Obște

The obște (pl. obști) was an autonomous agricultural community of the Romanians/Vlachs during the Middle Ages. Mixing private and common ownership, the communities generally employed an open field system. The obști were usually based on one or more extended families. This system of organization was similar throughout the Vlach-inhabited areas and it generally receded as overlords assumed more power over the rural communities and as the peasants lost their freedom by becoming serfs.

The word is of Slavic origin, its original meaning being "common", referring to the common ownership and usage of the fields. Nevertheless, the organization system is assumed to predate the Slavic contact, previously the word for community being cătun (cognate with Albanian ), a word that changed its meaning in modern Romanian into "hamlet" or "mountain village".

The villages, autonomous and lacking a political superstructure, employed their own defense system: the very words for village in Romanian (, archaic fsat) and Albanian () are derived from the Latin word , meaning "a ditch used for fortifications".

Most villages were not ancient, but they were founded and discarded during successive colonization steps. As extensive farming was used, the areas with depleted soil were abandoned for new land, often obtained through deforestation. Sometimes, they were divided into more groups, each looking to found its own obște on fertile land, something known as the "swarming of the obști" (roirea obștilor).

The villagers in an obște were often the descendants of the founder (or sometimes, founders) of the village, which was known as moș ("forefather"). By the 16th century, in Wallachia, each extended family (moșneni, people with a common forefather) had its own tracts of land which they used in common.

The obști had their own common law system, known in Romanian as obiceiul pământului ("custom of the land"), an unwritten law system which set rules for the relations between the villagers, including the rules for the usage of the land. The obști had judicial powers on their members, the elders of the village being the judges.

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Wikipedia