Kharaj (land tax)

In al-Baladhuri's usage, kharaj is the tax on land and produce levied on the people of settlement treaties and on the protected people (dhimmis). It is the general name under which the poll tax on heads and the tithe on land fall. ¹

In the Prophet's letter to Najran, the garments imposed were called "the garments of the kharaj." They were collected in Safar and Rajab: two thousand garments, each valued at an ounce. When the people of Najran presented their deficiency to Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, he said that he regarded this settlement as a jizya on their heads, not a treaty over their lands. ²

Al-Baladhuri reports that Umar wrote to the people of Ta'if about their vines that no tithe was due on them. He mentions the views of al-Thawri, Abu Yusuf, Malik, and others on the obligation of alms on crops and fruits, and the threshold of five awsuq. ³

Ibn Khurradadhbih presented a land-tax register for the kharaj of al-Sawad, its districts, and the other provinces of his time. He compared it with the revenue of Khusraw Parviz, which reached four hundred and twenty million mithqals in the eighteenth year of his reign, and then six hundred million mithqals after that. He notes that the people of al-Sawad prohibited the slaughter of cattle so that ploughing would multiply. ⁴

See the poll tax and the rules on land of the kharaj.