5 - Taxation

Summary

The nature and scale of the appropriation of a surplus from the producers by the ruling class changed profoundly with the installation of the new colonial regime. Again it was the primary producers, and the peasants more than the nomads, who were to carry the largest burden. The Turks demanded taxes (⃛ulba, from ⃛alaba, to ‘ask’, or darība, pl. ḍarā'ib, from ‘beat’, ‘hit’, ‘impose’), both in kind and in cash, and thereby enforced monetisation upon a society that knew only barter and local media of exchange, and very few metal coins outside the market centres. This policy stimulated the growth of a class of merchants and moneylenders and weakened the position of the commoners still further. In one sense, the increasing interest of the merchants in agriculture can be seen as an attempt both to overcome the commercial set-backs caused by the monopoly system in the first half of the Turkiyya and to exploit the taxation system to introduce usury capital into the agricultural economy.

More than anything else perhaps it was the question of the tulba that came to darken the relationship between the Ja'aliyyīn and the Turks, leaving a strong imprint on presentday memories and evaluations of the Turkiyya. The revolt of the Jafaliyyin in 1822 and the burning of Ismā'īl Pasha was triggered off by what was felt to be unreasonable demands for tribute. There is a Ja'ali proverb attributed to the Turkiyya, 'ashara ru'ūs fi'l-turba wa-lā riyāl fi'l-⃛ulba, ‘better ten heads in the grave, than a dollar in tax’.