Abstract
When the major changes Palestine went through during the previous century are discussed, especially in terms of the urban and human landscape, few studies focus on the urban–social aspects. This study reconstructs the urban fabric of three neighborhoods in Ludd, one of Palestine’s major cities, situated on the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The reconstruction attempted here is dual: On one hand, the Old City no longer exists, like many towns and villages destroyed in the Nakba; on the other hand, Ludd’s indigenous inhabitants have been ethnically cleansed. Hence, we do not have traces of buildings or neighborhoods, and we have almost nobody left to tell us about their ancestors. Therefore, I reconstruct the physical contours of sections of the city and invite some ghosts from the past to lead us through the imagined neighborhoods.
I usually start my tours in the city of Lod near a mulberry tree that provides shade on a road that cuts through a large dirt square that is adjacent to the main mosque and church.1 I will ask my audience:
Take a moment and look at the road that cuts through the large dirt square, leading your gaze towards a crumbling building surrounded by a fence, Khan al-Hilu, just a hundred meters to the east. Now, let us delve into the history of this city. The Khan was a prominent landmark at the center of the Old City. One of few remaining traces of the past, it is a stark reminder of what once was. As we stand beneath the mulberry tree, let your imagination transport you to a time when the Old City flourished and the hammam hustled and bustled beneath our feet.
To help visualize the city’s former glory, I usually show an aerial photo from before its destruction (Figure 1), and address the tour participants as follows:
Take a close look and try to identify the Khan on the photograph. Can you spot it? Now, let’s think back to our current location under the mulberry tree. It may be more challenging to identify the surrounding buildings, as the area has undergone significant transformation over the years. In this journey, we rely on our imagination to resurrect a city that no longer stands. By tapping into the depths of your imagination, you can immerse yourselves in its streets, meet its people, and envision its intricate details. As this city has been wiped off the face of the Earth, anyone who wants to experience it must rely on the mind’s eye.
Figure 1. Aerial photo of Lydda, 1936. Source: Courtesy of the Israel Antiquity Authority.
Figure 1. Aerial photo of Lydda, 1936. Source: Courtesy of the Israel Antiquity Authority.
Ludd is located on the main road from Cairo to Damascus and next to the road from the Jaffa port to Jerusalem. Thanks to its central location, it has been inhabited continually for millennia. Many of its layers of habitation have been studied in different ways. However, as in other ancient cities in Palestine such as Jaffa, much less is known about its recent past.
Ludd’s central location led to its destruction and the expulsion of its inhabitants in the Nakba. As Ludd and Ramla were situated on the road leading to Jerusalem, they were seen as obstacles to Jewish transportation from Tel Aviv, and therefore had to be occupied. In one week around mid-July 1948, the Israeli military took the city, killed hundreds of its inhabitants, part of them in a mass shooting in a central mosque, and forced nearly 50,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and march to the east in the scorching heat.2 This left an empty city with only a few hundred inhabitants. The able-bodied were tasked with removing dead bodies from the streets and from the mosque, and burying or burning them in mass graves. After cleaning the city, they were ordered to load furniture, merchandise, and other goods on trucks driven by Israeli soldiers and to clean the city and prepare its houses and shops for Jewish newcomers.3
After the city was repopulated with new Jewish immigrants, Israeli Lod was established. In this city, the two main Jewish groups lived in two separate parts. Immigrants from North Africa inhabited the Old City, while immigrants from eastern Europe entered the neighborhoods built during the British mandate (1918–1948).4 While the Old City was dense and built around a few main streets and narrow alleys, with one- or two-story houses around inner courtyards, the newly built neighborhoods under the mandate were composed of isolated garden houses following a strict grid planned by the authorities (see Figure 1).5
After a decade, the Israeli authorities felt displeased with the Old City, the focus of this article, and started pulling inhabitants from it. This was a long process that took almost two decades to complete.6 In the end, the Old City was demolished and a “Peace Park” was built on its ruins, in honor of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s landing in Israel in 1977, in the nearby airport.
This article reconstructs three neighborhoods, or harat (sing. Hara),7 in the center of old Ludd: al-Hammam, Suq al-Bazaar, and Saʿudi. In each, we focus on one or two families that played a central role in the city’s social life. Although this is a frozen view of a moment in the late nineteenth century, it allows a general understanding of Ludd. It is possible to differentiate between the center and outskirts, dense and spacious neighborhoods. We can walk the streets, climb the stairs or stumble on our way to the dressing room in the bathhouse, and even smell the acrid smoke rising from the soap factory. However, this is a limited vision of the city, as the three neighborhoods reconstructed here are dictated by the sources, and at this stage of research, we have scanty information about other parts of the old city.
Hence, before we focus on the mentioned three neighborhoods, an overview of the Old City will be presented, based on an Ottoman census book from early in the century that offers important information on Ludd’s inhabitants.8 Three neighborhoods are indicated: Harrat al-Jamiʿ (mosque neighborhood), al-Shammiyya (northern neighborhood), and al-Gharbiyya (western neighborhood). In addition, there is a separate section dedicated to Greek Orthodox families. Additional information about the neighborhoods’ names is provided in court records, where we find Harrat al-Suyagh (jewelers’ neighborhood) and al-Hara al-Sharqiyya (eastern neighborhood). Al-Suyagh might be part of Harrat al-Jamiʿ, while al-Sharqiyya is missing from the census book.
The census offers additional information on the neighborhoods and the social status of their residents. In Harat al-Jamiʿ, which included the three sections or “islands” reconstructed here, we see some differences from the other harat in the census. Here, at least three turba dar are registered. This position not only was probably held by the person who took care of a turba, a shrine, as the name indicates, but also can refer to someone taking care of a neighborhood’s small mosque. In addition, one person is referred to as hafazat din (knowledgeable in religion), and another three men, two of the same family, are muʾathins (callers for prayer). Various other social positions are mentioned in this hara, such as merchants (tujjar), orchard keepers (karram), real estate dealers (samsara), tanners (dabagh), and coffeeshop owners (qahwaҫi). In the Hara al-Gharbiyya, many are without any named position, with some referred to as peasants (ҫiftҫi). Finally, the majority in Harat al-Shamiyya are peasants (ҫiftҫi or zaraʿ).
The reconstruction presented here relies on written sources, mainly from the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The data from this period are superimposed on plans created decades later, assuming that changes in the interim, especially within the Old City, have not been dramatic in terms of the main roads and monuments. The reconstruction focuses on three neighborhoods in the city center situated along a main road that crossed the city from east to west. They will be reconstructed as if almost cut off from the surrounding urban fabric. At the same time, an effort will be made to present some of the people who lived and worked in them. Finally, we may be able to imagine only one person from all the names that will be mentioned. We will be able to see that man in our mind’s eye—his clothes, his living room, and the urban view seen from his window.
On the street level, the view we will be able to imagine is the one observed by this man when standing in front of Khan al-Hilu, on the main west–east axis connecting the three reconstructed “urban islands” (Figures 2a–c). One side of the picture is visible from the man’s viewpoint toward the west, toward his shop, which stood next to a row of shops at the back of the hammam. The other side of the picture will be revealed when this man turns his gaze to the east, toward the street leading to his house. This will reveal to us the Saraya (Government House) and Saʿd and Saʿid Shrine (Mazar) that stood behind it (Figure 3). Although these two views reveal central parts of the city, they are very limited compared with the scope of a city that covered an area of nearly 250,000 square meters around 1900.
Figure 2. A map of Ludd from 1929 with the three restored “islands” marked on it. (A) Hammam neighborhood, (B) Bazar neighborhood, (C) Saʿd and Saʿid neighborhood. Source: From the author’s folder and prepared by Slava Pirsky.
Figure 2. A map of Ludd from 1929 with the three restored “islands” marked on it. (A) Hammam neighborhood, (B) Bazar neighborhood, (C) Saʿd and Saʿid neighborhood. Source: From the author’s folder and prepared by Slava Pirsky.
Figure 3. General view of Ludd 1923, looking to the north. Source: Frank Scholten collection, Leiden University Libraries.
Figure 3. General view of Ludd 1923, looking to the north. Source: Frank Scholten collection, Leiden University Libraries.
Paving Our Way in the Darkness
Thousands of working days were invested in “Sakhnah” but this Arab neighborhood still retains its uniqueness in the early 1960s. A long and narrow silhouette breaks the horizon line in “Sakhnah.” This is the minaret of the “al Lod” mosque, next to which the prayer dome is dwarfed. Moreover, nearby, very close, stands the Christian Church of St. George on its mighty walls. Here is the Turkish bath house and here is the row of carved columns—the remains of the “Khan.” All around are ancient houses, between which date palms grow and rise. Bulldozers raise iron fists and demolish the old.9
This short paragraph describes in a few words the Old City of Ludd, here called “Sakhnah,” and the means used to erase it. The erasure is evident already in the word “Sakhnah,” which appears in the first sentence: “Sakhna” is a corruption of the Arabic word sakna, meaning neighborhood. The designation of the Old City as a “neighborhood” diminishes its importance. This paragraph follows the author’s indulgent look at objects foreign to his eyes, a Turkish bathhouse, carved pillars, and palm trees, and concludes with the need to destroy them.
Indeed, the Old City of Ludd was bulldozed off the ground in a process that took more than two decades to complete, following its nearly total ethnic cleansing in July 1948. The blows of the iron fists left no trace of that city, except for a handful of buildings scattered unrelatedly to one another between the new buildings erected instead. To reconstruct both the material and human aspects of this urban space, I will need the following sources: court records; aerial photographs; a city plan; and tombstones.
Researchers of the built space of pre-1948 Palestine relied mostly on a survey of buildings on the ground, and after locating and reviewing the buildings in the field, they looked for records about the owners and patrons—for example, a waqf (endowment) registration or a transfer of ownership—especially if the buildings were intended for public use. In addition, such studies tried to trace the development of the buildings themselves: for example, stages of construction over the generations.10 One of the most recent books on the local area was dedicated to Ramla, Ludd’s neighbor to the south. The authors surveyed the buildings that remained standing and buildings surveyed under the British Mandate that were demolished since then, and located them using aerial photographs and city plans. In that book, however, the human–social dimension was absent, since apart from mentioning the names of the sites, which sometimes indicated those who inhabited or were buried in them, the stories of the families, their social status, or their connections with the immediate or regional environment were missing.11
In contrast to the researchers of the built space, historians, and social historians in particular, make considerable use of court records (sijill, pl. sijillat). From these records, it is possible to learn about the Muslim legal system and its attitude toward women, for example,12 or about the social classes in cities such as Nablus and Tripoli.13 In addition, the sijillat make it possible to learn about professional associations or guilds, such as those that existed in Ottoman Jerusalem.14 However, the built and material dimensions are largely absent from the historian’s work. Thus, we can learn much about relationships within and between families and the hierarchy between them, and about classes in eighteenth-century Nablus, without getting an idea of the built character of the city at that time. For example, in Beshara Domani’s work about Nablus, central soap factories are described—the economic pillars of the city—without the reader being able to locate the various factories and their distribution within the built environment.15
Several studies seek to combine the built space, or the material aspect of the city, with written sources that deepen our knowledge of the urban society, including Michelle Campos’s studies of Jerusalem towards the turn of the twentieth century and Khaled Fahmy’s work of Cairo during the nineteenth century.16 Campos examines the composition of the population in the al-Wad neighborhood by analyzing data from census notebooks. Here the flat plan of the city, divided into quarters, becomes stratified on a social basis, which does not correspond to the rigid interreligious divisions depicted on the maps of the city and etched in historical memory. On a map divided into quarters marked with different colors, Campos points to a “colorful” neighborhood in terms of religious identity. Unlike Campos, Fahmy approaches the city and even its smells, mostly the less pleasant ones, using literary sources, leading his readers on a tour following the stench in the streets and neighborhoods of old, but also regenerating Cairo, in order to point out the different nature of its regeneration in different areas.
Campos, and even more so Fahmy, does not find it necessary to describe the built space in detail, let alone reconstruct it, since they are dealing with cities that are still standing. This does not apply to Ludd, which was wiped off the face of the earth. Therefore, we are required to combine the different methods—the building survey method adopted by Petersen and Pringle, and the sijillat approach of Doumani, to reconstruct the different layers of the space. The studies by Campos and Fahmy are notable landmarks toward such integrated research.
Nevertheless, even this combination of the various sources does not enable a continuous walk through the city, since the sources, especially those that open a window onto social life, are fragmented. Thus, during the imaginary tour conducted in the following paragraphs, we will be able to walk down a main street next to one of the townspeople, without knowing, however, who lives or works next to him. We will find ourselves walking from a busy and bustling market into an epistemological void, since we have no information beyond the marking of the line, until we reach another “island of knowledge” in the form of a neighborhood that can be expanded on from the various sources. This is analogous to driving on a moonless night on an unlit dirt road, with headlights turning sporadically off and on: For a moment the entire landscape disappears, and a few moments later, everything is clearly visible. I would like us to take such a walk in the Old City of Ludd—if you are not afraid of the dark (Figure 2a refers to the first, 2b to the second, and 2c to the third stop).17
First Stop: Harat al-Hammam and Shams al-Din bin Saʿudi al-ʿAlami
Here at the first stop and at the following two, I will first describe the urban space and the inhabitants of each reconstructed area, and then elaborate on some families that owned those estates. Almost 100 meters separate Harat al-Hammam and Harat Saʿudi, along the same line where the central section of Suq al-Bazaar is located. One building situated almost on the middle of this line and open to the suq is Khan al-Hilu, the main caravansary. After the destruction, the Khan would remain the only witness of the Old City center. Six shops and the main entrance on the Khan’s southern faҫade stand as part of the northern row of shops in the bazaar (Figure 4). The other two points, the two harat on the line’s edges, can be seen only in aerial photos taken and city plans and prepared before 1948.
Figure 4. Kahn al-Hilu faҫade, 1986. Source: Photographed by Samir al-Hunaidi.
The hammam was located in my previous study on urban changes in the Old City under the British Mandate.18 The hammam was destroyed after 1948; the only evidence for its existence—other than the memories of surviving inhabitants and refugees—is a 1936 aerial photo and a city plan from 1929. This city plan will serve as the basis for our reconstructions of the urban fabric. Into this plan, I will incorporate the social aspect in the shape of the people living in and using those buildings.
Shops in the hammam’s vicinity are mentioned in two court hearings recorded in the sijill. In one dated 5 November 1875, Sheikh ʿAwad Bast bought from his mother Fatuna al-Wakih a house and three shops in the market (suq). The hammam courtyard bounded the southern side of the shops; on the east side was the road to which the house and the shops were open; on the north stood the shops of ʿAbd al-Raʾuf al-Naji; and on the west stood the hammam and Salih al-Naji’s shop.19
The shops are bordered on the south by the shop of Sheikh ʿAwad Bast, on the east by the road to which the shops are open, on the north by the shop of Hajj Mahmud al-Far, and on the west by the aqmim (furnace) of the hammam. Moreover, ʿAbd al-Rahim al-Kay bought two adjacent shops in the market, bordered on the south by the courtyard of the coffeehouse, on the east by the sellers’ property, on the north by the shop of Hajj Mahmud al-Far, and on the west by the road onto which its doors open.20
If we place the hammam at the center of our plan, we can reconstruct a courtyard to its east. To the north of the courtyard stood the home and three shops of Bast, and further to the north the shops of al-Naji. To the north was al-Far’s shop. To the west of al-Far’s shop stood the furnace, and Salah Naji’s shop was to the south (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Ludd: a section of the 1929 plan and the surroundings of the hammam on which some of the properties mentioned in the Sijill are marked. Source: From the author’s folder and prepared by Slava Pirsky.
Figure 5. Ludd: a section of the 1929 plan and the surroundings of the hammam on which some of the properties mentioned in the Sijill are marked. Source: From the author’s folder and prepared by Slava Pirsky.
Additional pieces of the Hammam neighborhood puzzle may be reconstructed out of Sheikh Shams al-Din bin Saʿudi al-ʿAlami’s endowment deed (waqfiyya), written in 1846.21 Shams al-Din owned six shops opening to the alley leading to the hammam’s main entrance. To the north, his shops were bordered by a shop that was part of the endowment of the Great Mosque. The sheikh owned another shop to the north of the hammam that faced one of the town’s main markets, referred to in this waqfiyya as al-Suq al-Sharqi. Here the sheikh’s neighbors were members of al-Kay’s family, which owned many estates in town.
The ʿAlami mansion (dar or beit), situated to the south of the hammam, is described in detail in Shams al-Din’s waqfiyya. In the endowment deed, several estates are mentioned: a house, an oil press, and a soap factory. The soap factory is composed of two floors and many vaults and some facilities used for producing soap. On the ground floor there are basins for drying the qilw,22 a copper pot, and two water cisterns for collecting rainwater. On the first floor there are a storage room for the qilw, a lime storage room, a crusher for the qilw, and an elevated platform on which the soap is poured to dry. The oil press is composed of four vaults enclosing a basin, a crushing tool, an oven, and crushing stones for the sesame.23 Thus, the ʿAlamis owned an entire production line that could produce olive oil, cook it for producing soap, and also produce sesame tahini and oil. They also owned shops in the city center where they could sell their products.
Shams al-Din al-ʿAlami was the head of a major branch of the well-known ʿAlamis of Jerusalem in Ludd. It seems he was well acquainted with the notables of Jaffa, the commercial and administrative center to which Ludd was affiliated. When he married the sister of Jaffa’s mufti on 10 May 1805, he invited Wali (governor) Sida, the Sheikh of the Two Harams,24 and the mutasarif (district governor) of Gaza, Hajj Muhammad Basha Abu al-Mariq.25 It seems that Abu al-Mariq was willing to improve his relations with the ʿAlamis, as he appointed Muhammad Effendi al-ʿAlami of Jerusalem as a judge in Jaffa. He attended Shams al-Din’s wedding there, almost a year after he had been reappointed as mutasarif. However, Abu al-Mariq did not meet Istanbul’s demands, and soon he had to flee to Egypt, where he was killed, and a new era began in Jaffa—this was the time of Muhammad Agha Abu Nabbut (r. 1805–1819).26 Hence, almost half a year after Shams al-Din’s wedding, in December 1805, Abu al-Mariq was not there any more, but his short episode casts some light on the importance of some of the Alami’s members in local politics.
Another man who also attended the wedding was Mustafa al-Kay, one of the nobles of Jaffa, who asked Abu al-Mariq to rebuild Masjid al-Bahar (the “Sea Mosque”). Another prominent guest was the mufti of Gaza, ʿAbd Allah Sanʿ Allah, who at some point also held the position of iftaʾ in both Gaza and Jaffa.27 It seem that the ʿAlamis played some role during the troubled time, at least at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This is also attested to by their connections and branches in different cities, mainly Jerusalem and Gaza. Their rule in Ludd and the connection to Jaffa through Ludd may shed more light on the relations between the two cities by the mid-nineteenth century.
Second Stop: Suq al-Bazaar Neighborhood and Hajj Mahmoud al-Far
Hajj Mahmoud al-Far, whose shop near the hammam we have just passed, lives nearby. On our way to his house we pass the newly renovated row of shops in the Khan’s faҫade (Figure 4). On the other side of the road, the southern one, we pass another row of shops, including the shops of the Karazun family, and above them, the family home. Next, we pass three shops owned by Hajja Sitt Ikhwitha and next, on the corner of the block, the three shops and above them the house of Hajj Abd al-Majid Abu al-Huda al-Taji (Figure 6).28
Figure 6. Ludd: al-Bazar neighborhood and the surroundings of Haj Mahmud al-Far’s house. Source: From the author’s folder and performed by Slava Pirsky.
Figure 6. Ludd: al-Bazar neighborhood and the surroundings of Haj Mahmud al-Far’s house. Source: From the author’s folder and performed by Slava Pirsky.
Abu al-Huda al-Taji’s house occupies the corner between the Suq al-Bazaar road and the road passing to the east of the Khan and leading to the southern part of the city. The 1936 photo reveals the second floor of this house as partly ruined. We can see the walls, but the roofs of at least two rooms are missing. Moreover, if we pay attention after passing the Karazun shops, there is an entrance to a small market alley heading south, situated between the Karazuns’ shops and those of Sitt Ikhwitha. This small market was called Sibat al-ʿAmur. Sibat refers to a roofed market, indicating that the alley is vault-roofed, and above it are rooms that probably belong to the Karazun residence on the first floor. One of the families owning shops in the sibat is al-Lulu. Sheikh Hussein Efendi al-Lulu bought a shop here for 20 gold liras.29
On reaching the junction of Suq al-Bazaar and the road leading south, we turn right, pass the Abu al-Huda al-Taji residence, and turn right again into a passage leading to Hajj Mahmud al-Far’s home (Figure 6B4). This house has two floors. The 1936 photo reveals a domed room on the first floor—this may be the living room of our host. A similar living room still stands in the nearby city of Ramla, in another house owned by the al-Fars’ neighbors in Ludd—the al-Taji residence near the Great Mosque of Ramla. On the first floor of the house in Ramla is a living room roofed by a high dome and led to by a vaulted porch. This room is the most decorated in terms of curved and colored stones (Figure 7).30 Although the al-Fars were not on the same social level as the al-Tajis, Hajj Mahmud attained his high status thanks to his business, which enabled him to afford such a house. When an Israeli antiquity inspector visited the house in the 1950s, he noted “a two-floor house with a unique dome.”31
Figure 7. Ramla: Beit Abu Al-Huda. Source: Photo by the author, 10 February 2020.
Back to the tour with Hajj Mahmoud al-Far. As we walk beside him, we can see that he is wearing a tarbush/Fez with a lafih (bonnet) around it and a silk kumbaz (wide pants). In his pocket is a silver watch worth half the price of the kumbaz. In winter, he would also wear an ʿabaya (cloak) costing almost as much as the watch. If the sheikh wanted to impress his guests, he could have told us, while we were drinking coffee and smoking a hookah with him in the upper liwan room, that he had three camels, along with seven head of cattle and one mule. These must have lived in the stable on the ground floor.32 If lucky, we would also meet the Hajj’s wife, Nafisa Bint Khalil Abu Husa, the mother of his five sons and four daughters.
According to the deed of inheritance, written in November 1895, two weeks after Hajj Mahmoud’s death, his father summoned Yosef Bin Yosef Bin al-Haj Muhammad al-Far, who also had a share in the inheritance, as well as some of Ludd’s dignitaries to a meeting. Among these was the mukhtar (chief) of the Mosque neighborhood (Harat al-Jamiʿ), ʿAbd Allah al-Hunidi. Next to him was also the mukhtar of the al-Hara al-Sharqiyya, Muhammad al-Naji al-Kay. Gathering the makhatir of different harat may indicate the various businesses and affairs Hajj Mahmoud had in Ludd before he died, emphasizing his high social status despite his not hailing from a notable family.
The court records reveal information beyond the boundaries of the city. They not only refer to the mukhtars of the various districts as mentioned above, and thus also places Hajj al-Far higher on the social scale, but also attest to wide-ranging regional connections: The document states al-Far’s debts to people from villages located east of Ludd, on the hills leading to Jerusalem. The arrows marking those connections, which indicate the city’s outreach and extend beyond its borders, also appear in other documents and can be used to map the connections of merchants in the city with the surrounding villages and towns. Thus the map expands and is humanized by the names, the types of goods, and the occupations of their owners. From Haj Mahmud’s property count, we understand that his main occupation was soap production. We learn this mainly from debts to inhabitants of four villages: Deir Qadis, Niʿlin, Saffa, and Jammala. Haj Mahmoud must have traded frequently with the people of Jammala, as most of his debts were owed to them.
We learn more about the Hajj soap factory from the materials and tools involved in the production of soap, as listed in the declaration of his assets. He had soap worth 11,200 lira, the most valuable property Hajj had at the time of registration. There were also the production materials, including the lime and the qilw, along with precious olive oil.
Hajj Mahmud’s relations with the villages involved more than commerce. In certain cases, he joined notables from those villages when they entered the court in Ludd to buy or sell lands.33 Those relations were part of the triangular trade connecting the town inhabitants who cooked the soap, the villagers who supplied the olive oil, and the Bedouins who supplied the qilw.34 This pattern suggested by Doumani in Nablus might have operated also in Ludd, which was surrounded by villages supplying various products to it. The villages on the hills to the east were major suppliers of olive oil, as indicated by Hajj Mahmud’s papers.
Final Stop: Harat Saʿudi and Bakir b. Yasin al-Kay and His Family
Sheikh Shams al-Din al-ʿAlami shared his six shops in the alley that led to the hammam with Bakir b. Yasin al-Kay. Sometime around 1860, the three merchants, Shams al-Din al-ʿAlami, Mahmud al-Far, and Bakir al-Kay, dwelt in the same business quarter of Ludd. Perhaps they even spent some time in the coffeeshop nearby. Shams al-Din and Bakir almost certainly did meet, since they had to manage their joint business. There is some indication of Mahmud’s relations with the Kay in his tirki. When Mahmud died, the mukhtar of al-Hara al-Sharqiyya, Muhammad al-Naji al-Kay, was there as a witness.
The Kays, or the Kayalis as they are occasionally referred to in court documents, own one of the large residences situated on the southern part of the Saʿd and Sʿid neighborhood, called Beit al-Baqar. In this compound, which might be described as a hawsh (residential block), the Kays own a large house and an oil press. The house of which Bakir bin Yasin al-Kay, Shams al-Din al-ʿAlami’s business partner, owns a great share includes eight rooms and three iwans (vaults opening onto a courtyard), three storage rooms and a water cistern, and stone-built vaults that face a central courtyard. The oil press that al-Kay owns in this neighborhood is described as vault-built and enclosing two oil stone crushers, wooden weights, and two oil cisterns. This oil press is situated on the first floor of the house of Bakir’s brother, ʿAbd al-Latif.35
Let us then ask Haj Mahmud al-Far to join us on a visit to Bakir al-Kay’s home (moving from B4 in Figure 6 to C4 in Figure 8). To lead us there, Haj Mahmud will take us back to the west–east main road on which the main bazaar is located and turn east. The main building we face here is the two-floor saray to the south of the road. Attached to the saray on the eastern side is Hush Farraj, a compound of several houses, including that of Sitt Ikhwitha, whose shop we have just passed, in front of the Khan (B2 Figure 6).36 Attached to the eastern wall of Sitt Ikhwitha’s residence are the houses of Mahmud Bin al-Hajj Muhammad Nimr, Husain Nijma, and the sons of Husein al-Anas. Three buildings out of the ones just mentioned—the saray, Beit Sitt Ikhwitha, and Beit Nimir—have windows on their southern sides overlooking an open courtyard and maybe a garden. In this courtyard, the shrine of Saʿd and Sʿid is situated, one of the many holy places scattered around the city. On the southern side of the courtyard is the Kay family residence, referred to above as Beit al-Baqar. The Kays also have an oil press west of their residence. Bordering the al-Kays’ residence to the north is al-ʿAnanis’ house.37
Figure 8. Ludd: Saʿd and Saʿid neighborhood. Source: From the author’s folder and performed by Slava Pirsky.
Figure 8. Ludd: Saʿd and Saʿid neighborhood. Source: From the author’s folder and performed by Slava Pirsky.
The sijillat of the city of Jaffa allow us to follow the Kays almost from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Yasin Bin ʿAli al-Kayali was appointed Qaʾimaqam Naqib al-Ashraf38 in Jaffa by Jerusalem’s Naqib al-Ashraf Hajj Umar al-Husseini.39 Immediately after his appointment, Yasin either started or expanded his business in Jaffa by renting a soap factory there.40 Yasin had at least five sons whom we managed to track in the sijillat. Some of them stayed in Jaffa, where they had businesses, and others lived in Ludd. At a certain point, some of the Ludd branch also moved to Jaffa after selling their properties in Ludd to other Kay members in the city.
Ahmad bin Yasin al-Kay inherited his father’s position as qaʾimaqam after his father died. Together with two of his brothers, he bought a house in Jaffa and had a share in the soap factory their father had rented before he died.41 Ahmad’s residence in Jaffa was composed of two houses, a bathroom, kitchen, open courtyard, a big qasir (may refer to a big room), a vaulted floor, and two wooden floors.42
Bakir was one of the central members of the Kay family in Ludd. Later called Abu Amin, he seems to have owned much of the family estates in Ludd. He bequeathed his property to his sons of two wives. In a court hearing that took place at Jaffa in 1895, we read that Bakir died in 1868, that at that time his son Amin was no longer alive, and that his sons Shukri, Muhyi al-Din, and ʿAbd al-Shafi lived in Jaffa. Bakir’s grandsons appointed Muhamad Tawfiq Dajani as their court representative, asking for their revenue from their grandfather’s waqf, which included (1) the house in Harat Abi Masʿud (probably the abovementioned Beit al-Baqar) on the east side of the city; (2) the mansion known as the diwan; (3) Dar (mansion) Fayuna; (4) the Abu Amin oil press; (5) six shops in the hammam’s vicinity whose ownership was shared with Shams al-Din Sʿudi al-ʿAlami; (6) shops near the suq courtyard; (7) a shop in the suq; (8) a soap press in the market; (9) Dar Abu Ghazal, near the mosque; (10) several orchards, one of them shared with Sitt Ikhwitha; and (11) many olive trees.43
The three brothers Shukri, Muhyi al-Din, and ʿAbd al-Shafi lived in Mahalat Sheikh Ibrahim al-ʿJami in Jaffa.44 Shukri was born in 1849 and lived in house no. 255 with his wife Sadiqa, the daughter of Hamad Shams al-Din, probably of the ʿAlamis. They had five sons and one daughter and added a new member to the house around 1915, when revisions were made to the register: Zahra, the wife of one of the sons, born in Ludd to Ahmad ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Kay. The house in no. 256 belonged to Muhyi al-Din, born in 1855 and married to Fatima; they did not have children at the time of registration. No. 257 belonged to ʿAbd al-Shafi, born in 1858 and married to Hanifa Bint ʿAbd al-Imam; they had two sons and three daughters.45
The Kay branch that stayed in Ludd was headed by ʿAbd al-Latif bin Yasin, who owned a house in the Saʿd and Sʿid neighborhood where he and his wife, Salma Bint Asʿad Saʿudi al-ʿAlami, raised their children.46 When ʿAbd al-Latif diedy, a great cenotaph was erected in Ludd’s western cemetery, where he joined his ancestors. In this cemetery, a group of graves on a slightly elevated spot are made of well-built cenotaphs formed out of ashlar stones. Some are decorated with two rows of tiny niches resembling muqarnas (Figure 9). On one of the cenotaphs, a tombstone survives, bearing an inscription engraved on the marble slab, with fifteen lines eulogizing ʿAbd al-Latif al-Kay, who died in 1875 (Figure 10).
Figure 9. Ludd: western cemetery, graves belonging to the al-Kay family. Source: Photo by the author, 23 June 2022.
Figure 9. Ludd: western cemetery, graves belonging to the al-Kay family. Source: Photo by the author, 23 June 2022.
Figure 10. Ludd: tombstone of ʿAbd al-Latif al-Kay, inscription, western cemetery. Source: Photo by the author, 23 June 2022.
Figure 10. Ludd: tombstone of ʿAbd al-Latif al-Kay, inscription, western cemetery. Source: Photo by the author, 23 June 2022.
The Kays, represented here in three generations—the grandfather, Yasin, his sons, mainly Bakir and ʿAbd al-Latif, and his grandchildren—continued developing businesses in Jaffa and Ludd and married into other notable families in those cities, mainly the ʿAlamis. Under British rule, members of the Kay family held positions in the Ludd municipality. In August 1932, the municipality member ʿAbd al-Qadir bin Yusif al-Kayali attacked his colleague Saʿid al-Hunaidi while they had a municipal meeting. This fight caused counterattacks by the two rival families, which ended when one of the notables assembled the two families and a sulh (reconciliation) was achieved.47
Shedding More Light through the Wider Context
From looking at the set rubrics of the Ottoman census referred to at the beginning, a sense of equality emerges, as all inhabitants are registered on the same form and in the same manner. However, compared with the equal image emerging out of the census, the details of the sijillat point at a social ladder. At least two social statuses can be distinguished in the three families that used to live in the three neighborhoods. The Kays and ʿAlamis belonged to the notables who had acquired their status thanks to their religious functions.48 The Kays were part of the ashraf (Prophet Muhammad’s descendants) who even gained the naqaba (administrative head) in Jaffa, while the ʿAlamis held the post of nazara (administrator of waqf) on various awqaf. The two families intermarried and shared some residences and businesses. The third family, al-Far, had lower status, but was wealthy thanks to Hajj Mahmoud’s business acumen. Their neighbors in business, such as the Bast and Karazun families, also had this status of merchants.49 Indeed, we do not find evidence of any marriages between those families and those located above them on the social ladder, the Kays and ʿAlamis.
As Büssow noted, however, the power of some members of the religious notable families drew also on their individual ability rather than family status.50 Some branches of the Kay family in Ludd were more successful than others. Even within in the same branch, such as that headed by Bakir b. Yassin, there were status differences and dynamics: It started out as a powerful one when Bakir was alive but began to deteriorate immediately when he dies. In the next Kay generation, a new branch, headed by Bakir’s brother ʿAbd al-Latif, flourished in Ludd.
In a broader perspective, one of the aspects emerging from the reconstruction of the three neighborhoods in Ludd is the difference in its urban composition from that of Nablus, about which there is both historical and urban research. In Nablus, over the years, separate areas were created far from the population centers where soap factories operated, while in Ludd some of the soap factories and oil presses were located on the ground floors of private houses that were scattered all over the city. In other words, in Nablus, industrial facilities that produced a lot of smoke developed away from the city center. In Ludd, on the other hand, it is conceivable that in winter, columns of smoke would billow over the city for days on end, since the oil-cooking season was after the olive harvest, at the beginning of winter.
Beyond the pollution of the city’s skies, the zoning in Nablus—relegating the industry to the outskirts of the city, far from the houses of the factory owners—represents social status gaps between the two cities. Nablus’s wealthy families built spacious houses in the city, especially after the fall of Egyptian rule toward the middle of the nineteenth century. In Ludd, where the soap industry was not as well developed, an intermediate situation arose in which there was a small affluent class, not enough to effect zoning in the urban structure.
However, our comparison is limited, since the research about Nablus is based on a richer variety of sources. First, most of the old city is still standing. Second, most of its population remained there even after its occupation in 1967, which allowed the preservation of documents about the city in the form of Sharia court summaries, administrative documents, and family papers, allowing much deeper learning than is possible in Ludd.
Regarding comparisons with other Palestinian cities, recently some attempts to reconstruct Gaza’s urban layout have revealed some inner dynamics between competing factions—groups living in different parts of the city. We do not sense such competition in the relatively small city of Ludd, about half the size of Gaza in the late nineteenth century. Moreover, in Gaza we see fortress-like residences such as Dar Abu-Khadra in the Sheikh Ayyad neighborhood.51 Although several powerful families of Ludd resided around the shrine of Saʿd and Sʿid, which may have carried religious importance for the people of Ludd similar to that of Sheikh Ayyad in Gaza, apparently they did not build such vast mansions.52 Houses in Ludd resembled the mansions in Ramle, such as Qasir Waqf Abu al-Huda, Qasr Hasan al-Darwish, or Dar Khalil al-Mullah. Those were houses built around or beside a small courtyard, with one or two rooms on the first floor. One of the first-floor rooms, roofed with high dome, probably served as the guest room or diwan.53
Last, in light of the present findings, it would be interesting to compare the tirki of a Nablus notable with that of Hajj Mahmoud al-Far. Did the al-Far family have a status similar to that of one of the wealthy families in Nablus, the Abd Al-Hadi family, who came from the ʿAraba near Jenin and established strong trade ties with the surrounding villages? Did the people of Jammala, with whom Al-Far had a close relationship, produce oil exclusively for him? What did they receive in return beyond the financial value, for example, during a change of government at the local level, such as the replacement of tax collectors? In the soap triangle that connected the people of the city, the farmers of the village, and the seminomad Bedouins, did Hajj al-Far also have connections with Bedouin tribes for the sake of the qilw, the ash without which olive oil could not be turned into soap?
Another central question arises regarding the relationship between Jaffa and Ludd or between Ludd, Ramla, and then Jaffa. Did Jaffa’s ascendancy during the nineteenth century, owing to lucrative citrus exports to Europe, overshadow Ludd because investors preferred to invest in the new goods rather than to be left behind with the traditional soap industry?
Concluding the Journey
The destruction of old Ludd left practically nothing on the surface. Whoever visits it today faces a void that does not bear witness to its recent past. Thus, a person born in Ludd, say in 1930, was exiled from it as a teenager, and returned to visit after three-fourths of a century could not reconcile Israeli Lod with their memories of old. They would wander lost in a desolate area covered in dirt, barely able to locate the alleys where they used to stroll, the houses of relatives they used to visit, the bustling bazaar where they used to bargain. Therefore, the attempt to restore the urban fabric requires cross-referencing multiple sources of evidence, and still the space can hardly be brought to life. All we can do is resurrect the ghosts of prominent individuals who spent part of their time in part of that space, so long as they are referred to in court documents, memoirs, the city plan, and photographs.
Nevertheless, in the three cases recreated above, remains on the ground do allow visitors to stand in the same place even after seventy-five years and vicariously experience their childhood space. ʿAbd al-Latif al-Kay’s tombstone, for example, is located in an area that has not changed, so those who used to visit the cemetery on holidays can still, after all these years, walk toward the small hill and imagine the old days, when the city of the dead was surrounded by the city of the living. However, if they look to their right or to their left, they will not see the houses of the western neighborhood; if they look straight ahead, to the east, they will see but miserable traces of the Old City. To tell their children and grandchildren about the city that was, as I do, they will have to resort to written sources.
Compensating for the shortcomings of those sources, the advantages of documenting the city through aerial photography and a city plan stand out, as they flesh out the entire city system. Although this is a frozen view of a certain moment in time, it provides a general understanding of the city. It is possible to differentiate between the center and the outskirts, dense neighborhoods and spacious ones, and the combination of sources allows the construction of a multilayered image, albeit fragmented. Part of that fragmentation is reflected in the gap between the findings on the ground and their description in the court documents. Thus, we find ourselves with descriptions of different sections of the city without the possibility of connecting them or constructing continuous layers.
The current article attempts to summon some ghosts that once lived in Ludd, before its destruction. Given the information gathered about the three neighborhoods, the families that lived in them, and their social status and occupation, we can now begin to answer broader questions radiating from the city to its adjacent villages, as well as to other cities near and far, such as Ramla or Jaffa. This reconstruction places the oral testimonies of the descendants of the abovementioned families in urban space. Thus, Fatma al-Kay, who was born in 1917, and Mustafa al-Far, born in 1932, both settled in Amman after the Nakba, and their testimonies can now light our path through the Ludd of their childhoods.54
Notes
Ludd is the city’s Arabic name. In referring to the city under Israeli rule, the Hebrew name Lod will be used. Lydda was the city’s name under the British Mandate (1918–1948).
Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2008);Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006).
Isbir Munayyir, al-Lid fi ʿahday al-Intidab wal-Ihtilal [Lydda during the Mandate and the Occupation Periods] (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997), Ch. 4.
Ora Vaqrot, Lod Geographya Hisorit [Lod: A Geographical History] (Lod: Cherikover, 1977), Ch. 8.
This article is part of a series of articles about the city. The first presents a general picture of the city and some of the buildings still standing in it: Tawfiq Daʿadli, “Remains of Ottoman Buildings in the City of al-Ludd,” Der Islam 96, no. 1 (2019): 158–189. Another focuses on two projects dedicated by two city’s notables: Tawfiq Daʿadli, “The Waqfs of Hajja Sitt Ikhwitha and Khalil Dahmash in the City of al-Ludd: Local Agents of Urban Change, in From the Household to the Wider World: Local Perspectives on Urban Institutions in Late Ottoman Bilad al-Sham, ed. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Büssow (Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 2022), 111–123. A third introduces the “modern” planning methods imposed on the old city: Tawfiq Daʿadli, “Ludd and Lydda: A Tale of Two Plans,” Journal of Urban History (2023): 1–18. At this stage, and after providing general information about the city’s urban and social structure, a detailed reconstruction of some of the urban fabric of the Old City is introduced with the hope that it will help implanting other social layers.
Haim Yacobi, The Jewish–Arab City: Spatio-politics in a Mixed Community (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), Ch. 3.
In the Census Book, they are referred to as mahalle (Ottoman Turkish) or mahalla (Arabic). Following Johann Büssow and Yuval Ben-Bassat, “Rethinking Urban Neighborhoods in Late Ottoman Bilad al-Sham: The Case of Gaza,” in From the Household to the Wider World: Local Perspectives on Urban Institutions in Late Ottoman Bilad al-Sham, ed. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Büssow (Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 2022), 79, in this article, I employ “neighborhood” as a generic term for all kinds of urban subdivisions.
The book, much of it still intact, is dated to 1905, with some amendments in 1916; it is found in the Israel State Archives (ISA). Michelle U. Campos, “Mapping Urban ‘Mixing’ and Intercommunal Relations in Late Ottoman Jerusalem: A Neighborhood Study,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63 (2021): 133–169. Michelle U. Campos, “Placing Jerusalemites in the History of Jerusalem: The Ottoman Census (Sicil-i Nüfūs) as a Historical Source, in Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, ed. Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (Leiden, Brill, 2018), 15–28.
This paragraph is part of a kind of pamphlet, published by Lod municipality, glorifying it almost three decades after the occupation: Avraham Pilig, Lod (Lod: Lod Municipality, 1976), 44.
Here I would like to differentiate between studies that survey buildings and neighborhoods, or even whole cities, such as Michael Hamilton Burgoyne and Donald Sidney Richards, Mamluk Jerusalem: An Architectural Study (London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1987); Sylvia Auld and Robert Hillenbrand, Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City, 1517–1917 (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000); and Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld, Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1189–1250 (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2009), and studies that discuss the urban fabric mainly based on maps or aerial photos, such as Büssow and Ben-Bassat, “Rethinking Urban Neighborhoods”; and Majd al-Malki and Salim Tamari, The Palestinian City: Issues in Urban Transformations (Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2021). Each has its own methods, aims, and advantages.
Andrew Petersen and Denys Pringle, Ramla: City of Muslim Palestine, 715–1917 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2021), 136–142.
Iris Agmon, “Women, Class, and Gender: Muslim Jaffa and Haifa at the Turn of the 20th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, no. 4 (1998): 477–500; Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Beshara Doumani, Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Amnon Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2000). However, and despite the wealth of the sijill, it does not reflect reality due to several internal limitations and the fact that it is primarily intended as a legal tool to manage society. See Dror Ze’evi, “The Use of Ottoman Shariʿa Court Records as a Source for Middle Eastern Social History: A Reappraisal,” Islamic Law and Society 15, no. 1 (1998): 35–56.
Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), Ch. 5.
Michelle U. Campos, “Mapping Urban ‘Mixing’ and Intercommunal Relations in Late Ottoman Jerusalem: A Neighborhood Study,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63 (2021): 133–169. Khaled Fahmy, “An Olfactory Tale of Two Cities: Cairo on the Nineteenth Century,” in Historians in Cairo: Essays in Honor of George Scanlon, ed. Jill Edwards (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001), 155–187.
The last two decades have witnessed growing research into various aspects of urbanity in the Middle East and in Palestine in particular. The many works on Palestine extend the scope of this paper. The ongoing work of Salim Tamari includes studies on cities such as Jerusalem or Jaffa: Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), and edited memoirs such as those by Wasif Jawhariyyeh and Ihsan Salih Turjman: Salim Tamari and Issam Hassar, The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2014); Salim Tamari, Year of the Locust: A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015). In a recent edited volume that included various works about cities in the region, Johann Büssow and Yuval Ben-Bassat, From the Household to the Wider World: Local Perspectives on Urban Institutions in Late Ottoman Bilad al-Sham (Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 2022), introduced part of their project about Gaza, where they combined written evidences with maps and aerial photos and focused on different neighborhoods. This major work made it possible to make parallels to cases in my paper and open a wider window on similar dynamics. The volume included a paper by Evelin Dierauff (2022) about pre-World War I Jaffa, making it possible to walk through some of the cultural hubs in the city and experience an urban layer created thanks to contemporary ground photos and documentations of buildings that still stand: Evelin Dierauff, “Performance of Late Ottoman Modernity: Culture, Entertainment and Leisure Activities in Pre-World War I Jaffa,” in Büssow and Ben-Bassat, From the Household to the Wider World, 157–178. Also worth mentioning is the Jerusalem project directed by Vincent Lemire and Angelos Dalachanis, published in the Brill book series Open Jerusalem. This series has already published four volumes on such issues as urbanity and landscape change, Nadi Abusaada, “Urban Encounters: Imaging the City in Mandate Palestine,” in Imaging and Imagining Palestine: Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens, 1918–1948, ed. Karene Sanches Summerer and Sary Zananiri (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 360–369; comparison of three cities under the Ottomans, Mahmoud Yazbak, “Comparing Ottoman Municipalities in Palestine: The Cases of Nablus, Hafa and Nazareth, 1864–1914,” in Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Visiting a Global City, ed. Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 240–261; and the tramway, Sotirios Dimitriadis, “The Tramway Concession of Jerusalem, 1908–1914: Elite Citizenship, Urban Infrastructure, and the Abortive Modernization of Late Ottoman City,” in Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840–1940, ed. Dalachanis and Lemire, 475–489. Finally, we may mention Vincent Lemire’s recent contribution, In the Shadow of the Wall: The Life and Death of Jerusalem’s Maghrebi Quarter, 1187–1967 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023). In that it traces and reconstructs the neighborhood outlines, it is quite similar to my approach to Ludd.
Daʿadli, “The Waqfs of Hajja Sitt Ikhwitha and Khalil Dahmash.”
Awqaf Department, Abu Dis, Sijill Ludd, 8/1292/1, 1/16, 93. Copies of the sijillat are scattered in different archives. Sijill Ludd is kept at the Awqaf [sing., Waqf] Department in Abu Dis; copies of Sijill Jaffa are kept at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library, Haifa University, and the ISA; copies of Sijill Jerusalem are kept at the Israel National Library, Jerusalem. I provide the full details in the first reference and then only refer to the city of the sijill, such as Sijill Ludd.
Sijill Ludd, 8/1292/1,1/16, 134.
Sijill Jerusalem, Israel National Library, Jerusalem, 330, 14–21. On the ʿAlami especially in Jerusalem, see M. Uri Kupferschmidt, “Alami Family,” E12 (2008).
The qilw is the ash of a plant that grew in the desert and was collected by the nomads, dried, and burned. The ash was sold to factories for the production of soap, as it formed a base countering the oil’s acidity. About the production process, see Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, 252–254; Naseer ʿArafat, Nablus: City of Civilizations (Nablus: Cultural Heritage Enrichment Center, 2012), 148.
For documentation of a soap factory in Ludd, see Da’adli, “Remains of Ottoman Buildings.”
In charge of the two sacred sites of Jerusalem and Hebron, al-Haram al-Sharif and al-Haram al-Khalil.
Sijill Jaffa, Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library, Haifa University, 2/1, 135. Abu al-Mariq signed the ta’yin marsum (appointment order) of the judge in Jaffa with the same alqab as the ones referred to above in the wedding registration of Shams al-Din: Sheikh al-Haramain, Mutasarif Gaza, and in the abovementioned context, also as Wali Jadda. See Mahmoud Yazbak, Madinat al-Burtuqal Yafa: Hadara wa Mujtamaʿ 1700–1840 (Beirut: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 2019), 58–60.
On Jaffa’s prosperity under Abu Nabbut, see Yazbak, Madinat al-Burtuqal Yafa, Ch. 3; Ruba Kanaʿan, “Two Ottoman Sabils in Jaffa (c. 1810–1815): An Architectural and Epigraphic Analysis,” Levant 33 (2001): 187–202; Ruba Kanaʿan, Waqf, Architecture, and Political Self-Fashioning: The Construction of the Great Mosque of Jaffa by Muhammad Aga Abu Nabbut,” Muqarnas 18 (2001): 120–140.
Adil Manaʿ, Aʿlam Falastin fi awakhir al-ʿahd al-Uthmani (1800–1918) (Beirut: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 2008), 240.
Sijill Jaffa, ISA 348, 94–97.
Sijill Ludd, 240.
For the plan and details of this house, see Petersen and Pringle, Ramla, 136–142.
Israel Antiquity Archive (IAA) archives, Lod file.
Sijill Jaffa 63, 3–6.
Sijill Ludd, 60–61.
Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, Ch.r 5.
Sijill Jaffa 25; 73.
Sijill Jaffa 62/1, 106–110.
Sijill Jaffa 25, 73/1; Sijill Jaffa 29, 73; Sijill Jaffa 25, 183; Sijill Ludd, 269; Sijill Jaffa 348, 91.
Representative of the administrative head of the descendants of the Prophet, who in this case is settled at Jerusalem.
Sijill Jaffa 8, 140.
Sijill Jaffa 8a, 123.
Sijill Jaffa 11, 18.
Sijill Jaffa 23, 61.
Sijill Jaffa 59, 38–45.
The Mufti of Jaffa used to live in this neighborhood; see Sijill Jaffa 52, 86.
Nufus daftar, ISA 439, 5.
Sijill Jaffa 23, 172; Sijill Jaffa 25: 25; 70; 73.
About part of the conflicts the Kays had in the city due to this political involvement we can read in Palestine’s major daily newspaper; see Filastin, 8 August 1932, 5.
Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem, 1872–1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 318, 324.
Some members of this social class, such as the Dahmash family, elevated their position in the city through endowments; see Daʿadli, “The Waqfs of Hajja Sitt Ikhwitha and Khalil Dahmash,” 111–123.
Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 311 adds, “However, the individual actor is clearly not to be thought of as completely independent: families certainly played an important role . . . households were a key unit for social and economic reproduction.”
Büssow and Ben-Bassat, “Rethinking Urban Neighborhoods,” 94–95.
Regarding mansions, we have to rely mainly on plans and photos, as no mansion survived in the city. Following those sources, there were no houses resembling the notables’ houses in Nablus, such as the house of Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Hadi that stands fortress-like to the west of the Old City of Nablus. This house shares some features with Dar Abu Khadra in Gaza, such as the central open courtyard surrounded by all the rooms the two stories situated on the outer edges, forming a huge wall. See ʿArafat, Nablus, 274–277; Büssow and Ben-Bassat, “Rethinking Urban Neighborhoods,” 94–95.
Petersen and Pringle, Ramla, 136–142, 152–153, 156–158.
Palestine Remembered, accessed 21 January 2024, www.Palestineremembered.com.
