expropriation of surplus were the most consistent mechanisms of economic integration. The Ḥafṣids utilized military and legal force to secure sources of revenue. Like the Almohads, the Ḥafṣids and those who benefited from the land grants they distributed, urbanites and Bedouins, tried to retain control over these lands by legal means. All contemporaries, regardless of their political orientation or social standing, recognized this. This basic fact of politics weakened the ownership and control of land and made the role of the judiciary particularly prominent.2
The Ḥafṣids utilized at least three legal regimes, or ways of legitimizing their fiscal actions. First, they claimed taxes that were regulated by Islamic law and due from all Muslims, such as the ‘ushr (tithe). In Ifrīqiyā and the entire Maghrib, al-Andalus included, the Mālikī school of jurisprudence was predominant. The Ḥafṣids mobilized Mālikī law especially in areas where urban influence was greatest. Then, there were a number of other levies for which Muslim jurists had a hard time finding a rationale in their authoritative books and that Mālikī jurists considered extra-legal or illegal. These formed part of an individual ruler’s laws and tended to vary from one ruler to the next even if rulers drew on prevailing custom, old and new. Third, the dynasty received contributions from Bedouin sheikhs or village leaders who collected excises based on the customs of their locality. These contributions or tributes were not technically taxes. However, to collect them, the sheikhs used similar means and arguments to those used to collect taxes. When the Ḥafṣids brought under their domination Bedouins who possessed a body of organized customary laws (qānūn), they levied taxes or tributes based on rates of taxation the Bedouins had established. But for the most part, this last type of law predominated in areas not under Ḥafṣid rule (arḍ al-qānūn).
The reach and efficiency of the Ḥafṣid fiscal system varied with political and military circumstances. The more visible changes drew the attention of contemporaries and made their way into chronicles. Contemporary sources were less well aware of the impact of the incremental transformation of the tax structure itself, a “subterranean” and slower change that undermined the ability of the dynasty to collect legal taxes. Since agricultural taxes were assessed based on the status of land, a modification of the type of land tenure could have serious fiscal implications. Although the character of the sources makes it difficult to appreciate the short-term effects of strategies to evade the dynastic fiscal system, they gain significance in the longer term, shedding light on a process of fiscal resistance that can only be sketched imprecisely from the inconsistent and often contradictory references found in collections of legal opinions.3
Together with land tenure and taxation, contractual relations between laborers and farmers, landowners and tenants, or owners and shepherds determined the rate of profit. They also shed light on the homogenization of labor relations and may have been an important site of regional integration. The types of labor contracts were, however, tied to local customs and the ways the Almohads and the Ḥafṣids dealt with land—especially when it came to land grants (iqṭā‘āt, sing. iqṭā‘). In terms of prevailing relations between parties involved in agricultural production, Ifrīqiyā did not exhibit a homogeneous or homogenizing set of contractual relations.
To make my arguments about the lack of regional integration, I will utilize two types of sources: collections of legal opinions and literary sources. Both include very useful information about the period but also have their limitations. The legal opinions provide us with the basis for a typology of agricultural relations and allow us to determine which practices were accepted. But the opinions included in these compilations are not representative of all the legal cases that emerged at any given moment or place.4 In addition, jurists had the tendency to frown upon legal innovation and tended to privilege precedent, which further skewed the sample. On the other hand, information found in literary sources, such as the historical narratives and travelogues used here, tend to be anecdotal and inconsistent. However, they are informative about the activities of the ruling dynasty and, for instance, allow us to show that the Almohads used land expropriations and land grants as ways of securing their rule. They also demonstrate the continued existence of a multiplicity of economic arrangements well into the fifteenth century.
The coexistence of various types of land tenure, taxes, and labor contracts can make for a knotty discussion of their combined, but not always synchronic, evolution over time. The fragmentary and inconsistent character of the evidence magnifies the problem by making it difficult to draw a map of either the distribution of land or labor contracts. This is not necessarily a setback, however, because the focus here is not on geographic location, but on the impact of the Ḥafṣid fiscal system in fostering regional integration. Even without drawing a precise map, it is possible to differentiate between areas in the “countryside” based on the predominant economic arrangements.
Around the cities of Ifrīqiyā, there were three concentric circles of countryside. The first was a “green belt” of farms and gardens (basātīn), which, in the case of Bijāya, extended for twelve miles.5 Using water from rivers and wells, farmers planted a variety of vegetables and legumes.6 Some of these gardens were in fact large parks designed for the rest and entertainment of Ḥafṣid emirs.7 In their midst, there often stood functioning towers (abrāj, sing. burj) from which lookouts watched for intruders. Not far from these gardens, it was common to find palm, olive, and fig trees. These fruit groves (ghābāt, sing. ghāba) were located at the outskirts of cities. Lands in this first belt, near the cities, tended to be privately owned. Their owners hired laborers to work them or rented them out to individuals who lived on or near the land.
In the second belt, there were larger estates in which dry farming prevailed. To work the land, tenants or sharecroppers lived in small clusters of about ten to twenty houses or in small villages. In addition to vegetables and legumes, they planted cereals such as oats, barley, and wheat and usually kept sheep, cows, and goats. In spite of their distance from urban centers, which could be quite significant, these estates are best thought of in association with the cities, because they were mostly owned by urbanites, the ruling family foremost among them.
Beyond the first and second belts were “Bedouin” lands (bādiya). Less fertile and usually less well watered, these were generally farther from the Mediterranean coast toward the Sahara. Pastoralist nomads who lived in tents traveled across these lands in search of pastures. They were not alone, however, as a number of small villages survived on a mix of dry farming and animal husbandry. Given the regularity of droughts and the poor quality of their land, they often suffered famines and other hardships. The lot of these Bedouins was very similar to that of people who lived off the land in the mountains southeast of Bijāya and Qasanṭīna, for example. They were poor, and supplemented their diet by raising cattle, hunting wild animals, and harvesting nuts and other products of the forests.
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