180 chapter five
- Uthmàn’s and Œuûaifah’s answer to Caliph Umar’s question that
they left excess which they could have taxed if they wished and
the approval of Umar of this answer reinforces the argument
that the tax could be increased or decreased depending on what
the land could bear. - By changing the taxation system from the fixed tax system to
the proportional crop-sharing system, muqàsamah, Caliph Umar’s
rule of not charging the land more than it could bear would be
more observed. - The ruler has the right to decrease or increase the Kharàj tax
but he should avoid over-burdening the land taxpayers with the
tax. - The argument in the previous point was reinforced by that which
Caliph Umar levied on the people of al-Sawadone bushel and/or
dirhams on every jarib(a survey measure) of cultivated or uncul-
tivated land and eight dirhams on each jarib of palm trees, but
he later cancelled the tax on the palm trees that were growing
in areas otherwise cultivated to make the tax more bearable to
the tax-payer. Also, when Caliph Umar sent his administrator
Ya"la ibn Umayyah to Najran, he instructed him to hand over
the land to them on a proportional crop-sharing tax system: two-
thirds of tax on the yield of corn and the yield of palm trees in
naturally irrigated land and one-third in artificially irrigated land.
These two examples, al-Sawad and Najràn, show that the ruler
has the discretion to impose on people what is bearable in accor-
dance with the capacity of the taxpayers. - When the Prophet conquered Khyber by force he did not levy
a Kharàj tax on the land in the form of a fixed monetary tax.
Instead, he gave it to the keepers of the land, the Jews, on a
musàqàh agreement whereby half of the yield was to be taken in
the form of tax. - Caliph Umar ibn Abdel-Azìz, the pious Umayyad Caliph, ordered
one of his governors, Abdel Hamid ibn Abdel Rahman, to sur-
vey the land and instructed him not to treat the barren land as
the land under cultivation, or vice versa. The barren land should
be surveyed, and a levy applied that was related to what it was
capable of producing if it was improved and became worth cul-
tivating. For the land on which the Kharàj was to be exempted
the matter should be resolved leniently to the satisfaction of the
people on the land. No Kharàj was to be imposed on the houses,