Download PDF | (Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, Vol. 21) Amnon Cohen - The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem-Brill Academic Publishers (2001).
314 Pages
A. A FEW INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
Intellectuals, and more specifically those academics referred to in the last two decades as “orientalists”, have become quite accustomed to vitriolic criticism of their craft levelled against them by some of their colleagues, either from within this peer group or outside of it. Ascribing such reprehensible conduct (partly, at least) to a variety of extraneous reasons and trendy arguments, we tend to think that earlier years witnessed greater respect among members of this discipline. Yet reading through the proceedings of a colloquium on the Islamic city held in Oxford, England, 35 years ago, one is taken aback by the choice of words of two luminaries against their elder and otherwise respected associate.
Louis Massignon’s ideas on the history of Islamic guilds are referred to as “fancies” that have “no shred of evidence to support [them]” “worthless”, based on “a mere whim”—to cite some of the characterizations used by S. M. Stern. Claude Cahen, somewhat more reserved in his argumentation, suggests that “Massignon n’a nullepart explicitement développé tout son raisonnement”, and his “notion” is described, znter alia, as “fallacieuse” or simply “faux”.' Independently of one another, in a well-documented and devastating manner they take charge of a “young colleague” who some 30 years earlier, with what became in later years his “clarity” of thought and expression, was Massignon’s “lucid... disciple’—Bernard Lewis.’
The thrust of their argument is directed at the origins of Islamic guilds and their alleged Isma ‘ili (also Byzantine) connection. Neither Stern nor Cahen (nor, for that matter, S. D. Goitein, whose earlier work on the Cairo Geniza they cite) argues that guilds did not exist in later years; they regard them as an integral aspect of Mamluk or Ottoman realities. On this they adopt Lewis’ s description of 17thcentury Istanbul, based on Evliya Celebi, and of 19th-century Damascus, as per Elia Qoudsi’s address to the International Congress of Orientalists in Leiden in 1884. A similar approach to the guild system may be found in Gibb and Bowen’s analysis of the 18th-centu-ry Ottoman Empire.’ The space these two authors allocated to the description and analysis of this urban phenomenon indicates the relative importance they attached to it. After all, this was an urban institution that fit most naturally into the fabric of a society that all of the above scholars rightly viewed as a predominantly urban one.
The monumental, recently published Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Emfure presents a vast tableau of topics that are thoroughly analyzed and described. In all of the five parts of this book, the guilds of craftsmen and merchants—who constituted a central element within the Ottoman city throughout a period of 400 years—are sketched in varying degrees of intensity. They figure most conspicuously in the pivotal chapter “Crisis and Change”, where the author bases most of her description and analysis on two major cities, Istanbul and Cairo. With commendable outspokenness, she notes that “the smaller towns largely remain terra incognita, and the bias of primary documentation and secondary research in favor of the largest cities must never be lost from view” .* The pages that follow may be viewed as an attempt to partly amend this lack. They are the outcome of long research conducted in the syzdl archives of the court of Jerusalem, and thus present the fruits of an investigation into the guild system in one of those small, though hardly “unknown” towns, during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Using the guilds as a focus of historiographic debate, the Economic and Social History offers two diametrically opposed positions. According to one, Ottoman guilds were “reasonably autonomous organizations...which defended their interests against members of other guilds, workmen outside the guild, and merchants”. Another perspective presented by other researchers ascribes only minor importance to the guilds as a defender of craftsmen and regards them as predominantly “organizations established by the central government to supervise and tax craftsmen”.’ Applying these two yardsticks to Ottoman Jerusalem, we find ourselves largely supporting the first approach that underlines the local and autonomous nature of the guilds, rather than regarding them as an extension of the authority or apparatus of the central government.
True, they constituted an essential part of the entire setup of Ottoman social and economic realities; hence they could not be considered a separate, independent phenomenon. As was the case in Bursa, certain elements were missing from our picture, for example, the religious element (although unlike Istanbul, and in a way reminiscent of contemporary Cairo, the term shaykh was commonly used in Jerusalem in this context without any apparent religious connotation). Moreover, another institution, signified by the unexpected reference to the akhi babd (see below), seems to have been distinctly present in Jerusalem during the period in question; although no specific mention of the term futuzwwa was traced in our sources, several of its basic concepts were still applied in conjunction with the reemergence of the term (see below, pp. 101-2), indicating that it was very much alive.
However, as may be gathered from the vast body of evidence that will be included in this work, the above dichotomy covers only part of the picture that emerges from our sources. As a matter of routine the local kadi—a central figure of the Ottoman administration—kept written lists of guild members as well as copies of documents attesting to the various guild heads appointed by the court. The deep involvement of the kadi in the entire guild system is a basic element that should be added to the typology mentioned above. Another divergent element, also noted in Cairo, is the existence of merchants’ guilds in addition to those of craftsmen.
The total number of active guilds in Jerusalem was below 100, a far less impressive figure than the 1100 recorded in Istanbul or the 260 guilds of Cairo. However, when making this comparison, three major factors should be borne in mind. First, Jerusalem’s population was less than 10% (probably closer to 5%) that of Cairo, and it constituted a much smaller fraction of the capital of the empire. In spite of its demographic and administrative marginality, therefore, the overall principle of division of labor apparent in those two central cities of the Ottoman Empire was at least equally applied in our case and perhaps more so. Second, in spite of Jerusalem’s religious importance for Islam, mixed guilds not only existed (as indeed was the case in Cairo), but in a few cases the kadi appointed non-Muslim heads to run them.® Strict professional considerations seem to have been overriding, thus superseding any religious constraints or bias that may have existed in a broader sense.
Third, unlike “Istanbul, Cairo and many Rumelian cities”, the phenomenon of a large number of artisans belonging to a paramilitary corps is not applicable in our case; this may primarily reflect the marginality of the military in Jerusalem as compared to other Syrian towns such as Damascus or Aleppo. However, although in certain cases particular reference was made to holders of military titles or even soldiers on active duty who also served as guild members or even guild heads in Jerusalem, there was not a shred of evidence there of the phenomenon apparent in Cairo where merchants and craftsmen were incorporated into the military as such.’
The case of Jerusalem is more like that of Cairo than Istanbul, probably because of the relative proximity, or perhaps the common heritage that evolved over many centuries of shared history. This is borne out by several other examples taken from the Arabicspeaking provinces. ‘The number of guilds identified in 1 6th-century Hamat-67—1s very close to that of Jerusalem, and with a few exceptions one may almost speak of an identical breakdown into fields, vocations and actual guilds. Here, too, the system included a merchants’ guild alongside the more typical pattern of various crafts’ guilds, not only covering a broad gamut of professional activities but in certain cases (e.g., public criers) even offermg a much wider variety than in Jerusalem.
The role of the heads of the guild in Hamat was similar to our case, regulated by the kadi and limited to strictly professional areas, bearing no identifiable religious connotation.? In 17th-century Aleppo, to mention another case in point, the guild system was structured along similar lines, and the 157 professional guilds identified there in the middle of the century, projected against the demographic background of a town much larger than Jerusalem and situated at a very active commercial crossroads, further confirm the pattern sketched above.
The comparison with Aleppo, in addition, applies to the basic criteria described above: the regulation of guild activities did not originate with “centralized planning from above”; the system was structured according to a “narrow professional specialization”; collective controls were not uniformly adopted, although artisans’ activities were closely controlled by their headmen and on a higher level supervised by the local judge.’ The current state of research on Tripoli precludes generalizations, but the few 17th-century court documents published so far indicate a similar situation there in regard to guilds.'®
In Tunis, the other geographical extremity of the Arabic-speaking world, we come across an approximate figure of 100 guilds.!! And were we to return to the heartlands of Syria, we would find that the same features reemerge in Ottoman Damascus (and Aleppo): an ageregate of 163 different guilds can be identified there for the entire period extending from the 17th to the] 9th centuries, together with a high degree of professional specialization, and a relatively small number of guild members (e.g., 27 stonecutters) appearing in the few cases recorded.
These guilds covered a wide range of crafts and professions that broadly fall into categories of production, services and commerce. The internal stratification and professional activities of each guild were regulated and directed by its head, to whom the local kadi subjected all of its members. This was the regular, major channel of communication between the otherwise autonomous guild and the government.
Whenever dire financial conditions prevailed, it took the form of the imposition of special taxes on a quota basis, collected from each member by the guild head for the government.”
We shall have more to say about the resemblances and disparities; but here it is appropriate to pause and turn to Jerusalem itself.
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