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The Sijills of Beirut al-Mahrusa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
Extract
In the summer of 2001 I was granted access to the registers (sijills) of the Ottoman Muslim court (al-mahkama al-sharciyya) of Beirut. These records, housed in the offices of a functioning court - the court attached to Imam cAli's mosque on Tariq al-Jadida in Beirut, occupy two bookshelves, tightly squeezed behind hundreds of volumes of the court's current files - the vast majority of which nowadays pertain to family law. The closet-sized room also doubles as the office of Mr. cAli Al-Dacuq whose occupation it was (and I assume, still is) to file and locate documents for an endless stream of worried people. Despite the dust, noise, and torrid heat, I managed, largely thanks to Mr. Dacuq's dogged optimism and good cheer, to conduct my own research and to document the holdings of the Archive.
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- Essays and MESA 2002
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- Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2003
References
1 Hallaq, HassanAl-Tarikh al-ijtimaf wa’l-iqtisadi wa’l-siyasi fí Beirut wa’l-wilayat al-c Uthmaniyya fí al-qarn al-tasfc-c ashar: sijillat al-mahkama al-sharc iyya fí Beirut (Beirut: Al-dar al-Jamic iyya, 1987), 6–10.Google Scholar
2 Sijill: pp. 12,138, 140 and 11 (1264).
3 This is not surprising given the composition of Beirut’s nineteenth century population. For this, see Tarazi Fawaz, LeilaMerchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). See in particular chapters 3 and 4 where the author charts Beirut’s demographic history, arguing that Beirut’s Christian population, already substantial at the beginning of the nineteenth century, continued to grow as economic opportunity, improved hygiene and security, as well as sectarian bloodshed in the Mountain and then in Damascus, attracted more and more Christians to the city. Fawaz argues that the population of Beirut rose from around 6,000 to 120,000 over the course of thef century and that the Christians represented two-thirds of the population. A careful count of 130 randomly chosen pages from volume 1 yielded a total of 325 documents of which 122 (or 38 percent) were involved dhimmis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 See Scalenghe, Sara and Sbaiti, Nadya “Conducting Research in Lebanon: An Overview of Historical Sources in Beirut (Part I)”, in this volume.Google Scholar
5 Hassan Hallaq teaches at the Lebanese University in Beirut. He is also author of several other books on Beirut, including Beirut al-mahrusa fi al-c ahd al-c uthmani [Beirut in the Ottoman Period](Beirut: al-Dar al-Jamc iyya, 1987), Beirutal-Mahrusa: al-insan wa’l-hadara wa’l-thaqafa [Beirut: People, Civilization, and Culture] (Beirut: Hariri Foundation, 2002), and Awqaf al-Muslimin fi Beirut fi al-c ahd al-c uthmani [Muslim Waqfs in Ottoman Beirut] (1985). The most recent publication includes copies of some 134 documents from 1263. In addition to Hallaq, May Davie, a local historian, has published prolifically on Beirut’s history and urban architecture, and has made some use of the registers.
6 See, for example, Amy, singer, Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration Around Sixteenth CenturyJerusalem(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).Google Scholar See also, Ziyada, Khalidal-Sura al-taqlidiyya li’l-mujtamac al-madini: Qira’a manhajiyya fí sijillat mahkamat Tarablus al-sharc iyya fi’l-qarn al-sabf-c ashar wa-bidayat al-thamin c ashar (Tripoli: The Lebanese University, 1983), for a thoughtful analysis of what the author insists are the urban and political biases of the court.Google Scholar
7 See Peirce, Leslie Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (California University Press, 2003), 100–106.Google Scholar
8 See al-Qattan, Najwa “Textual Differentiation in the Damascus Sijilt. Religious Discrimination-or Politics of Gender?” in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Sonbol, Amira (Syracuse University Press, 1996), pp. 191–201.Google Scholar
9 Sijill 13,87.
10 Sijill 10, 1263–1265.