From the Pages of the Defter (ص 111)

غرض

عنوان
From the Pages of the Defter (ص 111)
المحتوى
Residences: Odas and Hanes
Although the Ottoman Empire was an agrarian empire, village societies have rarely been the
subjects, as opposed to the objects, of historical investigation. An analysis of housing in
Hebron’s villages is therefore valuable for what it reveals about rural social structures and
about economic stratification within and between rural settlements in a single district.
There were 3,687 residential structures recorded in the Hebron-district villages in
1876. These were categorized as either odas (Ada g} Tr., lit., room) or hanes (Aula, Tr., house,
household, building). Also recorded in most villages was the number of musaqqafat
(Cada, Tr., lit., buildings, house-property)."** The Turkish term musaggafat comes from
the Arabic root, s-q-f. Asagf (pl., suguf ) in Arabic is a “ceiling” or a “roof”. This category
likely indicated the number of rooms in a single residence, at least those rooms used for
living/sleeping. Most residences had between one and three musaqqafat. There were also
residences in the Hebron district with four, five, and even seven musaqgafat.
There is considerable overlap in recorded value and size between the categories of
oda and hane. In fact, the extent of this overlap is so great that the distinguishing
characteristics of an oda as opposed to a hane cannot be determined with any certainty.
These two Ottoman-Turkish words did not figure among the Turkish lexicon that was
absorbed into the local vocabulary. We never find oda and hane used in Hebron’s sharia
184 Semseddin Sami, 420 and Redhouse, 828.
94
هو جزء من
From the Pages of the Defter
تاريخ
٢٠١٦
المنشئ
Susynne McElrone

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