the abbasìd’s golden age 161and Abbasids. During the Umayyad and particularly the Abbasìd
caliphate, land granted in reward for services, known as qata"i, sin-
gular qati"a, grew in size and economic significance and it became
one of the main features of agricultural activities (Al-Rayyis, 1977).
What is notable, therefore, is that the pendulum of ownership during
the late Umayyad and Abbasìd period seemed to have swung towards
Muslims, who developed an interest in acquiring agricultural land
(Cahen, 1970, Lapidus, 1981). The relevance of this development to
the writing on state finance in general and land taxation in partic-
ular is that the change of the religion of the owner of the land, the
tax payer, may, in the views of some jurists, change the type of tax
from Kharàj to Zakah, ushr, tax. This is not always the case, how-
ever, as in the opinion of other jurists the nature of the tax should
not be changed by the change of the religion of the owner. Historically,
government policy during the Umayyads varied between the change
of tax to ushr, to reverting to the old status, Kharàj, even with a
change in the owner’s religion (Al-Rayyis, 1977). The claim was that
this was meant to discourage tax evasion when Kharàj was higher
than Zakàh. The issue was therefore debatable as it would raise
practical as well as judicial considerations; hence the appearance of
more than one book on Kharàj.
The Introduction of Intermediaries in Tax Collection
Furthermore, a further feature appeared with regard to the collec-
tion of tax. An intermediary agent would present himself to the
Treasury as being responsible for the payment of the total tax levied
on the region, pay the tax either when it is due or in advance, and
then collect that from individual tax payers. Although the system
was convenient to the Treasury it was not without problems. There
was always the possibility of the intermediary agent charging tax
payers more than what was due. This would create injustice and
severity to the ultimate payers. Abù-Yùsuf as we will see was strongly
against it.
Intellectual DevelopmentThe intellectual development that surrounded the writing on Islamic
economics during the period under examination depicted some