Dana Sajdi is Associate Professor of History at Boston College. She is the editor of Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century (2008) and coeditor of Transforming Loss into Beauty: Essays in Arabic Literature and Culture in Memory of Madga Al-Nowaihi (2008).

THE BARBER OF DAMASCUS

NOUVEAU LITERACY IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY OTTOMAN LEVANT

By Dana Sajdi

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8532-7

Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps………………………………………ixAcknowledgments……………………………………………………xiNote on Language and Transliteration…………………………………xvIntroduction………………………………………………………11 The Disorders of a New Order: The Levant in the Long Eighteenth Century..142 A Barber at the Gate: A Social and Intellectual Biography…………….383 “Cheap” Monumentality: The Nouveau Literates and Their Texts………….774 Authority and History: The Genealogy of the Eighteenth-Century Levantine
Contemporary Chronicle……………………………………………..1155 A Room of His Own: The “History” of the Barber of Damascus……………1456 Cutting the Barber’s Tale: The Afterlives of a History……………….174Conclusion: From Nouveau Literacy to Print Journalism………………….205Epilogue………………………………………………………….213Notes…………………………………………………………….215Glossary………………………………………………………….261Bibliography………………………………………………………263Index…………………………………………………………….281

CHAPTER 1

The Disorders of a New Order

The Levant in the Long Eighteenth Century

It is worth reiterating that it is not so much the literacy of the eighteenth-centurybarber that is surprising, it is his authority. This chapter investigatesthe sources of the authority of our nouveau literates. What is itthat impelled or gave confidence to a barber, a Greek Orthodox priest, acouple of Shi’i farmers, a Samaritan scribe, a Himsi court scribe, and acouple of Damascene soldiers to write? What is it in the social and culturallandscape of the eighteenth-century Levant that prompted these people,whose professions, strictly speaking, fell outside the learned professionsand especially history writing, to write chronicles? In short, this chapteris about nouveau literacy as a social phenomenon.

In search of the sources of the nouveau literates’ authority, I focus onDamascus, the city in which the barber was born, and which was undeniablyhis own. Ibn Budayr’s possession of the city is evident in his markingof the city’s features: its neighborhoods, streets, bazaars, bathhouses, coffeehouses,shops, colleges, and mosques. In his chronicle, a cartographyemerges in which the city is not just a list of places but a veritable habitat.It is home to all kinds of people: notables, scholars, merchants, soldiers,mystics, shopkeepers, prostitutes, and possessed individuals. It is a citywhere natural beauty and divine grace abound, but it is also a place ofmysterious murders and curious suicides, of immoral revelry and maritalinfidelities. It is the hometown of the great Sufi thinker ‘Abd al-Ghanial-Näbulusi, the poet laureate Bahlul, and the impossibly seductive prostituteSalamun. Despite Ibn Budayr’s anger over and frustration withthe corruption and disorder in the city, the barber narrates his Damascuslovingly, proudly, and protectively.

Damascus is important not only because it is the barber’s home. It happensto be one of the five most important cities in the Ottoman Empire anda chief provincial capital. It is the center of Ottoman rule in the region, anda recipient of imperial orders, benefits, and personnel. It is the node fromwhich imperial power is distributed and competed for. Thus, Damascusfunctioned as a microcosm of the empire and often mirrored its capital,Istanbul. In addition to its political significance, Damascus’ cultural andsocial (hence, economic) wealth was abundant. Historically one of themost important knowledge centers in the Islamic world, in the eighteenthcentury it became the point of departure of the northern pilgrimage routeto Mecca. In these capacities, Damascus was the center of religiously andintellectually motivated traffic. For all of these reasons, the first place tolook for the sources of authority in the eighteenth-century Levant, even theauthority of “unimportant” nouveau literates, is the Ottoman provincialcapital par excellence, Damascus, in which a great deal was happening.

The Levantine eighteenth century represented a reconfigured social andpolitical map, a new order of sorts. This order was constituted around theemergence of new households and networks, which afforded fresh opportunitiesto individuals and groups, and through which many experienceda change in social position or status. I trace the contours of this order byexploring the socioeconomic and political processes that undergirded it,and I locate in this new order a changed urban topography. It is insidethe city of Damascus itself that I look for the manifestations of this newsocial topography not only in an altered cityscape of exhibitionism andviolence but also in a more public sociability exemplified in a culture of theoutdoors. This (more) public culture is evident in ostentatious buildings,some in imperial style, and in the visibility of new segments of society,such as women and minorities. In the eyes of contemporaries, includingour barber, these changes represented not a new order but a condition ofoutright “disorder.” I argue that the chronicles of the nouveau literatesconstitute part and parcel of this social and cultural change, as a literarydisorder of the new order.

The barber and all the other new historians in our sample benefitedfrom the changes in the region, whether as individuals or as members of alarger community. This enhancement in status afforded these individualsthe confidence to celebrate, even flaunt, their rise, and it raised the stakesconsiderably. In a new position there was much more to lose. Whether tocount their blessings, issue rebukes, or complain about the vicissitudes oftime, these nouveau literates wrote chronicles to negotiate in a changedworld. Having experienced social mobility, and prompted by hope andfear in their new positions, these authors used the publicness of the textto negotiate and exhibit their altered situations. Consequently most oftheir texts were public displays, inexpensive “monuments” to match thenew urban architecture itself.

A RESHUFFLE IN THE SOCIAL TOPOGRAPHY

Despite (or perhaps because of) military defeat and territorial loss, theOttoman Empire in the long eighteenth century has come to be seenas constituting a new order. Politically, the clearest manifestation ofthis phenomenon is the externalization of the authority of the sultan tohouseholds outside his own. The capital city witnessed the rise of “vizier-pasha”households, while the provinces saw the rise of powerful localgubernatorial families. In the province of Damascus, local rule cametinged with a dynastic flavor. For much of the century, the al-‘Azm familyruled the province with the exhibitionism, pageantry, and panache ofa royal household.

In many ways, the al-‘Azm family represented a new creature. Andthe new creature came with a new fiscal deal: the malikane, a system oftax farming, which almost amounted to private land ownership. Thebeneficiaries of this system were the governors and other members ofthe local elite, whether ‘ulamä’ or commercial families. Competitionover the purchase of rights over these tax farms, auctioned to the highestbidder, was the order of the day. “Wealth pulls along more wealth,”as the Arabic proverb goes; those who were able to offer advances for amalikane found generous reward. Thus, in seeking to explain the eighteenth-centuryphenomenon of the rise of the notables (a’yan), scholarshave determined that the new tax-farming system constituted an importanteconomic basis that facilitated the social and political dominance ofnew figures and households.

Another economic factor that seems to have contributed to the changesin the eighteenth-century political landscape is the intensification of globaltrade because of European demand for cash crops such as cotton, silk,and grain. The emergence of port towns at the expense of traditionalinland commercial centers reflected a shift in trade patterns toward thesea. The point here, however, is that integration into the world marketbrought about what is usually expected of the integration into the worldmarket: new avenues for political and economic power. The ascendancyof the tribal strongman al-Zahir al-‘Umar (d. 1775) is a case in point.Having monopolized the cotton trade in Palestine, al-‘Umar managedto garner the strength—and audacity—to challenge Ottoman rule fromhis newly fortified costal town of Acre. As we shall see, al-‘Umar wasubiquitous in the region and consequently in the chronicles of the time.Often cast as the villain, but sometimes as the good ally—depending onwho is reporting—al-‘Umar eluded the representatives of Ottoman rulefor a long time. Whether the good guy or the bad, al-‘Umar rebelled withstyle, which made him the subject of epiclike narrations of the varietywe will encounter in Chapter 5.

The Levantine eighteenth century was also about a new sectarian order,which manifested itself in the rise to prominence of the Greek Catholiccommunity. The origin of these dreaded schismatics—as the Greek Orthodoxheld them to be—dates back to the late seventeenth century, but theirdominance in the subsequent century is intimately intertwined with theiractive role in the reinvigorated Mediterranean trade. Through conversionto Catholicism, this community sought to free themselves from the controlof the Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople. Significantly, thecommunity rose at the expense of their former co-religionists the GreekOrthodox, but by the end of the eighteenth century they had also supersededthe local Jewish community, especially the Farhi family, who werehitherto the preferred custom collectors and financiers.

Thus far, I have described the new order in terms of “rise” and “fall,”which are the current terms in modern scholarship. However, these storiesof rise and fall should not be seen as isolated trends in an otherwiseunchanged society. Rather, I will argue that the emergence of new figures,families, and groups reflected a larger and deeper social flux, in whichboth the “middling sort” (say, a barber, a farmer, or a minor soldier) andthe culturally nondominant (say, a Greek Orthodox priest or a Samaritanscribe) also experienced or stood to experience change in social position.In order to integrate nonnotables into the picture, one must readjust theview such that the focus is less on the fact and identity of the new elite andmore on the mode and place of their operation, that is, on the dynamicof family patronage and its base, the elite household.

The new order can be viewed as simply one of the appearance anddominance of new families whose households became the nodes and lociof social networks that extended beyond kin. The nature and extent of thepower of the household differed according to occupation and social and/or political functions of the family. Whether these were large military-administrativehouseholds, smaller wealthy merchants, or distinguished‘ulama’ families, they were generally rich, fiercely competitive, and decidedlylocal. However, for the perpetuation of their power, these familiesneeded to cultivate connections further afield in the places that matteredmost, often the imperial capital itself.

Although the shenanigans that went on between the local notablesand their Istanbul patrons are known to the modern historian, it is thelocal character of these households that concerns us here. As nodes ofsocial networks, these new households—whether in the provincial capitalor in town districts—could not remain afloat solely by clinging tothe rope extended to them from the capital city; they needed mooringbuoys in their own ports. Notable families formed factions and forgedalliances that necessarily crossed social functions and confessional lines.In their capacity as patrons, notables located beneficiaries nearby whoseexpertise, positions, or services facilitated their own rise, entrenchment,and even cultivation of their style. In other words, patronage, which wassolicited from above and extended below, was the name of the game,and the new household necessarily “served as a bridge between elitesand non-elites.” If lucky, the “non-elite”—say, an artisan, a soldier,or a minor scribe, whether Muslim or not—had the opportunity to bea useful client and become enmeshed in a web of favors and servicesthat would bring him closer to the nodes of powers. Thus, an artisan,craftsman, or member of a nondominant community could participatein and was affected by the social jostling around him; he too had astake in the new order.

Viewed this way, the emergence of the new notables, the GreekCatholic community, and/or rebellious local leaders cease to be isolatedtrends, that is, mere epiphenomena. Rather, they can be considered thetip of the iceberg. The famous tales of rise and fall that scholars havenarrated to characterize the Levantine eighteenth century both maskand betray a larger phenomenon of social mobility—vertical and lateral—inwhich the non-elite and non-Muslims participated. In otherwords, the eighteenth century was about social flux, about a reshufflingof the social topography.

A reshuffle in social positions is rarely orderly. Even though the centurywas a time of opportunity, it was also a time of competition andfear. Many of the chroniclers saw their environment as a sign of God’swrath against the breakdown of the traditional order. It is no wonderthat “lack of order” is the main theme in the chronicle of our barber, IbnBudayr. Though a beneficiary of this social flux, the barber never ceasesto grumble about the disorders of the new order. Little did he know thathe himself was contributing to this disorder. His book, which representsthe new voice of the commoner in the field of historiography, was itself adisturbance in the literary order.

URBAN DISORDERS

As the social topography changed, so did the landscape of the city andthe citizens’ use of its spaces. New wealth and power sometimes existto be exhibited. Damascenes, like their Istanbuli counterparts, did notshy away from displaying their new riches and social positions for all tosee. They too were engaged in the business of public display. This exhibitionisttrend manifested itself in the erection of new public buildingsand private palaces, whose interiors were exquisitely adorned—think theRockefellers and their New York City family homes. The exhibitionismalso extended to bodies as people started taking their assemblies fromthe privacy of their houses to the publicness of the outdoors. Whetherthey gathered in elite picnic spots or humbler coffeehouses, eighteenth-centuryDamascenes, Muslim or not, men or not, rich or not, seemed tospend—or desire to spend—much of their leisure time in public. And justas people competed in the display of power through public consumption,they vied for the control of sources of wealth. Factions coalesced aroundparticular interests, which were often literally fought out on the street.Violence was also public. Damascus (similar to Cairo and Istanbul) wasundergoing a facelift, but not without some scars.

Private Mansions and Public Buildings: A New Cityscapeof Power and Display

Perhaps the most apparent indication of the rise of new urban householdsis the appearance of their houses at the center of the walled city near theUmayyad Mosque, the main congregational mosque in the city (Figure2). As in Istanbul and Cairo, the residential patterns of the elites changedsignificantly in the eighteenth century. In Damascus, a total of 17 newmansions—each representing a significant outlay of capital—were builtinside the city walls in the eighteenth century, in comparison to a singlemansion built in the two previous centuries (Map 2). This is not to saythere was no private residence building activity in earlier centuries, butit was on a different scale and in other locations. Termed the “CentralRectangle,” this intramural space, although historically prestigious for itseconomic and religious significance, was not a residential area before theeighteenth century. The movement of notable families, some of whomheld mercantile interests, into the heart of the city may be indicative ofnot only their connections to the famous bazaars of the old city but alsotheir will to “colonize” the center. Here lived 19 of the 28 most importantMuslim families of Damascus. In other words, in the eighteenthcentury the center of the walled city of Damascus emerged as a reincarnatedresidential uptown.

The most famous mansion in the Central Rectangle belongs to themost famous member of the aforementioned gubernatorial dynasty, As’adPasha al’-Azm (d.1757; Figure 3). The process of the palace’s construction,we are told, caused much havoc. The governor had columns androcks taken from old ruins, recently destroyed structures, and even standingmonuments to be recycled into his new palace. One of the buildingswhose remnants were reused for this mansion was a ruined mill by the riverBanyas, the excavation for which caused “the river … to stop flowing forfully twelve days.” Inconvenience to the residents notwithstanding, thegubernatorial family did its utmost to show off. The series of complexesand smaller houses built by the al-‘Azm family displayed not just newpower and wealth but also a distinctive architectural style. Though thearchitectural landscape of eighteenth-century Damascus awaits furtherstudy, there are several indications that the new mansions of the periodare of a distinct Damascene style, a reworked version of Mamluk architectureand decoration interspersed with appropriations of both Ottomanand international forms, structures, and techniques.
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