Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T23:35:39.399Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regional cooperation among the rural population of Palestine's southern coast as reflected in joint petitions to İstanbul at the end of the nineteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Yuval Ben-Bassat
Yuval Ben-Bassat*
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Middle Eastern History, Mount Carmel Haifa 31905, Israel, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The issue of regional connections and cooperation among the rural population in different parts of Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century has thus far not received adequate attention. This article presents case-studies of several villages in the sub-district of Gaza, which submitted joint petitions about common concerns to the Grand Vizier in İstanbul. It examines the significance of these petitions and discusses their characteristics, uniqueness, and historical context. It then moves on to discuss other forms of regional cooperation and nuclei of regional identification among the rural population, which in part had previous roots, and explores their repercussions for the development of regional identity alongside more commonly known identities concomitantly held by Palestine's population at the time. The submission of joint petitions to İstanbul, it is argued, was one of the key manifestations of a tendency toward greater regionalism in some regions of Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century, an occurrence which was less likely to happen prior to the Tanzimat reforms. While the literature has primarily focused on the activity of the urban educated circles in the process of regionalization, this article presents a unique bottom-up perspective that underscores the everyday experiences, practices and mechanisms of cooperation in a rural region which is rarely investigated.

Keywords

Late-nineteenth-century Palestineregional identityGazapetitionsregionalism
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 46 , Spring 2012 , pp. 213 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office, İstanbul (BOA): HR. TO., 554/56, Şubat 9,1292 [February 2,1877] (in Ottoman Turkish), 554/80, Nisan 6,1293 [April 18,1877] (in Ottoman Turkish); 390/2, Safer 1,1302 [November 20,1884] (in Ottoman Turkish); 395/44, Kânunuevvel 23,1306 [January 4,1891] (in Arabic); 395/60, Kânunusani 29, 1306 [February 10,1891] (in Arabic); 395/61, Şubat 5,1306 [February 17, 1891] (in Arabic); 395/104, Zilhicce 1, 1308 [July 8, 1891] (in Arabic); 396/79, Rebiyülâhır 18, 1309 [November 21,1891] (in Arabic); DH. EUM. EMN., 30/5, Temmuz 16,1329 [July 29,1913] (in Arabic).Google Scholar
Mikhtavim mi-Eretz-Yisrael, March 26,1893 [1/1 1893]. Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). "Maps 13 and 16." prepared between 1872 and 1877.Google Scholar
Ayalon, Ami. Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 7900–7948. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Baer, Gabriel. Fellah and Townsman in the Middle East: Studies in Social History. London: Frank Cass, 1982.Google Scholar
Baldensperger, Philip. ha-Mizrah ha-Bilti Mishtane / The Immovable East: Studies of the People and Customs of Palestine. Tel-Aviv: Misrad ha-Bitahon, 1982.Google Scholar
Ben-Bassat, Yuval. “In Search of Justice: Petitions Sent from Palestine to İstanbul from the 1870’s Onwards.” Turcica, no. 41 (2009): 89–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Bassat, Yuval. “Proto-Zionist-Arab Encounters in Late Nineteenth Century Palestine: Socioregional Dimensions.” Journal of Palestine Studies 38, no. 2 (2009): 42–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büssow, Johann. Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem. 7872–1908. Leiden: Brill, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campos, Michelle U.Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalcraft, John. “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3 (2005): 303–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Norman J., and Anton, Steichele. The Ottoman Post and Telegraph Offices in Palestine and Sinai. London: Sahara Publications, 2000.Google Scholar
Conder, C.R., and Kitchener, H.H.The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. Vol. II. London: The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1883.Google Scholar
Davison, Roderic H. “The Advent of the Electric Telegraph in the Ottoman Empire: How Morse’s Invention Was Introduced at the Time of the Crimean War.” In Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774–1923: The Impact of the West, edited by Roderic, H. Davison. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990. Google Scholar
de Jong, Frederick. “The Sufi Orders in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Palestine: A Preliminary Survey Concerning Their Identity, Organizational Characteristics and Continuity.” Studia Islamica, no. 58 (1983):149–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deringil, Selim. The Well Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909. London: I.B.Tauris, 1991.Google Scholar
Doumani, Beshara. “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History.” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (1992): 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Introduction.” In Coping with the State: Political Conflict and Crime in the Ottoman Empire, 1550–1720, edited by Suraiya, Faroqhi7–23. İstanbul: Isis Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Political Activity among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570–1650).” In Coping with the State: Political Confici and Crime in the Ottoman Empire, T¡¡o-ij20, edited by Suraiya, Faroqhi, 13–41. İstanbul: Isis Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Political Initiatives ‘from the Bottom up’ in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Ottoman Empire: Some Evidence for Their Existence.” In Coping with the State: Political Confici and Crime in the Ottoman Empire, 1550–1720, edited by Suraiya, Faroqhi, 1–11. İstanbul: Isis Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Frantzman, Seth J., and Ruth, Kark. “Bedouin Settlement in Late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine: Influence on Cultural and Environmental Landscape, 1870–1948.” New Middle Eastern Studies, no. 1 (2011): 1–22.Google Scholar
Gerber, Haim. Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985.Google Scholar
Gerber, Haim. Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present. New York: Palgrave, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Haim. Stote, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Grossman, David. ha-Ukhlusiya ha-’Arvit veha-Ma’ahaz ha-Yehudi: Tifroset u-Tsfifut be-Eretz-Yisra’el be-Shalhe ha-Tkufa ha- Otmanit uvi-Tkufat ha-Mandat / Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density During the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2004.Google Scholar
Grossman, David. “ha-Yishuv ha-Kafri be-Mishor Pleshet uva-Shefelah ha-Nemukha / Rural Settlement in the Southern Coastal Plain and the Shefelah, 1835–1945.” Cathedra, no. 45 (1987): 57–86.Google Scholar
Guérin, Victor. Te’ur Ce’ografi, Histori ve-ArkhiOlogi shel Erets-Yisra’el [Geographical, Historical, and Archeological, Description of the Land of Israel]. Translated from French by Hayim, Ben-’Amram. Vol. I–2. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1982 [1868].Google Scholar
Hissin, Haim. Mi-Reshumot Ehad ha-Biluyim / Memoirs and Letters of an Early Pioneer. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1990.Google Scholar
Hoexter, Miriam. “The Role of the Qays and Yaman Factions in Local Political Divisions: Jabal Nâblus Compared with the Judean Hills in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.” African and Asian Studies, no. 9(1973):249–311.Google Scholar
Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter, and Kamal, Abdulfattah. Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlangen: Palm and Enke, 1977.Google Scholar
Karateke, Hakan T.Padişahım Çok Yasa! Osmanlı Devletinin Son Yüzyılında Merasimler [Long Live the Sultan! Ceremonies in the Ottoman Empire During Its Last Century], İstanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2004.Google Scholar
Kark, Ruth, and Michal, Oren-Nordheim. Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800-1548. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, Rashid. “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War I.” In Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward, Said and Christopher, Hitchens, 207–233. London: Verso, 2001.Google Scholar
Kressel, Gideon, and Reuven, Aharoni. “Masa’e Ukhlusim mi-Mitsrayim la-Levant ba-Me‘ot ha-Tesha’ ‘Esre veha-’Esrim / Egyptian Immigrants in the Bilad ΑΙ-Sham.” Jama’a, no. 12 (2004): 201–245.Google Scholar
Levin-Epstein, Eliyahu. Zikhronotai [My Memoirs). Tel-Aviv: ha-Ahim Levin-Epstein, 1932.Google Scholar
Niman, David. be-Reshit Baroh […]: Zikhronotav shel David Niman [In the Beginning {…}: The Memoirs of David Niman]. Tel-Aviv: [Private Publication], 1962/3.Google Scholar
al-Qatrawi, Jamal ’Abd al-Rahim. Qatra: Al-Huwiyya wal-Ta’rikh [Qatra: Its Characteristics and History]. Gaza: National Center for Studies & Documentation, 2000.Google Scholar
Reilly, James. “The Peasantry of Late Ottoman Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studiesio, no. 4 (1981): 82–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson Lees, Rev. G.Village Life in Palestine: A Description of the Religion, Home Life, Manners, Customs, Characteristics and Superstitions of the Peasants of the Holy Land, with Reference to the Bible. Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905.Google Scholar
Rogan, Eugene. “Instant Communication: The Impact of the Telegraph in Ottoman Syria.” In The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation, Bilad Al-Shamfrom the 18th to the 20th Century, edited by Thomas, Philipp and Brigit, Schaebler, 113–128. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998.Google Scholar
Schölch, Alexander. Palestine in Transformation 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic and Political Development. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1993.Google Scholar
Shim’oni, Ya’aqov. Arve frets Yisra’el [The Arabs of Eretz-Yisrael]. Tel-Aviv: ’Am Oved, 1947.Google Scholar
al-Tabba’, ’Uthman, İthaf al-A’izza fi Ta’rikh Ghazza [Presenting the Notables in the History of Gaza], ed¬ited by Abu-Hashim, ’Abdullatif Z. Vol. 4. Gaza: Maktabat al-Yaziji, 1999.Google Scholar
Tahsin, Paşa. Abdülhamit: Yıldız Hatıraları [Abdülhamid: Yıldız Palace Memories], İstanbul: Ahmet Halit Kitaphanesi, 1931.Google Scholar
Tamari, Salim. Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ursinus, Michael. Grievance Administration (Şikayet) in an Ottoman Province: The Kaymakam ofRumelia’s ‘Record Book of Complaints’ of 1781–1783. London: Routledge, 2005.Google Scholar
Vilnay, Zeev. Toldot ha-’Aravim veha-Muslemim Be-Eretz-Yisra’el [The History of Arabs and Muslims in Eretz-Yisra’el]. Vol. 2. Tel-Aviv: A.L. Stiebel, 1932.Google Scholar