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Local Trade Networks
In relation to its hinterland, the city of Nablus was the queen bee. It needed the peasants’ surplus to survive, and it often depended on peasant militia to maintain its relative autonomy vis-à-vis regional powers and the Ottoman state. In return, it provided the peasants with the commodities they could not produce, the services they required, and a set of political and cultural departure points to the larger Ottoman world. The activities of local trade and manufacturing, therefore, absorbed the energies of the vast majority of Nabulsis, and much of what this city meant to its inhabitants in terms of daily life was informed by a primordial set of relations: those connecting it to the surrounding hinterland.
Because textile products were the most ubiquitous commodity of local trade and because the Arafats’ primary customers, over many generations, have been the inhabitants of the hinterland—there is perhaps no better window on these multilayered connections than the local textile trade networks of this family. An examination of the inner workings of these networks and of how they have changed over time allows for a history from below of the dynamic roles that merchants and peasants together played in the constant reinvention of Jabal Nablus.
Space
The main arteries of local trade branched off the regional trade roads and wound through the hills and valleys to the larger villages. These, in turn, served as hubs for the surrounding clusters of smaller villages, two to three hundred in number, depending on the time period and the reach of Nabulsi merchants. Until the construction of carriage roads and railways in the late nineteenth century, movement was slow and difficult. The most prevalent means of local transport was the donkey, and two of the most familiar sights along the well-trodden paths were the pack animals of hired transporters (makaris) and the itinerant merchants (haddars). The makaris, often poor peasants with little or no land, moved goods and people back and forth for a fee. The haddars, usually from Nablus, Jenin, or one of the larger villages, hawked such things as textiles, cooking utensils, and shoes, especially during the harvest season, when they could exchange their goods for grains or olive oil.[88]
The physical network of paths etched on the limestone hills and brown valleys of Jabal Nablus also served as social, economic, and political boundaries for a multitude of local trade networks. The merchants of Nablus—especially the large textile wholesalers and the purchasers of the major agricultural products such as olive oil, cotton, and grains—literally carved the countryside into discrete spheres of influence, each merchant cultivating a thick web of relations with particular clans and villages. For example, Shaykh Abd al-Razzaq Arafat’s peasant customers primarily came from the large but geographically dispersed villages of Kafr Qaddum, Jamma‘in, Til, and Ya‘bad.[89] Those of Hajj Isma‘il Arafat a century later included Kafr Qaddum, Jaba, Tammun, and Dayr Istiya.[90] The most loyal customers of his son, Ahmad, and grandson, Tawfiq, came from Jaba, Silat al-Dhaher, Faqu‘a, and Turmus Ayya. As for Hajj Isma‘il’s five youngest sons who were partners in the textile trade, their business was concentrated in Jaba, Silat al-Dhaher, Sanur, Maythalun, and Bayt Leed.[91] The largest concentration of these villages was in the Mashariq al-Jarrar subdistrict.
A merchant’s access to these villages, as well as his ability to collect debts, depended on his relations not only with their residents but also with ruling families, both rural and urban, who dominated these villages politically and/or had substantial economic interests in them. In the case of the Arafats, this meant close relations with the once-powerful Jarrar clan that had ruled the northeastern part of Jabal Nablus for so long. Judging from letters sent by Ibrahim Khalil Jarrar to Hajj Isma‘il Arafat, it seems that the former was a regular customer around the turn of the twentieth century.[92] On December 26, 1899, for example, Ibrahim Jarrar requested that he be sent, without delay, a caftan and a scarf. After specifying the colors, pattern, and sizes, he recounted moneys sent previously in order to correct any misunderstandings in his account. To this letter, in which he addressed Hajj Isma‘il as “sir” and “our father,” he appended a note that read: “Sir, beware and take care not to hand over anything to my sons unless they have a sealed letter from me”—implying that they sometimes abused this long-standing relationship and ran up their father’s tab.[93]
The division of the hinterland into market shares, to use modern terminology, was not unique to merchants. Jabal Nablus was entangled by dozens of overlapping formal and informal networks: the political networks of urban ruling families and the rural subdistrict chiefs, the fiscal networks of sipahi officers and tax farmers, and the religious networks of Sufi leaders. These networks were not mutually exclusive, and the interaction in the shared spaces between them molded the overall political, cultural, and social landscape and determined the rhythms and dynamics of everyday life. Any major shift in the boundaries of these shared spaces reverberated through the entire social formation of Jabal Nablus, reconfiguring alliances and patterns of power and trade. Such, for example, was the effect of the Egyptian occupation in 1831.
Merchant networks were of the informal type: they neither required official sanction nor depended on the coercive power of the state. Rather, merchants and leading political families cooperated, and increasingly so during the course of the nineteenth century, in such matters as securing roads, enforcing contracts, and extracting debts. To maintain and reproduce their networks, therefore, Nabulsi merchants lent monies and made commercial opportunities available to political leaders. At the same time, they used a variety of economic and extraeconomic means to forge an intimate bond with their peasant clients.
These practices were not unique to Jabal Nablus. Merchant networks that relied on personal ties and patronage were the norm in societies characterized by a vigorous commercial life within the context of decentralized political structures. The most effective way to sustain movement and exchange across space and time in such an environment was through multiple layers of negotiation based on commonly held assumptions and on accountability between the actors. This meant that peasants were not passive actors and that their communities were not simply carved into spheres of influence, as the language above implies. On the contrary, peasants actively participated in the networking process, had choices and options as to what merchants to do business with, and possessed their own bargaining tools, such as nonpayment and relocation.
Economically, the primary link between merchants and peasants was the provision of credit services, given that payment was normally delayed until the harvest season. In addition, each merchant’s shop served as a bank of sorts: peasants could open an account by depositing goods and money, and they could draw on that account and/or ask for credit during subsequent visits. Culturally, we have already discussed the importance of religion, trustworthiness, and a sound reputation to the very meaning of “merchant.” Socially, merchants reinforced their trade networks by serving as the peasant’s “key to the city.” Textile merchants did much more than just sell goods on credit to loyal clients: they were brokers, who provided a wide range of services, as well as social acquaintances. They visited peasants in their villages, attended their weddings, and exchanged favors and gifts.[94] They also provided food and accommodations for their peasant customers visiting the city (that is why there were no boarding houses for peasants in Nablus), intervened on their behalf with other merchants, and offered their stores as a shopping headquarters for their rural clients.
In short, merchants linked culture with social practice and economic exchange to construct a resilient and flexible fiber that wove the various parts of Jabal Nablus into a single fabric and its inhabitants into a single social formation. The above generalizations are best illustrated through a discussion of weddings, because the purchase of textiles associated with this social ritual was the backbone of the textile merchant’s business in the hinterland.
Weddings
Sometime around the end of the nineteenth century, Hajj Isma‘il Arafat received the following letter from a peasant who was preparing to attend a wedding:
Our Respected Brother, Abu Ahmad…
After inquiring about that most dear to us, the health of your Noble Person, I put before you that since you will be receiving, through Mustafa Abd al-Latif, 2.5 French liras, 0.25 Majidi, 5 piasters, 1.5 bishlik, and 1 Majidi riyal, for a total of 336 [piasters], you might find it convenient to fill our order. We need a Haffari dimaya of pleasing form and fixed color; a dark-colored cloak [abaya] like the one you sent us earlier, with a head cover…and of a kind that you know to be of good quality. The [cloak’s] length should be to below the knee. [Also send us] a fez and shoes. For the ladies, [send us] two and a half good-quality pieces of Haffari dima of fixed color, so that [the women] can tailor them at home. [Also], four arms’ lengths of mansuri [cloth] and a large fez…and, very important, two undergarments, four pieces of good-quality ibrim ansiri, and four ladies’ handkerchiefs. Make a bill of sale for the value of the goods, so that we could sign on to it verbally and in writing, as we did last year. Trustworthiness is yours; please do not worry [about the payment] and convey our regards to your children, and we wish you all the best.Yours,
Uthman Abd al-Wahhab
[P.S.] We hope that you can send us the cloak immediately, before the other goods, because the one I have is no longer adequate. [For] you are well aware that there is a wedding coming up at Abu Muhammad’s, and a new cloak is important for a good image because strangers as well as relatives will be attending. In any case, if you do not have [such a cloak], please get it from someone else. If no one has the kind I described to you earlier, send us a good-quality one made out of wool.[95]
The above is one of many such letters involving the purchase of textiles in preparation for a wedding. Religious holidays and major life events all were occasions for the purchase of clothes, but weddings were the most important by far. Like other rituals, weddings served many purposes: enhancing or affirming status, redistributing wealth among poor family members and neighbors, making allies, reconciling enemies, and sealing kinship bonds. Weddings, in short, were important exercises in power and influence and were central to the formation and cementing of ties within peasant clans and village communities.[96]
The purchase of clothes for weddings was a major social, economic, cultural, and political undertaking. The bride and groom were not the only ones who received clothes. Depending on the amount of resources available, the state of relations between families and clans, parents, paternal and maternal uncles, other relatives, neighbors, and even leaders of other clans in the village could also expect to receive gifts of clothes.[97] The aim was to reinforce clan solidarity, to recognize the importance of the village collective, and to secure the blessings of both.
In the estates of Shaykh Abd al-Razzaq Arafat and of his grandson, Sa‘id, one can find all the varieties of textiles usually worn by peasants, especially items for weddings: silk belts (sing. zinnar harir), brightly colored silk headbands (sing. asaba), scarves (manadil), and plenty of kamkh, a type of velvet traditionally worn at weddings.[98] These and other basic items of formal outerwear for men and women, when put together, formed a kiswa.
According to Darwaza, “A few [Khan al-Tujjar] merchants sell textiles that only city people use. Most sell textiles used by both the city and village people, and most of those trade primarily in the kiswa needs of village people.”[99] Although the word kiswa is popularly associated with the clothes bought for a bride before her wedding, it was also used in a much more general sense to refer to a set of clothes or wardrobe which might include nontextile items, such as shoes or jewelry.[100]
Each type of kiswa had specific components. These components differed according to local preferences and changed over time. Both Darwaza and Masri described the specific components of various kiswas and the ways in which they were prepared. Darwaza, for example, noted that at around the turn of the twentieth century many large textile merchants prepared the basic kiswas of daily wear in advance and sold them as ready packages to peasants:
Some [merchants in Khan al-Tujjar] prepared kiswas for village people [consisting] of qanabiz [sing. qunbaz], sadari [waistcoats], qumsan [shirts], and sarawil [trousers]. Some were good at tailoring, so they cut [clothes], then put them out to home-based women who sewed them. Some sent the clothes to tailors.…My father and other colleagues were the kind who prepared kiswas and sold them ready-made. My father and grandfather used to cut the cloth with their own hands and then send them to our women and the women of our neighbors to sew them.[101]
Malik Masri, who learned the trade from his father and paternal uncles, wrote that wedding kiswas during the early twentieth century always included a silk saya (a type of qunbaz) and cloaks, the most expensive of which were made out of camel hair. He added that many textile merchants supplied headbands as complementary gifts to those peasants who came to the city and bought a kiswa.[102] He also made a distinction between kiswas for the bride and groom and those for relatives.[103] The former, for example, were formally divided into three parts—underwear, outerwear, and headwear—each of which had its specific components. Masri also claimed that the types and colors did not change over time, implying that the kiswa packages may have become rigidly formalized by the early twentieth century. Yet, judging from a series of textile orders included in the Arafat family papers, changes in fashion did take place, and there seems to have been a wide range of fabrics, colors, and styles from which to choose.[104] The final product reflected individual preferences because most peasant households, as the above letter illustrates, tailored their own everyday clothes. Masri, for example, noted that except for headgear and expensive silks, these textiles were sold by the shaqqa (piece), measuring around seven arms’ lengths, or approximately 475 centimeters. These pieces were cut from a large bolt, and whatever could not be sewn by the peasants themselves was sent to tailors in the city. He added that peasants from the western part of Jabal Nablus normally wore brighter colors than did those from the easter part and that they preferred silk belts made in Lebanon.[105]
In order to purchase the kiswa, peasants walked or rode donkeys to Nablus (and later on Jenin[106]) in groups referred to as mawkibal-kassaya (procession of the wedding-wardrobe purchasers), so named because they usually entered the city with fanfare: singing, dancing, and carrying gifts in kind. James Finn, British consul in Jerusalem, stumbled on such a scene in the vicinity of Haifa in mid-September, 1855:
Next day passing Tantoora and Athleet, and round the promontory of Carmel as the sun set, we arrived at Caifa, where we remained a few days, during which the ladies had the opportunity of seeing peasant holiday costumes different from those of the far south country; for a wedding being about to take place at Teereh [village], all or nearly all of the women repaired together in procession to Caifa, to purchase dresses and ornaments for the occasion, and they returned in similar line wearing the new dresses, very bright in colours, and singing a chorus as they swiftly shuffled along the road. Another similar body from another village did the same two or three days later, but returned with the music of drums and flutes.[107]
Because most villages were a day’s travel away from Nablus, peasants remained one to three nights in the merchant’s house, where they were provided with dinners, coffee, and sleeping accommodations. Masri recalled that females stayed in an extra room in their house, usually reserved for this purpose, while the men slept in the garden (hakura).[108] He added that the dinners were fairly substantial. Usually the meal consisted of big chunks of lamb over rice which, in turn, lay on a bed of bread soaked with cooked yogurt or tomato sauce.[109] According to Najib and Saba Arafat, sleeping accommodations at Hajj Isma‘il’s big house, located in the Qaryun quarter (demolished by the British during the 1936–1939 rebellion), were also segregated. Peasant women were housed in a room upstairs; accommodations for male peasant clients were set aside on the ground floor, which also contained a diwan (large reception room), stables, a water cistern, and a large fruit orchard.[110] Najib Arafat added that although food and lodging were made available to them, the same was not extended to their animals, which they had to leave somewhere else.
For the older members of merchant families, peasant guests were, more often than not, a burden. But for the younger members, especially females who did not venture far into public space, the evening festivities were one of the most pleasant memories of childhood. Umm Walid, Najib Arafat’s wife, observed that “peasants added a beautiful atmosphere to the house, because the occasion was one of happiness. After dinner, they would take out the dirbakka [a conical, one-headed hand drum open at one end] and sing and dance all night long.”[111]
Although some clients offered a small downpayment at the time of the purchase, most asked to have their payment postponed until the grain- or olive-harvest season. In letter after letter to Hajj Isma‘il Arafat, peasants assured him that he should not worry about payment. Typical is the following letter from a well-to-do peasant dated April 24, 1900; that is, the beginning of the wedding season:
Wanted:
1.5 [pieces] solid white thawb [light cotton cloth worn under the qunbaz]
1.5 [pieces] black thawb
5 blue hatta [head covers], of large size
5 manadil [head kerchiefs], red…
3 manadil…with black tassels
1/2 bundle of blue shalayil [long round columns made of cotton/silk strings].
To the most eminent and high standing, our father, Hajj Isma‘il Afandi Arafat, may he be preserved. Amen!
After greetings and inquiry about your most distinguished person…our father, we need these goods from you. Please choose them from high-quality materials and do not delay at all in sending them to us with the bearer of this letter. He has with him one French lira, and the rest put on our account. We, God willing, will come to see you soon, and please do not worry. We plead with you emphatically that you choose good [pieces] and do not delay in sending them.…Our greetings to you and your family and children and all those in your well-endowed shop.…
Your Son,
Sa‘id Hajj Zubayda
[P.S.] Let the bearer know the remaining cost.[112]
The writer’s promise to travel soon to Nablus usually meant soon after the harvest season, when payment was expected in cash, not kind.[113] Sometimes, however, arrangements were made for payment in jars of olive oil or measures of wheat.[114] Darwaza described the process as follows:
Some [textile] merchants sold to whoever passed by, others had agents, and some combined both. My father and other colleagues were of the latter kind. The agents were mostly peasants who bought their kiswa on credit until the grape, fig, oil, wheat, or barley seasons. Of course, the price was higher than cash sales [and varied] according to the length of the loan. They used to write IOUs on the peasants, specifying the payment date. When the harvest season…arrived, the agents came to sell their seasonal harvest and to pay their debts. The shop owners used to go to their agent’s villages to check on their loans. My father and grandfather had agents in the villages of Hajja, Bayta, and Bayt Amrayn.…I went with them more than once.[115]
Upon arrival, textile merchants usually tied their horses next to the oil press (badd) or the threshing floor (baydar), symbolically signaling their intention to collect their due. Practically, they could keep an eye on the economic health of both the overall harvest and the individual peasant household. Sometimes they would remain steadfast in this prime location until the entire debt was paid. Larger and richer merchants, such as the Arafats, employed horsemen (khayyala), each referred to as al-jabi (collector), who would ride into these villages and demand payment. The collectors, often peasants themselves, were well suited for this task, for they were keenly attuned to possible evasive tactics and tricks. Often the peasants could not or would not pay. But the collectors prolonged their stay, thus taking advantage of the peasant tradition of hospitality (diyafa), whereby the village collectively provided lodging, food, and other services to visitors in a special room in the village square (madafa).[116]
To maximize their returns while maintaining some flexibility, the textile merchants—like tax collectors, politicians and subdistrict chiefs—played the “good cop/bad cop” game.[117] According to Najib Arafat, his half-brother Ahmad and Ahmad’s sons, including Tawfiq, relied heavily on horsemen to collect debts, whereas his other brothers were less strict with the peasants.
Because a peasant’s ability to pay fluctuated widely, depending on a number of factors from weather conditions to tax burdens, bankruptcies were not uncommon in the ranks of textile merchants who operated on a system of credit. The estate of Abd al-Razzaq Arafat is a case in point. More than a century later, two of Hajj Isma‘il Arafat’s sons also went bankrupt, when they were unable to collect from peasants.[118]
In large villages, such as Jaba, the agents of textile merchants alsodoubled as middlemen who collected debts, placed orders on behalf of other peasants, and recommended potential customers from other villages. One such agent was Salih Yusuf, from the village of Kafr Qaddum. In 1897, he sent a letter of introduction to Hajj Isma‘il: “Please note that you will soon be visited by Ahmad Abadi, from the village of Kafr Qari. He intends to purchase his kiswa from you. So please, and for my sake, take care of him with good-quality tailoring and kamkh [cloth]. My regards.”[119]
In another letter, Mustafa Abu Asa, a long-time customer/agent, informed Hajj Isma‘il that he was placing a large order on behalf of a relative. Apparently the relative thought that he would get a better price and special treatment if he went through the connection (wasta) of an agent. Mustafa requested that the bill be put on his account and stated that he would personally come to pay it off. Then he asked Isma‘il Arafat to give his relative a discount as a gesture of their friendship.[120]
Some of these agents took advantage of their urban connection to venture into the retail trade in the countryside. As the following debt contract shows, they bought large quantities of textile goods on credit from wholesale urban merchants:
Only 3,739 piasters and no more. Price of piaster: 5.75; price of warzi: 7 piasters.
Price of a bundle (farda) of unprocessed [calico] foreign-made goods: 3210.10 Price of foreign-made yarn, 9.5 ratl: 487.10 3739.20
Today, a man in his majority, Qasim son of Muhammad I‘days al-Hammur from the village of Jaba, acknowledged and testified that he…owes…Isma‘il Arafat the above-mentioned amount…for the [above-mentioned goods] which he legally purchased.…Payment is delayed for a period of three months, starting today, November 23, 1879. Mansur al-Mas‘ud al-Hammur and Amir al-Kaffan from the above-mentioned village have guaranteed the entire loan and assured complete payment, including penalty.[121]
Keys to the City
The manner in which local trade networks were constructed and reproduced assumed a set of mutual obligations that allowed both peasants and merchants to create space for themselves in the other’s territory. Just as textile merchants used these networks to establish a foothold in the hinterland, peasants used merchants as their key to the city and its resources. A merchant’s place of business was the headquarters for peasant clients who needed to store their surplus, purchase goods, send communications, receive credit, make connections with political figures, obtain legal council in the Islamic court, and so on.
Thus, even though poor peasants who bought on credit found themselves, more often than not, trapped by debts and enmeshed in patronage networks, they could still make a merchant’s life very difficult by finding ways not to pay. Moreover, they were capable of taking their business to another merchant. An element of mutual trust and dependency, as illustrated by the merchants’ provision of the above accommodations and services, was therefore crucial to the stability and continuity of local trade networks. Just as the sons of merchants “inherited” their father’s customers, sons of peasants also claimed their parents’ “key to the city.”
For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the peasants of Bayt Wazan, a village on the western edge of Nablus, usually sold their onion crops to the Asi merchant family, whose members visited the village annually during the onion-harvest season. In return, this family was the Wazanis’ urban agent, and its stores became this village’s urban nexus of operations.[122] It was members of the Asi family who accompanied the Wazanis when they bought their wedding and other kiswas from a well-established textile merchant, Hajj Abd al-Rahman Anabtawi, whose shop was conveniently located in Suq al-Basal (onion market). The Asi family provided a mediating influence in price negotiations and, just as important, an urban reference or a guarantee for purchase on credit. They also indirectly extended credit by purchasing and storing goods needed by the Wazanis, such as copper kitchenware. A few times every the year the Wazanis would visit the city to collect these goods and to arrange for future payment.
As the Bayt Wazan case illustrates, the peasants’ key to the city was usually the merchant who purchased or helped market the most important agricultural cash crop they produced. Peasants who produced primarily olive oil in the village of Burqin, for example, usually sold this product to the Ashur family, who deposited it in wells beneath their soap factory.[123] Similarly, it was at the Ashur family’s house that peasants from Burqin stayed for two or three nights every time they traveled to Nablus to take care of their needs and to sell their goods. The relationship of the Burqin villagers to the Ashur family differed among peasant families, depending on their financial situation. For example, those who borrowed and were in debt usually paid a 30 percent interest rate and were forced to sell their olive oil immediately after the harvest, when prices were low. Those who were not in debt could deposit the oil at the soap factory and usually chose to sell it at a later date, when prices were higher.[124]
Cheese merchants constructed similar networks. Khalid Qadri noted that during the cheese-making season from mid-February until June, his grandfather’s shop received peasants primarily from four villages in the subdistrict of Mashariq al-Jarrar—Tubas, Tammun, Rujib, and Salim—as well as bedouins from the vicinity of Jabal al-Khalil. The peasants did not have to bring their cheese into the city, for many merchants sent agents out to the countryside. Yet they preferred to make the arduous trip, because these agents were often suspected of using inaccurate weighing scales with the intent of taking advantage of them. An established merchant in his city shop was assumed to be more trustworthy.[125]
Khalid’s grandfather was neither a shaykh nor a hajj, but he was widely known as a straightforward and deeply religious man and as the person who officially opened the neighborhood mosque every morning for prayers. The villagers would leave the cheese at his shop and often receive neither cash nor receipts in return, only his word as to the amount and the price. He benefited from this arrangement, because this process increased his liquid capital and allowed him to extend loans to peasants as well as to expand his business. At the same time, however, peasants expected not only to receive their moneys upon demand but also to be granted loans when they experienced hard times.
Khalid Qadri’s grandfather was called on to provide a wide range of other services, such as purchasing equipment and supplies for peasants, storing them, and charging the amount to that peasant family’s account with him. He was frequently asked to intervene in his suppliers’ behalf when they needed to purchase not only their kiswa but also gold, furniture, and other goods associated with wedding preparations. As with the Asi family, the Qadri family had prearranged deals with the textile and gold merchants to whom they would bring in customers for a commission, very much like today’s tourist guides in Jerusalem and Bethlehem who bring buses to gift shops selling religious icons made out of olive wood and mother-of-pearl.
Of course, Nabulsi peasants, unlike foreign tourists, were familiar with local prices and business practices and did not blindly follow their key to the city. Still, peasants were the weaker party in this relationship, for urban merchants enjoyed higher status and commanded greater resources. Contracts, in any case, were usually verbal, because they were supposed to be based on mutual trust, word of honor, and commitment to a fair exchange. As mentioned earlier, peasants did not receive receipts for their goods, and many deposited money with merchants for safekeeping. In case of conflict, their word in court did not carry the same weight as did that of a respected merchant, nor could they easily find two credible witnesses in the city who would testify on their behalf. Most important, their disadvantage was structural: their needs were constant, but their meager resources fluctuated significantly in an economy based on rain-fed agriculture.
Less vulnerable were members of rural ruling families, as well as middle or well-to-do peasants who had significant land and financial resources and who were active in rural trade and moneylending.[126] True, both groups, especially the middle peasants, depended on urban connections but they were in a strong position to forge a more equal working relationship based on mutual advantage and services—as indicated in a number of letters from Hajj Ahmad Isma‘il Abu Hijli (from the village of Dayr Istiya) to Hajj Isma‘il Arafat around the turn of the century. Although the Abu Hijli clan was not part of the rural ruling families that had long monopolized administrative and tax-collecting positions, both the tone and content of these letters show Hajj Ahmad to be a wealthy man who perceived himself as an equal to his urban counterpart.[127] In these letters, he addressed Hajj Isma‘il Arafat as “my brother,” asked for the most expensive items in stock, requested that he locate certain coins for him, and made it very clear that money was not a problem:
Wanted:
—one dimaya, two hindazas and one-third long [163.5 cm] of the white malti kind with wide stripes, tailored for ladies…;
—one-half similar to the above, two hindazas and one-quarter long, for a quilt cover;
—one chintz of the expensive kind with a blue background, two hindaztayn and one-third long, for a lining…;
—one [silver]-lined head kerchief worth two Majidi riyals
—one-half…[word not clear] to our brother Yusuf…and a dima jacket with a malti [cloth] lining. Ahmad al-Hijjawi knows the length;
—one large bed cover…of the expensive kind;
—one dimaya…to Hasan like that of his brother Ali, and what is left of the cloth [to be made into] a jacket with malti [cloth] lining;
—nine ratls of cooked quince. Put it in six jugs.
Sir, my dear respected brother, Hajj Isma‘il Arafat, may God preserve you,
After inquiring about your Noble Person, I declare that the above-mentioned goods are for me. Please deliver them to Ahmad al-Hijjawi and charge the price of the dimaya for my son Hassan in his [Hassan’s] name. Please order one of your protected ones to buy the cooked quince and deliver it to the bearer [of this letter]; and register its price in our name. Charge my brother Yusuf’s [account] for the rest of the dima and chintz goods. Let me know the entire price, and I will send it with a bearer so he can receive the goods deposited with Ahmad [al-Hijjawi]. Whatever you do not deposit at Ahmad’s, give to the bearer. If you receive any orders from my brothers requesting anything at all, send them [goods] without hesitation. If you have any…[word not clear] liras, keep them and let us know how much they are worth and we will send you [money]. Previously, we asked you to tell us if any [such] liras fall in your hands. You replied that mukhkhamasat are not be found anywhere, but I don’t think that…[word not clear] is empty. Also, if you find majarrat of the good kind as we mentioned, send them. . . .
Ahmad Isma‘il Abu Hijli
January 10, 1900[128]
It was not unusual that cooked quince and rare coins were part of an order for clothes from a textile merchant. In fact, Hajj Ahmad routinely asked for a wide variety of items—special foods, coffee, tobacco, kitchenware, herbs, rope, a watch, and even onions—as well as favors, such as forwarding mail. He also sent carpets and other goods to be sold on his behalf and requested that the money made be subtracted from his account.[129]Hajj Ahmad and Hajj Isma‘il Arafat, in other words, were agents for each other’s interests; and the relationship they developed was, judging from both the tone and content of the letters, a close and fairly equal one. In one letter, for example, Ahmad Abu Hijli mentioned to Hajj Isma‘il that he came upon a fine leopard skin and that he was sending it to him as a gift on the occasion of the latter’s purchase of a new horse. He concluded: “As to your letter to us saying that you left our home satisfied and grateful, . . . there is no need for this sort of talk. God willing, . . . we will have a chance to be honored by seeing you at your place, and to kiss you. It is our fate and yours that the Almighty, may he be willing, will preserve you for us.…Amen.”[130]