“L'histoire continue!” (p. 41). In several ways, this serves as the motto of Colette Establet and Jean-Paul Pascual's ongoing efforts to explore the world of late seventeenth-century Ottoman Damascus through one set of archival sources, i.e. probate inventories (mukhallafāt). The two French historians began almost two decades earlier with an inquiry into the composition of the estates of “civilians” in a book entitled Famille et fortunes à Damas. 450 foyers damascains en 1700 (Damascus, 1994). It was followed by several shorter publications that approached the same place, time period and source material from various angles.

In this recent monograph, Establet and Pascual painstakingly explore one register of the qisma al-ʿaskariyya, the court specializing in the division of the estates of people who belonged in one way or another to what was called the ʿaskarī class in Ottoman times. The Damascus court register No. 10 of the Syrian National Archives contains two types of documents: probate inventories and – a valuable addition to the already rich variety of available sources – the audit records (muḥāsabāt) in which tutors (wāṣī) had to account for their administration of the fortunes of the orphans placed in their care. The inventories concern about 77 cases of deceased men and women, the accountings 69 cases of orphans (p. 22). This small sample by no means reflects Damascene society as a whole, as the authors repeatedly remark. Yet understood as a snapshot of some members of an important section of that society it offers precious insights into their worlds, connecting the city and its rural hinterland, at a moment in time for which other sources are rare.

The book is divided into nine chapters. The first offers an introduction to readers unfamiliar with probate inventories as a source, outlining their potential and problems. Chapter 2 discusses the notion of ʿaskar understood as people in the service of the state in regard to their tax-exempt status (which needs to be nuanced in so far as that is only true for certain types of taxes) and presents the various social groups to be subsumed under this heading, mostly military personnel, civilian members of the state bureaucracy and some religious dignitaries. Chapters 3 and 4 give a broad overview of the composition of the fortunes left by the deceased and the activities these fortunes were built upon. The findings are then in a second step compared with those of the preceding studies which focused on tax-paying Damascenes.

Chapter 5 details the economic activities in the urban context, chapters 6 to 8 delve into those activities that connected the deceased with various aspects of the rural economy, in particular tax-paying, credit operations, waqf administration and agriculture. Chapter 9, entitled “A human touch”, provides some glimpses into the social and cultural world of the people under investigation, touching on demographic questions, but listing mostly the personal belongings of the men and women concerned: arms, clothes, furniture, in some rare cases even books. The study ends with a short conclusion, followed by two indexes (endowments, places) and a list of the names under which the single acts were registered, yet without referring to the pages where they are mentioned in this book.

There is also continuity in the way the collected data is analysed. In its method and presentation, the book clearly follows in the footsteps of the preceding studies by the same authors, in spite of the sometimes harsh criticism the statistical treatment has evoked. The smaller sample presented in this book allows for a more in-depth presentation of individual cases, yet the pages still abound with graphs and short tables the usefulness of which is not always evident given the small number of cases upon which they are based. The authors sometimes switch from detailed description to broad interpretation in a rather abrupt manner. The sheer number of names, terms and details mentioned in the course of the argument is daunting even for those who are familiar with both the historical context and the historiographical debates.

The richness of the source makes the exclusive focus on the one register understandable, yet it is also one of the weaknesses of this study. Though it may be true that many of the people mentioned will stay “dans le monde dominant des inconnus de l'histoire” (p. 175), without an effort to identify them in other texts they shall certainly remain so. One prerequisite to bringing them out of the dark would have been an index of all of the names mentioned in the register. The short sketches in chapter 7 that refer to biographical literature show that such an endeavour could be worthwhile. A look beyond the register would also have provided the correct identification of Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā (p. 179) as a member of the Ṣumādī family and not an ʿImādī. This misapprehension changes the social background of the person in some decisive ways.

Yet what was most annoying to this reader was the complete lack of effort to make the richness of the source available for further studies. Apart from the list of place names, there is no way of retrieving information about people and terms detailed in the argument, except by reading through the original register. To mention just one example: it is impossible to follow up on the intriguing presence of Bedouins or nomadic groups so near to the city of Damascus, which comes up in several documents (pp. 159, 172, 189, 191, 193, 203, 216, 228).

Without doubt, Colette Establet and Jean-Paul Pascual have shown the richness of probate inventories (once again) and muḥāsabāt (newly introduced) for historical inquiries, when these sources are approached with the right questions and enduring patience. Yet as to fulfilling their potential for the writing of the political, economic, social and cultural history of both the urban and the rural areas of Damascus around 1700, one has to state: “L'histoire continue”.