Summary
Son of a Nablus textile merchant whose memoir Nabulsiyat (Amman, 1990) is a principal source for Chapter 2 of Rediscovering Palestine on the customs of the textile trade, the Kiswa and peasant hospitality in merchants’ houses (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1173-1230, lines 1492-1686).
Details
- Masri recalled that in the early twentieth century children would not sleep the night before id al-adha without first folding their holiday clothes neatly beside their beds (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1173-1230).
- He described early-twentieth-century wedding kiswas as always including a silk saya and cloaks, the most expensive of camel hair, merchants supplying headbands as complementary gifts, and textiles sold by the shaqqa, about seven arms’ lengths or approximately 475 centimeters (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1366-1491).
- He recalled peasant customers lodged in his family’s house, women in an extra room reserved for the purpose and men in the garden (hakura), with dinners of lamb over rice on bread soaked with cooked yogurt or tomato sauce (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1366-1491).
- He learned from the peasants of Talluza a satirical maqamat oration, al-Tarabish wa al-Barabish (the fezzes and the waterpipes), against moneylenders and debt collectors, quoted in Chapter 2’s conclusion (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1492-1556).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Kiswa, Khan al-Tujjar, Nablus