Small land grants created a middle class of Muslim freeholders

Evidence

Besides the large estates, which were comparatively few in number, the qatfia¯’i were usually small; the normal size seems to have been a holding sufficient to sustain one family at the level appropriate to a conqueror aristocracy. The increase in number of qatfia¯’i thus led to the formation of something like a middle class of tithe-paying Muslim freeholders. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 354

Categorization

• CANDY: Small conqueror-holding grants inadvertently produced a middle class — a neat reversal of the usual top-down estate narrative.