Rediscovering Palestine: merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900

Abstract

Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, by Beshara Doumani. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. xviii + 245 pages. Appends. to p. 258. Gloss. to p. 260. Notes to p. 308. Bibl. to p. 325. Index to p. 340. $50 cloth; $20 paper. Reviewed by Dror Ze'evi Rediscovering Palestine is a very good book. It is readable, innovative and often original. It adds new information, reveals important sources, and explores them with a sober and critical eye. This study examines the 18th- and l9th-century social and political life of the Ottoman district surrounding the city of Nablus, a medium-sized Palestinian town that lies to the north of Jerusalem. Olive oil, soap, and textiles and cotton are used as three strands of a narrative thread around which the story of the region is woven. By telling the story of each commodity, the author examines the formation of social structures, trade networks, political upheavals, the region's integration into the European-dominated world economy, and the crucial importance of city-village relations. Doumani does well not to rely solely on sijils (records of the local shari'a [Islamic law] court), which have become a sine qua non for Ottoman provincial history. The more we study these records, the more careful we are in treating them as simple evidence of past events without further corroboration. The book introduces two main new sources to complement the sijils: records of the Nablus advisory council established during the tanzimat reform period (1839-76), and an abundance of letters and documents kept in the private archives and personal collections of families in the district. These sources suggest a different angle from which to view the region's history and shed new light on the information provided by the sijils. In its methodology Rediscovering Palestine wisely adapts late Annales concepts to Middle Eastern historiography. In this type of research histoire totale (the complete history) is both essential and impossible. It is essential because there can be no analysis of political developments, of social structures, even of cultural paradigms, over such a long period, without adequate integration of all these spheres into one rich compound. It is impossible because no amount of research can encompass in their entirety the infinite data and boundless interpretations pertaining to these spheres which we have at our disposal. Rediscovering Palestine wisely settles, therefore, on a middle-of-the-road approach, making use of various historical methodologies to build the story layer upon layer, without committing itself to one specific school of thought. …

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