Notes
1. Rogers, Domestic Life, p. 389 (emphasis in original). [BACK]
2. By uttering these words, and later by refusing to eat or drink until they received a favorable answer to their request for asylum, the young boys correctly followed established customary procedures for protection. [BACK]
3. Rogers, Domestic Life, pp. 214–235, 351–359, 360, 361–370, 372–373, 389–394. [BACK]
4. NIMR, 1:380–383; Schölch, Palestine in Transformation, p. 225. [BACK]
5. The future exclusion of Nablus’s leading families from the post of mutasallim did not mean the complete imposition of central Ottoman control. Real influence over the daily affairs of the city would now be shared between the revolving door of annually appointed Ottoman governors, on the one hand, and by the city council, dominated by the wealthy merchant families, on the other. [BACK]
6. The difference between the two families did not fail to attract the attention of two keen contemporary observers: the British consul in Jerusalem, James Finn, and Mary Rogers herself. (The following observations must, of course, be treated cautiously, for they reduced a complicated reality into a simplistic Eurocentric vision of tradition versus modernity.) Finn, for example, claimed that the Abd al-Hadis were “cunning at keeping up with Constantinople progress, and bidding for popularity with the European Consuls. They were, however, not to be trusted” (Finn, Stirring Times, 2:239). Meanwhile, Ahmad Jarrar, immediately after Finn entered his house in the village of Jaba: “growled out, ‘so the Sultan is giving away all the land of Islam, bit by bit, to the Christians’ ” (ibid., 1:263). Mary Rogers, in a similar vein, was awed by what she perceived to be the manly beauty, courage, daring, strength, and straightforwardness of the Jarrar leaders. But after spending a day in their residence in the village of Sanur, she wrote: “I never heard of a Jerrar who could read or write, or even sign his name. On the other hand, many of the men of the Abdul Hady family are well educated, and set a high value on book learning: and the ladies of Arrabeh are somewhat polished, and look very different to the simple rustic women of Senur” (Rogers, Domestic Life, p. 239 [emphasis in original]). [BACK]
8. Doumani, “The Political Economy of Population Counts,” pp. 5–9. [BACK]