在书写18世纪的巴勒斯坦历史时,贝沙拉·杜马尼(Beshara Doumani,1995)以对18世纪纳布卢斯山区(Jabal Nablus)社会史的细致研究,出色地探讨了奥斯曼统治下巴勒斯坦社会与经济的自主性。这一研究置于阿尔伯特·胡拉尼(Albert Hourani)提出的“城市显贵”(a'ayan)范式框架之中:这些省级阿拉伯城镇中的政治与经济精英,充当伊斯坦布尔帝国中央与省级社会之间的“贵族式”中介,并治理庞大奥斯曼帝国的各个行省。与阿拉伯东部其他地区一样,巴勒斯坦的城市社会精英竭力控制区域及远程贸易,并主导乡村的土地所有权。

Writing Palestine into the history of the 18th century, the idea of Palestinian social and economic autonomy under the Ottomans was masterfully explored by Beshara Doumani (1995) with special reference to the social history of 18th century Jabal Nablus. This was done within the framework of Albert Hourani’s paradigm of the ‘urban notables’ (a’ayan): the political and economic elites in provincial Arab cities and towns that served as ‘patrician’ intermediaries between the imperial capital in Istanbul and provincial society and governed the provinces of the vast Ottoman Empire. The urban social elites of Palestine, as in the rest of the Arab East, sought to control regional and distant trade and dominate landownership in the countryside.

然而，在奥斯曼帝国晚期的巴勒斯坦，城市规模相对较小，城市社会精英依赖奥斯曼的庇护，并与周边乡村以及广大的农村农民相互依存。

However, in late Ottoman Palestine cities were relatively small and urban social elites were dependent on Ottoman patronage and interdependent with their surrounding villages and the mass peasantry of the countryside.

但是，奥斯曼统治时期巴勒斯坦的历史，不能局限于霍拉尼所描述的城市显贵的政治，也不能局限于其他形式的精英政治——无论这种政治是以贪婪的封建地主为中心，他们通过奥斯曼的伊尔提赞（iltizan）土地耕作制度剥削巴勒斯坦农民；还是以仁慈的贵族乡绅为中心，他们在该地区设立了卓越的慈善瓦合甫（waqf）基金会。尽管这些城市精英抵制奥斯曼对巴勒斯坦的直接统治，但他们大多出身于相同的社会阶层，其政治仍以家族为中心，竞争激烈，内部派系林立（Mao’z 1968: 113），最终也收效甚微。此外，巴勒斯坦的全部历史也不能简化为单一范式：帝国的庇护—附庸框架与精英政治。关键在于，巴勒斯坦城市“阿扬”（ʿayans）的这种社会自主性，无法解释18世纪巴勒斯坦“自下而上”和“从内部”产生的、近乎独立的巴勒斯坦政权——阿尔-扎希尔-阿尔-乌马尔（al-ʿDhaher al-ʿUmar）国家的政治自主性。该国是巴勒斯坦历史上最接近现代独立国家的政权。然而，这种以地方“城市显贵”为核心的精英范式，影响了整整一代现代中东史学家。史学家往往不愿挑战既有范式，而且许多学术生涯都依赖于这些范式，这在一定程度上解释了为何乌马尔在巴勒斯坦建立的强大政权——该政权延续了近半个世纪——至今很少受到研究。

But the history of Ottoman Palestine cannot be confined to the politics of Hourani’s urban notables or other forms of elite politics, whether this is centred on greedy feudal landlords who exploited the Palestine peasantry through the Ottoman iltizan land-cultivation system or on benevolent aristocratic patricians who set up remarkable charitable waqf foundations in the country. Although these urban elites resisted direct Ottoman rule in Palestine, they were drawn for the most part from the same social classes and their politics remained family-centred, fiercely competitive and deeply fractious (Mao’z 1968: 113) and, ultimately, ineffective. Also, the entire history of Palestine cannot be reduced to one paradigm: the imperial patron‒client framework and elite politics. Crucially, this social autonomy of the urban ‘ayans’ in Palestine cannot account for the dramatic emergence political autonomy ‘from below’ and ‘from within’ of an almost independent Palestinian entity in the 18th century, the al-ʿDhaher al-ʿUmar state of Palestine, which was the closest Palestine got to a modern independent state. However, this elite paradigm of local ‘urban notables’ has influenced an entire generation of historians of the modern Middle East. Historians are often wary of challenging established paradigms and, with so many academic careers depending on them, this partly explains why al-ʿUmar’s powerful state in Palestine, which lasted for nearly half a century, has been studied only marginally.