¹ Owen, Roger, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914 (New York, 1981), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

² Integration is documented in ibid., passim, see especially p. 292. Peripheralization is suggested by the world-system perspective argued in Islamoğlu-Inan, Huri, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy (New York and Paris, 1987),Google Scholar in particular the articles by Sunar, Ilkay (pp. 63–87) and lslamoğlu and Çağlar Keyder (pp. 42–62).Google Scholar

³ Three of the more important are 'Hanna, 'Abdallah, al-Qadiyya al-zira'iyya wa'l-harakat al-fallahiyya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan 1820–1920 (Beirut, 1975), pp. 97–108;Google ScholarKhoury, Philip S., Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920 (Cambridge, England, 1983), p. 5;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSchilcher, Linda Schatkowski, Families in Politics: Damascene Factions and Estates of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

⁴ Huri IslamoğIu and Çaglar Keyder, “Agenda for Ottoman History,” in The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, pp. 59–60.

⁵ Tresse, René, “L'irrigation dans Ia Ghouta de Damas,” Revue des Etudes Islamiques, 3 (1929), 537–39Google Scholar

⁶ Sa'iduni, Nasir al-Din, “Nazra fi aradi'l-miri bi-bilad al-Sham athna'a al-'ahd al-'uthmani,” in al-Mu'tamar al-duwali al-thani li-tarikh bilad al-Sham, 2 vols. (Damascus, 1978), 1:363.Google Scholar

⁷ Latron, André, La vie rurale en Syrie et au Liban: étude déconomie sociale (Beirut, 1936), p. 74. Examples of such leases are found in the shari'a law court registers,Google Scholar e.g., Law Court Registers of Damascus (LCRD), vol. 606, pp. 66–67, case 94, I Rajab 1286/7 October 1869.

⁸ Although the words musha' and sha'i' are used to refer both to communally and collectively held property, the distinction between communal and collective property is significant. Communally owned land was the property of the whole village, periodically redivided between households or families. Collectively owned land was a well-defined piece of property (e.g., an orchard) owned by two or more partners in specified shares called qirats. Communally held land was usually found away from towns in newly cultivated areas. Older villages and lands near towns tended to be individually collectively owned. See Owen, Middle East in the World Economy, pp. 255–56.

⁹ Kurd 'Ali says that in some villages not even one foot (shibr) of land was owned by wealthy people or Damascenes. 'Ali, Muhammad Kurd, Ghutat Dimashq (Damascus, 1949; reprint ed., Damascus, 1984), p. 94.Google Scholar

¹⁰ lrrigated properties around Damascus had rights to water on rotating schedules, as explicitly stated in law court property transactions. E.g., LCRD, vol. 504, pp. 245–46, cast 471, 19 Rajab 1276/11 February 1860.

¹¹ al-Qasimi, Muhammad Sa'id, al-Qasimi, Jamal al-Din and al'Azm, Khalil, Qamus al-sina'at al-shamiyya, 2 vols. (Paris, 1960), 11: 255–56. The law court registers show that villagers also possessed properties as shaddads and musta'jirs. Village shaddads and musta'jirs, unlike those of Damascus, probably labored alongside their relatives or hired hands.Google Scholar

¹² The volumes listed at the end of the article were surveyed by the author, and 319 cases relevant to rural and agricultural propertyholding were noted. (The vast majority of cases in the registers deal with urban, not rural and agricultural, properties.) The cases cited appear to be representative of those concerning the rural and agricultural economy for the years sampled. Due to time constraints, not all the registers available for any given year were surveyed. This selectivity resulted from the author's wish to obtain a broad sample covering decades, rather than a deep sample covering one or two years. This broad survey of the Damascus cases relative to rural and agricultural propertyholding the 19th century is, to the author's knowledge, the first of its kind.

¹³ The probable origin of officials and officers in the cases under consideration (cited for Tables 1 and 2) is as follows:.

¹⁴ A French consul noted that even the “grand propriétaires” of the Duma district (northeastern Ghuta) did not own estates, but rather discrete holdings, due to the necessity of intensive rather than extensive cultivation. France, Archives du Ministére des Relations Extérieurs, Correspondance commerciale et consulaire (henceforth, CCC), Reports from Damascus, vol. 7, Guillois, 19 August 1892.

¹⁵ de Tassy, M. Garcin, Mémoire sur les nomspropres er les titres musulmans, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1878), p. 83.Google Scholar

¹⁶ E.g., LCRD, vol. 311, p. 276, case 280, 6 Rabic 1 1243/27 September 1827; vol. 312, P. 22, case 69, l Muharram 1244/14 July 1828; vol. 348, p. 103, case 124, 7 Safar 1255/22 l April 1839; vol. 348, pp. 112–13, case 143, 30 Dhu'l-Hijja 1254/16 March 1839.

¹⁷ There is no ambiguity surrounding the use of sadat to denote recognized descendants of the Prophet in the 19th century. See de Tassy, Mémoire, pp. 82–83.

¹⁸ In addition to bearing the title of alim/ulama, religious scholars were also called fadil/fudala', mudarris/mudarrisin, and sheikh. But since sheikh could also denote a person who had some religious training but was not a full-fledged alim, and could also denote a village notable (with no religious connotation at all), only sheikhs also bearing the title alim or fadil have been counted as ulama in this sample. On fadil and sheikh see ibid., pp. 86–87; Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, “Mazahir sukkaniyya min dimashq fi'l-'ahd al-'uthmani,” Dirasat Tarikhiyya, 15–16 (1984), 11.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Encyclopedia of Islam, 1965 ed., s.v. “Efendi,” by B. Lewis; ibid., s.v. “Čelebi,” by W. Barthold and B. Spuler. The Damascus registers indicate that Barthold and Spuler are wrong to say that çelebi was replaced by effendi in the Ottoman Empire from about 1700. Rather, the two titles coexisted and were frequently borne by one person simultaneously. In addition to being a token of respect, effendi in the 19th century was applied to people identified with the secular (as opposed to religious) Ottoman establishment, without, however, necessariiy meaning that they were officeholders. “Respectable urban gentleman” would seem to be the meaning here. Schilcher, Families in Politics, p. 151; al'Allaf, Ahmad Hilmi, Dimashqfi matla' al-qarn al-'ishrin, Nucaysa, 'Ali Jamil, ed. (Damascus, 1976), p.31.Google Scholar

²⁰ CCC 6, Gilbert, 14 August 1879; Britain, Great, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1880. Accounts and Papers, 74:238.Google Scholar

²¹ There were few Christian peasants in the overwhelmingly Sunni Ghuta, although Christian villages could be found elsewhere in Qalamun, the Bekaa, and the Hawran.

²² In this respect Damascus in the first half of the 19th century bore some resemblance to 18th- century Aleppo. After studying samples of Aleppo's law court registers from 1750–1751, Abraham Marcus concluded that there was a virtual Muslim monopoly of trading in commercial and agricultural properties in Aleppo. Like the present writer, Marcus found no evidence that non-Muslims were legally barred from commercial activities. Marcus, Abraham, “Men, Women and Property: Dealers in Real Estate in 18th Century Aleppo,” in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 26 (1983), 150–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ The first reference in the British consular records to (protégé) Jewish moneylenders’ activities in the rural areas dates from the mid-1840s. Great Britain, Foreign Office (FO) Archives Series 78, vol. 622, Wood, 4 December 1845.

²⁴ LCRD, vol. 614, p. 57, case 112, 12 Jumada 111286/19 September 1869.

²⁵ Mursad was an arrangement whereby a lessees’ expenses for repair and maintenance of a property were deducted from his rent, such expenses being considered a debt owed to the lessee by the owner. Often such expenses far surpassed the rent, indebting the owner to the lessee and requiring the former to pay the latter to vacate the property. See Reilly, James A., “SharĪ'a Court Registers and Land Tenure around Nineteenth-Century Damascus,” MESA Bulletin, 21 (1987), 161–63;Google ScholarDeguilhem-Schoem, Randi, “The Loan of Mursad on Waqf Properties,” in Kazemi, Farhad and McChesney, R. D., eds., A Way Prepared: Essays on Islamic Culture in Honor of Richard Bayly Winder (New York, 1988), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

²⁶ Bowring, John, Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria (London, 1840), p. 101.Google Scholar

²⁷ FO 78/1586, Rogers, I June 1861.

²⁸ FO 78/1586, Rogers, 25 June 1861.

²⁹ See, e.g., CCC 5, Robin, 18 April 1872; 28 June 1872.

³⁰ CCC 5, Robin, 30 May 1873; 25 May 1873.

³¹ LCRD, vol. 600, p. 1; vol. 601, pp. 1, 2; vol. 605, p. 1. None of the decrees is dated, but they introduce volumes from A.H. 1285/1868–1869. The European states specifically mentioned in the decrees include Britain, France, Austria, Belgium, Sweden-Norway, Prussia, Denmark, and another which the author could not identify.

³² In fact, direct European ownership of land in the Ottoman Empire as a whole remained very limited. See Pamuk, Şevket, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism. 1820–1913: Trade, Investment and Production (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 95–106.Google Scholar

³³ Schilcher, Families in Politics, p. 83.

³⁴ E.g., LCRD vol. 597, p. 120, case 97, 2 Jumada II 1286/9 September 1869.

³⁵ In a small number of purchases European currency was used. The use of European money is at best only a crude indication of a purchaser's access to European capital. Nevertheless, this information is summarized below for want of any other clues in the cases surveyed regarding the origins of purchasers’ capital. No foreign currencies were found in the decennial samples preceding 1869.

³⁶ LCRD, vol. 603, p. 6, case 6, 16 Safar 1286/28 May 1869; vol. 597, p. 120, case 97, 2 Jumada 11 1286/9 September 1869; vol. 597, pp. 149–512 Jumada 11286/10 August 1869.

³⁷ Both in LCRD, vol. 614, p. 22, case 32, 20 Rajab 1286/26 October 1869.

³⁸ The waqf custodian ceded full ownership (mulk talq) in perpetuity (duman 'ala'l-dawam) to the lessee of whatever the latter planted or built on the land during the period of the sublease and subsequent lease. This combined period totalled 14 years, ample time for the dragoman to acquire a substantial amount of private property in the orchards.

³⁹ Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, “Economic Relations between Damascus and the Dependent Countryside,” Udovitch, Avram L., ed., The Islamic Middle East, 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History. (Princeton, 1981), p. 657.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The Ottoman Land Code, trans. Ongley, F. (London, 1892), pp. 198–211, 229–38. Waqf was brought under the purview of the Defterhane in 1870, mulk in 1874. However, there was an interval some years before these laws were fully implemented in Damascus.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See, e.g, Yasin, Bu 'Ali, Hikayat al-ard wa'l-fallah al-sun, 1858–1979 (Beirut, 1979), p. 10;Google ScholarWarriner, Doreen, “Land Tenure in the Fertile Crescent,” in Issawi, Charles, ed., The Economic History of the Middle East 1800–1914 (Chicago, 1966), pp. 74–75;Google ScholarJwaideh, Albertine, “Aspects of Land Tenure and Social Change in Lower Iraq during Late Ottoman Times,” in Khalidi, Tarif, ed., Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East (Beirut, 1984), pp. 333–51, passim.Google Scholar

⁴² Gerber, Haim, The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo., 1987), chap. 5, passim.Google Scholar

⁴³ E.g., the plantations in the 'Ajam valley and the village of al-Hama in LCRD, vol. 863, case 83, Jumada 111305/19 September 1888; vol. 863, case 217, 10 Muharram 1306/16 September 1888.

⁴⁴ References to commissions appear in the 1869–1870 registers sample. LCRD vol. 597, p. 155, case 124, 20 Dhu'l-Qa'da 1286/21 February 1870; vol. 606, P. 60, case 84, 22 Rabic 11286/2 June 1879; vol. 614, p. 62, case 120, 23 Shacban 1286/28 November 1879.

⁴⁵ LCRD, vol. 711, p. 28, case 52,25 Rajab 1296/15 June 1879; vol. 711, pp. 211–12, case 234, 27 Dhu1Qacda 1296/12 November 1879.

⁴⁶ LCRD, vol. 863, case 83, 6 Jumada II 1305/19 February 1888; vol. 863, case 84, 27 Rajab 1304/21 April 1887; vol. 863, case 217, 10 Muharram 1306/16 September 1888; vol. 863, case 218, 10 Muharram 1306/ 16 September 1888; vol. 863, case 219, 8 Safar 1306/14 October 1888; vol. 863, case 220, 8 Safar 1306/ 14 October 1888.

⁴⁷ LCRD vol. 863, cases 217–18, 10 Muharram 1306/16 September 1888.

⁴⁸ E.g., CCC 7 Guillois to Ribot, 19 August 1892; regarding Duma and cited previously; Kurd 'Ali, Ghutat Dimashq, p. 94.

⁴⁹ 'Ali, Kurd, Ghutat Dimashq, p. 95.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ E.g., LCRD, vol. 1123, case 73, 4 Rabî' II 1317/12 August 1899, where villagers possessed tapu deeds. On alleged peasant ignorance of the tapu system see, inter alia, Klat, Paul J., “The Origins of Landownership in Syria,” Middle East Economic Papers (1959), pp. 60–61. Damascus is comparable to the Jerusalem region with respect to peasant possession of tapu deeds.Google Scholar See Gerber, Haim, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem 1890–1914 (Berlin, 1985), pp. 201–5, 219.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Mardin, Şerif, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11 (1969), 258–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar