The history of libraries in Ottoman Palestine is faced with two main issues, lack of attention and a biased coverage of Jerusalem.1 This is surprising given the wealth of sources to reconstruct Palestinian book culture. Several catalogues of historic book collections are mere handlists and await detailed cataloguing.2 Furthermore, the modern whereabouts of these collections are not always clear and the political situation in the region frequently prevents a suitable research atmosphere. Hence, books and libraries have not been seriously taken up as study objects in research on Ottoman (and post Ottoman) Palestine. The book culture of this region in the existing literature on the social, cultural and political landscape of Greater Syria is mostly described as insignificant if at all, especially for the Muslim majority population.3 This is in stark contrast to neighbouring Syrian and Egyptian societies, which are well-known to have produced many private book collections, libraries and a vivid culture around the written word. The most recent survey of the various holdings in different Palestinian cities suggests that many libraries await in-depth studies.4
Jerusalem is comparatively well represented in not only historical research on Palestine generally but also the meagre existing literature on libraries and books. This is not only thanks to the increasing number of detailed catalogues that are continuously being published.5 The last few years have witnessed notable digitalisation projects and the holdings of some libraries, especially from Jerusalem, are now accessible online. Exciting source material, hitherto unused for the history of libraries in the Ottoman realm, such as the guest books of the Khālidiyya library, are available and await dedicated research. In comparison to Jerusalem, other towns lag behind and this volume on the library of al-Jazzār in Acre is a first attempt to broaden the scope.
In this chapter, we will leave Acre and turn south. A little more than a hundred kilometres down the Mediterranean coast, in the ancient town of Jaffa, a mamlūk of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār (d. 1219/1804) by the name of Muḥammad Aghā (d. ca. 1833–1834), better known as Abū Nabbūt, embarked on an urban development project including striking parallels to what his master, al-Jazzār, did in Acre. Abū Nabbūt was the deputy governor (mutasallim) of Jaffa in the early nineteenth century, and invested time and money in the economic and military infrastructure of his place of residence. His urbanisation project changed the townscape of Jaffa decisively and elevated the place into a regional hub, a centre of trade for the produce of the fertile hills of Nablus. Abū Nabbūt fostered Jaffa’s role as the major entry point of seafaring pilgrims and visitors for Jerusalem and some of his buildings still stand today.
Similar to al-Jazzār’s urban project and certainly inspired by it, Abū Nabbūt resorted to the time-tested strategy of creating a large endowment complex to fund his enterprise and extend his influence in the social fabric of the town. The endowment complex involved khāns, markets and several fountains. It also included a mosque, the Great Mosque (also known as the Maḥmūdiyya or Maḥmūdī Mosque), the largest religious building in Jaffa at that time. Abū Nabbūt built a madrasa as an essential component of the Great Mosque, and founded a library in this educational facility. This chapter will explore the history of Abū Nabbūt’s library, based mostly on the endowment statements on its books.
The history of Abū Nabbūt’s library can be examined based on various documentary and material evidence, not all of which can be used exhaustively in this chapter. The endowment documents prove particularly helpful for the endowment complex of Abū Nabbūt in its larger context. These texts provide an insight into the financial substructure of the endowed institutions and Abū Nabbūt’s vision about how they should function. It is important to note from the outset that we are not dealing with the initial endowment deeds but transcriptions of various endowment-related documents which survive in two different forms. Firstly, we have a composite-document manuscript, containing transmediations of various documents concerning Abū Nabbūt’s endowment complex.6 This manuscript7 has been transcribed and analysed in depth by Ruba Kana’an in her 1998 PhD dissertation, which remains the prime study on Jaffa under the rulership of Abū Nabbūt.8 Each transmediated document is provided in duplicate in this composite-document manuscript: once in Arabic, as registered in the Islamic court register (sijill) of Jerusalem, and once in Ottoman Turkish, as registered in Istanbul (dār al-salṭana al-ʿāliyya). Many questions concerning the history of this important manuscript remain unanswered. We do not know, for example, exactly by whom and for what purpose it was produced. The Ottoman government was collecting copies of endowment deeds in different parts of the empire9 in the late nineteenth century to enable a more effective management, and our composite-document manuscript may very well have been produced in this context. Its producer was knowledgeable in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish and had access to the documents in both languages, indicating that he was probably tasked by a higher authority.
The court registers of the Islamic Court of Jaffa and the Islamic Court of Jerusalem are a second source for the history of the library. Similar to most cities of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, the records from Jaffa are incomplete. Jaffa was subject to a devastating occupation by Napoleon in 1799, taken over by Egyptian forces in 1831, and ravaged by the tremendous changes of the twentieth century. There are no register volumes from the period before 1799; apparently the earlier volumes got destroyed in a fire. Be that as it may, the surviving volumes allow important insights as Abū Nabbūt’s endowment complex left many traces in the court registers of early nineteenth-century Palestine.10
An inventory of books that was drawn up in the first third of Dhū al-Ḥijja 1228/November–December 1813 in the court registers of the Islamic Court of Jaffa is specifically interesting regarding Abū Nabbūt’s library. Ruba Kana’an reproduced it in her PhD thesis in 1998 and Fatima al-Wahsh published an article in 2011 based on this inventory.11 Abū Nabbūt’s books are listed on three pages under twelve thematical categories. The inventory provides two names of people involved in the affairs of the library, gives a total number of books in stock (538) and reveals the existence of a dedicated library catalogue in the possession of its librarian. The available reproduction of this inventory is rather challenging to work with and poses several challenges. The listed books, for example, do not add up to the 538 books declared that were apparently housed in the library at the time of its production, even if we consider that more than one copy of some books was in stock.
Finally, next to these two main sources that have, to some extent, already been used in research on the library of Abū Nabbūt, are those objects that, more than anything else, define a library, the books themselves. Compared to similar libraries, not least the Jazzār library in Acre, a sizable number of manuscripts that were once part of the library in the Great Mosque of Jaffa are identifiable today. What enables us to identify them with certainty are the endowment statements they carry on their title pages (or later fly pages). I have been able to track down 146 books so far. I will call this corpus in the following the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus and aim to publish it in full in the future. If we take the number 538 from the inventory in the court record of Jaffa in 1813 as a yardstick, the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus is certainly only a sample of the library’s former holdings. However, with roughly twenty-five per cent, this sample can be regarded as fairly representative, and some conclusions, however tentative, can be drawn.
This chapter argues that the library of the Great Mosque of Jaffa was an integral element of Abū Nabbūt’s urban programme. Furthermore, he used the books of the library to make his political allegiances and ambitions known. Based on the endowment notes, I advance the argument that for Abū Nabbūt, his affiliation to al-Jazzār was a highly important and meaningful condition, and that he utilised his books to proclaim this in his attempt to obtain a promotion within the Ottoman hierarchy. But before we explore what these books tell us about the history of the library, we will introduce its founder and his endowment project to later connect these dots to his bookish endeavour.
1 Abū Nabbūt
Little is known about Abū Nabbūt before he became the deputy governor of Jaffa in the early nineteenth century, and even less about his life before he came to Acre. It is only known that he served as a customs officer (gümrük emini) in Acre and, for a brief period, as deputy governor of Damascus under Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār.12 What allowed Abū Nabbūt to rise to such positions was his membership of al-Jazzār’s household, that is, the extended group of dependents held together by various forms of social, economic and personal ties. The innermost circle of the household was, at least in its early years, a group with a pronounced loyalty, a feature often described as typical for such a social formation. Al-Jazzār himself set an example: The reason that he initially fled Egypt in 1768 was his refusal to take part in a plot against his former master.13 His worldview must have been heavily shaken when in May 1789, after he himself grew to be the master of a household, his own mamlūks started a rebellion. Although al-Jazzār eventually weathered the insurrection, the effects of the disloyal behaviour of his mamlūks have been profound. After the rebellion, he was described as paranoid and constantly on guard. Still, in 1802, he readopted at least one of the mamlūks who took part in the rebellion against him, a certain Sulaymān.14 When al-Jazzār died in 1219/1804, Sulaymān eventually assumed power and became the governor of Sidon. Under Sulaymān Pasha (r. 1804–1818), Abū Nabbūt further advanced his career and left his imprint on Jaffa and its environs.
Abū Nabbūt’s stellar career was enabled by a change of policy. Although Sulaymān followed al-Jazzār in keeping Acre the official residence of the governorate of Sidon, his politics were decisively different. He loosened the reins on the monopoly on cotton and other agricultural produce that made his predecessors al-Jazzār and Ẓāhir al-ʿUmar (ca. 1690–1775) such prosperous rulers. This involved laxer taxation for the peasants and artisans who were seriously afflicted by al-Jazzār’s policy.15 In terms of manpower, Sulaymān Pasha maintained a much smaller regiment than his predecessor. This style of leadership earned him the appellation ‘the just’ (al-ʿādil) and stood in self-evident contrast to al-Jazzār (‘the butcher’). Under Sulaymān Pasha’s decentralised rule, his deputies were able to act more independently in their regions and virtually establish lordships, such as Muṣṭafā Barbar in Tripolis and Abū Nabbūt in Jaffa and southern Palestine.16
When exactly Abū Nabbūt assumed his position in Jaffa is contested. Al-Jazzār integrated the town into his district in 1803—before, it was officially part of the sanjak Damascus—and appointed Abū Nabbūt his deputy governor (mutasallim) around that time. Abū Nabbūt’s early tenure in Jaffa was shortly interrupted by Abū Maraq, a local from Gaza who had already ruled Jaffa from 1801 until 1803 and who returned briefly to rule the town in 1804. Al-Jazzār’s successor Sulaymān the Just sent Abū Nabbūt to oust Abū Maraq for good, and reappointed Abū Nabbūt, who was, in theory, of equal rank to his former mamlūk comrade. Jaffa was badly afflicted not only during Abū Nabbūt’s siege but also with previous military attempts to capture the town. Egyptian forces under ʿAlī Bey al-Kabīr and Abū Dhahab lay Jaffa under siege in the early 1770s. Though the subsequent Siege of Jaffa under Napoleon in 1799 was much shorter, the accompanying massacre and the following outbreak of the bubonic plague were far more devastating. After he captured the town, Abū Nabbūt held the position of deputy governor until he was eventually ousted in 1819.
In his position as deputy governor, Abū Nabbūt’s domains include Jaffa, Gaza, Ramla and Lid. He asserted various military and administrative tasks in this southernmost region of Ottoman Greater Syria. His main responsibilities were maintaining security and collecting various forms of taxes, including the customs of the port, for his superior in Acre. His role gave him some leverage concerning trade, which, in turn, helped him to turn Jaffa into a port city of transregional importance. In addition, he was the administrator of the sultanic endowment (mutawallī al-waqf al-sharīf) in his region, silaḥshūr khāṣṣa (commander in chief) and port director (ḍābiṭ iskila Yāfā).17 With these official titles behind him, Abū Nabbūt was an ambitious ruler who did not simply use the existing structures in the region for his personal profit but initiated a large-scale rebuilding project in and around Jaffa. In his efforts to develop the town into a proper port city, he resorted to the well-established practice of creating an endowment complex by acquiring and subsequently endowing property to ensure the continuous financing of his projects. The composite-document manuscript mentioned above enables an in-depth look into his various infrastructural projects taking place mostly between 1812 and 1816.18
Figure 6.1
The cemetery can be seen in this painting of Jaffa by David Roberts from 1813. (Jaffa, formerly Joppa, looking south). Coloured lithograph by Louis Haghe after David Roberts, 1843
Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection
Abū Nabbūt took care of the fortification of the city to foster security and, importantly, create a haven for himself and his retinue. He initiated the refurbishment of the land walls including the digging of a moat.19 He bought land outside the city to move the cemetery outside the city walls (see fig. 6.1) and make space for more buildings. He built two new markets with thirty-six and eleven shops, respectively, to encourage trade and, thus, income. In addition, he built two new khāns.20 The two fountains built at Abū Nabbūt’s behest are most famous among his buildings, one outside the city on the way to Jerusalem and one within the town annexed to the Great Mosque, both of which still stand today.21 He attempted to build a sea wall late in his tenure in Jaffa, but this last project was not realised.
Abū Nabbūt was brought down in the summer of 1819 through a scheme plotted by Ḥaim Farḥī, the secretary and financial administrator of Sulaymān Pasha, ʿAbd Allāh Pasha and Samʿān al-Ṣāliḥ, a scribe at the Court of Jaffa. His attempt to obtain the official status of Pasha and gain a degree of independence from his superior Sulaymān had not only failed but triggered his opponents to eventually remove him. Upon returning from Gaza, Abū Nabbūt was denied access to Jaffa, and he was never to enter his former seat of power again. After a brief interlude in Cairo, where Abū Nabbūt is said to have arrived with an entourage of about 500 people as a guest of Egypt’s strongman Muḥammad ʿAlī,22 he later held other high-ranking positions, such as that of the wālī of Salonika in 1821 and later also the wālī of Diyar Bakir (1826).23
Figure 6.2
Sketch Plan of the Great Mosque. The courtyard to the west is the one built in 1812. Kana’an, Waqf, Architecture, and Political Self-Fashioning, p. 121
© Ruba Kana’an
2 Building a Library in Early Nineteenth-century Palestine
The Great Mosque was the religious signature project of Abū Nabbūt’s endowment complex in Jaffa. It stood on the remains of an earlier, ruinous mosque, built in the eighteenth century by a certain Muḥammad al-Bībī.24 After the devastating period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the mosque lay in ruins. Abū Nabbūt decided to rebuild it and the construction phase concluded in 1812.25 The new building was enlarged and equipped with running water, carpets and several employees. A madrasa was attached to the mosque to serve local educational needs and attract scholars (see fig. 6.2). This madrasa housed a library (kitābkhāne), located in the north-east corner of the Great Mosque.26 The Great Mosque and Abū Nabbūt’s fountains have gained some scholarly attention, most notably by Ruba Kana’an and, more recently, by Mahmud Yazbak. Only one dedicated article has been written on the library by Fatima al-Wahsh, who based her research on the inventory from the Jaffa court records described above, but unfortunately missed one entire page of it in her analysis.27 For the first time, the present chapter includes the books that once lay (or stood) on the shelves of the library, which enable us to add another layer to its history.
The Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus as it stands today comprises 146 books. These books are identifiable as formerly belonging to Abū Nabbūt’s library thanks to the endowment statements they carry. The largest bulk of books (124 manuscripts) I have been able to find so far are manuscripts that have remained in Jaffa for at least a century and in 1923, became part of the newly established Islamic Library in Jaffa. Pictures of these manuscripts can be found today on the website of the al-Najah National University Library in Nablus. These pictures are reproductions of microfilms, presumably those produced by Maḥmūd ʿAṭā Allāh (d. 2002) in 1984 when the latter produced a catalogue for the Islamic Library and, in its course, microfilmed some 339 manuscripts.28 I will cite these manuscripts by their Islamic Library in Jaffa class mark and provide links to the al-Najah library website. Unfortunately, I was not able to track down the current whereabouts of most of these 124 manuscripts and, thus, had to work with the uploaded pictures of varying quality.
Some 19 of those 124 manuscripts uploaded on the al-Najah National University Library’s website appear in the 5 published catalogues of the Center for Heritage Revival and Islamic Research (Muʾassasat Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth wa-al-Buḥūth al-Islāmiyya) in Abu Dis next to Jerusalem, where they are also kept today.29 This institution was set up by the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs in 1983 to safeguard the written heritage of Muslim Palestine. It holds (at least) another eight manuscripts formerly owned by Abū Nabbūt, making the total number of books formerly part of Abū Nabbūt’s library there twenty-seven (for now). The role of the Center for Heritage Revival and Islamic Research in the more recent history of books and libraries in Palestine is certainly highly relevant and awaits dedicated research.
A further thirteen manuscripts in the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus are today in the ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza. They have been digitised in a collective effort by Muneer Elbaz from the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza within the framework of the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library (EAP1285/1) in cooperation with the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. A total of 211 manuscripts have been digitized and uploaded online. It is not clear whether these are all the manuscripts kept in the ʿUmarī Mosque or only a sample. The catalogue of the ʿUmarī Mosque library published in 2016, for example, speaks of only 187 manuscripts.30 Should there be more manuscripts in the ʿUmarī Mosque than those uploaded, there may also be more manuscripts formerly kept in the library of Abū Nabbūt.
A single manuscript in the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus is today part of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, the manuscript itself is very sparse in terms of information about its own history: besides the endowment note of Abū Nabbūt, the only other paratextual clues are the stamp and the shelf number of the National Library. The manuscript in question, Ms Ar. 266, was, according to the inventory book of the ‘Ar. Stock’, bought from a certain Dr. Goldstein on 14 December 1955.31 I will come back to some of the institutions named in the preceding paragraphs in the last part of this chapter.
The corpus of 146 identified books, though not the sum total of the library’s former stock, allows a corpus-based approach to the history of the library and, thus, an important addition to the documents at hand. In the meantime, additional manuscripts are expected to be found in the region and, maybe, around the world. Any quantitative detail and argument based on quantitative data in this chapter must, thus, be treated with reasonable caution. The corpus I have built (so far) and on which this chapter is based is, in many regards, indebted to the digitalisation efforts of different institutions and individuals, but, at the same time, it is based on their selection criteria, which are not always clearly stated. We can read in Konrad Hirschler’s chapter on the translocation of al-Jazzār’s manuscripts (Chapter 7) that the al-Najah Library’s website only hints at from where they got their manuscripts (“established families of Nablus known for their famous scholars, litterateurs and poets”), but provides neither details of single manuscripts, their current class marks, nor information about which manuscripts are actually part of their library today and for which they only have digital reproductions. Though we can detect a most welcomed reappraisal of historical Palestinian book collections in recent years, the references to actual manuscripts in this chapter will show that the situation is not always satisfactory. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that we should not wait until the research situation is fully satisfying, with each and every manuscript clearly locatable and digitised according to the most recent state-of-the-art.
Before we come to the books and their endowment statements, I will briefly outline some key points about the library based on the other sources at hand. We know from the endowment document in the composite-document manuscript that Abū Nabbūt conceived the library to be a part of the madrasa and not an independent institution. He added seven shops, a khān and a house to the already existing endowment to secure the financial maintenance. He deployed a staff for the whole mosque complex of, among others, himself as the administrator of the endowment (mutawallī), a preacher (khaṭīb), an imam, a person spreading the prayer carpets, a sweeper, an unknown number of servants (khudām dākhil wa-khārij) and two muezzins. Regarding the madrasa, Abū Nabbūt allocated stipends for thirteen non-resident students of three different stipend brackets and another category for students living in the mosque. These students were taught by two teachers (sg. ʿālim mudarris),32 each of which was given a teaching assistant (muqrīʾ).33 Finally, a librarian (amīn kutubkhāne) was designated for the upkeep of the library.34
The inventory in the Islamic Court of Jaffa mentioned above is a major source for the number of books in Abū Nabbūt’s library, though its interpretation is not straightforward and the number of books a library holds is usually fluid. The entry was drawn up on the first day of Dhū al-Ḥijja 1228/25 November 1813, that is, approximately a year and a half after the foundation was registered in court.35 In its surviving form, it consists of a preamble, twelve thematic sections and a closing formula from which the number 538 derives. As we will see, Abū Nabbūt endowed books over time, well beyond the production of the inventory. The number 538 can, thus, only be seen as a snapshot of the holdings for that particular date. Be that as it may, the fact that the number of books had reached 538 after only one and a half years of the library’s foundation is significant. It suggests that either Abū Nabbūt had started acquiring books long before he founded the library or he was able to acquire such a huge number of books in such a short time. This, in turn, would mean that books were available in the early nineteenth century by the hundreds. Can we get any closer to the origins of the books in his library?
The provenance of books in libraries endowed by political and military rulers are sometimes shrouded in myth. Politically motivated confiscation, shifty means or even violent looting are sometimes go-to explanations for how high-calibre men built their libraries, and Abū Nabbūt’s leadership style is sometimes described as rather harsh, including occasional looting.36 These stories about the appropriation of books by dubious practices can be true, as Kyle Wynter-Stoner has recently shown for the Maḥmūdiyya library in fifteenth-century Cairo.37 Other times, they are bloated narratives meant to speak ill of certain figures. The recurring narrative of al-Jazzār plundering libraries, among others in Jabal ʿĀmil, to stock his library in Acre is as persistent as it is dubious. The credibility of this narrative is highly doubtful as we can read in Chapter 3 of this volume. What can we say about the previous life of the books in Abū Nabbūt’s library?
Firstly, it is telling to note that, so far, no conclusive evidence has emerged that Abū Nabbūt’s library housed a single book formerly held in the Jazzār library in Acre. Not a single endowment statement of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār can be found, nor any of his endowment seals, among the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus. The book market of early nineteenth century southern Greater Syria was, apparently, sufficiently saturated to enable the establishment of more than one library created by an emir. On the other hand, the absence of books previously owned/endowed by al-Jazzār from Abū Nabbūt’s library suggests that, at least until the latter’s career in Jaffa ended, al-Jazzār’s books were quite secure in their place. From where, then, did Abū Nabbūt get his books?
Figure 6.3
Estate inventory of Shaykh Muḥammad (d. 1807), position with books squared in red. Jaffa, Sijill al-Maḥkama al-Sharʿiyya 3, p. 79.
There has been only one indication so far that his books were, at least partially, acquired from the selling of estates. Estate inventories are one type of document we find repeatedly in Ottoman court registers and Bashīr Barakāt has pioneered their study for book ownership in Ottoman Jerusalem. Mohammad Ghosheh’s publication of facsimiles of book-related estate inventories, again from Jerusalem, shows that there is much more work to be done on this rich material.38 In contrast to Jerusalem, in the court registerof Jaffa I was able to see, estate inventories are not only rarer, but books appear less often. In fact, I have found only one estate inventory containing books in the Jaffa court registers from 1215/1800 to 1223/1810 (see fig. 6.3).
This inventory lists the estate of a certain Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣādiq Efendī (al-Ḍāghistānī) al-Madanī, who died in 1222/1807. One of the last positions in the inventory enumerates the following items: Kitāb (matn) munyat al-muṣallī matnhā kitāb 1, majmūʿ ṣaghīr 1, kitāb dasht 1, maḥfaẓa. From these four items, only one title is clearly identifiable, Kitāb munyat al-muṣallī, a book on prayer by Sadīd al-Dīn al-Kāshgharī (d. 705/1305), the others being an unspecified small collection of multiple texts (majmūʿ), one book of fragmentary material (dasht) and one folder. The governor of the province of Sidon, Sulaymān Pasha, became the official legal guardian of the deceased’s estate because the legal heirs of Shaykh Muḥammad were in Medina and, thus, out of reach. Being equally far away in Acre, Abū Nabbūt assumed the role of the trustee of the inheritance.
As the trustee of the estate, Abū Nabbūt was in pole position and could very well have bought Shaykh Muḥammad’s copy of the book (as well as the other items in that position). And indeed, one copy of the Munyat al-muṣallī can be found among Abū Nabbūt’s books.39 Matching titles from estate inventories to actual books, however, is not an easy task, and this case is no exception. There is no clear evidence that Abū Nabbūt’s copy of the Munyat al-muṣallī is actually the one formerly owned by Shaykh Muḥammad; an ownership statement from the latter is missing. What speaks for the fact that we have the very same copy is the date of the endowment statement by Abū Nabbūt (here Abū Labbūt)–1238/1822–1823—that is, after the death of Shaykh Muḥammad.
How often Abū Nabbūt was lucky enough to acquire books in Jaffa, the other towns in his domain or the wider region is not clear; the case of Shaykh Muḥammad is, to date, an exceptional find. Furthermore, as we have seen in the contribution of Said Aljoumani in Chapter 2, some 95 books of one particularly fervent book collector from Jaffa, al-Sayyid Yaḥyā Efendī b. al-Sayyid Muḥammad al-Ṭībī, were integrated into the Jazzār library in 1218/1803, that is, a couple of years before Abū Nabbūt founded his library. Jaffa was a small town and certainly not famous for scholarship. It can be assumed that not too many inhabitants collected books and their scant appearance in estate inventories reflects this state.
Another hint regarding from where he got his books appears on (so far) twelve books in the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus. All of these twelve manuscripts carry an undated ownership statement by a certain Ḥāfiẓ ʿUthmān (b. Ibrāhīm). Ḥāfiẓ ʿUthmān was also the copyist for one manuscript in the corpus, a commentary on the famous Dalāʾil al-khayrāt by al-Jamal al-ʿUjaylī (d. 1204/1790) with the title al-Minaḥ al-ilāhiyyāt. The dated colophon (1218/1803)40 gives one point in time allowing us to estimate when this book collector was alive. Strikingly, all of the twelve manuscripts with an ownership statement of Ḥāfiẓ ʿUthmān were endowed in 1234/1818–1819, after Abū Nabbūt’s ousting from Jaffa. This makes it probable that Ḥāfiẓ ʿUthmān’s books ended up in Abū Nabbūt’s library and not vice versa. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out anything about Ḥāfiẓ ʿUthmān so far. Having reached the Abū Nabbūt’s manuscripts themselves, we will now interrogate them more thoroughly to see what they can add to our knowledge of the library and its endower.
One element on Abū Nabbūt’s books that helps us to reconstruct some details of the library’s history are the endowment statements. In the following, we will rely on these endowment statements to look at the formation of Abū Nabbūt’s library, the endower’s vision and the library’s afterlife. This chapter argues implicitly that a detailed study of endowment statements can add an essential layer to the history of libraries not mentioned in other sources. I argue more explicitly that the endowment statements and endowment notes on the books of Abū Nabbūt’s library were perceived of and used as a form of ‘public text’. By linking subtle changes in these short texts to leaps in his career, we will see how Abū Nabbūt utilised the books to make public (and perpetuate) his various positions of power, openly display his allegiance to al-Jazzār and insert himself into a political genealogy. Before delving into the argument, I will briefly introduce some of the irks and quirks of the endowment statements.
While on the books of the Jazzār library, we have one endowment statement with only minor variations,41 Abū Nabbūt’s books have a host of different endowment statements which vary in length and the range of information they provide. For one, there are long statements that contain the well-known elements such as the waqf formula (waqafa wa-ḥabbasa […]), specification of the endowed object, name of the endower, the beneficiaries (ahl al-ʿilm al-qāṭinīn bi-iskila Yāfā), the conditions (lā yubāʿu wa-lā yurhanu wa-lā yubaddalu […]) and the exact date of the endowment act. On the other hand, there are shorter endowment statements that only consist of the declaration ‘waqf’, the endower’s name, a date and a seal. I will call these shorter texts endowment ‘notes’ in the following. Overall, we can detect (so far) fifteen different statements, which, in each case, cluster around a certain period, each written in a different hand. The various hands and formulations of the endowment statements and notes show that various people were involved in the maintenance of the library over time. This variety made it initially more complicated to gather the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus, but eventually provides some fascinating insights into the history of the library. Before coming to the specifics of these insights, we will briefly ascertain the function of these endowment statements.
We can read about one way in which the political/military elite used their books in Dana Sajdi’s chapter on the history section of the Jazzār library inventory (Chapter 22). Accordingly, a wayfaring Moroccan scholar met al-Jazzār on the pilgrimage, who showed him a book containing a riddle the scholar was asked to solve. This is an all too rare report about how a ruler, al-Jazzār, brought his books into action. It is a case of blatant (but failed) self-promotion, but revealing regarding the instrumentalisation of books by the political/military elite. Why books? As a local governor you could not mint coins. You had to produce other ‘public’ texts, such as public announcements or inscriptions on buildings, to make yourself, your name and whatever you wanted to convey known. Another form to make your message public was to utilise the endowment statement on your books which, as the preceding anecdote has shown, were not only meant to be seen by the odd library user but, at times, rubbed in a scholar’s face in an event as prominent as the annual pilgrimage. How, then, did Abū Nabbūt utilise his books to spread his name publicly, and what were the messages he tried to convey?
The first notable point regarding Abū Nabbūt’s endowment statements is how he used them to emphatically proclaim his allegiance to his former master, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār. We can find his affiliation to al-Jazzār on fifty books (so far), in formulations such as ‘[…] the manumitted slave of the late (the pardoned) the Mecca Pilgrim, Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār’ (maʿtūq/ʿatīq al-marḥūm (al-maghfūr) al-Ḥajj Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār). This suffix to his own name appears on the very first batch of (to date) fifteen books Abū Nabbūt endowed in various months of 1226/1811–1812, that is, right when he established his library and some seven years after al-Jazzār had passed away. The association to his former master was apparently so meaningful to him that he made sure to have it spread across the town, carved in stone: of the surviving monuments built by Abū Nabbūt, we can find the affiliation to al-Jazzār on the inscription on the Great Mosque, the khān al-Maḥmūdiyya and on two fountains.42 In the inscription on one fountain, he even calls himself the ‘successor of al-Jazzār’ (khalīfat al-Jazzār).
Abū Nabbūt’s proximity to al-Jazzār went beyond bluntly stating it in various public texts. It can also be seen in his emulation of the architectural style of the Aḥmadī Mosque in his Great Mosque in Jaffa.43 As suggested in the Introduction to this volume, the Aḥmadī Mosque in Acre was itself an imitation of the imperial Ottoman style, diverting from the regional Syrian mosque tradition and meant to echo the more recent style of mosques built in the Ottoman capital. Abū Nabbūt’s adoption of this architectural style, in turn, can be seen not only as an emulation of his former master, but equally shows him displaying his claim to power within the Ottoman hierarchy. It is interesting that the endowment statements on his books starting in 1228/1813–1814 lack the affiliation to al-Jazzār and it reappears only in 1234/1818 when Abū Nabbūt was forcibly exiled from Jaffa. What are we to make out of the later reappearance?
Being from the same mamlūk household, Abū Nabbūt saw himself as equal in rank to Sulaymān Pasha. Upon the death of Sulaymān’s deputy, ʿAlī Pasha (d. 1230/1815), Abū Nabbūt was stepping up his efforts to obtain the title of Pasha. He saw himself the most suitable contender, but, much to his disappointment, Sulaymān’s choice fell on another candidate, the son of the deceased ʿAlī Pasha.44 Towards the end of the following year (1231/1816), Abū Nabbūt is said to have changed his approach towards reaching his career ambitions. He tried to pull strings directly in Istanbul, again without success. He now aimed to further enhance the fortification of Jaffa, to build a sea wall to eventually break away from the district of Sidon, in order to have a better basis for negotiations.45 It is arguably against this background that he decided to have his affiliation to al-Jazzār put back on his books, aiming to promote his status as an equal to Sulaymān Pasha and emphasise his claim for his own realm.
We can read yet another feature on Abū Nabbūt’s books as a reference to al-Jazzār. Starting in 1238/1822 (that is, after his ousting from Jaffa), the endowment notes on his books come with a seal impression (see fig. 6.4). The appearance of the seal itself is not as impressive as al-Jazzār’s larger (almost identical) ones, which, as Boris Liebrenz argues in Chapter 10, al-Jazzār’s used as an ‘element of emulation and ambition’ of Ottoman imperial book culture. In al-Jazzār’s case, this emulation is based on the form and size of the seal. It could be argued that Abū Nabbūt’s seal is an emulation of al-Jazzār’s seal based not on its grandiose appearance but on the motto, both read ‘wa-mā tawfīqī illā bi-llāh’. It should be noted, however, that this was a common phrase on seals and also used by other owners.
The affiliation to al-Jazzār is dropped once again in the endowment notes of books that entered the library in 1238/1822–1823. Along the same line as above, this can be explained by his eventual promotion in the Ottoman hierarchy. Abū Nabbūt finally rose in the hierarchy in 1821, becoming the wālī of Salonica, where he would become infamous in the Massacre of Naoussa. He again became the wālī in 1242/1826, this time in Diyarbekir.46 These positions finally put him on an equal footing with not only Sulaymān (who was already dead), but also his former master, al-Jazzār. Accordingly, his name was from now on given as ‘the vizier, the warrior champion, Muḥammad Pasha al-Wazīr al-Ghāzī Muḥammad Pasha Abū Labbūt’. The affiliation to his former master al-Jazzār apparently lost its function. It was now he who served as an affiliation in the names of some of his former mamlūks who started to provide their names with the addition maʿtūq al-wazīr Muḥammad Amīn Pasha.47
Figure 6.4
Abū Nabbūt’s seal which only appears in 1822, after his ousting from Jaffa
MS Gaza, ʿUmarī Mosque 206 [CC BY-NC 4.0]
A second point we can glean from his name on the endowment notes relates to how he was addressed. We can detect a change in the notes starting in 1234/1818. For one, his name in the early statements tends to be much longer than the later ones. The higher he rose in rank, the shorter his name on these statements and notes became. In the earlier statements, for example, he is often addressed with a firework of honorifics, such as ‘glory of the grand emirs, prime of the senior-ranking nobles, authorised carrier of the stately responsibility, commander in chief, governor of the district of Gaza, Ramla, administrator of the Sultanic endowment, acting officer of the harbour of Jaffa, the emir Muḥammad Aghā’ (iftikhār al-umarāʾ al-fakhām wa-zubdat al-kubrā al-kirām wa-muʿtamad al-wizr al-ʿiẓām silaḥshūr khāṣṣa wa-mutasallim liwāʾ Ghazza wa-al-Ramla wa-mutawallī waqf sharīf wa-ḍābiṭ iskila Yāfā ḥālan al-Amīr Muḥammad Aghā). In the later notes, his name is severely abbreviated, and he is mostly addressed simply as vizier and warrior champion (ghāzī).
More crucially, he is no longer addressed as Muḥammas Aghā in these later notes but by his moniker, Abū Nabbūt, ‘father of the cudgel’. It is not always easy to get to the heart of monikers. Al-Jazzār, ‘the butcher’, got his after killing a large number of Bedouins in Egypt and in his case this ‘[…] certainly was meant as a term of respect and did not reflect a perception of general cruelty of character’.48 That behind al-Jazzār’s moniker lurks a complex and nuanced perception by different historians can be read in Chapter 4 of this volume by Feras Krimsti. Abū Nabbūt, similarly, earned his moniker for his rough style of leadership. There are, for example, entries in the Jaffa court records of two men who stole from a shop run by a Christian and who were beaten to death by Abū Nabbūt during the interrogation. Abū Nabbūt continued to be remembered as a stern ruler in stories circulating among the peasants in the vicinity of Jaffa, though in contexts in which he eventually dispersed justice. In one rather amusing story, Abū Nabbūt is said to have beaten the door of a house that got robbed until the door revealed the thief.49 He certainly got the image of a ruler who did not shun violent measures and he should live up to his moniker in his tenure in Salonica.
To bring the comparison to a close, al-Jazzār evidently used his moniker himself, probably with some pride, as can be seen, among others, in his usage of it in his seal(s). Not so Abū Nabbūt. We cannot find him addressed by his moniker in his inscriptions, his seal, or the books he endowed during his tenure in Jaffa. Regarding the court records of Jaffa, he is never referred to as Abū Nabbūt either, but always as Muḥammad Aghā, with the usual shower of honorifics. According to Mahmoud Yazbak, his moniker appears in the court records only in 1241/1826.50 It is only after he was exiled that we find this moniker in one of its derivatives, Abū Labbūt or Abū Labbūṭ (this is how he became known in Salonica). There is no clear answer as to why this change took place. Perhaps whoever was responsible for the endowment notes felt that Abū Nabbūt was at a safe distance and, thus, no repercussions could be expected.
The third main insight we can gain from the endowment statements and notes relates to the building of the library’s stock, namely, that its stocking was a continuous effort. Based on the dates provided in the endowment statements and notes, a detailed timeline can be reconstructed.51 The different dates show that Abū Nabbūt endowed books over a period of one-and-a-half decades, gradually enlarging his library. A first batch of books entered the library in 1226/1811, while a last batch of the corpus was added in 1238/1822–1823. There are two years, 1231/1816 and 1234/1818, in which the library received large numbers of books, but smaller supplies entered the library in between. There were several occasions of additions to the library’s stock in some years. In 1232/1817, for example, books were added in three months (Jumādā I, Jumādā II and Shaʿbān).52 The absence of one particular date with a massive number of books entering the library suggests that there was no looting or acquisition of a single large library involved but that the books were collected from different sources on various occasions. This can also be seen in the different hands of the endowment statements and notes, suggesting, furthermore, several different people involved in running the library over the years of its increasing stock.
It is striking, and probably telling, that Abū Nabbūt continued endowing books as late as 1238/1822–1823. As we have seen above, at this date he was no longer deputy governor of Jaffa nor residing in the town. Four years after his ousting, he was apparently still hoping to return to Jaffa or, at least, to exert influence. This is also supported by his continued acquisitions of property in the city. For this matter, Abū ʿAbduh al-Bannā al-Nāblusī, who previously worked for him as an architect/builder (miʿmār), was acting as his legal trustee who took care of his foundation complex in Jaffa.53
A fourth point the endowment statements on these manuscripts reveal is that Abū Nabbūt was not the only person responsible for stocking the library. The endowment statements of two manuscripts54 in the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus—and here we see that this label has its limits—reveal that a mamlūk, ʿUthmān Aghā (d. 1229/1814), brother-in-law and the emir of the treasury (khazīna al-ʿāmira) of Abū Nabbūt, endowed the books in 1229/181455 from the money of the deceased Aḥmad Aghā al-Alfī, another member of Abū Nabbūt’s household.56 The (so far) comparatively low number of books endowed by others than Abū Nabbūt himself suggests that these two books are outliers and that Abū Nabbūt himself was indeed the main driving force providing the financial means to stock his library.
3 The Afterlife of Abū Nabbūt’s Books—Regional Dispersal
The library landscape of Palestine and the wider region went through changes in the late nineteenth century. This period particularly saw the opening of an increasing number of what we today call family and public libraries. These developments were accompanied with massive reshuffling of books.57 Abū Nabbūt’s library in the Great Mosque of Jaffa was to some extent a phased-out model, being one of the last libraries founded by a non-local ruler, a type of library with an uncertain future in times of increasing efforts to centralise what became treated as ‘cultural heritage’. Abū Nabbūt was certainly not the last local governor of Jaffa to endow books. But instead of founding a new library or adding to the existing library in the Great Mosque, his successors Muṣṭafā al-Saʿīd Aghā (d. ca. 1260/1844) endowed books to the library of Ḥusayn Efendī al-Dajānī (d. 1274/1857–1858), mufti of Jaffa.58 Abū Nabbūt’s library was, thus, most probably never as well-stocked as it was back in 1238/1822–1823, the last date he endowed books to the existing stock.
What happened to his books right after this date is mostly obscure. We, therefore, have to zoom out a bit and see the library in the context of its associated madrasa. The court records of Jaffa reveal some names of scholars with teaching positions in the madrasa of the Great Mosque, at least until 1909.59 For some, their affiliation to the school was apparently meaningful. Abū Rabbāḥ ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Dajānī (d. 1290/1873–1874), a Sufi scholar of some fame and cousin of the mufti Ḥusayn al-Dajānī mentioned above, reveals on one of his manuscripts that he had a teaching position in the madrasa of the Great Mosque (khādim al-ʿilm fī madrasa jāmiʿ Yāfā) in 1270/1853–1854.60 The latter was, thus, functioning at least until the early twentieth century. The library, as part of the madrasa, was also still functioning in one way or another. According to the official Ottoman Yearbook (sālnāmeh) from 1318/1900, however, the number of its books had shrunk to 263 and, thus, half as many as in its heyday.61
Two decades later, the 1920s are a particularly significant period for the history of libraries in Palestine in general. Several new libraries were founded in this period and older collections were being reshuffled. The Supreme Muslim Council, after finishing their work on the ḥaram al-sharīf in Jerusalem, including opening the al-Aqṣā Mosque Library and the Islamic Museum, now concentrated on other towns and asked local dignitaries to help establish more libraries across the country.62 The Supreme Muslim Council (al-Majlis al-sharʿī al-islāmī al-ʿalā) founded the Islamic Library in Jaffa (al-Maktabat al-Islāmiyya—Yāfā) in 1923 as part of a large-scale effort to establish educational facilities and libraries across Palestinian cities, such as Gaza, Hebron and Acre. A substantial part of Abū Nabbūt’s books ended up in the Islamic Library in Jaffa, which was built next to the Great Mosque and equipped with a proper reading room including working desks, proper lighting and lockable bookshelves.63 How many of the 263 books mentioned in the Yearbook in 1900 made it to the newly established Islamic Library is not known. The same goes for their fate over the next 60 years, a period with substantial disruptions in the region.
It is only in the 1980s that we can recover their scent. Nablus-born historian Maḥmūd ʿAṭāʾ Allāh published a catalogue in 1984 with the somewhat misleading title Manuscript Catalogue of The Islamic Library in Jaffa. The catalogue contains 288 shelf marks (339 titles) of books ʿAṭāʾ Allāh found in the al-Nuzha Mosque in Jaffa, books that were formerly part of the Islamic Library in Jaffa. Unfortunately, he had nothing to say about how the books came to the al-Nuzha Mosque, that once the Islamic Library in Jaffa had more manuscripts than listed in the catalogue, and that a large portion of the Islamic Library in Jaffa manuscripts were once part of Abū Nabbūt’s library.64 Fortunately, though, ʿAṭāʾ Allāh produced microfilms which, according to his short introduction, he deposited in the Islamic Club in Jaffa (al-Nādī al-Islāmī fī Yāfā) and copies of which are at the al-Najah University Library in Nablus and the Centre for Archives and Manuscripts of the University of Jordan in Amman.65 The history of the Islamic Library in Jaffa, thus, remains largely obscure and awaits further research. According to Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī (d. 1953), it existed simultaneously with Abū Nabbūt’s library.66
When we set sail and turn further south, the library of the ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza complicates the story further. Here, we find the (so far) second biggest batch of the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus—thirteen manuscripts. The ʿUmarī Mosque library has a long history going back to the rule of the Mamluk sultan Baybars (r. 1260–1277). How far this genealogy is fictional remains to be studied in detail. The more recent history of the library after World War I was largely influenced by ʿUthmān al-Ṭabbāʾ (1882–1950), who held various positions in the mosque, among others serving as the director of its library. When he became the librarian, he called upon fellow scholars and book collectors to donate books to the recently reopened library.67 In this effort, manuscripts formerly situated in Jaffa came to Gaza, for example, some books previously owned by the mufti of Jaffa, ʿAlī b. al-Mawāhib al-Dajānī.68 The al-ʿUmari Mosque was severely damaged as a result of an Israeli attack in December 2023. It is unclear what has happened to its library.
Al-Ṭabbāʾ was an active librarian who, when newly donated books entered the library, wrote what we can call acquisition notes on some of their title pages. The lower note on fig. 6.5 shows such a note on a copy of the second volume of al-Suyūṭī’s Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr. From the thirteen manuscripts of the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus that are today in Gaza, eight carry such an acquisition note, dated between 4 Muḥarram 1354/8 April 1935 and 25 Rabīʿ I 1354/18 June 1935. Who was responsible for their translocation to Gaza, if they were taken from the Great Mosque of Jaffa or the Islamic Library in Jaffa is currently unknown. The wording of al-Ṭabbā’s notes, ‘came to the library of the Great ʿUmarī mosque’ ([…] qad warada li-maktabat al-jāmiʿ al-kabīr al-ʿumarī […]) are not revealing in this regard. Al-Ṭabbāʾ only mentions that he was ‘repeatedly successful in taking books from a library in Jaffa’ (wa-tawaffaqnā li-akhdh al-mukarrar min maktabat Yāfā).69
Figure 6.5
ʿUthmān al-Ṭabbāʾ wrote a note below the endowment note of Abū Nabbūt regarding the arrival of this manuscript to Gaza in 1935
MS Gaza, ʿUmarī Mosque 94 (CC BY-NC 4.0)
What we can say, apart from all open questions, is that not all the books of Abū Nabbūt’s library were transferred to the Islamic Library in Jaffa, even though this library was only some metres away from their original place in the Great Mosque. The books that ended up in Gaza (and a single book in Jerusalem) were most probably taken out of the Mosque library before the Islamic Library in Jaffa was founded in 1923—they miss the seal imprint of the 1923 library. Furthermore, their arrival in Gaza on two different dates may suggest that they came from two different sources. Moreover, we have concentrated in the preceding paragraphs solely on two institutions that played a fundamental role in the afterlife of Abū Nabbūt’s books. Based on a detailed study of ownership statements on the books, private individuals may be brought to light who took possession of books in the decades between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth century.
4 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have left al-Jazzār’s Acre and turned to Jaffa to explore what one of his former mamlūks did in yet another harbour town on the Mediterranean coast. Inspired by the accomplishments of his former master, Abū Nabbūt embarked on quite a similar project in his seat of power, securing the town against potential threats, developing an infrastructure for trade, and building a mosque with a madrasa and a library. A library was apparently an essential element in Abū Nabbūt’s vision of what a ruler such as himself needed. To materialise all this, he followed al-Jazzār, and indeed many rulers before him, and established an endowment complex to enable the continuous funding of his project. This chapter has argued that Abū Nabbūt used the endowment statements on his books strategically to make himself and his ambitions known to the users of the library. He used his books as a public text to proclaim his affiliation to al-Jazzār, display his status as an equal to his superior Sulaymān Pasha, and ultimately in order to influence decision makers to promote him and to give him his own realm.
The library built by Abū Nabbūt was one of the last of its kind. Few, if any, local governors of non-local descent after him built a comparable institution in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman realm. In contrast to some of the major Palestinian family libraries, mostly in Jerusalem, Abū Nabbūt’s books did not stay together, but the library witnessed an increasing drop in its stock. And although Jaffa witnessed an uneasy history in the period after Abū Nabbūt with the Egyptian occupation (1831–1840), the British Mandate (1919–1948) and the founding of Israel in 1948, a major portion of the books survived in close proximity to or in the region of the Great Mosque, with the Islamic Library in Jaffa and the ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza as the two main sites so far.
Zooming out, what can Abū Nabbūt’s library contribute to the history of books and libraries of the Ottoman Arab provinces in the early nineteenth century? The continuous additions to the library in the Great Mosque of Jaffa suggest that a substantial number of handwritten books were available for and within reach of a local governor of a minor town such as Jaffa. Furthermore, the spatial extent of the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus as it stands now is remarkably local, with not a single manuscript found in the major European and American manuscript collections to date. In this, the afterlife of Abū Nabbūt’s library resembled the Jazzār library, as will be discussed by Konrad Hirschler in the following chapter.
The research for this chapter was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2176 ‘Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures’, project no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.
See the various fahāris published by Maḥmūd ʿAṭāʾ Allāh for libraries in Nablus, Hebron, Akka and Jaffa.
Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 465–467; Pohl, “Führer Durch Die Bibliothek Palästinas”; For a heavily politicised account, see Schidorsky, “Libraries in Late Ottoman Palestine”.
Conrad and Salameh, “Palestine”.
See most recently Barakāt, al-Maktabat al-Budayriyya; Barakāt, Maktabat Dār Isʿāf al-Nashāshībī.
For composite-document manuscripts and transmediation, see Reier, “Books as Archives”.
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 162, (accessed via Nablus,
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 95–101; For the manuscript, see ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Yāfā, 233.
Gerber, Ottoman Rule, 184.
Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 4; Qaṭnānī, “al-Awqāf fī qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 281–282; for an overview of the court records in Jaffa, see Layish, “The Sijill of Jaffa and Nazareth Sharīʿa Courts”; for an overview of court records from Palestine and their importance for the writing of history, see Doumani, “Palestinian Islamic Court Records.”
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, II, 120–122; al-Waḥsh, “Dirāsat.”
About Ottoman mamlūk households, see Hathaway, The Politics of Houselholds, 17–31; about Abū Nabbūt’s early career, see Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 65–66; about al-Jazzār’s household, see Philipp, “The Last Mamluk Household”, 326–329; Philipp, Acre, 142–147.
Philipp, “The Last Mamluk Household”, 319; Philipp, Acre, 50–52.
Philipp, “The Last Mamluk Household”, 326–331; Philipp, Acre, 143–147.
Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine, 100–102; More critically, Philipp, Acre, 123–126.
About the relationship between Sulaymān Pasha and Abū Nabbūt, see Saʿīd, Yāfā, 57–59.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 66–70.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 94–126; Qaṭnānī, “al-Awqāf fī qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 290–299; Yazbak, “al-Waqf al-islāmī fī Yāfā”, 311 ff.
Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 133–141.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 38–44; Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 126–130.
Kana’an, “Two Ottoman Sabils”.
al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, IV, 469, 473.
For his career after he left Jaffa, see Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 89–90; Saʿīd, Yāfā, 84–88; Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 152–154.
Qaṭnānī, “al-Awqāf fī qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 286.
Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 106–107; Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae 6—J (1), VI, 78–79.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 103–109; Kana’an, “Waqf, Architecture, and Political Self-fashioning”.
al-Waḥsh, “Dirāsat”.
ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Yāfā, 3–4.
ʿAfāna et al., Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Filasṭīn al-Musawwara, al-Fiqh wa-uṣūl.
Abū Hāshim, Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Maktaba al-Jāmiʿ al-ʿUmarī al-Kabīr, 13. The lower number might be the result of the dasht section which is digitised and uploaded but not catalogued by Abū Hāshim.
I am grateful to Samuel Thrope for this information.
For teachers at the school in the late nineteenth century, see al-Ṭarāwana, “Qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 492–493.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, II, 61, 65.
For the title “amīn kutubkhāne”, see Chapter 1.
For black and white reproductions of the microfilmed entry, see Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, II, 120–122.; also see al-Waḥsh, “Dirāsat”, missing one page.
See, for example, Mannāʿ, Taʾrīkh Filasṭīn, 123.
Wynter-Stoner, “Books, Corruption, and an Emir’s Downfall”; Wynter-Stoner, “The Maḥmūdīyah”, 42–44.
Barakāt, Taʾrīkh al-maktabat; Ghosheh, Encyclopaedia Palestinnica: Manuscripts.
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 1656 (accessed via Nablus,
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 1286, fol. 187a, (accessed via Nablus,
The endowment statements on the Maḥmūdiyya Library books are also quite consistent, see Wynter-Stoner, “Books, Corruption, and an Emir’s Downfall”.
Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae 6—J (1), Great Mosque 6, 79, khān 6, 81, fountain (al-sabīl al-Maḥmūdī) 6, 76, fountain (sabīl al-shifāʾ) 6, 102.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 155; Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 109.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 79–80.
His wish for independence was noticed by the French painter and traveller De Forbin, who had met him personally, see Travels, 155.
Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 90.
Ibid., 89–90.
Philipp, Acre, 50.
Concerning the two thieves, see Kana’an, “Jaffa and the Waqf”, I, 53–54; regarding the door, see Macalister, “Some Miscellaneous Tales”; also see Meryon, Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, I, 197.
Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 93–94.
There are several undated endowment statements and notes in the Abū Nabbūt manuscript corpus which can, however, be easily matched to a date thanks to the used formulation and the handwriting.
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 509 (accessed via Nablus,
Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 153.
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 426 (accessed via Nablus,
The date of the endowment statement on Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 428 is wrong, and most certainly missing the decade (ʿishrīn). The library did not even exist yet on the date given (1209/1794).
On ʿUthmān Agha, see Yazbak, Madīnat al-Burtuqāl, 98, 100–101, 209. On Aḥmad Agha al-Alfī, see ibid., 100.
For the fate of Damascene libraries in this period, see Hirschler, A Monument, 64–66.
Jaffa, al-Maktaba al-Islāmiyya, MS 424 (accessed via Nablus,
al-Ṭarāwana, “Qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 492; See also al-ʿAsalī, Kāmil, “al-Taʿlīm fī Filasṭīn”, 22; al-Dabbāgh, Bilādunā Filasṭīn, IV, 165.
Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, Ms. AP Ar. 254, fol. 1a. On al-Dajānī, see Sālim, Aʿlām min madīnat Yāfā, 30–31; Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar, I, 71–72.
al-Ṭarāwana, “Qaḍāʾ Yāfā”, 493.
Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council, 144; Roberts, Islam under the Palestine Mandate, 128–129.
For pictures, see “Bayān al-majlis al-sharʿī al-islāmī al-aʿlā fī Filasṭīn sanat 1341/2 (1923/4)”, between 32 and 33.
For a very short description of the opening, see ʿAṭāʾ Allāh, Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Yāfā, 3–4.
Conrad and Salameh, “Palestine”, 572–573.
Kurd ʿAlī, Khiṭaṭ, VI, 197.
al-Ṭabbāʿ, Itḥāf al-aʿizza, II, 116–126; also see Mubayyaḍ and Kullāb, Maktabat al-Jāmiʿ al-ʿUmarī al-Kabīr, 48–50.
Abū Hāshim, Fihris Makhṭūṭāt Maktaba al-Jāmiʿ al-ʿUmarī al-Kabīr, 13–14; Mannāʿ, Aʿlām Filasṭīn, 172; Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar, I, 69–70; Mubayyaḍ and Kullāb, Maktabat al-Jāmiʿ al-ʿUmarī al-Kabīr, 73–77.
al-Ṭabbāʿ, Itḥāf al-aʿizza, II, 121.
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