Chapter 7 - Property and commercial partnerships

Summary

Building a household entailed not only acquiring clients and forging alliances, by marriage or otherwise, but also amassing enough wealth to sustain these clients, along with wives and children, and to leave a legacy that they could inherit. Hence a prime concern of any astute grandee was securing a steady source of revenue. This revenue could derive from tax-collection rights in both city and countryside, from property rentals, or from investment in trade. Complementing and reinforcing this tangible wealth was the household's symbolic wealth: monuments to a household's stature in the form of maʾāthir – the charitable works, such as mosques and fountains, that a household head commissioned – or, more fundamentally, the mansion or palace where the household assembled to hatch its schemes of aggrandizement. Such structures proclaimed the household's existence and contributed to its members' sense of identity and cohesion.

The house

Perhaps the most visible and essential component of a household's wealth was the house that it used as a headquarters. Indeed, the very ability to purchase or commission the construction of a palatial residence reflected a certain degree of wealth, status, and independence on the part of the household head. Household heads of relatively low status, such as low-ranking regimental officers, tended to use their barracks in Cairo's citadel as a headquarters while perhaps maintaining modest family residences in various neighborhoods.