This book is about a barber, Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber may have been a "nobody," but he wrote a history book, a record of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Dana Sajdi investigates the significance of this book, and in examining the life and work of Ibn Budayr, uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy.
The Barber of Damascus offers the first full-length microhistory of an individual commoner in Ottoman and Islamic history. Contributing to Ottoman popular history, Arabic historiography, and the little-studied cultural history of the 18th century Levant, the volume also examines the reception of the barber's book a century later to explore connections between the 18th and the late 19th centuries and illuminates new paths leading to the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance.
This book is about a barber, Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber may have been a "nobody," but he wrote a history book, a record of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Dana Sajdi investigates the significance of this book, and in examining the life and work of Ibn Budayr, uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy.
The Barber of Damascus offers the first full-length microhistory of an individual commoner in Ottoman and Islamic history. Contributing to Ottoman popular history, Arabic historiography, and the little-studied cultural history of the 18th century Levant, the volume also examines the reception of the barber's book a century later to explore connections between the 18th and the late 19th centuries and illuminates new paths leading to the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance.
The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
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The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
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Overview
This book is about a barber, Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber may have been a "nobody," but he wrote a history book, a record of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Dana Sajdi investigates the significance of this book, and in examining the life and work of Ibn Budayr, uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy.
The Barber of Damascus offers the first full-length microhistory of an individual commoner in Ottoman and Islamic history. Contributing to Ottoman popular history, Arabic historiography, and the little-studied cultural history of the 18th century Levant, the volume also examines the reception of the barber's book a century later to explore connections between the 18th and the late 19th centuries and illuminates new paths leading to the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804788281 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/09/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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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 UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8532-7
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-century barber that is surprising, it is his authority. This chapter investigates the sources of the authority of our nouveau literates. What is it that impelled or gave confidence to a barber, a Greek Orthodox priest, a couple of Shi'i farmers, a Samaritan scribe, a Himsi court scribe, and a couple of Damascene soldiers to write? What is it in the social and cultural landscape of the eighteenth-century Levant that prompted these people, whose professions, strictly speaking, fell outside the learned professions and especially history writing, to write chronicles? In short, this chapter is about nouveau literacy as a social phenomenon.
In search of the sources of the nouveau literates' authority, I focus on Damascus, the city in which the barber was born, and which was undeniably his own. Ibn Budayr's possession of the city is evident in his marking of the city's features: its neighborhoods, streets, bazaars, bathhouses, coffeehouses, shops, colleges, and mosques. In his chronicle, a cartography emerges 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 city where natural beauty and divine grace abound, but it is also a place of mysterious murders and curious suicides, of immoral revelry and marital infidelities. It is the hometown of the great Sufi thinker 'Abd al-Ghani al-Näbulusi, the poet laureate Bahlul, and the impossibly seductive prostitute Salamun. Despite Ibn Budayr's anger over and frustration with the corruption and disorder in the city, the barber narrates his Damascus lovingly, proudly, and protectively.
Damascus is important not only because it is the barber's home. It happens to be one of the five most important cities in the Ottoman Empire and a chief provincial capital. It is the center of Ottoman rule in the region, and a recipient of imperial orders, benefits, and personnel. It is the node from which imperial power is distributed and competed for. Thus, Damascus functioned as a microcosm of the empire and often mirrored its capital, Istanbul. In addition to its political significance, Damascus' cultural and social (hence, economic) wealth was abundant. Historically one of the most important knowledge centers in the Islamic world, in the eighteenth century it became the point of departure of the northern pilgrimage route to Mecca. In these capacities, Damascus was the center of religiously and intellectually motivated traffic. For all of these reasons, the first place to look for the sources of authority in the eighteenth-century Levant, even the authority of "unimportant" nouveau literates, is the Ottoman provincial capital par excellence, Damascus, in which a great deal was happening.
The Levantine eighteenth century represented a reconfigured social and political map, a new order of sorts. This order was constituted around the emergence of new households and networks, which afforded fresh opportunities to individuals and groups, and through which many experienced a change in social position or status. I trace the contours of this order by exploring the socioeconomic and political processes that undergirded it, and I locate in this new order a changed urban topography. It is inside the city of Damascus itself that I look for the manifestations of this new social topography not only in an altered cityscape of exhibitionism and violence but also in a more public sociability exemplified in a culture of the outdoors. 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, including our barber, these changes represented not a new order but a condition of outright "disorder." I argue that the chronicles of the nouveau literates constitute part and parcel of this social and cultural change, as a literary disorder of the new order.
The barber and all the other new historians in our sample benefited from the changes in the region, whether as individuals or as members of a larger community. This enhancement in status afforded these individuals the confidence to celebrate, even flaunt, their rise, and it raised the stakes considerably. In a new position there was much more to lose. Whether to count their blessings, issue rebukes, or complain about the vicissitudes of time, these nouveau literates wrote chronicles to negotiate in a changed world. Having experienced social mobility, and prompted by hope and fear in their new positions, these authors used the publicness of the text to negotiate and exhibit their altered situations. Consequently most of their texts were public displays, inexpensive "monuments" to match the new urban architecture itself.
A RESHUFFLE IN THE SOCIAL TOPOGRAPHY
Despite (or perhaps because of) military defeat and territorial loss, the Ottoman Empire in the long eighteenth century has come to be seen as constituting a new order. Politically, the clearest manifestation of this phenomenon is the externalization of the authority of the sultan to households outside his own. The capital city witnessed the rise of "vizier-pasha" households, while the provinces saw the rise of powerful local gubernatorial families. In the province of Damascus, local rule came tinged with a dynastic flavor. For much of the century, the al-'Azm family ruled the province with the exhibitionism, pageantry, and panache of a royal household.
In many ways, the al-'Azm family represented a new creature. And the new creature came with a new fiscal deal: the malikane, a system of tax farming, which almost amounted to private land ownership. The beneficiaries of this system were the governors and other members of the local elite, whether 'ulamä' or commercial families. Competition over the purchase of rights over these tax farms, auctioned to the highest bidder, was the order of the day. "Wealth pulls along more wealth," as the Arabic proverb goes; those who were able to offer advances for a malikane found generous reward. Thus, in seeking to explain the eighteenth-century phenomenon of the rise of the notables (a'yan), scholars have determined that the new tax-farming system constituted an important economic basis that facilitated the social and political dominance of new figures and households.
Another economic factor that seems to have contributed to the changes in the eighteenth-century political landscape is the intensification of global trade because of European demand for cash crops such as cotton, silk, and grain. The emergence of port towns at the expense of traditional inland commercial centers reflected a shift in trade patterns toward the sea. The point here, however, is that integration into the world market brought about what is usually expected of the integration into the world market: new avenues for political and economic power. The ascendancy of the tribal strongman al-Zahir al-'Umar (d. 1775) is a case in point. Having monopolized the cotton trade in Palestine, al-'Umar managed to garner the strength—and audacity—to challenge Ottoman rule from his newly fortified costal town of Acre. As we shall see, al-'Umar was ubiquitous in the region and consequently in the chronicles of the time. Often cast as the villain, but sometimes as the good ally—depending on who is reporting—al-'Umar eluded the representatives of Ottoman rule for a long time. Whether the good guy or the bad, al-'Umar rebelled with style, which made him the subject of epiclike narrations of the variety we 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 Catholic community. The origin of these dreaded schismatics—as the Greek Orthodox held them to be—dates back to the late seventeenth century, but their dominance in the subsequent century is intimately intertwined with their active role in the reinvigorated Mediterranean trade. Through conversion to Catholicism, this community sought to free themselves from the control of the Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople. Significantly, the community rose at the expense of their former co-religionists the Greek Orthodox, but by the end of the eighteenth century they had also superseded the local Jewish community, especially the Farhi family, who were hitherto 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 stories of rise and fall should not be seen as isolated trends in an otherwise unchanged society. Rather, I will argue that the emergence of new figures, families, and groups reflected a larger and deeper social flux, in which both the "middling sort" (say, a barber, a farmer, or a minor soldier) and the culturally nondominant (say, a Greek Orthodox priest or a Samaritan scribe) also experienced or stood to experience change in social position. In order to integrate nonnotables into the picture, one must readjust the view such that the focus is less on the fact and identity of the new elite and more on the mode and place of their operation, that is, on the dynamic of family patronage and its base, the elite household.
The new order can be viewed as simply one of the appearance and dominance of new families whose households became the nodes and loci of social networks that extended beyond kin. The nature and extent of the power of the household differed according to occupation and social and/ or political functions of the family. Whether these were large military-administrative households, smaller wealthy merchants, or distinguished 'ulama' families, they were generally rich, fiercely competitive, and decidedly local. However, for the perpetuation of their power, these families needed to cultivate connections further afield in the places that mattered most, often the imperial capital itself.
Although the shenanigans that went on between the local notables and their Istanbul patrons are known to the modern historian, it is the local character of these households that concerns us here. As nodes of social networks, these new households—whether in the provincial capital or in town districts—could not remain afloat solely by clinging to the rope extended to them from the capital city; they needed mooring buoys in their own ports. Notable families formed factions and forged alliances that necessarily crossed social functions and confessional lines. In their capacity as patrons, notables located beneficiaries nearby whose expertise, positions, or services facilitated their own rise, entrenchment, and even cultivation of their style. In other words, patronage, which was solicited from above and extended below, was the name of the game, and the new household necessarily "served as a bridge between elites and non-elites." If lucky, the "non-elite"—say, an artisan, a soldier, or a minor scribe, whether Muslim or not—had the opportunity to be a useful client and become enmeshed in a web of favors and services that would bring him closer to the nodes of powers. Thus, an artisan, craftsman, or member of a nondominant community could participate in and was affected by the social jostling around him; he too had a stake in the new order.
Viewed this way, the emergence of the new notables, the Greek Catholic community, and/or rebellious local leaders cease to be isolated trends, that is, mere epiphenomena. Rather, they can be considered the tip of the iceberg. The famous tales of rise and fall that scholars have narrated to characterize the Levantine eighteenth century both mask and betray a larger phenomenon of social mobility—vertical and lateral—in which the non-elite and non-Muslims participated. In other words, the eighteenth century was about social flux, about a reshuffling of the social topography.
A reshuffle in social positions is rarely orderly. Even though the century was a time of opportunity, it was also a time of competition and fear. Many of the chroniclers saw their environment as a sign of God's wrath against the breakdown of the traditional order. It is no wonder that "lack of order" is the main theme in the chronicle of our barber, Ibn Budayr. Though a beneficiary of this social flux, the barber never ceases to grumble about the disorders of the new order. Little did he know that he himself was contributing to this disorder. His book, which represents the new voice of the commoner in the field of historiography, was itself a disturbance in the literary order.
URBAN DISORDERS
As the social topography changed, so did the landscape of the city and the citizens' use of its spaces. New wealth and power sometimes exist to be exhibited. Damascenes, like their Istanbuli counterparts, did not shy away from displaying their new riches and social positions for all to see. They too were engaged in the business of public display. This exhibitionist trend manifested itself in the erection of new public buildings and private palaces, whose interiors were exquisitely adorned—think the Rockefellers and their New York City family homes. The exhibitionism also extended to bodies as people started taking their assemblies from the privacy of their houses to the publicness of the outdoors. Whether they gathered in elite picnic spots or humbler coffeehouses, eighteenth-century Damascenes, Muslim or not, men or not, rich or not, seemed to spend—or desire to spend—much of their leisure time in public. And just as people competed in the display of power through public consumption, they vied for the control of sources of wealth. Factions coalesced around particular interests, which were often literally fought out on the street. Violence was also public. Damascus (similar to Cairo and Istanbul) was undergoing a facelift, but not without some scars.
Private Mansions and Public Buildings: A New Cityscape of Power and Display
Perhaps the most apparent indication of the rise of new urban households is the appearance of their houses at the center of the walled city near the Umayyad Mosque, the main congregational mosque in the city (Figure 2). As in Istanbul and Cairo, the residential patterns of the elites changed significantly in the eighteenth century. In Damascus, a total of 17 new mansions—each representing a significant outlay of capital—were built inside the city walls in the eighteenth century, in comparison to a single mansion built in the two previous centuries (Map 2). This is not to say there was no private residence building activity in earlier centuries, but it was on a different scale and in other locations. Termed the "Central Rectangle," this intramural space, although historically prestigious for its economic and religious significance, was not a residential area before the eighteenth century. The movement of notable families, some of whom held mercantile interests, into the heart of the city may be indicative of not only their connections to the famous bazaars of the old city but also their will to "colonize" the center. Here lived 19 of the 28 most important Muslim families of Damascus. In other words, in the eighteenth century the center of the walled city of Damascus emerged as a reincarnated residential uptown.
The most famous mansion in the Central Rectangle belongs to the most famous member of the aforementioned gubernatorial dynasty, As'ad Pasha al'-Azm (d.1757; Figure 3). The process of the palace's construction, we are told, caused much havoc. The governor had columns and rocks taken from old ruins, recently destroyed structures, and even standing monuments to be recycled into his new palace. One of the buildings whose remnants were reused for this mansion was a ruined mill by the river Banyas, the excavation for which caused "the river ... to stop flowing for fully twelve days." Inconvenience to the residents notwithstanding, the gubernatorial family did its utmost to show off. The series of complexes and smaller houses built by the al-'Azm family displayed not just new power and wealth but also a distinctive architectural style. Though the architectural landscape of eighteenth-century Damascus awaits further study, there are several indications that the new mansions of the period are of a distinct Damascene style, a reworked version of Mamluk architecture and decoration interspersed with appropriations of both Ottoman and international forms, structures, and techniques.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE BARBER OF DAMASCUS by Dana Sajdi. Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps.................... ix
Acknowledgments.................... xi
Note on Language and Transliteration.................... xv
Introduction.................... 1
1 The Disorders of a New Order: The Levant in the Long Eighteenth Century.. 14
2 A Barber at the Gate: A Social and Intellectual Biography................ 38
3 "Cheap" Monumentality: The Nouveau Literates and Their Texts............. 77
4 Authority and History: The Genealogy of the Eighteenth-Century Levantine
Contemporary Chronicle.................... 115
5 A Room of His Own: The "History" of the Barber of Damascus............... 145
6 Cutting the Barber's Tale: The Afterlives of a History................... 174
Conclusion: From Nouveau Literacy to Print Journalism.................... 205
Epilogue.................... 213
Notes.................... 215
Glossary.................... 261
Bibliography.................... 263
Index.................... 281