It might seem strange to begin a series on social organisation with a discussion of land ownership and taxation; but it should be remembered that one of the primary functions of the early state was to regulate and control access to resources, and how to expropriate these resources efficiently for the benefit of the élites. Without outlining a few guiding principles on how such things operate in Ukxár, not much of the following would make sense.
In both theory and practice, land ownership is the sole province of the state; or more strictly the Temple, which is basically synonymous with the state in Qári thought. Only the Temple owns land, everybody else just has rights to it.
The Qáritu recognise two types of land rights: kyátxe and taka, which we can translate (roughly!) as “usufruct” and “title”, respectively. kyátxe “usufruct” is the right to cultivate the land and enjoy the majority of its produce, while taka “title” is the right to a proportion of the land’s produce (in the form of rent; or, more accurately, a proportion of the tax owed to the state by the usufructor)[1].
It should be noted that someone who has title to a piece of land is not entirely analogous to a landlord. If whoever has usufruct over some land fails to pay their rent, the one who has title over that land is not able to repossess the land or similar: instead it’s a debt matter for the courts to resolve. Nor is it analogous to mediaeval European feudalism: the title-holder cannot direct the usufructor in how to cultivate the land, for example. Additionally, the two rights are mutually exclusive: one cannot have both title and usufruct over a piece of land, thus there are no “owner-cultivators” or analogues to freeholders. Indeed, the Qáritu would be horrified by the concept.
It is the two main types of land rights that divided Qári society into two classes: the lantiru “landholders” and the kalihnu “commoners”. Essentially, lantiru are those with titular rights over land; while kalihnu are those with usufructuary rights.
Qári has three words relating to taxation: yoniya, kali and takati, which we can translate as “tax”, “tariff” and “tribute”, respectively. All involve the transfer of wealth to the state, but the distinction between the three words is based on their source. Yoniyar “taxes” are levied on (groups of) people, kaliyá “tariffs” are levied on things and takatiyá “tribute” is levied on states.
Taxes are paid in kind: a taxpayer would be liable for a certain amount of grain, cloth, beasts and labour each year. It should be noted that the categories here are broad: a tax liability in grain could be paid in rice, wheat or barley, for example. These commodities have legally defined equivalences: for example, in 31st century Ilmár one measure of wheat is worth two of rice, or four of barley. Similarly, a liability in cloth could be paid in raw wool, finished cloth, cotton or flax; while a liability in beasts could be paid either in living sheep or goats, or in preserved meat. Only commoners are liable for all forms of taxation; landholders only had a labour liability. Precisely how all of this worked out in practice is detailed further below in the section on classes.
Tariffs are assessed on goods, and typically were set at between 8% and 12% of their worth. A foreign merchant entering the city would be expected to pay a tariff on the goods he was bringing to trade; or a stallholder in a market would be expected to pay a tariff on the goods she had sold that day (effectively a tax on profits). Tariffs were paid in copper or silver, the standard units of account in Qári cities.
Tribute is paid primarily in prestige goods, such as precious stones and metals, craft goods and so on. They are paid from one state to another, recognising disparities in power. Tribute is more in the domain of foreign relations and will not concern us further here.
In the next in this series, we’ll have a closer look at the two classes, and how they were organised among themselves.
[1] I apologise here profusely. Using technical terms from property law in Common Law jurisdictions to translate concepts from a completely different jurisdiction on another planet probably isn’t all that illuminating; but to repeat the native terms is just confusing. Also, I’m a bit of a property law nerd, what with doing it for a living.
