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Production and Trade in an Islamic Context: Sharika Contracts in the Transitional Economy of Northern Samaria, 1853–1943 (I)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Ya'akov Firestone
Ya'akov Firestone
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Notwithstanding five generations of legislators and administrators bent on westernizing the economies of the Ottoman Empire and of its successor states, Islamic patterns were so intimately woven into the fabric of community and society in the Levant that every aspect of economic endeavor beyond the area of daily contact with the West continued to be cast in the mold of the all-encompassing Sharî'a until after the Second World War.1 Nowhere was this clearer than in rural Palestine, where an economic organization framed in Islamic concepts, operating in Islamic terms, and embodying the problems and the promises of the Islamic view of doing business and carrying on production, withstood a century of confrontation with Western settlers, traders, and administrators and a quickly expanding implanted sector.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 185 - 209
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 185 note 1 This article is based on fieldwork conducted from 1968 to 1971 on the social and economic history of the rural district of 'Arrâbeh. The research was funded by National Defense Foreign Language Fellowships and by a grant from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The present analysis would have been impossible without the searching comments of Albert Hourani and Edward Wheeler. Professors David S. Landes and Gabriel Baer have also read this paper, making most valuable observations. Above all I must acknowledge the kind help of scores of informants and opinion leaders at 'Arrâbeh and other West Bank locations, many of whom have gone unnamed here. They gave unstintingly of their time, their knowledge, and their practical assistance without any consideration and at a time of greatly unsettled conditions.Google Scholar

page 185 note 2 Sharika, often pronounced shirka, is shirkat in Anglo-Muhammadan law. The colloquial form in Syrian and Palestinian Arabic today is sharâkeh; shirka and sharika are used to refer to modern business companies. The word ‘partnership’ renders adequately the fiduciary relationship of sharing in the looser forms of sharika, but does not do justice to the scope of the institution.Google Scholar

page 186 note 1 For the main features of the Levant's economy in the transition stage see Issawi, Charles (ed.), The Economic History of the Middle East, 1800–1914 (Chicago, 1966), pp. 226–7.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 For a succinct sociological study of the institution see Milliot, Louis, Introduction a l'étude du droit musulman (Paris, 1953), pp. 658–61;Google Scholar for a comparative study of societas see Pesle, O., La Société et le partage dans le rite malékite (Casablanca, 1948), pp. 9–22;Google Scholarcf.Bloch, Marc, Les Caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française, vol. I (Paris, 1964), pp. 169–70,Google Scholar and Lopez, Robert S. and Raymond, Irving W., Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York, 1955), pp. 185–7.Google Scholar

page 186 note 3 Of the expositions available in Western languages, Rahim, Abdur, The Principles of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (repr. ed. Lahore 1958), pp. 322–5, does not employ the classifications most often used by the jurists in this connection but its analystic framework will best help the reader grasp the approach of Muslim jurisprudence.Google Scholar

page 186 note 4 It is the sharikat mulk of Islamic law, as against sharikat 'aqd (to which we go on next). The jurists have no single term for our third category which covers what are for them a number of disparate contracts: most of them are really ‘quasi-sharika compacts’ (see pp. 189–90 below).Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 These examples are from individual villager histories collected in the process of reconstructing the social and economic evolution of the district of 'Arrâbeh. For the pooling of plots by smallholders (bit-ferd)Google Scholarcf. Pasquier-Bronde, P. M. E., La Coopération et les fellahs algériens (Algiers, 1938), p. 77.Google Scholar

page 187 note 2 Regarding the need for mutual aid in Middle Eastern agrarian societies see Berque, Jacques, Les Nawâzil el-muzâra'a du Mi'yār Al-Waazânî (Rabat, 1940), pp. 73–4;Google Scholar for various practical considerations see Pesle, La Socîété, pp. 19–20, 35.Google Scholar

3 See Arin, Félix, Recherches historiques sur les opérations usuraires et aléatoires en droit musulman (Paris, 1909), pp. 23–7, 143–7.Google Scholar

page 187 note 4 See Ibid, pp. 39–42, and Milliot, Louis, L'Association agricole chez les musulmans du Maghreb (Paris, 1911), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar The Muslim traditions ascribe the prohibition of gharar to the Prophet himself (Lane, Edward William, An Arabic—English Lexicon ‘London, 1877; repr. Beirut, 1968], bk. I, part 6, p. 2239).Google Scholar

page 187 note 5 Lane, Lexicon, p. 2239.Google Scholar

page 187 note 6 Santillana, David, Istituzioni di diritto musulmano malichita, vol. II (Rome, 1938), p. 56. All page references in this article are to vol. II.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Hamilton's, Charles translation of al-Marghînânî's Hedâya (2nd ed. by Standish Grove Grady, London, 1870), pp. 490, 579;Google ScholarSantillana, Istituzioni, pp. 259–60, 303–4. In hiring a worker for a share of the product, the prohibition on account of ghaharar was compounded by a related ban on promising in payment anything that would only be brought into existence by the hired person's laborGoogle Scholar (Hedâya, pp. 501, 579).Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 Just as the provision of a share instead of a fixed payment rendered a contract of lease or hire invalid on grounds of gharar, so did the provision of a fixed payment in lieu of a share render a sharika null and void, ‘since it is possible that no more profit may be acquired altogether, than the sum so stipulated’Google Scholar (Hedâya, p. 226). This ban was duly incorporated into the Ottoman Civil Code or Mejelle (art. 1337) which was based on Muslim law.Google ScholarCf. Hedâya, p. 580;Google ScholarMilliot, Introduction, p. 662.Google Scholar

page 188 note 3 I owe my realization of this point, and others, to the kind comments of Professor John P. Dawson of the Harvard Law School.Google Scholar

page 188 note 4 Cf. Pesle, La Société, pp. 80–83.Google Scholar

page 188 note 5 Ibid, pp. 46, 80.

page 188 note 6 Pesle, Octave, Les Contrats de louage chez les malékites de l'Afrique du Nord (Rabat, 1938), p. 108;Google ScholarPesle, La Soci´té, p. 46;Google ScholarMilliot, Introduction, p. 662.Google Scholar

page 188 note 7 Santillana, Istituzioni, p. 308, quoting Ibn 'Arafa.Google Scholar

page 189 note 1 These provisions were duly incorporated into the civil codes of modern Muslim states: Mejelle, Art. 1404–48;Google ScholarLambton, Ann K. S., Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), pp. 402–4. All these contracts except the conimenda are discussed in detail in Milliot, L'Association, which maintains that while the principles governing the sharika in classical Muslim law remained unchanged through the ages, tainting most of the actual agricultural sharika contracts of modern times with a presumption of invalidity, positive law and custom bore out the modern contracts. Cf. the works of Pesle and Berque cited above, and Part II of the present article. For the muzâra'a see my forthcoming article in Middle Eastern Studies, ‘Crop-Sharing Economics in Mandatory Palestine’. To my knowledge there have been no other studies of these compacts in the Levant save Dominique Chevallier's ‘Aspects sociaux de la Question d'Orient: aux origines des troubles agraires libanais en 1858’, in Annales, vol. XIV (1958), pp. 35–64;Google Scholar but an excellent overview is provided by Latron's, A. indispensable La Vie rurale en Syrie et au Liban (Beirut, 1936).Google Scholar

page 190 note 1 By extension the word shank may also refer simply to a regular client or a steady supplier. Margaret F. Katzin (quoted in Mintz, Sidney W., ‘Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relationships’, in Garfield, Viola E. (ed.), Symposium: Patterns of Land Utilization and Other Papers [Seattle, 1961], p. 55) has noted that in Jamaica the word ‘customer’ applies equally to regular suppliers and clients. One explanation could lie in the substantial amount of barter that trading involves in an agrarian setting; semantically more appealing, and perhaps more consistent with the case in the Levant, would be the guess that in an organic society the notion of common participation in an economic act can assume greater significance than identification with any one particular function within that act.Google Scholar

page 190 note 2 Cf. Milliot, Introduction, p. 669.Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 For a thorough discussion of this contract see Santillana, Istituzioni, pp. 323–34,Google Scholar and Hedâya, pp. 454–65;Google Scholarfor the provisions governing it in the Ottoman Civil Code see Mejelle, art. 1404–30.Google ScholarFor the medieval commenda see Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade, pp. 174–84,Google Scholar and for a study of the institution's role at its apogee in Europe, Carmona, Maurice, ‘Aspects du capitalisme toscan au XVIIe et XVIII siècles’, in Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 11 (1964), pp. 81–98.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 Hedâya, p. 225. Neither the sharî'a nor Middle Eastern society differentiates between a trader's industry and his management function. What is more, Arabic uses the same word for work and labor as it does for the management of the affairs and property of others (entry ‘Amal’in Lane, Lexicon, part V, p. 2159) and that is the word employed in the jurists’ discussions of the commenda (see any Arabic text of Marghînânî's Hedâya such as the Cairo, 1936 ed., book iii, p. 148). Accordingly, while our translation of the Hedâya consistently calls the entrepreneur in the commenda ‘manager’,Google ScholarHooper's, C. A. translation of the Mejelle (The Civil Law of Palestine and Transjordan, vol. I [Jerusalem, 1933]) renders the word as ‘workman’ and the commenda contract as a ‘partnership between capital and labor’ (pp. 362–8). This may be misleading where the contract involves a commenda for trading, which was its original purpose, but the capital of an Islamic commenda could also take the form of livestock, i.e. cattle were farmed out with a herdsman (see p. 203 below) or of premises and tools for a manual trade (see p. 203, n. 3 below) and by Western concepts the herder and the artisan in such circumstances would probably be closer to workmen than to managers.Google Scholar

page 191 note 3 Rahim, Abdur, Principles, p. 325.Google Scholar

page 191 note 4 Hedâya, p. 454;Google Scholarcf. Milliot, Introduction, p. 664.Google Scholar

page 192 note 1 We owe the application of the term ‘patrician’ to the Middle East to Bulliet's, Richard W.The Patricians of Nishapur (Cambridge, Mass., 1972): it is the most fitting expression for the social role of certain families even in a rural environment, as in 'Arrâbeh.Google Scholar

page 192 note 2 Bay‘;bil-wafâ’. These facts emerge from the collection of family papers most graciously lent to us by Hâjj Fathî Rushrâsh Hamdân of 'Arrâbeh, which includes all the deeds discussed in this section.Google Scholar

page 192 note 3 Britain, Great, ‘Abstracts of Reports on the Trade of Various Countries and Places’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1854–1855, vol. 55, pp. 227–8; 1856, vol. LVII, pp. 1–3, 177; 1857 (2nd Session), vol. XXXVIII, p. 177; 1859 (2nd Session), vol. xxx, pp. 426, 444, 454, 478; 1862, vol. LVIII, pp. 178, 180–1;Google ScholarPuryear, V. J., International Economics and Diplomacy in the Near East; A Study of British Commercial Policy in the Levant, 1834–1853 (Stanford, 1935), pp. 212–18.Google Scholar

page 192 note 4 There is the possibility that even though the traders resided in the district and obtained financing there, it was not local grain in which they were dealing: we know that in later times 'Arrâbeh was a center of regional trade, and to some extent an entrepôt.Google Scholar

page 193 note 1 Manuscript nos. 23 of 10 Ramadan 1272, 96 of I Jumada II 1271, 97 of I Rabi' I 1272, 98 of 13 Rabi' I 1270, 100 of 24 Jumada I 1271, 101 of 21 Shawwal 1272, 102 of 15 Rabi' I 1273, 103 of Rabi' II 1275, 138 of 27 Rabi' I 1274.Google Scholar

page 193 note 2 See p. 195, n. 3 below.Google Scholar

page 193 note 3 In all our deeds except nos. 23 and 101 the agreement was concluded by Mahmûd, eldest of the five full brothers. On the dates nos. 23 and 101 were written, which were only one month apart, he may have been unavailable or temporarily incapacitated.Google Scholar For the currency employed here see Verney, Noel and Dambmann, Georges, Les Puissances étrangères dans le Levant (Paris, 1906), pp. 156–64,Google Scholar and Latron, La Vie rurale, pp. 30–1; for the esedi,Google ScholarGibb, H. A. R. and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West, vol. I, part II (London, 1957), p. 50,Google Scholar quoting Belin, ; Volney, Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie (Paris, 1959 ed.), p.384Google Scholar (an English edition of 1787 quoted in Issawi, The Economic History, pp. 217–18).Google Scholar

page 194 note 1 What is more, the family's economic activity in those two generations seems to have been concentrated in the fifteen years from 1847 through 1861 (over one-half of all the deeds in the collection) and especially in the six years from 1853 through 1858 (over one-third of all the deeds).Google Scholar

page 194 note 2 Great Britain, ‘Abstracts of Reports…’, 1856, vol. LVII, p. I; 1861, vol. LXIII, p. 49. The striking correlation is less significant than may appear at first sight.Google ScholarFor one thing, Palestine's exports were loaded off her own shores and not in Syria; for another, our figures are for exports from Beirut to Britain only, and French estimates for that port's global trade through 1857 collated by Chevallier, Dominique (‘Western Development and Eastern Crisis in the Mid-19th Century: Syria Confronted with the European Economy’, in Polk, William R. and Chambers, Richard L. (eds.), Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East ‘Chicago, 1968’, p. 214) show no fluctuations to speak of between 1855 and 1857; while in 1859 Moore, the British Consul-General in Beirut, wrote that ‘the exports to France in silk and cocoons from this port, and oil and sesame seed from Palestine, have been as considerable as heretofore’Google Scholar (Great Britain, ‘Abstracts of Reports’, 1861, vol. LXIII, p. 50). One is also less surprised at the quickness of capital mobilization in 'Arrâbeh in apparent response to the opportunities of the Crimean War after learning that as early as 1850 James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem, had reported to Palmerston: ‘This country has been drained of corn by the extensive exportation from the Seaports for Europe and especially for England’Google Scholar (F.O. 78, no. 839, quoted in Issawi, Economic History, p. 227).Google Scholar

page 195 note 1 ‘On the whole coast of Syria there is not a single harbor,’ wrote Moore in 1856, referring to the entire eastern shore of the Mediterranean. ‘Ships are obliged to anchor in dangerous open roadsteads during the winter’Google Scholar (Great Britain, ‘Abstracts of Reports’, vol. LVII, pp. 2–3).Google Scholar

page 195 note 2 This was substantially higher than the return on many an investment in 'Arrâbeh in the twentieth century, including loans, to judge by evidence we are at present assembling.Google Scholar

page 195 note 3 Muslim law lays down certain requirements about the qualifications of the parties, about contract procedure, etc., failing which any contract is invalid. In addition, particular contracts entail requirements of their own: we have seen that for a sharika to be valid, for instance, each party must get a share of the income and not a fixed payment. In order to assure a deed's legality, therefore, the person who drafts it will set down everything he considers essential to show that these requirements have been met. The stipulations that recur most frequently in a set of deeds belonging to one and the same type of contract, such as our nine deeds of commenda, are thus presumably those that the writers considered most essential to the contract's validity. Other features, equally characteristic of the contract and therefore of importance to the researcher, may have appeared self-evident to the legists who drafted the deeds and therefore they went unmentioned — until some legal man came along who did happen to set them down in the deeds he drafted, his choice being governed by his assessment of what it mattered to set down, or by momentary feelings, or by the individual stylistic preferences that play such an important role in Arabic, a language in which word meanings overlap and what one says is a matter of aesthetics rather than rigorous exposition. Accordingly, in our nine deeds of commenda we found that isolated provisions appearing in just one or two of the documents in the set often yielded valuable information about the contract in general. In every deed we must of course ask ourselves whether the variant may not in fact rather have been intended to apply only to the document in which it occurs: but even where this is true, it may give us a clue to the society's practices and institutions — e.g. when the temporary absence of Mahmûd led to Sâdek's signing deeds nos. 23 and 101 in his stead. An example will demonstrate how helpful an isolated provision can be in illuminating social facts that actually apply to all the deeds. Only two of our deeds of commenda — nos. 96 and 101 — state that the funds invested are the joint property of Mahmûd and his full brothers. This might lead the researcher to surmise that perhaps the other deeds represented private investments by Mahmûd alone or, in no. 23, by Sâdek. But it so happens that nos. 96 and 101 — and they alone — were drafted by one and the same legist, Mustafâ Khâlidî. Likely enough, the men who drafted the other deeds simply had felt it superfluous to specify that the funds invested belonged to all the full brothers in common, since full brothers usually owned their property jointly. In fact, a response by the Moroccan jurist al-Tawoodi states that a person co-owning goods with others is presumed to own all his property with them unless he proves that he purchased it with funds not originating in the jointly owned goods (quoted in Pesle, La Société, p. 27.) But Mustafâ Khâlidî, being perhaps more far-sighted and realizing that some day the common holdings of Mahmûd and his brothers would have to be partitioned, if only by their children or grandchildren, made sure to dwell on the fact that the stock invested in the commenda was jointly owned. To this farsightedness we owe our knowledge that the commenda was indeed a joint venture of the full brothers, and our near certainty that this applied to all the deeds of commenda in our test.Google Scholar

page 196 note 1 Rabb al-mâl and mudârib, respectively.Google Scholar

page 196 note 2 Milliot, Introduction, p. 663;Google ScholarMejelle, art. 1353; but there is some disagreement among the jurists over the actual implementation of this principle.Google Scholar

page 197 note 1 See Milliot, Introduction, p. 663.Google Scholar

page 197 note 2 Hedâya, pp. 222, 225–226;Google ScholarPesle, La Société, pp. 54–5;Google ScholarArin, Recherches, pp. 131–2, 135.Google Scholar

page 197 note 3 In his work, al-'Amal al-Fâsî (‘The Practice of Fez’). Discussed by Pesle, La Société, pp. 80–1;Google Scholarcf. Berque, Les Nawâzil, pp. 144–6 for details about 'Abdurrahmân.Google Scholar

page 197 note 4 See above, pp. 187–8.Google Scholar

page 198 note 1 Mejelle, art. 1370.Google Scholar

page 198 note 2 Qirâd and mudâraba may be used interchangeably to mean commenda, though some Muslim schools of law use one of the terms in preference to the other; but mudâraba refers etymologically to the commenda transaction and to the relationship it establishes between the parties, while qirâd designates more specifically the stock that is invested.Google Scholar

page 198 note 3 Mejelle, art. 1371.Google Scholar

page 200 note 1 Nallino, Carlo Alfonso, ‘Le dottrine del fondatore della confraternità senussita’ in Raccolta di Scritti, vol. II (Rome, 1940), p. 408;Google ScholarLammens, Père H., ‘La Mecque à la veille de l'hégire’, Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 9 (1923–1924), fasc. 3, p. 215;Google ScholarHeffening, W., ‘Tidjâra’ in Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 4 (Leiden, 1934), pp. 750–1;Google ScholarGoitein, S. D., ‘The Rise of the Near Eastern Bourgeoisie in Early Islamic Times’, Journal of World History, vol. 3 (1957), pp. 583–604.Google Scholar

page 200 note 2 In the words of a Sufi quoted by the founder of the Sanusi order, Muhammad b. 'Alî al-Sanûsî, ‘this tarika is founded on the soul's immersing itself in the vision of the essence of the Prophet…while the exterior strives ever to follow the Prophet in words and actions’ (al-Manhal al-Ra'iq, quoted in Nallino, “Le dottrine,” p. 405; cf. also p. 406,Google Scholar and Shukry, Muhammad Fu'âd, al-Sanûsiyya Dîn wa-Dawla [Cairo, 1948], p. 41)Google ScholarCf. Adams, C. C., ‘The Sanusis’, in The Muslim World, vol. 36 (1946), pp. 35–6.Google ScholarFor a discussion of the replacement of union with God by union with the Prophet to bridge the gap between Sufi theosophy and orthodox theology see Arberry, A. J., Revelation and Reason in Islam (London, 1957), pp. 111–12.Google ScholarAccording to Edmond Doutte (L'Islam algérien en l'an 1900 [Algiers, 1900’, pp. 68–9) all the orders trace back to the Prophet their silsilat al-ward as well as their silsilat al-baraka.Google Scholar

page 200 note 3 DrAbu-Manneh, Butrus, unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, Oxford University.Google Scholar

page 200 note 4 There is also the possibility that the substitution of the sharika for the mudâraba in cominenda agreements antedates the Crimean war, but that the legist who formulated the first three deeds of Mahmoud 'Abdurrazzâq and his brothers was not well schooled in drafting the relevant contracts, which until then had presumably been rare in the area for lack of commercial opportunities of scope. This would not necessarily imply a different motivation for the substitution than we have set out above; it would only force us to look for evidence of it further back in historical time.Google Scholar

page 201 note 1 This idea was suggested by DrStouffer, Thomas P. of Harvard University.Google Scholar

page 201 note 2 Cf. Thoumin, Richard, Géographie humaine de la Syrie centrale (Tours, 1936), p. 150.Google Scholar

page 202 note 1 Cf. Latron, La Vie rurale, pp. 58–61;Google ScholarSalamé, Michel, ‘L'élevage au Liban’, in Revue de géographie de Lyon, vol. 30, 2 Pp. 87–9. Our discussion of the livestock sharika contracts of Ya'bad and 'Arrâbeh is based on interviews with Messrs Mahmûd 'Abd-al Fattâh 'Abd-al Ghanî and Mahmûd Sa'îd Rashîd and Hâjj Mahmûd Hâjj Nijî Hunaytî of 'Arrâbeh; Hâjj Ahmad Khalîl A'mar, his son Husayn and Sharîf Anîs Zeyd of Zabda; Dr Hâtem Kemâl and Messrs Fawzî and Muhammad 'Atmeh of Nablus; and above all Mr Abdul Latîf Ibrahîm Sâleh Tâha Amarnî of Khirbet Zahr al-'Abed.Google Scholar

page 202 note 2 Goats feed on leaves and twigs, which they vastly prefer to the stubble grazing that suits sheep. Nibbling by goats may stunt trees; in the climatic conditions of Samaria it will not destroy them.Google Scholar

page 202 note 3 The foothills of Samaria are distant from the high mountains and arid regions that dictate migration movement in the great stock-raising regions of the Levant, and the pattern is set, rather, by the grazing sequence and water availability in adjacent vegetation and cropping zones.Google Scholar

page 203 note 1 Milliot, L'Association, pp. 63–5. For the livestock sharika contracts current in North Africa at the time see his pages 130–3, 245–9.Google Scholar

page 203 note 2 Ibid p. 246.

page 203 note 3 See p. 191, n. 2 above. We were even told that the term mudârib, which as we noted earlier (p. 196, n. I) was used to designate the manager in the commenda contract, was also employed in Mandatory Palestine for a workman using the premises and perhaps some of the tools or equipment of a shop-owner — a true ‘partnership between capital and labor’ (from Mr Ahmad Sharkas of Harvard University).Google Scholar

page 203 note 4 Mejelle, art. 1409, 1338, 1342.Google Scholar

page 203 note 5 For an apparently identical contract, see the Rev. Klein, F. A., ‘Life, Habits, and Customs of the Fellahin of Palestine’, in Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (1883), p. 48. The same type of arrangement is dealt with by Milliot, L'Association, p. 133.Google Scholar

page 204 note 1 Rahim, Abdur, Principles, p. 323;Google ScholarMejelle, art. 1371.Google Scholar

page 204 note 2 Conversely, stock owners of the Ya'bad district farmed out their sheep with 'Arrâbeh herdsmen.Google Scholar

page 205 note 1 Latron, who makes out two main forms of farming out livestock (La Vie rurale, pp. 58–9) writes that the first corresponds to a lease (‘bail à cheptel simple’) and the second to a joint or common holding (‘cheptel à moitié’). It is interesting, however, that under the second head he describes only what we call here the sharika that did not involve a loan, and does not mention the arrangement, so well known in Palestine in almost every domain into which the sharika has spread, in which the investor provides the whole stock and debits his partner the value of his share. On the other hand, under the arrangement that Latron states corresponds to a lease, the entrepreneur in Syria gets a share of the increase and is liable for a share of the losses, which was not necessarily the case in Palestine where no sharika had been established. What is more, Latron adds that in the early stages of this type of relationship, before mutual trust develops, the entrepreneur is often formally debited the stock — the entire stock — as a form of security. On the face of it there may be some confusion here; but contracts do vary widely and the power relations between owners and users of resources in certain parts of Syria may have made possible a contract which in Palestine would have seemed most unfair: to refuse the herder the status of a partner, yet to saddle him with a financial onus — full liability for losses — that even a sharika contract would not have imposed on him.Google Scholar

page 206 note 1 Salamé, L'Elevage, pp. 87–8.Google Scholar

page 207 note 1 The date is from the chronicles of Hâjj Dhîb As'ad Hasan of 'Arrâbeh.Google Scholar

page 207 note 2 Cf. Rev. Wilson, C. T., Peasant Life in the Holy Land (London, 1906), pp. 171–2.Google Scholar

page 207 note 3 From MrAmîn, Sâlehh al-Tâher of Ya'bad, 10 November 1969.Google Scholar

page 208 note 1 Cf. Despois, Jean, L'Afrique du Nord (3rd ed., Paris, 1964), p. 250.Google Scholar

page 208 note 2 Cf. Maquet, Jacques, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (London, 1961), pp. 129–36.Google Scholar

page 208 note 3 Cf. al-Nimr, Ihsân, Ta'rîkh Jabal Nâblus wal-Balqâ' (A History of Samaria and Balqa), vol. II, Ahwâl 'Ahd al-Iqtâ' (Conditions in the Iqtâ' Period) (Nablus, 1961), 11, 35 and n. 2.Google Scholar