Monday was not just an ordinary day in our calendar; it was market day, and for us, the market was the city of Nabatieh on Monday!
Monday Market was never just a traditional commercial market, but a space for social interaction, an opportunity for acquaintance and meeting among the people of Jabal Amel, as well as being their living memory that stores the details of daily life, and many stories and events.
Within its boundaries, a network of human and social relationships grew, linking the city of Nabatieh with neighboring villages, such as: Zibdine, Kfar Tebnit, Kfar Remman, Arab Salim, Jebchit, Doueir, and others.
Despite suffering many blows and damages during the successive Israeli wars that passed through the region, it remained an unerring indicator of the well-being of the region and its people: if the market was crowded, it meant that the people were resilient, that the economic cycle was running, and that Nabatieh and its four districts were still alive.
All of this happened before 8:15 p.m. on October 11, 2024. On that night, Israeli aircraft launched a series of raids on Nabatieh, the most violent since the start of the “war of support,” targeting the city’s commercial center, which includes the so-called Monday Market heritage square, and completely destroying it.
The shops, the old stores, the stone staircases leading to the upper shops, the covered passageways, the only hotel building in the city, “The Flower of the South,” the sidewalks, the entire memory of a group of people who inhabited this country, were leveled to the ground and turned to ash in moments.
We watched the scene in amazement in the places of our forced displacement, but our memory refused to believe, and insisted on keeping the old images.
After the war ended, we rushed to the place; we, the people of the neighboring villages and the city, found that what happened was not a nightmare or a horror movie we had seen on screens, and we saw what no one would be pleased to see, and we confirmed that the scene was real despite its surrealism, and that “our market” had become a thing of the past.
The Nabatieh commercial market is divided into two sections: a historical section that is over 900 years old and takes the form of a square in the middle of the city, which is the section that houses the popular Monday market, and the other section on the upper side that grew and expanded gradually with the development of the city and its transformation into the center of the Nabatieh Governorate.
In an interview we conducted with him, the writer and historian Ali Mazraani says about Nabatieh and its market: “The human settlement in Nabatieh is due to its plains and the abundance of its springs, which made it a meeting point for caravans and the exchange of goods by barter. This natural-commercial location established the Nabatieh market, which is more than nine hundred years old, and made the city one of the main trading stations in the Levant.”
This was the beginning, until the nineteenth century, when commercial activity in Jabal Amel became active, and it needed an official map. Here, Mazraani adds: “The market witnessed a remarkable expansion in the nineteenth century, and it was divided into three main markets: the livestock market towards Al-Baydar, the used clothing market in Al-Manshiyya, and the grain and food market.”
Mazraani recounts, according to historians, that Monday was adopted as a weekly day for buying and selling, and caravans of merchants would arrive in Nabatieh on Sunday afternoon and camp there until Monday evening. The market, which bore his name, became a regular center for commercial activity. The oldest photographs taken of the market, dating back to 1910, show, in addition to the goods and displays, two Ottoman soldiers guarding the place.
After the occupation of Palestine, the market activity declined, and its three sections moved to Al-Baydar. Then the livestock market disappeared in the eighties with the spread of local markets in neighboring villages such as: Tibnin, Al-Taybeh and Jbaa.
The question many people ask when talking about the Nabatieh market is, which was the nucleus of the other’s emergence, the city or the market? There is no doubt that the relationship between Nabatieh and its market is a direct one. According to Mazraani, “The historical market contributed to shaping the city’s centrality, and the city, by containing the largest Shiite gathering in the region, reviving the Ashura rituals since 1895, and hosting a number of official institutions since 1920, such as the municipality, the government building, and the post office, and the emergence of political families in it, such as the Al-Zein and Al-Fadl families, was able to attract merchants to it, which produced integration and interdependence between the economic, political, and social role of both… the city and the market together.”
Therefore, whenever the market prospers, the city prospers and vice versa. In the fifties, with the activity of tobacco cultivation in the south, the city experienced great prosperity, which was increased by remittances from expatriates, and the presence of schools and missions. In the eighties, commercial activity doubled with the establishment of the first Palestinian camp in it, as the Palestinians were spending their money in the market and were not competing with local merchants.
But the Israeli enemy was always lying in wait, targeting the market repeatedly. The first Israeli strike on Nabatieh was in 1974, and in 1977 the city was forced to cancel its Monday market and restrict commercial activity due to Israeli shelling. The attacks continued until the occupation in June 1982, when artillery shelling turned into a daily confrontation with the occupying soldiers, including the famous Ashura clashes. This naturally led to a decline in the city’s economic activity and a market stagnation. In 1985, Israel partially withdrew from the south, and the market regained some of its vitality, although Israeli hostilities did not cease. Israel remained in control of the city and its market, positioned on the surrounding hills. The city and its market witnessed destruction and massacres, particularly during the wars of 1993 and 1996. After the complete Israeli withdrawal in 2000, the city witnessed a general revival, restoring its appeal and the market’s traditional place in the region’s economic life. Then came the July 2006 war, which destroyed six years of prosperity and stability, and the same commercial square suffered massive destruction, which the locals soon considered normal, compared to what happened on the night of October 11, 2004…
When we asked one of the city’s residents, who wished to remain anonymous, about the significance of Israel’s focus on destroying the market in every attack, he replied: “Destroying a place is an attack on a social symbol before it is merely the destruction of buildings. The Nabatieh market is the most important social symbol the region has ever known. Destroying it is destroying one of the most important bridges of communication between people. It can be said that the intention behind targeting it is to target a fundamental pillar of Jabal Amel’s identity and memory… Popular markets in Lebanon, as in the entire East, have always been centers of political, social, and economic interaction throughout history. Therefore, destroying the Nabatieh market is an attempt to weaken the shared social space that unites the residents. When this space is broken, people are pushed towards isolation, towards losing the spaces that allow them to live as one community. By targeting the market, Israel struck at the central gathering place of the Shiite community in the region, and this leads them to dispersal and further isolation.”
From a popular perspective, the market has other meanings. During a tour of the shops, Abu Hussein (a pseudonym), one of the old merchants of Nabatieh, says, “The market used to be based on agricultural products, as well as the products of craftsmen. However, things gradually developed, and imported goods invaded the shops and stalls, especially clothes, shoes, accessories, household items, and even food and cleaning materials, of which UNIFIL forces are one of the largest sources.”
During our conversation with Hajja Umm Ali (a pseudonym), who comes every Monday from the neighboring town of Kafr Rumman to display her fresh agricultural products, she said: “The market is our home and our sweet memories. I used to visit it as a child with my mother, and here I am today standing in her place.”
In another corner, Haj Muhammad (a pseudonym) stands in front of a stall displaying various nuts and spices. He greets us, saying, “The old times have changed. The situation is difficult, my daughter,” referring to the prevailing stagnation due to declining purchasing power and the reluctance of some people to visit the market these days, especially since the hills surrounding the city are subject to frequent Israeli raids and attacks.
For me, the Monday market is the “hustle and bustle” of Eid. We used to go there in the last days of Ramadan to buy new clothes, shiny shoes, and colorful bags, says a woman in her forties, standing beside us, examining the goods and testing the quality of the fabric. Darin feels as if she’s talking about her, as she tells me, and her memory takes her back to those mornings when she would get ready to visit the market with her mother to complete the Eid preparations. How wonderful her day would be if her mother decided to stop by the meat market, where the delicious aromas filled the air. Afterwards, she would return home happy with a delicious breakfast and the teasing she would do to her sisters, since she was lucky enough to be the one visiting the market that day.
“It’s as if there’s a special relationship between women and the market,” Hala tells me. “In addition to shopping being a favorite women’s activity, women have found in the market a window through which they look out at the world, and a social and economic outlet for them. It has always been their only escape. They visit it sometimes to walk and shop, and sometimes to sell what they produce. They get to know other women from neighboring villages, exchanging cooking recipes, news, stories, and the concerns of family and husbands.”