The Urban Notables Paradigm revisited - article ; n°1 ; vol.55, pg 215-230

Philip.S Khoury

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Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée - Année 1990 - Volume 55 - Numéro 1 - Pages 215-230
16 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: REVUE_DU_MONDE_MUSULMAN_ET_DE_LA_MEDITERRANEE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1990
• Nombre de lectures: 43
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Philip S. Khoury
The Urban Notables Paradigm revisited
In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, N°55-56, 1990. pp. 215-230.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Khoury Philip S. The Urban Notables Paradigm revisited. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, N°55-56, 1990.
pp. 215-230.
doi : 10.3406/remmm.1990.2345
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/remmm_0997-1327_1990_num_55_1_2345S. KHOURY Philip
THE URBAN NOTABLES PARADIGM REVISITED
In the late 1960s, two studies were published that offered historians important
and lasting instruction on how to comprehend politics at the macro and micro
levels in geographic Syria. Ira M. Lapidus' Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages
appeared in 1967 and Albert Hourani's article «Ottoman Reform and the Politics
of Notables» followed a year later. Written independently of one another and for
different periods of Syrian history, both studies posited that local politics in the
major towns and in the countryside around them were dominated by groups of
notables in competition with one another for power and influence. To become
and remain viable political actors, notables relied on a variety of vertical linkages
both to dependent elements in the wider society below them and to their foreign
governors or rulers above them, whether in the provincial capitals of Damascus
and Aleppo or in the imperial capitals of Cairo and Istanbul. To enhance their
strength, notables also formed horizontal alliances, often of a temporary sort, with
other notables. The material base of their power and influence frequently was rooted
in control of the land or land tax in the vicinity of the towns, urban real estate,
local handicrafts, regional and long-distance trade (merchant capital), and awqâf.
Some notables belonged to the ranking families of the religious establishment while
others derived power from the local military organizations which they controlled.
If one characteristic can be said to define the notables then it was their ability
to act as intermediaries between government and local society. «Access» and
«patronage» were the code words of the politics of notables.
Versions of the notables paradigm that Lapidus and Hourani established have
been employed by historians concerned with geographic Syria in the medieval period
(Shoshan, 1986 and Humphreys, 1988) and in Ottoman times (Rafeq, 1966; Ma'oz,
REM.M.M. 55-56, 1990/1-2 216 / P. S. Khoury
1968; Barbir, 1980; Khoury, 1983; Roded, 1984; Schatkowski Schilcher, 1985;
Masters, 1988 and Marcus, 1989). The notables paradigm has also been applied
to the twentieth century, especially the interwar years (Porath, 1974; Lesch, 1979;
Khoury, 1987) and the immediate post-war period in Syria (Seale, 1965). Historians
have used notables to study the political configuration of towns and the factions
that dominated them (Khoury, 1983, 1987 and Schatkowski Schilcher, 1985) and
their role in land control (Abdel-Nour, 1982 and Reilly, 1987), production and
trade, and religious organizations, including the sufi orders. At least one historian
has examined the changing role and status of women within the notables framework
of analysis (Meri wether, 1981). Some have concentrated on the conflicts between
pro-imperial and pro-localist factions of notables (Schatkowski Schilcher, 1985 and
Abu-Husayn, 1985), while others have examined the relations between notables
and foreign rulers and, in particular, the role of notables in provincial administration
(Khoury, 1983 and Roded, 1984). Within the framework, several historians
have explored the ideological orientations of notables and the paradigm has been
of considerable value in studying the emergence of nationalism in Syria and Palestine
(Dawn, 1962/1973; Khalidi, 1980; Porath, 1974; Khoury, 1983 andMuslih, 1988).
Other historians have utilized the paradigm to produce full-scale biographies of
twentieth century political and intellectual leaders (Cleveland, 1977; Wilson, 1987
and Mattar, 1988).
Historians working within the notables paradigm for the medieval and Ottoman
periods have relied on three principal written sources: local chronicles, biographical
dictionaries, and local sharVa court registers. These have been supplemented by
published Ottoman Yearbooks (sâlnàme) and a variety of European consular
documents and travelogues. Few, however, have made significant use of the Ottoman
imperial archives to study the notables of geographic Syria; therefore, the view
from the imperial capital remains largely a mystery.
This article will provide one example of how the notables paradigm has been
applied to the study of Syrian political history in order to assess its strengths and
weaknesses. The example is drawn largely from my own study, Urban Notables
and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920 (1983). Although the
book focuses almost exclusively on Damascus, the example provided can be
generalized to include other towns in geographic Syria, but with all the obvious
caveats. The decision to use my book as a stalking horse is quite straightforward
and is not intended to be self-indulgent; it is sufficiently behind me to permit
a first take at an auto-critique. First, the book is directly concerned with the
articulation of the notables paradigm and its application to life in Ottoman Damascus
during a period of profound political and social change. Second, its central thesis
has been formed in large part by earlier studies of notables, and the book belongs
firmly to the Lapidus-Hourani-Dawn tradition. Third, the book has had some
influence on the research of other historians. Fourth (and most importantly), its
central arguments have spawned some interesting criticisms that are eminently
worthy of re-examination and discussion.
Before re-examining a few of the issues raised by the notables paradigm as The urban notables paradigm revisited I 217
articulated in Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, let me mention in passing
the book's general shortcomings, some of which critics have brought to my attention.
1. It does not supply adequate information on the notable families, their economic
interests, political acitivities, and marriage alliances. 2. Some of the information
provided is inaccurate or incomplete such as that on the wealth of different families
and status groups like the *ulama\ the ashràf, and the aghawat. 3. The
appropriateness of class analysis for understanding change in Syrian politics and
society requires a deeper exploration of the Syrian political economy in the
nineteenth century. 4. Inadequate attention is paid to the relations of the main
class discussed in the book, the landowning-bureaucratic class, to the merchants,
artisans, religious minorities, and sufi orders. 5. Insufficient attention is paid to
the ways notable politicians mobilized and/or dominated local society. 6. The book
does not discuss fully other channels that were developed to articulate popular
interests and demands once the notables began to abandon their traditional role
as intermediaries between state and society. 7. The book does not sufficiently account
for the contributions made to the development of Arabism before 1914 by elements
outside the local upper class. 8. Insufficient attention is paid to the changing
expressions of political consciousness and cultural identity in nineteenth century
Syria.
What follows is a re-examination of three broad features of the notables paradigm
as articulated in Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism.
I. PERIODIZATION
Nearly all historians who have employed the notables paradigm agree, at least
implicitly, that the relations between the notables and the Ottoman state can be
usefully periodized for the eighteenth and long nineteenth century. In Urban Notab
les and Arab Nationalism, I presented the following periodization for the Damasc
us province: 1. 1700-1760, when the provincial governorship reasserted its authority
and checked the independence of the notables; 2. 1760-1830 when the central author
ity was weak and the notables acted, in Barbir's (1980) words, as «semiindepen-
dent surrogates » for the state rather than as « intermediaries » between state and
society; 3. the 1830s when the Egyptian occupation of Syria inaugurated an unpre
cedented era of intensified state control in Damascus (and other Syrian towns);
4. 1841-1860, when the return of Ottoman control was accompanied by a series
of centralizing reforms that were not, for the most part, warmly received by the
notables of Damascus whose resistance helped to precipitate the crisis of 1860;
5. 1860-1908, when a reinvigorated central authority drew the notables more comp
letely into the state administration as a provincial aristocracy of service, espe
cially after 1880; 6. from 1909, when the Young Turks imposed rigid centrali
zing reforms and «Turkification » policies that caused resentment among a growing
number of notables, who began to demand greater autonomy for their province
and, in some cases, to agitate for separation from the Ottoman Empire.
Periodization schemes are generically problematic because they are not well-
designed to account for varia