Jami' al-Saghir / Jam' al-Jawami' (al-Suyuti) 2-2200b

Translation

Machine translation, not reviewed

“Abu Mijlaz and others narrated that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab appointed ‘Uthman ibn Hunayf over the kharaj of al-Sawad, and paid him a quarter of a sheep and five dirhams each day. He ordered him to measure al-Sawad, both cultivated and uncultivated, and not to measure a salt flat, a sand dune, a thicket, a stagnant pool, or what the water does not reach. ‘Uthman measured everything below the mountain, meaning from Hulwan to the land of the Arabs, which is the lower part of the Euphrates. He wrote to ‘Umar: I have found that everything reached by water, cultivated and uncultivated, is thirty-six million. ‘Umar wrote to him: Impose the kharaj on every cultivated or uncultivated jarib, whether its owner works it or does not, at one dirham, and on the irrigated land at five dirhams, and feed them the palms and trees. He said: This is a strength for them in developing their lands. He imposed on their necks, meaning the dhimmis, eight and forty dirhams on the wealthy, twenty-four dirhams on those below that, and twelve dirhams on whoever had nothing. Mu‘tamil said: One dirham does not burden a man each month. He lifted from them the bondage through the kharaj that he had placed on their necks and made it the cultivation of the land. So from the kharaj of the land of Kufah he brought to ‘Umar in the first year eighty million dirhams, then the following year he brought one hundred and twenty million dirhams, and it continued in this way.”

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