422 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



by an effectively policed zone, where tlie resultant law and order invite 

 the small peasant to take his chances in defending his rights. Every- 

 where else in the Near East, from the shores of the Mediterranean to 

 the Persian Gulf, the land is held in great landed estates, some of 

 which are very extensive, veritable principalities. Throughout the 

 length of the Fertile Crescent, the great transition zone between the 

 desert and the sown which extends from the Gulf of Aqaba northward 

 to Aleppo and eastward to Basra, the more arid the climate is, the 

 more extensive is the cultivation — two factors which coincide with the 

 phenomena of great landed estates and of a miserable peasantry. 

 These tremendous holdings are an outgrowth of the social climate, 

 which in turn is conditioned by two principal factors, viz, the pre- 

 eminent social and political role played in the Near East by the city 

 vis-a-vis the country, and the economic and social prestige which 

 accrues to the individual who has his entire fortune in land. The 

 essential function of capital throughout the centuries has been and 

 still remains the acquisition of land. We are not concerned here with 

 the methods whereby the great landed estates have come into being. 

 Suffice it to say that enormous agglomerations of broad and fertile 

 acres are owned in fee simple by single families, the eldest member of 

 which acts in each case as the manager. Thus the people who own 

 land do not work it and those who work the soil own none of the land, 

 although they are tied to it by the invisible bonds of immemorial cus- 

 tom and by the more tangible fetters of debts which they can never 

 hope to pay. 



These holdings comprise not merely tracts of land but entire villages 

 as well, the sites of which are in reality, together with the inhabitants, 

 "owned" by the manorial overlords. Only a few miles to the north 

 of Dahr, in the eastern part of the Akkar Plain, the Dendachlis "own" 

 more than 60 villages, and the Barazi of the town of Hama own 49 

 village in the Alawite Mountains.^ 



Olives, figs, grapes, apricots, and divers other fruits are consumed 

 where tree crops are grown, but in the vast cereal-producing areas of 

 the interior, bread, bourghol, and leban are the basis, year in and year 

 out, of the diet of the inhabitants of the "owned" villages. It is only 

 in the poorer districts and during periods of famine that actual want 

 occurs, but the diet is, to say the least, very monotonous, and the peas- 

 ants could in general consume much more food if it were available. 

 But the general social insecurity, the extremely primitive housing and 

 sanitary conditions, the deficient recreational facilities, and the wide- 

 spread ignorance, make for a hunger which is not so much physical as 

 cultural and spiritual. The fact that the good earth does not yield 



•WeulersBe, Jaques, Paysans de Syrle et du Proche-Orient, p. 119, Paris, 1946. 



