Summary
A young Ottoman official who, with Muhammad Rafiq Tamimi, was ordered in 1916 to gather materials for a general “guide book” on the southern half of Beirut province and instead investigated the population’s socioeconomic conditions and political attitudes; their report on Jabal Nablus is quoted throughout Chapter 4 of Rediscovering Palestine (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3160-3219).
Details
- In the first leg of their two-month trip they visited Jabal Nablus, beginning with Salfit, then one of the two largest olive-oil-producing villages in the district, where as the first Ottoman officials to visit in some time they were swamped with complaints, most directed against the merchants of Nablus (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3160-3219).
- Their report put first, among what the government should do about peasant poverty, misery and disease, the need to eradicate Nabulsi notables’ oppressive and usurious practices, reporting that “most of the wealthy Nabulsis lend money at an annual interest rate ranging between 60 and 70 percent” (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3160-3219).
- Doumani qualifies both authors as modern nationalists bitterly critical of their traditional society, whose accounts portray peasants one-dimensionally as passive victims of urban greed and imply moneylending was a new phenomenon, when what was new was the context in which it operated (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3160-3219).
- Concluding their Salfit visit, Tamimi and Bahjat wrote: “Of course, the Salfitis are ignorant of the sacred patriotic [symbols] such as the flag, the nation, and sacrifice” (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3340-3372).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Muhammad Rafiq Tamimi, Jabal Nablus, Salam