page 144

Page 144

uncultivated in order to use their ploughing resources to stake claims at the margins. The hreat to the village pasture led to organised opposition in the village to this movement. When a man set out to stake a claim, neighbours would follow him, and sit in rows staking claims to the strips immediately alongside the furrow he was ploughing, rendering his claim useless and absurd. These situations naturally led to violence. The administration intervened and ruled that no more land should be ploughed up. In 1951 surreptitious ploughing of pasture by those whose land was adjacent to it was still said to be going on, but not on a great scale, and not without the danger of rousing both neighbours and authorities to intervene.The effects of the previous regime when marginal land was a free good were still plainly to be seen in the social structure. Well-to-do families often had extremely poor affines, and even extremely poor agnates. One family in particular illustrates my point.

Haci Bayram (B) had been a great man, and had served as District Officer under the imperial administration. He had had at least five sons on whom presumably his eminence was built. He had crowned it all by making the pilgrimage to Mecca, in those days a costly trip. Spent up, he had returned to the village a Haci, to die in modest circumstances. His five sons had inherited a modicum of land and one beast each. They began their independence poor.

Of these five, three younger full brothers were still alive in 1951. The eldest survivor had had four daughters, all by this time married. His land was worked by a stepson, who, I was assured, had no right to inherit it. The old man was poor and insignificant. The second of the three had had three sons of his own; his first wife had died after a long illness, and this, he said, had ruined him. Yet his household had a comfortable sufficiency.

The youngest brother, Hayip (B), had five sons, all adult and all but one, the village headmaster, still living in his household. The eldest, who had a son already old enough to work, had been headman about the time of the land rush. Hayip had not been slow to seize the opportunity and his was one of the wealthiest households in the village. He had an imposing guest room, and was having a new dwelling house for the family built