An Arabic Description of the Activities of Antique Dealers in Late Ottoman Damascus

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of a chapter in an Arabic dictionary of the crafts of Damascus (Qamus al-Sina'at al-Shamiyya) detailing the activities of antiquities dealers. Written sometime between 1890 and about 1905, this description contains information on the items traded by antiquities dealers in the last years of the Ottoman period and the manufacture in Syria of imitations/forgeries of ancient artefacts. The last section of the article establishes the economic and cultural context of the trade in artefacts in Syria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a particular emphasis on objects of the Islamic period.