"Palestine" and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century

"Palestine" and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th CenturyAuthor(s): Haim GerberSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 563-572Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164341 .

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 30 (1998), 563-572. Printed in the United States of America

Haim Gerber

"PALESTINE" AND OTHER TERRITORIAL

CONCEPTS IN THE 17TH CENTURY

It is a well-known anachronism of historians to treat areas within the Ottoman Empire (Egypt, Syria) as if they had a meaningful existence of their own in the pre- nationalist period.' There is no question that before the appearance of nationalism in the later part of the 19th century the major political community was Islam, whose actual political manifestation was the Ottoman state. It is assumed that as a conse- quence, no other form of collective identity could exist at the time. The received wisdom on this issue may be expressed by one study of Arab nationalism which claimed: "None of the [Arab] new states was commensurate with a political community. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine-these names derived from geography or classical history."2 Yet it is possible that the debate over these issues is not yet over. One is entitled, for example, to doubt whether we know enough in social psychology to determine that the human mind is so simple that it cannot accom- modate multi-faceted phenomena such as double identity, both in terms of regional Egyptian nationalism, for example, and all-inclusive Arab identity. Dichotomization makes for sharper and more impressive arguments, but sometimes it can be pushed too far and thus rendered misleading. In line with this last consideration, the argument of this paper is that though the all-inclusive identity of Middle Eastern Muslims under the Ottomans was Islamic and Ottoman first, territorial identities existed beneath them and that these territorial communities are commensurate with the modern Middle Eastern states.

Little-used sources from the 17th and 18th centuries indicate some remarkable traces of awareness of territorial consciousness that deserve closer scrutiny. The main source in question is a two-volume fatwa (legal opinion) composed by the Palestin- ian Mufti Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (1585-1670),3 which on many occasions mentions the concepts Filastin, bilddund (our country), al-Sham (Syria), Misr (Egypt), and diyar (country), in senses that go far beyond "mere" objective geography. While I am fully aware that some may claim that such territorial concepts may simply refer to one's native home, place of birth, a close reading of al-Ramli may suggest that there is something more to it, and that we are in fact looking at something that can only be called embryonic territorial awareness, though the reference is to social awareness rather than to a political one.

Haim Gerber is Professor, Department of Islamic Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.

? 1998 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/98 $9.50



564 Haim Gerber

Who was Khayr al-Din al-Ramli?4 He was born in al-Ramla in 1585. As a boy, he traveled with his elder brother to Egypt to study at al-Azhar, where he seems to have excelled as a student. After completing the course of his education he went back to al-Ramla, where he started immediately to teach and give fatwas. In the course of the years, his fame spread, his teachings became popular, and he became one of the most important jurists in Greater Syria (a term not found in al-Ramli's collection) at the time, if not actually the greatest, though he never became involved with the Ottoman government.5 People started to flock to him, many of them from the great learning centers of the area, such as Damascus. It might be reasonable to expect that at this stage he would have moved to Damascus, or at least Jerusalem. But he chose to remain in his little home town until the end of his life. We can only speculate as to why this was the case. In my judgment, the clue has to be sought in one of his fatwas, where he speaks of the love of one's own place of birth as something that is not only natural but also incumbent on us as humans, not to speak of the well-known saying of the Prophet on this issue.6 His words on this subject are so emotional that they may well have some connection with his practicing exactly that kind of feeling which I can only refer to as an atavistic sort of patriotism.

It is extremely important for the argument of this paper that Khayr al-Din al-Ramli seems to have been not only a real social leader in his own time,7 but also a very influential person in the area of Greater Syria in the two centuries after his death. Suffice it to say that the Damascene Mufti Ibn 'Abidin (himself one of the most influential pre-modern Islamic personalities for modern Islamic fiqh scholars8) used Khayr al-Din more frequently than he used any other source and referred to him as the "main pole of the late scholars" ('umdat al-muta'akhkhirin).9

It is important, too, to bear in mind that al-Ramli was a practical mufti-that is, he handled actual questions and dealt with them on the level of the theoretical fiqh and on the practical level of the daily life of the people.

As this point will have considerable bearing on the argument of this paper, it is important to go into some details. Thus, a large number of the fatwas appearing in the collection bear the mark of their place of origin. Many of the questions mention Ramla and Ludd, the two adjacent villages where the mufti resided. One question, for example, deals with excessive tax extracted from the Christian church of Ludd for the benefit of the Khasseki Sultan waqf in Jerusalem. 10 In another fatwa, a woman from Ludd was invited to her sister's engagement in Nablus." Quite a few of the fatwas were sent from Jerusalem, some describing typical Jerusalemite traditional institutions, such as the use of water cisterns.'2 A question from Bethlehem inquired about penal responsibility concerning a corpse found in the courtyard of the Nativity Church (Dar al-Mahd).13 A merchant from Dumyat was found dead in a warehouse in Acre.14 Many questions were sent to him from cities around the Middle East, such as Damascus,15 Tripoli,16 and even Istanbul.17 Many of the fatwas in the collection mention various Ottoman terms and institutions, such as feudal fiefs (timar, ziamet), sipahis,18 specific Ottoman taxes (avariz),19 the Amir al-Hajj (the commander of the Syrian Hajj caravan),20 Sultanic orders,2' etc. Thus, though al-Ramli was no doubt committed to the enforcement of Islamic law, he was also deeply involved with the society around him, both in his home town and in the entire Ottoman context. Hence, not surprisingly, his extensive deployment of curf (customary law); maslaha



"Palestine" in the 17th Century 565

(the well-being of the people); istihsiin (judicial preference), usually used to relax strict prohibitions; and borrowing of convenient solutions of other madhhabs.22 He was by no means aloof from the real problems of the people of the age. All this means that what he said, and the language he used, were well known to several groups of people at the time, partly as an outcome of what he said but also partly because it stands to reason that he had used language well known to the people around him. These points will be important for understanding the argument of this paper, since our claim revolves around the deployment of social language, more specifically that the fatwa was a social document, one that circulated among the people, rather than being known only to the educated few.

One of the most surprising terms used by al-Ramli is Filastin (Palestine). As is well known, in classical Islam this was the name given to the former Roman province of Palaestina Prima, Jund Filastin, in the Islamic state. This province stretched from the Sinai Desert in the south to a line connecting Beisan to an unknown point on the Mediterranean somewhere south of Acre.23 It is well known that the concept of Jund Filastin was no longer used by the Mamluk and Ottoman states,24 and hence there is a widespread consensus that the concept disappeared.25 Palestine under the Ottoman Empire never constituted one bureaucratic entity. In the 16th century it was divided into several districts (sanjaqs): Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus, Lajjun, and Safed, all under the province (eyalet) of Damascus. Sometime around 1660, the province of Sayda was established, which included the sanjaq of Acre and Safed.26 The term Palestine itself disappeared from Ottoman parlance and is not mentioned by the ex- cellent studies now available on the country in the 16th to 18th centuries.27 Despite this, Y. Porath expressed a hunch that on a popular level the term continued to be used.28 Another theory that one sometimes hears is that although the term may have had some usage after the end of classical Islam (1258), it was strictly limited to the region of al-Ramla itself, the capital of the province in the classical period.29 But it seems that both of these theories stand in need of correction in light of the sources used in the present study.

What are some of the contexts in which the term Filastin appears? Obviously, al-Ramli does not define the term, since all people concerned knew what he was talking about. Also, the concept itself is in no case the subject of any discussion. It is only mentioned in passing, usually without a context or any clarifying hint. There are only a few exceptions to this rule, and these, too, have to be read extremely care- fully. The clearest fatwa that gives an idea as to what the mufti had in mind relates to conditional divorce. In it, a man "from a village of the villages of Palestine" who quarreled with his wife and then exclaimed that his wife would be divorced three times if, a year later at the same time, he was "in the same country" (bilad). The question is then posed: "What if [a year later] he traveled outside of Palestine in the strict sense (musamma Filastin), for example, if he was in 'Uyun al-Tujjar or in Acre; was he to be clear of his oath?"30 The answer is that he would be clear of his oath not only there but in any area or town distant enough from his village that it could not be pointed at (la tutlaq al-ishira macahu). Several conclusions can be drawn from this fatwa: Acre and 'Uyun al-Tujjar were just about outside of Palestine in the strict sense, an implied definition that corresponds exactly to the classical Muslim notion and border of Jund Filastin. But on the other hand, some people at



566 Haim Gerber

the time may have thought that the concept extended even farther north and actually reached areas beyond the borders of Jund Filastin. And last, the fatwa hints at a certain conceptual confusion concerning the term bilad, which some thought was equivalent to "Palestine." The mufti, in my judgment, does not say that this equation is untrue, but only that the concept is multi-faceted, and that in the context used in this fatwa it meant the area that could be seen from one's place of residence. We will return to this issue.

In another relevant fatwa, we hear about a nazir of a waqf in Filastin who was ab- sent, being actually in Damascus. The question is whether the qadi of Jerusalem can appoint somebody to take care of the repairs in the waqf's properties.31 The mufti's answer was affirmative. If the qadi of Jerusalem had an authority extending over all of Palestine, then the reference could not be to the area of al-Ramla alone. It would have included at least the area of Jerusalem, as well. It is extremely interesting, of course, and not without some meaning that the mufti uses the indigenous rather than the Ottoman administrative terms, even concerning an administrative affair. It strengthens my point in this study, which, from another angle, is to show the existence below the administrative layer of concepts of popular territorial concepts. In another fatwa, mention is made of a certain coin, and the mufti comments that he refers to "quriish, so that each of them is subdivided into thirty [coins called] qita, each of which is subdivided into ten fuluis, which are [also] called judad, as is the parlance of the people of Palestine."32 In a third relevant fatwa, we hear about "an Egyptian man who came to settle in a village in Palestine."33

Khayr al-Din al-Ramli is not the only source attesting to the fact that the term "Palestine" did not actually die out. Thus, the term appears in a fatwa by ?eyhuil- islam Ebu Suud Efendi (officiated 1545-74; d. 1574). Ebuii Suiud was asked in this fatwa, "What is the meaning of the term the Holy Land, arazi-i mukaddese?" His answer is that various definitions of the term exist, among them the whole of Syria, to Aleppo and Ariha in the north. Others equate it with the area of Jerusalem (al- Quds); still others equate it with the term "Palestine."34 Since no one ever suggested any sanctity connected with al-Ramla, it is evident that Ebui Suiud did not have al- Ramla in mind when he mentioned Palestine in this fatwa, but more likely the area of Jund Filastin.

Some other near-contemporaries of al-Ramli used the term "Palestine," or equivalent territorial terms, often relating to al-Ramli himself. A case in point is the usage of his near-contemporary, the early-19th century Damascene Mufti Ibn 'Abidin (d. 1836), who cited Khayr al-Din quite often, obviously admired his achievements, and sometimes called him "the 'dlim [scholar] of Filastin,35 or even 'alldmat Filastin (the great scholar of Palestine).36 It is hardly credible that Ibn 'Abidin had al-Ramla in mind when he looked for lofty terms by which to praise Khayr al-Din. Obviously, too, he had to assume that readers of the fatwa knew full well what he was talking about. Another case is that of the famous 18th-century Damscene Mufti 'Abd al- Ghani al-Nabulsi, who, in one of his fatwas, uses Khayr al-Din al-Ramli as his major intellectual source and refers to him as "the Hanafi jurist of al-Diyar al-Qudsiyya."37 Again, such a reference conveys a tangible territorial "feeling," and specifically concerning al-Ramli, it presents him as connected to the territorial orbit of Jerusalem rather than al-Ramla.




Surprisingly, the travel book of the famous Turkish traveler Evliya ;elebi, who was in Palestine in 1648-50, mentions the term, too. As was indicated, this is some- what surprising, since Evliya had a great deal of official Ottoman information, which he lavishes on the reader, and traces his itinerary by the official Ottoman administrative division. This he does in Palestine, as well, and yet on a number of occasions he mentions the term "Palestine."38 Usually, the reference does not say much about contemporary conditions, since it refers to classical Islam or even pre-Islamic periods, but at least on one occasion the reference seems to be to current conditions: in this case, he describes a tomb site in lower Galilee and mentions that pious people flock to this place from "the land Palestine" (arz-i Filastin) and other places.39 The information has the ring of something Evliya had heard from people in the area.

The term "Palestine" was also recently disclosed in an unpublished work on a 17th-century treatise on the virtues (fa4daDil) of al-Sham, Filastin, and the Holy Land written by a contemporary of al-Ramli, Salih ibn Muhammad al-Timartashi (d. 1644-45). The very name of the treatise is indicative: 'Al-Khabar al-Tammfi dhikr hudid al-ard al-muqaddasa wa-Filastin wa-al-ShAm."40 The land, which is the classical Jund Filastin, is called Filastin, and is also equivalent to the al-ard al-muqaddasa, the Holy Land. Its area extends from Rafah in the south to Lajjun in the north, which is, again, the exact extent of the ancient Jund Filastin.41 The value of this information is lessened by the fact that the treatise was commissioned by the governor of Nablus, and that for the most part it consists of citations from the classicalfada'il literature. It is doubtful whether it was intended for extensive readership. Still, the use of the term Filastin is meaningful. It is unlikely that the author would have picked up a dead word to put in the title of his work.

Another important territorial concept employed by al-Ramli rather often is "country" (bildd or occasionally diydr).42 By no means does bilad refer to one's home or beloved birthplace. This last idea exists in al-Ramli's fatwas and was dealt with by the concept of wafan.43 In the relevant fatwa, he railed against the Ottoman government or some of its provincial governors, who brought hardship on some peasants and caused them to emigrate from their home villages, something which he obviously viewed as a calamity.44 But such beloved birthplace was called watan, while the term bilad was never treated emotionally. In almost no case is it possible to get a straightforward idea as to what he does mean by this term. For example, in one fatwa he probes into various formulas by which a man can give his daughter in mar- riage. Concerning one formula, he says it is legally valid since it has been accepted in the customary law of the countryside of our country (rasatiq bilddina).45 It is not at all clear in this document exactly what the mufti had in mind. But I believe that by a process of elimination it can be determined that bilad for him probably meant again mainly Palestine, though with an important residue of ambivalence.

In the first place, it is quite evident that al-Ramli was not referring to the entire "Middle East," certainly not to territories beyond it. The fact is that when he wished to talk about the "Middle East," he obviously had a problem (since no indigenous term existed), and it is noteworthy that he conceived of this region by the modem areas. Thus, in one fatwa he wanted to describe bedouin tribes who roam all over the region, and he referred to this region as Hijdz, Misr, and al-Shdm.46 From other



568 Haim Gerber

fatwas, we know that he had a very clear notion of the concepts of Egypt (Misr) and "the land of the Turks" (Bilad al-Rum, more commonly al-Diyar al-Rumiyya).

Al-Ramli seems to have had a very clear territorial conception of Egypt-that is, in non-Islamic or Ottoman frames of reference. Some muftis he defines as mufti al- Diyar al-Misriyya.47 This is certainly not an official title, since there is no territorial limit on the authority of a mufti in Islam. Such a loose limit was established by the ability of a mufti to influence others, and al-Ramli makes it amply clear that muftis were often associated by territorial areas that, surprisingly, correspond to modern Middle Eastern states. It was not only the case for Egypt but also for the Turks. Thus, the renowned mufti Ebii Siiud Efendi (d. 1574) is invariably called mufti al- Rum, or mufti al-Diyar al-Rumiyya, the mufti of the land of the Turks.48 This is a noteworthy title, since the official title of Ebu Siiud was mufti of the entire Ottoman state. We again note the use of popular terms. But why was Ebii Siiud called mufti al-Diyar al-Rumiyya? The likely explanation: while no one is restricted from using the services of any mufti, there is a popular consensus that the influence of any given mufti is greatest in one particular, meaningful geographical area. It cannot be said to be meaningless that this area is defined by its being inhabited by the Turks. In one fatwa we read a discussion about the conditional taldq: "[If] I do this, I am divorced three times" (Calayya al-talaq thalathan la-af al kadha).49 Al-Ramli mentions Ebii Siiud Efendi as a jurist who denied that such a saying could establish conditional taldq. Al-Ramli accepts the reading of an earlier jurist that this view has to be interpreted as meaning that this saying was not accepted by the customary law of "their land" (diyarihim) in the sense of conditional divorce. But he goes on to say that we have to accept it, because in our customary law it has been accepted. It is quite evident that "their land" in this last sentence cannot mean a reference to Ebii Stiud himself, or even to a small area around Istanbul; it must refer to the Turks in general and the country inhabited by them.50

It should be clear from the aforementioned fatwas that al-Diyar al-Rumiyya is the "land of the Turks," rather than Rumeli (literally "the land of Rum"), the European part of the Ottoman Empire, since it makes no sense to refer to Ebti Suiud as the mufti of Rumeli. Another source that can be employed to the same end is the 17th- century Damascene biographer Muhibbi, who uses the term al-Diyar al-Rumiyya to refer to locals who went to Istanbul or officials and ulama who came to Damas- cus.51 Often he shortens this expression to the simple al-Rum.52 In all these cases, people came from or went to the center of the state and had nothing to do with Rumeli proper, so the meaning of the terms is quite unequivocal.

In one fatwa, there is a rather loose suggestion that "our bilad" may have meant Syria, al-Sham. In it the mufti was asked whether the testimony of a Qaysi person against a Yamani person "in our country" (ft biladina) is to be accepted, keeping in mind the natural animosity (asabiyya) between them.53 The mufti does not accept such testimony, and he relies on a former law book where the animosity of the Qaysi and the Yamani "in al-Sham" is cited as an example of unacceptable testimony because of bad blood between the groups. There is an implied equation here between al-Sham and biladuna, though this is by no means a clear-cut deduction, and in my view it points to Jund Filastin rather than to al-Sham. Al-Sham is used here by a 15th-century central Asian mufti, while biladuna is used by al-Ramli himself. His




meaning will be made clear when we remember that the Qays-Yaman division was mainly a matter of the central mountainous range of the country (not of the plains, where al-Ramla was situated). If he meant in bilddund the mountainous region of the country, then obviously Filastin and biladund were more or less equivalent in his mind.

Some fatwas may suggest that bildd may have referred to a small area, such as the agricultural region around al-Ramla. This was already suggested in a fatwa cited earlier. Such a possibility may also be suggested in a number of fatwas that relate to the agrarian legal regime in the area and describe the land as aradi khardj al- muqisama.54 But the reference may well extend to the entire Palestinian littoral, which probably shared the same agrarian peculiarities.

My estimation is that the main meaning of bilddund is again "Palestine," or at least something similar in size. On the one hand, many of the references to the term relate to customary law known to the mufti,55 and it is hard to imagine that he had personal knowledge concerning Aleppo. On the other hand, he most probably did not mean the restricted area around al-Ramla, for which he used the term watan, as we have seen. The resulting country is larger than the region of al-Ramla but smaller than Bilad al-Shdm-that is, more or less Jund Filastin.

The unquestioned awareness of the mufti of the socio-geographical entity called Palestine does not preclude other meaningful entities. It is quite clear that at a certain level, al-Ramli viewed Palestine as forming part of Bildd al-Sham. In the relevant fatwa, he was asked the rule concerning the preciseness of the direction of the prayer niche (mihrib) in mosques-more concretely, how truly precise it should be in re- lation to the kacba in Mecca. Al-Ramli opined that slight divergence from the math- ematical qibla did not invalidate the mosque, and that in any case all places in a country should follow the direction used in that country. It is in this discussion that he comments that Nablus, Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), and al-Ramla form part of al- Shdm, and he obviously is not referring to official Ottoman administrative divisions.56

On the other hand, a sense of uniqueness and difference from other regions, even from Syria, was no doubt imparted to the inhabitants of Palestine by the basic fact that, following Judaism and Christianity, Islam too considered Palestine a holy land. This was well known in the period under study, so much so that even the Ottoman Empire itself referred to the country using the term arazi-i mukaddese57 Not surprisingly, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, too, occasionally used the term al-ard al-muqaddasa.58 It is important to recall here that when Ibn cAbidin and 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (both Damascene muftis) referred to al-Ramli (in the late 18th century and first quarter of the 19th century), they described him as living in Palestine and al-Diydr al-Qudsiyya, not in southern Syria or any similar term. Neither is suspected of not being aware of the geography of the region as used by their contemporaries.

The term al-Diydr al-Qudsiyya deserves special comment. Besides the well-known ambiguity concerning the meaning of the term al-Shdm (equivalent to both Da- mascus and Syria), diyar in our sources is never attached to a city but always to a "country" (al-Diydr al-Ruimiyya, al-Diydr al-Misriyya, al-Diydr al-Shamiyya). Al-Diydr al-Qudsiyya seems to be an exception, one that shows the strength of the psychological connection between the Holy City and the country of which it was the social and religious heart. Emmanuel Sivan has extensively documented how this



570 Haim Gerber

bond was forcefully strengthened during the Holy War against the Crusaders,59 and our sources indicate that this attachment was joined by a continued sense of social identity of the people of Jund Filastin. The Ottomans themselves, by making the qadi of Jerusalem one of the highest grades in the empire, and by making Jerusalem the most important provincial capital in western Palestine, and by using western Pales- tine as an important province to facilitate the carrying out of the yearly hajj60 no doubt further augmented the sense of identity of those who lived in its cultural orbit.

By way of conclusion, I want again to emphasize that it should not be thought for a minute that if Palestine was a meaningful social concept for its inhabitants, the better-known social and political concepts were not operative. Islam and the Otto- man Empire were the most meaningful socio-cultural-and political-entities, and al-Ramli's collection provides ample evidence of this rather obvious fact.6' But what I wished to show here is that territorial entities were extant and even of some im- portance. I want further to compare the value of al-Ramli's information to that of Timartashi and claim that the information supplied by al-Ramli is far superior. Both writers were obviously members of the intellectual elite of the region, but al-Ramli did not write merely for the elite. In fact, he constituted a classic link between the lower population and the elite and served as an important transmission belt of information and concepts from the elite downward. In this sense, his contribution can best be studied in the context of the cultural relations between elite and mass within the framework of popular culture. The very fact that al-Ramli attained fame indicates that his message was heard and spread widely. His biography hints that he was considered by some to be a holy man. The fatwas that he issued were obviously widespread, well known, and handled with reverence. The fact that he used the terms Filastin and biladuna is much more than just a personal-intellectual fact; it is an important sociological fact.

NOTES

'See Abou-El-Haj's criticism of Iraqi and other qutrl (regional) historians, who are said to have dis- torted the reality that under the Ottomans no Iraq or Syria in the social sense really existed: R. A. Abou- El-Haj, "The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule," International Journal of Middle East Studies 14 (1982): 185-201.

2Martin Kramer, "Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity," Daedalus 122 (1993): 179. 3Al-Fatdwd al-Khayriyya li-Naf ' al-Bariyya, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Uthmaniyye, A.H. 1311). 4For his biography, see Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-dthdr fi acydn al-qarn al-hddl

cashar (Cairo: Al-Matba'a Al-Wahhabiyya, A.H. 1284), II: 134-39. For studies based on his fatwa collection, see H. Motzki, "Muslimischen kinderehen in Palastina wahrend des 17. Jahrhunderts. Fatawas als Quellen zur Socialgeschichte," Die Welt des Islam 27 (1987): 82-90; Ihsan 'Abbas, "Hair al-Din al-Ramli's Fa- tawa: A New Light on the Life on Palestine in the Eleventh/Seventeenth Century," in Die islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. U. Haarman and P. Bachman (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1979), 1-19; Haim Gerber, "Rigidity Versus Openness in Late-Classical Islamic Law: The Case of the Seventeenth-Century Palestinian Mufti Khayr al-Din al-Ramli," Islamic Law and Society 5 (1998).

5The history of iftda', or fatwa-giving, in Islam shows that before the Ottoman period muftis were usually private individuals, unconnected with the government and working at the request of private individuals. This situation changed radically under the Ottomans, when muftis became employees of the government. In not being engaged by the government, Khayr al-Din was an exception in his time. The best short account that helps place the career of al-Ramli in its Islamic context is M. K. Masud, B. Messick,




and D. S. Powers, "Muftis, Fatwas, and Islamic Legal Interpretation," in Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and their Fatwas, ed. M. K. Massud, B. Messick, and D. S. Powers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 3-32.

6Al-Ramli, II: 184-85. 7Muhibbi says of him that his fatwas were highly respected by the bedouins of the area, who usually

did not think much of the sharica. He also mentions that both highly placed ulama and men of state flocked to his native town to study with him and accept an ijdza (authorization document) bearing his name. Even if Muhibbi exaggerates, the important point for this study is the social reputation of the mufti rather than any objective "fact." See al-Muhibbi, Khuldsat al-dthdr, 11: 134 ff.

8The influence of Ibn 'Abidin can, for example, be realized from K. N. Ahmed, The Muslim Law of Divorce (Islamabad: The Islamic Research Institute, 1972).

9Muhammad Amin ibn 'Abidin, Al-'Uqud al-Durriyya fi Tanqih al-Fatawd al-IHamidiyya (Bulaq: al- Matba'a al-'Amira, A.H. 1300), 2:76-77.

0'Al-Ramli, II:178. "Ibid., 1:76. 2Ibid., 11:185-86.

13Ibid., 209. 14Ibid., 153. 'Ibid., 22-23, 188. 16Ibid., I: 180. 17Ibid., 11:74. l8Ibid., 38-39, 117. '9Ibid., 158-59. 20Ibid., 1:234. 21Ibid., 11:103-4. 22The way he handled these topics will be analyzed in another study. 23D. Sourdel, s.v., "Filastin," The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (hereafter EI2); A. Elad, "Two

Identical Inscriptions from Jund Filastin from the Reign of the CAbbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir," Journal of the Economic History of the Orient 35 (1992): 344 ff.

24y. Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), 4ff.

25Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 261, n. 1: "It is doubtful whether the name Palestine was commonly used by the native population to refer to a specific territory or nation before the late nineteenth century."

26On the administrative division of Palestine in the period under study, Sourdel, s.v., "Filastin," EI2; Dror Ze'evi, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 11.

27See Uriel Heyd, Ottoman Documents on Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960); Amnon Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1973), Ze'evi, An Ottoman Century.

28Porath, Emergence, 5. 29Elad, "Two Identical Inscriptions," 335. 30Al-Ramli, I, 86. Text: Fi rajul min qarya min qurd Filastin tashdjara maca zawjatihi fa-khalafa

bi-"t-taldq thaldthan annahu md ya'tl mithl hadhd 'I-yawm min al-'am al-qdbil wa and fit mithl hddhihi 'l-bildd fahal idhd sdfara Can musamma Filastin kama idha kdna fi 'UyCun al-Tujjdr aw 'Akkd mathalan fi dhilika al-yawm yabirru fi yaminihi am lad.

31Al-Ramli, 1:191. 32Ibid., 11:240: 'Ala anna kull wdhid min al-qurush bi-thaldthin qifa wa-kull qitca bi-ashara min

al-fulus al-musamma bi-'l-judad kamd fi istilah ahl Filastin. 33Ibid., 233: Fi rajul Misri nazala bi-qarya min qurd Filastin. 34MS British Library, OR 7255, f. 19b. Text: Mesele: cami diar-i Arab arz-i mukaddesedenmidir yoksa

hudud-u muayyeni varmidir ve arz mukaddesenin sair araziden farki varmidir? Elcevab: Mutlaka diydr-i Samiyya arz-i mukaddesedir derler Beyt-i Makdis ve Halab ve sair nevahi-i Dimask andandir baziler hemen Arihadir derler baziler[i] Dimask ve Filastindir derler. Ebii Suud. An interesting territorial term



572 Haim Gerber

that surfaces in this fatwa is diyar-i Arab as a clear reference to all the lands inhabited by the "Arabs" of the "Middle East," where the reference to Arabs is clearly not to bedouins but to the modern sense of the term.

35Ibn 'Abidin, Al-'Uqiud al-Durriyya, 1: 12. 36Al-Ramli, I:178. 37Bakri Alladin, "Deux Fatwa-s du $ayh Abd al-Gani al-Nabulusi (1143/1731)," Bulletin d'Etudes

Orientales 39 (1987): 30. 38Evliya Celebi, Evliya (elebi Seyahatnamesi (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaasi, 1935), IX:243, 245, 450,

463, 521. 39Celebi, Evliya (elebi Seyahatnamesi, IX:450. The noteworthy point here is the term arz to denote

land in a quasi-political sense. It is interesting that the same Evliya l(elebi reproduces an Ayyubid in-

scription from Jerusalem, dated 619/1213-14, which situates the building in arz Filastin, thereby avoid- ing the formal jund and opting for the more popular "land." See Evliya Qelebi, Evliya Tshelebi's Travels in Palestine (1648-50), trans. (from the original Topkapi Saray MS) St. H. Stephan (Jerusalem: Ariel

Publishing House, 1980), 67. (The work was originally published in six installments in the Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine, 1935-42).

40Transcribed by Ghalib 'Anabsi, in a master's degree thesis (Tel Aviv, 1992). The treatises were originally used in J. Sadan, "Le tombeau de Moise 'a Jericho et a Damas," Revue des Etudes Islamiques 99 (1981): 60-99.

41Ibid., 11 Iff.

42Surprisingly, when talking about "country," Bernard Lewis talks only about the term watan, while in the context of Palestinian nationalism bilad seems to have occupied a more central place. See Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 166-73. There is also no mention of bilad in any pre-modern Islamic or Middle Eastern context by Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 18. (Bilad was used only to relate in various ways to European political entities.)

43Cf. Lewis, Islam and the West, 167. 44Al-Ramli, 11:184-85. 45Ibid., I:21. 46Ibid., 107-8. 47Ibid., 3. 48Ibid., 11:233. 49Ibid., 1:48-49. 50In one other fatwa there is reference to al-awqaf al-misriyya wa-'l-awqaf al-rumiyya. See ibid.,

179-80. 5tFor example, al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-dthar, 11:41. 52Ibid., 156. On the same page, we find also al-bilad al-Rumiyya. See also ibid., 174, 274; ibid.,

IV:394-95. 53Al-Ramli, 11:35. On the social division between Qays and Yaman in Palestine in this period, see

M. Hoexter, "The Role of the Qays and Yaman Factions in Local Political Divisions: Jabal Nablus Com-

pared with Judean Hills in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," Asian and African Studies 9 (1973): 251-304.

54Al-Ramli, 1:96; ibid., II:154. 55Examples: ibid., 11:118; ibid., 1:38. 56Ibid., 1:7.

57Heyd, Ottoman Documents on Palestine, 39, 50, 92. 58Al-Ramli, 1:87. 59E. Sivan, Arab Political Myths (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1997), chap. 3. 60As is made clear, for example, by Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century, passim. 61See further Gerber, "Khayr al-Din al-Ramli," passim.

