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Silk and Agrarian Changes in Lebanon, 1860–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Kais Firro
Kais Firro
Affiliation:
Department of Middle East HistoryUniversity of Haifa
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Extract

The production of silk on Mount Lebanon dates back to the time of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. From his reign in the 7th century until the 19th century, despite fluctuations in the production of silk, Mount Lebanon and parts of the Bekaa valley continued to produce “Syrian silk.” In the latter part of the 19th century, silk production on Mount Lebanon and elsewhere even expanded, as new areas for growing mulberry trees were added along the coast from Antioch to Sidon.

Studies on silk production in Syria, such as those of Gaston Ducousso, Dominique Chevallier, Roger Owen, and Boutros Labaki, focus on the silk industry and trade, treating silk as a cash crop and analyzing its impact on the 19th-century Syrian economy, and deal only indirectly with subjects such as the land-tenure system, the peasants' dependence on the silk merchants, the decline of the landlords, and changes in the mushāc system, or collective use of land.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , May 1990 , pp. 151 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

NOTES

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29 M.O.C. (1897), pp. 345–46.

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31 M.O.C., No.947 (1911).

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70 Ducousso, , L'industrie de la soie, p. 112.Google Scholar

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74 Ibid., p. 90.

75 “As a result of the debts, we proceeded to farm out portions of the property and pay the proceeds to the creditors… The properties to be farmed out have been auctioned Out amongst the farmers.” Translation from a letter from the wakīl (selling agent) of the Jumblat family to the British Consul in Beirut, Foreign Office, 195/760 (January, 1863).

76 D.C.R., No. 1418 (1894), pp. 2–3.

77 Martineau, , Le commerce français, p. 167.Google Scholar

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79 See Boutros, Labaki, “La soie dans l'économie du Mont Liban et de son environnement arabe, 1840–1914,” Peuples Médirerranéens 7 (04/06, 1979), pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

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