The existing land-register, which was drawn up fifty years ago, is very inexact with regard both to measurements and boundaries, and enjoys no public confidence. A proper survey and valuation was decreed in 1913, but has not yet been begun in Syria. In the next place, a primitive system of collective tenure still prevails at many villages, though individual indebtedness has of late not infrequently led to partition. Under this system the land is reapportioned among the families of the village every two years, a practice resulting in stereotyped cultivation, and leading the temporary holders to minimise their outlay of both capital and labour.
Apart from communal land, much is concentrated in a few hands. Vakuf accounts for a good deal. Another large section, including the greater part of the Jordan valley, consists of domains belonging to the late Sultan, which have lapsed to the State and are commonly leased in small plots in return for one-fifth of the produce paid in kind. Moreover, the old miri land has to an increasing extent passed into the hands of large proprietors, who, as a rule, do not farm it themselves, but let it on similar terms to small cultivators. The plain of Esdraelon, for instance, is now entirely owned by a few town landlords. These large proprietors are apt to regard their estates merely as an investment, and the fellahin, or peasant cultivators, are always liable to be evicted when a favourable opportunity for realisation offers. It is also customary, in order to obviate any prescriptive rights, to change tenants at intervals. A frequent cause of land passing into capitalist hands is the oppression of the tax collector, from which the fellah seeks relief, either by disposing of his holding to a local effendi, or by turning it into vakuf. In Turkey the burder of direct taxation falls mainly upon the land (cf. p. 138), and is aggravated by the tax-farming system, which involves much extortion and oppression.
A large proportion of the fellahin, therefore, are in no sense proprietors, but merely cultivators with a
