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An Agenda for Research in History: The History of Libya between the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Rifaat Abou-El-Haj
Rifaat Abou-El-Haj
Affiliation:
California State UniversityLong Beach
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Extract

It is perhaps premature to spell out priorities of research in the history of Libya, since bibliographies of what has already been written have not been systematically read, nor even adequately compiled and indexed. The following observations and analyses are, of necessity, based on a cursory reading in a list—compiled by the author on the history of the Arab world and Ottoman Empire (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries)—of some 500 studies done since the 1950s by Arab scholars and historians. The fifties are taken as the period which signalled the achievement of political independence by the Arab States. I realize that individual scholars will be able to make exceptions here or ther to the observations, generalizations, and criticisms which are made in this study. The very exceptions, however, point to the dearth of modern critical scholarship on the history of Libya from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. However, the exceptions which one could point out as models for research to be done, do not in and of themselves amount to trends in research. To date, available histories of Libya are, in the main, focused on political if not outright dynastic history. The focus is usually placed on the peculiarities and the anomalies of political history rather than the primary similarities which make for comparative history. In the remainder of this paper we offer a novitiate's priorities for research under five headings.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 1983 , pp. 305 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I wish to thank Talal Asad of Hull University and Irmingard Staueble of the Free University, Berlin for their reading of and critical comments upon, this study.Google Scholar

1 The Centre for Libyan Studies has been providing a continous bibliography on the history of Libya, especially in its journal, Mjallat al-Buhuth al-Tarikhiyyah, which started publication in January 1979. The reader will find the following bibliographies of great value for this period: Annuare d'Afrique du Nord: Algerie, Maroc, Tunisie, Libye, Aix-En-Provence, 1962-: and the more recently started The Turkology Annual (Turkologischer Anzieger) which has been published as a supplement to the journal Wiener Zeitschrift Fur Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes since 1975, but can also be separately obtained. This latter bibliography is prepared under the direction of Andreas Tietze in collaboration with sectional editors from practically every part of the western world and now taps some of the resources of Middle Eastern centres to provide perhaps the most complete (for all languages) and thorough (it has systematically arranged every aspect of Turkish scholarly endeavors since 1972) bibliography on Turkology.Google Scholar

2 The compilation of this bibliography and the critical reading of parts of it were facilitated by grants for research and released time from California State University, Long Beach. The impetus and inspiration for the early assessment of these materials are in part due to the author's participation in an international conference held as the inaugural meeting of the Centre for Libyan Studies in Tripoli (December, 1978). The theme of the conference was The Decolonization of Libya's Historical Past. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. Muhammad al-Jarary and the preparatory committee for their hospitality and to the participants for their direct and indirect contributions to the substance, approach and orientation of this study.Google Scholar

3 Thus the periodization adopted by the author is still the liberal one which considers the history of the Ottoman state and its provinces strictly in terms of their response to external threat devoid of local concerns and dynamics.Google Scholar

4 1n the case of Ottoman history, the examples which come to mind show that the reforms were aimed at the creation of the largest immediate cash revenue for the state treasury at the time of a protracted war. Changes in the malikane system that were offered in the latter part of the seventeeth century are reported in the Istanbul-based Basvekalet Arsivi, Maliye Defteri no. 3423, p. 607Google Scholar and excerpted in Rasid, , Tarih-i Rasid, Istanbul 1283, Vol. II, pp. 288–291.Google Scholar

5 “Trablus Garp,” islam Ânsikiopedisi. Orhonlu's contribution is an addition to the Turkish translation of the original text in the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam.Google Scholar

6 Oral observations by Sahiloglu at the inaugural conference of the Centre for Libyan Studies, held in Tripoli, in December, 1978.Google Scholar

7 Most of the historical material found in M. A. Muhammad's work is based on secondary and tertiary sources. The work is based mainly on analogous treatment of land-holding in other parts of the Ottoman state, rather than on the critical examination of the actual practice of land-holding in the Libyan provinces. Except for a model of decline and disintegration, there is no critical sense or apparatus to the work. Finally, there is missing an historical dimension, which is so critically important for an understanding of the socioeconomic dimensions of Libyan society in premodern times.Google Scholar

8 The reader can find a general classification for the financial registers in the work of Sertoglu, Midhat, Muhteva Bakimindan Basvekalet Arsivi, Ankara, 1955;Google ScholarShaw, Stanford, “Archival Sources for Ottoman History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 80, 1960, pp. 1–12; and the most recent work which I have not been able to consult,CrossRefGoogle Scholar by Çetin, Atilla, Basbakanlik Arsivi Kilavuzu, Istanbul, 1979.Google Scholar

9 The author does admit at one point that he had spent only one week in Tripoli where he visited the archives (Saray al-Hamra) and managed to get some documents produced to be able to include as appendices to his text, see pictures 2–9.Google Scholar

10 Jan Vansina had been involved early in this project. Report in Majallat al-Buhuth al-Taikhiyya, Vol I, no. 1, 1979. pp. 145–146.Google Scholar

11 Report to the inaugural conference for the Libyan Studies Centre, Tripoli, , December, 1978.Google Scholar

12 The sanjak is the military administrative unit used nearly throughout the Ottoman domains.Google Scholar

13 The registers or records which have been consulted for this essay are located in the court offices in Jerusalem. There are over 550 sijils, which follow one another in almost direct chronological order. Of these, the first 416 cover the affairs of the Kada-sanjak of Jerusalem up to World War I. Although there is no specific index of the sijils, a reference list (fihris) which is kept for the waqfiyat can serve as an index for them. In the fihris, the waqf entries are listed bearing the number of the sijil, page on which it is found, and the date of the waqfiyyah. In addition there are two columns which note the dates covered by each sijil and the names of the incumbent kadis. This part of our study is based on illustrative and typical selections from the first eighteen sijils which cover the period 934–954 A.H. (1530–1546/7) and on; sijil no. 49 dating from 973 A.H. (1566). The standard scripts are broken naskhi and rik'a; the rescripts and orders emanating from Istanbul and Damascus (the provincial-eyalet capital) are written in nestalik. The common Ottoman practice of using modified forms of siyakat for the financial entries is copiously illustrated in the registers consulted. There are in Arabic two articles which both describe and illustrate the usefulness of the sijils from other Arab provinces as historical records: Khalil Sahili (Sahiloglu), “Sijillat al-Mahakem al-Shari'iyyah kamasdar farid liltarikh al-'iqtisadi wal'ijtima'i,” al-Majillah al-Tarikhiyyah al-Maghribiyyah, no. 1. 1974, pp. 25–32; and Abdul Wadad Yusuf, “Sijillat al-mahakem al-Shar'iyyah kamasdar asasi litarikh al'Arab fil-'Asr al-'Uthmani,” al-Majallah al-Tarikhiyyah al-Misriyyah. no 19, 1972, pp. 325–335.Google Scholar

14 For example, when the welfare of the town was in jeopardy, the sanjak bey was called upon to take direct action. In one instance, serious shortage of meat was experienced in the city of Jerusalem due to the fact that its butchers could not agree on the selection of a reis (head of their “guild”), resulting in the fluctuation of the price of meat three times in one month. The governor stepped in, and in consultation with various sectors of society in the city, he had a reis appointed and gave him virtual monopoly to provide meat. Jerusalem sijil 18 (952 A.H,/ 1546).Google Scholar

15 These dues were regulated by Ottoman law (kanun). Barkan, Omer Lutfi, Osmanli Imparatorlugunda zirai ekonominin hukuki ve mali esaslari, Istanbul, 1945, 1, 218 cites an undated price-list which corresponds to versions of this list entered in Jerusalem sijil 13 (948 A.H./ 1541); the first instance is on page 303 and the other on page 381. Heath Lowry has collected most of the available liva and sanjak kanunnameler for the Ottoman provinces. For a report and list with dates seeGoogle ScholarLowry, Heath, “The Ottoman Liva Kanunnames contained in the Defter-i Hakani,” The Journal of Ottoman Studies 11 (1981), pp. 43–74. Part of my ongoing research includes the examination of the liva and sanjak kanunnameler for eighteen Arab districts and provinces of the Ottoman state and the assessment of the usefulness of these laws for the economic and social history of the Arab provinces inthe sixteenth century.Google Scholar

16 This practice is very much reminiscent of the “frank-pledge” of the Middle Ages in the West. For a quick reference, see Lyon, Bryce, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (New York, 1960), pp. 81–82 and 195 ff. I am grateful to my colleague, Donna Boutelle, for drawing my attention to this similarity between Ottoman and European practice. There is evidence that this practice was continued elsewhere in the Ottoman domains well into the eighteenth century. For example, in the year 1115 A.H. (1703), a contemporary chronicler records that “since there was rumor that certain misdemeanors were being practiced.… those men and women who are not bonded [without kafil, i.e., bondsman against such ‘crimes’ were to be fetched and expelled from the city.” In Edirne, “Edirnede bazi mertebe fevahish maqulesei istimā' olunmaghla def', shehri tatheer eylemek uzere hatt-i humayun shevketmekrun sadir oldu…veziri-i azam tarafindan dahi mu'tamed agalar tayin, mahelle bi-mahalle teftish oliyip kefilleri olmiyan rijal u nisa ikhraj ve yanlinara chawushlar kushulup shehirden chikardilar” (unpublished chronicle), Anonymous, “Tevarih-i Sultan-i Suleyman,” Berlin staatsbibliothek. Diez A quarto 75, p. 229.Google Scholar

17 In a “jizye defter” found in the Jerusalem records (for 940 A.H.), there is inscribed a list of the names of the Christians and Jews who were liable to pay the jizye and those individuals who actually paid the head tax. There is a notation against the names of those who were absent from their residence or for some other reason did not pay their taxes. Finally, the disbursement of the revenue collected among the various Muslim charitable and religious bodies is recorded. For a study of an Anatolian example of these records see Jennings, B., Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient Vol. XXI (1978). David Geza provides a useful study based on the “tahrir defter” from the Ottoman archives, for the formula calculating the number of individuals living in a household.Google ScholarIdem., “The Age of Unmarried Male Children in the Tahrir Defter,” Acta Orientalia Vol. XXXI (1977), pp. 347–357. Heath Lowry discusses the issue of the composition of the hane (households) both in his book Trabzon Sehrinin Islamlasma ve Turklesmesi: 1461–1583 (Istanbul, 1981), soon to appear in English and especially in his forthcoming review article of B. Lewis and A. Cohen, “Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Journal of Ottoman Studies.

18 Laroui, A., The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay (Princeton, 1977).Google Scholar

19 Idem., Abdul-Rahman Agha al-Budayri (Beirut, n.d. [1960s?). Ismail, Omar, Inhiyar Hukm al-Usrah al-Qaramanliya fi Leebya (Beirut, 1966), takes the same approach.Google Scholar

20 We cite for example, two such marriage contracts: the first dated 12 Zul-Hijjah, 973 A.H. where the spouse was Suleyman Çelebi ibn the late Mehmed, the Agha of the fort of Jerusalem, whose wife was Fatmah bint Hasan, the ÇavuŞ of the said fort, and lately the divorcee of Mustafa, the molla of the same fort; even the ex-slaves of the elites seemed to marry from within the ex-slave population of the elites, for instance, the spouse Rizq b. Abdullah, the manumitted slave of the late Qaytas Bey, and the wife was Hurayr bint Abdullah, the manumitted slave of Shehzade bint Yusuf al-Rumi al-Ankaravi. Jerusalem sijil 49, pp. 73 and 100.Google Scholar

21 Verdery, R. N., “The Publications of the Bulaq Press under M. Ali of Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 91 (1971), 135a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ibid., 135b.

23 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, in a forthcoming study from Cambridge University Press, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, adds new insights into the conflict between Muhammad Ali and his eldest son over the wisdom of using native Egyptians to staff the new ruling elite and the importance of this delay in the Egyptianization of the ruling class and the latter's impact on the evolution of a modern Egyptian culture, nation state, and national identity.Google Scholar

24 Abdul-Mola al-Horeir describes and analyzes the culture created in the badiya of North Africa and especially Libya by the Sanusiyya movement, and assesses the role of the zawiyyas in the creation of the socioeconomic formation and culture.Google Scholar“Social and Economic Transformation in the Libyan Hinterland During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” University of California. Los Angeles. Ph.D. Dissertation, 1981 (copies are available through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA).Google Scholar

25 The Centre for Libyan Studies in cooperation with UNESCO sponsored a conference on the caravan trade across the sub-Sahara (announced in Majallat al-Buhuth al-Tarikhiyya, Vol. 1, 1 (1980).Google Scholar Some of the papers for that conference have been published in ibid., Vol. III, nos. 1 & 2 (1981).

26 Ismail's study of the Qaramanli dynasty quoted in footnote 19 above is written completely without raising any of the critical questions and without taking into consideration the whole question of the relation between state and society outlined in this section.Google Scholar

27 Christian Sourriou of the University of Aix en Provence has indicated that in the French archives such information remains untapped.Google Scholar