Overview

The River of al-Sila is a river in al-Sawad. Al-Baladhuri mentions that al-Mahdi ordered it dug. They dug it and revived the lands along it, and its revenue was assigned to the allowances (silat) of the people of the two sanctuaries. The expenditure there was on the condition of fifty years, followed by sharing of half. ¹

Kharaj (land tax)

Kharaj in the usage of Futuh al-Buldan is the tax laid on land and produce owed by treaty peoples and dhimmis, the general name under which fall the capitation jizya and the tithe 'ushr on land: in the Prophet's letter to Najran the stipulated hullas are called 'the kharaj hullas', levied at two thousand a year in Safar and Rajab at an uqiyya apiece, and when the people of Najran presented their diminished numbers to Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz he judged 'I see this treaty is a jizya on their heads, not a treaty on their lands'; among its rulings transmitted by him are Umar's letter to the people of al-Ta'if on their vines 'there is no tithe on them', and the positions of Sufyan al-Thawri, Abu Yusuf, Malik and others on what crops and fruits incur the levy and the five-awsuq threshold — kharaj being the subject al-Baladhuri pursues in the book's closing chapters after exhausting the conquest reports.

Nahr al-Sila

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Kharaj (land tax)