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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 18th 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.
Posted on: 2000
By Sami Rami
In August 15, 1929, militant Zionist groups paraded in the vicinity of Al-Buraq Muslim Wall, which Jews believed since long times to be their Wailing Wall, in the first political demonstration of its kind after the British occupation of Palestine in 1918. 
Under the British invaders, Palestine witnessed a process of mass Jewish immigration and colonization. The Mandate uthorities encouraged Zionists to build some 60 Jewish colonies in less than a dozen of years, from 1918 to 1929.
As a result of those grave developments, especially the Zionist political demonstration at Wailing Wall stirred Palestinian susceptibility and tolled the bills of an impending catastrophe.
Consequently the first Palestinian revolution erupted in the face of the Zionist attempt to mess with Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and its Western Wall, a Muslim property the seventh century when two Umayyad Caliphs, Abdul Melik and his son Walid built the magnificent Mosque of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, which both constitute Haram Sharif. The Ottomans and previous Muslim rulers allowed Jews to visit and practice their prayers at Walling Wall without changing the legal status of the Muslim holy places allowed Jews.
A British-appointed Commission of Inquiry, with the approval of the Council of the League of Nations, reported rightfully on Zionist instigated violence in the aftermath of the first political militant demonstration by Zionist groups of August 15, 1929 “ the Arabs have come to see in Jewish immigration not only a menace to their livelihood but a possible overlord of the future.”
The Commission concluded that the ownership of the Western Wall belonged solely to Muslims and it formed an integral part of Haram Sharif. Unfortunately, Israel occupation of Arab East Jerusalem in June 1967 encouraged extremist Jewish groups, as Faithfuls of the Temple, to blackmail Muslim worshippers from time to time, threatening to demolish al-Haram and build the third Temple. Moreover, occupation troops surround the Mosque of al-Aqsa every Friday, harassing Muslim worshippers and not letting in anyone who is under certain age or not holding Israeli ID.
Zionists used metaphysical religious myths and the holy places in Jerusalem as fig- leaf to hide their evil designs and insatiable appetite for devouring all the Arab lands in historic Palestine never mind how indigestible they are.
Posted on: 2006
By Saira W. Soufan
The destruction of the Maghrebi Quarter in Jerusalem was one of the first points of the Israeli campaign to change Jerusalem’s Arab character after the conquest of 1967. 
On the 3rd day of the Six Day War, Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem in order to conquer the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Maghrebi Quarter which dates back to 1320 a.d. was razed to the ground and it’s Arab inhabitants evicted in order to enlarge the area in front of the Western or Wailing Wall. Two ancient mosques, Al-Buraq and Al-Afdali were destroyed as well as the desecration of the historic Mumillah cemetery in which many famous Muslim heroes were entombed.
The loss of personal properties, homes, businesses, schools, and mosques cannot be calculated. Statistics, architectural planning, and urban layout information has been wiped from text books and records as if the 647 years of the Maghrebi Quarter did not exist. For the Israeli occupiers, it is enough that the Western Wall was located a little too near the Maghrebi Quarter to warrant it’s destruction. The Western Wall was expanded from the original 22 meters to 60 meters due to the demolishing of the Arab area. The Maghrebi Quarter of Jerusalem was the second smallest quarter located within the old city walls, the smallest being the Jewish quarter until 1967.
A testimony from one of the displaced families of the Maghrebi Quarter sketches out some of the losses incurred. The Abu Saud families were residents of Old Jerusalem until the destruction in 1967 of the Maghrebi quarter. The Abu Saud residences consisted of 21 branches of their family living within villas and apartments. Small businesses, a bookstore, the Abu Saud Mosque were demolished along with the rest of the quarter to make way for the Jewish expansion. Due to the close proximity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to the Maghrebi quarter, the Abu Saud families had set up a School for Islamic Studies. This was also razed to the ground. One of the elder occupants from the Abu Saud family, Um Musa, refused to move from her chair in her home on the day of destruction. She was threatened by Israeli Occupation Authorities to leave otherwise they would bring the building down upon her head. “Destroy my house but I will not leave my home, I remain here.” The IOA proceeded to manhandle Um Musa and physically carried her outside to watch the annihilation of her home.
These activities were repeatedly condemned by international opinion as endangering Muslim holy sites and threatening their ancient foundations. This led the UN General Assembly and Security Council to pass several resolutions condemning Israel’s excavations and appealing to it to preserve Jerusalem’s historical heritage. UNESCO has repeatedly called upon Israel to desist from altering the city’s cultural, structural and historical character, but to no avail. The Archbishop of Canterbury, after his visit to Jerusalem in 1971 remarked,” It is distressing indeed that the building program of the present authorities is disfiguring the city and its surroundings in ways which wound the feelings of those who care for its historic beauty and suggest an insensitive attempt to reclaim as an Israeli city one which can never be other than the city of the three great religions and their peoples.”
None of the large or small families of the Maghrebi Quarter took compensation for their demolished properties. The IOA offered to buy the properties for a nominal fee in order to appease their guilt from the theft and destruction of Arab properties. The Arab families refused any sale or compensation to give validity to the fact that this was an illegal and forced plementation by the Israelis. Till today the families of the Maghrebi Quarter visit the demolished sites of their homes in order to remember the heritage of their fathers and forefathers.
This article was published in 2002 in Al Arabiya News Channel.
Throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, around 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli
authorities, more than 10,000 of whom are women. Many of those female detainees were subjected to several forms of abuse, sexual in particular, but very few were willing to talk. On the eve of International Women’s Day, however, some decided to break their silence. S.H., who refused to disclose her full name, was arrested for a few days to put pressure on her husband, also detained at the time, and extract confessions from him. “They striped me and the officer who was interrogating me sat beside me and tried to molest me but I resisted,” she told Al Arabiya.
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