The Village Law of 1924 (p. 27) contained provisions for the fixing and registering of the boundaries of village territories. Before this date, and even after it, boundaries were vague, depending on general features of the landscape (p. 49).ven if, in some cases, villagers knew clearly the boundaries between them, it is plausible that many, cultivating only the land near the settlement, were not concerned with precise rights to the extensive pastures which lay between them and their neighbours.
The situation I have described is not inconsistent with the existence of tax farmers or even of absentee landowners. So long as the dues are paid on the crop produced and not on the extent of land held, the rights of the urban landlords or tax collectors are over villages as social groups, and not over specific pieces of land. Each villager can therefore still be free de facto to take on fresh land whenever he wishes to do so. His tax or rent is in fact personal, a proportion of income due to a political superior.
I have already (p. 83) described the limits of cultivation per ploughman imposed by the traditional techniques. Very roughly, each extra adult man equipped with a plough, seed and a team of oxen would add a possible twentydönüm (about ten to fifteen acres, four to six ha.) to the annual cultivated area of a household.
Quite apart from these physical limitations, many villagers did not in the past strive to increase their cultivations beyond a certain point, because they had nothing to gain by so doing. To market grain was not easy. Moreover, in years of surplus local prices would be low, whereas in years of high prices the villager was unlikely to have any surplus to market.
Transport was a major difficulty. Ox-carts carry comparatively small loads, and move more slowly than a man walking. Thus even from Sakaltutan a journey to Kayseri would have taken some ten hours or more. Moreover, many people told me