The traders are keen and allow no points of advantage to escape their notice. In fact, the conversation of the common people of the country is in terms of the currency and concerns the ins and outs of bargaining, loss and gain. Sometimes, in the heat of trading, the parties appear to rise into a frenzy of altercation. But nothing is ever settled at this high tension. After a few seconds of comparative calm the haggling and controversy begin again and an attempt is made to find a common basis of argument in which neither party may yield too much. The difference between wholesale and retail business is not very clearly recognized in the villages. Few peasant producers know what their own expense has been in the production of their commodities. Striking a bargain is a tedious process to the stranger, but an exercise of great interest to the native and full of possibilities. He declares that the business arrangement shall be as you like, utterly. He is a servant of God, he seeks not money but your happiness, your good-will. Is not that the sweetest possession, the love and favor of brothers? If it is a house that you are trying to rent at a decent price, he says, “What is such a thing as that between us? Take it for nothing.”[162] An utter stranger once came to my door with a young gazel which he had found in the wilderness. He declared that it was a present to me. I offered him forty cents for it and he demanded sixty. I gave him the forty, however, promising the other twenty if the little creature lived.
Measures and weights vary as between villages. In the cities the French system prevails, but in the country the peasantry persist in the use of the variable weights and measures. Many things are weighed which with us are measured, as, for example, olive-oil and vegetables. The _oḳḳîyeh_ approximates a half pound. Six of these oḳḳîyehs equal an _oḳḳa_, and two oḳḳas equal a _ruṭl_. One hundred ruṭls equal a _ḳonṭâr_. The linear measure of one _dhrâ‛_ or _drâ‛_ equals about twenty-seven inches. The grain measure, called _ṣâ‛_, is the least regular of all. The Râm Allâh ṣâ‛, for example, is a little larger than the Jerusalem ṣâ‛ and more than double that of Ṭayyibeh.
In theory the coinage of the country consists of the Turkish gold pound of one hundred piasters, the silver _mejîdeh_ of twenty piasters, the half and quarter silver mejîdeh, the silver double piaster, piaster and half piaster. There are also coins of nickel and copper alloy, one called _bishlik_, which equals two and a half piasters, a double bishlik, called _wazary_ in Jerusalem and _zahrâweh_ at Haifa, a half bishlik, a half piaster and a quarter piaster. There are some copper coins of small value. This list and these values are according to the government standard, which is called _ṣâgh_, and they hold for all payments of taxes, for the post and telegraph and for legal business. For ordinary trade in the country, though these same coins are used, different values are assigned to them. Thus Hebron, Jerusalem and other places have their own systems of reckoning. In Jerusalem the tariff _sherk_, or market, as it is called, makes the mejîdeh twenty-three piasters instead of twenty as in government reckoning. The result is a diminution of the piaster and an increase in the number of them in each of the coins mentioned above. The Turkish gold pound is not seen in the country, but the gold twenty-franc pieces of the Latin Monetary Union are frequently seen and go by the name _lîreh fransaweh_ or _nubalyôn_ (Napoleon). This coin equals one hundred and nine piasters according to the Jerusalem market rate.