Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

In the 18th and 19th centuries, wheat and cotton shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre to Italy, southern France (Beheiry 1981: 67) and England helped save the growing population of France from famine and fuelled the English Industrial Revolution and the rise of commodity capitalism in Europe. This brought about the rise of a local bourgeoisie in urban Palestine (in Acre, Nazareth, Tiberias, Nablus, Jerusalem and Jaffa)

as well as a peasant economy directed towards export to Europe, as this became the more lucrative market. This move during the 18th century transformed Palestinian agriculture and industry from subsistence towards production for the international market, and brought about a new relationship between (larger) cities and towns, and the hundreds of villages where most people lived and worked. This increasing international trade with the growing capitalism of Europe, and the insatiable British demand for cotton for its mills, also ushered in early modernities in Palestine. The conventional wisdom about modernity in the Arab world focus on the elite notable (a’ayan) politics, the Napoleonic invasion or the Ottoman state’s weaknesses as a mix of factors behind the start of modernisation in the region (Baram 2007a: 16). Furthermore, the conventional wisdom advanced by historians is that early modernities in Palestine were first imported by European missionaries and biblical explorers in the 19th century or disseminated by urban elites educated in European-style schools or schools which operated under Ottoman patronage. The Ottoman Tanzimat (literally ‘reorganisations’) – a period of major reforms ‘from above’ that began in 1839 and ended with the Ottoman First Constitutional era of 1876 – and their impact on Palestine and the wider Arab East have been given most scholarly attention. Yet the new evidence contradicts elitist, romantic Orientalist and biblicist approaches to modern Palestinian history. This evidence shows, first, that the start of modernities was in 18th century Palestine; second, that the Napoleonic invasion of Palestine and siege of Acre in 1799 followed rather than led the European material culture and commodities (including European textiles) which became widely available in much of urban and rural Palestine throughout the rules of al-ʿUmar and al-Jazzar (Baram 2007a, 2007b); third, that the ‘new’ economy and new agricultural tools of Palestine in the mid-18th century had already been significantly integrated within the modern international trade and European capitalist economy which had been ushered in by the British technological and industrial revolutions.

Although the European printing and educational revolutions did not catch up with Palestine until the late 19th century, the English Industrial Revolution of the 18th century and rise of European capitalism impacted on the economy of Palestine directly and profoundly. These new forces also contributed to the reorientation of Palestine towards Europe and creation of a new political economy and statehood in mid-18th century Palestine, a statehood that was effectively independent of the weakened Ottoman Empire, and which was headed by Palestinian leader Dhaher al-ʿUmar al-Zaydani (1689–1775). Natives of Safad, the Zaydanis would have been familiar with the local traditions and social memories of the province of Safad under the Mamluks: ‘Kingdom of Safad’ ( مملكة صفد ). Backed by a professional modern army and most of the Palestinian peasantry, the latter stood up to and defeated the Ottoman army and created a statehood which managed to impose its power and practical sovereignty on much of modern Palestine, despite being resented by many of the Palestinian urban elites of Nablus and Jerusalem.

The concept of formal sovereignty has undergone radical transformation in the modern era, from being historically derived from the sovereign (person or ruler) to being linked to the territorial concept of the modern nation-state. However, state, power and legitimacy remain central to the notion of sovereignty. In the 18th century the practical sovereignty of al-ʿUmar’s regime was not derived from any modern notion of the nationstate, but from the ability of al-ʿUmar’s regime to impose legitimate power on much of Palestine.

In view of these dramatic developments in Palestine, a history ‘from below’ and ‘from within’ approach can partly explain the rise of Dhaher al-ʿUmar al-Zaydani and early modernities in Palestine rather than theories of modernities which focus on metropolitan cultural elites in the 18th and 19th centuries or European missionary activities in late Ottoman Palestine, activities which centred on urban Palestine where the majority of the Palestinian Christians resided. Indeed al-ʿUmar can easily qualify as the founding father of early Palestinian modernities and social renewal, and the single most influential figure in the beginning of the modern reorientation of Palestine towards the Mediterranean region. In the 18th century the majority of the Palestinian population (predominantly Muslim) were peasants who lived in villages or small towns, with a few large urban trading centres. The term for ‘modern’ in 18th century Palestine was jadid (new) or tajdid (renewal, innovation), and it began in these small towns and villages of the Galilee. Powerful local leadership in 18th century Galilee and modernities manifested themselves in a variety of ways:

• The emergence of a new Palestine-based autonomous rule under both Dhaher al-ʿUmar and Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (1720–1804), a rule independent of both the Ottoman authorities and urban elites.

• New agricultural and technological innovations in Palestine which benefited the majority of Palestinian peasantry began in the 18th century – preceding and anticipating the rise of local urban Palestinian bourgeois ‘nationalism’ by at least a century – and deeply affected the agricultural production of Palestine. The considerable growth of international and regional export of Palestinian agricultural produce and urban products was shown in the export of Palestinian cotton, olive oil, wheat and soap.

• Palestinian state monopoly on the flourishing cotton, wheat and olive oil export to Europe and the international and regional export of Palestinian produce and products generated much-needed new capital for investment in the country.

• The expansions of small towns and villages and construction of ‘new’ urban spaces in Palestine in the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of a distinction between the ‘old spaces’ and ‘new spaces’ (al-ʿImarah al-Jadidah) was noted by several authors.

Inspired by the model of the neighbouring and autonomous Emirate of Mount Lebanon (1516‒1841), al-ʿUmar’s effective leadership, popular backing by much of the Palestinian peasantry and international trading relations with the French and British all brought about the creation of a dawlah qutriyyah in Palestine, a new state driven by and based on an indigenous agency, whose authority extended from Lebanon to Gaza, and whose modern capital was Acre. This Palestinian dawlah qutriyyah transformed Acre from a small village into a fortified and rich urban metropolitan centre. Throughout much of the 18th and early 19th centuries Acre, effectively and to all practical purposes, functioned as the second capital of modern Palestine. French cotton imports from Palestine and similar British imports following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of ‘new’ British technologies, with their insatiable demand for cotton, together with the new regional and international trade in cotton, olive oil, silk and textiles, all helped transform Palestinian agriculture and urban spaces in much of the country. New urban spaces and neighbourhoods were created in key cities such as Acre and Nablus, making these cities not only into the biggest and wealthiest centres in Palestine but also among the largest cities of al-Sham (Doumani 1995; Philipp 2001). The newly expanded port of Acre (together with the smaller port of Jaffa) remained the main international gateway to and from Palestine throughout much of the 18th and 19th centuries. After the decline of the Palestine cotton industry, coastal Acre and Nablus, together with al-Quds/Jerusalem, were still the three most important ‘new’ urban centres in Palestine and were central to the Ottoman administrative reorganisation of the country in the 1870s, as we shall see below, the Mutasarrifate of Noble Jerusalem and the Sanjaks of Acre and Nablus were central to the new (evolutionary) paradigm shift in the reconceptualisation of late Ottoman Palestine. The British industrial revolution also contributed indirectly to the emergence of the first modern Galilee-based ‘state’ in Palestine in the second half of the 18th century.

In Europe throughout the 18th century the perception of Palestine as a distinct ‘country’, separate from Syria, was widespread and the plethora of European maps of ‘Palaestina/Palestina’ produced in that century reflected this growing perception of Palestine. In 1747, in the London Modern Gazetteer (p. 65), Thomas Salmon, an English geography writer and author of Modern History, or the Present State of all Nations (1744–1746) – which provided ‘a short view of the several nations of the world’ – described Palestine as follows:

PALESTINE, a part of Asiatic Turkey, is sit.[uated] between 36 and 38

degrees of E. Lon.[gitude] and between 31 and 34 degrees of N. Lat.

[itude], bounded by the mount Libanus, which divides it from Syria, on the N.[orth], by mount Hermon, which separates it from Arabia Deserta, on the E.[ast], by the mountains of Seir, and the deserts of Arabia Petraea, on the S.[outh], and by the Mediterranean Sea on the W.[est], so that it seems to have been extremely well secured against foreign invasions ... It is generally a fruitful country, producing plenty of corns, wine, and oil where it is cultivated.2

Crucially, political power and practical sovereignty in the Galilee in the 18th century was not the outcome of the imperial patron‒client system of the urban leadership, nor did it derive from the central Ottoman authorities; in fact it evolved ‘from within’ and ‘from below’, and in defiance and actual military resistance to the Ottoman Empire. It was backed by many Palestinian peasants and resented by some of the Ottoman-backed urban elites. With the sharp decline of the Ottoman power, new technological and commercial developments in Europe and indigenous Palestinian struggle for autonomy emerged from within the Galilee countryside in the mid-18th century. Several factors contributed to this radical development.

One of these was due to:

[new A]cre’s exceptional status. Politically, it was an enclave – semiautonomous, if not completely independent of the center of empire and PALESTINE: A FOUR THOUSAND YEAR HISTORY 224

its administration. This began when a local chieftain, Daher al-ʿUmar, established himself as an independent ruler in the city. His self-declared sovereignty was expanded and interpreted on an even broader scale by his successor, Jazzar Pasha. (Rosen-Ayalon 1998: 519‒520)

The astonishing modern rise of the city and province of Acre represented more than anything else the dramatic reorientation of Palestine towards Europe in the 18th century – a reorientation which, unlike previous reorientations of the country by imperial dynasties including the Roman, Umayyad and Ayyubid/Mamluk, was engineered by a powerful indigenous Palestinian leader. Indeed, Acre became the capital of Dhaher al-ʿUmar al-Zaydani for nearly thirty years, from 1746 to 1775, and one of two most powerful trading cities in Palestine; the other one was Nablus.

Not surprising, Acre also remained the capital of al-ʿUmar’s successor, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, Governor of the Ottoman Pashalik – in reality, a ‘province’ – of Acre from 1776 until his death in 1804. The dominance of Acre continued well into the early 19th century. After the death of al-Jazzar the Ottoman Governors of Acre, Suleiman Pasha al-‘Adil (d. 1819)

and ‘Abdullah Pasha (d. 1831) ruled much of Palestine and Lebanon and Damascus from their Palestinian capital of Acre.

The spectacular reorientation of modern Palestine towards the Mediterranean region/Europe and the dramatic rise of modern Acre in the 18th century began with the emergence and military successes of al-ʿUmar in Galilee, backed by the Palestinian peasantry. The latter’s achievement of autonomous power in Palestine was spurred by revolutionary technological and industrial developments in Europe. The coastal port city of Acre had been a famous Crusade stronghold. In the centuries following the Crusades the city had slipped into oblivion and by the time of the Ottoman conquest old Acre had become a small fishing village (Philipp 2001: 1). Under the Mamluks and throughout the early Ottoman period the town of Safad replaced old Acre as the administrative capital of the Galilee. Yet in the middle of the 18th century modern Acre was the first of the major sites along Palestine’s Mediterranean coast that quickly renewed its function as a ‘new’, dynamic, major port city following the sharp decline of the coastal cities in the post-Crusader period under both the Ayyubids and Mamluks (Rosen-Ayalon 1998: 520; Philipp 2001: 1). But by 1785 modern Acre had become one of the largest cities in Palestine and the third largest city in al-Sham, after Damascus and Aleppo (Philipp 2001: 1).