The lands thus granted were generally publicly held prior to the grants, which usually meant that the lands themselves had at one point been the rewards of military conquests, making them fairly just rewards for military service. Others would cultivate this land and pay taxes or tributes to the landowner, who in turn had to pay a tithe to the public government, creating a system very similar to feudal Europe and perpetuating the large land holdings through hereditary inheritance. As conquests faded away, the actual granting of lands became far less common (as there was simply less land to go around), but the permanence of previous grants continued to perpetuate the growth of a hereditary land-owning class. New grants were issued that gave certain individuals the right to collect taxes on certain areas of public land, but these individuals had to collect the taxes themselves and make what profit they could from this. This eventually became a corrupted practice, as tax gathering often did, and helped to keep down...

Scientists, teachers, oculists, physicians, merchants, and industrialists were all a part of the khassa in urban parts of Muslim society. Government salaries or patronage from wealthier members of the elite often provided for the subsistence of these men and their families, which itself created a clear distinction between these groups and the true elite. The vast majority of people in Muslim societies, however, were the peasants about whom very little is known. When men of a peasant background made a name for themselves as tradesman, they ceased being peasants and their positions changed considerably. Craftsman and tradesman tended to live only in cities or in villages large enough to support individuals with such specialized trades.