The Palestinian Rural Notables' Class in Ascendancy: The Hannun Family of Tulkarm (Palestine) (original) (raw)
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PhD dissertation, 2016
This dissertation is a socio-historical statistical study of the implementation and adoption of Tanzimat-era land-tenure reforms in the Palestinian countryside. It addresses three main questions: (1) what was the character of rural property tenure in mountainous regions of Palestine; (2) to what degree were modernizing property-reform measures adopted by the rural populace; and (3) how did the reform affect rural property-tenure and economic wellbeing? The 1858 Land Code was one of a series of Tanzimat reforms that together formalized individual title to property and land tenure. Yet, due to the dearth of accessible documentation, little is known about the implementation of these reforms. Among historians of Palestine, in the absence of proof to the contrary there is broad consensus that the reforms failed. It is widely argued that villagers evaded land registration en masse, either because they did not understand the significance of the reform or feared that increased taxation or conscription would result from property registration. This study brings to light and analyzes a property-value and property-tax assessment register (Esas-ı Emlak) compiled in 1876 (1292 maliyye) for the villages and rural agricultural lands of the large Halilürrahman (Hebron) district, south of Jerusalem. It permits, for the ix first time, systematic investigation of the implementation of property-tenure reforms in Palestine at a district-wide level. This study demonstrates that many rural agriculturalists in rural Hebron had independent economic power and landed wealth above subsistence levels. Hebronites were invested in implementing modernizing reforms to protect their landed assets, which they registered with the emlak, property-tax commission as individual holdings and as communally owned properties. While it is commonly understood that traditional, communal land-tenure arrangements (musha') were disallowed after land reform, this study demonstrates how it was incorporated into reform and protected the rights of shareholders. It also argues that property-tenure reform needs to be understood as a process, not an event. Villagers have rarely figured as subjects of Ottoman histories. This study exploits the emlak register together with sharia court cases and 1905 Ottoman population registries to flesh out a picture of late-Ottoman villages, villagers, and rural society from below in southern Palestine.
Die Welt des Islams
This article presents a new approach for analyzing the characteristics and historical transformations of an institution central to Palestinian society and the Fertile Crescent at large – the Elite Family. The approach perceives elite families in the twentieth century as complex organizations with three fundamental traits: structure, distinct goals and strategy. Based on the cases of the al-Jaʿbarī family from Hebron and the al-Maṣrī family from Nablus, the article comparatively examines the ways each family dealt with historical shifts from the early twentieth century through the late 1970s and how this affected its sociopolitical status. My principal argument is that the three attributes of goals, structure and strategy – which were influenced by local conditions too – shaped the different ways in which the two families managed changes and challenges, and directly determined the degree to which each endured in the sociopolitical arena. This approach challenges the prevalent view of...
Journal of Contemporary History, 2016
The Palestinian-Arab middle class under the Mandate may be characterized as bourgeois and educated, similarly to bourgeois classes that have developed in the West in the Modern era. The bourgeois characteristics of the Palestinian-Arab middle class, and their influence on its historical trajectory during the Mandate era, have not been studied in depth yet. This article aims to focus on a local aspect of the rise of the middle class in the region in that period: the rise of the Palestinian-Arab middle class under the Mandate, until the Palestinian-Arab Revolt (1936–9). The main hypothesis is that particular bourgeois social and cultural characteristics prevented the middle class full incorporation into the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, and even led to estrangement between the middle class and the national leadership, as well as members of lower strata, especially the villagers. Members of the middle class, mostly Christians but Muslims as well, espoused in their daily life modern habits, ideas, and customs, as a means to distinguish between themselves and other classes, similarly to their parallels in the West, and like their contemporaries elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, as has demonstrated Watenpaugh. Those gaps reached their climax during the years of revolt
The Peasantry of Late Ottoman Palestine
Journal of Palestine Studies, 1981
Originally a chapter from my MA thesis written at the American University of Beirut in 1980, when studies on Ottoman Palestine were rarer than they subsequently became. The article may still have some use for those interested in Ottoman Palestine and its majority population of Arab peasantry.
The Middle Class and the Land Struggle in Palestine
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2023
This article discusses the rise and failure of private horticultural farming by Palestinian leaders and middle-class developers in the Beisan valley in the 1930s. This focus broadens and deepens our understanding of the colonial encounter in Palestine. Although the Palestinian middle class appears prominently in the political narratives of the struggle, this group has been paradoxically deemphasized in the social history of capital and settler accumulation and dispossession. By correcting this bias, the article seeks to develop a more inclusive narrative concerning private property in land in the settler-colonial predicament as a process of double loss: of Indigenous land relations and ecologies, on the one hand, and national life and territory, on the other. To do so, the article privileges an actor-based history, which captures both the development of political and economic practices and traditions, as well as the long and deep effects of governmental structures of dispossession.
This workshop is a coproduction of researchers from two ERC-funded historical research projects which target rural regions of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East from different perspectives. BORDER, based at the University of Neuchâtel, uses the case of the Turkish-Syrian-Iraqi borders to highlight the centrality of borderlands and their mostly rural populations to state and nation formation across the Middle East. The Bochum-based research project ‘Late Ottoman Palestinians’, LOOP, uses Digital Humanities tools to explore demographic data and complementary sources on rural communities in late Ottoman Palestine and thereby aims to construct empirically based models of social and cultural dynamics on the eve of the modern Middle East. The workshop seeks to revisit major debates and discuss promising avenues for research in the field, while also unpack certain obstacles and limits that historians of the rural Middle East still encounter. In doing so, it focuses on the following questions: - On what scholarly discourses do recent historical studies of the rural Middle East draw, e.g., histories of marginality, territoriality, political economy, human capital formation, social network theory, or actor network theory? - How might the reinvigorated study of rural pasts change our view of Ottoman and Middle Eastern history as a whole? - What are the most promising perspectives, sources, and methodologies for the study of rural communities, rural areas, and imaginaries of the rural?
Middle Eastern Studies, 2007
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinian-Arab middle class in the three larger cities – Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa – was among the first groups to leave the country, in the initial stage of the war. As yet, no in-depth study has been made of the place and function of this group as a civil society during the intercommunal war between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine (December 1947 - May 1948). This essay refers to the Qatamon neighbourhood in Jerusalem as a test case for the processes that were undergone by the Arab middle class in this period, focusing on the social and cultural background of the neighbourhood’s residents.
Power and Clanism in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Chapter 3 in 'Informal Power in the Greater Middle East: Hidden Geographies' by Edited by Anceschi, L., Gervasio G., Teti A., 2014
Power cannot ever be entirely monopolized by one social institution, not even, by the state; this assumption is especially relevant in the Palestinian context, where the exercise of sovereignty is limited by both the Israeli occupation and the competing forces of the domestic political landscape. The localization of informal power in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)1 – rather than the observation of central and formal institutions – provides the focus for this chapter. Special attention will be given to the interaction between traditions and clanism in the Palestinian political landscape. Whilst the importance of informal power has been described by numerous Palestinian authors, a consensus on the definition of local political informality is yet to be reached: ‘factionalism’ (Hassassian 1990), ‘elitism’ (Sabella 1999), ‘localism’ (Tamari 1999), ‘neopatrimoniality’ (Jamal, A. 2005) and ‘tribalism’ (Kassem 2009) are only a few of the many labels used to capture the essence of Palestinian informal power. However, it might be worth noting that these categories reveal different aspects of a single phenomenon – that of traditional local power structures based on clan/family ties. The first section of this chapter examines the traditional structure of power in Palestinian society, with the aim of sketching the interactive patterns connecting traditions and clanism in Palestine’s historical continuum. The second part focuses on the post-Oslo era and considers the relationship between formal and informal power during the establishment of the new Palestinian ‘state’. Finally, the third section will centre on the influence of clanism on contemporary political struggles – focusing on the separation of Palestinian power over two governments, one in the Gaza strip and the other in the West Bank. Family ties and clanism have continued to play a pivotal role in the oPt, where they have traditionally represented a critically important source of power. Ultimately, this chapter is designed to discuss the connection between the clanist mindset of the population and the authoritarian attitudes of the current leaderships. This authoritarian practice, to a very significant extent, might be seen as a counter-trend in the Middle East region, where informal powers – both traditional local/tribal groups and elements of the new urban civil society – have been the protagonists of the Arab Spring. Analysing sociopolitical changes in the oPt, ultimately, might contribute to providing a more complex picture of the current Middle Eastern political reality.
Elite households in Gaza, c. 1900
2020
Throughout the Ottoman period, elite households and elite families were central figures in Middle Eastern urban politics; however, these entities were constructed in different ways according to time and period. Thanks to an exceptional source of documentation, the Ottoman census data of 1905, we are now able to reconstruct such households and families for the city of Gaza at the end of the Ottoman period in greater detail than ever before. This article examines the ways in which established elite families in late Ottoman Gaza [attempted to remain] endeavored to preserve their power and influence. It does not focus on the economic or political activities of these families or the narratives produced by them and about them, but mainly on their most private sphere; i.e., social relations within the household and between households belonging to one family. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which household members collaborated with each other to further their shared interests. B...
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2024
This paper provides a social and geographic account of al-Lajjun (Jenin Sub-district), a prominent Palestinian village during the British Mandate period (1918–1948). It portrays a countryside in renewal, encapsulated in the story of Umm al-Fahm’s expansion and Lajjun’s resettlement. In contrast to existing scholarship, the present work contextualizes the site within the wider diachronic, longue durée, history of the region, and the synchronous, shifting pattern of settlements in Marj ibn ‘Amir (Jezreel Valley), Bilad al-Ruha (Ramot Menashe), and Wadi ‘Ara (Nahal ‘Iron). It focuses on the development of the physical outlines of the (re)new(ed) village, with the development of three “Lajjuns” reflecting its founders’ Hebronite/Khalīlī patterns of settlement. Furthermore, it explores Lajjun’s diversified economy and its metamorphosis from a derelict hamlet into a hub of utilities and transportation infrastructure of regional importance under the British Mandate of Palestine (1920–1948).