Hamula Organisation and Masha'a Tenure in Palestine

The thesis is examined that nontribal masha'a villages in Palestine were inherently socially fragmented and, therefore, susceptible to outside intervention and land expropriation. Some general features of the village patronymic group, or hamula, are explored. It does indeed appear that few, if any, such groups are, or were in the recent past, genealogically integrated patrilineages. There is a short treatment of the agricultural routine in the lowlands where the masha'a system prevailed. The usual claim that the periodic redistribution of communal lands characteristic of masha'a was inimical to economic planning and management proves unwarranted. A comparative analysis is made of the effects of Ottoman Land Registration, British Land Settlement and Zionist colonisation on the social and economic organisation of masha'a villages in and around the Plain of Esdraelon. Physically exposed and socially amorphous plains villages composed of sedentarising semi-nomads and hill migrants did seem prone to outside interference. Those older continuously inhabited hill villages with a stronger social fabric were apparently better able to forestall the alienation of their valley lands. But very different fabrics could show resistance. A village constituted of a few powerful and competitive hama'il, such as Umm el-Fahm, was clearly poised to balance internal socio-economic antagonisms and parry outside threats. Yet, even a socially heterogeneous village containing a number of smaller hama'il, such as Isfiyya, held fast owing to a village-wide network of affinal relationships and persistent inter-hamula ties of matrilaterality.