the abbasìd’s golden age 177needed by both the poor and the rich, and more so by the poor,
regardless of the amount of tax collected from them.
Land taxation
For convenience of presentation land taxation is divided below into
Kharàj tax and ushr tax, followed by the administrative reform of
land taxation. But to avoid a potential confusion of terms, a clarification
of the term ushr and half ushr, and ushùr, may be needed. In lin-
guistic terms ushrmeans one-tenth, i.e. ten per cent, and half ushris,
hence, five percent. Applying this to land taxation would lead to
classifying lands according to the tax imposed into ushr land and
Kharàj land. Ushrland was mainly the land in the hands of Muslim
owners, while Kharàj land was the land under the occupation of
non-Muslims, which came to being after the Islamic conquests. A
misconception is created by referring to ushr land as Muslims’ land
and Kharàj land as non-Muslims’ lands. But this is not necessarily
the case as lands in hands of non-Muslims could be, and were, taxed
at ushr, ten per cent. These were the lands of the People of the
Book in Arabia, i.e. Christian and Jews, and of others outside Arabia
who had a peace treaty with Muslim armies stipulating the ushr, ten
per cent, provision. Furthermore, Muslims land could also be taxed
at the Kharàj rate. This would be the case if Muslims purchased
lands from the owners who were taxed at the Kharàj rate. To extend
the clarification further, the ushrrate was not always ten per cent;
the rate could be halved to one fifth, five per cent, depending upon
the burden of irrigation, as stipulated in the Sunnah. But the tax,
and the land, would still be referred to as ushrtax and ushrland. A
further and last point: ushùr, plural of ushr, is often confused with
ushr land tax. Ushùr are custom dues. The reason for the confusion
is that custom dues were charged at the rate of ten per cent, ushr,
but that was the only common factor between the two types of taxes.
However the ten per cent rate on custom dues could be halved to
five percent.
Kharàj tax
In his book, Abù-Yùsuf introduced a new method of Kharàj taxa-
tion. Before Abù-Yùsuf, the manner of taxing conquered land was
dominated by the practice of the second caliph Umar when the land