TAXEScrown land even after the sixth-century reforms and are also repre-
sented by Islamic tithe land. The mi~aha and muqasama systems were
juxtaposed on different kinds of land and seem to have been associated
with different forms of tenancy.
The obligation of landholders to pay agricultural taxes was ex-
pressed in terms of ancient, indigenous Mesopotamian legal concepts
that applied the principles of lease and mortgage contracts to land
taxes. The form of sharecropping described in the Talmud in which
the tenant held a permanent, inheritable lease and turned over one-
quarter to one-third of the crop to the landlord appears to be the
model for the theory that most of the agricultural land in lower-central
Iraq in the Middle Sasanian period was state property for which the
landholders paid an annual rent-tax (A. tasqa) proportional to the
yield. Such land was considered to be mortgaged to the state for the
amount of taxes due on it each year. It reverted to the state in case
of default, and the right to use the land could be sold to anyone who
paid the tax on it for that year.^26 The other main form of tenancy, in
which the renter paid a fixed annual value of produce or cash, appears
to be related to the fixed land tax per unit of area established in the
sixth-century reforms. It seems to have prevailed on the estates of the
dahaq,n but was never applied to crown lands, which remained subject
to tasqa.
Traces of the tasqa system are to be found in the treatment of
confiscated Sasanian crown lands (Ar.lM.P. ~awafi al-ustan) by the
Muslims following the conquest. ·Uthman ibn I:Iunayf is said to have
set tax rates on crown land proportional to the yield. The tasq varied
according to the relative distance from water sources and markets,
and ·Uthman levied one-tenth of the crop on palm trees and vineyards
watered by rain and one-twentieth on those irrigated artificiallyP
When land grants (Ar. qata'r) began to be made from state property
near Kufa by the caliph ·Uthman, we are told that two of those who
26 Lskkegaard, Islamic Taxation, pp. 58, 173-75; Newman, Agricultural Life, pp.
39,42-43,50-52,54-61,161-68,173; Rodkinson, Talmud, XII, "Baba Metzia," 288.
The standard share (Ak. miksu) of the landlord in Old Babylonian field rental contracts
was one-half or one-third of the harvest. In the collection of public revenues, the state's
share ranged from one-half to one-third, one-fourth, one-fifth, or one-tenth. See M.
Ellis, Agriculture and the State in Ancient Mesopotamia (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 31,
37,60-70.
27 Abii Yiisuf, Kharii;, p. 129; Baladhuri, Fueu/J, pp. 268, 271; YaQya ibn Adam,
Kharii;, p. 81. These happen to be the fractions designated by the Persian ordinal
numbers that were translated into Arabic as 'ushr (tenth) and n~f 'ushr (twentieth)
under al-l:Iajjaj (Baladhuri, Fueu/J, p. 301; Lskkegaard, Islamic Taxation, pp. 113,241;
Mawardi, A/Jkiim as-sul,aniyya, p. 195).