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 Drawing on previously unused
primary sources, this book paints an intimate and vivid
portrait of Palestinian society on the eve of modernity.
Through the voices of merchants, peasants, and Ottoman
officials, Beshara Doumani offers a major revision of
standard interpretations of Ottoman history by investigating
the ways in which urban-rural dynamics in a provincial
setting appropriated and gave meaning to the larger forces
of Ottoman rule and European economic expansion. He traces
the relationship between culture, politics, and economic
change by looking at how merchant families constructed trade
networks and cultivated political power, and by showing how
peasants defined their identity and formulated their notions
of justice and political authority.
Original and accessible, this study challenges nationalist
constructions of history and provides a context for
understanding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is also
the first comprehensive work on the Nablus region,
Palestine's trade, manufacturing, and agricultural
heartland, and a bastion of local autonomy. Doumani
rediscovers Palestine by writing the inhabitants of this
ancient land into history.
Beshara Doumani is Assistant Professor of History at
the University of Pennsylvania.
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