Note on the Rural Societies of Bukhara in the First Half of the 14th Century

Abstract

In 1965 Russian orientalist O. D. Chekhovich presented several views on the rural societies of Bukhara districts in the first half of the 14th century, as a result of the study of the vaqf document (vaqf-nâma) written in 1326. The most important view of them is that about two types of the peasants called “kadîvar” and “muzâri'”. But in it the difference between “kadîvar” and “muzâri'” was uncertainly pointed out.
In this article I intended to make clear the difference between the two through a detailed examination of the vaqf-nâma and found that it was in the way they had had relations with a village community and the conditions of their landtenancy; muzâri's were sharecroppers as main members of a village community who received their lands from landowners through a village community and under the condition of paying 1/3 crops as their rent. Kadîvars were rich farmers who formed the upper part of a village community, received their lands in the individual connections with landowners under more favourable condition called “kadivari” and were often themselves owners of the private land (milk). The existence of such a sharp contrast within a village community, on the one hand rich kadîvars who aim at rising to landowners and on the other hand muzâri's who were sharecroppers subjected to landowners, will make us certify that in the first half of the 14th century the peasant class in the villages of Bukhara districts was going to be divided into two parts.