1. For details on the records of the Nablus Advisory Council, see the discussion in and notes to the Introduction. For a comprehensive overview of these records, see Beshara Doumani, “Palestinian Islamic Court Records: A Source for Socioeconomic History,” MESA Bulletin, 19 (1985), pp. 155–172. Internal records of the Nablus Islamic Court show that all the volumes known to exist today were accounted for in that period. [BACK]

2. Interview with Nazih al-Sayih, head scribe of the Nablus Islamic Court for the past three decades, according to stories that were passed to him (February, 1987). Nimr, writing in the 1930s, made the same claim (NIMR, 1:6). [BACK]

3. For a general overview, see Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society, 2:86–93. For Palestine, see Doumani, “Palestinian Islamic Court Records,” pp. 155–161. [BACK]

4. According to Gibb and Bowen, there were only 27 mullas in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century. In rank, Istanbul came first, followed by the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, then Cairo and Damascus, followed by Jerusalem, along with three suburbs of Istanbul, Smyrna, Aleppo, Salonika, and Yeni-shehir (Islamic Society, pp. 89, 121). [BACK]

5. No appointment letters were registered for the years 1829, 1831, 1837, 1845, 1852–1853, or 1856–1857. All of these gaps occurred during the long tenures of Abd al-Wahid Khammash and his father, Mustafa Khammash. Most likely, they served during those years. [BACK]

6. A full list of Nablus judges during the 1799–1860 period, as well as the exact dates of their appointment, can be found in Doumani, “Merchants,” pp. 409–411. [BACK]