al-Qubarāʾ
al-Qubarāʾ.[1] This is a small village, south-west of Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq. Its land is adjacent to the land of Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq, so much so that the people of one village hear someone calling in the other village. It contains orchards of figs, date palms, vine, apples and peaches. Some of its orchards are clustered together like a fertile valley, and some are separated from one another. Its people are Arab, the Banū Kaʿb of the Banū ʿAjlān. Its land is registered (musajjala) in the name of the people of al-Akhṣāṣ [al-Ḥallāq], who sow it, whereas the people of this village sow in Shallāla. By not sowing their own land, while sowing the land of another instead, they are like an ostrich that leaves its eggs and goes to pasture, and then finds in its path the eggs of another ostrich, sits on these and broods upon them. On this topic the poet says:
Like the one who leaves her eggs in the open / And covers[2] the eggs of another by her wing[3]
These people are a disobedient and ignorant lot, from among the boorish Arabs, and it is their custom to withdraw (al-tasaḥḥub) and flee. At one point, the governor of the Fayyum, the amir Badr al-Dīn al-Marandizī, destroyed their homes (diyāra-hum) and suppressed the traces of their cultivation (qaṭaʿa āthāra-hum)[4] due to their transgression, and he removed them from this village. But when that Badr al-Dīn left, they returned.
It has no fiscal value. It has a press with one stone. Its sugarcane are sown in the land of Miṭr Ṭāris, and subsumed in the revenue register of that village. It is irrigated from a separate canal, which branches out from the [divisor known as] al-Shādhrawān on Sinnūris Canal. Its quota, for irrigating winter and summer crops, is four qabḍas.
Its entire revenue [in specie] is 119 1/16 dinars; and in grains, levied on the people of Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq, 676 1/24 1/48 ardabbs:
wheat, 387 1/2 1/8 ardabbs;
barley, 207 1/3 1/4 1/ 8 ardabbs;
broad beans, 77 2/3 1/4 1/16 ardabbs;
sesame, 12 1/2 1/4 ardabbs.
[The revenue in specie]:
Land tax on perennial plants, in the name of the tenants (al-muzāriʿīn) and the owners of the properties at al-Qubarāʾ, 94 1/24 1/144 dinars:
Basic assessment, for 43 1/2 1/48 1/72 feddans, 80 1/4 1/6 1/8 1/144 dinars:
Vineyards, at the rate of 5 1/3 dinars, for 1/4 1/6 1/16 feddan, 2 1/4 1/6 1/8 1/72 dinars.
perennial plants, for 30 1/8 1/48 1/72 feddans, 58 1/6 1/8 1/144 dinars:
fully-grown plants (kāmil), for 28 1/8 1/72 feddans, 56 1/4 2/24 dinars;
30 two-year old plants (ghars ʿāmayn), for 2 1/48 feddans, 2 1/48 dinars;
land subject to long-term lease, for 7 1/3 1/16 feddans, 11 1/4 1/6 2/24 dinars:
at the rate of 2 dinars [per feddan], for 4 1/24 1/144 feddans, 8 2/24 1/48 dinars;
at the rate of 1 dinar [per feddan], for 3 1/3 1/72 feddans, 3 1/3 1/72 dinars.
cotton, for 5 1/2 feddans, 8 1/4 dinars.
The addition, 13 1/2 dinars.
Munājaza land-tax, in grains, 676 1/24 1/48 ardabbs, as specified above in the aggregates.
The alms-tax is 1 1/4 1/6 1/8 dinar:
estimate of date palms, 1 dinar;
alms-tax on small cattle, for one goat, 1/4 1/6 1/8 dinar.
The fees, the pasture-tax and the measurement fee, jointly with Akhṣāṣ al-Ḥallāq — 938 1/4 1/8 dirhams, which are 23 5/24 dinars; [and in grains,] 22 1/48 ardabbs:
wheat, 14 1/48 ardabbs;
barley, 4 ardabbs;
broad beans, 4 ardabbs.
[The fees, the pasture-tax and the measurement fee] in detail:
the fees, 361 1/8 dirhams; wheat, 9 1/2 1/48 ardabbs:
dredging fee, 26 dirhams;
harvest fee, 53 dirhams;
supervision of endowments, 4 dirhams;
protection fee, 15 dirhams;
colocasia fee, 180 dirhams;
garlic fee, 75 dirhams;
threshing-floor fee, 8 1/8 dirhams; and wheat, 9 1/2 1/48 ardabbs.
The measurement fee, 12 ½ ardabbs:
wheat, 4 1/2 ardabbs;
barley, 4 ardabbs;
broad beans, 4 ardabbs.
The pasture-fee, for 457 heads, 577 1/4 dirhams:
Permanent pasture lands, at the rate of 2 1/4 dirhams per head, for 128 heads, 288 dirhams; seasonal pasture lands, for 327 heads, 260 1/2 1/8 dirhams:
at the rate of a dirham per head, for 125 heads, 125 dirhams;
at the rate of 70 dirhams per 100 [heads], for 186 heads, 130 1/4 dirhams;
at the rate of 30 dirhams per 100 [heads], for 18 heads, 5 1/4 1/8 dirhams.
Government agents’ fee, 28 1/2 1/8 dirhams.
Hay, 644 bales.
The barley paid for in advance, for the people of al-Akhṣāṣ, who are liable for the annual grain yield of the village, 50 ardabbs.
[1] Modern location: Al-Kaʿābī al-Qadīma/Munshaʾat ʿUṭayfa (منشاة عطيفة/الكعابي القديمة). Ramzī, Al-Qāmūs, ii/iii, 11: al-Kaʿābī al-Qadīma; i, 299 (under the entry of Shallāla): Ḥūḍ al-Turba, number 9, in the lands of Munshaʾat ʿUṭayfa. Shafei Bey, ‘Fayoum Irrigation’, p. 309, confirms this identification and states that the local peasants still remembered the weir, or flow divisor, that used to be there (al-Fasqiyya al-Yūsufiyya).
[2] AS: mukassiyya. MP: mukassiba. The canonical version of the verse has mulbisatan (covers).
[3] The verses are taken from a poem by Ibn Harma (b. 709 in Medina). See Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-Qulūb fī al-Muḍāf wal-Mansūb (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1982), p. 445; On Ibn Harma, see Charles Pellat, ‘Ibn Harma’, EI2, iii, 786.
[4] The phrase may have the specific meaning of ‘discontinued their right to cultivate’. The term athar is used in the Ottoman period to designate rights of usufruct by tenants. See Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, pp. 64 ff.