UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Before Banks: Credit, Society, and Law in Sixteenth-Century Palestine and Syria Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qw371fm Author Al-Sabbagh, Munther Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Before Banks: Credit, Society, and Law in Sixteenth-Century Palestine and Syria A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History By Munther H. Alsabagh Committee in charge: Professor Stephen R. Humphreys, Co-Chair Professor Adam A. Sabra, Co-Chair Professor Ahmad A. Ahmad Professor Baki Tezcan Professor Edward D. English March 2018 The dissertation of Munther H. Alsabagh is approved. _______________________________________ Edward D. English _______________________________________ Baki Tezcan _______________________________________ Ahmad A. Ahmad _______________________________________ Adam A. Sabra, Committee Co-Chair _______________________________________ R. Stephen Humphreys, Committee Co-Chair March 2018 Before Banks: Credit, Society, and Law in Sixteenth-Century Palestine and Syria Copyright © 2018 by Munther H. Alsabagh iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The archival and manuscript research behind this dissertation was facilitated by research grants from UCSB’s Department of History and Center for Middle East Studies, the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies, a Dean’s Advancement fellowship from UCSB’s Graduate Division, and a UC Economic History research grant. I am grateful to Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly and the Department of History for funding a graduate award at the outset of my research, as well as to the Department of History for awarding me an Eloise Hay Fellowship. I have incurred several personal debts on the road to writing this dissertation. I take the opportunity to thank Darcy Ritzau, for her advice, tireless support and dedication in seeing me through the program. My sincere thanks also go to Djodi Deutsch at the American Research Center in Egypt and the various scholars I had the privilege of meeting and discussing my research with while in Cairo during the Summer and early Fall of 2014. I am indebted to Professors Nelly Hanna and Magdi Gerguis for advising me on the sources and materials concerning Mamluk-era merchants. My sincere thanks also go to Prof. Nicolas Michel at IFAO in Cairo for giving me access to the institute’s Mamluk waqfīya database. I am also grateful to Prof. Emad Abu Ghazi for his support of my early project. I reserve special thanks for Prof. Kenan Yildiz, Director of ISAM’s archive in Istanbul, for his welcoming reception and helpful advice. Without his generous assistance, and that of his team, I would not have been able to access Syrian and Palestinian sijill material that is the basis for much of this dissertation. Even though papyrology is outside of my immediate area of research, Prof. Andreas Kaplony always found a way to link his students’ research to his love of Arabic papyrology iv in his webclasses. I am thankful to him for the opportunities he provided to discuss and share my research in such settings in 2013 and 2017, and the invaluable gift I received from not giving up on deciphering a text after straining my mind and eyes on what seemed unreadable. Likewise, I am indebted to Professors Frederic Bauden and Elise Franssen for the training they provided on Arabic paleography and codicology at the school of Mamluk Studies in June 2015 in Leige, Belgium. Beyond identifying genres and dating texts, this training was invaluable for understanding how paratextual ownership and readership notes informed how knowledge was produced and consumed, aspects that have better enabled me to evaluate manuscripts used in my own dissertation. The comments I received from Professors Warren Shultz and Carl Petry at the Mamluk Studies conference held at the University of Chicago in 2016 helped me to reconceptualize my chapter on the intersection of gender, class and credit. At UCSB, Prof. Edward English’s guidance on the intellectual history of usury in medieval Europe helped me to better situate my comparative understanding of this topic in the Islamicate context. I am indebted to Prof. Ahmad Ahmad for his close readings of fiqh texts connected to my first two chapters, his indefatigable and sustained interest, and guidance on my evaluation of legal custom in Islamic law the premodern era. Prof. Tezcan’s ideas on the monetary unification of the Ottoman economy at the turn of the seventeenth century, and a reconsideration of how the relationship between Ottoman ‘ulamā’ elites and the state should be conceived, have strongly influenced my own evaluation of why legal-economic history of Bilād al-Shām was distinct in this same period, and I am thankful for his support and keen interest in my project, even at a late stage of its development. Although not a member of my final dissertation committee, Prof. Dwight Reynolds’ professional mentorship and advice on the early life of v my project was invaluable. His influence left its mark on my future direction, something that I am grateful for. Ultimately, my greatest professional thanks go to my joint advisors, Professors Adam Sabra and Stephen Humphreys who have read every word in this dissertation and provided invaluable suggestions on improvements in form and substance, and the shaping of core aspects of my thesis. I am indebted to them for their critiques, commitment and professional encouragement. My friendships at UCSB have also been a source of solidarity and intellectual engagement and I owe personal and professional debts to: Andrew Magnusson, Joe Figliulo- Rosswurm, Ibrahim Mansour, Kalina Yamboliev, Brian Griffith, Cheryl Frei and Mr. Tyrrell. I owe a special gratitude to Eric Massie for his unwavering friendship and critical review of sections of this work. Thank you all for being there. I thank my parents, Sameera al-Shamri and Husain al-Sabagh, my father especially, for promoting a curiosity for history. I am happy they seeded in their child a critical worldview that decades on would support an unconventional decision to leave a profitable career to engage in a history PhD. I reserve my greatest thanks for Camila Barreto whose unflinching support and dedication enabled me to do this project, and to my children, Salman, Sofia and Omar, for patiently and happily traversing this journey with me. vi VITA OF MUNTHER H. ALSABAGH March 2018 EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts in Management, Clark University, Worcester, MA, May 1998 Master of Arts in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, June 2011 Doctor of Philosophy in History, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 2018 (expected) PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2013-Present Teaching Associate, Department of Religious Studies, UCSB 2010-2016 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, UCSB 2007-2010 Head of Investments, First Bahrain Real Estate Co., Bahrain 2004-2007 Manager, Investment Banking, Ithmaar Bank, Bahrain 2000-2003 Assistant Manager, Investment Banking, TAIB Bank, Bahrain 1998-1999 Project Lead, Lewtan Technologies, Waltham, Massachusetts AWARDS 2017 Dissertation Writing Grant, UCSB 2016 History Associates Award, UCSB Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Department of History, UCSB 2015 All-UC Economic History Group Research Grant, UC Berkeley Stephen and Eloise Hay Fellowship 2014 Research Associate, American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Conference travel grant, Academic Senate, UCSB Center for Middle East Studies summer research grant, UCSB Dean’s Advancement Fellowship, Graduate Division, UCSB 2013 Center for Middle East Studies research travel grant, UCSB 2012 Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly Graduate Award King A. Aziz ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies research fellowship FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Medieval Middle East history Studies in medieval European economic history (external field) with Prof. Edward English Studies in Islamic law (external field) with Prof. Ahmad A. Ahmad vii ABSTRACT Before Banks: Credit, Society, and Law in Sixteenth-Century Palestine and Syria by Munther H. Alsabbagh This dissertation is a social-legal study of credit in the Middle East before the advent of European-style banking institutions in the 1850s. Although scholars have long observed the importance of credit in daily life since ancient times, little attention has been given to the transformation of credit institutions and practices between the late medieval and early modern eras. This study evaluates how credit structures developed in Syria and Palestine during the long sixteenth century through the lens of Islamic law. While the legalization of market interest and the charitable lending institution known as the cash-waqf are rightly attributed as major interventions of Ottoman Law, I demonstrate how both were underpinned by the Ottoman state-approved legal stratagem of the mu‘āmala, a credit structure that was widely used in Mamluk Syria and Palestine (1250-1516). In the first two chapters, I argue that rather than being a radical move, the Ottoman contribution was in refining and regularizing the use of the mu‘āmala, as reflected in Ottoman legal literature, jurist manuals, and the state’s law courts. The sixteenth century Ottoman legal reforms on credit, I contend, viii present a continuity of the credit norms of the fifteenth century and represent a clear evolution from Mamluk antecedents. Chapters three through six examine historical changes in specific credit structures across the late Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Chapter three attends to the lending activities of charitable endowments, waqfs. While the new Ottoman cash-waqf was an institution without a Mamluk parallel, I argue that its use was still predicated on the mu‘āmala form, and similarly allowed for aspects of Mamluk-era legal pluralism to survive into Ottoman Syria and Palestine, such as the widespread practice of registering the loan collateral of debts under Shāfi‘ī law. Also, in contrast to the scholarly consensus, I illustrate how cash-waqfs in the Levant were integral providers of market credit by the third quarter of the sixteenth century.