Summary
Family based in Arraba village, home of the most important leading family of Jabal Nablus to emerge in the nineteenth century, whose rise was marked by the Egyptian occupation of 1831-1840 and whose headquarters at Arraba was destroyed by the Ottoman government in 1859 (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 459-533, lines 577-676).
Details
-
Before the Egyptian occupation the Abd al-Hadis were supported by the rulers of Acre, especially Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar and Sulayman Pasha, and by the Tuqan family, as a counterweight to the Jarrar clan (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 577-620).
-
Ibrahim Pasha made Shaykh Husayn Abd al-Hadi his right-hand man for southern Syria and promoted him to governor of Sidon province (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 577-620).
-
In the 1850 administrative table, Mahmud Beik Abd al-Hadi heads the sanjaq of Nablus and Yusuf Sulayman Abd al-Hadi the sanjaq of Jenin; Salih Beik Abd al-Hadi heads Sha’rawiyya (east) and Abd al-Rahman Husayn Abd al-Hadi Sha’rawiyya (west) (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 577-620).
-
The destruction of Arraba in 1859 marked the official end of rule by native sons in Jabal Nablus (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 496-526, lines 621-676).
-
Shaykh Husayn Abd al-Hadi’s agent signed a Salam contract in the Jerusalem Islamic Court on September 6, 1833 with peasants representing the entire population of Bayt Jala: 30,000 piasters from the city’s treasury for 1,000 jars of olive oil deliverable to the local government four months hence, the oil probably to cook soap for the Egyptian military, with Abd al-Hadi — soon to own a Nablus soap factory — probably commissioned to produce it (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3100-3159).
-
The family initiated both registered waves converting state lands into full private property in the late 1830s — the first (1836-1838) concentrated in Arraba and Ya’bad, the much larger second (twenty-one purchases) as the Egyptian occupation’s end became clear; on May 27, 1838 several large properties were sold to Muhammad Abd al-Hadi for 29,500 piasters before dozens of witnesses, and the family simultaneously endowed its principal urban properties as waqf (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3220-3279).
-
Mahmud Beik Abd al-Hadi, qa’immaqam of Nablus, handled the Jaba peasants’ petition of fall 1851 and the Asira al-Shamiyya petition of February 1852 — both addressed directly to the governor of Jerusalem over his and the council’s heads — answering Jaba’s with a report that presented its collective Salam contracts for taxes as “usual practice” and Asira’s with a memorandum blaming peasant “insolence toward the government” (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3100-3159, lines 3280-3339).
-
Mary Eliza Rogers’s February 1856 visit to the family’s Arraba compound opens Chapter 4: the household’s women asked her father’s camels’ number and whether his olive trees were “new and fruitful,” the two key indicators of an important family’s material base (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3028-3099).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Tuqan family, Jabal Nablus, Nablus