Material Life in Mid Nineteenth Century Damascus: Christian Compensation Claims After the 1860 Massacres

In July 1860, a violent mob destroyed the Christian quarters of central Damascus killing an estimated 5,000 people and razing hundreds of houses, businesses and religious structures.  Thanks to the intervention of a small core of the city’s Muslim notables, some 85% of the Christians survived the massacre.  Their survival confronted the Ottoman government with a massive challenge, of providing housing and livelihoods for thousands of destitute Christians and compensating them for their losses.  Drawing on contemporary Damascene records, this paper examines the claims of Damascene Christians for compensation for their destroyed houses and workspaces as well as their stolen property to examine the material life of nineteenth century Syrians.  This material sheds new light on social norms and hierarchies within the professional classes in late Ottoman Damascus.

Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony’s College, where he also serves as Director of the Middle East Centre.  He is author of Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 1999); The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2009); The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (Penguin, 2015).  His new book, The Damascus Events, will be published by Penguin in 2024.

 

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