Structural portraits of elite households in Gaza, c. 1900: strategies and patterns of cooperation

Abstract

Throughout the Ottoman period, elite households and elite families were cen- tral figures in Middle Eastern urban politics; however, these entities were shaped in dif- ferent ways as a function of time and place. Thanks to the exceptional source of docu- mentation constituted by the Ottoman census of 1905, information on these households and families can be reconstructed for the city of Gaza at the end of the Ottoman period at finer granularity than ever before. This chapter examines the strategies implemented by established elite families in late Ottoman Gaza as they endeavored to preserve their power and influence. It does not focus on their economic or political activities or the narratives produced about them, but rather on their most private sphere; i.e., social relations within the household and between households, which show how members collaborated with each other to further their shared interests. Hierarchical, cooperative and diverging patterns of relationships within a whole family or a family branch emerge from this analysis.