From the Pages of the Defter (ص 232)

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From the Pages of the Defter (ص 232)

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indeed been registered in the tapu register (which employed dunams, not feddans), even
though their kushans were not presented or mentioned in court.
Secondly, the choice of the term sahm (share) is also noteworthy. We infrequently
find this term employed in the Hebron sharia court, except in a minority of inheritance cases,
for example, a number of siblings inheriting shares in a store, a house, a field, or an olive
grove. The term girat (pl. gararit) was more often used in cases of inheritance, as well as in
mortgage cases. Qirats signify twenty-fourths. The distinction between the two is that the
latter term was employed when the property in question was left physically undivided, and
was shared. Thus, one who sold his or her girats sold his or her partnership rights to the
whole, not a particular portion of the property itself. Additionally, while girats were shares
of twenty-four, there was no limit on the number of sahms.
More frequently than the employment of either of these two terms, however, one
finds that sharia-court cases involving shares of an entity were enumerated in (shari‘)
fractions in accordance with rules of inheritance according to relation to the deceased. Thus,
for example, one could own half a store, one-sixth of a tree, one-eighth of one-fourth of a
room (bayt), etc. Mundy and Saumarez-Smith (2007) found that in Ajlun, Transjordan, many
villages registered their musha in shares (sahms or girats), as opposed to individual plots
with named borders. The variety of ways communal properties were recorded in the Emlak
register was discussed in Chapter 3. One illustration of how this ownership was reflected in
the tapu registers has been discussed in this chapter, in the Idhna case. The reference to
215

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From the Pages of the Defter

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المنشئ

Susynne McElrone

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