And in October and November, after a three-month blockade of the Mehsud fief, displacing over 200,000 people, it routed the militants there.
But his critics say he is a petty tyrant who has treated the tracks like a fief, running roughshod over contracting procedures and, in one case, giving a million-dollar contract to a company linked to organized crime.
Then Mr. Byrd and his sizable staff ruled over a fief that was the envy of territory-hungry lawmakers everywhere, before he stepped down from the committee post in 2008.
One of the last remaining symbols of India's feudal past, Ms. Devi and her husband, the Maharajah of Jaipur, ruled over a fief of some two million peasants in India's northwestern desert country before the nation won its independence from Britain in 1947.
Prince Salman (pictured a step behind King Abdullah) who took over Sultan's lucrative defence fief last year, is now confirmed as the new heir and crown prince.
The extent to which surrender of property to a lord as a fief limited control and rights over the property has been investigated, as has the importance of such acts in creating ties between family groups that could be repeatedly renewed.
Hideyoshi confirmed Nobunao's lordship over the Nanbu fief, and helped suppress an uprising by Nobunao's relative Kunohe Masazane.
It has no need of an international treaty like the one that governs Antarctica.A handful of disputes rumble on: about a few rocks located between Greenland (a Danish fief) and Canada; and between Canada and America over the status of the North-west Passage shipping route.
Often, Mr Assad seemed to have little control over fiefs carved out by his father's cronies.But there is no sign that the younger Assad's grip is weakening.
… Each fief has an intellectual or administrative territory over which he or she reigns".
