In 1912, the Arab journalist Yusuf al-ʿIsa from Jaffa published an editorial in Filastin (“Palestine”) in which he declared it the duty of a journalist to be cognizant of the state of the different cities of the country, and especially their relative “civilizational progress.” ʿIsa then went on to relate that he sailed 60 kilometers south to Gaza, the third-largest city in the District of Jerusalem, to survey it. When approaching the city from the coast, his first impression was gloomy. Gaza’s infrastructure was derelict. The main road connecting the small port to the city center was not wide enough for carriage traffic, and in winter, he learned, the road was practically impassable. The sandy coastal areas around Gaza were put to the collective use (mushaʿ) of the locals to collect firewood. Despite appeals to register this land as mahlula (uncultivated state-owned land that could be reclaimed based on usage), open it up for farming, and sell it off to private individuals, no steps had been taken and it was left undeveloped. Gaza’s architecture was dull, wrote ʿIsa, as is common in the “Oriental cities” (al-mudun al-sharqiyya), with its typical narrow alleyways bordered by “miserable, convoluted buildings” (al-abniya al-haqira al-mutarakiba).
ʿIsa only found two positive features in Gaza: the new hospital, albeit still under construction, and the good quality of the local water. Gaza’s notables, ʿIsa noted, had recently asked the city’s municipality to install new pipes to supply clean running water to the inhabitants. ʿIsa’s usage of a Biblical quote from the Prophet Zephaniah about Gaza’s abandonment, which was reproduced here in the Introduction, gave the report a decidedly apocalyptic cast. “Abandonment” for modern Gaza meant that the city had been “left to its own devices by the government, isolated from the world, abandoned by God.”Footnote 1 ʿIsa’s alarmist tone was clearly a rhetorical device by a journalist who saw it as his mission “to alert public opinion” through trenchant commentary.Footnote 2 However, his description of Gaza as a stagnant backwater of the Ottoman Empire, a marginal location with considerable economic potential but only faint hopes for future development, sometimes associated with clichés of the “Oriental” cityFootnote 3 and negative Biblical associations about the land of the Philistines, was part of a larger discourse that pervaded many other contemporary texts dealing with Gaza.
Popular historians of Gaza in the twentieth century took up certain features of this discourse.Footnote 4 Decline diagnoses have a long pedigree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.Footnote 5 Despite much scholarly criticism of various “decline paradigms,” this notion still appears in public and scholarly discourse with remarkable frequency on what today is called the Middle East.Footnote 6 By contrast, this chapter seeks to establish an alternative framework that should allow for a more balanced assessment of Gaza’s development in various fields, especially its economy, population growth, and geostrategic position.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to consider Gaza as something of an outlier among the cities located along the Palestinian coast during the late nineteenth century. Despite its considerable size, Gaza was often overlooked by travelers and was not on the main pilgrimage routes of the Holy Land. It had no major port facilities, unlike those built elsewhere on the Eastern Mediterranean, which had led to a surge in the development of other services, the construction of new buildings and neighborhoods, and rapid modernization. It boasted no settlement or colonization activity by foreigners and had no sizeable Christian or Jewish populations that would attract European investments. It was further marginalized as a caravan city after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which led to the rerouting of trade and pilgrimage land routes to easier and faster maritime itineraries. All these factors contributed to the erroneous image of Gaza by historians of this period as a city on the fringes of Ottoman Palestine of no particular importance. To rectify this perspective, this chapter examines the major trends in Gaza’s economic development, its geostrategic situation, and its cross-border connections. It does not deal with the dramatic events of WWI, which led to Gaza’s partial devastation, since these constitute a distinctive, short, and very traumatic period that deserves treatment in its own right.
Within the Ottoman system of provincial administration, as it was structured after the end of Egyptian rule in the 1840s and reformed by the 1864 Vilayet Law and subsequent regulations, Gaza as the center of a subdistrict exercised its control over a sizable part of the Palestinian region that included 59 villages.Footnote 7 The Ottoman presence in Gaza, however, was fairly limited and is not well documented to date. The salname of Syria of 1286/1870 provides a glimpse into this administrative reality at the beginning of the period discussed here.Footnote 8
In the section on the southern Palestinian region, Gaza is mentioned in second place, after Jerusalem but before Jaffa. Only five posts are mentioned in the kaza administration: the subdistrict governor (kaymakam) ʿAbdallah Efendi, the chief judge (naʾib), Mehmed ʿAli Faqih al-Din Efendi, the mufti, Muhyi al-Din Efendi [al-Husayni], a financial director (mal müdürü), Yusuf Efendi Bulad, and the chief scribe (tahrirat katibi), Jurays Efendi. Judging by their names, all probably had an Arab, possibly Palestinian background, with the possible exception of the kaymakam, ʿAbdallah Efendi. Seven members of the local Administrative Council (Meclis-i İdare ve-duʿavi aʿzası) are listed. As members of the council, they were very likely locals, but none had last names that can be related to local families, except Khalil al-Shawwa (1818–1884), a politically active businessman whom we will meet again in Chapter 4. One can be identified as Christian by his name of Danyal.
A statistical table prepared by the District of Jerusalem during WWI gives an overview of the kaza’s territorial organization at the end of the period discussed here. It lists four rural districts (nahiyes): Gaza itself (with 15 associated villages), Majdal (with 27 villages), Faluja (with 15 villages), and Khan Yunis (with only two villages).Footnote 9
Economic Change
Gaza and its surrounding region underwent profound transformation from the 1860s onwards, which impacted the foundations of its economy. The decline of caravan routes between Syria and Egypt was at least partially offset by the growing export of barley, the region’s main cash crop through Gaza’s small port, which took on renewed importance.
The main constant in Gaza’s history from Antiquity to the late Ottoman period was caravan trade. Its location at a major crossroads at the southern tip of the Eastern Mediterranean made this oasis-like city important and sustained dense urban life. Gaza was a hub for people, goods, and ideas on the ancient overland route (the Via Maris) that connected the Syrian lands with Egypt and was known during the Ottoman period as al-Tariq al-Sultani (the Sultanic road, see Figure I.3). A second route led from Gaza to ʿAqaba on the northern shore of the Red Sea via ʿAwja, in the border region between the Negev and Sinai. A third led southeast from Gaza towards the northern Negev, where Beersheba was built from scratch by the Ottoman government in 1900. A fourth route led east from Gaza towards Hebron, in the southern part of the Judean Mountains. Numerous other local small roads branched out from Gaza towards nearby villages in the Subdistrict of Gaza.Footnote 10
As early as the Abbasid period, Gaza was indirectly affected by the Hajj, the great annual pilgrimage to Mecca. During the Ottoman period, pilgrims (together with their companies of soldiers, merchants, and merchandise) came in large caravans from Damascus southwards via Transjordan and onwards to the Hijaz via ʿAqaba or further east via Tabuk, on what was known as the Syrian Hajj Route (darb al-hajj al-shami). A smaller caravan route extended from Cairo eastwards via the Sinai Peninsula and was known as the Egyptian Hajj Route, which crossed the Sinai Desert from Suez to ʿAqaba (darb al-hajj al-misri). None of these pilgrimage routes passed directly through Gaza,Footnote 11 but a secondary travel and pilgrimage route went through the city itself, and was used mostly by pilgrims from southern Palestine. Pilgrims who used it would provision themselves in Gaza’s markets and travel southwards to ʿAqaba via ʿAwja. An Ottoman map drawn up during the 1906 border negotiations with Britain following the ʿAqaba incident clearly depicts this route and the Egyptian Hajj Route (see Figure 1.1).Footnote 12
Figure 1.1 An Ottoman map of Sinai drawn after the ʿAqaba Incident of 1906 with added captions. The map shows possible locations of the Sinai–Palestine administrative dividing line between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Map legend: (1) Jerusalem, (2) Dead Sea, (3) Gaza, (4) District of Jerusalem, (5) ʿAqaba, (6) Beersheba, (7) Mediterranean Sea, (8) Gulf of ʿAqaba, (9) Red Sea, (10) Gulf of Suez, (11) Province of Egypt, (12) Sinai Peninsula, (13) Suez, (14) “region given to Egyptian rule as a temporary deposit,” (15) Rafah, (16) Al-ʿArish, and (17) Tarabin tribe.
Gaza’s commercial role in the Hajj provision is often overlooked in research, even though the city was connected to the pilgrimage in many ways. Some of Gaza’s governors served as leaders of the Damascus caravans (amir al-hajj al-shami),Footnote 13 and Gaza played an important role in provisioning the Hajj caravans with grain, which was collected in the region and relocated to granaries along the routes, as recorded in correspondence between Ottoman officials. One of the major structures in Gaza’s government compound was a large grain depot (ʿanbar) located immediately adjacent to the government building (saray) and the army barracks.Footnote 14 A cluster of private storehouses (hawasil) at the southern end of the city, near the roads towards al-ʿArish and ʿAqaba, is likely to have housed more grain.Footnote 15 There were two markets for beasts of burden close by, which were also probably connected to Gaza’s role as a caravan city: the Donkey Market (Suq al-Hamir) near the road to al-ʿArish and the Camel Market (Suq al-Jimal) right on the road to ʿAqaba.Footnote 16
The opening of the Suez Canal put a dent in Gaza’s importance in supplying the Hajj caravans, as a crossroads for a secondary Hajj route, and in its income from trade in general. From then on, virtually all the goods that had been traded on the caravan route went on steamers, as did the pilgrims on the Egyptian route who took boats to Jeddah instead of crossing the Sinai Desert on foot.Footnote 17 In the absence of documentary evidence, the consequences for the inhabitants of Gaza and its region remain largely speculative. However, it must have affected the livelihoods of a large number of people from different walks of life, including grain producers, merchants, artisans, and the Bedouins who provided animals for the convoys.Footnote 18 The decline of caravan trade in Gaza is well reflected in comments by the Archduke of Austria, Ludwig Salvator, who visited the Sinai Peninsula and southern Palestine in 1879 to examine the possibilities for future development and infrastructure projects:
[S]ince the opening of the Suez Canal, the greater part of the traffic between Syria and Egypt is carried on by the short water route viâ Jaffa and Port Said, in consequence of which the old highway, formerly so frequented by caravans, travelers, and pilgrims, is now deserted and forgotten. Even the cattle-dealers now prefer to send their stock by steamer from the great export harbour of Jaffa to Alexandria, so that only a few camel-drivers are to be met with on the once favourite route.Footnote 19
Importantly, Salvator also notes that the traffic on the road from Syria to Egypt, although it dropped tremendously, did not come to a complete halt.Footnote 20 The economic loss for Gaza might have been somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Damascus caravans continued to operate until the completion of the Hijaz Railway in 1908.Footnote 21 Thus, not surprisingly, the 1905 Ottoman census for Gaza still lists numerous occupations that were traditionally identified with the caravan trade, such as traders of beasts of burden, porters, cameleers, and the like. However, another economic trend provided Gaza with new opportunities: the unprecedented rise in grain exports.
Since Antiquity, the coastal lands around Gaza had been one of the breadbaskets of the Eastern Mediterranean. As Faruk Tabak has shown, the idea of grain production as a perennial feature of a cohesive Mediterranean culture is a cliché. In fact, the production and trade of this most basic food staple experienced significant and sometimes dramatic changes over the centuries. From the seventeenth century onwards, a combination of factors, including climate change, the weakening of Ottoman state control, and the growing nomadic population caused grain production to drop, whereas animal husbandry and orchards in the mountain regions offered alternative livelihoods.Footnote 22 Roger Owen and other economic historians have argued that only the increased security and the settlement of nomads in the plains of Bilad al-Sham after 1840 made large-scale grain growing possible again.Footnote 23
Increased maritime transportation, in particular after the introduction of steamships, allowed for relatively cheap export to Europe. The lifting of the British Corn Laws in 1846, which nullified the high tariffs on imported cereals, added an additional impetus. Meanwhile, declining returns from other industries prompted merchants in Beirut, the Eastern Mediterranean’s economic capital, to invest in what was increasingly becoming a “grain economy,”Footnote 24 starting primarily in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Grain exports, sometimes complemented by other local cash crops such as cotton from the Adana-Mersin regionFootnote 25 or Jaffa orangesFootnote 26 became the driver of massive urban development in a number of coastal cities.Footnote 27 The entire complex of economic, architectural, and cultural features became known as “the Eastern Mediterranean port city” that also led to the rise of the middle classes, more opportunities for members of the Christian and Jewish communities, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, cultural hybridization, and a new culture of leisure and sociability.Footnote 28 These trends emerged in the imperial capital Istanbul, Smyrna/Izmir, and in Salonica beginning in the 1850s, and were felt somewhat later in Bilad al-Sham, mainly in the four decades preceding WWI. They introduced new and dynamic economic and cultural models into the urban landscape of Bilad al-Sham, which could then compete with the old commercial and political centers of the interior, such as Aleppo and Damascus.Footnote 29 The latter were eventually also transformed by the new economic and cultural trends, as reflected, for example, in the modification of existing urban structures or the construction of new suburbs.
This is the general backdrop for the evaluation of the development of any city in this region and period. Gaza was part of this general process, but in its own way. Natural conditions in the greater region of Gaza, including the vast plains of the northern Negev, and the dry and salty lands with their annual precipitation of less than 200 mm on average especially in the areas further southeast, made Gaza a difficult and less suitable terrain for growing wheat. By contrast, unlike other varieties of grain, barley and millet were perfectly suited to these conditions. There was also considerable expertise among the local population on optimal methods to exploit small but well-watered locations such as the beds of seasonal streams (wadis) for growing barley, even far into the arid Negev lands. Geographers describe this method as “patchy dry farming.” Traditionally it yielded enough grain to supply the Bedouins for bread-baking, feed their cattle and sheep in the summer, and supply caravans that passed through Gaza on their way to Egypt, Syria, or the Hijaz. The American geographer Ellsworth Huntington noted his impressions of Bedouin (“Arab”) agriculture, when he traveled through the plains south of Beersheba in April 1909, after a period of rainfall:
Here and there a few Arabs were tented beside heaps of earth like huge beehives six feet high, under which much straw and a little grain was stored. Every mile or two we came upon the strange sight of a camel drawing a plough, perhaps with a baby camel running alongside. Or else we passed a group of three or four Arabs coming down from the north with primitive wooden ploughs swung on the sides of their slow-stepping beasts. The news of the rains of the past few days had already reached the nomads near Hebron and Jaffa, and they were hastening back to plant a little millet, in the hope of having something to eat next winter aside from the products of the flocks and herds. Furrows are ploughed about three or four feet apart, and in these the seed is planted. Millet will grow in the driest land, provided water is abundant at the start and the sun is warm enough to promote rapid growth.Footnote 30
As the adjectives “strange,” “primitive,” and “little” suggest, Huntington probably underestimated the capacity of local agriculture. He also overlooked the importance of barley. However, he noted himself that around Tall al-Hasi, in the more fertile lands east of Gaza, Bedouin landowners employed peasants to grow grain: “The land here, being close to the dry Negeb, belongs to wandering Beduin […]; but on the hilltops small houses are scattered about, the homes of the Fellahin servants who till the land for their wandering masters.”Footnote 31
It required no permanent attendance by peasants, as local customary law (ʿurf) guaranteed protection of these cultivated patches, as well as the mudbrick storage facilities mentioned by Huntington.Footnote 32 After 1880, the rising value of land appears to have initiated processes of territorialization and land privatization. Tribal grazing territory was divided into individually sown fields, and wells were privatized. This was accompanied by a series of inter-tribal agreements on land use. As of the 1890s, the Ottoman government adopted these newly negotiated tribal boundaries in its attempt to increase its control over the Negev.Footnote 33 As can be seen in Figure 1.1, such tribal boundaries also served the Ottoman Empire in making claims for territorial control vis-à-vis British-controlled Egypt (note item 17 on the map, the Tarabin tribe, whose presence served as an argument for Ottoman territorial claims over a large part of the northern Sinai).
Since the 1870s, Gazan merchants had exported their growing surplus of barley from the greater Gaza region to Europe, where demands were on the rise.Footnote 34 The growth in exports from the port of Gaza was largely due to the export of barley to Britain, where it was needed for the beer industry, particularly for producing the lighter beer that became more popular in the mid-century. The barley grown in the meagrely rain-fed northern Negev plains could be exported to Britain in the early spring, before barley from other places was ready to harvest, which constituted a major advantage on the international market.Footnote 35 In the Negev itself, better security conditions, the Empire’s increased regulation and control of this region, and its policy that encouraged sedentarization of Bedouin groups and the cultivation of their land, in addition to a rare sequence of exceptionally rainy years, all led to increased cultivation of barley, especially by Bedouins.Footnote 36
In 1898, John Dickson, the British consul in Jerusalem, estimated that 600 tons of sorghum, 4,000 tons of wheat, and 30,000 tons of barley, three-quarters of southern Palestine’s total barley exports, were shipped to Britain from Gaza onboard British steamers. Only a small fraction was exported to the markets of Jaffa and Egypt.Footnote 37 The average value of Gaza’s barley exports to Britain alone was nearly twice the average of Jaffa’s famous oranges.Footnote 38 Bringing this voluminous and precious load safely aboard the trading vessels required considerable logistic efforts and suitable port facilities. This was Gaza’s weak point, since it did not have a natural deep-water port.
As shown in the aerial photo of Gaza and its environs in the Introduction, contrary to common wisdom,Footnote 39 during the Ottoman period, Gaza was a caravan and not a port city. It only had a small wharf located some four kilometers west of the city, inland from the extensive sand dunes.Footnote 40 Since Gaza had no natural harbor, large steam ships could not dock there. Thus, they had to unload relatively far from the shore and place their goods on small boats that shuttled between the coast and the ships anchoring in deep waters.Footnote 41 The geographer Huntington provides a vivid depiction of this situation:
Gaza […] is harborless. Down by the beach, and separated from the city by nearly a mile of sand dunes, a whitewashed custom-house mounts guard over a small wooden wharf and a few sailboats. Occasionally a steamer calls to carry away barley in exchange for a load of iron or cloth for sale to the Beduin; but ships large enough to go to sea must anchor a mile from shore, and can discharge their loads in lighters only in calm weather.
Needless to say, this was an expensive, complicated, and inefficient process that led to considerable damage to goods, as well as to the boats themselves. Given that the commercial potential of Gaza’s port at the time was mainly associated with specific commodities and its potential to serve as a major regional port was limited, the Municipality of Gaza, together with the Ottoman imperial authorities, searched for ways to resolve the predicament of the port and raise funds to finance construction works at the site.Footnote 42 After years of deliberations that started as early as 1893, the Ottoman State Council finally approved a plan to construct a pier in Gaza in 1905 and to levy a special tax on products imported and exported from the port which was earmarked to be used to construct a hospital in the city and to upgrade its infrastructure. Historian Dotan Halevy notes:
In March–May 1905, the State Council and a subsidiary “special committee” approved the final plan for the port. In order to start construction on the pier and pave a road to it, the municipality of Gaza was instructed to take out a loan of 2,000 Turkish pounds. According to this plan, once the pier was completed, local authorities could start collecting duty from merchants, which in turn would cover interest on the loan, the pier’s maintenance costs, and finally the building of the long-awaited hospital. Parceling and auctioning the sand dunes would be put off to a later phase in order for their price to appreciate after the new infrastructure was built. This iteration of the plan once again incorporated the hospital and tax collection into the same scheme. An addendum to the State Council’s approval specified which import and export items would henceforth be taxed. They included cereals, oranges, rice, sugar, luggage, liquids, finished goods, domestic animals, pack animals, cattle, as well as passengers.Footnote 43
The pier was finally constructed in 1906, a dozen years or so after it was first discussed. It was 60 meters long and 8 meters wide, but it did not provide a solution to the problem for which it was intended in the first place; that is, the lack of a natural deep-water harbor. In addition, it did not last long because in the absence of a breakwater, the waves quickly caused corrosion and damage. Moreover, it was impossible to safely navigate next to the pier, so lighter boats that were loaded with goods to be carried out to ships anchoring in deeper waters avoided using it in the first place and preferred the previous system.Footnote 44
Gaza’s partial transition from a caravan city to a port city was incomplete and entailed high risks, given the dependency on a single product, barley, as the main export that was subject to severe fluctuations in demand, weather, and precipitation.Footnote 45 The residents of Gaza and its region had to adapt to these changes whether they wanted to or not, and make the best of the situation to maintain their sources of livelihood. Two decades of exceptionally good rain and rich harvests created the illusion that the “barley bonanza”Footnote 46 would only be the beginning of sustainable economic growth with steady returns for producers, merchants, and the Ottoman state.Footnote 47 British observers also envisioned great development plans for Gaza given the impressive growth in barley exports, including a railway link to Transjordan that would increase British access to grain growing regions, and allow Gaza to be a regional hub for grain exports.Footnote 48 However, in the end, Gaza’s barley became yet another example of a number of Eastern Mediterranean monocultures that led to a severe economic downturn when local, regional, and global circumstances deteriorated.Footnote 49
Yet, looking back on the four decades since the opening of the Suez Canal, there was no all-out decline in Gaza’s economy. This assessment is also borne out by the available estimates of the city’s population, which all point to a slow but steady population growth during this period.Footnote 50 Nonetheless, the city and its region had to adapt to several successive shocks. Two of these, the cholera epidemic of 1902 and the end of the “barley bonanza” were particularly severe. Thus, despite partially successful adaptation to the changing economic circumstances of the previous decades, on the eve of WWI Gaza found itself in a major economic crisis.
It remains unclear how these transformations impacted the population of Gaza or how they were perceived in the memories of past generations. From the historical records available for the Ottoman period from its beginnings in 1517 up to the 1850s, changing fortunes, the vagaries of rainfall, migration, and conflicts over resources, for example, between Bedouin herders, farmers, and the tax authorities, were characteristic of everyday life.Footnote 51 The period of Ottoman rule started with a rebellion of Gaza’s population, which was quickly put down.Footnote 52 In the mid-seventeenth century, the Ottoman government was able to reduce the power of the local Ridwan Dynasty that controlled the southern part of Palestine by sending their dominant leader Husayn Pasha to Istanbul where he was murdered in 1662/1663.Footnote 53 Later on, catastrophic events also took their toll: the invasion of French troops in 1799, in the context of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign and his push towards Acre,Footnote 54 and about a generation later, the decade of Egyptian rule between 1831 and 1840.Footnote 55 All these events reshuffled the economic and social opportunities in Gaza.Footnote 56
The Egyptian Factor
Throughout its history, Gaza engaged in vast, complex relationships with Egypt. From the early nineteenth century, these were decisively shaped by the fact that the Ottoman province of Egypt was ruled by the family of Mehmed (Muhammad) ʿAli who maintained tense relations with Istanbul. Vital links between the populations of Gaza and Egypt had been established through trade, the settlement of Egyptian peasants around Gaza, and emigration from the Gaza region in the opposite direction. It also included the presence of Gazan students and ʿulamaʾ in al-Azhar college, Bedouin tribes that roamed between the Negev and Sinai regularly, Sufi tariqas that established institutions on both sides, and patronage relationships of some of Gaza’s elite families with the Khedive of Egypt. Some of these ties were anathema to Istanbul, which had doubts as to the peaceful intentions of the house of Mehmed ʿAli that had conquered Palestine and Syria in the 1830s and brought the Ottoman Empire to the brink of collapse. Fears that Egypt would once again become a threat to the Empire were revived after the British occupied Egypt in 1882, which gradually turned the Gaza region into a political and military frontier zone.
Gaza’s relationships with Egypt were pervasive and visible in everyday life. The Baedeker travel guide emphasized the visibility of Egyptian cultural influences in Gaza when writing, “Gaza is a town of semi-Egyptian character; the veil of the Moslem women, for example, closely resembles the Egyptian. The bazaar, too, has an Egyptian appearance.”Footnote 57 Rafeq, when analyzing the remnants of the Shariʿa court records from Gaza, mentions that the terms wikala for trading house and khatt for street indicated the strong Egyptian influence in everyday vocabulary.Footnote 58 Examining the extant Gaza sijill records from the 1850s shows the degree to which the Egyptian involvement was strong in Gaza: numerous people bore the laqab al-Misri, “the Egyptian,” better known in its colloquial form “al-Masri,” which in the 1905 census appears as a frequent last name.Footnote 59 In other cases a place of origin in Egypt is mentioned when people appeared in the court. Payments registered in the surviving court records were often made in Egyptian silver coins (fidda misriyya).
There is evidence of repeated waves of immigration of Egyptian agricultural workers and Bedouins who settled in the Subdistrict of Gaza,Footnote 60 but also the reverse trend when people left the subdistrict for Egypt because of declining economic opportunities or acute crises. Leaving Gaza for Egypt was obviously used as a threat when complaining to the central authorities in Istanbul. This threat was a common tactic in negotiations between the central government and populations in the Empire’s provinces throughout Ottoman history as part of the idea of the “Circle of Justice” that Ottoman political thought adhered to.Footnote 61 According to this notion, all components of society and governance depend on each other and if one of them is out of balance, the whole structure of the state and society is in jeopardy. For instance, if there is no justice, peasants will run away or rebel and stop paying taxes. In this case, the state coffers will be emptied and there will be no way to support the bureaucracy or finance the army, thus putting the ruler’s hold in danger.Footnote 62 However, in the case of Gaza, there may have been more than a conventional rhetorical device at stake. The number of people who stated in petitions to Istanbul that they were ready to leave Gaza are certainly rounded upwards and perhaps provide only rough estimates of the magnitude of the phenomenon. Other specifics in these complaints, however, seem so concrete that they can be taken at least as credible indications of where people from Gaza might have gone if they planned to leave.
For example, petitioners in 1895 stated that “five hundred households” of peasants or agricultural workers (fallahin in colloquial Arabic) were about to leave for either Egypt or the Syrian region of Hawran.Footnote 63 The mention of the latter region is particularly interesting since compared to Egypt the Hawran was farther away and less well connected to Gaza and was often subjected to violent conflicts.Footnote 64 However, it was a major grain-growing region in the midst of an economic boom and as such would have provided grain-growers from the Gaza region with familiar conditions. Another petition goes as far as saying that “ten thousand people have already left the region of Gaza and moved to the Hawran and to Egypt,” a number which must have been inflated for rhetorical purposes by the petitioner, who defines himself as a “loyal (subject) who loves the state.”Footnote 65
Another wave of emigration from Gaza and its region was caused by the cholera epidemic, which hit the region hard in 1902. Reports indicate that some 18,000 people may have left the region and some 3,000 to 4,000 people may have died from the disease.Footnote 66 The epidemic reached Gaza from Egypt, which led to the closure of Gaza’s port in mid-October 1902 and to unsuccessful Ottoman attempts to prevent people and goods moving north of al-ʿArish where a quarantine station was set up in the summer of 1902 in the direction of Gaza. The Bedouins, we are told, refused to comply: people paid bribes to officials to be able to pass and the authorities hesitated to act.Footnote 67
Five years later, a mass emigration of rural producers seems to have taken place not so much for political but mainly for climatic and economic reasons. In 1907, after a very dry winter and dramatic crop failures, the British consul in Jerusalem estimated that as many as 5,000 of the Gaza region’s 40,000 inhabitants had left the region, probably for Egypt.Footnote 68
Al-Azhar and Elite Networks
A large number of the prominent Gazan scholars, religious leaders and administrators graduated from al-Azhar in Cairo. Studying at this most prestigious Islamic college provided aspiring young men from Gaza with a first-rate education in Islamic law and related disciplines. It qualified them for important and well-paid positions in the religious sector, local government, or in one of the municipal or district councils. No less importantly, it also provided graduates with a social network in Egypt, which many maintained throughout their lives. Biographical data on Gaza’s political elites of the period illustrate the importance of al-Azhar graduates in the city’s public life.
For example, one of the most prominent al-Azhar graduates was Ahmad Muhyi al-Din al-Husayni (1808/1809–1878). During his lifetime, he held all three of the highest Islamic religious offices in Gaza: that of the Hanafi mufti, the supreme judge (kadi), and the preacher (khatib) of the Grand Mosque (al-ʿUmari Mosque), the city’s main mosque.Footnote 69 He also initiated the construction of a new mosque and madrasa on the site of the tomb of al-Sayyid Hashim (Jamiʿ Sayyidina Hashim), Gaza’s most revered local saint, during the time of Sultan ʿAbdülmecid (1839–1861), who partially financed the project.Footnote 70
Muhammad Saqallah, who served as the mufti of Gaza one short term in the mid-1870s, was also a graduate of al-Azhar. He was born in Gaza in 1227 (1812), started studying at al-Azhar in 1249 (1833), and stayed there for a period of seven years. After moving back to Gaza, he taught in the Grand Mosque of Gaza, practiced Islamic jurisprudence, and concomitantly worked in commerce.Footnote 71
The scholar-cum-Sufi Shaykh Ahmad Busaysu was a highly important graduate of al-Azhar who lived in Gaza. Tabbaʿ purports that over his lifetime he personally initiated 20,000 murids and students to the Khalwatiyya Bakriyya Sufi order.Footnote 72 Busaysu grew up in Shujaʿiyya neighborhood. He became a member of the Khalwatiyya Bakriyya tariqa,Footnote 73 and enrolled in al-Azhar in 1845. In 1854/1855 he returned to Gaza and was allocated a room in the Sayyida Ruqayya MosqueFootnote 74 where he worked and taught. He was also employed as the katib (clerk) of the Shariʿa court in Gaza and as the imam of the Ibn ʿUthman Mosque (Jamiʿ ʿUthman Shihab al-Din) and became the head of the Education Council of Gaza in 1898/1899. Tabbaʿ calls him the “head of the ʿulamaʾ in Gaza” and “shaykh of the Sufi orders in Gaza,” two probably informal titles that indicate his prominence among his peers. He often journeyed back to Egypt after his return to Gaza from al-Azhar,Footnote 75 which led his local opponents from among the supporters of the Husayni family to level accusations about his connections in Egypt and his repeated visits there.Footnote 76 In particular, they claimed that he was pretending to be a Sheikh of a Sufi tariqa, was “leading people astray,” and had inflated the number of his followers.Footnote 77 Ahmad Busaysu and some of his relatives were important allies of the Husayni family, whom they supported until 1893. Later on, however, the Busaysus, together with the Shawwa family turned against the Husaynis in 1895.Footnote 78 They broke away from Gaza’s dominant political faction and entered into an alliance with the imperial authorities and its most important local representative, the governor of Jerusalem Mehmed Tevfik Bey (1897–1901), who took office in November 1897.Footnote 79
Another prominent al-Azhar graduate was Yusuf Sharrab (b. 1254/1838 in Khan Yunis, d. 1330/1912 in Cairo). Unlike the aforementioned personalities, he did not belong to the local political elite. He serves in fact as an interesting example of a first-generation scholar from an upwardly mobile family with a rural background whose members lived on both sides of the emerging Ottoman–Egyptian border. Yusuf Sharrab’s family originally came from the small town of Khan Yunis, some 25 kilometers south of Gaza. According to Tabbaʿ, it was a “big family with many branches in Khan Yunis,”Footnote 80 as well as in Gaza and in al-ʿArish in northern Sinai.Footnote 81 The 1905 census, for example, lists 21 Sharrab households in Khan Yunis. In terms of profession, 14 persons in these households were classified as peasant or farmer (çiftçi), some were shop owners (bakkal, dükkancı), and one was member of the local Administrative Council (müdüriyet meclisi aʿzası), which was a relatively senior post, especially given the modest occupations of most of the other family members.Footnote 82 In Gaza there were only five Sharrab households, although some male family members who had more education moved there from Khan Yunis and climbed the social ladder.
Yusuf’s father, Shaykh Salim b. Muqbil b. Salim Sharrab, moved from Khan Yunis to Gaza where he worked in trade. He died there in 1285 (1868/1869). The family was upwardly mobile by capitalizing on higher education and commercial success. Its family tree drawn by Tabbaʿ shows that between c. 1850 and 1910 there were a large number of shaykhs, efendis, state officials, merchants, a teacher and a poet among his children and grandchildren, in Gaza, Khan Yunis and al-ʿArish.Footnote 83 Shaykh Salim had five sons: along with Shaykh Yusuf, the scholar and the family’s most renowned scion,Footnote 84 there were al-Hajj Muhammad (a petition and letter writer, an arzuhalci), Mustafa, Shakir (d. 1320/1903–4),Footnote 85 and Ahmad Efendi (d. 1320/1902–1903), who was a muhafiz (governor) of al-ʿArish in Sinai, whose very successful and wealthy children continued to live and do business in caravan trade in this city.Footnote 86
Shaykh Yusuf Sharrab, who was blind, moved to al-Azhar from Gaza in 1280 (1863/1864) and studied there for nine years, after which he taught at the institution for 12 years. He got married in Egypt but was extradited in 1882 for supporting the ʿUrabi Revolt. Thereafter, he returned to Gaza and taught in several local institutions, in addition to serving as the imam, khatib, and mudarris at the Katib Wilaya Mosque in the Zaytun neighborhood.Footnote 87 Tabbaʿ writes that his scholarly fields were jurisprudence (fiqh), Prophetic tradition (hadith), and Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir). He had excellent relations with leading scholars at al-Azhar, was a member of the Shadhiliyya Sufi order, and went to Mecca for the pilgrimage in 1319 (1901/1902).Footnote 88 Ahmad Busaysu writes that Yusuf Sharrab was a “meticulous” jurist and a “clever” scholar, although he was “difficult to get along with and liked to quarrel and to meddle in affairs that did not concern him.”Footnote 89 Abu Hashim, who edited Tabbaʿ’s book, writes that in 1904 Yusuf Sharrab was “shaykh al-ʿulamaʾ” of Gaza, using the epithet that was also ascribed to Ahmad Busaysu. Abu Hashim, probably drawing on oral history accounts, also highlights Yusuf Sharrab’s function as a gatekeeper for Egyptian–Gazan professional social networks, saying that Yusuf collaborated with “the notables and scholars” of Gaza in resolving the affairs of the “returnees from al-Azhar (shuʾun al-ʿaʾidin min al-Azhar).”Footnote 90
The Khedive and the British-Controlled Government of Egypt
The personal networks of some Gazan notables included connections in Cairo, up to the level of the Khedive of Egypt. These ties provided them with political clout and staying power to resist Ottoman efforts to control southern Palestine. These relationships, in particular between the Husayni family and the Khedive, were looked upon quite negatively by Istanbul.
As of 1866, Gaza became the seat of a salaried Ottoman subdistrict governor, and the appointed governors tried hard to assert their authority over the networks of the strong local elite. When tensions with the governor erupted, the Husaynis appealed for help from their friends and supporters in the scholarly hierarchy in Istanbul, Cairo’s al-Azhar, and the court of the Egyptian viceroy.Footnote 91
In the Dialogue, the issue of relationships between Gazans, the Khedive in Egypt, and the British who controlled Egypt at the time comes vividly to the fore.Footnote 92 The text is a polemic in the form of a fictitious dialogue written for the Gazan Husayni faction. It begins with an exchange in rhymed prose (sajʿ) between three imaginary figures: Waʿiz ibn Nasuh, the narrator, and two young men named Sadiq ibn Amin and Nashid ibn Rashid whom he encounters while strolling along the shores of Gaza. The three men’s names are symbolic and characterize their specific roles in the Dialogue. The narrator’s name Waʿiz ibn Nasuh translates as “the warner [whistle-blower], son of the provider of good advice.” The name of Nashid ibn Rashid, the Egyptian visitor, means “the seeker of truth, son of the rightly guided,” characterizing him as a sound inquirer. Finally, the name of Sadiq ibn al-Amin, the young Gazan, means “the sincere, son of the trustworthy,” which characterizes him as a reliable source of information.
While resting in a garden near the port of Gaza (see Figure I.2), the three imaginary figures engage in a lengthy conversation that provides a unique window into political discourse in late Ottoman Gaza. Despite the fictional framework, the personalities mentioned and the events discussed are familiar from historical records and events. The overall objective is to praise the Husayni family in Gaza while bashing their opponents in this city and beyond, including the mayor Ahmad al-ʿAlami, representatives of powerful local households and families, as well as their allies from the Khalidi family in Jerusalem, the kaymakam of Gaza and the mutasarrıf of Jerusalem.Footnote 93 Among other accusations it is claimed that the Hasaynis’ opponents betrayed the Ottoman Empire through cooperation with the British to facilitate the purchase and transfer of tribal lands near Gaza to Egypt, which was under British control at the time. At the climax of the Dialogue, Sadiq, the young Gazan formulates this accusation:
Sadiq: There is one case that can prove everything. It involves the fact that the kaymakam ceded parts of the subdistrict lands to the Egyptians as a part of the planning for a major future intrigue.
Nashid: How can this be, my brother? Are not there borders separating Egypt and the Subdistrict of Gaza?
Sadiq: Yes, there are borders, and in particular a natural border composed of sandy Egyptian land that is not suitable for agriculture. Therefore, Bedouins from Egypt bought [the farming rights for] lands belonging to the Gaza Bedouins, farmed them and paid the tithe to the tribe they bought it from. And this is how the kaymakam intervened: He prevented the collection of the tithe from the Egyptian Bedouins and made the sellers [i.e., the Bedouins from Gaza] pay it. He took it from them several years without objection. His plan is that later on, when he sees an opportunity, he will tell the [Gaza] Bedouins to ask for their accumulated tax rights with their swords.” This would then be an opportunity for other parties to get involved. That is his intention, without doubt.
The mere fact that such accusations were made shows the delicate nature of Ottoman relationships with Egypt at the time, the level of mistrust in Ottoman circles as to Egyptian intentions, and the rising importance of Gaza as a border region. The file in which this text was found contains numerous other complaints to Istanbul about intrigues on the part of various officials and individuals in Gaza and in the Province of Jerusalem, all said to be in cahoots with the British in Egypt. For example, the kaymakam is accused of holding secret meetings at night with the governor of al-ʿArish to plot against the Empire.Footnote 94 Sultan ʿAbdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) had his senior representative in Egypt (Misir Fevkalade Komiseri, the Ottoman High Commissioner in Egypt), at the time Ahmed Muhtar Paşa, keep an eye on these delicate matters. In fact, the High Commissioner himself was the person who sent Istanbul a copy of the anonymous Dialogue discussed here.Footnote 95
In 1906, when the administrative division line between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire was drawn up under heavy British pressure, the British consular agent in Gaza, Alexander Knesevich, wrote to the British Consul in Jerusalem that he had been contacted by several Muslim notables in Gaza who asked for a confidential meeting on the beach near the city. Knesevich reported that they claimed to speak in the name of the entire local population, from various backgrounds and walks of life, and had openly asked for British “protection” over Gaza by moving the border northwards to Isdud (Ashdod), where they claimed it was located in the past.Footnote 96 A border near Isdud would have been advantageous to Gaza’s elite families, as it would have left most of their sphere of influence under the same political entity (compare Figure 3.1 for the boundaries of the Subdistrict of Gaza during the period). The petitioners stated that they were “willing to go down to Egypt after disposing of all their property,”Footnote 97 a threat whose sincerity is questionable, although it resembles the tone taken by Gazan farmers who threatened to leave for Egypt if local conditions deteriorated. The local notables may have wanted to enter into negotiations to increase their political importance. Interestingly, at the same time, the German consul in Jaffa reported that a Bedouin group from the Subdistrict of Gaza sent a delegation to meet British representatives in Egypt and threatened to emigrate en masse to Egyptian territory.Footnote 98
After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, numerous petitions to Istanbul from Gaza contained complaints about Zionist activity and aspirations in the city and its surroundings, which were first brought up in the mid-1890s.Footnote 99 In the spring of 1911, for example, it was argued that the Zionist movement had tried to establish a stronghold in the Subdistrict of Gaza, which was close to the Egyptian border. The petitioners from the Abu Khadra, Fayyad, and Surani families accused their rivals in the city, including the governor, the mayor, the former mufti, and members of the Administrative Council of collaborating with the Zionists and the British, as well as with corrupt individuals in other cities in Palestine.Footnote 100 The British in Egypt were thus perceived by the petitioners as protecting Zionist immigration and settlement activity in Palestine.Footnote 101
Further evidence of the strong relationships between Gazan notables and the Khedive of Egypt emerges from the case of Yusuf Sharrab discussed above, who wanted to return to Cairo after being exiled in 1882 after the ʿUrabi crisis. He approached the Khedive ʿAbbas with a praise poem while the latter was visiting al-ʿArish in 1904, the city where his late brother Ahmad Sharrab had served as the governor. The Khedive indeed arranged for a teaching post to be given to him at al-Azhar, where he remained until his death in 1912.Footnote 102
Egyptian Villages
Besides elite relations, the Egyptian influence made itself felt in the Gaza region through immigration and settlement of Egyptian peasants. As said, the Arabic nisba or last name al-Masri, “the Egyptian,” was very common in the 1905 census of Gaza and to date this family name is still often found in the Gaza Strip. Over the course of the nineteenth century, various groups of Muslim immigrants settled in Palestine, including Bosnians, Circassians, Kurds, and Maghrebis (mostly Algerians). They were outnumbered by the arrival of Egyptian peasants throughout that century, but particularly during the occupation of Palestine by the Egyptian army in the 1830s.Footnote 103 The Egyptians settled in various parts of the country but particularly in the coastal plain stretching between Gaza and Jaffa, including on the outskirts of these two cities. Some of the villages in the Subdistrict of Gaza such as Burayr, Kawfakha, Muharraqa, and Simsim were established by Egyptian immigrants,Footnote 104 who contributed significantly to agricultural production, particularly barley.Footnote 105 They also helped promote the development of the citrus and the weaving industry in the region.Footnote 106 In other villages such as Bayt Hanun, Dayr Sunayd, Hamama, Hiribya, Isdud, al-Jura, Majdal, Qastina, and Yibna, there was an Egyptian presence alongside the native population.Footnote 107 In Hamama, the Egyptians lived in a separate neighborhood called al-falatiyya; that is, “the outcast.”Footnote 108 In Isdud as well, local memory as manifested in oral history and village memories has it that they were landless, poor, and outcast.Footnote 109 According to many sources, the Egyptians were poorer than the other villagers, usually did not own their own land but rather worked as tenants, and were looked upon with contempt by the rest of the rural population who refused to intermarry with them.Footnote 110
The Establishment of Beersheba and the Creation of the Southern Border
After 1882, when the British occupied Egypt and later when they forced an administrative dividing line between Ottoman Palestine and Egypt in 1906, the importance of the border region between the Negev and Sinai deserts increased considerably. This encouraged the Ottoman Empire to strengthen its hold over the region.Footnote 111 Ottoman countermeasures against the perceived British threat made the Gaza region a particularly sensitive area. Gaza could have been the focal point of Ottoman intervention in the area, but the imperial authorities did not trust Gaza’s political elite at all and were frustrated by the non-cooperative attitude of the dominant political faction in the city that gravitated around the Husayni family. Under the administration of Mehmed Tevfik Bey, a forceful governor of Jerusalem and a confidant of the Ottoman Sultan ʿAbdülhamid II, Ottoman involvement in the area increased. This included the exiling of leading members of the Husayni family in 1898; the establishment of Beersheba as the seat of a new subdistrict in the northern Negev Desert; the construction of the border town of ʿAwja al-Hafir near the border between the Negev and Sinai deserts;Footnote 112 investment in infrastructure, such as telegraph lines, bridges, roads, and railroads; and a reorganization of the region’s administrative units along with efforts to register tribal land, including the creation of the nahiye of al-Hafir and the establishment of the Subdistrict of Beersheba.
The town of Beersheba was officially founded in 1900 by the Ottoman government in the northern part of the Negev Desert according to predefined plans. It grew gradually over the next decade and a half to slowly become a real town, with both public and residential buildings.Footnote 113 The Subdistrict of Beersheba was created around the town of Beersheba, which thus detached the region from Gaza to which it had been previously subordinated. Both subdistricts were part of the Province of Jerusalem.
As discussed in Chapter 4, the elite of Gaza was deeply divided among itself and competed for power and influence over the rural population in the region as far afield as the northern Negev, which the government considered detrimental to its regional interests. A major factor reinforcing the importance of the region was the presence of partially nomadic Bedouin tribes together with their large herds. Since the Bedouins constituted an economic and military asset, although largely out of the Empire’s reach, the government was determined to establish an administrative center for them in the region to better control them, win them over as new allies in its modernization policies, and release them from the grip of several Gazan elite families and their deleterious politics and influence.
The imperial elite aimed to demonstrate that the Empire was a modern state with an urban civilization on a par with that of the leading powers of its time. In their minds, the Ottoman state was endowed with a civilizing mission towards groups they regarded as less advanced on their imaginary ladder of progress.Footnote 114 In this process, unruly elements had to be “disciplined” or “contained.”Footnote 115 However, in the case of Beersheba, the main “unruly elements” targeted by the Ottoman discourse were the several Gazan notables who maintained independent relations with the Bedouins. Curtailing what was perceived as their detrimental influence may have been a sufficient reason in itself for the establishment of Beersheba.Footnote 116 Sectors of the Bedouin population were also considered troublemakers, especially during tribal feuds. The Bedouins as a whole, however, were usually portrayed as “still savage” (henüz çok vahşi, in the words of governor Mehmed Tevfik)Footnote 117 but with the potential to become loyal and productive Ottoman citizens. Ekrem Bey, the governor of Jerusalem from 1906 to 1908, viewed the new city of Beersheba as a place where Bedouins could be educated and socialized into the Ottoman community and from where “civilization” would “gradually” spread throughout the region.Footnote 118 He thus portrayed Beersheba as a purely Ottoman initiative, exclusively directed at the Bedouin population and detached from the allegedly “corrupting” influence of Arab notables.Footnote 119
Eventually, the Ottoman measures succeeded in reducing the influence of the Gazan elite over the Bedouins of the northern Negev, but did not eliminate it entirely. Gazan merchants continued to control the export of barley grown by Bedouins in this region through the port of Gaza,Footnote 120 were involved in land transactions,Footnote 121 and maintained social and familial ties with the Bedouins.
The Impact of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908
The Husayni family, who had a major fallout with Sultan ʿAbdülhamid II in 1898 when the leadership of the family was exiled to Ankara, welcomed the 1908 Young Turk Revolution with open arms, since it placed limits on the rule of the Sultan and soon led to his dethronement in the spring of 1909. Not surprisingly, shortly after the news of the revolutionary events in the imperial capital reached Gaza, the Husaynis and a group of their allies, some of whom from families who had previously bitterly opposed them, sent a petition to the Grand Vizier in which they used the new language of the post-revolutionary and constitutionalist era to demand that the government officials in Gaza be replaced because they were agents of the former “tyrannical” regime.Footnote 122 Such language became very common in petitions after the Revolution, which instead of glorifying the Sultan, demanded civil and constitutional rights, the implementation of the constitution, freedom, and equality before the law.Footnote 123 In a demonstration of “fluid factionalism,”Footnote 124 out of the 19 signatories to the Husayni petition two were members of the Saqallah family, their former arch-opponents, who obviously felt equally sidelined by the successful rise of the Shawwa-Busaysu faction as of the mid-1890s. The petitioners stated:
Despite the proclamation of the Constitution, the officials have remained almost the same as in the era of tyranny (zaman al-istibdad) […] and the local population still suffers from poor security […]. This prompts them to seek equal treatment […] and relief from the oppressive grip (makhalib jawr) of unjust and arbitrary individuals.Footnote 125
The Husaynis, who were back in the game after 1908, were partially able to counterbalance the power of their local rivals when Ahmad ʿArif al-Husayni (d. 1916), the grandson of Ahmad Muhyi al-Din al-Husayni, who stood behind the Husaynis’ rise to power in Gaza in the nineteenth century, was appointed mufti of the city in 1909, although at this point the post had lost much of its prestige and influence.Footnote 126 He still held the post of Gaza’s mufti during WWI, when the governor of Syrian front, Cemal Paşa, put him to death together with his son Mustafa, for alleged collaboration with the British and the Hashemite family in the context of the Arab Revolt.Footnote 127
Finally, there was stronger emphasis on economic and infrastructural development in the local administration of Gaza after the Revolution of 1908, and the Municipality of Gaza acquired more power. This dovetails with what is known about the development of infrastructure in Palestine and the region as a whole during the Young Turk period.Footnote 128 This trend was manifested in the ability of the Municipality to finally start the construction of the long-awaited municipal hospital in 1911, even though it was not completed before WWI, due to lack of funds.Footnote 129
A concise overview of the political agenda in Gaza on the eve of WWI, as well as the debates fueling Ottoman and local circles can be found in the report filed by the governor of Jerusalem at the time, Ahmed Macid Bey, during his inspection tour in May and June 1913.Footnote 130 At the same time, a reporter from the newspaper Filastin published his own impressions of this tour that stressed the ceremonial and public aspects of the visit. Strikingly, Filastin’s reporter makes no reference to the newspaper’s editor Yusuf al-ʿIsa’s 1912 apocalyptic evaluation discussed above, but rather embroiders on what he apparently perceived as a fruitful dialogue between representatives of the Ottoman government and the local population.
According to the reporter, during his four-day tour of Gaza, governor Ahmed Macid paid visits to leading local politicians. The sequence of these visits clearly confirmed the hierarchy of Gaza’s notables and elite families at the end of the Ottoman period. On day one, Macid Bey visited mayor Saʿid al-Shawwa; on day two he dined with mufti Ahmad ʿArif al-Husayni, while on days three and four he met with members of the KhayyalFootnote 131 and ʿAlamiFootnote 132 families.
The visit ended in style with the governor’s visit to Gaza’s only state primary school, in the presence of a large number of local representatives. Characteristically, it was one of Gaza’s “returnees” from al-Azhar college, Shaykh Muhammad Saʿid Murad,Footnote 133 who took on the role of spokesperson for the local population with a speech in Arabic in which he detailed Gaza’s wants and needs. The governor responded with a speech in Turkish, in which he acknowledged the existence of severe “misery and distress (buʾs wa-shaqaʾ)” in the subdistrict, pointed to the general lack of education as the central cause, and promised the speedy completion of Gaza’s second primary (boys’) school, which had been promised but delayed, as well as the founding of an agricultural school in Gaza. He then announced plans to resurface the road to Jaffa and the installation of an engine-driven water supply network. He stressed, however, that although Gaza’s needs were indeed pressing, he had seen similar conditions during his earlier terms in office in six different Anatolian districts. Therefore, Gazans should not consider themselves to be the exception but rather part of the general struggle by the empire to “make progress.” The speech was followed by a town-hall style debate, during which leading notables had the opportunity to address the governor directly. Again, it was Shaykh Muhammad Saʿid Murad who attracted most attention when he zeroed in on the three most important political issues in his city: allowing local initiatives to found private schools, more consistent reform policies irrespective of the relatively short terms governors remained in office, and what he termed the “appetite of foreigners and colonists (matamiʿ al-mustaʿmirin wa-l-ajanib)” for residential and agricultural lands in Gaza that should be rebuffed.
The farewell to the last Ottoman governor to visit Gaza in peace-time was a poetry reading by local students while the governor laid the cornerstone for the new school building and a sheep was slaughtered, as customary in Ottoman state ceremonies.Footnote 134
What did the last peace-time governor convey to Istanbul about Gaza? Macid Bey’s own report confirms that of the newspaper, but leaves out the ceremonial and public aspects of the visit, and focuses instead on the city’s history and future prospects. He starts with some general geographic information and his impressions of the city, whose narrow winding streets reminded him of Hebron. He adds a brief summary of the Islamic merits of the city as the birthplace of Hashim, and notes, apparently with some amazement, that Gaza once had been a more important Ottoman administrative center than Jaffa.
Consistent with the spirit of the Young Turk era, the remainder of the report focuses on questions of infrastructure, where matter-of-fact descriptions alternate with interesting personal remarks and value judgments. As in his speech, the issue of schooling received top priority. He indicates there are one middle (rüşdiye) school, two primary (ibitidai) schools, one of them still under construction, and four elementary (sıbyan) schools for boys in addition to one primary school for girls (inas ibtidaisi), and complains that the completion of the second primary school has been delayed. He calls the British hospital “excellent,” mentions the local efforts to build an “Islamic” hospital “in response” as well as the practical problems involved and makes an altogether optimistic assessment that these problems can be overcome and that the barley export from both Gaza and Beersheba will continue to bring prosperity to the city. In the final passages, he singles out three major challenges to Gaza’s future development: creating incentives for the local population to erect bulwarks against the sand dunes that he experienced personally when his own carriage got stuck in the sand on the way to the beach, building a water supply grid, and establishing the agricultural school.
Interestingly, governor Macid appears to have come away with a generally positive image of Gaza and concludes his report on the city with strong support for the agricultural school project. He voices some disagreement with his predecessors in Jerusalem who apparently favored Beersheba as the location for the school. He notes that its construction in Beersheba is “still a story (hikaye)” while people in the area are being deprived (mahrum) of their right to study and are struggling to escape their “state of Bedouinism (hal-i bedavet).” He then goes on to say that a school “in a central location (vasat bir mevkide)” was needed, to enable as many people as possible to benefit from this endeavor in this subdistrict that was “extremely suitable for economic development (terakkiyat-ı iktisadiyyeye fevkalade müsait olan bu livada)” and concludes that the school should be built in Gaza.
Conclusion
In 1914, Gaza’s municipal hospital, the institution that was meant to be the grandest public building ever erected in Gaza during the Ottoman period, a towering structure with an imposing symmetrically shaped façade, was still a work in progress. Like its successful counterpart, the municipal hospital in Jerusalem (established in 1891),Footnote 135 it promised to embody the very essence of decades of Ottoman reform. The Ottoman state and the urban community of taxpayers, represented by the belediye, were to work together in pursuit of the well-being of all the local inhabitants. The endeavor was to be financed by what seemed to be a reliable surplus generated by Gaza’s successful integration into the globalized market economy. However, barley exports had dwindled recently, and the construction of the hospital was proceeding very slowly. Nevertheless, the Ottoman government, while acknowledging Gaza’s “distress,” did not seem particularly alarmed, but rather took this as one of the predictable kinds of setbacks characterizing the generally uncertain circumstances of the period.Footnote 136 All this is indicative of Gaza’s status on the eve of WWI as an Eastern Mediterranean hub in the midst of profound transformations, which was experiencing steady demographic growth but facing many imponderables as to its economic and political future.
Simultaneously, Ottoman administrators, in tandem with local builders and entrepreneurs, were overseeing the construction of even more imposing structures in Beersheba, about 40 kilometers inland from Gaza. In the end, Gaza was sidelined by the establishment of Beersheba, even though Gazan merchants were still active there. The overriding geostrategic priorities of the Empire were addressed through the new city, while Gaza once again was left to play by its own rules (see Chapter 4). Yet Gaza was not only a center of traffic and trade, and an important hub of information and Islamic learning, as discussed in this chapter, but also drew on the strengths of its rural connections, as discussed in Chapter 3. For now, however, we turn to life in the city itself and the life-worlds of its inhabitants.
