The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (2 page)

In the early eighteenth century, the system stabilized and the local elite were included within the imperial matrix of control and sovereignty. As Ehud Toldano remarks, this was not systematic planning on the part of Istanbul but rather a piecemeal,
ad hoc
policy responding to events on the ground. An elite position in the empire required a high office, which enabled the holder to acquire wealth (although wealthy people did not necessarily win high positions).
⁴

Ira Lapidus taught us that the core of this elite was the pool of Islamic scholars, the
ulama
. They appeared in nineteenth-century Syria as notables who descended from prominent eighteenth-century families who supplied the officials for the religious posts of
mufti
,
khatib
(preacher) and Syndic of the Descendants of the Prophet. They also managed the
awqaf
and had strong support from merchants, artisans, Janissaries, and the town quarters.
⁵
The Husaynis belonged to the Syndic of the Descendants of the Prophet – the Ashraf families. This was the family’s main source of power, and through it its members held hereditary offices throughout the Ottoman period.

THE ‘POLITICS OF NOTABLES’

A more focused look at how the notables remained in a high position for so long can be obtained with the help of a concept developed by Albert Hourani for describing and analyzing their political career: the ‘politics of notables’.
⁶
In many ways these ‘politics’ are the key for understanding the urban politics of the Ottoman provinces (at least in the Muslim provinces). The ‘politics’ were a mode of behavior, a ‘practice’, a Weberian concept put forward by Hourani to explain their prolonged political survival. The wider context of this kind of urban history is European patrician history. It is tempting indeed to use the term ‘patrician’ for these people, but it is safer to employ the term ‘notables’ as it is probably the closest to the term
‘a‘ayan’
used at the time. There are other possible terms from the period as well as new ones, but for the purposes of this book I am content to use ‘notables’.

This practice is in essence the ‘politics of dependence and coalitions’, practiced by people in the city and the area around it with their notables and through them with their ruler. Such a mode of behavior can work when there are ‘great’ families or ‘grandee’ families – more akin in the greatness accorded to them to the medieval families of Italy than to that enjoyed in medieval France and Britain, as Hourani remarks.
⁷

The notables enjoyed considerable independence in running the affairs of the cities in the Arab Ottoman world. These families won this relative autonomy because they had access to the rulers of the empire – in the case of Jerusalem, to regional capitals such as Damascus, Acre and Beirut as well to Istanbul and Cairo. This enabled the notables to represent their society before the powers that be. Their prestige in the eyes of the empire stemmed from their standing within their own society.

Other factors also affected the relative independence and authority of the urban notable families. The Husaynis’ ability to compose effective coalitions with forces within and without the city is a major feature of this political biography. The key word is ‘coalition’, and it was such a powerful asset that it served the Husaynis as well in the eighteenth century as it did in the twentieth.

As Hourani sensed even before going into a particular case study, the need to form coalitions increased the tendency ‘towards the formation of two or more coalitions’.
⁸
These formations are traced in this book and are indeed a vital factor in the political history of Palestine in the period under review. In this context, Hourani makes additional remarks that are relevant to the history of the Husaynis: the coalitions were challenged because they were not institutionalized and were fragile because they demanded an almost impossible balancing act between the families’ interests and the policies of the rulers. But it is exactly this balancing act that explains why the Husaynis were leaders of such coalitions for so long: they had the support of the other families in Jerusalem and access to the rulers.

The formation of coalitions was part of the habitual circumspection built into the ‘politics of notables’. These coalitions were not part of a fixed institution; they were far more fluid formations. Occasionally, one party left the coalition for another, disappointing an ally and aligning with a former foe. These shifts also occurred because of the ‘divide and rule’ policies of the central government. Therefore the notables’ ‘modes of action must in normal circumstances be cautious and even ambiguous’, as illustrated by how the Husaynis led revolutions against rulers or shunned others or left them behind when convenient.

As it had been a century before, at the beginning of the nineteenth century ‘the politics of notables’ was very much a politics of
ulama
. Hourani remarks that their scholarly background placed the
ulama
notables closer to the ruler than to society.
⁹
But this changed with the secularization of the notables at the beginning of the twentieth century. The notables of religion became the notables of nationalism.

Within society the notables were at the top of the hierarchy, and in the empire they were a substratum below the officials governing the provinces from the capital of the main province or, later on, directly from Istanbul. Among the notables,
primus inter pares
seemed to be the rule of the game – one family would hold this advantageous position. The position of seniority was the
naqib al-ashraf
, which until the 1860s was one of the most coveted in Jerusalem next to that of the
mufti
, the most senior religious position to which a notable could aspire. An appointment as
naqib al-ashraf
carried with it certain duties as an arbitrator, as a representative of certain
awqaf
and as an objective witness in matters involving local elite groups.

The titles and functions of notable families were inherited from father to son, making the Husaynis a kind of hereditary aristocracy. This aristocratic status was won with religious respectability and a prestigious lineage. Furthermore, families such as the Husaynis augmented their power by establishing alliances with the military chieftains (
aghawat
) whose power was based on clientele and the control of suburban quarters and the grain trade that passed through them.

THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL BASIS

But prestige, alliances and connections were not enough to sustain the clan as a political force; they also needed financial resources. Most of these resources came with the appointments rather than ensuring them. The tax-farming system in the Ottoman Empire was such that it enabled the notables both to be enriched by and to accumulate political power. In a way, it was an alternative to the European banking system. As Sevket Pamuk explains:

While loans to kings, princes and governments were part of the regular business of European banking houses in the late medieval and early modern periods, in the Islamic world advances of cash to the rulers and the public treasury were handled
differently. They took the form of tax-farming arrangements in which individuals possessing liquid capital assets advanced cash to the government in return for the right to farm the taxes of a given region or fiscal unit for a fixed period.
¹⁰

At first this right was given for a year to three years, but during financial crises the tendency was to grant it for longer periods. The Ottoman Empire relied on tax-farming for urban taxes in particular, and hence the importance of notables who could serve as tax collectors. A different system was at work in the rural areas until the sixteenth century, but it was replaced by tax-farming thereafter, the concessions for which were auctioned in Istanbul.

Another source of income, and probably the most profitable one, was the ability of the notables to benefit from supervising, and later on breaking up, religious endowments – the
awqaf
(plural of
waqf
).

Before the emergence of municipal services, the authorities attended to the essential needs of the urban population through the
waqf
, the source for funding the restoration and maintenance of religious buildings and centers, educational systems and social services. Moreover, the
waqf
financed the expansion of infrastructure, the construction of bridges and the introduction of more systematic water supplies to the cities. The
waqf
was not invented by the Ottomans but was used more extensively by them as the best means of catering to the urban society’s concerns and requirements.
¹¹

Usually, Ottoman officials such as local governors founded the
awqaf
and appointed notables to look after them (as
mutawallis
and
nazirs
). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Husaynis established three
awqaf
of their own, while others of the family were appointed as
mutawallis
and
nazirs
, which meant the family as a whole became the beneficiary of the
waqf
.
¹²
Gabriel Baer, who investigated the period from 1790 to 1801, discovered that the Husaynis had a larger share than any other group in founding new
awqaf
and in being appointed
mutawallis
(one third of the former and half of the latter).
¹³

Awqaf
that were endowed by the state for public services included profitable assets such as
muzara’
fields (lands cultivated on a permanent basis), the total cultivated lands of several villages, factories, workshops, etc. Out of the profits salaries were paid. Sons of the notable families in Jerusalem were already receiving generous allowances from the profits of the
awqaf
in the early nineteenth century. Among them were the Husaynis, who were given the title
wujah-i-murtazaqa
(those
who benefit most in several lists of
awqaf
). But they were not the only ones; they had to compete with many other families. There were about 1,000 to 1,500 notables in Jerusalem at the end of the eighteenth century, and they were about 20 percent of the overall population of several thousand. (Figures are not easily attainable for that period, and there is no room here to enter the debate about them.) Their high proportion within the overall Muslim community explains why they were so numerous among those enjoying the profits of the
awqaf
.
¹⁴

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman central government found they could use the
awqaf
to reward families who cooperated with them.
¹⁵
Supervision at the beginning of the nineteenth century was lax, and therefore families could expand their financial benefits from the endowments, which in principle were meant to serve the public. One imperial decree, a
firman
from 17 April 1797, decries the excessive number of beneficiaries drawing on these sources without the sultan’s permission, which led to growing debts that disabled the proper functioning of the endowed institutions.
¹⁶

Inclusion on such a list required authorization from either the governors of the province or the city – or those who represented them: the supreme
qadi
(Islamic judge) in the region, the
qadi
of Jerusalem or his deputy. This explains the networking a notable family needed to do to sustain its economic prosperity. In the eighteenth century, an innovation was introduced: the beneficiary documents could be passed to the next of kin, a fact that expanded the lists and overburdened the debts of the
awqaf
. The notables themselves approached the governor from time to time and asked him to limit the lists so as to ensure smoother operations in the field of charity and aid to the poor.
¹⁷
Of course, they made this request without giving up their own privileged positions.

In 1777, after a period of political upheaval, the central government transferred the right to grant beneficiary status exclusively to the Ottoman officials dealing with the finances of the empire. The ministry was ordered to consider further documents only on a purely economic basis. There was worse to come. The move annulled past documents, which generated a strong protest and a demand to return the old system. The outcry worked, and the old system was reinstated.
¹⁸

The
waqf
became a particularly profitable asset in the beginning of the nineteenth century when it was broken up. Gaining control of public
waqf
domains and making them a family’s own private property was legal. Some cases were sanctioned by the local
qadi
and the properties registered in the
sijjilat
as privately owned land. Alongside the
Khalidis, Nammaris, Nusaybas and al-Dajanis, the Husaynis were the most important family to amass wealth in such a way. These families held high posts in the
waqf
administration and in the Shari‘a judicial system and other Islamic institutions, so they exploited their economic power. But there were those who truly meant to help develop an endowment, and thus they re-endowed their investments.