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Amazon.com
 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. |
