تركات الفلاحين ني جبل نابلس ودلالاتها الاجتماعية والاقتصادية 1280ه/ 1864م - 1317 /1900م.

This paper seeks tofathom the usefulness of the titles of estates in studying the social and economic conditions of Palestinian peasants in Mount Nablus in the period between 1864 to 1900. The paper relies primarily on an important set of primary sources, that is, the titles of estate and inheritance contained in the files of the Nablus Shar‘i Court. This set of primary sources is special in that it offers rich and valuable information about the subject of this paper that no other historical source provides us with. In a nutshell, those titles provide us with much data on the size of families, polygyny, dowries, personal names and their significance, house furniture, clothes, house tools and utensils, monies, debts, agricultural crops and their kinds and prices, agricultural tools, livestock and its kinds and prices, as well as the different weights and scales used in the period under study. The paper includes various themes, such as the family size, the property size (monies, real estate, livestock, furniture, debts, monies, as well as weights and scales). The paper will show that minor children of the deceased tended to outnumber adult children, and that male children – minors and adults – usually outnumbered girls. It shows also shows that polygyny was not widely prevalent among peasants, and that livestock featured first in the estates of the deceased followed by agricultural crops. The paper follows a historical methodology as well as analysis of the data collected and which will be put together in tables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]