(COURT OF APPEAL)

SULEIMAN ABDALLA HAMZA AND OTHERS v. ABDALLA NOURA

AND OTHERS

Principles

  Land Law—Mirin—An imaginary line drawn along the middle of the river; usually by an agreement or a settlement

A mirin is an imaginary line drawn along the middle of the river ‘ ad medium filum aquae.” Usually it is drawn by an agreement or a settlement. A mirin drawn by a settlement becomes permanent and governs the future distribution and can only be altered by a decree of a higher court.

Advocate: Ahmed Suleiman for the applicant

Judgment

Mahdi Mohamed Ahmed J. November 25, 1969 : —In this application applicant’s counsel is impeaching the decision of the Shendi Settlement Officer, in settlement Suit-2- as being against the weight of evidence.

In the above suit applicants invoked ancient ownership against respondents’ claim by right of Gusad. They produced a bunch of old documents which purport to be a sale of the land in dispute to their predecessors. However they failed to identify or locate the land thus claimed.

A careful scrutiny of the documents produced discloses the fact that the land mentioned therein lies between Mirin El Karu in the West and Mirin El Fahalabia in the East. It appears from the report of the Omera’s Settlement that the a length of Mirin El Fahalabia is 2371/2 uds. Hence the land between the two Mirins is large enough and applicant has to locate the precise site of their land. Another factor makes such location a necessity, for it turned out that the land mentioned in five out of seven documents produced has already been registered in other Sagias. There. fore in the absence of direct evidence as to the exact location of the land specified in documents 6 and 7 applicants must fail.

On account of a remark made by the learned Province Judge about the failure of the Settlement Officer to follow the Gusad principle and divide the land equally between the West-bankers and the East-bankers, I feel bound to say a few words about the nature and significance of a mirin.

A mirin is an imaginary line drawn along the middle of the river “ad medium filum aquae.” Usually it is drawn by agreement or a settlement. A mirin drawn by a settlement becomes permanent and governs the future distribution of the river-bed between the high-anders on the opposite banks. A mirin thus sited can only be altered by a decree of a higher court. It will not be affected by fluctuations in the course of the river.

Hence it is the primary duty of a settlement officer in the case of river-bed land to start his work by an inquiry as to the existence and the whereabouts of any mirins in the settlement area. I admit it is a difficult job to find out about and locate a mirin. The people, in the hope that they will get more land than they are entitled to, will more often than not withhold such information. But once a settlement officer discovers and locates a mirin, he will find that his troubles are over. All he has to do is to grant land east of the mirin to the Eastern-banker and land to the west of it to the Western-banker.

Therefore, I feel that the remark of the learned Province Judge did not do justice to the settlement officer. Where a mirin exists a settlement officer is bound to take it as the established boundary and divide the land between the two bankers accordingly. To set up a fresh mirin on every settlement or resettlement will annul the whole work of the previous settlements and undermine the existing register.

In the present case the existence, location, and extent of El Fahalabia’s mirin is an admitted fact: “Omera’s Settlement Report.” The dispute was over its extension to Sagias Nos. 24 to 30 in 1926 by Omera Settlement. The learned Judge of the High Court set aside this extension but did not cancel the original mirin which was not the subject of any dispute.

I therefore conclude that the decision of the settlement officer was not against the weight of evidence and that he was right in distributing the land in accordance within the existing mirin. This application is therefore summarily dismissed.