iddt3
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This is beautiful @Jonathan Edelstein, another area of history that I know almost nothing about.
What if Jerusalem had assented to the 1538 Sanhedrin.
- Thread starter jacob ningen
- Start date
FOUR HOLY CITIES III: KFAR GALITSYA, SUMMER 1765
FOUR HOLY CITIES
III: KFAR GALITSYA, SUMMER 1765
III: KFAR GALITSYA, SUMMER 1765
Anshel traveled the last ten miles to Umm al-Fahm in the back of a farmer’s donkey-cart, but what he found there wasn’t a village. Umm al-Fahm had been the first place where Zahir al-Umar had ruled, its men had fought for him in his early battles, and its current governor, Muhammad al-Atawna, was as loyal to the Banu Zaydan as anyone not born to the tribe could be, and for all these things, it had been rewarded well.
Fifty years before, Umm al-Fahm had held eleven hundred people; now it was a town of six thousand with a strong earthen wall. Almalik Zahir – for so they called him here – had encouraged pottery, weaving, and silversmithing, and he had himself commissioned a steel foundry and gunsmith works. And to the town’s famous plantings he had added the Hadiqat al-Jana, seven layers of platforms with tier upon tier of gardens and cascading pools, something out of Khayyam or Rumi.
Had Anshel ever read a description of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, he would have known that Zahir fancied his first capital as a wonder of the world. He hadn’t, so it was the Song of Solomon he thought of, not without a moment’s embarrassment about what that garden signified. Still, it was a pleasant enough place to spend the day, a place where he could defer contemplating the other thing about Umm al-Fahm’s transformation: that where so much of Zahir’s money had flowed, the few piasters he had left from Tzfat wouldn’t last him very long.
“Work?” said the innkeeper at the Olive Tree, that evening when he’d returned from the garden. “Try the gunsmiths’ workshop. Many of the Jews work there – surely they’d find something for you.” And when Anshel visited the workshop the next morning, he found it was true – one in three of the workers were Jews from Yemen and Morocco. Gunsmithing and blacksmithing were Jewish occupations in both their homelands, and some had come even this far, drawn by the good wages Zahir offered.
The Muslim workers got on easily with them, Anshel noticed; they were the most baladi of the Jews, Arabic-speaking and traditional in their ways, and they fit well with Arabs who were a generation away from being villagers. They told jokes and bantered in a way their fellow workers understood, and the one who fancied himself a poet composed his verses in the maqama style as Zechariah Dhahiri had done, making it easy for the two Muslims who fancied themselves poets to try to top him.
They weren’t nearly as easy with Anshel, who “baladi” would never describe. But one of them, a foreman, did speak for him; he lacked their skills and the wages offered him weren’t nearly as high, but the overseer told him he could sweep and fetch and carry if he didn’t mind doing so for three piasters a week.
And so he stayed and worked, replenishing his savings, going now to the Yemenite synagogue and now to the Moroccan one, visiting the gardens in the hours before the Sabbath. But he also remembered that, when he’d left Acre months ago, he’d been given a task to do in this place.
“I have a letter for Yitzhak ben Menachem from his grandson,” he told the innkeeper one night. “Can you tell me where to find him?”
“The sheikh?” Yitzhak was a man of minor importance, the mutassalim of two villages lower in the valley, but he’d once been as a brother to Zahir al-Umar, so the townsman spoke his name with respect. “He comes to market sometimes – if you put out word you’re looking for him, the shopkeepers will let you know when he’s here.”
Anshel did send word, but it proved unnecessary; a few mornings later, Yitzhak came to the gunsmiths’ shop, accompanied by three retainers. He was dressed plainly in a farmer’s clothes, but had a striking appearance nonetheless; his left arm was missing and he had a craggy, ugly face, lines of age overlaid on scars of smallpox and battle. But he was still hale and fit, as if, having so narrowly escaped death by the sword, he was determined not to die at all.
The overseer greeted Yitzhak like an old friend, and they sat on a rug in a corner while one of the apprentices brought bitter coffee – negotiating a purchase, surely. They took their time over the bargain, a custom stronger than any enforced by the Sanhedrin, and when they had finished and Yitzhak turned to leave, Anshel caught his attention.
“A letter from Amnon?” said Yitzhak, taking the wax-sealed envelope from Anshel’s hand. “Is he well?”
“He was when I saw him last.”
“Good, good. He has ideas, that one.” Anshel smiled, remembering when Amnon had described his grandfather exactly the same way.
But by then Yitzhak had noticed something else. “You’re from Poland, aren’t you?” he asked in Yiddish, measuring Amnon’s clothes, accent, mannerisms. “A Galitsianer like me?” And at Anshel’s nod, “then come stay with me a while. A Galitsianer and a friend of my grandson is welcome at my table. Tomorrow at dawn, at the valley gate – I have a spare horse.”
Anshel had never ridden a horse, and he spent much of the day wondering if he would fall or be thrown. But the docile mare waiting by the gate with Yitzhak and his men did neither of those things, and though Anshel was well content to let it follow the others’ lead while he concentrated on keeping his seat, he soon lost his fear and drank in the view down the valley.
They reached Yitzhak’s villages two hours after dawn. Kfar Polin and Kfar Galitsya, the latter of which was the first-founded and the site of Yitzhak’s farmhouse, held a thousand people on eight thousand dunams, divided into dozens of small farms; the countryside was spotted with wooden houses, barns and granaries, fields and pastures and orchards. The sights and smells weren’t unfamiliar ones – there were farms in plenty around Chelm, albeit less prosperous – but coming home to a farm, rather than going to one to pick up some garments to sew up or to collect a fee, was something he had never imagined.
So was being asked to take part in the work. Yitzhak seemed to take for granted that he would join in pitching hay and mucking out the barns, and the farmhands – Polish Jews in the second or third generation, most of them, with a few Muslims hired from the next village – thought the same. Anshel, for his part, was grateful that he’d spent the past weeks doing hard work as a laborer in Tzfat, or else he could never have kept up with them.
The Jews of Kfar Galitsya, like those Anshel had known in Acre, were part familiar and part foreign. They were Arabs in their dress and they spoke far more Hebrew and Arabic than Yiddish, but they prayed in the Ashkenazi manner, their art and songs were Polish, and the cabbage rolls and ring-shaped white bread brought out for the midday meal might have come from home. And in the late afternoon, when they went to bathe before evening prayers, the Hebrew in which they gossiped was pronounced as it might have been in the shtetl.
Supper that evening was at Yitzhak’s table; on a fine night like this, it was a table under the stars, with several of the nearer smallholders joining the farmhands for the meal. From his place of honor, Yitzhak dispensed advice and judged disputes, promised one of the Muslim hands money for his daughter’s dowry and assigned men to help repair storm damage on one of the Jewish farms. After, he played the dulcimer with his remaining hand and told stories. The tunes came from Poland; he’d forgotten most of the words, but the younger people had made up new ones, part Arabic and part Hebrew. But sometimes he played a song of his own, and those were always Yiddish, whether their subject was the beloved land of his childhood or the beloved land where he lived now.
He was like a sheikh, Anshel realized; a Bedouin or Druze clan-chief, or – and he drew in his breath at the comparison – a Cossack hetman. Anshel knew how dangerous such men could be, camaraderie turning in an instant to rage and violence, and he knew that Yitzhak’s life had been a bloody one. But there seemed to be no blood left in him anymore, only poetry and memory.
Noticing Anshel again, he shared a story that everyone else at the table surely knew. “I lost the arm in front of Sidon, covering our retreat,” he said. “We lost that battle, but it could have been much worse – the wali had orders from the Sultan to behead Zahir if he caught him.”
“And that was when you came home?”
“No, I fought with him five more years! I didn’t lose my sword arm, did I? But” - he lifted the hair above his left ear to reveal another long scar – “the second time at Sidon – after Zahir made his peace with the Sultan and we beat the wali’s army – I took this wound, and he said, ‘my brother, it is time for you to live on your land.’”
He looked across to the fire and was reminded of another story, this one starting in one of David Zemach’s caravans and then jumping to the days when Zemach was governor of the Galilee and back to the caravan again. “Zahir loved him,” said Yitzhak. “When we came to Tzfat to break the wali’s siege and Zahir learned he’d died fighting on the walls, he wept.” From where Anshel sat, he could see the easy tears of old age standing in Yitzhak’s own eyes.
“And the Zemach who rules there now?” asked Anshel moments later when the spell had broken.
“He’s a capable man. Zahir trusts him. But he isn’t his grandfather.”
And no one ever will be, Anshel finished silently. The people of one’s youth are always wiser and more valiant than those of today. And then, one day, they will be old men too.
He stayed that night, and another and another; the farm work was harder than he’d ever known and he finished every day exhausted, but something compelled him to stay. One day, when Yitzhak was out working with the farmhands, he made bold to ask what had compelled him to settle here.
“Here, the Land gives us everything,” Yitzhak answered – the capital L was evident in his voice. “Here, we depend on no one.” Anshel waited for him to add we live as our ancestors did, but he didn’t, and after a time, Anshel realized that he didn’t think so; maybe he was baladi after a fashion, but he was aware he was building something new. He has ideas, Amnon had said, back in Acre.
And so Anshel stayed, day after day, until late in the month of Elul, Yitzhak died. His sons found him in the morning, and by the end of the day, the two villages and the others at this end of the Wadi Ara had gathered to bury him. At nightfall he was laid to rest, and the mourning prayers of Muslims joined with those of Jews.
So he was mortal after all, Anshel thought. Seventy-six and himself to the end, though – he was luckier than most.
In the morning, Yitzhak’s eldest son – and now the sheikh of the Yitzhaki tribe – found him. “Here are your wages,” he said, “and here are ten piasters more. There are no caravans directly to Jerusalem from Umm al-Fahm, but there are caravans to Nablus all the time, and once you’re there, you can find someone going to Jerusalem with no problem.”
“I should go, then?”
“This isn’t Jerusalem." Then, after a moment, "not for you.”
Anshel nodded. He had no horse this time, but Umm al-Fahm was close, and if he walked steadily, he would be there by noon.
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Notes to part 3:
1. The two Polish villages are south of Kafr Qara in the lower part of the Wadi Ara, near where it merges into the coastal plain.
2. The villages’ way of life has some quasi-Zionist elements but it isn’t Zionism. The Hebraization, self-sufficiency ethos, and rooted connection to the land are there, but they have no ambition for political autonomy or control of territory, and though they favor self-defense, they’re happy to practice it by serving in the regional overlord’s militia. In a way, they’re the working-class, traditionalist analogues to the Spinozist-Hasidic avant-garde in Acre.
3. Yes, bagels did exist in the 18th century, and were already associated with Ashkenazi Jews.
4. The war Yitzhak is reminiscing about is a conflict between Zahir al-Umar and the wali of Damascus that took place from 1745 to 1752. In 1740, the previous wali, who had been friendly to Zahir, died and was replaced by Uthman Pasha, who resented Zahir’s ambitions and control of trade routes. In 1745, after much negotiation with the Porte, Uthman Pasha obtained a firman sentencing Zahir to death and appointing him to Zahir’s titles, and the first skirmishes broke out soon after.
In 1746, half of Uthman Pasha’s army and several Shi’ite clans of the Jabal Amil whose allegiance he had bought laid siege to Acre, and the other half invaded the Galilee. Zahir broke the siege of Acre and pursued Uthman’s forces northward; the pursuit ended in defeat in front of Sidon in 1747, but the wali’s armies were too exhausted to counterattack again. In the meantime, the Galilee towns resisted the invasion until, in the summer of 1747, Zahir’s main force arrived and drove Uthman Pasha out.
After that, the war devolved into raids and counter-raids for several years, while Zahir and his agents in the Porte sought to make peace with the Sultan. This they finally did in 1750, at the cost of much gold and minor political concessions, and in the meantime, he had also managed to win over the Jabal Amil clans with promises of protection from the Druze warlords to the north. By 1752, Zahir decisively defeated Uthman at a second battle of Sidon and the war was, for practical purposes, over.
One thing not mentioned: it is widely believed in the Galilee at the time of the story that the Sabbateans of Damascus, who enjoy both the wali’s and the Sultan’s favor, fomented them against Zahir. The truth of that rumor is open to dispute – Uthman Pasha had plenty of reasons of his own for wanting the war – but he did have a Sabbatean vizier, and that gentleman did at least take part in the discussions with the Porte.
1. The two Polish villages are south of Kafr Qara in the lower part of the Wadi Ara, near where it merges into the coastal plain.
2. The villages’ way of life has some quasi-Zionist elements but it isn’t Zionism. The Hebraization, self-sufficiency ethos, and rooted connection to the land are there, but they have no ambition for political autonomy or control of territory, and though they favor self-defense, they’re happy to practice it by serving in the regional overlord’s militia. In a way, they’re the working-class, traditionalist analogues to the Spinozist-Hasidic avant-garde in Acre.
3. Yes, bagels did exist in the 18th century, and were already associated with Ashkenazi Jews.
4. The war Yitzhak is reminiscing about is a conflict between Zahir al-Umar and the wali of Damascus that took place from 1745 to 1752. In 1740, the previous wali, who had been friendly to Zahir, died and was replaced by Uthman Pasha, who resented Zahir’s ambitions and control of trade routes. In 1745, after much negotiation with the Porte, Uthman Pasha obtained a firman sentencing Zahir to death and appointing him to Zahir’s titles, and the first skirmishes broke out soon after.
In 1746, half of Uthman Pasha’s army and several Shi’ite clans of the Jabal Amil whose allegiance he had bought laid siege to Acre, and the other half invaded the Galilee. Zahir broke the siege of Acre and pursued Uthman’s forces northward; the pursuit ended in defeat in front of Sidon in 1747, but the wali’s armies were too exhausted to counterattack again. In the meantime, the Galilee towns resisted the invasion until, in the summer of 1747, Zahir’s main force arrived and drove Uthman Pasha out.
After that, the war devolved into raids and counter-raids for several years, while Zahir and his agents in the Porte sought to make peace with the Sultan. This they finally did in 1750, at the cost of much gold and minor political concessions, and in the meantime, he had also managed to win over the Jabal Amil clans with promises of protection from the Druze warlords to the north. By 1752, Zahir decisively defeated Uthman at a second battle of Sidon and the war was, for practical purposes, over.
One thing not mentioned: it is widely believed in the Galilee at the time of the story that the Sabbateans of Damascus, who enjoy both the wali’s and the Sultan’s favor, fomented them against Zahir. The truth of that rumor is open to dispute – Uthman Pasha had plenty of reasons of his own for wanting the war – but he did have a Sabbatean vizier, and that gentleman did at least take part in the discussions with the Porte.
How long until the Porte starts taking a more active role in Palestine?
Amazing update as always. A few questions:
1. What is the relationship between the Galilee Yishuv and the great Jewish communities in western Europe - particularly Amsterdam? I can see a revival of the old Jewish-facilitated west-east trade routes in the style of the Radhanites, passing through the Galilee on the way to India or China.
2. Will the agricultural towns in the Yishuv start cultivating dates and grapes on a massive scale? After all, both holds massive significance in Judaism, are a natural part of agriculture (although they can't revive the Judean Date Palm just yet, other types will do fine) in the region, and would be very profitable (Wine from the holy land to Christians in Europe, Dates during Ramadan to the Islamic world - which is something that Israel does IOTL, btw).
The question is when, or if, the Porte might have the capacity to take a more active role in Palestine. The Ottoman Empire in the 18th century had little practical control over much of its hinterland - in my updates here, I'm not exaggerating how feudal Palestine was during that period and how much practical independence local clans and warlords had. The Sultan collected taxes when he could and meddled in local politics all the time, but the meddling was usually of the form "give a firman to Local Warlord A to besiege Local Warlord B." The warlords all knew they couldn't go too far in rebelling or withholding taxes lest they have to withstand such a siege, but before the 19th-century reforms, the Porte didn't have much ability to intervene directly and everyone knew it.
I'd imagine that the relationship will be more intellectual than economic - there will be correspondence between the Galilee/Acre Haskalah and the European Haskalah like the literary correspondence that occurred everywhere at this time. The Galilee Yishuv probably also employs European Jewish merchants as business agents and vice versa - I'd imagine that there would be a trade in olives, as well as the silk and textiles that the Galilee produced both IOTL and ITTL and the glassware it produces ITTL.
ETA: I should add that the richest European Jews can buy and sell the richest Galilee Jews - there's a world of difference between merchant/cottage-industrialist rich and financier rich - so the business relationships are likely to be in the Europeans' favor. OTOH, these relationships could also give the Galilee access to capital that it wouldn't otherwise have. Not to be all stereotypical, but banking could be one of the European communities' important contributions to the Galilee.
The grape cultivation has been happening for two centuries at this point - the Galilee is good wine country, and the need for ritually pure wine means that there have been Jewish vineyards virtually from the beginning (as there were in the 16th century IOTL). This was still an age when wine didn't last long or travel well - a lot of the techniques for making wine stay good and improve with age are modern - so I'm not sure if Christian Europe will be a practical market just yet, although Christian pilgrims might be.
Dates - definitely. I mentioned orchards in the description of the agricultural villages, and they aren't only olives. It takes time for the trees to mature, but at this point the villages have existed forty years, and providing dates at Ramadan is probably part of their relationship with the Muslim villages nearby.
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Yeah Britain is kind of unique in being one of the few empires with the capacity to have an active role in their empire.
FOUR HOLY CITIES IV: NABLUS, FALL 1765
FOUR HOLY CITIES
IV: NABLUS, FALL 1765
IV: NABLUS, FALL 1765
Nablus was unconquered. Twice Zahir al-Umar had attempted to take the city and twice he had been driven back, once in the hills to the north and once at its very walls. The Tuqan family, who had made themselves lords of all the Jebel Nablus, used the hills to keep even the Sultan at bay; they and their subordinate clans monopolized the local offices and gave the Porte as meager a tribute as possible, so Nablus kept much of its wealth for itself.
This is not to say, though, that Zahir’s influence was not felt here. More trade flowed from the north than had been seen in centuries, and though Zahir did not rule this country, his troops patrolled the roads to protect that trade. And on this, if on nothing else, he and the Tuqans were in perfect agreement. The road to Nablus was thus one of the safest in Palestine; the proverbial virgin with a bag of gold might still be too much of a temptation, but an ordinary caravan such as the one in which Anshel approached the city could expect no trouble from bandits.
The ambush instead awaited him at the city gate.
He was waiting with the other passengers while the caravan-master talked to the guards, sitting cross-legged with his back against a resting donkey, when someone said “a Polish tailor? Truly?” And almost before he could react, two of the guards were standing in front of him and motioning him to stand. “Take your things,” one of them said. “You need to come with us.”
He managed to stammer “why?” but the guard only gestured again. “Come with us,” he repeated. “You’ll find out why when you get to the zaim’s house.”
With no choice but to obey, Anshel rose and followed the guards through the gate and into narrow streets where jasmine bloomed. The guards didn’t seize hold of him or handle him roughly, and he guessed from this that he was at least not a prisoner, but aside from that they said nothing, and when he again asked why they’d picked him out, they seemed amused by his consternation.
Fortunately he had not long to wait; it was only a short distance to the mansion where Umar Tuqan, the governor of the city, made his home. He stood at the door with one of the guards while the other conferred with a servant and then motioned him inside, saying “the paymaster is in the counting-room.”
Paymaster – that, at least, sounded promising. The inside of the mansion was more promising still: opulent halls, walls hung with tapestries, ornaments of worked silver, richly colored carpets that reduced movement to silence. And at the end, in a well-guarded strongroom, a gray-bearded man in layered robes of black and white sat among ledgers, tax rolls, maps, and chests of gold and silver coins.
“Ibrahim ustaz,” one of the guards said to him, “we have brought a Polish tailor.”
Now Ibrahim – for so the gray-haired man apparently was – raised a pair of spectacles to his eyes and looked at Anshel keenly. “An answered prayer,” he said. “We have received a letter from a Dutch merchant house which has an interest in importing our soap. They are sending a delegation to meet with us, and the zaim wants suits of clothes made for when he entertains them – clothes of the kind they wear in Europe.”
Anshel’s mind raced at the conversation’s unexpected turn. The zaim and his family would surely want clothes fit for nobility, and he’d never made clothing for a great lord. But in Chelm, he had sometimes tailored for rich merchants and minor szlachta, and the difference between what they wore and what the noblemen did was mainly a matter of quality. The only thing was…
“The clothes won’t be the same as what Hollanders wear,” he said. Rich Polish men in the cities had begun to adopt the fashions of the French court, but much of their clothing still bore Russian, Turkish and even Persian influence.
“That won’t matter. Make something that will show hospitality, that will tell these merchants that they should consider Nablus their home.”
After a moment, Anshel nodded. “I can do that, I think.”
“Good, good. And the matter of your fee… twenty-four piasters?”
So overjoyed was Anshel at the prospect of working in his proper trade again that he almost forgot to haggle – almost, but not quite. “Thirty, plus the cost of the material.”
Ibrahim laughed. “You are a child despite your years,” he said. “You could have had forty. I won’t betray my master to that degree, but shall we say thirty-three? Eleven now and twenty-two when the job is done. And yes, your material will be paid for.”
Thirty-three piasters all at once – that would not only see Anshel to Jerusalem but would pay for his journey back to Acre or another port, and if he were frugal, maybe even all the way to Poland. Such a change of fortune, after months of scrambling, was almost unimaginable.
He began to stammer thanks to the man who’d brought his good fortune about, and noticed something else about him. The paymaster was wearing a pendant of silver which had been worked into letters, spelling out a word, and the letters looked naggingly familiar. A couple of them were formal Hebrew, others resembled cursive Hebrew, and the rest looked like nothing Anshel had seen but fit with those that remained…
A Samaritan, he realized suddenly. He remembered hearing during his travels that the last Samaritans on earth lived mostly in Nablus where their holy mountain was, and that one of them, a poet, was chief clerk to the Tuqans. He had never met a Samaritan and never imagined he might meet one, but Ibrahim was evidently that man.
He wondered what to say – if he should say anything – but the spell was broken by the sound of eleven piasters ringing on the table, followed by the guards’ return. “Show him where he can find lodging,” Ibrahim said, and at another gesture of a guardsman’s hand, Anshel left.
This time they took him to an alley in the southwest of the city that was off another alley, and they stood in front of a house and called “Shimon!” until a florid man of indeterminate age opened the door. “You can stay with him,” they told Anshel. “He does many things.”
And it turned out Shimon did do many things – he kept bees on the roof, did rough repairs of broken furniture and pottery, wrote letters and legal documents for those who couldn’t read, and ran a boarding-house for Jewish travelers. He himself was one of the few Jews to actually live in Nablus, maybe even the only one; as he explained it, “my family came from Spain and this is no further from there than any other place.” He led the way upstairs, showed Anshel to a small second-story room overlooking the kitchen garden, and left him to his own devices.
Anshel put his pack down and lay on the straw pallet, staring at the boards of the ceiling and trying to assimilate how much had changed in the space of two hours. He didn’t plan to fall asleep, but he did so anyway.
_____
When he woke, it was afternoon, and he set off to find a weaver before the shops closed, noticing for the first time the city around him. The houses were of ancient stone and two scents were overwhelming: the jasmine that grew on every parapet and door-sill, and olive-oil soap from the factories that seemed to be everywhere. Nablus’ olive groves were its wealth, but less for the fruits themselves than for the soap made from their oil and the baskets and furniture fashioned from their wood.
Down the street and through an archway, the neighborhood opened into a small local market where a third scent, that of pastries, mingled with the others. Anshel, suddenly ravenous, bought a slice of knafeh, ate it in one bite, and bought another. He ate this one more slowly, leaning against a wall and looking around the square, until he saw what he’d come to find: one of the looms that were the other foundation of the city’s wealth.
The weaver inside, and the five sons who worked with him, knew why he had come before he said a word; evidently, the news of his arrival had spread to the city’s textile workers. The patterns and dyes here were different from those used in Poland – or even those of Tzfat, which was also famous for its cloth – but the weaver quickly understood what Anshel wanted, and explained how he would do it with the competence of decades at the loom. “Come back in a week,” he said. “Your cloth will be ready. And so will Ibrahim’s bill.”
Anshel spent the next days measuring the zaim and his brothers and sons, sketching the clothes he planned to make, shopping in the markets for thread and buttons. With ten of the Tuqans’ piasters still in his belt-purse, he had few worries; in fact, he had only one.
He had still been in Umm al-Fahm for the New Year, and had celebrated at the Moroccan synagogue. But now it would soon be Yom Kippur, and Nablus was a city with far too few Jews to form a community. There was no synagogue here where he could go to pray and ask forgiveness during the fast…
And then he realized that he was wrong – that there was a synagogue here.
“Shimon!” he called when he returned to the boarding-house that evening, looking for him in the kitchen and storeroom and finding him on the roof with his beehives. “Do you know of the Samaritan synagogue?”
“I go there sometimes, yes.”
“Then they allow us?” said Anshel, and thought of something else: “then our law allows us?” He knew there was a tractate of the Talmud that discussed the Samaritans, but it wasn’t one he’d ever learned; no Samaritan had ever come to Chelm and no Jew of Chelm imagined that any ever would, so there was no reason even for rabbis to study it. But maybe Shimon, who had lived most of his life in Nablus, would have given the matter more attention.
“They say that Samaritans are to be considered Jews where their practices agree with ours, and not Jews where they disagree.”
“Does their Yom Kippur agree with ours?”
“They fast, as we do. They observe the laws of Shabbat as we do. They ask forgiveness as we do. Their prayers… are not the same.”
So they agreed and disagreed – which weighed more? Anshel had no idea how to measure that, until he realized that he did, that the Sanhedrin’s jurisprudence on law and custom gave him a framework. Where the Samaritans followed a different law, surely that was a disagreement, but their prayers and hymns was their custom, and a difference of custom did not debar them from being Jews any more than the differences between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi nusachot. This was not how Anshel had planned to observe the holiday, but surely it was better than not observing at all.
And it proved better even than that. The synagogue was on a back street, and inside was a single room with the floor carpeted like a mosque and a nested archway in one corner where the Torah scrolls were kept. The high priest, for so they called him, was there, waiting to begin the service, and also there, seated cross-legged among the prominent men, was Ibrahim al-Danafi, the zaim’s clerk.
“I knew you would come,” Ibrahim said, and motioned to Anshel to sit next to him. And they stayed all night and through the next day, for the Samaritans spent all of Yom Kippur in the synagogue without interruption. Prayers for forgiveness were followed by an intermittent reading of the entire Torah, interspersed with poetry, and toward dusk, Ibrahim rose and recited one of his own verses. It was a long lament in the tawil meter, but in Aramaic; a catalog of Samaritan catastrophes and Samaritan sins, of yearning for forgiveness and redemption.
History weighs on them as much as it does on us, Anshel realized, and wondered if that was another point of agreement. He wondered that through the rest of the prayers, through the festive meal that began at Ibrahim’s home when the fast was broken, and through much of the next day.
The cloth was ready the day after that, and the next days were full of cutting and fitting and sewing, interrupted by Sukkot. The Samaritans built their sukkah indoors and covered with fruit, which made Anshel uneasy, but the rule of building the sukkah outside was of rabbinic origin, so in his loneliness, he was willing to regard that too as a mere difference in custom. But when the sukkah was taken down, they didn’t celebrate Simchat Torah. He and Shimon sat on the roof, listening to the bees and recalling other celebrations in other years, but this was one time when the weight of history was too much, and he remembered that another holy place was so close.
_____
Five days later, the suits of clothes were finished. The Tuqans had of course seen them many times already during fittings, but the zaim came down to admire them all in one place and pronounced himself well pleased. Moments later, in the strongroom, Ibrahim presented the other twenty-two piasters.
“Have you considered staying?” he asked. “Not today – I know you have to go to Jerusalem. But when you’ve seen what you must see, we can pay you well to set up shop here. You do excellent work, and we will have more employment for you.”
It seemed that Anshel’s stay in Nablus was to end as it began, with an ambush. He stammered something that he hoped was polite and yet noncommittal, and took his leave. He wasn’t sure if he could return to Nablus, well though the city had treated him – but it dawned on him of a sudden that he wouldn’t be returning to Poland. He’d denied it all this time, but six months in the Holy Land had cast its spell on him, and the weight of history he’d felt most recently at the Samaritan synagogue wouldn’t let him leave. The cutpurse in Beirut – the one who’d seen to it that he’d have to work his way across the Holy Land rather than coming and going on a pilgrim’s caravan – hadn’t just lengthened a journey; he had changed a life. One of the cities Anshel had passed through would be his home.
Which, he didn’t yet know. Maybe when he prayed at the Wailing Wall, he would.
_____
At sunset, on a hilltop whose name Anshel would never learn, the caravan stopped to rest, and beyond the next valley, behind walls that glinted gold, hidden among the Dome of the Rock and the minarets, was all that remained of the Temple. Dusk fell on the last day of Tishri, and there, there, was Jerusalem.
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Notes to part 4:
1. Nablus was indeed a center of industry in Ottoman Palestine at this time, and through its wealth and favorable defensive terrain, has been able to extend its influence throughout the surrounding hills and into Transjordan trading centers such as as-Salt, and to resist Zahir al-Umar much as IOTL. OTOH, there is some pragmatic cooperation between Zahir and the Tuqan clan on issues such as suppressing banditry and preventing encroachment by the Porte.
2. Ibrahim al-Danafi is a historical figure referenced in Dana Sajdi’s amazing treatise The Barber of Damascus, who was active in the 1770s and still living as of 1783. He in fact worked as a scribe and clerk for the Tuqan family, which enabled him to be a patron for the other Samaritans of Nablus, and he is known to have written histories and poetry.
3. The relationship between Jews and Samaritans has always been mixed, with each identifying only partly with the other. As mentioned in the story, the Talmudic tractate dealing with them (Kutim) prescribes that they are to be considered Jews where their practices align with rabbinic Judaism but not where they differ. This continues today, where IOTL, the Samaritans of Nablus are the only people with both Israeli and Palestinian nationality. IOTL, Samaritans and Jews in the Holy Land lived largely separate lives until the 20th century; ITTL, with more Jews living in a larger geographic area, the two are having to define their relationships much earlier (and will also have to figure out their attitudes toward the Karaites in Egypt and Jerusalem, although that’s taking place offstage for now).
1. Nablus was indeed a center of industry in Ottoman Palestine at this time, and through its wealth and favorable defensive terrain, has been able to extend its influence throughout the surrounding hills and into Transjordan trading centers such as as-Salt, and to resist Zahir al-Umar much as IOTL. OTOH, there is some pragmatic cooperation between Zahir and the Tuqan clan on issues such as suppressing banditry and preventing encroachment by the Porte.
2. Ibrahim al-Danafi is a historical figure referenced in Dana Sajdi’s amazing treatise The Barber of Damascus, who was active in the 1770s and still living as of 1783. He in fact worked as a scribe and clerk for the Tuqan family, which enabled him to be a patron for the other Samaritans of Nablus, and he is known to have written histories and poetry.
3. The relationship between Jews and Samaritans has always been mixed, with each identifying only partly with the other. As mentioned in the story, the Talmudic tractate dealing with them (Kutim) prescribes that they are to be considered Jews where their practices align with rabbinic Judaism but not where they differ. This continues today, where IOTL, the Samaritans of Nablus are the only people with both Israeli and Palestinian nationality. IOTL, Samaritans and Jews in the Holy Land lived largely separate lives until the 20th century; ITTL, with more Jews living in a larger geographic area, the two are having to define their relationships much earlier (and will also have to figure out their attitudes toward the Karaites in Egypt and Jerusalem, although that’s taking place offstage for now).
So that finishes 1765, which I originally planned as a vignette but which turned into a 9500-word four-parter. Again, for those who remember me from Malê Rising, this is not uncommon.
The next series of stories will be an arc running roughly from 1799 to 1815, which will include several turning points. After that, I'll probably jump to 1840 or so, and then, depending on how big a project I really want to make this, either the 1870s or a retrospective from 2025.
The next series of stories will be an arc running roughly from 1799 to 1815, which will include several turning points. After that, I'll probably jump to 1840 or so, and then, depending on how big a project I really want to make this, either the 1870s or a retrospective from 2025.
1799 teaser #1:
The Palatinate of Jerusalem was a short-lived state in the Levant proclaimed by Napoleon Bonaparte after the defeat of the Ottoman garrison at…
… In theory, the Palatinate was nominally subject to the Sublime Porte and was governed by two councils: the Grand Stewards, drawn from the notables of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and the Grand Sages, made up of religious leaders. The Grand Stewards had duties similar to the officials of the same title who Napoleon had appointed in Egypt. The Grand Sages bore a resemblance to the theocratic council that had governed the Eastern Galilee from the mid-17th to early 18th centuries; it is unclear whether this was conscious, although Napoleon is known to have…
… As he had in Egypt, Napoleon appointed non-Muslims to the governing councils in the hope of gaining their support for French rule. While this effort met with some success in Jerusalem itself, it proved… and was further complicated by the controversies over holy sites that erupted when…
… In practice, the Palatinate was under French military rule throughout its existence, and the final word on all matters lay with Napoleon or a proconsul appointed by him, with their decrees enforced by the French army…
… The Palatinate claimed the entirety of Ottoman Palestine as far north as the Galilee and Acre, as well as the near Transjordan; Napoleon had other administrative plans for Lebanon, Syria and the Hejaz, should he succeed in taking them. Its greatest actual extent, however, was…
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Zionism/Haskalic aside
Wow!
In hindsight it looks like TTL Nappy's Syrian campaign has been a bit more succesfull and not too violent.....I cas guess Acre has surrendered and then French troops perhaps have reached Mount Lebanon
I don't know where the butterflies are leading, especially how profitable TTL Syrian campaign turns to Nappy. Is the Armée d'Orient going to push into Syria to repeal the Ottoman encroachment? Anyways, IMHO wether Acre and Beyrout are taken or not won't make big differences in the end for Bonaparte, since unless major changes occur he's going to get trapped in Near East far away from France and with Britannia ruling the waves of the Med, same than OTL.....
Obviously the major changes OTL/TTL are going to take place at a local level, especially in the Levant. If French plans for the area comprise some sort of self government, giving not only equal rights but also the reins of power to Dhimni minorities, a Maronite-Jewish-Druze-Rest of Chistians Confederation can be established as a new French Client State.
Obviously, it's the perfect recipe for chaos when the displaced Muslims get angry and start rising up to get power back (with British encouragement and support), something that can be exacerbated by the dispute over the Holy Places. The picture will get bleak for the non Muslims, unless a dramatic twist takes place.....maybe the Jews switch sides and begin supporting UK??
I fancy about the idea of a post-Napoleonic Levant with some degree of independence from Istanbul, maybe alligned with Muhammed Ali Egypt, attracting new waves of Jewish Olim from Europe (Hep Hep Riots could be a major push event ITTL a la Dreyfus Affair)
Not necessarily (the last paragraph of the teaser might hint at other possibilities). Going up the coast wasn't Napoleon's only option, and where he goes first may have to do with which Ottoman army is the first to oppose him - IOTL, he defeated Jezzar Pasha's Albanians at al-Arish and then went after Jezzar's strongholds at Jaffa and Acre, but ITTL, the troops he faces at al-Arish - or maybe Gaza, or maybe both - might come from another place.
Anyway, all I'll say now is that Napoleon will try to do some of what you say (as he tried to do in Egypt IOTL) and at least some of the things you mention will play out, but most of them will happen over either a shorter time span or a much longer one than you're thinking.
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I'm guessing from this part "Napoleon appointed non-Muslims to the governing councils in the hope of gaining their support for French rule. While this effort met with some success in Jerusalem itself, it proved…" that there was resistance outside Jerusalem. That could very well include the Sanhedrin in Tzfat. If Napoleon is seen as destabilizing, the Jews may not be on his side.
Fearless Leader
Donor
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC didn't some Arab nationalists try to include Jews in OTL highlighting the work of some Jewish philosophers in Arabic?
Great work so far! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Other things about the Sanhedrin: (1) although the center of gravity (by this time the overwhelming center of gravity) is in Tzfat, the rabbis of Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza are part of it too; (2) the Yerushalmi rabbis, as mentioned, face different pressures and incentives from the others; and (3) although the Sanhedrin tries to govern by consensus, it doesn't always work.
Also, Jewish law recognizes a concept of necessity - actually several of them, with a number of imperatives (most prominently saving life, but there are others) taking precedence over the letter of the law. This concept, of course, itself has limits.
I know Egypt has occasionally claimed Maimonides. What I had more in mind, though, was the way that some 20th-century Arab nationalist movements included Christians - Aflaq in the Syrian Ba'ath was the most prominent, but far from the only one. There were attempts, within nationalist ideology, both pan-Arab and more local, to conceptualize Christians as part of the people and culture, and ITTL, with Jews more rooted in the area's recent history ("recent" is key), there may be similar thinking toward Jews.
Whether this kind of thinking will be dominant in Arab nationalisms ITTL is another question, and one which may have a different answer from region to region and which may itself cause conflicts. Romantic nationalism in general is still an open question ITTL - maybe the Levant will avoid it altogether, although I'm a pessimist in that regard (I suspect that nationalism is an inevitable downside of political liberalization and Enlightenment concepts of citizenship, and is also likely to be an inevitable reaction to Western colonial encroachment).
Thank you! This has been fun to write, and a way to explore issues and questions that are important to me.
1799 teaser #3 of 3:
… By the mid-1750s, Zahir al-Umar’s nascent state had reached its natural borders. With Sidon taken and the Shi’ites of Jabal Amil as reliable vassals, further expansion to the north would face the difficult challenge of subduing the Druze clans of the Chouf Mountains and the even harder one of conquering the Shihab dynasty of Mount Lebanon. The territories to the east were held by the powerful wali of Damascus and the wily Tuqans of Nablus, and to the south was the Sanjak of Jerusalem, which could not be invaded without risking deadly retribution from the Porte. The frontiers were not entirely peaceful – the Chouf border, in particular, had to be continually maintained by a combination of bribery and force – but the border wars were small ones rather than large.
Thus, from 1756 to 1774, the Zaydani state enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity, attracting a steady stream of immigrants and drawing investment from European Jewish bankers in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Zahir and the Sultan also remained on peaceful terms; indeed, so far had Zahir’s relations with the Porte improved that in 1768, he sent troops to aid in putting down Ali Bey al-Kabir’s rebellion in Egypt. [1] This expedition was costly – the revolt was fully suppressed only in 1771 – but Zahir made use of it to build relationships with Mamluk emirs in the Nile Delta and recruit skilled immigrants to his kingdom.
By 1774, however, there was another new governor in Egypt – during the eighteenth century, beylerbeys of Egypt turned over, on average, every year and a half – who, like many of the Porte’s emissaries, quickly angered the local Mamluk lords. Several of these, who knew Zahir from the prior war, called on him for aid and, encouraged by promises of military and commercial alliance, he answered.
This again brought Zahir into conflict with the Porte, and by the end of 1774, he faced the threat of invasion from all sides. After a hard bargain, the Nabulsi agreed to be bribed, and through his alliances with Bedouin tribes in the Negev and the Mamluk emirs who stayed faithful, Zahir was able to divert the attention of the Turkish garrison at Jerusalem. In the north, however, his old rivalry with Damascus escalated again into open war, this time with the wali of Aleppo and Yusuf Shihab joining the attack.
The first year of the war went badly for Zahir, as it had done in the 1740s; he lost Sidon, Tyre, and much of the Jabal Amil, and the Galilee and Acre were threatened. But early in 1776, he negotiated a temporary alliance with the Druze clans of the Chouf, who now saw the Shihabs as a more immediate threat than him, and drew on his reserves in the Wadi Ara and the coastal plain to push back the invasion. By 1777, he had retaken Sidon and concluded peace with the Shihabs and Aleppo, and although desultory fighting with the wali of Damascus continued a year longer, the Zaydani heartlands were out of danger.
As he had a quarter-century before, Zahir al-Umar had survived a conflict with the Sultan. But he and his realm had not survived unscathed. The war had been costly in money and lives, the flow of immigration with which Zahir hoped to develop his state diminished virtually to zero, and at the time of his death in 1779, his relations with the Porte were still unrepaired…
… Many of the Banu Zaydan’s enemies hoped that Zahir’s death would also be the end of the Zaydani state. Zahir was eighty-nine when he died, a remarkable age for the time, and had outlived all but three of his sons, but the Tuqans and the wali of Damascus anticipated – and tried to foment – a succession struggle between them, and also encouraged Zahir’s grand-nephew, the current sheikh of the Banu Zaydan tribe itself, to press a claim. But it was not to be. Zahir had consolidated sufficient control of his realm, and particularly his personal vassals in the Galilee, Wadi Ara and Jabal Amil, to arrange a smooth succession to his eldest son Suleiman, and on Suleiman’s death in 1790, to his grandson Muhammad Zahir.
Suleiman’s and Muhammad Zahir’s reigns were outwardly peaceful, with neither the Banu Zaydan nor their neighbors ready for another open war. Their rivalry instead played out, once again, along the borders with intrigues in the Lebanese mountains and the Sanjak of Jerusalem, the latter of which was in theory directly subject to the Porte since the failed rebellion of 1705 but was in fact loosely controlled outside Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Banu Zaydan, Nablus, the Porte, and Egypt – now under the strong leadership of Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey – all competed for influence in the other cities and towns of the sanjak. Sometimes this competition involved the violent overthrow of leading families by rival clans or even low-level warfare such as the three-cornered civil war that took place in Gaza in the mid-1780s, but it was more often conducted with bribery, commerce and quiet diplomacy.
By the late 1790s, the Banu Zaydan were slowly gaining the upper hand in the north of the sanjak, the Nabulsi in the east, and Egypt in the south. In 1798, however, Muhammad Zahir died suddenly in a hunting accident, leaving the leadership of the Zaydani state to his 22-year-old son Abd-al-Rahman. And later the same year, Egypt would face a European invasion for the first time since the Crusades…
_______
[1] This, as much as Zahir al-Umar's more stable power base and, er, better management of family relations, is the reason for the Zaydani state’s better fortunes ITTL – IOTL, Zahir allied himself with Ali Bey’s rebellion and was temporarily successful, but this alliance led to a series of double crosses and ultimately to his downfall.
… By the mid-1750s, Zahir al-Umar’s nascent state had reached its natural borders. With Sidon taken and the Shi’ites of Jabal Amil as reliable vassals, further expansion to the north would face the difficult challenge of subduing the Druze clans of the Chouf Mountains and the even harder one of conquering the Shihab dynasty of Mount Lebanon. The territories to the east were held by the powerful wali of Damascus and the wily Tuqans of Nablus, and to the south was the Sanjak of Jerusalem, which could not be invaded without risking deadly retribution from the Porte. The frontiers were not entirely peaceful – the Chouf border, in particular, had to be continually maintained by a combination of bribery and force – but the border wars were small ones rather than large.
Thus, from 1756 to 1774, the Zaydani state enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity, attracting a steady stream of immigrants and drawing investment from European Jewish bankers in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Zahir and the Sultan also remained on peaceful terms; indeed, so far had Zahir’s relations with the Porte improved that in 1768, he sent troops to aid in putting down Ali Bey al-Kabir’s rebellion in Egypt. [1] This expedition was costly – the revolt was fully suppressed only in 1771 – but Zahir made use of it to build relationships with Mamluk emirs in the Nile Delta and recruit skilled immigrants to his kingdom.
By 1774, however, there was another new governor in Egypt – during the eighteenth century, beylerbeys of Egypt turned over, on average, every year and a half – who, like many of the Porte’s emissaries, quickly angered the local Mamluk lords. Several of these, who knew Zahir from the prior war, called on him for aid and, encouraged by promises of military and commercial alliance, he answered.
This again brought Zahir into conflict with the Porte, and by the end of 1774, he faced the threat of invasion from all sides. After a hard bargain, the Nabulsi agreed to be bribed, and through his alliances with Bedouin tribes in the Negev and the Mamluk emirs who stayed faithful, Zahir was able to divert the attention of the Turkish garrison at Jerusalem. In the north, however, his old rivalry with Damascus escalated again into open war, this time with the wali of Aleppo and Yusuf Shihab joining the attack.
The first year of the war went badly for Zahir, as it had done in the 1740s; he lost Sidon, Tyre, and much of the Jabal Amil, and the Galilee and Acre were threatened. But early in 1776, he negotiated a temporary alliance with the Druze clans of the Chouf, who now saw the Shihabs as a more immediate threat than him, and drew on his reserves in the Wadi Ara and the coastal plain to push back the invasion. By 1777, he had retaken Sidon and concluded peace with the Shihabs and Aleppo, and although desultory fighting with the wali of Damascus continued a year longer, the Zaydani heartlands were out of danger.
As he had a quarter-century before, Zahir al-Umar had survived a conflict with the Sultan. But he and his realm had not survived unscathed. The war had been costly in money and lives, the flow of immigration with which Zahir hoped to develop his state diminished virtually to zero, and at the time of his death in 1779, his relations with the Porte were still unrepaired…
… Many of the Banu Zaydan’s enemies hoped that Zahir’s death would also be the end of the Zaydani state. Zahir was eighty-nine when he died, a remarkable age for the time, and had outlived all but three of his sons, but the Tuqans and the wali of Damascus anticipated – and tried to foment – a succession struggle between them, and also encouraged Zahir’s grand-nephew, the current sheikh of the Banu Zaydan tribe itself, to press a claim. But it was not to be. Zahir had consolidated sufficient control of his realm, and particularly his personal vassals in the Galilee, Wadi Ara and Jabal Amil, to arrange a smooth succession to his eldest son Suleiman, and on Suleiman’s death in 1790, to his grandson Muhammad Zahir.
Suleiman’s and Muhammad Zahir’s reigns were outwardly peaceful, with neither the Banu Zaydan nor their neighbors ready for another open war. Their rivalry instead played out, once again, along the borders with intrigues in the Lebanese mountains and the Sanjak of Jerusalem, the latter of which was in theory directly subject to the Porte since the failed rebellion of 1705 but was in fact loosely controlled outside Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Banu Zaydan, Nablus, the Porte, and Egypt – now under the strong leadership of Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey – all competed for influence in the other cities and towns of the sanjak. Sometimes this competition involved the violent overthrow of leading families by rival clans or even low-level warfare such as the three-cornered civil war that took place in Gaza in the mid-1780s, but it was more often conducted with bribery, commerce and quiet diplomacy.
By the late 1790s, the Banu Zaydan were slowly gaining the upper hand in the north of the sanjak, the Nabulsi in the east, and Egypt in the south. In 1798, however, Muhammad Zahir died suddenly in a hunting accident, leaving the leadership of the Zaydani state to his 22-year-old son Abd-al-Rahman. And later the same year, Egypt would face a European invasion for the first time since the Crusades…
-- Amir Yitzhaki, The Zaydani State at the Crossroads (Jaffa U.P., 1985)
_______
[1] This, as much as Zahir al-Umar's more stable power base and, er, better management of family relations, is the reason for the Zaydani state’s better fortunes ITTL – IOTL, Zahir allied himself with Ali Bey’s rebellion and was temporarily successful, but this alliance led to a series of double crosses and ultimately to his downfall.
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