148 chapter four
This argument was supported by the substantial increase in the state
revenue from this source, which increased from between 4,000,000
and 9,000,000 to 50,000,000 dirham during the reign of the third
caliph (Al-Màwardì).
Nevertheless, Caliph Uthmàn’s introduction of the new system
marked the beginning of feudalism in the economic history of
Islam.
Therefore, what started as a request from the governor of Syria
to the caliph, which was granted on the condition that the land
would be rented not owned, led to the accumulation of land by
Mu"awiyah and the caliphs after him, who developed a great pas-
sion for land ownership (Al- ̨abarì). This led to a considerable increase
in the size of fiefs, which grew even further as a result of the appli-
cation of the principle that a person could claim the ownership of
barren land if he or she revived it. Although the rule was useful for
agricultural development in principle, the adverse application was
that when the Umayyad and Abbasìd caliphs revived vast areas of
land they claimed the ownership of the land for themselves instead
of adding it to that of the Treasury. Consequently, this increased
the size of the royal fiefs.
The history of the Umayyad always finds an exception in the per-
son of the outstanding Caliph Umar ibn-Abd al-Azìz, Umar II,
(717–20) whose piety nicknamed him the fifth Rightly Guided Caliph.
Denying the right of the preceding caliphs to give as gifts or inherit
as legacies lands that belonged, or should have belonged, to the state,
Umar annulled the transfer of such land to him or to other mem-
bers of his family and transferred the ownership to the Treasury (Al-
̨abarì). But Umar was an exception. After him, caliphs reversed
his decisions, took back their, or what they thought was their, land
and resumed a policy that was temporarily interrupted. After the
eclipse of the Umayyads and the rise of the Abbàsids, the policy of
accumulating sawàfìland continued, but with new owners: the Abbasids
who had a similar passion for land ownership. Inheriting all that the
Umayyads left; they owned the existing fiefs and increased their size
even further (Al-Rayyis, 1977).
Business Public Sector Revenue
Small as it was in comparison with sawàfìlands; a business sector
was owned and run by the state. It was represented mainly in pub-