Summary
The most important of the leading families to emerge in Jabal Nablus after the 1657 Ottoman campaign: originally subdistrict chiefs in the hinterlands of Homs and Hama, they received the lion’s share of the campaign’s land grants, gained the posts of mutasallim and mir alay, and intermarried and entered business partnerships with rich merchant and ulama families (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 496-526).
Details
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Umar Agha Nimr, deputy mutasallim of Nablus, submitted the 1723 tax report that shows Jabal Nablus’s subdistricts had increased from four to seven (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 496-526).
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The Nimrs helped the Tuqan family prepare Nablus’s defences against Zahir al-Umar in 1771, and occasionally helped the anti-Tuqan coalition in 1817-1823 (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 534-576).
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Over the eighteenth century the Nimrs and Tuqans traded positions of leadership in Nablus and occasionally ruled Jerusalem and Jaffa, including Lydda and Ramla (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 496-526).
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The family’s papers show Timar villages in southeastern Jabal Nablus remained within the Nimr household for more than 200 years, and in 1724 Muhammad Agha Nimr arranged a lump sum of 2,000 piasters on behalf of all 52 timar and za’ama holders to avoid military duty (Chapter 1, notes) (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 844-1172).
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Chapter 1’s notes record that the struggle with the Tuqans exposed the Nimrs’ already very limited political role — they led the urban opposition to the Tuqans — and that after the Egyptian occupation the Nimrs quietly turned their attention to business and real estate (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 844-1172).
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A receipt dated April 20, 1837 in the family’s private papers shows the Damascene wool dealer Sayyid Abd al-Ghani al-Sawwaf turning over promissory notes totaling 5,500 piasters to Ahmad Agha Nimr to cash and buy soap with, the soap sent to Damascus through Nimr’s agent Shaykh Sulayman al-Banna — the older, politically mediated system of debt collection, in which Ahmad Agha, who owned a soap factory, was paid in soap (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 1285-1365).
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Ihsan Nimr was mistaken, Doumani notes, in claiming Umar Agha Nimr was mutasallim of Nablus at the time of the 1723 tax report; he was Salih Pasha Tuqan’s deputy (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 844-1172).
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The family’s private papers contain the Salam contracts on which Chapter 4’s in-depth look at that system rests; in early January 1828 Ahmad Agha Nimr, waqf superintendent of the family’s Yusufiyya soap factory, advanced 1,025 piasters to four Salim peasants for 100 jars of oil at 10.25 piasters a jar, deliverable half at once and half ten months later, when the open-market price averaged 23 piasters a jar (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3028-3099).
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The Nimrs had privileged access to Salim through Timar grants and tax farms for generations, and also subcontracted salam loans on behalf of oil merchants and soap manufacturers (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3028-3099).
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In 1855 (three years after buying the land from the brothers), the Jaffa merchant Khawaja Khalil Mitri sold the Kafr Bayta lands he had appropriated on a salam default to Abd al-Fattah Agha Nimr, again without registering the sale in the Nablus Islamic Court; the contract survives in the family’s papers (Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, lines 3220-3279).
Related pages
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, Ihsan Nimr, Tuqan family, Jabal Nablus, Timar, Arafat family