Relationships between the peasants and the Ottoman authorities were far more complex in operation than in structural outline. Taxpaying, the subject of the present chapter, was the nexus of peasant–official interactions; it defined and punctuated the agricultural routine of the year. The following discussion concentrates on tax payment and collection, using several cases to illustrate different aspects of this essential feature of rural administration. The disparities between the estimates of the survey registers and the annual assessments found in the sijills illustrate more fully the character of the survey data. Charts containing data from the survey registers for the cases cited may be found in Appendix 1. The fluctuations recorded in the sijills depict more realistically how the underlying agricultural rhythms affected each year separately. And, the difficulties of payment and collection show how tensions between peasants and officials were the product of more than numerical disparities.

Abū Dīs

The village of Abū Dīs is located three to four kilometers east-southeast of Jerusalem, probably on the same site as the contemporary village of Abū Dīs. Settlement in the mountains stretching between Hebron and Nablus has been relatively stable over time, and many of the villages here today may be identified with those listed in the Ottoman surveys.