A Line in the Sand: The Development of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Sand/Dune Agriculture at Rimāl Yibnā on the Southeastern Mediterranean Coast

This article explores property and dune cultivation in Late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine as exemplified by Rimāl Yibnā and al-Nabī Rūbīn/Yavneh-Palmachim dune field on the southeastern Mediterranean coastal plain. The study describes native agricultural practices from synchronous and diachronous perspectives, while proposing a way of bridging the epistemological gaps between native typologies of dune agriculture and modern scholarly analytical taxonomies. The article shows that land improvement among the dunes was not a one-way process. Rather, it was a never-ending battle against the encroaching sand. Using cadastral maps, land settlement records, oral testimonies, and some archaeological and arboreal evidence, the article argues that land improvement in the region significantly expanded following British colonial land tax reform and land settlement initiatives in the 1920s-1930s despite the a priori legal precepts and colonial classifications of these peripheral, sandy lands as uncultivable/mawāt. Thus, this study provides a key test case for assessing the influence of environmental conditions, legal and economic superstructure, and local sociodemographic dynamics on the development of traditional agriculture.