| 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. |
| 3. | Share-cropping and Ownership |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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”. |
| 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. |
| 6. | Income from Farming |
| (£1 = 7.8 T.L., roughly 8 T.L.) (1 sinik of wheat = approximately 16 lb. i.e. about 7 to the cwt. or |
| about 4 to the | bushel.) |
| 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 |
| 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 |