Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism

There is a certain school of thought among Zionist historians that detects anti-Semitic overtones in every action or utterance of Muslim rulers of the Middle East. Sultan Abdul-Hamid II’s famous refusal to allow Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, to settle Palestine with Jewish colonists is a case in point. Herzl probably thought that he was offering the Sultan a bargain, knowing that the Sultan’s dearest wish was to rescue the empire from the indebtedness it had fallen into as a result of easy European loans.

Herzl offered to buy up and then turn over the Ottoman Debt to the Sultan’s government in return for an Imperial Charter for the Colonization of Palestine by the Jewish people. For having refused, the Sultan is painted in the lurid colors of the Muslim bigot and presented as the first of a long series of Jewish-hating rulers particularly characteristic of the Muslim Middle East.

And yet, this is far from the truth. The fact that Jews native to the Ottoman empire had long coexisted and made contributions to Ottoman culture is totally ignored, although it was a reality recorded in many of the archives of the provinces of the Ottoman empire. Ottoman Jerusalem, for instance, was, and is still famous for the coexistence of many different ethnic, religious and confessional groups often living together cheek by jowl.

The reasons for Abdul-Hamid II’s decision not to initiate the beginnings of Jewish political settlement in Palestine had to do with the internal or foreign affairs of the empire, and were not based on racial or ethnic bias. At a time when the multinational Ottoman empire was being torn apart by secessionist movements in the Balkans and East Anatolia, the Turkish government feared the creation of yet another nationality problem . The Sultan’s government also recognized that the venture would sow the seeds for Jewish expansionism that might affect negatively other Ottoman provinces. Finally, the Great Powers posed as the protectors of religious minorities in the empire and the Sultan did not want to provide them with further advantage. As a result , the Ottomans devised a series of entry restrictions that prohibited all foreign Jews, with the exception of pilgrims, from visiting Palestine. Through active European involvement, however, European Jews were granted official protection as bona-fide minorities, thereby increasing the number of “native” Jews in Palestine, and thereby flouting Ottoman laws.

In Jerusalem, the governor, Ali Ekrem Bey was hard put to stem the tide of Jewish immigration and often laid the blame for the phenomenal rise of Jewish migrants at the door of foreign Consuls who offered protection to all minorities . The governor realized that laws were not enough to prevent the sale of land to foreign Jewish settlers because many lands had been acquired by private agreements and the connivance of corrupt officials. Moreover, the local Sephardi community was becoming susceptible to “the winds of change” and falling under the influence of Zionist ideas. Although he actively fought against these tendencies , in the end Ali Ekrem Bey was forced to conclude that the foreign Consuls had usurped a large role in the conduct of minority relations with the Ottoman state. Suffice it to say that largely as a result of that foreign interference, by 1908 when Sultan Abdul-Hamid II’s rule collapsed, it was estimated that the Jewish population of Palestine had risen to 80,000, three times its number in 1882, when the first entry restrictions were imposed. And Jews had acquired some 156 square miles of land, setting up 26 colonies.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

References
Oke, Mim Kemal, “The Ottoman Empire, Zionism and the Question of Palestine” in International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol.14, 1982.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

Although the opening up of the Ottoman archives to scholars has resulted in the revision of many flawed arguments on Ottoman history, the remarkable thing is that many biases remain in the literature. Among the most persistent have been the periodic attempts to portray the empire as inherently anti-Christian and, of course, anti-Jewish. The presumption is that because the Ottomans upheld Islam as the state religion, and fought against Christian states to expand their territories, they automatically discriminated against other faiths in the empire.

And yet, archival history tells a different story. Amnon Cohen’s article on Muslim policies with regard to the Christian community of 16th century Jerusalem explores the complexity of relations between state and religion without resort to simplistic arguments.

Although Christians were not considered as equal to Muslims in many instances, the state never “prevented any of the Christian communities from exercising their historically acknowledged rights of free passage into Jerusalem” nor interfered in any way with their religious conduct.

Moreover, even though several incidents throughout this period gravely affected this relationship, Cohen puts them into perspective. He concludes that, overall, the expulsion of the Franciscan monks from Mt. Zion in 1551, Muslim attempts to legally seize parts of the Monastery of the Cross and threats to the Coptic monastery in Jerusalem were not so much the work of official policy as they were the actions of Muslim “zealots”.

In any case, Istanbul reimbursed the monks’ loss by providing them with other properties on which to build monasteries. The important thing is that these episodes never formed part of Ottoman ideology. Quite to the contrary, the state continued to treat all its citizens with justice and to uphold their rights throughout the Ottoman period, even though the empire itself was constantly prey to anti-Muslim prejudice (and potential dismemberment) from Christian Europe.

Further evidence that the Ottoman empire kept to its contract with ahl al-kitab (people of the Book) is provided in Ottoman church documents. They reveal the systematic building, renovation and upkeep of churches and monasteries in Jerusalem and beyond. This is apparent even in times of inter-communal friction.

For instance, an interesting phenomenon is the permission granted to the Armenian Catholic community in Jerusalem in 1887 to build a church on property close to a Muslim mystic fellowship, even though the Armenian Catholics in Jerusalem numbered but four houses comprising 22 men and women. What is extraordinary about the incident is that this permission was given to the Armenians of Jerusalem at about the same time as state elements were massacring Armenians in Anatolia.

In another instance, when the Greek Orthodox community asked the Porte for allowance to renovate their church in 1881, they were automatically allowed to do so. Even on the rare occasions when Istanbul initially refused permission, as it did in 1894 when the 30-odd Greek Catholic rite wanted to erect a second church in Jerusalem (on property already inhabited by Muslims), eventually official consent was given for a second church to be built.

Significantly, all permission was granted based on the same formula: that the governor of Jerusalem ascertain that the property on which the churches would be built belonged to the community in question, that it did not infringe on Muslim property, and most important of all, that no force would be used to extract contributions from community members to build the churches.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

References:
Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim and Saadawi, Salih eds., Al-kana’is al-arabiyya fi al-sijjil al-kanasi al-uthmani, 1868-1922 (Arab Churches in Ottoman Church Documents, 1868-1922), Amman : Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, 1998.

Cohen, Amnon, “The Ottoman Approach to Christians and Christianity in Sixteenth Century Jerusalem”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol.7, no.2, June 1996.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

Much like the rest of the Middle East, the Palestinian peasant or fellah is considered to have no history worth mentioning. Because peasant families were often illiterate and left no records, little is known of their problems or their everyday concerns.

However, what can be recovered of their traditions and culture often emerges through a combination of sources: Ottoman law codes or tax surveys in the 16th century, foreign accounts of Palestinian rural life in the 18th and 19th centuries and Arab, British, and Zionist documents and papers in the 20th century.

Whether written from the perspective of the Ottoman tax farmer or governor, the Arab notable, the Zionist settler, or the European official, this elitist literature reinforces the common perception of the Palestinian peasantry as historically subordinate and politically unaware.

And yet, new research indicates that this was far from the truth. Amy Singer’s work on 16th century Jerusalem shows that the frequently ignored and always marginalized Palestinian fellah had different means at his disposal to signal his displeasure with the status quo.

One of these was migration, the periodical– and unsettling– departure of peasants from villages they had cultivated by tradition and communal right. The abrupt departure of groups of fellaheen from their customary places of work was important because, among other things, it threatened the Ottoman sense of order, tied as it was to the security of food production in the empire.

By leaving fertile land uncultivated, the Palestinian peasantry jeopardized the overall Ottoman distribution of food crops in the empire, thus upsetting the delicate balance which tied each Ottoman sub-region to the empire as a whole.

But evidence from Islamic court records in Jerusalem also indicates that a sense of fair play was also at work. While many of the judges’ rulings forced the authorities to arrest peasants who had fled to other Palestinian districts so as to bring them to justice, the underlying justification was not always the punishment of the fellah.

In many instances, the judge wanted to find out why the peasant had fled and if he had done so for a valid reason. Interestingly, if there was a legitimate reason for the fellah’s migration (such as the oppression by a particular landlord), the state was often flexible enough to devise means to solve the problem.

For instance, Singer notes that a legal ruling allowed a peasant who had migrated to another region , and who had not been caught and sent back to his home village in the space of ten years, to remain where he was. This permitted the successful migrant to forego the oppressive conditions of work that had made him migrate in the first place, and continue tilling the land in more hospitable districts. This was beneficial both from the peasant’s point of view (his well-being was assured) and the Ottoman state’s food security considerations.

Singer notes that “the close attention given to peasant movements in the sixteenth century suggests a continuing potential or real shortage of labor … [and] under such conditions, flight from abusive officials was a strong weapon for peasants because it brought their situation to the immediate attention of the responsible administrators”.

She also suggests that peasant migration eventually took on a political character, which distinguished seasonal migrations in search of work from the more principled stands taken by fleeing Palestinian fellaheen as a result of injustice. Thus, even though the peasantry had no recourse to the written word, and even though its existence was periodically recognized only because of extraordinary economic disruptions, the fellaheen of historic Palestine entered history, even if it was the result of other peoples’ actions.

Moreover, in late 19th and early 20th century Palestine, it was often the peasantry that alerted the Arab notability and elite to the dangers inherent in Zionist land purchases and settlement. It has often been claimed that an Arab awareness of the Zionist takeover of Palestinian land only became entrenched in the late 1930s, too late to mount a coordinated campaign to offset the by-now permanent features of Jewish settlement in Palestine.

But, as Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, land sales and transfers of whole groups of Palestinian fellaheen out of their traditional villages to make way for Zionist collectives instigated a number of serious peasant-led rebellions. Among the most important were those in the Tiberias region in 1901-1902 and Afula in 1910-1911.

Although peasant insurgencies against Zionist settlements were recorded from as early as 1884-1886, those in Tiberias and Afula were significant because they galvanized Arab nationalist opinion against the systematic colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural communities.

They also laid bare the seemingly laissez-faire attitude of Ottoman governors who went along with Zionist aims on the pretext that they were just upholding a contractual agreement between a buyer and seller (often an Arab absentee landowner).

Such notables as Amir Amin Arslan and Shukri al-Asali– both sub-district governors in Palestine at the time– not only took issue with their superiors’ orders and resisted the command to turn over land held communally by Palestinian fellaheen (but frequently privately owned by Arab merchant families) to organizations, such as the Jewish Colonization Association, but also rallied Arab nationalist opinion against such sales in the Ottoman parliament and the Arab press.

Because they had been first-hand witnesses to the peasant rebellions against Zionist land expropriation, they became ardent sympathizers with, and vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Thus the politicization of the Ottoman Arab elite, usually seen as a by-product of Western influence, actually took its cue from the very real grievances of the Palestinian peasantry, the one sector of Palestinian society often seen as having no voice in its own affairs.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

References :
Khalidi, Rashid, “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism Before World War I ” in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming The Victims : Spurious Scholarship and The Palestinian Question, London : Verso, 1988.

Singer, Amy, “Peasant Migration : Law and Practice in Early Ottoman Palestine” in New Perspectives on Turkey, no.8, Fall 1992.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

One of the more interesting aspects of history in any part of the world is the shifting reality exhibited in the textual sources of any one period.

It has become obvious over the years that the historian is as prone to making mistakes and misjudgments as any other human observer, and that biases and overt prejudice frequently mar many historical narratives, whether these concern foreign countries or those closer to the historian’s home region. This is because “objective” history is a misnomer; life is riddled with inconsistencies, misunderstandings and flawed perceptions, which routinely show up in the most scrupulous chronicles of times past.

It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast foreign and local sources with regard to one of the most misrepresented sectors of humanity, women. Traditionally, women in the Islamic world have been given short shrift throughout history; along with the peasantry, they are among the least visible members of Arab-Islamic-Ottoman society.

But all this is changing; the new Middle Eastern scholarship is focusing on a number of issues heretofore considered of marginal interest, of which women take pride of place.

One of the most fascinating articles on this subject is that by Dror Ze’vi, entitled “Women in 17th Century Jerusalem: Western and Indigenous Perspectives”. In it, the author compares male European perspectives on women in Jerusalem to those of male Arab-Ottoman perspectives found in Islamic court records.

The first, superficial and frequently tinged with contempt, exhibits a profoundly ignorant view of women and their role in the family and society at large. The second shows women as active — if separate — members of a society in the throes of constant change brought on by the social, economic and political constraints of the moment.

Whereas Europeans note the strict segregation of Ottoman Palestinian life, which secludes women from the company of all but their closest male relatives and women in general, the judges of the Islamic court in Jerusalem record the many instances in which women not only abrogated their marriages (if undertaken without their consent) but also bought, sold and mortgaged property.

Thus, in contrast to European society, in which women had few, if any property rights, Arab Muslim women not only actively engaged in buying and selling land but also employed men as agents to pursue their transactions.

Moreover, women often showed up in court arguing in their own defense, a far cry from the image projected by European travelers of women living in total isolation from social interaction.

Another article supporting Ze’vi’s thesis, albeit from another part of Ottoman Palestine, shows the variety of ways in which women negotiated (and renegotiated) their positions in society. Far from being passive creatures dependent on their menfolk for assistance in everyday affairs, Iris Agmon’s article proves that women in early 20th century Haifa and Jaffa knew how to enhance the relationships that mattered most to them, which were those between them and their children and those between them and their natal families, or the households in which they were born.

Because men were responsible for their children’s upkeep, they exerted more say in the way that children were brought up and eventually married off. But, as Agmon’s research shows, women used subtle strategies to enhance both their children’s and natal families’ socioeconomic benefits, in part because the women in question could be easily divorced.

In that case, a woman’s assets were better protected by her natal family, to which she often returned after being repudiated by her husband. Thus, contrary to the distorted picture painted in Western sources, women in Ottoman Palestine knew how to take advantage of their “secondary” status, partly because they were adept at securing their rights within Islam in open court.

Among the varying methods of how to study the modern Middle East, historians of the Ottoman period have a particularly difficult time choosing between two. According to authorities in the field, these approaches are labeled macro-history and micro-history.

The first deals with broad patterns of social interaction, economic activity and political development. It portrays the history of any one society or people as large interpretations of existing data, using theoretical or quantitative frameworks to study continuity and change over time. The second deals with detailed case studies of people or events that may convey a smaller but necessarily more intimate look at society. It functions as a microcosm of larger trends.

Both approaches figure prominently in the study of Ottoman societies, so it is no surprise to see that they have also been used with regard to the history of women in Ottoman Palestine.

Shar’iyya court records primarily handled Islamic family law but in addition to marriage, divorce and inheritance agreements, they also recorded “sales deeds, commercial partnership contracts, waqf (endowment) deeds and building authorizations”(Ze’vi, 1995).

The problem arises with the interpretations that historians draw out from what are, in essence, legal judgements passed by literate, government-appointed men of the law on both literate as well as illiterate women and men from all classes of society. The biases inherent in the court records are largely those of the educated, legal scholars confronting the “great unwashed” of the small towns and villages of Palestine.

In addition, as Dror Ze’vi’s article on Ottoman Jerusalem shows, court records sometimes fudged the “reality” they presented, so that the facts presented were never completely fool-proof. For instance, there are no records of murders of girls or women in the city whereas the records of such “honor” crimes were plentiful for the rural districts.

Ze’evi surmises this was because the judges were men and tended to believe the stories of the fathers and brothers questioned in “accidental” deaths. Ze’evi believes that, where family honor was concerned, the judges of Islamic courts preferred to “hear no evil”. They did this not only to safeguard the honor of men but of society as well.

Nonetheless, court records provide a slice of reality that is far more complex and vibrant than the macro-histories of the European traveler or the journeying scholar. Among other things, they allow the conscientious historian to ferret out the strategies through which women played key roles in society. By taking the law in their own hands, so to speak, women in Ottoman Jerusalem and elsewhere in Palestine were able to engage actively in commercial pursuits that secured them a form of power and status in society that would otherwise have been denied them.

While many women were not apprised of their rights in Islam, and sometimes cheated of their inheritances by brothers or husbands, the more fortunate did indeed receive redress from Islamic judges, who were, for the most part, fair-minded and cognizant of the law down to the minutest detail.

References :
Ze’vi, Dror, “Women in 17th Century Jerusalem : Western and Indigenous Perspectives”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol.27, no.2, May 1995.

Agmon, Iris, “Women, Class and Gender: Muslim Jaffa and Haifa at the Turn of the 20th Century”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol.30, no.4, November 1998.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

It has long been known that the records of foreign missionaries in the Near and Middle East serve as valuable repositories of the social, religious, political, and even economic events of their adopted towns or districts. The reports sent to the Missionary Herald, a journal first issued in 1805 as the official organ of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (based in Boston) are one such source. Among their very interesting reports are those that dwell on the historic accommodation between faith and power that was one of the characteristics of Jerusalem throughout its long history.

In contrast to the received wisdom that stresses that Christians and Muslims were in perpetual conflict with one another in the Ottoman empire, due to the latent anti-Christian hostility exhibited by generations of Muslim Ottoman rulers, the situation in Jerusalem was far more complex. When the Reverends Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons were sent as Protestant missionaries to the city in the early 19th century, they did encounter great hostility but it did not stem from Muslims. Most of it arose from the Catholics in Jerusalem. On one occasion, in 1824, the missionaries at the American-led Palestine Mission believed that “the Catholics in Palestine violently oppose the efforts made to circulate the Scriptures” and that, due to their power in the Ottoman empire, not only forbade the Catholic Patriarch from meeting with the two Protestant missionaries but also influenced the issuance of ” a Firman (Sultanic decree) from the Grand Seignore at Constantinople (the Sultan himself), forbidding the sale of Bibles, and other religious materials, in his dominions.” Unlike the Protestant clergy, the Catholic hierarchy did not believe that Christians should read the Bible without the intercession of their parish priests. This was true until up to 50 years ago.

There is also a mistaken belief that the primary purpose of the foreign Missions was to proselytize among the Muslim population of Palestine. But, as the letter of intent of the American Board of Commissioners to the two American missionaries shows, most Christian missionary activity was directed at Jews (and Jewish converts to Christianity in the US were initially believed to be more successful than Protestant missionaries in furthering that assignment). In one part of the letter, the missionaries are told frankly that “[their] Mission … might be the means not only of conveying the Gospel to Jews and Mohamedans but of awakening [Christians] to the duties of the times”, thus making clear that the mission was many-tiered, aimed at all “native” religions in Jerusalem, including Eastern Christianity.

On the whole, however, the recognition on the part of the two missionaries that Ottoman Jerusalem catered to a plurality of faiths and confessions forced them to adapt their work to the local situation.For instance, they realized that for their missionary work to succeed, the Bible would have to be translated into different languages, both European and non-European (including Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and Turkish). Moreover, and much to their surprise, the propensity of the two missionaries to learn Farsi and Arabic was highly admired, and even gained them the friendship of some of the “Mussulmen”.

Finally, while “modernization” theory has had its day, there is some truth to the fact that external influences did play a part in the shaping of local Christian identity in Ottoman Palestine. One of the interesting facets of the missionaries’ work in Jerusalem consisted in the selection of highly motivated Christian youths for further education in the United States. In the 1820’s, the Turco-Greek war succeeded in granting independence to Greece. In the spirit of the age, it seemed almost natural that young Greek men from Jerusalem would be among the first selected for foreign educational missions, thus lending credence to the oft-repeated statement that missionaries were the first wave of modernizers in the Middle East.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

Reference:

Salibi, Kamal and Khoury, Yusuf K., Eds. The Missionary Herald: “Reports from Ottoman Syria, 1819-1870.” Vol.1, Amman: Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, 1995.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

When Jerusalem was occupied by Ottoman troops in the early 16th century, neither the local population was harmed nor were the historic sites damaged. Quite to the contrary, law and order was reinforced, the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt, and the bedouin kept at bay. Moreover, Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver also built a number of drinking-fountains for the provision of water to the worshippers that flocked to the Haram al-Sharif (The Noble Sanctuary). The return to security and stability was enough to produce two near-immediate results: an increase in population and an economic boom.

Because water for agriculture was always scarce in Jerusalem, the region’s rural surplus was not as important as its urban revival. The city’s prosperity depended on sources other than agriculture. In the 16th century, the economic corporations or guilds in the city had a very high profile. Artisans and craftsmen thrived, and so did Jerusalem. Among the best known guilds were those of the soap-makers, the bakers, the linen-workers and the weapons makers. Trade was also important in Jerusalem, as testified to by the numerous specialized markets in the city. There were the apothecaries, the vegetable sellers, the dye-makers and the leather suppliers. But the most important was the cotton market. Although it had existed under the Mamluks, the market had since then fallen in disrepair. Then the early Ottoman administration (in conjunction with local merchants and entrepreneurs) injected renewed energy into its renovation and repair. As a result of government-led expansion (which also led to the renaming of the market as Suq al-Sultan), the number of warehouses and shops in the market area increased, and so did their prices!

Very little traces of this prosperity and urban renewal remained in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jerusalem underwent a period of arrested growth during that time, which lasted until the early 1830’s. Contrary to the 16th century, its renaissance came about not because of economic or commercial expansion but because of the political, religious and administrative developments of the 19th century. In fact, the late historian Alexander Scholch believed that “the history of Jerusalem in the 19th century is the history of her emergence as a major administrative centre in Bilad al-Sham and, in a way, as the capital of Palestine…”.

After the Egyptian General Ibrahim Pasha’s occupation of Syria in 1832, foreign missions and consulates were established throughout the province that, upon the Ottoman re-occupation, proved hard to dislodge. The first European consulates were those of Great Britain (1838), Prussia (1842), Sardinia (1843), France (1843), America (1856) and Russia (1857). Meanwhile, the Anglo-Prussian Protestant Bishopric opened its doors in 1841, the Latin Patriarchate was reestablished in 1847 and the Russians sent a Bishop in 1858. And after 1845, the Greek-Orthodox patriarchs of Jerusalem moved their seat from Constantinople to Jerusalem itself. All of these European-inspired changes quite naturally accelerated the building boom in the city. Starting with the construction of new buildings inside and outside the town by the English and German Protestants in the 1840’s, “the erection of new churches, monasteries, synagogues, mosques, schools, hospitals, orphanages, hospices, consulates etc. continued without interruption until World War One”. It is noteworthy that wealthy Muslim families participated in the changing of Jerusalem’s urban landscape alongside foreign European and Christian organizations.

Scholch makes clear that the city’s new prominence arose not as a result of commercial opportunities but because Jerusalem “lived off and for the Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy places, for the institutions which existed or were established for their sake and from the pilgrims and travelers who visited them”. He also says that the influx of European Jewry did not have a discernible effect on industrial or commercial activity for many of the Jews that moved to the city in that period “continued to live off alms collected from Europe”. But the building boom was instrumental in creating new jobs for Jerusalem’s artisans, craftsmen and small builders. It also had an effect on the establishment of the telegraph and the railway, and the construction of new roads.

Finally, the increased attention paid to the urbanization of Jerusalem, the spread of communications and the growth of the population forced the Ottomans’ hand, so to speak. In the middle of the 19th century, the administrative redevelopment of Jerusalem was a key aspect of the Ottoman centralization of Palestine. As a result of the institution of municipal and administrative councils, Jerusalem’s political life was revitalized. Chief among the political reformers of the epoch were the important Muslim families that had long resided in the city. The next article will discuss their great significance to Jerusalem before , during, and after World War One.

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

References:
Alexander Scholch, Jerusalem in the 19th Century (1831-1917 AD) in K J Asali, ed. Jerusalem in History. New York : Olive Branch Press, 1996. Suleiman Masalha, trans. Amnon Cohen.

Al-quds : dirasat fi tarikh al-madina. Yad Yastahaq Bin Tasqi, Jerusalem, 1990.

Posted on: 1999

By Dr. Hala Fattah

Over the years, a number of misstatements have entered the academic field and obscured the true meaning of the Palestinian experience. One of these is the notion that Palestinian nationalism was non-existent until the birth of Zionism and that, much like the rest of the Arab world, it only flourish  under the impact of a model imported wholesale from the West.

Professor Rashid Khalidi has written a subtle and powerful book that examines the issue within a historical framework entitledPalestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness.

Rashid Khalidi believes that, much like the rest of the world’s nationalisms, Palestinian identity is both a construct and a process. In other words, the Palestinian sense of selfhood and nationality is at once a concrete set of expression arising from a collective notion of people hood and “belonging”, and a phenomenon that changes over time. It is therefore both fixed and fluid. Moreover, like all “ imagined”constructions, it incorporates within it different levels of affiliation. Khalidi states,” the intellectuals, writers and politicians who were instrumental in the evolution of the first forms of Palestinian identity at the end of the last century and early in this century…identified with the Ottoman empire, their religion, Arabism, their homeland Palestine, their city or region, and their family, without feeling any contradiction, or sense of conflicting loyalties”. After the collapse of the empire, a wrenching transformation occurred that forced a reorientation from an Ottoman and pan-Islamic identity to Palestinian national consciousness. Once existing among a set of loyalties, Palestinian identity became the primary focus of the leaders, intellectuals and politicians of Mandate-era Palestine.

In the period that followed, this sense of nationhood only developed and strengthened among the different Arab communities in Palestine. Khalidi believes that “Although the Zionist challenge definitely helped to shape the specific form Palestinian national identification took, it is a serious mistake to suggest that Palestinian identity emerged mainly as a response to Zionism”. This is because Palestinian nationalism developed alongside the nationalism of the Arab world, and in fact helped revitalize and refocus a Arab identity that had roots as far as the 18^th century. And he goes on the caution that “While studies of Palestinian nationalism have concentrated on its evolution in recent decades, in fact most elements of Palestinian identity- particularly the enduring and parochial, local ones- were well-developed before the climactic events of 1948, although they continued to overlap and change both before and after that date”.

Because of its important religious and , Jerusalem became a significant symbol of that new identity. As described in our preceding article on the building and population of Jerusalem, the rise of Western schools and new Western-influenced juridical codes opened up the educational and legal system to novel changes. This displaced the locus of power from the traditionalist Muslim religious elite to the “new men”. Moreover, as a result of trying to thwart the constant interference of foreign consuls and governments, Ottoman central authority took on more authority, thus jeopardizing further the influence of the local religious hierarchy.

Eventually the old notability adapted, switching their sons to the new schools and training their offspring in the new law codes and systems.

Alongside the adaptability of the class of notables in Jerusalem, and their continued hold on the intellectual and social life of the city, another literate section of the city turned to the publication of newspapers. Among the most important was the official al-Quds al-Sharif [published in Arabic and Turkish], another paper published purely in Arabic called Al-Quds, and al-Najah, al Nafir, al-Munadi, al-Dustur and Baytal-Maqdis. Khalidi states that “As the Ottoman era drew to a close, what can be seen in the press, as in a few other sources, is the increasing usage of the terms, “Palestine” and Palestinian”, and a focus on Palestine as a country”. However, this literary and intellectual ferment came to an end with the collapse of the Ottoman centuries. Again Khalidi puts it best: “As the Ottoman era in Palestine ended with the capture of Jerusalem by General Allenby’s troops in December 1917, there passed with it not only sovereign domination-transferred from one power to another-but also the possibilities of autonomous development for the indigenous population, and of unfettered economic social and intellectual interaction between Palestine and other parts of the region.”

Of Iraqi origin, Dr. Hala is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, especiallyIraq. She is the author of The Politics of Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900(S.U.N.Y Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.

This text is from the book Patterns of the Past Prospects for the Future Edited by Thomas Hummel, Kevork Hintlian and Ulf Carmesund

On the eve of the Great War in 1914, the Arab provinces of the empire (including notably Palestine) while still nominal Ottoman rule, stood de facto under the joint suzerainty of the Porte and the European powers, a result of the interplay between the financial tutelage and the combination of the millet policy and the Capitulations as they had evolved. There was indeed a struggle between the Young Turks, who were attempting to get rid of the Capitulations altogether ( and who finally opted for war on Germany’s side in part because France and Britain would not hear of revoking them) and some Arabs of greater Syria, who wanted to use their millet status and the Capitulations to further their autonomy. France and Britain, to name only those two powers, had specific ambitions with respect to the region, before the outbreak of war. In 1912, France was recognized  (by Britain, not by Italy or Russia) as the prime protector of greater Syria (including Palestine and Lebanon), but with great reservations, as was later to become manifest with the Balfour declaration.

Findley has made a significant conceptual breakthrough with his characterization of the late Ottoman empire as ‘doubly imperial, that is to say, subject to the historical laws as they affect empire ( a political entity composed of many sub-entities). It was doubly imperial…

On the one hand, it remained a formally independent, multinational empire. On the other hand, it lost territory to separatist nationalisms and to great-power imperialism, and it slipped into economic and political dependence. We have here been dealing with a particular aspect of that doubly imperial quality, or rather one of the various ways through which it can be grasped historically. We have attempted to show unexpected results relating to this doubly imperial quality, were obtained through the particular effects of historical processes.

The interaction between sectarian policy and international politics in the late Ottoman period demonstrates the unexpected effects of particular causes, as well as the interaction of diverse policy elements in producing unanticipated results. The Capitulations were initially agreed upon under conditions where the Ottoman empire was dealing with its European partners from a position of strength; in later centuries, as the empire declined, the treaties remained and the Europeans did everything they could to interpret them in the sense of increasing their influence upon and control over various areas (port cities for example) and communities (Greeks, Jews, Armenians) in the empire, and thus over its policies as a whole

Posted on: 2000

By Adly Muhatadi

The Wailing Wall, or Western Wall, is held by most Jews to be the remnant of the Second Temple, and thus has become an object of veneration. It forms the base of the Haram al-Sharif, where stands the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque. This wall is also known to Muslims as al-Buraq, considered a holy place because it was here that Muhammed tethered his winged steed on his journey to Jerusalem. Access to the wall was through a passage in the Magrebi residential quarter, completely destroyed by Israel in 1967.

The wall and much of the area around it constitutes Waqf property ( a religiously and legally protected endowment), owned by the Muslims since the time of Salah-al-din.

Acquired by trade and purchase, this Waqf property is open to all to come and worship and pray there. Throughout the centuries of Muslim rule, Jewish rights to pray at the wall have always been safeguarded. With the emergence of the Zionist movement, more militant Zionist elements began to emerge, and in the late 1920s these groups sought to change the status of the wall. Rather than addressing their demands to the appropriate concerned authorities, these elements forced the issue by bringing screens, benches, and other objects to the area. These objects not only caused great congestion in the area because they did not allow for the free passage of people, but it also was a change in the “status quo”.

The concept of “status quo” in the religious sites in Jerusalem allows religious communities to preserve their rights over certain sites. According to the British who were ruling Palestine at that time, “the regulations pertaining to religious practices at the holy places in Jerusalem and the balance between the rights and claims of the different faiths and denominations with regard to these places have in the past always been based the so-called Status Quo.

” If any change in status is not protested by a community, then after a period of time, the change becomes the new status quo. Thus, the Moslem community was concerned that any additions to the wall by Jewish worshippers would change the status quo- “ for after stools would come benches, the benches would then be fixed, and before long the Jews would have established legal claim to the site.

Zionists Jews in the 1920’s forced such changes in the status quo. The Jewish worshippers brought benches and a screen to separate men and women, which were removed by the police several times. The Deputy District Commissioner noted in 1927 “ several incidents and many problems caused by the Jews around the question of the Buraq plainly indicate that they have laid down a plan of gradually obtaining this place.”

The tensions escalated and the ensuing violence resulted in riots on August 1929 with hundreds of casualties on both sides. The British sent in a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the cause of the “disturbances.” The Commission, headed by Sir Walter Shaw, former Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements, arrived in Palestine in October that same year and remained there for two months. One of the recommendations he made to the Secretary of State for the Colonies was the need to establish an ad hoc Commission to determine the rights and claims for Moslems and Jews in connection with the Wailing Wall and, on January 1930, it was decided that:

A Commission shall be entrusted with the settlement of the rights and claims of the Jews and Moslems with regard to the Wailing Wall:

The Commission shall consist of members not of British nationality…

Elief Lofgren, formerly Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs. Member of the Upper Chamber of the Swedish Riksdag (as Chairman). Charles Barde, Vice-President of the Court of Justice at Geneva, President of the Austro-Roumanian Mixed Arbitration tribunal and C.J. Van Kempen, formerly Governor of the East Coast of Sumatra, Member of the States-General of the Netherlands.

On June 13, 1930, the members of the new Commission sailed for Palestine and arrived on the June 19, and stayed for one month. The Commission was appointed by the United Kingdom and approved by the League of Nations.

From the book The Right and Claims of Moslems and Jews in connection with the Wailing Wall at Jerusalem by the Institute for Palestine Studies. 

With respect to the position of the Western or Wailing Wall ( in Arabic Al Buraq; in Hebrew, Kothel Maarawi and the lie of the surrounding area, see the official plan drawn by the Palestine Government.

The Wailing Wall forms an integral part of the western exterior shell of the Haram-el-Sherif which itself is the site of the ancient Jewish temples, at the present day supplanted by Moslem Mosques. The Haram-el-Sherif ina ctual fact is a vast rectangular platform, several hundred metres in length and width. One of the said Mosques, the Mosque of Aqsa, is contiguous to the southern exterior wall of the Haram and extends up to the Wailing Wall at its southern end. The other Mosque, the Dome of the Rock ( in Arabic, Qubet Al Sakra), or, as it is usually called, the Mosque of Omar, is situated in the middle of the Haram area.

The Eastern Wall of the Haram-el-Sherif as a whole is a structure of more than 100 meters in length and about 20 meters in height. The very large blocks of stone at the base of the Wall, more especially the six courses of drafted stones, are dated by most archaeologists to the times of the Temple of Herod (i.e., the second reconstructed Temple). Many of the stones bear inscriptions in Hebrew on their faces, some of them painted, others engraved.

Above these stones there are three courses of undrafted masonry; these are probably colony by the Emperor Hadrian). The upper strata again are of much later date, belonging probably to the period about 1500 A.D. Recent researches go to show that the boundaries of the Wall coincide with those of the platform of the Temple of Solomom, of which courses of stones are supposed to still remain beneath the surface. The part of the Wall about which dispute has arisen between the Jews and the Moslems comprises about 30 metres of the exterior wall mentioned. In front of that part of the wall there is a stretch of pavement to which the only access, on the northern side, is by a narrow lane proceeding from King David’s street. To the south this pavement extends to another wall, which shuts the pavement off at right angles to the Wailing Wall from a few private houses and from the Mosque of Buraq site to the south.

In the year 1929 a door was made at the southern end of the wall last mentioned, and it gives access to the private houses and the Mosque. At the northern end of the pavement a third wall, with a door in it, shuts off the area from the courtyard in front of the Grand Mufti’s offices.

The pavement in front of the Wall has a width of about 4 metres. Its boundaries of three sides have already been indicated; on the fourth side, i.e., the one opposite to the Wailing Wall, the pavement is bounded by the exterior wall and houses of so-called Moghrabi Quarter. On that side there are two doors which led to the Moghrabi houses.

It is this Pavement running at the base of the part of the Wall just referred to that the Jews are in the habit of resorting to for purposes of devotion.

At a short distance from it, in the southern direction and within the Wall itself, there is a chamber or niche in which according to tradition Mohammed’s steed, Buraq, was tethered when the Prophet during the course of his celestial journey (as to which see below) visited the Haram-el-Sherif. It is for this reason that the Wall is known to Moslems as Al-Buraq.

Before proceeding further we desire to state that at the date of our sojourn in Jerusalem, the Wall and its environs were not exactly in the same state as before the War, for as already stated by the Shaw Commission certain innovations had been introduced, viz:

–         The erection of a new structure above the northern end of the Wall.

–         The conversion of a house at the southern end of the Pavement into a “Zawiyah” ( literally to be translated, Moslem   “sacred corner”).

–         The construction of the above-mentioned door giving access from the “Zawiyah” to  the Pavement in front of the Wall, and constituting a through connection from the

Haram area (through the Moghrabi Gate) to the Pavement in front of the Wall.