What is "iqta'"

Iqta‘ was an Islamic practice of tax farming that became common in Muslim Asia during the Buyid dynasty. The prominent Orientalist Claude Cahen described the Iqta‘ as follows:

a form of administrative grant, often (wrongly) translated by the European word “ fief”. The nature of the iḳṭāʿ varied according to time and place, and a translation borrowed from other systems of institutions and conceptions has served only too often to mislead Western historians, and following them, even those of the East.