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

8. Urban Social Movements, 1750–1950

224 8 Urban Social Movements, 1750–1950 S A M I Z U B A I DA S A M I Z U B A I DA • I N B R O A D O U T L I N E I N B R O A D O U T L I N E, a pattern of urban politics can be discerned in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century, with continuities into the nineteenth in most of them. Popular movements, protests, riots, and rebellions are best considered in the context of the urban politics of that period. Toward the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, a gradual transformation in the forms and frameworks of urban (and now “national”) politics took place, which also transformed the forms of popular organization and mobilization. We witness the emergence of modern politics, a concept that will be elaborated further below. This chapter is organized around this emergence of modernity, first examining the old patterns of urban politics and popular movements and then defining political modernity in terms of the newly emerging patterns. “Traditional” Urban Politics Who are the main actors on the urban political scene? What are their sources of power and what are the stakes and issues of contention? The rulers of the Ottoman city were the military classes, askaris. At the top of the hierarchy was the pasha, the centrally appointed governor, with his personal retinue of soldiers and functionaries. Usually appointed for one year (though a number of individuals held office for both shorter and longer periods), his primary concern was to try to extract as much revenue as possible (partly to recoup the Urban Social Movements | 225 investment he had made to acquire the office and to make a profit and partly to remit revenues to the central treasury in Istanbul) and to maintain order and allegiance to his lord, the sultan. The janissary regiments were another regular military power in most Ottoman cities, known in Egypt as ocaks, with their commanders, usually called aghas. These forces played different roles in different cities at various times. They became particularly important at times of crises and instability, when they assumed greater control and almost arbitrary powers, as we shall see in the case of Aleppo in the 1780s and 1790s. In Istanbul and many other cities, the janissaries had particularly intimate connections with the urban population, especially the craft guilds.1 A janissary regiment would often attach itself to a particular guild as partner and protector , and some of the men would actually enroll as practitioners of the craft, which did not leave much time or inclination for soldiering. In some cities, such as Aleppo and Cairo, the ocaks were divided between those who were long established and almost native to the city and those who were stationed there on a tour of duty. The former, naturally, tended to form long-term attachments to the guilds, though, at times, many other soldiers attempted to impose their “partnership” on tradesmen (al-Jabarti n.d., 1:633–34). Mamluks were another category in the military power elites of Ottoman cities, most notably in Egypt during our period, but also in Iraq and Syria. In eighteenth-century Cairo the Mamluk amirs (with the title of beg or bey) were the virtual rulers, deploying large numbers of well trained and disciplined men, and benefiting from wide networks of influence and alliances with local notables and urban strata. There were rivalries, however, between Mamluk households, each around an amir and his slaves and freedmen, controlling vast sources of revenue from rural tax farms, taxes on urban trade, and sundry exactions. They also traded and often established monopolies in various commodities.2 The nonmilitary components of the urban elites consisted of the local urban notables, in varying patterns of affiliation to the politico-military 1. For the organization of Ottoman provincial government in the “classical age,” see Kunt 1983. 2. On Mamluk organization and politics in Egypt, see Hathaway 1997, especially ch. 3. For Syria, see Grehan 2003; for Iraq, see Lier 2004. 226 | S A M I Z U B A I D A S A M I Z U B A I D A rulers. The elite ulama (that is, not the general run of ulama), the mashayikh, heads of Sufi turuq (orders), the ashraf (descendants of the Prophet) all derived their...