They Are The Summer Residence Of Many Families Of The Town, Who
Make It A Custom To Pass There A
Couple of months in the hottest season.
Few of the date-groves, unless those dispersed over the fields, are at
All enclosed; and most of them are irrigated only by the torrents and
winter rains. The gardens themselves are very low, the earth being taken
from the middle parts of them, and heaped up round the walls, so as to
leave the space destined for agriculture, like a pit, ten or twelve feet
below the surface of the plain: this is done to get at a better soil,
experience having shown that the upper stratum is much more impregnated
with salt, and less fit for cultivation, than the lower. No great
industry is any where applied; much ground continues waste; and even
where the fields are laid out, no economy whatever is shown in the
culture of them. Many spots are wholly barren; and the saline nature of
the soil prevents the seed from growing. The ground towards the village
of Koba, and beyond it, in a south and east direction, is said to
consist of good earth, without any saline mixture; and in value it is
consequently much higher than that near the town, which, after rains, I
have seen completely covered for several days with a saline crust,
partly deposited from the waters, and partly evaporated from the soil
itself, in the more elevated spots which the waters do not reach.
Most of the gardens and plantations belong to the people of the
[p.354] town; and the Arabs who cultivate them (called nowakhele) are
mostly farmers. The property of the gardens is either mulk or wakf; the
former, if they belong to an individual; the latter, if they belong to
the mosque, or any of the medreses or pious foundations, from which they
are farmed, at very long leases, by the people of Medina themselves, who
re-let them on shorter terms to the cultivators. They pay no duties
whatever. Not the smallest land-tax, or miri, is levied; an immunity
which, I believe, all the fertile oases of the Hedjaz enjoyed previous
to the invasion by the Wahabys: these, however, had no sooner taken
possession of the town, than they taxed the soil, according to their
established rule. The fields were assessed, not by their produce in
corn, but in dates, the number of date-trees in every field being
usually proportionate to the fertility of the soil, and also to its crop
of grain. From every erdeb of dates the Wahaby tax-gatherers took their
quota either in kind or in money, according to the market-price they
then bore. These regulations caused the Wahabys to be disliked here much
more than they were at Mekka, where the inhabitants had no fields to be
taxed; and where the tax which the Wahabys had imposed was dispensed
with, or rather given up to the Sherif, the ancient governor of the
town, as I have already remarked.
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