Damascus: Antiquities Dealers

Date: c.1890-1906

Arabic: antakjī or antikjī

Antiquities dealers bought and sold a wide variety of objects, ranging from contemporary crafts to antiquities from archaeological sites. They also commissioned artisans, including the decorators of copper alloy vessels (naqqāsh) to make imitations of older items. See also: Decorator of metal vessels (naqqāsh).

Citation: al-Qasimi, Muhammad Saʿid, Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, and Khalil al-ʿAzm (al-Azem), Dictionnaire des métiers damascains, ed., Zafer al-Qasimi. (Le Monde d’Outre-Mer passé et présent, Deuxième série, Documents III, Paris and Le Haye: Mouton and Co., 1960), pp. 40-41 (chapter 9).

Partially translated in: Charles Issawi, The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914: A Documentary Economic History (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 388.

See also: Milwright, Marcus. “An Arabic Description of the Activities of Antiquities Dealers in Late Ottoman Damascus”, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 143.1 (2011): pp. 8-18.

Milwright, Marcus. “Metalworking in Damascus at the End of the Ottoman Period: An Analysis of the Qamus al-Sinaʿat al-Shamiyya”, in: Venetia Porter and Mariam Rosser-Owen, eds, Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Crafts and Text. Essays presented to James W. Allan (London: I B Tauris, 2012), pp. 271-72.