The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (22 page)

Abd al-Hamid II correctly identified the problem, but his response to it was a failure. He tried to promote pan-Islamic and Ottoman nationalism in the face of the national movements that were cropping up everywhere, and failed. Now he had to contend with the internal national revolution that had begun to take shape when he ascended the throne – that of the Young Turks.

Four medical students who met in Istanbul in 1889 started a process that would change the face of the entire Ottoman Empire. They formed an association they named ‘the Young Turks’, whose avowed goal was to topple the tyranny of Abd al-Hamid II and replace it with a free, progressive, national Turkish regime. A mixture of romantic nationalism, admiration for the strong modern state and vestiges of liberalism made up their creed, but above all they worshipped ‘progress’ – technological progress based on reason and science to overcome all obstacles, primarily tradition and religion. No more slow, partial and vague reforms – instead, a single revolution with miraculous solutions for all the ills of society. The first attempt to bring it off in 1897 had failed miserably and was followed by the sultan’s repressive measures.

In Jerusalem these measures had taken the form of a relentless resistance to the new printing presses. This was where Ismail had a major role to play. As supervisor of the printing industry, he was in effect the long arm of tyranny’s drive to restrict the freedom of expression. He was the first to fight the Arab printing press in Jerusalem, though in times to come it would serve the family during the transition to the national stage. The first Arab press in the city was established in 1906 by George Habib Hananya, who had to prove the machines were not designed to make bombs before he could get a license.
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Ismail was party to the moves against the press, particularly the Egyptian newspapers distributed in the districts of Beirut, Nablus and Jerusalem spreading sharp criticism of the government. Near the end of Abd al-Hamid’s rule, the order was given to seize all the copies of
Al-Manar
in those districts. This was the journal of Sheikh Rashid Rida, one of the leading Islamic philosophers and activists who would later
inspire a future generation of Muslim Brothers and likeminded political organizations.
Al-Manar
’s first issue had accused the Ottomans of not doing enough to raise the level of education and culture in the Arab countries, so the second issue was confiscated. Naturally, the accusation was leveled at Ismail himself, who was responsible for the education system in Jerusalem. The paper also blamed the government for allowing an influx of foreigners into the region and called for a holy war against them and the expulsion of their collaborators. Above all, Sheikh Rashid Rida’s newspaper called for reforms based on a stricter reliance on Islamic sources. Ismail was not sufficiently religious or nationalistic for this publication, in sharp contrast with the future image of al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni.
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Yet Ismail was not exceptional amongst the local notables, many of whom were faithful to the sultan. The Gaza Husaynis, however, who were apparently linked to the Wafa’i and therefore to the Jerusalem family, displayed a very different attitude to Abd al-Hamid that nearly led to their destruction. In February 1898 the Gazan
mufti
, the head of the family there, his brother and his son were arrested and exiled to Anatolia. They had been about to accept Egypt’s rule in El Arish, thus allying themselves with one of the sultan’s chief enemies. The opposite was true of Ismail – his standing was badly damaged by the sultan’s fall, though he remained a prominent figure and was regarded as the head of the Jerusalemite family. But it would be Said and Shukri, his more dynamic cousins, who would skillfully steer the family through the dramatic upheavals of the first decade of the twentieth century.

THE END OF THE HAMIDI ERA

The last family occasion to take place under Ottoman rule – which had lasted more than 350 years – was the coming-of-age celebration of Muhammad Amin, the son of Mufti Tahir II and his second wife, Zaynab. Held on a roof in the heart of the Haram al-Sharif reached by a spiral staircase, it was attended by a large crowd of women and children. The important guests reclined on bolsters on a dais made up of large cushions, while the poorer ones sat on bare wooden benches. The wife of the deputy governor of Jerusalem, a pious, bulky lady, was the guest of honor. Her English companion, the wife of the painter Stanley Inchbold, provided future historians with a detailed description of the event, though unfortunately she was more interested in clothes than in
the traditional ceremony. Her painstaking description of the guest of honor’s dress, for example – an embroidered gown with gold trimming on the sleeves, a green cummerbund, a small diamond tiara – might have been referring to a fashion-plate from Vienna or Paris rather than Jerusalem. There were about 100 women on the roof, some of them in Western clothes but most in traditional robes. There were Sudanese servants, Bedouin children and country girls in headdresses hung with silver coins – the fashion of the mountain villages since the beginning of the reign. Mrs Inchbold assumed that the women who sat on upright chairs had received a European education, while those who lolled casually on cushions had not been exposed to Western influence. Women and girls came to peer at the Englishwoman and from time to time leaned over the openings in the parapet to see what was going on below. The deputy governor’s wife translated their questions: ‘Are you comfortable? Is there anything you want?’ – ‘I’m perfectly comfortable,’ the grateful visitor replied. Servants kept bringing her jugs of water for refreshment. Then a group of girls appeared to entertain the guests – Jewish girls from Beirut, the hostess explained, who danced to the sound of a flute played by a girl in a long silk robe. The performance included love songs and delightful dances. Now and then the birthday boy appeared among the guests. He was small and delicate-looking, but vividly colorful with his red hair and blue eyes. The party went on until well past midnight, but the painter’s wife did not feel up to it. She was about to depart on a long journey through the Syrian lands (
Under the Syrian Sun
, as her husband’s travel book was called) in the summer of 1905.
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The Hamidi era ended with the death of Tahir II in 1908. The funeral was an exhausting affair, since in burying the
mufti
the family took great pains with the ceremonies.
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He had hesitated until his last days to decide which of his sons should inherit his position as
mufti
. As well as five daughters, he had three sons – one, Kamil, by his first wife, Mahbuba, and two, Fakhri and Amin, by his beloved second wife, Zaynab. He used to take the three potential successors to the Haram al-Sharif to learn the requirements of the
mufti
of Jerusalem as well as their duties as members of the Ashraf family.
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The quiet Zaynab took pains with Amin’s religious tuition at their house in the Husayniyya, the home of the Tahiri branch, and he also received a broader education than his two brothers. First he attended the traditional primary school, where he was taught history and religion in the spirit of Islam. Then he attended the French missionary École des Frères, where he learned French, his favorite language, which
he also studied with a private tutor, a Miss Hassasin.
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In the 1890s he was in Istanbul for his higher studies. A small, slender young man, his tendency to mumble and lisp made communication with him difficult, but his physical appearance remained strikingly colorful. In the early twentieth century he was a pupil of Sheikh al-Rida (who at the time taught at the University of al-Azhar), thereby completing the family’s connection with the great institution that had begun 200 years before. But when Tahir II died, Amin was only thirteen and could not inherit his father’s position. Fakhri was also too young, so the eldest, Kamil, was automatically chosen. The Tahiri branch was somewhat uneasy about this, as Kamil had a pallid personality and lacked connections with the city notables – a worry that would prove to be well-founded. Palestinian historiography paints him in a bad light, chiefly because he did little to fight against Zionism.

Along with Amin’s coming-of-age party, Tahir’s funeral and Kamil’s installation as
mufti
, the end of the Hamidi period was marked for the young Husayni men (excluding Amin, who muttered religious texts on his way home from school) by the advent of a new sport – football. Most of Musa Kazim’s sons excelled at football at their school, St George’s, known as the Mutran. It had been founded in 1898 by the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, George Francis Blyth, and Musa Kazim’s sons were among its first pupils.
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The school was a splendid edifice in the eastern city, near a fine Anglican cathedral. The school’s name was not unfamiliar to the Husaynis, as the eponymous patron saint of England had been born in Lydda. The church was ornamented with colorful stained-glass windows, which the boys enjoyed looking at. They depicted the life of another native of the country born in nearby Ayn Karim: John the Baptist. And everywhere was the image of St George in a feathered helmet, striking down the dragon at his horse’s feet. Though the dragon supposedly symbolized the enemies of Christianity, to the boys it was merely a story about a hero and a monster.

Six of the Husayni boys attended this school, and each of them would reach the top of Mandatory Palestine’s social and political hierarchy. The eldest and most prominent was Jamal, the son of Musa Kazim al-Husayni’s sister and Musa Saleh al-Husayni. Jamal was the first boy to come to school dressed in Western clothes – a dark corduroy suit with a collarless shirt – catching the attention of teachers and students. The historian Izzat Tanus was also a pupil there at the time, hence our information.

The school had only about 100 students, and was very popular with all of them: in addition to offering football, it was the first school in Palestine that did not use the cane. Four of Bishop Blyth’s daughters taught there under the direction of the sports-loving Reynolds, who made sure that no other school could match St George’s. Proper football had begun to be played in the British Isles in 1888 and reached St George’s in only a few years. In the summer, other colonial sports were introduced, such as cricket, basketball and hockey. Every month there was a sports day, which drew parents and other interested parties, and before the First World War there was a football match every Saturday afternoon. The schools league was launched in 1906 with a match between the St George’s team and that of the Protestant school. Some of the players still wore tarbushes, which hampered them as they rushed around the pitch at Bab al-Sahra. Tawfiq, the son of Musa Salih, was one of the best players.

Tawfiq also took part in school theatricals. A pleasant, smiling young man, he played the Prince of Morocco in the school production of
The Merchant of Venice
. On a small stage flanked by green doors and windows with their shutters flung open, Tawfiq seemed to personify the cultural riches of the twilight of the Ottoman age, an age in which East and West were blending into a distinctive culture. It was still the culture of the elite and would have needed many years to flourish and spread through the rest of society, but the process was instead thwarted by the searing force of the political and national struggle that over-whelmed Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine in the twentieth century.
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This then was the world of the Husaynis during the Hamidi period, a world in which the official language was Turkish but the language of literature and the one in which the people of the Jerusalem district interpreted reality was Arabic. He who commanded the Turkish language dominated family affairs, but he who thought in ‘Palestinian’ would become the leader of the family in the new century. No wonder, then, that it was said of them that they were ‘first and foremost to all that is sacred in Palestine, and all the people of the place admire and bless it with awe and exaltation.’
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CHAPTER 5

Facing the Young Turks

The Family as Bureaucratic Aristocracy

While young Tawfiq al-Husayni was playing the Prince of Morocco on the stage of St George’s, the clouds were gathering overhead for Sultan Abdul Hamid II, heralding a storm that would sweep away four centuries of Ottoman rule over the Arab Middle East. Although the clearest signs of the imminent revolution appeared in Jerusalem in 1906, it is doubtful if any of the city’s notables discerned them. The Young Turks had failed in their first attempt to topple the government in 1897, and they understood that they needed to broaden their revolutionary base before rising openly as a political and military force. They did so on a large scale between 1902 and 1906. The movement infiltrated the standing army, especially the officer corps of the Fifth Army who were stationed in Damascus, Jerusalem and Jaffa. In Damascus a young officer by name of Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, organized the Homeland and Freedom Association – the first military group and the springboard of the 1908 revolution.
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At the same time officers of the Third Army began to organize in Salonika. These military rebels were assisted by anti-Hamidi elements all over the empire, notably the Armenians (whom fate would in a few years turn into the slaughtered victims of their erstwhile allies).

Why the revolution erupted in 1908 nobody knows. What is clear is that there was a wide enough coalition of unsatisfied sectors that had been bruised by the sultan and that suddenly came together as a critical mass. Be that as it may, the Husaynis were no more prepared for the explosion than the sultan himself was.
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