I have elsewhere drawn attention to the fact that agricultural work in Palestine is, as it was in Bible times, divided into three principal kinds, following the main divisions of the soil:

1st. Corn and grain culture, on arable land, chiefly on the great plains.

2nd. Vine, olive, and fig culture, on the mountains.

3rd. Vegetable culture, in irrigated "gardens of herbs," where there is a stream from a fountain head, chiefly in the valleys by the villages, and on a great scale, formerly in the Jordan Valley.

The sadeh, arable land, is, no doubt, now often held in common and allotted annually by the Chiefs of the Village; but we found this allotment greatly influenced by considerations as to mutual protection; the fallowing of the land; and the proper rotation of crops: 1st, wheat, barley; 2nd, pulse and beans; 3rd, summer crops, melons, cucumbers, summer beans, sesame, and millet.

But Israel's fallow was appointed to be in the Sabbatic year, and they were commanded to work the other six.

It must be remembered that for many, many centuries, the population of Palestine has been so sparse that they have had far more land than they needed to use. The fellahh population has, moreover, shrunk enormously within the last 40 years. We found that the system of annual conclave and allotment was resorted to on the undistributed land of the Great Sharon Plain by the villages of the overhanging hills (Jezer is situated near this plain) for mutual protection and as a means of ensuring fallow, and also to prevent quarrels over any plot which, being "undistributed" (unappropriated), one might seek to make his own by continuous occupation. That the custom is most ancient is certain, and also that it prevails in many lands, as Mr. Neil has shown. But all arable land is not now "undistributed" in Palestine. Now, as of old, we have arable fields which are private property (Arabic, mulk, A.).

But I think that, according to the Law of Moses, it was intended that every man was to receive an inheritance; and I read Numbers xxvi, as directing allotment-1st, to Tribes, and 2nd, to Families, (still called after their fathers, whose names were in the first great muster roll of Moses, and were in use, though they themselves had died in the wilderness); but also, 3rdly, to Individuals of full age (20 years, see verses 4 and 51), stated in verse 51 to be 601,730. To them personal and inalienable inheritance was to be granted, as follows, verses 52, 54: “To these shalt thou apportion (divide) the land for inheritance, accord

ing to the number of the names. To [him who is] many shalt thou increase his (not their) inheritance; to [him who is] few thou shalt diminish his inheritance. To each man shall be given his inheritance according to those that were numbered of him."

This surely points to an allotment to each man individually.

any

The application of Zelophehad's daughters immediately follows and was approved, their claim being allowed. Then follows the Law. In Numbers xxxvi. 8, "Every daughter that possesseth an inheritance in any tribe of the children of Israel shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe of her father." They and all future heiresses were thus restrained by special enactment from marrying into other than their own tribe, and thus (singly and personally-not collectively) alienate the inheritance from their father's tribe. Ten portions were allotted to Manasseh (Joshua xvii. 5, 6), because the daughters of Manasseh "had an inheritance among the brethren of their father." So, in Deuteronomy xxi. 17, we read that a first-born son was to inherit a double portion; as Joseph did in Ephraim and Manasseh, when Reuben had forfeited his double portion, 1 Chronicles v, 1.

Again we have, in Joshua xv, from 16 to 19, Caleb giving to his daughter Achsah, a field, TV, sadeh, as personal property. (Note here the use of the phrase, a blessing," to mean a superadded gift. The natives of Palestine to this day use the phrase in the same sense- "the blessing," bárakeh-an additional hand. ful added to the already full measure; an extra bunch to the full weight of grapes; a small coin, over and above the stipulated pay, all added in token of good will. Thus Achsah received her field, and, besides that, her bárakeh of the upper and lower springs).

In 1 Samuel viii. 14, Israel is warned that the future kings may take from them their fields, &c., plainly their personal property. Naboth's history, 1 Kings xxi., plainly refers to his vineyard as personal property, The Jubilee laws against alienation of property also refer to personal acts of mortgage or sale. See also the application of those laws to the Prince, in Ezekiel xlvi. 16, 18. Mr. Neil refers to the span of human life given in Psalm xc. 10, but it should be remembered that in this psalm Moses, "the man of God," is not speaking of human life in general, but of the one generation doomed to die in the wilderness within the 40 years. Other Israelites did live to see more than one jubilee period.

In short, I am disposed to regard the fellahh custom of working in common, the "undistributed" princely or crown lands (ardh

miri), as a survival like many others of aboriginal custom not abolished by Israel, because the Mosaic laws were but imperfectly carried out.

According to Mosaic laws there were no crown lands at all. "The land is Mine," Leviticus xxv. 23. The land marks used by the fellahheen for marking their allotments are, as Mr. Neil well observes, but slight piles of stones easily removable. Doubtless similar landmarks were used by the Israelites. But in Deuteronomy xix. 14 reference is made, not to any recent landmark but to the ancient boundary, gavool, which they "of old time have set in thine inheritance." So, Proverbs xxii. 28 and xxiii. 10, remove not the ancient, olam, landmark, which thy fathers have set," "and into the fields, TT, sadeh, of orphans enter thou not" (clearly personal property).

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Mr. Neil mentions that a portion is cultivated for the village carpenter and khateeb, whose business keeps them from ploughing for themselves. We also found that this portion was called shkārāh. Here, as is so often the case, we find a Hebraic term in fellahh dialect. Skārāh means hire," see Jonah i. 3. Maress is derived from maras, c, "rope," not from, meerath, inheritance. The Hebrew word for rope is 2, khavel, whence our "cable,", Arabic "rope." Then, as now, rope was used for field measurement.

As to the purchase by Abraham, Genesis xxiii., of the field and cave of Macpelah, it is expressly said that these were the personal property of Ephron; but it is clear that Abraham sought to get the children of Heth to waive the right of pre-emption which they had as neighbours, and that he succeeded in so doing, otherwise, any member of their families might afterwards have upset the purchase.

This right of pre-emption, by even a neighbour, is strictly enforced to this day among the fellahheen. So also property in fruit trees exists, distinct and separate from that of the soil in which they grow. Abraham had the trees secured to him as well as the

field, sadeh, and cave.

Connected with this separate property in trees are the curious and interesting laws of tenure by amar (cultivation of waste land), into which space and time prevent my entering at present. Nor may I do more than just mention the curious fact that in South Palestine, the peasantry are governed by an unwritten code which they call Sharyat Ibrahim = the code of Abraham. This code is

held in the greatest reverence, and is respected even by the Turkish Government officers. It is unwritten, and is administered by the village elders, as distinct from the Sharyat el Mahhkameh (Moslem law) and the Sharyat el Osmanli (Ottoman Imperial law).

E. A. FINN,

Member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

REPLY BY THE AUTHOR.

It is a great satisfaction to find that so competent an authority on the manners and customs of modern Palestine as my critic minutely confirms my facts.

,(marasah ومرسه

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مرس

rope,"

I am willing to adopt the derivation of maress, from wo maras (or rather, for is a collective plural, popularly used as a singular in the sense of cable, from as preferable to my own from, meerath (pronounced by the natives meerass), "inheritance;" and this greatly confirms and strengthens the interpretation I have given of all the Scriptural allusions to "the lot" and "the rope."

The reference in Deuteronomy xix. 14, Proverbs xxii. 28, and Proverbs xxiii. 10, to "ancient land marks," may as reasonably be referred to the boundaries of tribal and family inheritances—of which our parish boundaries are probably the modern survival— as to individual holdings in severalty. Clearly no conclusive argument can be established either way on these passages.

יְתוֹמִים)

The words of Proverbs xxiii. 10, "and into the fields of orphans (in, oovisdaiy (plural construct of sadeh) yethoameem) enter thou not "--by the term sadeh my critic admits that the unenclosed arable land is meant-are plainly the figure of synecdoche, either that form of it to which I have alluded on page 4 of my paper, by which sadeh stands for land generally, i.e., the part put for the whole, or else that form which consists of the very opposite, the whole put for the part, by which "the sadehs of orphans" signifies that portion of the sadeh to which they are entitled in the annual allotment. The exceedingly figurative

nature of Bible language, as on its human side that of a purely Eastern book, is even more overlooked than its curious allusions to Eastern manners and customs; for while we have a number of really valuable works on the latter subject, it is deeply to be deplored that we have not even one of a thorough or exhaustive kind in our own, or, I believe, in any other modern tongue, on the former!

This question is not in any way affected by an extraordinary fallow having been appointed for Israel every seventh year, for, whether or no they farmed during the intermediate six years by a rotation of crops, the land would have constantly to lie fallow for short intervals, and would need, as it does now, to be cleaned and manured, year by year, by feeding the cattle over it when in stubble. And, seeing that Israel came up out of Egypt, as they went down into it, a nation of shepherds rather than farmers, the question of pasturage for their vast flocks and herds must have been much more important to them than to the modern fellahheen of Palestine, who are farmers rather than shepherds. Equally, too, with the fellahheen of to-day, they would be influenced, at their first settlement amid the unexterminated nations of Canaan, and for long years after, by considerations as to mutual protection.

The fact that "all arable land is not now undistributed' in Palestine" is explained by Mr. Samuel Bergheim's observations on my paper as to the ceaseless and determined efforts of the Turks, the ruling power, to bring about a holding in severalty, with a view to facilitate the collection of taxes.

But another far more important fact, equally true, that all arable land-even that small portion which in recent times, often by force and fraud, has been wrested from the Village-Communities, and has passed into holding in severalty-is still everywhere open and unenclosed, is the strongest possible argument against this latter mode of tenure being ancient. No remains, nor the faintest traces of remains, are anywhere to be found of walls, ditches, hedges, or fences of any kind separating the sadehs of Palestine into fields or farms, which are always to be found where land has been long and legally held in severalty. The utter absence of any such divisions of the sadehs witnesses to the common rights of pasture over all the plough land during seasons of fallow, and such common rights of pasture over plough land are only practicable or possible where there are common rights of tillage under the joint husbandry of Village-Communities.

My critic practically grants all that I have mainly endeavoured