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of the field system, the economic equality of brothers is also disrupted by the
female inheritance. thus Mustafa (BA 1) has a sufficiency of land from his
wife while his brothers and agnatic cousins (BA) are poor, his two brothers,
very poor. Iba (FB 3) in the same way, has by marriage obtained a
sufficiency of land, while the rest of his kabile, including two brothers, are
poor. Haci Ali (VA 12) farms his mother’s land, since she resides with him,
again a sufficiency, while Cemal (VA 13), his brother, is landless and has to
work as a share-cropper.
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3.
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Share-cropping and Ownership
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In all the villages of this area, villagers may cultivate the lands of another on a
system of share-cropping. The share-cropper is called “yarici”, literally, a
“halfer”. He supplies half the seed, all the animals and labour, but can expect
assistance with harvesting. He takes half the crop. The owner pays taxes on
the land, supplies half the seed, helps with the harvest and takes half the crops.
The relationship between owner and tenant is not a constant one, and the
pattern in the village is continually changing. No villager likes to let his land
out to a “yarici”, in spite of the highly favourable terms. Those who do so
may have elected so to do as a temporary measure while they earn money by
going to work in the town; more often, it is because of inability to work the
land through age, sickness, widowhood, or lack of oxen. Although a man’s
land is often worked by his kinsman as “yarici”, equally, or perhaps more
often, it is a poor man, whose land is inadequate to support his family, who
undertakes to plough another’s land. For reasons of personal relationship, or
because of man’s oxen are not strong enough, or for some such reason, even
those regularly letting to a yarici may let to a different man from year to
year. There are in the village no land owners habitually living without
working, but there are some families dependent on finding some owner
willing to let them land for share-cropping under this system. In a few cases,
other villagers, owning land in Sakaltutan but residing elsewhere, have a semi-
permanent arrangement with their relatives in Sakaltutan on this basis.
Ownership of land carries with it the right of sale. There is nothing to
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prevent a man from selling inherited land and leaving his children landless,
and, in fact, the father of the present village watchman appears to have done
precisely this. He appears to have lived on the capital, defying general
disapproval of his conduct. Nevertheless, sale is not common, for the obvious
reason that no one has more than enough land. Only when a man emigrates,
or a girl marries out of the village, do large quantities of land come on the
market, and in these cases almost invariably there are close relatives waiting
and anxious to buy. Transactions of this kind between relatives are fairly
common, between strangers rare. The main reason for which land is sold
within the village, but out of the family, is for building. If a man wants a new
house and there is no suitable site on his own land, he may buy one from
another family. Thus a young man living in cramped quarters away from his
kin, on his father-in-law’s ground, has just bought half a donum for the price
of 300 T.L. to build a new house of his own near his own father’s house, now
belonging to his brother, in the Lower Quarter of the village where he was
born and bred.
Sometimes land is sold with the right of redemption at the original price, in
fact, this right seems to be taken for granted unless the opposite is explicitly
stated. One man in a village I visited claimed to own 400 donum, but to work
less than 50 donum each year. The rest he revealed he had sold, but if and
when he could repay the purchase price, he could recover his land. In another
case, a complicated dispute arose between Arif, a man of Sakaltutan, and
Emin, a man of Ck village, who was claiming to repurchase land, sold to Arif.
The dispute was not about the right of repurchase, but about the amount paid.
Arif claimed he had staved off a previous attempt at re-purchase by an
additional payment to Emin’s brother, now in gaol for theft, which Emin
refuses to acknowledge. They speak of proceeding to law to settle the matter.
Ownership of land is defined by three main criteria. a man owns a piece of
land which he is known to have acquired from his father, or by other
recognised means; which he works or arranges to have worked normally as
the accepted thing in the village; and for which he holds a legal title-deed. Of
these the first is the most important, the second weighs a good deal, and the
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third is not taken seriously.
Osman (AG 1) referred to a particular plot of land as his. He was questioned:
had not he ploughed this particular plot on behalf of Pasha. No, he said, his
father had ploughed it, and he had ploughed it, and without doubt it was his.
His audience insisted that they remembered otherwise, but since Pasha was not
present, there the matter rested. Both parties clearly attached more weight to
how the land was acquired than to the other relevant fact that Osman ploughed
it, and had done so for years. Not once in any dispute about ownership of
land was the possession of a title-deed referred to in my hearing. The only
reference which I came across suggested why title-deeds are not looked to as
sound evidence. A man who had moved away from a neighbouring village, to
trade in the nahiye centre some four house to the east, claimed that he still
owned land in his native village. This was met with the objection that the
present occupiers would not agree. “But”, said he, “I still have the title-deed”.
Clearly the audience did not regard this as of much importance. Title-deeds
exist, but they are not adjusted to meet the rapidly changing situation in the
villages. There is no legal adjustment for each bit of inheritance, and hence
the title-deeds bear little relation to the existing st up.
The household, being an economic unit, distinction between husband and
wife’s land normally serves no purpose. Nevertheless, it is remembered, and
may become operative. If a man dies, his widow or widows regain their own
land. Equally, in cases of divorce or separation, the woman will take her own
land, and, if she has children of her own, any step children will not inherit it.
When Emine, his mother’s brother’s widow, married Emin, (son of T 1), she
brought him land. Later Emin took a young wife, and Emine found life in the
old house intolerable, so Emin built her a new house at the far end of the
village, where she set up on her own, with her adult son (T 2) and his wife,
living off her own small piece of land. Again Melik (CS 2), is an elderly
widower with five grown sons. I once remarked on the extent of Melik’s
lands. “They are not his”, I was told, “they were his wife’s, now they belong
to his sons”.
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Although the legal title-deed does not, in my estimation, play a major part in
the present concept of ownership, it is assumed that the courts will uphold the
village idea of what is right, that custom will be upheld by the law. Since
disputes once settled in the village are increasingly being taken to court, this
assumption will be tested, and it seems highly likely that certain discrepancies
will reveal themselves. If so, either the traditional concept of ownership will
be modified or the courts will lose in prestige; perhaps both.
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(£1 = 7.8 T.L., roughly 8 T.L.)
(1 sinik of wheat = approximately 16 lb. i.e. about 7 to the cwt. or
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In a society content with a low standard of comfort and diet, with a hard and
simple way of life, Western monetary standards do not apply. This economic
incommensurability means that one has either no model at all for thinking
about their economic life, or what is worse, misleading models. Moreover,
the villagers are vague and evasive on questions of income and expenditure,
partly intentionally, partly because they do not always bother to work it out
for themselves. The sort of questions the anthropologist asks about these
matters are not always the questions they have thought about themselves. Not
having a ready answer, they give a rough estimate which may be seriously
inaccurate without being deliberately dishonest.
All relevant measures are vague, except the grain measure. There is in use a
measure, made of wood, and called simply “measure - “olcek”. The current
measure for commercial and official transactions is the “sinik”, equivalent to 1
half olcek, always arrived at by using an olcek. The harvested crops in the
fields are spoken of in terms of the heaps into which they are gathered, which
in turn are theoretically equal to a cartload. Questions of yield per donum are
usually answered in terms of cartloads per donum, and then in terms of sinik
per cartload. Also, of course, yields vary greatly from plot to plot and year
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to year.
The main source of income from farming is from the main cereal crops,
wheat and rye. Potatoes, onions and chickpeas are sold, and also wool, calves
and lambs, eggs and chickens, but few houses have a surplus of these items.
Owing to a late sharp frost in May, the yields in 1950 were below normal. T
1, having sown about 75 donum, had about 100 cartloads, which in a normal
year would give about 2,000 sinik. Mustafa (BA 1), who sows about 30
donum a year, and is considered as slightly above average in wealth, reckoned
he had 34 cartloads which should have given him just over 600 sinik. Bilal,
(VT 1) sowing less than 20 donum per annum, one half of which is his
brother’s, to whom a quarter of the produce should be given, expected from
fourteen cartloads of rye, and six of wheat, 350 sinik all told. In fact, all
yields were much lower than expected, owing to the late frost.
Estimates of home consumption varied. Bilal said he needed about 200 sinik
for food, 100 for seed, and 50 for animal feed. He had 5 in family, 4 head of
cattle to feed, and 8 sheep and goats, and only 20 donum to sow. He estimate
seemed higher than others. His total yield was in fact about 200 sinik. Eyup
(KO 2), who lived at the other end of the village, with 9 in family, rather
more land, and a few more animals, estimated 200 sinik for food, and 150 for
seed. T 1, which expected 2,000 sinik, had thirteen mouths to feed, 14 head of
cattle, 2 horses, 30 sheep, and 75 donum to sow, at a guess, 1,000 sinik in all
would be required. Ali Osman (BK 1), gave me a more careful estimate. He
sows about 35 donum per annum, 15 for relatives, the rest for himself. He
had six in family, 6 cattle, 8 sheep and an ass. For household purposes he
reckoned 180 sinik, and for seed 115. With 20 cartloads, of which he was
entitled to half, and 27 of his own, he anticipated rather more conservatively a
yield of 550 to 600 sinik.
Rye was fetching about 1.50 T.L. a sinik, wheat about 2 T.L. last autumn.
Great fluctuations are prevented by bulk buying, and if necessary selling, by
the government. Since the bulk of what is sold is rye, I take 1.50 T.L. a sinik
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