_Mîreh_ land is domanial or state land. The ultimate title is with the state, to whom it reverts in the event of the failure of proper heirs. There are nine degrees of heirs eligible as owners of such land, children, grandchildren, brothers’ children and grandchildren and so on; lastly the wife of the owner, if all the other degrees fail. If the land is sold, then the degrees count from the new owner and go right through the nine degrees from him. So it is very possible that mîreh land may be in continuous ownership other than the state’s. Village cultivable lands are mîreh lands. In cases where they are village lands they are held as communal lands. In villages like Râm Allâh and el-Bîreh the land that is held thus in common as cultivable land is divided into three grades according to quality. Then each grade is divided into _feddâns_. A _feddân_ is, in the first instance, a team or yoke; in Râm Allâh, four yoked cattle. Feddân then comes to mean the amount of land apportioned to the owner of such an equipment, which amount is presumably as much as the feddân of cattle could plow in a day. Finally the term feddân is used by the peasants to indicate the acknowledged right of a village farmer to own and work his plow and team and participate in the annual divisions of the arable land of the farming community. The feddân is the unit, but one feddân may be shared by several owners, each partner contributing his share to the outfit and being recorded as entitled to privileges in the feddân. These legal fellaḥîn, then, receive by lot as their assignment for the year some of each quality of land. Hence the man, or family, or company interested in one _feddân_ may have land here, there and in a third place. A deep furrow, the width of a plow, marks the boundary between the different strips. Or a succession of small heaps of stones may mark the line.[128] The workers on such a strip or strips pay the government taxes or tithes on the produce of their land. ----- ----- [Illustration: A SOWER] [Illustration: CHILDREN GLEANING] To obtain a place in the list of such fellaḥîn and share in the use of the communal lands is a matter of some complexity and difficulty and, perhaps, of serious discussion amounting to a quarrel. A stranger coming to the village to live cannot ordinarily enter into the land privileges. A newcomer may occasionally be worked into a privileged family by marriage. The old families of the villages, having had these land rights for years, hold them tenaciously. Newcomers are ordinarily compelled to turn to some other business, to open a shop or go into some kind of manufacture. By a difficult procedure, eased with money, communal land may become the private property of one person and be made into a vineyard or an orchard.