by Ilan Pappe
The majordomo found the delegation from Jerusalem standing beside the guardhouse that had sprung up near the eunuchs’ quarters and watching open-mouthed as builders and masons completed the conversion of the harem from a traditional Ottoman structure into a baroque-rococo one.2
Abd al-Latif’s son Abdullah was the delegation’s leader. After the usual greetings, he addressed the chief eunuch as follows: ‘We urge our glorious son, Mehmet Aga, to do his utmost to distribute these gifts in accordance with our wishes, and may Allah prolong his days. To our benefactor, sheikh al-islam, a chest of soap, a jar of rose water and six head-coverings …’3
The list went on: former chief qadis, past and present naqibs al-ashraf of Istanbul, all received one or two fragrant chests and soft linen caps with the dignitaries’ names embroidered on them by daughters of the family. As on previous occasions, Mehmet was asked to obtain receipts showing that the gifts had reached their destinations. The list was usually made up of eighteen of the imperial capital’s dignitaries. Two chests were always assigned to the sheikh al-islam (who appointed local notables to the highest religious posts) to make sure he remembered Abd al-Latif’s four sons and would obtain plum positions for them in the city’s religious hierarchy.
Abdullah spent several days in the bustling capital and called on Zayn al-Abidin, Istanbul’s naqib al-ashraf, an exalted official empowered to appoint and discharge any naqib al-ashraf in the provincial capitals throughout the empire. Zayn al-Abidin assured Abdullah that the niqaba – the post of naqib al-ashraf of Jerusalem – would remain in the family, or, more precisely, remain his.4 The authorities also confirmed Abdullah in his post as supervisor of the sanctuary of Nabi Musa.
This time the mission was driven by some urgency: the governor of Damascus harassed the family by threatening to pass the niqaba to the Alami family. As noted before, ever since the appointment of Muhib al-Din al-Ghudayya to the post of mufti, the Alamis had coveted the post and had actually filled it for a while.
ABD AL-LATIF, FOUNDER OF THE NEW FAMILY
But all that was in the past, and in 1765 Abdullah was thinking about the future. Would he be able to repeat his father’s achievements?, he wondered.
Zayn al-Abidin clearly remembered Abdullah’s father. Al-Qudsi – ‘the Jerusalemite’ – was the nickname of the notable who sent him chests of fragrant soaps, sweet rose water and exquisite caps almost every year. The first such delivery arrived in 1740, accompanied by a letter begging for the post of naqib to be restored to the Ghudayyas. The letter vilified not only the Alamis but also their allies the Jarallahs, likewise one of the grandest families in the city. With amazing boldness, Abd al-Latif asked not only to have the post of naqib restored to him but also his father’s old post of sheikh al-haram, guardian of the city’s holy shrines. The letter was kept for several years in the Istanbul naqib’s office, until one day the loyalty of the Ghudayyas during the 1703 uprising was brought to mind and the decision was made to accede to Abd al-Latif’s request. Perhaps the sweet scents of the soaps and rose water helped.5
The letter of appointment arrived in the beginning of February 1745, and Abdullah could still quote it verbatim: ‘We hereby command that you be appointed naqib al-ashraf of the holy places in Jerusalem, Nablus, Gaza, Ramallah and Jenin. You are to treat respectfully all persons of high lineage. You are to preserve their legal rights …’ and so on and so forth. It was signed: ‘In all humility, the Honorable Ottoman naqib al-ashraf, Sayyid Zayn al-Abidin.’6
Once he held these two posts, Abd al-Latif’s sphere of influence stretched beyond Jerusalem. More importantly, the Alamis could not compete with his status and power. Khalil al-Muradi, the mufti of Damascus, who knew him personally, would write that Abd al-Latif controlled every aspect of life in Jerusalem, so powerful and dominant had he become.7 But it was not blind fortune that preserved Abd al-Latif’s exalted position – it was his tireless efforts to maintain good relations with the governor of Damascus and the authorities in Istanbul that ensured his standing and influence. He followed closely everything that took place at the sultan’s court, and every possible opponent of the sultan or the vizier received gifts from Abd al-Latif.
But times were changing. Abdullah complained to the high official in Istanbul that the source of the trouble lay in Damascus. In 1760 the sultan had appointed a new governor of Damascus, Othman Pasha, a harsh, tyrannical man who had been sent to the region in order to suppress the revolt of Dahir al-Umar, dubbed the ‘King of Galilee’ by the Franciscans in the country. Al-Umar was in fact much more attuned to the people and less ambitious as a king, but he did become a thorn in the empire’s side. This young Palestinian sheikh had sprung up and grown strong in the town of Saffuriya, and with his personal charm and well-placed bribes he persuaded the Ottoman authorities to make him governor of Galilee as well as its imperial tax collector. In 1735 he expanded his rule to Nazareth, Marj ibn Amr (the Jezreel Valley) and Nablus.8
When al-Umar expanded his sphere of influence, he threatened the valuable Hajj routes, which provided substantial revenues from levies on transit and encampment on the pilgrimage route to Mecca. (They also conferred honor and prestige on the person who protected the journey of the believers on their way to perform one of the five basic commandments of Islam.) Yet despite his grave infringement of Istanbul’s power, no one could defeat this man. In 1750 he expanded his rule to include Haifa and Tantura. His success encouraged other local potentates to encroach on Ottoman control of the Syrian districts. But it should be understood that what appeared to be the crumbling of imperial control was in reality a struggle for the representation of the empire and the collection of its taxes rather than attempts to displace it as the sovereign power. When a local potentate sought a larger share of the tax revenue, he was not actually challenging the empire. Istanbul’s decentralized, delegated power made such moves possible; only when the empire began to weaken would the rules of the game change, and then the central power would try to deter dominant figures in the provinces from embarking on independent courses.
Decades before, al-Umar had created enough uncertainty to allow relief from tax collection and other forms of annoying governing policies directed from Damascus. This was now over, and with the help of the new governor Damascus restored its position as the center of regional authority. At the time of Abdullah’s visit, the new governor in Damascus began to show satisfactory results in the attempt to contain Dahir al-Umar. He succeeded in strengthening Jerusalem’s attachment to Damascus, and hence to the empire.
But Abdullah complained in Istanbul that the new governor was more concerned with increasing his own wealth at the expense of the local notables than in suppressing the rebellious al-Umar. What Abdullah did not tell his host was that some months before going to Istanbul, he himself had sent emissaries to al-Umar in Acre, proposing cooperation against the tyrannical governor. However, the governor did hear about it, and forbade Abdullah’s father to leave his house – a punishment that was still in force for some time after Abdullah entered the imperial capital. So tyrannical did Damascus’ rule seem to Abdullah that he would have preferred to let his beloved city fall into Dahir al-Umar’s hands. Economic considerations combined with political ones prompted the family to support the Galilean ruler. Abdullah feared that more money would be taken by the governor in Damascus than by al-Umar. Moreover, the family’s fortunes were in decline due to the 1760 earthquake that shook Jerusalem and, although causing little loss of life, destroyed many of the family’s properties.9
Zayn al-Abidin reassured the young man, saying that his father’s connections in the capital would secure the family’s predominance in Jerusalem, even if they were at odds with Damascus. The Istanbul naqib, like other high imperial officials, habitually made such promises, not only to the Ghudayyas but to their rivals. The old imperial method of divide and rule enabled the central government to maintain control over its outlying provinces. Still, the family’s great wealth and generous gifts served to secure an advantage
over its rivals. This was a ruthless competition for limited resources and properties capable of sustaining only a handful of aristocratic families in Jerusalem.
The power of these families derived from the income they received for managing the sanctuaries and for the religious services they provided to the populace, and they strove to pass these posts and their properties on to their heirs. Abd al-Latif succeeded in conferring a prime position on his offspring, and his son had to work to keep it. The fate of the family hung in the balance. Since the Ghudayyas’ income came indirectly from the sultan himself, their lavish gifts were a kind of quid pro quo. Since the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the sultans had invested greatly in the holy places in Jerusalem, a good deal of their investment being in the form of rewards to the people who looked after the shrines, such as the sheikh al-haram, the mufti and others. So far as we know, the Ghudayyas had no sources of income outside the city walls. Still, the management of holy places and clerical posts was sufficient to make them wealthy by both contemporary and modern standards.
Muslim notables such as the Ghudayyas also accrued economic power from the debts owed to them by the Jewish and Christian communities. All members of the family lent money, and the debts increased from one generation to the next, enriching the family’s capital. Abd al-Latif himself passed on this kind of financial asset – not unlike modern bonds or shares – to his son Hassan and his daughter Budriya. The creditors were also the benefactors and patrons of the non-Muslim communities in the city. For example, the creditors of the Jews had the right to veto the community’s chosen leaders.
But there was no satisfying the governor of Damascus: the accruement of debts meant that the accruement of debts meant that the Ghudayyas were richer than before, and the governor thus expected them to pay more taxes. Despite Zayn al-Abidin’s assurances, Abdullah returned to Jerusalem with a heavy heart and a premonition that his family could expect a difficult time. His worries were confirmed as soon as he returned. Before he had rested from the journey, his family informed him that the situation had worsened. The governor of Damascus had openly allied himself with the rival families to depose Abd al-Latif from his post.
The campaign against Abd al-Latif had begun before Abdullah’s journey to Istanbul. It was led by the Dajani family, who headed the Shafi’i school in the city. (Each of the four canonical Islamic schools of law had its own judiciary.) The rumor that was spread in the city would not seem defamatory to us today, but at the time it could seriously damage Abd al-Latif’s standing. It began with an undeniable act that was typical of the man. Not far from his house lived the Jewish rabbi Aharon, who used to beat his son Hayim mercilessly. Abd al-Latif could not bear to see this and demanded that the rabbi stop the beatings, and indeed they stopped. The grateful lad must have decided that only Islam could save him from his abusive father, and asked to be converted. But Abd al-Latif refused to convert him. It was here that the slander began. Some claimed that Abd al-Latif was not interested in protecting the boy but was motivated by greed, and that he had been paid handsomely by the leaders of the Jewish community. Abd al-Latif had no choice but to petition the court, which decided that he was ‘a religious man and a true believer’ and that the slander was groundless.10
But the campaign went on, and it was only thanks to the mufti of Damascus, Khalil al-Muradi, Abd al-Latif’s devoted old friend, that the rival families were unable to carry out their scheme. The family enterprises were now being run by Abdullah, since his father was still confined to his house for the crime of corresponding with the Galilean rebel Dahir al-Umar. In effect, Abdullah had become the city’s naqib al-ashraf. Counseled by his friends in Damascus and Istanbul, he hoped to be successful in the post, which he had wanted but had not expected to take on so soon.11
In fact, Dahir al-Umar unwittingly saved the family from the hostile governor of Damascus. In September 1771, he routed the governor’s army in the Huleh Valley. To replace the defeated governor, Istanbul appointed Muhammad al-Azm, a scion of the chief notable family in Damascus, with whom the Ghudayyas had cordial relations. Al-Azm was no more successful than his predecessor in the fight against Dahir al-Umar, who continued to expand his kingdom. In 1773 al-Umar seized the entire area west of the Jordan (from the Litani River in the north to Bir Saba in the south); only Jerusalem and its environs remained under effective Ottoman rule.
Fortunately for Jerusalem, al-Umar had no interest in the city, but he did take a brief interest in the Ghudayyas. He believed that their status as a leading family – possibly already known as the Husaynis – could be useful to him in the regional power play. He therefore sent the heads of the family a letter asking them to mediate between him and Damascus.12 The family only rarely supported rebels against Ottoman rule; mostly they remained loyal to the central government, and they did so in this case too. In any event, Dahir al-Umar’s rise did not force them to become involved in regional political machinations, and since their local rivals showed no interest in the matter, they felt no need to deal with such a mighty force as Dahir al-Umar.
In November 1773, a new local figure successfully challenged both al-Umar and Istanbul. This was Ahmad al-Jazzar, or ‘Cezzar Ahmet’ as he was known in Turkish. (Since he knew no Arabic, it would be appropriate to call him by his Turkish name, but we will use his more common Arabic name.) Al-Jazzar would become a major figure in the region. He quickly rose from being a mercenary soldier to the position of provincial governor, betraying others who helped him along the way, such as Dahir al-Umar. During his ascent to power he visited Jerusalem, but we have no evidence of any contact with the Ghudayyas.
Dahir al-Umar and al-Jazzar were part of a general challenge from within to the empire’s authority in the Middle East. In the 1770s Istanbul was hard-pressed by its prolonged, bloody war with expansionist Russia, and this encouraged potentates in the provinces to try to unseat their Ottoman overlords. In Palestine, this new reality was manifested in a constant struggle for the land amongst Egyptian rulers, who gradually seceded from the empire, and ambitious governors in Damascus, Saida and Beirut.
Al-Jazzar added a new regional center, the city of Acre, which was responsible for most of Syria’s southern regions. After consolidating his role, al-Jazzar, in the service of the empire, succeeded in containing the Egyptian drive into Palestine.
During those years of regional strife, Jerusalem was not sought after by any of the warring parties. Nevertheless, its inhabitants were prey to more zealous tax collection every time one of the rivals gained the upper hand. However, because of all the confusion and ambiguity, this meant escaping the need to pay customary annual taxes. The city was also immune to the destruction wreaked by invading armies on towns in the adjoining districts of Jaffa, Gaza and Ramla. This urban space was quite often a battlefield for the belligerents.
These troubled times were relatively short and came to an end in the mid-1770s. During those years of unrest, the Husaynis, like other urban notables, were more concerned with financial matters than local politics. They were affected by the Ottoman monetary reform declared in the late seventeenth century, but only many years later. Until 1690 most of the Ottoman economy had been based on foreign rather than local currency, which limited the government’s ability to control its economy in the capitalist era, and the frequent wars in the late seventeenth century had further depleted the treasury. They decided to base the economy on a new imperial currency, the akce, a silver coin later replaced by the piastre. People began to buy the new currency from the government, paying in old specie, but the government preferred jewelry, diamonds and the like. The notables were ordered to hand over silver objects, as the metal was needed to mint the new imperial coins. The inhabitants of all the cities were obliged to pay for the Ottoman currency with gems and gold.13
The regional and local agitation subsided once Istanbul ended its long, bloody war with Russia with a peace treaty in 1774. With the capital at peace, it was possible to concentrate on pacifying the provinces. Al-Jazzar�
�s position was solidified alongside a loyal governor in Damascus.
In that year of relative calm, Abd al-Latif’s health began to decline. Perhaps he was worn out by the struggle against the governor of Damascus in addition to the rivalry with the other great families. But his failing health had to be kept secret. While Abdullah conducted most of his father’s business, by all appearances Abd al-Latif was still the city’s naqib al-ashraf.
He finally died in 1775, aged eighty-one (though some sources say he was ninety years old). The funeral was low-key. His body was placed in a casket and followed by the family and close friends. Dervishes and sheikhs bearing palm fronds murmured prayers, and everyone called out repeatedly: ‘There is no God but Allah!’ The casket was taken to the Haram al-Sharif, where it was placed on a stone plinth for people to walk past it before it was taken to the cemetery facing the Mount of Olives.14
While walking down to the cemetery, Abd al-Latif’s four sons discussed the future and shared out their father’s posts without dispute. Two of them will appear later in our narrative as they were the ones who were given a role in public life: Abdullah and Hassan. The other two were not given any posts or particular honors (their part of the family played no role in the public life of Jerusalem or Palestine but instead followed private careers in business or the sciences). Abdullah inherited the niqaba, which would remain in the family for a long time. In 1776 he was also appointed Sheikh al-Haram, a position that had always been in the family (that is, in the ‘appropriated’ Wafa’i family). However, Hassan had to wait five years for his post, and only in 1780, at the age of thirty-eight, was he appointed mufti of Jerusalem. Now the family had almost complete control of Jerusalem’s religious and social systems.