[1] Most rural notables originated in, and belonged to, the fellahin/peasantry class, forming a lower-echelon land-owning gentry in Palestine's post-Tanzimat countryside and emergent towns.
[2] Numerically, rural notables form the majority of Palestinian elites, although certainly not the richest.
[3] In contrast to urban elites traditionally made of city-dwelling merchants (tujjar),[4] clerics ('ulema), ashraf, military officers, and governmental functionaries,[5][6][7] the rural notability was composed of rural sheikhs, village or clan mukhtars.
Rural notables took advantage of changing legal, administrative and political conditions, and global economic realities, to achieve socio-economic and political ascendancy using households, marriage alliances and networks of patronage.
[3] Over all, they played a leading role in the development of modern Palestine into the late 20th century.