed advances to a village without an iqṭāʿ-holder) or al-murtajaʿ (the seed advances which should be reclaimed from an iqṭāʿ-holder after the end of his tenure).
Advance Payments for Barley and Beans
In most large and medium-size villages there is record of contracts to supply the Royal Stables with barley or broad beans as fodder for government-owned animals (al-ʿawāmil al-dīwāniyya). In return, the villages received an advance payment.
The contracts are, for the most part, for the supply of barley. The common formula is ‘wa’l-musallaf ʿalayhi bi-hā min al-shaʿīr bi-rasm al-iṣṭibalāt al-sulṭāniyya’ (barley from the village, which had been paid for in advance, assigned to the Royal Stables).[5]
Al-Nābulusī records only the amount of barley and beans which the village was contracted to deliver, but not the amount of the advance payments by the government.
Data: Advance payments for barley and beans
Arrears
Arrears are mentioned only in seventeen villages. These villages are those which were either under the control of the royal domain (khāṣṣ) at the time of al-Nābulusī’s visit, or had been under the control of the royal domain at some point over the previous decade. The arrears generally represent the village’s debts at the time it was handed over from the royal domain to the iqṭāʿ-holders, although the arrears could occasionally also include debts to previous iqṭāʿ-holders.
The records identify the creditor — the Dīwān al-Māl or a named iqṭāʿ-holder — and the type of unpaid fiscal obligation, whether in specie or in kind. This balance of payments carried over from previous years is listed immediately after the seed advances, since both were seen as categories of credit.[6]
The balance of payment is divided into three categories: al-ḥāṣil (surplus), al-mawqūf (withheld) and al-bāqī (outstanding), also called mutaʾakhkhar (delayed). The first category, the surplus (al-ḥāṣil), is a record of over-payments from previous years.[7] The second category, the withheld payments (al-mawqūf), is of exemptions, mostly in cash, due to flight or death of cultivators, to damage caused by force majeure (e.g., fire or mice), or because of mechanical failures (a malfunctioning mill).[8] The third category, that of ‘outstanding payments’ (al-bāqī), was that of unpaid taxes for which no exemption was granted.
[1] Nicolas Michel, ‘Les rizaq ihbasiyya, terres agricoles en mainmorte dans l’Égypte mamelouke et ottomane: étude sur les dafatir al-ahbas ottomans’, Annales Islamologiques, 30 (1996), 105–98 (pp. 109, 114); al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, xxxi, 348 (rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya for religious buildings and personnel are exempt from being assigned as iqṭāʿ).
[2] These tithes, in ardabbs of grains, are listed as an appendix to the land-tax of a few villages, after the measurement fees (Sinnūris, Būr Sīnarū). In Babīj Andīr and Ḥaddāda a payment of ardabbs of grain is mentioned as ‘land-tax on the plough-shares of the allowances’ (kharāj maḥārīth al-rizaq). In Islamic law, tithe is levied on land which is the private property of Muslims, and varies between a full 10 per cent on naturally irrigated lands and 5 per cent on lands that require artificial irrigation. There is no evidence in the Villages of the Fayyum of wider payment of tithes, despite the detailed account by al-Nuwayrī; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, viii, 252, 259.
[3] See also Michel, ‘Les rizaq ihbasiyya’, pp. 108–11 (Michel corrects the reading to rizaq, instead of the classical form rizq used by Cahen in his ‘Le régime des impôts’); Michel, ‘Les services communaux’; Sato, State and Rural Society, pp. 185–88.
[4] See Sato, State and Rural Society, pp. 200–04.
[5] Correctly explained by Cahen (‘Le régime des impôts’, p. 23). See also al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, viii, 241, for musallaf as advance payment.
[6] Al-Makhzūmī also lumps together the seed advances and the arrears. He states that when the revenue in kind is collected, the clerks need to distinguish between the land-tax of the current year, the arrears (bāqī) from the previous year, and the reclaimed seed advances (murtajaʿ). See Al-Makhzūmī, Al-Muntaqā min kitāb al-minhāj, p. 62.
[7] Al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, viii, 218, 275–76, 284–85. On ḥāṣil as the balance in favour of the peasant after the payment of land-tax, see viii, 259.
[8] It appears to be equivalent to the term maḥsūb, explained by al-Nuwayrī as an exemption due to factors beyond the control of the tax-payer; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, viii, 289. The term maḥsūb is mentioned elsewhere in the treatise with the general meaning of ‘deduction’. Al-Nuwayrī mentions the term mawqūf as category similar to the arrears (bāqī), and lists the maḥsūb separately, just after the surplus; al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, viii, 285.