ABSTRACT
Rural communities lived largely under a feudalistic system, with land concentrated in the hands of a small absentee landowning class and cultivated by peasants under a system of share tenancy, which could be terminated at the will of the landlord. Like European feudalism, Middle East feudalism made the cultivator a serf dependent in every way upon his landlord; but one of the main characteristics of European feudalism was absent, namely, the personal relationship between the landlord and the cultivator. The effect of Middle East feudalism was to reduce appreciably the productivity of the land and to demoralize and impoverish a considerable proportion of the rural population.
