Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/238

198 shaddad, "will your entire crop, barley and wheat, &c., amount to in measures (sa&#787;âs) when threshed," and adds, before the shaddad has time to answer, "I think so many"—naming an amount five or six times as great as it could under even the most favourable circumstance produce.

There is then a general outcry from all the shaddadeen, "Yes it is a blessing however much or little, but it can never make the amount you state."

This farce is gone through several times, and over several days, until either one party or the other is wearied out. The villagers—that is each shaddad—sometimes agree to pay a fixed quantity of grain or other produce in place of the legal tenth. The ’Ashar then departs, but leaves a servant to watch that no grain is removed from the threshing floor after it has been brought there and threshed, until the quantities agreed to be paid by each shaddad have been delivered to him.

Sometimes the villagers hold out and refuse to compound, and the ’Ashar then places several of his servants to watch that all the grain (in the straw as harvested) is brought to the threshing floor. When all the harvesting is done, the straw still unthreshed as brought from the field belonging to each shaddad is put up by him, the shaddad, into what he considers ten equal stacks. The ’Ashar is then asked to choose one stack. This he does, but refuses for some days to have it threshed and winnowed (which the shaddad is bound to do for him) and until this is done the shaddad is not allowed to touch his own stacks.

After a day or two, the ’Ashar goes round to look at all his stacks representing the tithe, and having made the inspection he then calls his men and orders them to prepare their horses and bring him his own to leave the village immediately, "I have been robbed of more than half of each stack belonging to me" (totally untrue, because the stacks given for the tithe have all been removed to another part of the threshing floor at a distance from the stacks belonging to the shaddadeen, and have been closely watched night and day by the servants of the ’Ashar). "I am going to put my case into the hands of the authorities." In the end the villagers each and all agree to pay a certain number of measures of grain, &c., in addition to the division already made, i.e., the stack already set apart for the ’Ashar. When this has been threshed and winnowed and a quantity sufficient for the supplementary amount agreed upon as above has been delivered, camels are provided by the villagers at their own expense to carry the grain of the ’Ashar to the chief town in the district. The ’Ashar then clears out together with his servants, and the shaddadeen proceed with their own work of threshing, &c.

I may add that I can safely say from close observations I have made during nearly ten years' farming in the Sharon plains near Ramleh, that the amount collected by an ’Ashar rarely, if ever, averages under one third of the whole crops, instead of the legal tenth, viz., 33 per cent, instead of 10 per cent.

The very word ’Ashar is an opprobrious term, and an extortionate