Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (12 page)

The
ka'ba
, of course, is the holiest shrine in Islam, the site of the pilgrimage to Mecca. The
qibla
marks the direction of prayer for Muslims toward Mecca. By elevating Macedonia to the status of Mecca, al-Nashashibi not only proclaimed the sacred value of
urriyya.
He also marked off prerevolutionary time (and by extension, antirevolutionary thinking) as the age of ignorance,
jahiliyya
, that references the Arabian Peninsula before the revelations of the Prophet. Furthermore, by intertwining sacred and secular time and space, al-Nashashibi underscored the complex role that religion played in giving shape to a distinct Ottoman nationalism and nation-building project. In other words, in sacralizing the birthplace of the constitution and all that it represented, al-Nashashibi explicitly challenged the sacred sources of sultanic political legitimacy and loyalty, and elevated new parameters for loyalty—to the Ottoman nation and to the Ottoman homeland.

Anthony Smith, the prominent scholar of nationalism, argues that religion and nationalism are more deeply intertwined than earlier scholars have imagined. Rather than seeing nationalism as an essentially secular, modern phenomenon, the functional replacement of religion, and instead of looking at the instrumentalization of religious symbols by nationalists and nationalist movements, Smith underscores the ongoing relevance and symbolic importance of religion in people's lives as the reason for its enduring usage in national movements.
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Indeed, we will see that Ottoman nationalism tapped into the religious consciousness, symbols, and sacrality of Ottoman citizens in complex and profound ways.
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COMMUNAL LIBERTY

The language of liberty, reform, and consultation did not stay focused on the institutions of state, but rather trickled down in remarkable ways. Claiming to have been influenced by the new spirit of
urriyya
, reformists in three religious communities in Jerusalem—the Armenian, Greek Orthodox and Jewish—conducted hard-fought struggles for change within their communities. The three groups demanded liberation from the oppressive rule of the priests and rabbis, participation in the decision-making processes of their congregations, and a new spirit of reform and modernity. Indeed, for many of the Christian and Jewish residents of Palestine, the language of liberty and equality inspired and gave succor to internal efforts to reform and reinvent their communal lives, not only as Ottomans but also as Ottoman Christians and Jews.
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The broadest-scale and longest-lasting of the three communal revolts, the “Orthodox renaissance,” as the Greek Orthodox struggle for reform
was known, began over the principle of representation and power sharing among the elite foreign clergy and the local Arab populace.
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The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was ruled by the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, a body of celibate monks from Greece who had been educated and trained in Jerusalem, whereas the lower clergy of married Arab priests as well as the local laity were largely excluded from decision making and representation in communal life.
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One of the young leaders of the Greek Orthodox revolution was Khalil al-Sakakini, the young schoolteacher discussed earlier, who had recently returned to Jerusalem from America. Together with his old teacher Jurji Zakaria, al-Sakakini put together an informal commission of inquiry to research the needs and rights of the community. As al-Sakakini noted, “though we were freed from the tyranny of the government, we are still under [the tyranny of] the spiritual leadership…. My objective…is to rip out the Greek yoke [
nīr al-Yūnān
] who have no right to be at the head, neither religiously, nor politically, nor morally.”
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According to Article III of the Ottoman constitution, each religious community was to have an elected council. The Greek Orthodox reformers insisted that the council should include representatives from parishes outside of Jerusalem, a significant demand which in essence called for the unification of the Greek Orthodox Arabs of Palestine. This council would oversee the communal schools, churches, religious endowments, and funds. They also demanded that archbishoprics and provincial religious leaderships be established. Furthermore, the committee demanded that the leading school in Jerusalem admit “national Ottoman Orthodox” students from all the parishes of Palestine and educate them in higher literature and theology so that they would be prepared to enter the priesthood.
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Indeed, a significant underlying element of the local Christians' demands was opposition to the Hellenizing aims of the foreign ecclesiastical leadership at the expense of the local indigenous culture, echoing broader complaints against foreign influence and subjugation in the Ottoman Empire as well as a rejection of hated Greece. Out of the twenty-eight Greek Orthodox churches in Jerusalem, only three offered services in Arabic, despite the fact that the Greek Orthodox community in Jerusalem was 85 percent Arabic-speaking and only 15 percent Greek-speaking.
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Greek Orthodox intellectuals in Jaffa also began proselytizing against “Aryan Christianity” in favor of a purer “Semitic Christianity,” sending delegates to the provincial towns to promote this idea. In other words, the Greek Orthodox reformers were careful to paint their communal revolution in national patriotic terms. After several members of the leadership met with the Jerusalem governor, they were greeted on their way home by thousands of co-religionists waving Ottoman flags.
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In the dramatic course of events, numerous large-scale demonstrations were held in Jerusalem and Jaffa; protestors occupied churches and monasteries and barricaded themselves, parishioners boycotted the annual Christmas mass at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, and the community sent delegations to Istanbul to pursue their claims with the central government. In response, the Holy Synod decided to punish the natives for revolting, cutting off the supply of food to the poor and payment of the communal head tax, and demanding rent payment for communally-owned apartments (which formerly had been rent-free for members of the community).
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The Patriarchate requested assistance from the foreign consulates in Jerusalem in pacifying the locals, complaining that the Ottoman government refused to intervene. In fact, the central government at first intervened on behalf of the Greek Orthodox Arabs: the minister of the interior sent a telegram to the Jerusalem governor ordering him to inform the Patriarchate that it would not be able to evict Christian tenants from their apartments until the entire affair was over.
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At the end of January 1909, a government commission arrived in Jerusalem to investigate the matter, and it was greeted at the train station by hundreds of Jerusalem's assorted residents. A leading member of the Greek Orthodox community, Eftim Mushabbak, gave a rousing speech on behalf of his co-religionists: “Sir, Members of the Committee, all of us standing here, all of us living in this country for generations upon generations, for hundreds and hundreds of years, demand justice, and the rule of law! We want the committee to research and demand everything without prejudice; we demand our rights, to be free in our country and not to be [subject to] the foreign Greeks.”
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By February, the struggle between the local Arab Greek Orthodox and their ecclesiastical leadership turned into an outright battle, as Greeks and Arabs on both sides were found murdered and Greek shops and passersby were attacked in the city, forcing the army to patrol the streets and leading many shops to shutter their doors.
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Over the next two years, the Greek Orthodox Arabs of Jerusalem succeeded in securing some concessions, and at the end of 1910 elections for a communal mixed council were finally held.
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As Palestinian Christians used the logic and rhetoric of the new political order to secure their own communal rights, this incident reveals the power and appeal of the language and structure of constitutionalism. Additionally, the Greek Orthodox renaissance also sought to link Greek Orthodox Christians throughout Palestine as well as east of the Jordan River in an effort to unite the community. As the leadership of the revolt saw it, this was a substantial victory: “Before the renaissance the life of
every Orthodox was a private life, living for himself and taking interest in his own affairs…. [Now]…the Orthodox has entered a new life which is national life.”
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Finally, the revolt contributed to supporting links between the Greek Orthodox and their Muslim neighbors, planting a seed of local sentiment that sought both to unite and transcend communal boundaries all in the unique “spirit of the times.”
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The spirit of the Greek Orthodox rebellion spread to other religious communities in Jerusalem, inspiring them to seek similar autonomy and liberty.
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Reform-minded Sephardi Jews in Jerusalem saw in this an echo of their own internal struggle for change (known as
el pleyto)
, and the Jewish press reported on the affair extensively. In the early weeks after the outbreak of the rebellion, the Hebrew newspaper
The Deer (Ha-Zvi)
editorialized in support of the native Christians' efforts: “This is an important deed in the public life of our country, and not just for the Greek Church but it is first of all a fruit of the constitution, liberty…. [We do not know if their claims are just or not, but] we cannot help but feel affinity to anyone who fights for his rights that are important to him.”
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It was precisely this fear of the spread of the spirit of communal rebellion that worried the Latin Patriarch Camassei, who saw the Greek Orthodox revolt as the beginning of “serious troubles.”
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Other forces would also seek to curtail the boundaries of liberty before it was too late.

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY

Outside of the main cities, lack of access to information, the personal proclivity of local government officials, and the leadership of important local notables influenced when, how, and along what contours the Ottoman revolution arrived. Over two months after the official announcements of the new constitutional parliamentary regime, the residents of northern Safad (in the Galilee in the province of ‘Akka) had “barely heard” of the reforms, and the official celebration mandated by the local deputy governor reportedly did little to move them.
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Precious few historical sources document the responses and attitudes of non-elite, nonliterate Ottomans, whether urban workers, villagers, or rural peasants—undoubtedly the majority of the population throughout the empire. Their voicelessness suggests political impotence—the CUP reportedly despised the masses and manipulated them for their own political goals.
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For some leaders of the CUP, a representative government (parliament) was a necessary evil in order to challenge the negative power of the state, but even then the representatives were considered “agents of the state” rather than “representatives of the people.” In this context, the
CUP leader Ahmed Riza is quoted as saying, “Silly people should not be allowed to enter into politics; however, they have unfortunately even become deputies, and this is a defect of liberty that enables the masses to assume a role in the life and future of the state and nation.”
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The young novelist Halide Edib Adivar related an incident that took place in Istanbul immediately after the restoration of the constitution when the CUP leader Dr. R iza Tevfik encountered a group of Kurdish porters in the mass celebrations: “'Tell us what the constitution means,' the porters had shouted. ‘Constitution is such a great thing that those who do not know it are donkeys,' answered the speaker. ‘We are donkeys,' roared the porters. ‘Your fathers also did not know it. Say that you are the sons of donkeys,' added Riza Tevfik. ‘We are the sons of donkeys,' roared the porters again.”
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