The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750-1950

4. The Economic Organization of Cities in Ottoman Syria

104 4 The Economic Organization of Cities in Ottoman Syria A B DU L -K A R I M R A F E Q A B DU L -K A R I M R A F E Q • I N A V A R I E T Y O F W A Y S I N A V A R I E T Y O F W A Y S , the contemporary economic organization of MiddleEasterncitiesstillbearstheimprintofcenturiesofinteractionbetween Islamic, customary, Ottoman, and European legal and economic institutions. In Syria, this interaction was characterized by alternating conflict and accommodation over time, and the result was a high degree of sophistication and adaptability in business practices. Very often Islamic law conflicted with Ottoman law in these matters, but pragmatic solutions were devised, in line with custom and tradition, to accommodate local practice. In Anatolia and the Balkans , for example, business practices were adapted to conform to pre-Islamic Turkic or pre-Ottoman Byzantine practices. This is evident in the application of interest in matters of credit and loans in the sharia courts in Anatolia and the Balkans. Islamic law does not permit the taking of interest, but interest had been a feature of Byzantine and pre-Islamic Turkic financial dealings. Sultanic orders approving interest were thus communicated to the courts and implemented by the strength of Ottoman law. Judges in the Syrian Islamic courts were initially reluctant to apply interest to credit transactions, but they were eventually prevailed upon to do so by Ottoman decree.1 European influences also played a role in shaping the economic organization of Middle Eastern cities, particularly after the mid–nineteenth century. 1. See the quotation from Masters 1988 in chapter 1, note 50. Economic Organization of Cities | 105 Prior to the Industrial and French Revolutions, mercantilist Europe coexisted alongside the traditional economy and society of the Middle East and protected its interests in the Ottoman Empire largely through commercial treaties known as the capitulations. In time, the capitulations became extraterritorial rights granted to European merchants and their local protégés. In the nineteenth century, industrial, capitalist Europe destabilized the traditional economy and society of the Middle East and brought new institutions and new social classes into existence, with different business practices and political platforms influenced by Europe. Thus the guilds, introduced under the Ottomans , underwent deep changes under the impact of industrial Europe. Many of the traditional institutions were abolished and new institutions emerged, such as the commercial courts established in Damascus and Aleppo in the early 1850s. The Guilds in the Syrian Cities The backbone of the traditional economy and society of Syrian cities under the Ottomans was formed by the guilds, referred to in the court records as ta’ifas, groups. These were autonomous groups of craftsmen engaged in production, marketing, and services. The major sources of information about the guilds are the Ottoman court records, which are available for some Syrian cities from the 1530s. The controversy over the existence of guilds in Arab-Islamic cities before the Ottoman period has not been entirely resolved (Cahen 1970). Despite the fact that there were crafts and craftsmen at the time, there were no craft organizations with corporate bodies, apparently because the Islamic sharia and its associated institutions were considered the only authoritative sources for organizing every aspect of life. When disputes arose among the crafts, the qadi (judge) and the mufti (jurist) looked into the matter. The market-inspector (muhtasib) then played a major role in checking weights, prices, quality of work, and the ethics of the profession at large. The creation of guilds in the Syrian cities under Ottoman rule was an extension of similar institutions in Anatolia and the Balkans, which were no doubt influenced by earlier Byzantine and European guilds. Their flourishing in Syria under the Ottomans is reflected in the growing commercial activity of the cities locally, regionally, and internationally, a fact well attested by the 106 | A B D U L - K A R I M R A F E Q A B D U L - K A R I M R A F E Q creation of a large number of caravanserais (khans) in the Syrian cities, which profited tremendously from trade in and beyond the vast Ottoman Empire (Raymond 1979–80, 1984, 1985). The shift in commercial importance in the nineteenth century from the internal caravan cities to seaports such as Beirut, which could accommodate steamships...