1. NICR, 7:64–68. The wife, Sayyida Salha, daughter of Sayyid Abd al-Wahhab Afandi Fityani, came from a family of important religious figures and established textile merchants. She was his second wife and probably bore him four children, because nine of the thirteen were already adults in 1810. In fact, Abd al-Razzaq’s third-oldest son, Ahmad, was married on the same day that his father had been married, seven years earlier, to Sayyida Salluh, daughter of SayyidaHajj Muhammad Afandi Hashim Hanbali. The Hanbali family (named after the school of law to which it belonged) routinely held high religious posts such as naqibal-ashraf and was heavily invested in the soap industry (NICR, 6:161, dated June-July, 1803).

2. Clifford Geertz uses the word “clientelization” to describe a somewhat similar situation in the context of market exchanges in the bazaar of Sefrou, Morocco. In this case, however, he was mainly referring to the tendency of urban customers to buy repeatedly from and to establish a personal connection with specific purveyors, hence becoming enmeshed in a “system in which exchange is mediated across a thousand webs of informal contract.” See Clifford Geertz, Mildred Geertz, and Lawrence Rosen, Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays in Cultural Analysis (Cambridge, England, 1979), p. 220.

3. For a comparative perspective, see David Seddon, Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif, 1870–1970 (Folkestone, England, 1981), p. 92. See also Ted Swedenberg, “The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936–1939),” in Edmund Burke III and Ira Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics and Social Movements (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), pp. 172–177.

4. For a discussion of this and other points regarding the importance of textiles, see S. D. Goiten, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 1, Economic Foundations (Berkeley, Calif., 1967), p. 101.

5. Goiten noted that in the Cairo Geniza documents during the medieval period clothes were labeled as washed or secondhand, both of which testify to their importance (ibid., vol. 4, Daily Life (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), pp. 183–184.

6. This was not unique to either Nablus or this period. Goiten, for example, reached similar conclusions for Cairo in the medieval period (ibid., pp. 184–185).

7. Parents were and still are usually referred to as umm (mother of) or abu (father of) the eldest son, even if the first-born was a female.

8. The entire episode is described by John Mills, who lived in Abdullah’s house during his stay in Nablus. In fact, the negotiations took place on neutral ground: his room (Three Months’ Residence, pp. 155–159). It is interesting to note that the division of the clothes followed Islamic law (shari‘a) rules for inheritance even though this case did not come before the court and no Muslim officials were present. One can only surmise that, as far as inheritance practices were concerned, the rules of Islamic law were so ingrained in the population as a whole that they were followed by non-Muslims.

9. Usually, each household (dar) consisted of a number of buyut (NICR, 13A:74).

10. I am indebted for the insight on the political use of clothes as gifts to Bernard Cohn, “Cloth, Clothes, and Colonialism: India in the Nineteenth Century,” in A. B. Weiner and J. Schneider, eds., Cloth and Human Experience (New York, 1989), pp. 303–353.

11. Malik Masri, Nabulsiyat (Amman, 1990), pp. 45, 55, 77–79, 129, 146, 166, 175, 179, 216.

12. Ibid., p. 166. Interviews I conducted with young men and women in Nablus in 1986–1987 and in 1990 suggest that this ritual continues in most households.

13. Masri, Nabulsiyat, p. 163.

14. Arafat Family Papers, 1:29 (emphasis added). The letter was written in the local dialect and contained many grammatical mistakes, reflecting the inadequate education of its writer. The translation is not literal. A dimaya was the principal form of outerwear, especially for rural men, and surtali was a cotton/silk mix with vertical black stripes. See Nimir Serhan, Mawsu‘at al-folklore al-Filastini (Encyclopedia of Palestinian Folklore) (2d ed.; 3 vols.; Amman, 1989), vol. 3, pp. 650, 684. Dima cloth, developed by Damascene artisans in the late 1850s partly as a response to increased competition from Europe, was a cotton version of the alaja, historically one of Damascus’s most famous silk/cotton textile products. For details, see Sherry Vatter, “Journeymen Textile Weavers in Nineteenth-Century Damascus: A Collective Biography,” in Edmund Burke III, ed., Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), p. 85.

15. Muhammad Izzat Darwaza, Mi’at am filastiniyya: Mudhakkirat wa tasjilat (One Hundred Palestinian Years: Memories and Notes) (Damascus, 1984), p. 19. Darwaza’s recollections were independently confirmed in a number of interviews with Hajj Khalil Atireh, a long-time merchant and head (mukhtar) of the Gharb quarter, June 9, 1988; Hani Arafat, son of one of largest textile merchants in Nablus, March 14, 1989; and Najib Arafat (b. 1901), son of Hajj Isma‘il and himself a life-long textile merchant (August 8, 1990).

16. Rogers, Domestic Life, p. 263.

17. Mills, Three Months’ Residence, pp. 88–89 (emphasis added). This market was still dominated by textile merchants in the early 1920s (Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 85–86).

18. This division might be related to the long power struggle between the Nimrs, who controlled the eastern half, and the Tuqans, who controlled the western half during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (NIMR, 1:192–202, 225–299). This explanation, however, cannot fully account for the persistence of this division in the popular consciousness.

19. For a history of the Nabi Musa festival, see Kamil J. al-Asali, Mawsim al-nabi Musa fi Filastin: Tarikh al-mawsim wa al-maqam (The Nabi Musa Feast in Palestine: History of the Feast and the Sanctuary) (Amman, 1990).

20. Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 154–155.

21. Ibid., p. 171.

22. Interview with Najib Arafat.

23. The majority of merchant estates were probably not registered in the Islamic court. Hence the results of any sample based on a small absolute number of cases must be treated with caution. The following percentages should be viewed as general indicators, not empirically accurate figures.

24. NICR, 6:52, 197–199, 237, 251, 253, 318, 364; 7:64, 72, 372, 375, 386, 392; 8:226, 242, 269, 285, 304, 309, 376–377, 382, 390, 409, 421; 9:37, 70, 73–74, 141, 149, 172, 279, 324, 377; 10:8, 103, 118, 140, 142, 161, 221, 301; 11:8, 47; 12:99, 169, 204, 233. Because inheritance estates, as a rule, did not mention the occupation of the deceased, I considered only estates in which the commodities listed came in large quantities that could only be stored in warehouses of wholesale merchants and in which the value of these commodities constituted the bulk of the value of the estate as a whole. Thus retailers and local traders were not included, nor were owners and operators of certain economic enterprises such as mills. To determine the primary specialization, the most important factor considered was the type of commodities that made up the largest share by far of the total goods (that is, items not for personal use) listed in the estate.

25. For example, Hajj Isma‘il Arafat, in addition to being a textile merchant, was both a soap manufacturer and a landowner—olive groves, not surprisingly, constituted the bulk of his holdings (Arafat Family Papers 1.34–1.47).

26. Furthermore, in a sample of 26 inheritance cases of artisans for the same period, those involved in textile production constituted, along with those of shoemakers, the largest group in terms of numbers among the artisan community. NICR, 6:137; 7:384; 8:372, 412, 427, 431; 9:6, 16, 96–97, 103, 117, 128, 286; 10:34, 60, 174, 250; 11:33, 61, 156; 12:75, 93, 97, 169. Again, these percentages mustbe treated cautiously. There is no doubt that artisans who worked in textilesfar outnumbered all other artisans, but the location of most production facili-ties in private homes and the prevalence of a putting-out system skewed the sample.

27. Interview with Najib Arafat. The bulk of information on the Arafat family was gathered from cases registered in the Islamic law court, such as inheritance estates, waqf endowments, lawsuits, and property transactions. This was supplemented by a collection of family papers, kindly provided to me by Saba Amr Isma‘il Arafat, as well as by interviews with Najib Isma‘il Muhammad Arafat, himself a long-time textile merchant; Hani Tawfiq Ahmad Arafat; and Ibtihaj Said Umar Arafat (January 10, 1993).

28. For a discussion of the “affirmation of identity” genre in Palestinian historiography, see Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” pp. 13–17.

29. For example, Abd al-Razzaq’s nephew, Muhyi al-Din, bought a soap factory in 1829 (NICR, 8:328, 361). One of his great-grandchildren, however, was an artisan who produced cords, braids, and other trimmings (NICR, 13B:218).

30. According to Saba Arafat (letter, April 4, 1993), this family produced the city’s first professionally trained doctor (Nu‘man Sa‘id), pharmacist (Nur al-Din Sa‘id), and architect (Tawfiq Abd al-Fattah). All were educated in Istanbul early in the twentieth century. Masri refers to the “Arafat Pharmacy” in his neighborhood during the early Mandate period (Nabulsiyat, p. 92).

31. NICR, 6:198, 237, 251; 7:64–68, 109; 8:304; 9:70, 73, 141, 324; 10:8, 221, 301).

32. Ibid., 4:26, 161.

33. Ibid., 10:221.

34. He was also a landowner and founding member of the Mustashfa al-Watani (National Hospital), the first of its kind in Nablus (NIMR, 3:28, 80).

35. Interviews with Najib and Hani Arafat.

36. The second-oldest male child, Shaykh Amr, owned a soap factory (interview with Najib Arafat, son of Isma‘il’s second wife). His oldest half-brother, Ahmad, owned a textile shop on the western end of Khan al-Tujjar.

37. Letter to the author, April 4, 1993.

38. Interviews with Najib and Hani Arafat.

39. By the end of the nineteenth century, this practice was discontinued for the most part, and attaching a surname for individuals was slowly institutionalized. Among the causes of this development were urbanization, the breakup of clans and individuation of the family, the extension of central control to the rural areas, and the need of the new Ottoman bureaucracy to keep extensive records for social control.

40. Masri’s memoirs contain many fascinating details about the dynamics of a typical textile-merchant household (Nabulsiyat, pp. 29–43, 75–77).

41. The Islamic court was often resorted to in order to prevent such instances from occurring. This is why most of the inheritance estates brought before the judge for resolution involved minors and/or other areas of real or potential dispute.

42. The most common reason for changing or adopting a family name is a change of location. Many Nablus families are called by the name of the village or town or county they originally came from. Other reasons, to the extent that they can be linguistically discerned, include a particular occupation, a prominent physical feature, or peculiar events.

43. The Khammashs, for example, share an ancestor with the Jawharis, but by the eighteenth century they had managed to carve a distinct place for themselves, and by the early nineteenth century they had come to dominate leading religious positions in Nablus.

44. NICR, 4:51.

45. Ibid., 4:51, 69.

46. See a dispute over this waqf in which Ammun, the granddaughter of Abd al-Razzaq’s brother, Abd al-Ghani, wins a case against the waqf superintendent who had withheld her share (ibid., 13B:97–98).

47. The fact that his uncle died without male children may have contributed significantly to the concentration of the family’s resources in his hand, for he was the oldest son of one of the three brothers (ibid., 4:51).

48. At least three of them were learned shaykhs.

49. Around the same time, other descendants retained the family name Shahid, which continues to the present. The infrequency of references to this family in the court records, at least in comparison with the Arafats, suggests that they were less wealthy.

50. The information contained in the family tree, including the religious titles, was gathered from the first fourteen volumes of the Nablus Islamic Court records. The Arafats’ official family tree, as compiled by them, differs in some respects from the one used in this study. For consistency, I have relied solely on the court records.

51. Letter to the author, April 4, 1993.

52. For example, Shaykh Abd al-Rahim Arafat married his cousin, Khadija, daughter of Shaykh Hajj Abdullah Arafat (NICR, 8:233); and Khadija’s brother, Sayyid Ibrahim, married his cousin, Aysha, daughter of Shaykh Abd Al-Razzaq Arafat (ibid., 6:198). Aysha, incidentally, was previously married to Sayyid Ibrahim’s brother, Sayyid Ahmad (ibid.). It was not unusual for a man to wed his brother’s widow in order to support his nephews and nieces and to keep the property within the household. For other examples of Arafat-Arafat marriages, see ibid., 6:71; 8:231; 11:6, 101; 12:23.

53. Ibid., 7:64, 171.

54. Ibid., 6:36, 171; 7:64–68. In the mid-1930s Shaykh Amr Arafat, son of Hajj Isma‘il, supervised the reconstruction of the Nasr Mosque, which had suffered severe damage in a 1927 earthquake (letter from Saba Arafat, April 4, 1993).

55. NICR, 6:171; 7:307, 350, 375; 8:233; 9:96; 10:221; 12:99–100, 113; 13A:123. Examples of extensive economic and cultural ties among the Arafats and these families can be found in ibid., 6:260–264; 8:233, 281–283; 9:73, 393; 10:261; 11:6, 30, 101, 115, 172; 12:135, 242; 13B:141–143.

56. During the late nineteenth century, many Arafat males resumed their religious education.

57. This was confirmed in an interview with Najib Arafat.

58. For example, NICR, 6:64–65, 228, 250, 252; 7:109; 8:233, 304, 409; 9:96; 11:101; 12:99–100, 233; 13B:141–144. Some members of the Arafat family were also co-owners of property in the commercial center of Nablus with the Abd al-Hadi and Tuffaha families.

59. See, for example, the estates of merchants from Mosul, Beirut, and Aleppo who died in Nablus while on business (ibid., 7:395; 8:284; 9:75).

60. It must be noted here that the reliance on textiles as an example of regional and local trade networks can give the misleading impression that subregional trade networks were of little importance. The social life of grain, for example, would emphasize those connections.

61. After his oldest son, Ahmad, died during a pilgrimage to Mecca, Hajj Abdullah asked his wife and female children to choose legal agents. He then gathered them in court, along with his one remaining son, Ibrahim, in order to divide up his estate as if he had already died. This was done in the same manner as all other estates. He only asked that he receive a daily stipend from Ibrahim on behalf of himself, his wife, one of his daughters, and the two daughters of his deceased son. He died sometime between 1805 and 1812 (NICR, 6:193, 198). Saya is yet another type of blended cotton/silk cloth with bright colors and vertical stripes used to make outergarments for men and women. Thiyab (sing. thawb) is a light cotton ready-made robe. Baladi means locally made. Darwaza notes that malti cloth was imported from England, probably via Malta (Mi’at am, p. 71).

62. In addition to the Arafats, some of the families of textile merchants who did business primarily with Egypt are: Fityan, Nabulsi, Abd al-Muhsin, Ghazzawi, Balbisi, Darwish-Ahmad, Kawkash, Bishtawi, Zu‘aytar, Masri, Qutub, and Tuffaha (NICR, 6:198, 237; 7:64, 109, 386; 8:242; 9:212; 10:8; 221).

63. Ibid., 7:109.

64. They were SayyidHajj Hasan Tuffaha Husayni, Sayyid Muhammad Kawkash, Muhammad Bishtawi, Yusuf Murad Balbisi, and the beneficiaries of the deceased merchant, Hajj Abdullah Darwish-Ahmad.

65. NICR, 13B:125–127.

66. Ibid., 7:386.

67. Mikhayil Mishaqa, a well-known Lebanese contemporary chronicler, was for three years a member of this expatriate community of Levant merchants living in Damietta during the early nineteenth century and wrote about his experiences there (Muntakhabat, pp. 63–67).

68. NIMR, 2:296.

69. NICR, 9:212.

70. For example, in January 1806 a dispute arose over who was to be the legal guardian of the children of Husayn Beik Jurri, who died while conducting business in Egypt. Witnesses and business partners involved included members from the Arafat, Shahid, Tuffaha, Bashsha, and Kawkash families (ibid., 6:228).

71. Ibid., 13B:141–143. Settlements of very large estates in Nablus and elsewhere in Palestine were routinely referred to the Jerusalem Islamic court judge, who, because of his higher rank, had the prerogative in such matters.

72. Ibid., 6:198; 7:64; 10:221.

73. This included the soap production of Nablus, Gaza, Lydda, and Ramla. See John Bowring, Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria (London, 1840; reprint, New York, 1973), p. 19.

74. The relationship was of long standing: in the sixteenth century, Egyptian merchants invested large amounts of capital in promoting local production and export of Jerusalem soap to Egypt (Cohen, Jewish Life, p. 193). Export statistics show that most of Palestine’s soap was sent to Egypt in the second half of the nineteenth century (Schölch, “European Penetration,” pp. 13, 50, 53; Buheiry, “Agricultural Exports,” p. 73). Finally, Sarah Graham-Brown estimated that during the Mandate period Egypt consumed approximately one-half of the soap output of Nablus (”The Political Economy of Jabal Nablus, 1920–1948,” in Owen, ed., Studies, p. 140).

75. He bought it sometime during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This factory was later sold by his children from his second wife to the Abd al-Hadi family, in whose possession it remains (Saba Arafat, letters to the author, August 8 and December 12, 1993).

76. Interview, August 8, 1990.

77. Darwaza, Mi’at am, p. 71. Judging from the name, mansuri cloth must originally have been an imitation of an Egyptian cloth.

78. See, for example, Vatter, “Journeymen Textile Weavers.”

79. Darwaza, Mi’at am, pp. 70–77.

80. They came from al-Arish (northern Sinai).

81. Interviews with Najib and Hani Arafat. Saba Arafat recalls that members of the Haffar and Mansur families visited Tawfiq Arafat’s house in Nablus on more than one occasion (letter, April 4, 1993). Darwaza mentions the Haffars first in his list of Damascene agents and tells of the close relations between Damascene agents and Nabulsi merchants in general (Mi’at am, pp. 71, 74). Masri relates how Hajj Amin Haffar, a close friend of his father’s, invited him for a feast in his house while he was visiting Damascus (Nabulsiyat, pp. 140–141).

82. In addition to the Haffars, they usually were members of the Mansur, Khattab, and Tuban families.

83. Arafat Family Papers, 1.1.

84. NICR, 13A:191. For similar examples, see ibid., 13A:237, 258.

85. Nimr Family Papers, 3.5.9.

86. Even in Egypt, soap was sometimes was used in lieu of money in commercial transactions and in the repayment of loans. For example, see Cuno, Pasha’s Peasants, p. 58.

87. Haddars are usually remembered as owners of portable textile shops on donkeys who always appeared during the harvest season (for example, interviews with Hajj Sharif Kamil Jarrar [b. 1897], from the village of Burqin, July 17, 1990; and Muhammad Fayyad Muhammad Bushnaq [b. 1905], from the village of Rummana, July 17, 1990).

88. These were the most frequently mentioned among the more than thirty villages registered in Shaykh Abd al-Razzaq’s inheritance estate. They are also mentioned in the estates of his brother, Abdullah, and his grandson, Sa‘id (NICR, 6.198; 7:64–68; 10:221).

89. Arafat Family Papers, 1.5, 1.6, 1.11, 1.29.

90. Interview with Najib Arafat. Most of the business was with the village of Sanur. They also had occasional agents in the village of Qabatya.

91. Arafat Family Papers, 1.9, 1.19.

92. Ibid., 1.19.

93. Almost all of the sources mention these important outreach activities. See, for example, accounts of weddings in the villages of Qabalan and Tubas that were attended by Malik Masri and his father (Nabulsiyat, pp. 55–61, 203–204).

94. Arafat Family Papers, 1.1 (emphasis added). Haffari refers to cloth made in the factory of the Damascene Haffar family, as discussed above. A fixed color was one that would not bleed or run when the garment was washed. I have not been able to discover the meaning of ibrim ansiri.

95. For a discussion of the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of weddings in Palestinian villages, as well as of the importance of the village collective to marriage rituals, see Serhan, Mawsu‘at, vol. 1, pp. 279–294.

96. Interview with Najib Arafat; Serhan, Mawsu‘at, vol. 2, p. 293.

97. Darwaza, Mi’at am, p. 55.

98. Ibid., p. 70.

99. Thus one can speak of a kiswa as a wardrobe for a wedding, for a graduation, or for a pilgrimage or simply as a new set of clothes to replace one that is worn out or no longer fits (interview with Najib Arafat). A detailed description of types of clothes for these special occasions can be gleaned from Malik Masri’s description of the kiswas he acquired while growing up (Nabulsiyat, pp. 45, 55, 77–79, 129, 146, 166, 175, 179, 216).

100. Darwaza, Mi’at am, p. 70.

101. Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 209–210.

102. Ibid., pp. 207–210; Serhan,Mawsu‘at, vol. 2, pp. 298–299.

103. Arafat Family Papers, 1.1–1.3, 1.5–1.6, 1.9, 1.11–1.13, 1.19, 1.21, 1.24, 1.28, 1.30.

104. Masri, Nabulsiyat, p. 209. Differences between these two local styles may have been due, among other things, to the topographical differences betweenthe eastern and western slopes of Jabal Nablus (see Chapter 1) as well as to the desire to visually express discrete local identifications within Jabal Nablus as a whole.

105. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jenin grew in size, and large textile shops were established. All the peasants of the small village of Dayr Ghazala, for example, traveled to Jenin together to purchase the kiswa for a marriage ceremony. Members of the Atari and Naji families—from Arraba and Qabatya villages, respectively—usually supplied the peasants of Dayr Ghazala with their textile needs (interview with Awad Yusuf Abu Alayya [b. 1908], July 17, 1990).

106. Finn, 2:344–345. According to Najib Arafat, a typical procession in the early part of the twentieth century consisted of three or four women and five or six men, plus their children (interview).

107. Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 206–207.

108. Ibid., pp. 40, 123–127.

109. Interview with Najib Arafat; and Saba Arafat, letter to the author, April 4, 1993.

110. Interview with Umm Walid, August 8, 1990.

111. Arafat Family Papers, 1.30.

112. Interviews with Hani and Najib Arafat.

113. See a letter from Husayn Abdullah to Hajj Isma‘il, in which he pleaded with the latter to accept payment in wheat instead of oil, as promised earlier (Arafat Family Papers, 1.8).

114. Darwaza, Mi’at am, pp. 70–71. Masri related similar stories and confirmed that interest was calculated into loan payments. He also quoted a rhymed satiric song (discussed at the end of this chapter), written by peasants from Talluza village, complaining about debt collectors (Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 204, 225–228).

115. Interviews with Hani and Najib Arafat.

116. Ihsan Nimr provided some examples of how ruling families spoke in two voices in a calculated carrot-and-stick policy (NIMR, 4:361–364).

117. Interview with Hani Arafat.

118. Arafat Family Papers, 1.6.

119. Ibid., 1.13.

120. Ibid., 1.5. Because the value of the currency fluctuated widely during this period, relational measures were often mentioned in loan contracts.

121. Interview with Mahmud Muhammad Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Haqq (Abu Adnan), who was born in Bayt Wazan at the turn of the century and has lived there all his life, July 22, 1990.

122. Interview with Sharif Kamil Jarrar, July 17, 1990.

123. According to Sharif Kamil al-Jarrar, most of the peasants in his village were indebted during the early part of the twentieth century (interview).

124. Interview with Khalid Qadri, July 16, 1990.

125. For a discussion of the term “middle peasant,” see Chapter 4.

126. For more on this family, see Chapter 5.

127. Arafat Family Papers, 1.21. Ahmad al-Hijjawi was Hajj Ahmad’s business agent. Mukhkhamasat were pentagon-shaped coins, often used for jewelry (see Arraf, Al-Ard, p. 159). Majarrat is the plural of majaer, a gold coin, probably from Hungary. This coin was also found in Gaza and Damascus in the mid-nineteenth century (see Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “Ghazza: Dirasa umraniyya wa iqtisadiyya min khilal al-watha’iq al-shar‘iyya, 1273–1277/1857–1861” (Gaza: A Cultural and Economic Study Based on Islamic Court Documents, 1273–1277/1857–1861), in Al-M’utamar al-duwali al-thalith li tarikh Bilad al-Sham (Filastin) (The Third International Conference on Bilad al-Sham: Palestine), vol. 2, Jughrafiyyat Filastine wa hadaratiha (The Geography and Civilization of Palestine) (Amman, 1980), pp. 133–134.

128. Arafat Family Papers, 1.22, 1.24–1.25, 1.31.

129. Ibid., 1.22.

130. Ibid., 1.31, dated June 8, 1900.

131. Masri, Nabulsiyat, pp. 225–228.