1. NICR, 8:328. Each soap factory had a name and a personality, somewhat akin to famous skyscrapers of modern cities. This one was located in the Yasmina quarter.

2. He held the post of mutasallim for most of 1827 and 1828 (ibid., 8:289, 360–361). He and his two brothers, Abd al-Rahman and Abdullah, inherited the factory from their father, Muhammad Beik Tuqan (ibid., p. 328).

3. Muhyi al-Din had legitimate reasons to be afraid. The Tuqans had, on more than one occasion, used their political position to extort moneys and property from merchants. Nimr recounts some incidents of expropriation and murder of some merchants by the Tuqans during Musa Beik Tuqan’s rule in the early nineteenth century (NIMR, 1:256). Two similar incidents that took place in the late eighteenth century were recounted by Ibrahim al-Danafi al-Samiri (al-Samiri, Zahir al-Umar, pp. 44, 47).

4. NICR, 8:361.

5. Ibid., 9:151. This form of loan, called bay bi’l-wafa, was widely resorted to. In case of default, she had the right to sell the property in order to collect the principal.

6. Ibid., 9:151. Loans by women, especially to relatives, were common in Nablus and other cities in the Ottoman Empire. It was not unusual for women to sue delinquent borrowers in court. For example, see Ronald Jennings, “Women in Early Seventeenth Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of Anatolian Kayseri,” JESHO, 18 (1975), pp. 53–114; Abraham Marcus, “Men, Women, and Property: Dealers in Real Estate in 18th Century Aleppo,” JESHO, 26 (1983), pp. 138–163; Tucker, Women, chap. 4. Also, see Tucker’s two articles on women in Nablus during the Ottoman period: “Marriage and Family,” pp. 165–179, and “Ties That Bound,” pp. 233–253.

7. NICR, 10:267.

8. Soap was produced in most cities and towns of the Fertile Crescent. In Palestine the most important was Nablus, followed by Jaffa (including Lydda and Ramla), Jerusalem, and Gaza. See Bowring, Commercial Statistics, pp. 19, 83; Kurd Ali, Khitat al-Sham, 4:159, 190; Schölch, “European Penetration,” pp. 50–51; Graham-Brown, “Political Economy,” pp. 138–141; and Gerber, “Modernization,” p. 256. For further details, see Appendix 3. Tamimi and Bahjat (Wilayat Bayrut, p. 54) noted that the soap industry also expanded in Tripoli, but no other sources make mention of this point.

9. NIMR, 2:288; Dabbagh, Biladuna, 6:198.

10. Al-Ansari, Nukhbat al-dahr, pp. 200–201.

11. Bowring, Commercial Statistics, p. 19.

12. Kurd Ali, Khitat al-Sham, 4:159.

13. A copy of the advertisement can be found in Graham-Brown, Palestinians, p. 115.

14. NIMR, 1:291.

15. Nimr claimed that these properties were taken over by the people of Nablus (ibid., 1:295).

16. NICR, 8:225, dated October, 1830.

17. He came from a family of rich peasants based in the large village of Ya‘bad, though it had branches in the villages of Misilya and Qabatya as well (ibid., 7:78–79; 13A:174). The latter was one of the two largest olive-producing villages in Jabal Nablus. He moved to Nablus before the Abd al-Hadis and, along with his father, helped the Abd al-Hadis to locate and purchase dozens of prime commercial properties. Many of these properties were jointly owned with them, and Shaykh Yusuf often acted as the agent of Husayn Abd al-Hadi and his children in property purchases (for example, ibid., 9:85–86, 247, 249–251, 281–283). A relative, Abdullah Afandi Zayd al-Qadri, was appointed as a guardian over Abd al-Rahman, son of Husayn Abd al-Hadi, who was then governor of Sidon province (ibid., 10:240).

18. This jibes with Nimr’s assessment (NIMR, 2:291). Kurd Ali stated that soap produced in Damascus was allowed to dry for three years in special places before being sold (Khitat al-Sham, 4:159).

19. NIMR, 1:95–105.

20. Also located in the Habala quarter. The other half of this soap factory was already endowed as waqf by Khalil Beik Sawwar; hence its name.

21. NICR, 5:81–82. This waqf was later voided with a note saying that it had been replaced by the 1161/1748 version. Unfortunately, the Islamic court records for that year are lost.

22. NIMR, 1:120–121.

23. Ibid., 1:121–122, 130–142. Nimr claimed that the golden age of Nablus was during the time of Umar Agha Nimr’s rule. He also credited him with initiating the commercial trade in soap with the Arabian Gulf (ibid., 2:288).

24. His grandfather had two sons, and his father had two sons. If there were only male children, and if they all inherited, the most that Hajj Umar could receive would be exactly one-quarter. Apparently, however, the whole soap factory was passed to his father from his grandfather, and his father, in turn, divided half of it equally between his two sons and kept the other half (NICR, 5:81–82; and Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.8).

25. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.8.

26. Ibid., 3.1.5. See also NICR, 8:276. Renovation began in May 1825.

27. They were built in 1830/1831 (NICR, 8:276).

28. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.5.

29. Ibid., 3.1.6. This document was reproduced in NIMR, 2:opposite p. 288.

30. NIMR, 1:290.

31. Ibid., 2:301–302.

32. NICR, 8:281.

33. Ibid., 8:316.

34. NICR, 8:281–283, 316, 325. The Amrs were, and continue to be, one of the most important families in the Hebron area. Hajj Ahmad Qaddumi was a leading religious figure originally from the village of Qaddum, southwest of Nablus.

35. Ibid., 8:283.

36. The other half of the Uthmaniyya factory was part of the Tuqan family waqf. It must be assumed that they were also coordinating this program of expansion with Ahmad Fakhr al-Din, because it made little sense to renovate only one-half of a factory.

37. NICR, 8:316.

38. Ibid., 8:329.

39. Umar Agha Nimr, whom we met previously, endowed one-quarter of this soap factory as a family waqf on January, 18, 1729 (ibid., 5:81–82). See also ibid., 8:329. The Abd al-Hadis gained portions of this factory through waqf exchanges with the Sawwar and Fakhr al-Din Akhrami families in the 1830s (ibid., 9:77–78, 254–255).

40. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.6.

41. Ibid., 3.1.2. The implication that labor became more expensive is misleading, because some labor costs were included in the miscellaneous column of the 1825–1826 account sheet.

42. The jift was supplied by a merchant, by the “people of Asira,” by the Qaryun quarter, and “from outside.”

43. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.2. This document shows continuity in the patterns of partnerships, but with even greater fragmentation. This situation, as we shall see below, was the exception that proved the rule, for it had more to do with the declining power of the Nimr family than with the overall trends.

44. Tamimi and Bahjat, Wilayat Bayrut, p. 120. In calculating the costs of production and sale prices of soap, they came up with three possible margins of profit, all of which were between 20 and 30 percent.

45. Calculated at 250 jars of oil per tabkha at a market price of 23 piasters per jar. The price per jar was determined from the account sheet.

46. In 1825/1826 and 1842/1843 taxes on each tabkha of soap were 614 and 836 piasters, respectively (Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.6; Abd al-Hadi Family Papers, 1.1.4).

47. NICR, 12:205–206. The family name suggests that they were, at one time, makers and sellers of bishts (see Chapter 3).

48. This degree of concentration of an extended family’s resources was not necessarily typical just a few decades earlier. The four sons of Arafat Abd al-Majid Shahid, discussed at length in Chapter 2, each established their own household and did not centralize the extended family’s resources. When one of the sons, Abd al-Razzaq Arafat, died indebted in 1810, his property was sold to other rival families even though his brothers were rich at the time.

49. Some examples of the dozens of purchase cases can be found in NICR, 12:73, 208, 216, 218, 229–231, 235–236, 263. The first document cited, for instance, was a purchase of oil presses in the nearby villages of Rafidiya and Bayt Wazan.

50. Ibid., 12:207. It is important to note here that the inheritance estate, like all others in the Nablus Islamic Court, did not include immovable properties.

51. Ibid., 12:207.

52. Deniz Kandiyoti, “Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Keddie and Baron, eds., Women in Middle Eastern History, p. 33. See also her article, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society, 2 (1988), pp. 274–290.

53. NICR, 12:208, 210.

54. Ibid., 12:162–165. On July 23, 1856, they endowed this factory as a family waqf. The Asaliyya, as it came to be called, was located in the Aqaba quarter.

55. Ibid., 10:83–85.

56. Interview with Hasan Fihmi Masri, July 20, 1990. Born in 1933, he started working in soap factories at the age of nine, and at the time of this writing, was operating the Yusufiyya soap factory.

57. In the early twentieth century Hajj Isma‘il Arafat’s son, Shaykh Amr, was considered to be the local authority on this subject (see Chapter 2).

58. Interviews with Hasan Masri; and with Husam Sharif, November 29, 1987. Nimr provided an almost identical list but did not mention the specializations (NIMR, 2:292).

59. For example, Salah Tbeila, identified as “the pride of merchants,” bought more than two-thirds of the Gharzaniyya soap factory in late November 1723 (NICR, 4:39); and in February 1726 Abd al-Wahid Khammash’s grandfather married the daughter of Khawaja Salih Tbeila (ibid., 4:308).

60. Interview with Hasan Masri. Masri’s father was one of the Egyptian artisans recruited to Nablus for this purpose. Ironically, his father tried to form a soap-workers’ union in 1958, and he also became active in the union movement in the late 1970s.

61. Ma‘oz, Ottoman Reform, p. 9 (emphasis added).

62. Ibid., p. 12.

63. Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, Historical Geography, p. 62; and David H. K. Amiran, “The Pattern of Settlement in Palestine,” Israel Exploration Journal, 3 (1953), p. 69.

64. For example, Cynthia Nelson, ed., The Desert and the Sown: Nomads in a Wider Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1974).

65. Talal Asad, “The Bedouin as a Military Force: Notes on Some Aspects of Power Relations between Nomads and Sedentaries in Historical Perspective,” in Nelson, ed., Desert, p. 71.

66. Volney, Travels, 1:382–383.

67. Ibid., p. 391.

68. Burckhardt, Travels, pp. 344, 346.

69. NIMR, 2:361, 365; Finn, Stirring Times, 1:241.

70. For example, see Finn, Stirring Times, 1:252, 2:42.

71. NIMR, 2:543.

72. For an example, see Finn, Stirring Times, 1:317.

73. Raouf Sa‘d Abujaber, whose ancestors worked in the qilw trade, argues that this trade was no longer an important source of income for bedouins by the 1860s due to the introduction of industrially produced caustic soda, which was both cleaner and cheaper (Abujaber, Pioneers, p. 135).

74. NIMR, 2:289. Sometimes the barilla plants were sent directly to the soap factories and burned there.

75. Burckhardt, Travels, pp. 354–355.

76. Indicative of the importance of the qilw trade was the attempt by the Egyptian government to monopolize it during the occupation in the 1830s. The Egyptian commanders forced the Bani Sakhr and other Arab tribes to bring all their qilw to Gaza, where the government bought and stored it. The soap merchants in Nablus and Jerusalem were obliged to buy their provisions from government offices in Gaza at a higher price. Both the bedouins and the soap-factory owners, however, complained bitterly about this arrangement and the extra costs involved, especially in transportation. The Egyptians quickly realized that this monopoly caused a drop in soap production and, consequently, in taxes on soap. Therefore, after only one year, they rescinded the order and allowed bedouins to deliver the qilw directly to Nablus and Jerusalem (Asad Rustum, Al-Usul al-arabiyya li-tarikh Suriyya fi ahd Muhammad Ali basha [Materials for a Corpus of Arabic Documents relating to the History of Syria under Mehemet Ali Pasha] [5 vols.; Beirut, 1933–1936], 2:133–134).

77. NIMR, 2:289. As usual, he does not specify the period.

78. For a detailed account, see Rogan, “Incorporating the Periphery,” part 2. In the mid-nineteenth century, Palestinian merchants exerted pressures on the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem to facilitate cultivation of the Jordan plain and to undertake infrastructural projects (Finn, Stirring Times, 2:17).

79. NICR, 6:260–263.

80. The deceased was married to the daughter of the naqib al-ashraf of Jerusalem.

81. His was only a temporary appointment, and the deceased’s son, Muhammad Murtada, took his father’s position when he reached his legal majority. Muhammad Murtada went on to become not only a soap factory owner but also the longest-serving religious official in Nablus: he held the position of naqib al-ashraf for forty consecutive years (1823–1863). For the first and last documents which mention him in this capacity, see ibid., 8:238, 311; 13A:239. For details, see Doumani, “Merchants,” chap. 3.

82. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Bishtawis were important timar holders, but they shifted gradually to trade and soap production. In January 1729 Muhammad Beik Nasrallah Bishtawi and his wife, Aysha, daughter of Ibrahim Tuqan, endowed a soap factory as a family waqf (NICR, 5:84–85). In April 1810 a member of the Bishtawi family purchased approximately 1/12 of this factory from the Shafi‘i family (ibid., 7:40). By the late 1850s, it seems that this factory was entirely in the hands of Sayyid As‘ad Bishtawi, whose inheritance case was discussed in the previous section (ibid., 12:122).

83. Muhammad Salih Afandi Hanbali owned a soap factory, or part of one, in 1213/1798–1799 (ibid., 6:24). Hasan Agha Nimr’s recently deceased brother, Abd al-Latif Agha, also owned a soap factory (ibid., 6:324).

84. Ibid., 6:260–264.

85. Ibid., 6:264, 269–273.

86. A waqf endowment by Abd al-Wahid’s father and paternal uncle—Mustafa and Hasan, respectively—mentions that they had renovated the Sultaniyya factory, located in the Yasmina quarter, sometime before 1806 (ibid., 6:348).

87. Sayyid Muhammad Hashim Hanbali bought shares in the Tbeiliyya soap factory between 1802 and 1811, and it does not seem that the Tbeila familyheld any more shares after that point (ibid., 6:165, 7:84). In the early eighteenth century the Bustami family owned a soap factory, but they had no shares left by 1825 (ibid., 4:307). The fate of the Sawwar, Shafi‘i, and Akhrami familieswere discussed earlier. Members of the Qaddumi, Qadi-Shwayka, and Tuffaha Husayni families also operated soap factories at this time, but as renters, not owners. The first two rented part of the Bashawiyya soap factory from a charitable waqf (ibid., 7:363, 8:281), and Sayyid Hasan Tuffaha Husayni was a financial backer of the Nimr family’s soap factory (ibid., 6:324). For more details, see below.

88. To the above list of merchants one must also add the Ya‘ish family, one of the few merchant families to own a soap factory in the eighteenth century. There is no evidence that they remained soap owners at the turn of the nineteenth century, however. The Ya‘ishiyya soap factory, named after them, was already the property of the deceased.

89. NICR, 6:98; located in the Qaysariyya quarter. The same sum was paid by Muhammad, son of Ali Tuqan, for a small, ruined shop next to the soap factory (ibid., 6:107).

90. Ibid., 6:11, 18, 48; located in the Habala quarter. The purchase of this soap factory was quite complicated, and it changed hands a number of times during that year.

91. Ibid., 6:23; located in the Qaryun quarter.

92. Ibid., 6:260–264. It is not clear where this factory was located, and it could possibly be the same as the Husniyya or Ayshiyya factory.

93. Ibid., 7:92–93; located in the Qaryun quarter, next to the Nasr mosque.

94. Ibid., 7:363.

95. Ibid., 7:346; located in Spinner’s Street, Gharb quarter.

96. Both served briefly as mutasallims of Nablus. Qasim al-Ahmad even moved his residence to the city proper, purchasing a large complex which included an entire soap factory called the Shaqrawiyya.

97. Asa‘d Mansur, Tarikh al-Nasira, p. 70. Descendants of Qasim al-Ahmad claim that his son planned the assassination.

98. NICR, 9:180. The house, which still stands, is very large, and the soap factory was considered but a part of it. The other half of the property was sold to a rich merchant, Hajj Dawud, son of Hajj Mahmud Kan‘an, for 55,000 piasters on May 3, 1860 (ibid., 12:334–335).

99. Ibid., 9:77–78, 206–207, 254–255, and ibid., 9:85–86, respectively.

100. Between 1830 and 1864 he served for a total of 28 years. He died in 1876. For more details, see Doumani, “Merchants,” chap. 3.

101. The petition was signed on April 20, 1840. For the text and context of the petition, see NIMR, 1:338–341.

102. Located in the Yasmina quarter, adjacent to the family’s residence, it was endowed as a private family waqf, along with a substantial number of other properties (NICR, 11:121–123; dated September 1848). This was not a new departure for the Khammash family: Abd al-Wahid’s father and uncle had invested in the renovation of the Sultaniyya factory in 1806 (ibid., 6:348).

103. Ibid., 9:206–207.

104. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.1.

105. NIMR, 1:333.

106. As mentioned earlier, a close relative, Sayyid Hasan Tuffaha Husayni, was a partner of Ahmad Agha Nimr’s cousin in a soap factory during the first decade of the nineteenth century.

107. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.4(A). Also reproduced in NIMR, 2:292–293.

108. NIMR, 1:341.

109. Ibid., 1:341–342.

110. Nimr Family Papers, 3.1.1. For the waqf document, see NICR, 12:67–70.

111. NICR, 9:393; dated January 14, 1839.

112. Two other allies of the Abd al-Hadis who acquired shares in soap factories at this time, but who were not mentioned in the list, are Tahir al-Musa and Shaykh Salah al-Baqani. For example, in September 1839 Tahir al-Musa purchased one-sixth of the Uthmaniyya factory from Salah al-Baqani (NICR, 9:399). The former came from Arraba, the hometown of the Abd-Hadis, and he was appointed deputy to the mutasallim of Nablus in early May 1836 (ibid., 9:174). Salah al-Baqani served briefly as a judge and signed the petition against Ahmad Agha Nimr (NIMR, 1:340).

113. He endowed two-thirds of the Shaytaniyya factory as a private family waqf in mid-December 1811 (NICR, 7:92–93).

114. The name of the third soap factory, added to their holdings sometime between 1839–1841, is not known, but it was located in the Habala quarter. It was endowed as a family waqf by Mahmud Beik Abd al-Hadi in late June 1841 (ibid., 12:48–50).

115. Hajj Anabtawi, originally a wealthy peasant from Anabta, was a business partner with the Abd al-Hadis and jointly owned a number of properties with them, such as a flour mill in Wadi al-Tuffah (Apple Valley), which extends westward from the city (ibid., 9:172). He also represented them frequently in court (for example, ibid., 9:191, 253, 259, 262, 273). In 1852 a letter by the Nablus Advisory Council claimed that he and Shaykh Yusuf Zayd Qadri were two pillars of the merchant community. This was part of an application to have them approved as the financial backers of Mahmud Beik Abd al-Hadi’s reappointment as the mutasallim of Nablus (NMSR, p. 249).

116. NICR, 13A:162. In 1856 he endowed 80 percent of this factory as a private family waqf (NICR, 12:175–176, 306–307, 372).

117. Ibid., 9:399.

118. Ibid., 10:267; 12:48–50.

119. Ibid., 11:121–123.

120. Ibid., 13A:220, 265; 13B:7, 115, 128.

121. NMSR, p. 293; dated May 1, 1853.

122. Respectively, NICR, 13B:144, 164–165; 13B:115; 13B:19–20; 13A:30–36, 74–75, 110–111.

123. Ibid., 12:162–165. This factory was endowed as a family waqf on July 23, 1856. Fourteen years earlier, in August 1842, they endowed a small share of the Husayniyya soap factory as a family waqf (ibid., 10:83–85).

124. Tamimi and Bahjat, Wilayat Bayrut, p. 119.

125. Ibid., p. 119; Darwaza, Mi’at am, p. 77.

126. Tamimi and Bahjat, Wilayat Bayrut, p. 120. Darwaza noted that they outdistanced by far all other merchants in Jabal Nablus (Mi’at am, pp. 77–79).

127. On April 30, 1850, for instance, four soap producers—Hajj As‘ad Tahir, Sayyid Mahmud Tamimi, Hajj Amin Hashim Hanbali, and Abd al-Fattah Agha [Nimr]—were appointed as new members of the council. The other membersat this time included the qa’immaqam, Sulayman Beik Tuqan; the qadi, Abdal-Wahid Khammash; the naqib al-ashraf Muhammad Murtada Afandi Hanbali;and the mufti SayyidAbu al-Hida Khammash—all of whom were soap-factory owners (NMSR, p. 46). For background and details, see Doumani, “Merchants,”chap. 3.

128. NMSR, p. 186 (emphasis added).

129. Ibid., p. 196.

130. Ibid., p. 210. His letter is summarized in the council’s answer detailed below.

131. Ibid., p. 210.

132. Ibid., pp. 221–222.

133. Ibid.

134. Ibid., pp. 53, 66, 72–73, 94.

135. The central government condemned smuggling and threatened violators on a number of occasions (ibid., pp. 12, 14, 41, 56). See also below for a discussion of the smuggling of oil from Jabal Ajlun into Nablus.

136. They were spelled out in NICR, 10:199–200, 289–290; 11:141–142, 180.

137. An Arabic translation of the firman issued by the sultan was registered in the Nablus Islamic Court on May 7, 1846 (ibid., 10:199–200). The officials addressed specifically included governors, head scribes, judges, customs officials, Advisory Council members, and muftis in the two provinces and their districts.

138. Ibid., 11:141–142, 180.

139. Further detailed clarifications, sent between 1849–1851, can be found in NMSR, pp. 38, 92, 132.

140. See Ibid., pp. 92 and 304 for the first and last cases.

141. For example, ibid., p. 227.

142. Ibid., p. 235.

143. Fiscal years began in March and were calculated on the basis of a solar calendar. This calendar was first introduced in 1740, and by 1794 it was applied to all financial matters (Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics [Madison, Wis., 1985], pp. xi–xiii).

144. NMSR, pp. 132–133.

145. Ibid., pp. 38, 304; NICR, 11:141.

146. NMSR, pp. 153–154, 183, 221, 227, 235–236. The soap merchants also claimed that some of the 1851/1852 soap was made from old 1266/1849–1850 stocks, so they really had a double grievance (ibid., pp. 153–154).

147. Ibid., pp. 264–265, 304.

148. Ibid.

149. Ibid., p. 153. Apparently there was some truth to this allegation, for the customs officials were warned not to do so by the central government (ibid., pp. 132–133).

150. Ibid., p. 153.

151. Ibid., pp. 92, 195, 202, 221, 227, 235–236, 275, 293, 304.

152. Soap exported to Safad, on the other hand, was taxed at the very light rate of 8 paras per load, and perfumed soap manufactured in Jerusalem and on its way to Damascus paid 1 piaster in customs for each load when passing through Nablus. The very low taxes on soap are more readily apparent when compared, for example, with tobacco and garlic, which were assessed 1 and 5.5 piasters per load, respectively (NICR, 8:389).

153. NMSR, p. 50.

154. Ibid., p. 227. The anger of the central government is also transparent in ibid., p. 70.

155. NICR, 10:289–290.

156. NMSR, pp. 259, 274–275. This means that at least 1.5 million piasters’ worth of soap was exported during this period.

157. Ibid., p. 240.

158. Ibid., p. 227.

159. Ibid., pp. 226–227.

160. Ibid., pp. 11, 153, 240, 242, 294, 313.

161. Ibid., pp. 226–227, 274.

162. Ibid., p. 293.

163. Ibid., p. 304.

164. Ibid., p. 38.

165. Ibid., pp. 259, 274–275, 304.