The country life of Western Palestine to-day is organized on the basis of farming. The original estate of the Arab is to own flocks and tents, with the auxiliary pastimes of raiding and hunting. This life is represented to-day by the nomad tribes of the Syrian desert and of Arabia. They still roam over Eastern Palestine and penetrate into Western Palestine, but their range is being narrowed in these regions by the pressure of the Turkish government, which is organizing the country more closely in favor of its own authority. The transition stage between herding and agriculture may be seen in the Jordan Valley and eastward, where the nomads and the village peasants go into partnership together to raise grain. Ordinarily a desert nomad scorns the farmer and villager, but there are Bedawîn farmers who are a sort of industrial bridge between the civilization of the villagers and the primitive freedom of the dwellers in tents farther east and south.[126] The breeding of horses and camels falls to the nomad, while the rearing of sheep, goats and cattle is the vocation of the villager. It is hardly necessary to say that a scattered farm life, with dwellings far apart, as in Europe and America, is not known in Palestine, since the country is not yet secure enough to encourage it. ----- ----- The farmers (_fellaḥîn_) are the foundation of the village population. Their lands lie out around the village and may extend a considerable distance from it.[127] It will be well to understand the system of landholdings in Palestine. There are three kinds of landholdings to be distinguished, _wakf_, _mulk_ and _mîreh_. _Wakf_ land is land that is held in perpetual and inalienable right by some ecclesiastical establishment, as, for instance, the properties of the Jerusalem Mosk, “The Dome of the Rock,” or the landed properties of the Hebron Mosk, which is a very wealthy foundation. Or _wakf_ land may belong to a school or other institution, or to a family. _Wakf_ land is supposed never to change its character. If it belongs to a family there is an elder of the family or some representative who is the wakf administrator. ----- ----- _Mulk_ land is absolutely free and transferable land. It is usually in a city or a village, or it may be in a certain border around such a place of, say, forty yards in width. This is house and garden property for the actual needs of city or village life. It can be sold or otherwise transferred at the pleasure of its owners. Such a piece of property pays an extra tax where a house is built on it, as the occupancy of the land by a building prevents that land from yielding taxable produce.