The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (4 page)

The
qadi
went to the Dome of the Rock, where he was met by the commander and the notables of the city. Before the meeting started, the
qadi
had the uncomfortable thought that most of his predecessors had been killed by rebels. And no wonder – the
qadi
was always the most tangible symbol of the sultan’s rule, for better or worse. Those
qadis
who survived were forced to obey the will of the mob rather than God’s holy law. He was determined to recommend to the authorities in Istanbul that the next
naqib
be someone loyal to the sultan’s representatives, and certainly someone who had his personal approval.

Many of the city’s notables had already turned against the rebellious
naqib
a year earlier, when they heard that the sultan was sending a large army to suppress the revolt. The
naqib
did not hesitate to confront this loyalist camp and fought a bloody battle against it in the city in 1704. The climax of the confrontation, involving many combatants, took place in the Bab al-Huta quarter, in the northern end of the Old City. By the time it was over, corpses littered the narrow, crowded alleys of the quarter that was named after the Sinners’ Gate, through which prayerful penitents entered. After this civil war many abandoned the
naqib
’s camp and joined the beleaguered faction in the citadel, who were waiting for the sultan’s army. The rebellious
naqib
chose to flee the city before the arrival of the imperial army.

A representative of that army, which was still a few days’ journey from the city, took part in the meeting. He brought the
qadi
greetings from the commander of the dispatched force and congratulated him on his resolute stand in the besieged citadel. Then the
qadi
reported that he was about to recommend that Istanbul appoint Muhib al-Din Effendi, of the Ghudayya clan (later to be known as the Husayni family), as the next
naqib
. He explained that, unlike the
naqib
who had fled, Muhib al-Din had been loyal to the government from the start of the uprising. In actual fact, Muhib al-Din had at first contemplated joining the rebels, but at this time he could certainly be counted among the loyalists, rather than the opponents of the sultan’s rule.

In the days that followed, the notables gave much thought to the reversals among the ruling officials. Now they were free to indulge in the pleasures of the
hammamat
(the baths), which they had been deprived of for some time. Most of them favored the Hammam al-Sultan, on the corner of al-Wadi (Valley) Street, which is also one of the first Stations of the Cross. There, amid the scent of rose water and the aroma of coffee wafting from the loaded trays of sweetmeats, they discussed the vicissitudes of their times, continuing their talk long into
the night in the city’s cafes. The poets sang the praises of the new
naqib
and speculated about the future in between puffs of their
nargilehs
. These were the customary ways of the notables of Jerusalem, which Muslim travelers described as a lively city, quite unlike the picture that would be drawn by many Christian travelers, among them Gustave Flaubert and Mark Twain, who advanced the myth of the empty land and the desolate city.
³

This was the city in which the Ghudayyas, the family of the fortunate Muhib al-Din, had resided for four centuries. The high points of life in Jerusalem, for them as for other notable families, were the
mawlid
– the religious festivals – weddings and births, and the occasional appearance of famous Muslim travelers, who were admired for their great learning in religion and the sciences as much as for their literary style. At their house – which at least one manuscript describes as a ‘palace’, so impressed was the visitor – the Ghudayyas entertained some of the great men of their era.
⁴

But nothing was as momentous as the day of Muhib al-Din’s appointment, which in all likelihood was marked by a great feast. If so, it must have been attended by all the notables, who doubtless discussed the division of the spoils. The Ottoman authorities had expropriated the estate of the fugitive
naqib
and were about to distribute it to the loyal notables. The lion’s share was sure to be given to the two branches of the Ghudayya clan – the family of the new
naqib
and that of his cousin Abdullah, who had for years held the post of
sheikh al-haram
(
sheikh
of the Jerusalem holy sanctuary). Abdullah was greatly admired in the city for his work and his great learning in theology and
i’lm al-fiqh
, the Islamic religious precepts. But though his father had been
naqib al-ashraf
, he himself did not win the post and had to be content with being
sheikh al-haram
.
⁵

We focus on Abdullah al-Ghudayya because his son Abd al-Latif is the central figure of the present story, a story that begins in 1703 and ends in our time and one that may indeed continue so long as the family is represented in the political life of Jerusalem and of the surrounding country, Palestine.

As far as we know, Abd al-Latif’s youth was uneventful, and he makes a rare appearance in the writing of a Sufi traveler, Mustafa Ibn Kamil al-Bakhri, who visited the city quite often.
⁶
On his visits, al-Bakhri stayed near the mosque of al-Aqsa, where he settled for long spells after his second visit to the city in 1710. It seems that Abd al-Latif and al-Bakhri first met in 1724 at one of the city gates where al-Bakhri,
about to enter, was reading the Fatiha before passing through, as was customary in those days. Having read the opening verses of the Qur’an, he changed his rich traveling apparel for the simple garments of purity, expressive of the visitor’s reverence for the city’s sanctity.

The
naqib
was welcomed by the Ghudayyas and by
sheikh al-haram
Abdullah and his son Abd al-Latif. After praying together and exchanging lengthy blessings, the august company walked through the city, composing a
qasida
(a poem in the classical style) at every noted site:

In the name of God, if you meet us, we
shall tell you it is the day of Jerusalem.
Together let us go to this city and visit it.
The Good will be with us forever.
⁷

Each time al-Bakhri returned to Jerusalem he brought books from his library in Damascus, thereby enriching the lives of his companions in Jerusalem. His visits also had a certain missionary quality. Al-Bakhri was a member of the mystic Sufi Kheloti order, which he would eventually head. But it seems that his hosts were more impressed by the order’s ostentatious self-mortification and accompanying ceremonies than by its theological message of approaching God via Muslim mysticism.
⁸
Members of the family were entranced by the spectacular exercises and the dancing in a circle that culminated in intense excitement. Al-Bakhri never arrived on his own: as a man of high position, he was always surrounded by an entourage, and his frequent visits demonstrated the great importance of Jerusalem in the Muslim world of the early eighteenth century.

Hosts and guest alike passed the time discussing the mysteries, showing off their abilities as religious mystics. Al-Bakhri was deeply influenced by one of the great medieval Sufi philosophers, Ibn al-Arabi. Al-Arabi had written about the creation of the world and of understanding it, and consequently al-Bakhri wrote a good deal about such subjects. It is possible that not only members of the religious elite took part in such gatherings but also others such as the
sheikh al-tujjar
, the leader of the city’s merchants.
⁹
During his visit, al-Bakhri gave the customary guest lecture; he liked to quote from ‘The Praises of Jerusalem’ – the literature lauding the city, which had grown following the Crusades. He also visited the graves of holy men, among them that of Nabi Musa (the Prophet Moses) near Jericho, where he spent the week of festivities in the prophet’s honor.

The Ghudayyas took to al-Bakhri. He was invited to be the guest of honor at the dinner celebrating
Mawlid al-Nabi
(the Prophet’s birth), and they offered him a chair in the courtyard of al-Aqsa mosque, where most of the guests reclined on cushions on the ground. The public dinner was a widely attended occasion in which all walks of life took part: the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant. In a travelogue he wrote after an earlier visit in 1690, al-Bakhri expressed his wonder at seeing that among the throng ‘there were also veiled women in the corner of the mosque, and with them young and small girls’. The
muezzins
trilled the verses. Servants of the
haram
circulated through the multitude, offering sweets and fragrant pastries and finger bowls of rose water for the guests to rinse their sticky hands in, and at last the crowd dispersed, well-fed and contented.
¹⁰

The years that followed al-Bakhri’s visit were disappointing for the Ghudayyas. During the 1730s, the key posts in the city were given to other families. The Alami clan, for example, won a number of lucrative positions at the expense of the Ghudayyas, causing the rivalry between the two clans to continue for some time. Like the Ghudayyas, the Alamis had made good use of the
naqib
’s revolt in the early years of the century, and persuasion combined with money won them the position of
mufti
, which the Ghudayyas had coveted.

The
mufti
was a state official who wrote opinions (
fatwas
) on legal subjects for judges and common believers. Some of his opinions became binding precedents. He also belonged to an Ottoman hierarchy that was supervised by the
mufti
of Istanbul, who had the power to appoint and dismiss local
muftis
around the empire.

But this was a temporary decline – Abd al-Latif’s family would later recover the
mufti
’s post, and the three most important positions held by local personages under Ottoman rule would be theirs:
naqib al-ashraf
,
mufti
and
sheikh al-haram
. No wonder they became the most important family in Jerusalem and perhaps in all of Palestine.

For a short while it looked as if all this glory would fall to the Alamis. In January 1733, when Muhib al-Din of the Ghudayyas died and his son Amin was appointed in his place as
naqib al-ashraf
of Jerusalem, the Alamis moved into action. Amin was a pleasant man, but even his family recognized that he did not have the necessary qualities to serve as
naqib
. As soon as it became known that he had failed to settle a feud between two city families, the Alamis began to agitate for the post. They bribed the Grand Vizier and the governor of Damascus, and with their support obtained it.

It took Abd al-Latif twelve years of continuous effort to wrest the prestigious position from his rivals. Bribery, intrigue and considerable personal charisma restored the Ghudayyas to the apex of the local hierarchy. Having won this position, Abd al-Latif launched a successful dynasty that would drop the name ‘Ghudayya’ and adopt that of the fugitive
naqib
– ‘al-Husayni’. This dynasty would lead Palestinian society for the next two and a half centuries, up to the present day.

Appropriating the name and lineage of another clan requires great ingenuity and the ability to exploit uncertain political circumstances. It is unclear exactly when this happened, but thanks to Adel Mana’a we do have the genealogy that was used to create the family’s new identity. It is hard to determine whether it was a deliberate takeover of another family’s lineage, as one would be inclined to imagine, or an error due to the families having an ancestor with the same name back in the seventeenth century. The rebellious
naqib al-ashraf
was the head of the Wafa’i Husaynis, and he had a great-grandfather by the name of Abd al-Kader ibn al-Karim al-Din. The Ghudayyas also had a great-grandfather by that name.

The Ghudayyas’ lineage was fairly lackluster compared to that of the Wafa’i Husayni. The latter family arrived in Jerusalem in the early fourteenth century, with a family tree stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad – to be precise, to Hussein, the son of Ali, husband of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. A direct line of succession leads from Hussein to one Muhammad Badr al-Din, who made his way in the fourteenth century from the Arabian Peninsula to Jerusalem and built a house in Wadi al-Nusur on the city’s outskirts.

The Wafa’i Husaynis appear in records from the sixteenth century onwards, and they are certainly not the forefathers of today’s Husaynis but rather their adoptive ancestors. Another theory ascribes to them a different, anonymous ancestry. There evidently was a hiatus in the grand ‘family history’ that was doubtless quoted and repeated whenever the family’s fortunes either faltered or rose to new heights.
¹¹
The adoption of the new family name was followed by closer ties with Jerusalem families of more esteemed lineage. Daughters were married to the sons of the al-Khalidi and Jarallah families, considered to be the noblest in the city. In this way the family kept its position in the front rank of the city’s notables, even if it did not always retain all three leading posts in Jerusalem.

It appears that the name change had already taken place by the 1770s, when Abd al-Latif was in his forties. Documents show that by
that time he was already a respected figure –
rais al-Quds ayn aayanuha
(the leader of Jerusalem and its notables), as he was dubbed by contemporary historian al-Muradi. Abd al-Latif was famous for his generosity and modesty. And though al-Muradi lavished such praise on almost every notable, in this case he offered various testimonies to back it up. Abd al-Latif served his guests with his own hands, reported the amazed al-Muradi, ‘and always smiled at his children and preferred the poor over the rich’. He was renowned beyond the confines of the city as one who provided food for pilgrims and indigent visitors. The poets of the time, al-Muradi goes on to say, sang his praises in their poems.
¹²