The following paper is published in Comparing Cities: The Middle East and South Asia, by Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Between the surrender of Jerusalem to General Allenby's victorious army by the Ottoman Governor Izzat Bey and Mayor Hussein al Husseini(December 1917) and the commencement of the British Mandate (1920), Palestine witnessed three years of administrative and legal flux. Although British intentions for the country were already defined by the commitments to their French allies (Sykes Picot Memorandum), and to the Zionist movement (the Balfour Declaration), these commitments did they translate into clear policies on the ground. The bulk of the British military establishment in Palestine, including General Moonie, the first military governor, were either hostile to the prospects of a Jewish National Home, or ambivalent towards it, on the grounds that it violated British promises to the Sherif Hussein and his Syrian allies, or—more importantly—because it provoked Palestinian-Syrian yearning for independence, and made the control of the street problematic. But against those local administrators and field officers who were clearly against the idea of a Jewish national home, like Brigadier General Clayton, Allenby's chief political officer, and Sir Walter Congreve, who commanded the British troops in Egypt and Palestine, there stood a legion of philo-semites and supporters of Zionism. Those included Louis Bolls, Palestine's chief administrator, General Storrs, Military Commander of Jerusalem, and the first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel.
Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s memoirs for the years following the Great War—covering the Mandate period—contributes significantly in conveying the spirit of emancipatory anticipation that engulfed Jerusalem (and Palestine) during the critical three years of military rule. Wasif himself was maturing as a musical performer, and reached an age where he was able to reflect on the future of Palestine and Jerusalem from the momentous events that he witnessed. He also occupied a strategic vantage point in these events: as an entertainer to members of the city’s notable elite, as well as his enhanced position in the nascent British civil service in the capital of the country.
One often forgets that the British Mandate over Palestine occupied barely three decades of the country’s modern history. In scholarly literature and in Palestinian popular imagination the Mandate has acquired a colossal (if not mythical) impact on the molding of modern Palestinian society and its destiny. A quick list of its often cited achievements (and disasters) would make this point: the creation of modern institutions of government, including a new civil service and police force, and the centralization of the national bureaucracy in Jerusalem; the modernization of the land code and the taxation system; the creation of a legal corpus to replace (and supplement) the Ottoman code; the conduct of a national census (1922 and 1931), and the creation of the population registry; the creation of the rudimentary features of citizenship and icons of unfulfilled sovereignty (currency, stamps, passports); a modern secular educational system; and finally an infrastructure of roads and communication system, including a broadcasting authority—the Palestine Radio in 1931. A major consequence of these administrative changes was the separation of Palestine from greater Syria. All this happened in three short decades (less if we deduct the years of initial military rule). But the Mandate is also remembered—retrospectively-- for one major accomplishment: laying the grounds for Partition and the creation of the state of Israel.
City of Riffraff and Parasites
But the British are also remembered for laying the foundation of urban planning in Palestine, and hence for creating the modernity of urban space. The memoirs of Ronald Storrs (1881-1955) based on his letters and diary, at once an elegant, informed, and very perceptive of Palestine's Ottoman and Islamic heritage, constitute an excellent exposition of the ideology behind the liberal colonial hegemonic discourse. It also crisscrosses fruitfully with Jawhariyyeh's witty comments on the activities of the Pro-Jerusalem Society—Storrs’ pet program for the preservation of the city's public monuments and architecture. The two narratives, Jawhariyyeh's and Storrs, present us with two divergent discourses—native and colonial--on Jerusalem's modernity.
The conventional wisdom is that the Ottoman's had no contributions to urban planning in the Levant, and that it was the British who introduced it to Palestine. Here is what Ruth Kark suggests on the subject:
Until the end of the Ottoman period, there was no overall planning of the built-up area in Jerusalem. The Sublime Porte and the local authorities limited their operations to supervision. For security reasons a law prohibited the construction of any edifice beyind a distance of 2,500 cubits (about 1.4km) from the wall of a city. Because of this restriction, Acre failed toexpand beyond its walls until the turn of the century, and had the law been strictly obeyed in Jerusalem as well, the fate of that city would have been similar.
But of course these laws "were not strictly applied". The main provincial centres of the Ottoman Levant had various degrees in the planning of their public spaces (Damascus, Beirut, Jaffa, and Aleppo). Jerusalem received planning guidelines of sort after the passage of the Ottoman Municipalities Law in 1877, which regulated building permits, building material and height of buildings. Historian Hala Fattah notes how "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."
A symbolic feature of Ottoman public monumental planning for the period was the creation or expansion of public squares to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Sultan Abdul Hamid II ascension to the throne in 1900-1901. These plazas with their iconic watch towers became central public spaces in regional cities like Izmir, Tripoli, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. The Hamedian clock-tower in Jerusalem became the subject of considerable controversy later when the British military government forcefully removed from the Jaffa Gate plaza for “aesthetic reason”, as we shall see. Jerusalem differed from many of these provincial centres in that its economic base was considerably based on religious charities and endowments as well as services to pilgrims.
According to C. Ashbee—Jerusalem’s ‘civic advisor’ after the war—the city “maintained a large parasitic population—priests, caretakers, monks, missionaries, pious women, clerks, lawyers, and a crowd of riffraff—who all had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo."
Despite the anti-social texture of this statement, it seems that Ashbee, given his populist credentials, was expressing here a negative assessment of the lopsided occupational base of the city's economy, rather outright prejudice.
Aside from Ottoman municipal buildings and takaya, the first important urban buildings were established inside the old city by English and German Protestants in the 1840s, and outside the city walls with the completion of the Russian compound in late 1850s. According to Alexander Scholch these three schemes triggered the urban modernization of Ottoman Jerusalem, "the new construction, alterations, and expansion of churches, monasteries, hospices, schools, hospitals, hotels, and consulates subsequently continued unabated." This was followed, in the 1870s, with the creation of neighbourhoods for Muslim notables outside the walls, in Sheikh Jarrah and Bab es Sahira, and by Jewish residential suburbs in Yemin Moshe and Me'a She'arim.
Ottoman urban expansion schemes, and city building regulations did exist, but they were either haphazard or overwhelmed by construction activities undertaken by autonomous religious endowments, private construction, or foreign public projects. Kark suggests that even though "overall plans for the city of Jerusalem did exist during the Ottoman period…they were not implemented, even partially, until 1920". But it was on the basis of that Ottoman vision that many successive planning schemes—during the transitional period of the OETA, and the early Mandate, were built.
And it was against this background that Ronald Storrs introduced in 1918, through the Pro-Jerusalem Society, a scheme for the urban renovation and preservation of the city. The Society's declared aims were "to preserve the city's antiquities, develop modern cultural functions such as museums, libraries, theatre, etc., and foster the education and welfare of the city's inhabitants." Storrs was able to assemble an impressive array of the city's ruling elite to constitute the Council of the Society. Those included: The Mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Kazim al-Husseini, the British Director of Antiquities, the Mufti—Kamil al Husseini (followed by Haj Amin), the two Chief Rabbis, and the Orthodox, Latin and Armenian Patriarchs, the Anglican Bishop, and other leading members of the community. One is struck again here by the Storrs' vision of Palestinian society as composed of confessional elements added to the local aristocracy (a3yan)—a perspective that clashed frontally with the emerging national movement and its secularized intelligentsia.
Although Storrs was the key figure behind the idea and its execution, the early planning of Jerusalem cannot be discussed without the participation of two innovative urbanists from the Mandate period, William MacLean and Charles Ashbee. The first, MacLean, then the town planner of Alexandria and Khartoum was invited by Storrs in 1918 to introduce the first modern master plan for Jerusalem, which he accomplished in a record two-month period, and later elaborated by Patrick Geddes in 1922. Despite its limitations, MacLean's achievements were ground-breaking. His plan "…prohibited new construction within the boundaries of the Old City, mandated that the area around the walls be kept clear, and ordered the leveling of structures abutting the wall from the outside. New buildings, permitted only to the west and north of the Old City, would rise to a maximum height of eleven meters so as not to compete with the skyline of the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem was to be built of stone; industrial structures were banned." In almost all of its features these regulations were Ottoman in origin and British in implementation.
In terms of a conceptual paradigm for its urban future, however, it was Ashbee who provided the vision of the new/old Jerusalem. Charles Ashbee (1863-1942) was a disciple of William Morris, who belonged to a generation of socialist romantic thinkers finding themselves in the service of the British colonial enterprise. Although he was brought in by Storrs to survey and revive local handicrafts his work went way beyond that. Officially he held the position of Civic Advisor of the city, a post which he held until 1922. In addition he was the Secretary, and the main coordinator, of the Pro-Jerusalem Council, the Society's administrative board. Ashbee made significant contributions of his own, given his close association with Storrs, and the latter's substantial powers, to propose solutions to "the city's modern problems while conserving its ancient holy sights and unique character."
Ashbee combined a romantic vision of the 'oriental ideal' of the city, with a practical down to earth approach to the unique predicament of Jerusalem. In the 1920 annual report of the Society he defined the city unproductive base ("riffraff and priests", described above) as the main problem facing the planner. His attempt at overturning this 'parasitic' occupational structure through the revival (and introduction) of the traditional crafts in the city's building trades: weaving, tiling (with Armenian ceramic experts brought in from Kutahia), and glasswork (from Hebron). Among the projects undertaken and finished in this period were the renovation of Suq al Qattanin (Cotton Market) in the old city, the tiling of Dome of the Rock with the Waqf Authorities, the restoration of the ancient wall ramparts built by Suleiman al Qanuni, and the Citadel of the City. All of these projects involved the setting up of apprenticeship based on the guild-system. Storrs set up an annual Academy of the fine arts at the Citadel where exhibitions on Muslim art, Palestinian crafts, and town planning, were held.
Ashbee was at pains to reconcile his dual conception of the city—the romantic-visionary, and the conservationist-revivalist. He resolved this contradiction, according to Inbal Gitler, by dividing the city into two zones of future redemption: one was the city within the walls, which he saw "in a secular way as an historic monument marked for archeological preservation"; and the new city which was marked for modern expansion and development. The linkage between the two cities relied on a networking of landscaping schemes which surrounded the city walls and utilized concepts of the English garden combined with a series pavillions invoking an "Oriental style". An original contribution of Ashbee was an attempt at uniting the city with its rural and agricultural hinterland. This was achieved by “planting endemic natural vegetation, and by leaving part of the park area in state of wilderness or under development by local agrotechniques”. Ashbee’s planning of Jerusalem was a labour of love and contradiction, in which he tried to synthesize an orientalist vision of the holy city, with imaginative landscaping and the revived local traditions and crafts.
By sheer coincidence Wasif Jawhariyyeh, who was toiling at the same period in the Central Registry of the Military Government, caught the attention of Col. Storrs. Wasif’s ‘oud performances brought him to close to the Governor, who was fond of oriental music from his long stay in Egypt. Storrs seconded Jawhariyyeh to work as an assistant to Ashbee in the newly-established Pro-Jerusalem Council.
In his position as secretary to Ashbee, Jawhariyyeh relates the first incidence of conflict between the architectural vision of the Pro-Jerusalem Society and the Jerusalem Municipality. In 1901 the Ottomans had constructed a clock tower inside Jaffa Gate during the tenure of Mayor Faidallah al Alami to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Sultan Abdul Hamid reign (see above). The tower was designed in the Baroque style by Jerusalem architect Pascal Affendi Sarofim, who was the municipal architect at the time. When Ashbee became secretary of the Pro-Jerusalem Society he took a decsion to remove the clock tower, since, according to Wasif “it did not fit well with the image of the historical wall”. The tower was removed overnight despite protests from Municipality. Jawhariyyeh, however, concurred with Ashbee’s aesthetics. “The design was an elaborate hybridity of styles, and reminded me of Abdel Wahhab’s Franco-Arab music, although I must say that it should have been moved to another location, perhaps in the vicinity of the new municipality by Barclays Bank.” Years later Wasif had a wooden model of the removed Clock Tower and the adjoining plaza, destroyed by Storrs, made for the benefit of those who wanted to see what Ottoman Jerusalem looked like on the eve of the Mandate.
Wasif spent months accompanying both Ashbee and Richmond in their field trips on renovation work at Al-Aqsa compound, and in the restoration of the city’s ancient wall. Of these trips he has the following to say:
“As secretary to Mr. Ashbee I was privileged to observe the restoration work in al Haram area, and in other archeological sites of the city. The famous architect George Shiber, who later became renowned, was also involved in the renovation of al-Haram as a technical expert under Mr. Richmond. Unfortunately I was not to stay long with Ashbee. One winter evening I was considerably drunk when I entered the Registry, and started teasing my colleagues. I climbed on the desks and was clowning around just as Mr. Ashbee entered the room and began staring at me.
“Well Hello. Hello Mr. Ashbee”, I shouted. “Everybody was laughing their bellies off, except Ashbee, who went to his office and wrote an angry memo on my behalf.. That was the end of my career with him. I must say however, that I benefited greatly from working under Ashbee, which increased my knowledge of Jerusalem historical and architectural heritage.”
Wasif goes out of his way in his memoirs to indicate that his expulsion by Ashbee did not diminish his admiration for his work. He also makes a clear distinction between Storrs the “colonial-orientalist”, and Ashbee the architect and planner.
These diaries also help us to re-think these changes in the urban landscape of Jerusalem not only as a lived experience by a contemporary observer, but also because they challenge the idea of a clean rupture between Turkish rule and English rule. It undermines the notion that the Ottoman regime and the British regime were opposites, one representing oriental despotism, while the other—modernity.
Here, by contrast, the presumed creation of these institutions of colonial modernity are seen not as an innovation over the ‘decrepit’ Ottoman system, but as an elaboration on its foundations which were already introduced by Ottoman reforms (secular education, the civil service, constitutional reform, urban planning). In certain areas the British political plans constituted a retrogression over the Ottoman system. This was the case for example with the confessionalization of quarters in the old city, and enhancement of religion as a marker of national identity. Jawhariyyeh reminds us that much of the celebrated reforms of the Mandate Administration were already in place during and before the First War. But the tragedies of the war, and disastrous consequences of conscription (safar barlik) in poisoning the relationship between the Turkish rulers and the subject Arab population in Syria and Palestine wiped out the memory of these features of Ottoman modernity from Palestinian collective memory.
Palestine in particular, was one of the provinces in which anti-Ottoman sentiments were least pronounced at the turn of the century. Even after the proclamation of he Constitution of 1908, when separatist movements in the Arab regions began to add their weight to Greek and Armenian movements asserting themselves against Istanbul, the Palestinian street remained relatively pro-Ottoman. Adel Mana’ notes that Palestine was distinguished among the Syrian provinces with the lack of enthusiasm for the constitutional reform. In Nablus and other northern areas, the street demonstrated for the Sultan, and against the reformers. Only in Jaffa and Jerusalem was the Movement of Union and Progress able to attract limited support. It was only after Union and Progress began their Turkification program, following the removal of Sultan Abdul Hamid from power that Palestinians began to join Arab nationalist groups en masse.
Naturally the British administration is recalled as the conscious instrument (through the Balfour Declaration) which laid the foundation for the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, and much of Jawhariyyeh’s narrative is permeated with this foreknowledge (since he was writing in a later period). It explains to a large extent his ambiguity about the liberation of Jerusalem from the Ottoman yoke, even as Jerusalemites were dancing in the street and as he and his brother Khalil were burning their Turkish military uniforms.
Ballad of the Stuffed Carrots
The years that preceded the fall of Jerusalem were particularly harsh. The devastation of war was accompanied by major social dislocations and ruthless suppression of the urban population in the major cities of the region. The last three years of Ottoman rule were also the years of famine in Syria and Palestine. Hunger was not induced by draught or any other natural cause, but through the confiscation and forced diversion of wheat supplies to the Fourth Army, under the command of Jamal Pasha. To compound these disasters Palestine was subjected in the middle of 1915 by a severe attack of locust swarms that compelled a massive relocation of coastal populations inland. Lebanon was first hit by famine in the spring of 1916, and the famine soon spread to other the urban centres of Syria and Palestine. Dr Izzat Tannous, a Jerusalemite medical student (and later officer) in the Ottoman army described the devastating impact of the famine when he was stationed in Beirut: "Walking from Ras Beirut down to the Burj, the centre of town, it was a common affair to step over ten or fifteen dead bodies lying on the sidewalks for the municipal cart with one horse to pick them up and bury them. I fretfully stepped over these corpses many a time but it became routine. Children cried day and night: 'Jou'an'! (hungry), and rushed at every garbage can for anything to eat….babies were left at hospital gates at night to be taken in the morning to be fed." In Jerusalem the scarcity of food supplies were associated in people's mind with the conscription. In his sardonic way Jawhariyyeh composed a ditty revolving around popular obsessions with missing dishes. He jointly wrote the lyrics with Omar al Batsh—his teacher and oud master in Ottoman army:
انشودةالمجاعة
كرشاتكرشاتكرشاتمحشيه بيضاتبيضاتبيضاتمشوية
ياسمكياسمكياسمكمقلي واسكبواشربوغنيواطرب
بادربادربادرواشرب ماعلىالإنسانمنمهرب
فالسكرأنفع منهلاتفزع
An Ode to Hunger
Tripe tripe, stuffed with rice Eggs eggs, eggs in the oven
Fish oh fish fried in batter Pour the wine, drink, sing and be happy
Be daring and drink, For being high is the only way
Refrain
Qabwat, qabwat fried Kubbeh, kubbeh cooked with yogurt
Carrots, carrots oh stuffed carrots Come and settle in my stomach
Zucchini with meat, kishk with lard Aubergine ala yakhni with fluffy rice
Refrain
Oh Kunafeh do not desert me Oh pudding you are my destination
Almond hariseh you come first The queen of deserts after the stuffings
Pistachio cracking taqqish faqqish Fill you narghileh and get stoned
After the qatayif pick your teeth After all these helpings you will need a bath
Wasif first performed this song at the table of the Mutassarif of Jerusalem and his Turkish officers as evening entertainment. "I kept thinking all the time of how my family and friends outside were not only deprived of these foods, but did not even have the chance of looking at them". Paradoxically this macabre ‘ode to hunger’ had a hallucinatory effect and spread like wild fire in Jerusalem. Masses of people sang it as a way of invoking the famous 'stuffed' (mahashi) dishes of city that disappeared from their lives. But as the wording shows, it went beyond the evocation of food towards adopting an attitude of licentiousness and abandon. It continued to be a popular ballad for years after the war.
And despite the devastation, or perhaps as a result of it, several writers were able to look back at those years as signaling a major restructuring of Palestinian and Syrian society. A contemporary observer refers to the radical impact of the movement of population and the war economy on the normative aspects of daily life: villages coming to the city on a regular basis, women going to school and removing their veils, the emergence of café culture, and the decline of religiosity in Nablus and Jerusalem. A derivative development of these normative changes was the decline of local affinities and the emergence of Syrian and Arab nationalism.
Chaos in the Streets
Jawhariyyeh recalls the three years of transition as the days of chaos—both in the country as a whole and in his private life, as if one condition mirrored the other. But the ‘chaos’ here is also seen here as a period of creative anarchy.
In his personal life, those were the 'precious' years of bachelorhood before he got married and settled down. They were also ushered by the death of his patron, the mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Effendi al Husseini. He describes his condition then as one of ‘vagabondage’: “ I roamed around the city as if in a trance. I would spend all night partying, and then sleep all day, then spend another evening in neighbouring villages of Jerusalem. I paid no attention to anybody or anything, and would only go home to change my clothes, sleeping mostly at my friends’ homes until my body was completely depleted from intoxication. One day I am celebrating in the Bab Hatta neighbourhood, and in the next morning I am having a picnic with the families of the top notables (a3yan) in the city. Then I would have a ‘session’ with some of Jerusalem’s gangsters (zu3ran and qabadayat) in a city alley”.
But these episodes of hedonism which lasted most of 1918 and part of the next year reflected a mood which engulfed the city as a whole. Jawhariyyeh provides us with numerous episodes of public celebrations of freedom in the streets of the old city, marked by musical processions and open consumption of alcohol. In one such fantasia involving hundreds of revelers, the celebrants started in Damascus Gate, moved out of the old city through Musrara, to the Russian Compound, back into the old city from Jaffa Gate, to the Austrian Hospice and ending in the Sheikh Rihan Neighbourhood of Mahallat al-Sa3diyya. “Why did we have these orgies of celebration the likes of which we have not seen since then?” asks the author. He proceeds to answer himself: “The people were hungry for a moment of release, after the years of humiliation, disease, hunger and dispersal during the war and Ottoman despotism. When the British arrived we began to have a breath of freedom. Unfortunately our joy was short lived, for they brought us catastrophe which was several times more disastrous than the Turkish yoke”.
These outbursts of street merriment soon found an outlet during the years Military Government through the mushrooming of local cafes and café-bars. They were places where Jerusalemites could meet at leisure, listen to gramophone music, drink araq and cognac, and smoke an arghileh. Two outstanding cafés from this period were Maqha al 3arab in Ain Karim (owned by Abu-Al3abed Arab) which stayed open all night, and the Jawhariyyeh café bar—which featured live entertainment by visiting musicians from Cairo, Alexandria and Beirut.
The departure of the Turkish troops also encouraged some of the secret anti-Ottoman societies which had been active as literary or sports organizations to surface. Most notable among those associations were the Society for Arab Amity (Jam3iyyat al Ikha' al Arabi), established in Istanbul in 1908 after the proclamation of the new constitution; al Muntada al 3arabi (1909), with branches in many Syrian cities; the Arab Maiden (al Jam3iyyah al 3arabiyyah al Fatat—1912, based in Beirut; the Qahtani Association (al Jam3iyya al Qahtaniyya), and The Green Flag Society (Jam3iyyat al 3lam al Akhdar)—both in Istanbul in 1912. In Palestine the most notable of these quasi secret groups was the Literary Club (al Muntada al Adabi), whose membership included Fakhri al Nashashibi (who became later the leader of the Defense Party militia against the Husseinis and the Palestine Arab Party), Saliba al Juzi (brother of Bandali, the Marxist historian), Khalil Sakakini, Musa Alami, and Is’3af al Nashashibi. Sakakini’s Vagabond Party (Hizb al Sa3aleek) was an early precusor of the literary club and his circle included leading figures from Jaffa and Jerusalem intellectual circles such as Nakhleh Zureiq, Adel Jaber, and the Issa brothers (founders of the Filasteen newspapers in 1909). The Literary Club became the nucleus of the Christian-Muslim Associations during the Military Government. We have a record of a mass rally held in early 1918 just outside Jaffa Gate in which the main speakers were Fakhri Nashashibi and Saliba al Juzi; both spoke against the Balfour Declaration and in favor of Syrian unity.
Liminal Space and Military Rule
The Jawhariyyeh memoirs shed significant light on the critical post war years during which much political ambiguity about the future direction of Palestine prevailed. These were the years of cultural liminality in Palestine, when the Ottoman system had collapsed militarily but the colonial system was not yet ushered in. “We lived in a state of ignorance” Colonel Storrs—military governor of Jerusalem later confessed—“and my word was the law”. Under the administration of General Moonie all civil laws were suspended in favour of the military administration.
Suddenly in Palestine, according to Mandate historian Bayan al Hut, there were no lawyers, no judges, no courts, and no newspapers. The northern part of Palestine was still under Turkish control in 1918, and the British were mobilizing resistance in the name of Sherif Hussein against the fledgling Ottoman army. But even after the defeat and final consolidation of British rule over the country the borders between Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria with Palestine remained "Ottoman", with fluid boundaries, and common cultural outlook.
While the legal vacuum was filled in the countryside by a reversion to common law (al Qanun al 3urfi) and tribal law, the situation in the big cities allowed appointed judges and senior administrators, both British and Palestinians, substantial leeway to exercise their discretion in applying the law at the local level.
These discretionary powers are illustrated by a number of recorded cases in 1919 at the Jerusalem Court of Appeals, presided by Judge Muhammad Yusif al Khalidi, widely known for his eccentricity and fairness. In one those cases a well known Old City prostitute is brought before him for on charges of 'disturbing the peace'. Judge Khalidi apparently had been drinking heavily the night before, and was still in a daze when the woman was ushered in screaming into the court.
Judge Muhammad al Khalidi: "Shut up, you whore (ya sharmuta), and control yourself"
Prostitute: (enraged by the insult) "My lord, I maybe a prostitute at home, but here I am a citizen in the court of the state."
Judge Khalidi: (sobering and taken aback) "You are absolutely right."
The proceedings were temporarily halted and the judge addressed the court secretary Jamal al Salahi:
"Write this down: In the new case of slander, brought by the plaintiff fulaneh the daughter of fulan , against the accused, Judge Muhammad Yusif al Khalidi, the court judges for the plaintiff. I hereby fine the accused[myself] five Palestinian pounds."
He then took five pounds from his wallet, handed it to the court secretary, who issued him with an official receipt. The judge then entered the case into the court protocols, and apologized to the prostitute, he then proceeded with the original charges against her.
Another feature of this liminality was the porousness of the new borders with Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria and Egypt, which still reflected the old domains of Ottoman greater Syria. In the summer of 1922 Wasif goes on an excursion with his brother Khalil to Syria and Lebanon through the northern borders. Khalil had spent three years of the war as an Ottoman soldier stationed in Beirut. The passage through Ras al Naqura, which within ten years had become a formidable frontier post, is hardly recorded, as if one passed from one district to another. Three years later Wasif repeats the same trip with his wife Victoria, passing again with hardly any formal procedures. The two stories illustrate the fluidity of frontier areas on the eve of the British and French protectorates delineating the borders of new states that consolidated notions of citizenship, exclusion and separation. The new regulations ended the regime when northern Palestine and southern Lebanon where constituted a sub-region, a physical unit with shared cultural and social attributes.
The phasing out of this border fluidity corresponded to the growth and consolidation in Palestine of the governing apparatus of the colonial state: the army, the police force, the civil service and the corpus of the new legal system. Within every sector of the new state the British had to balance a system of appointments that took into account the representation of the native Palestinian population, and the emigrant Jewish population. But while native representation was individual and direct, taking into account social status and confessional considerations, Jewish representation was mediated through protracted negotiations with the Jewish Agency and Zionist Executive. During the crucial formative stage of British rule, when the new civil administration was installed in 1920, Jewish representation was overwhelming, even though they constituted less than 12% of the population. Segev writes: "The Palestinian Jews in senior positions were prominent principally during Samuel's tenure. Together with the British Zionists, they held key positions in his administration, complained Lietenant Colonel Percy Bramely, the director of public security in Palestine. In fact, Bramely wrote, Samuel's was a 'Zionist-controlled government.'"
Jawhariyyeh himself was a direct witness and participant in the formation of the new civil service. Within the latter Wasif became a senior staff member in the National Registry (Qism al Tahrirat) and then (in 1919) in the Land Registry, whose main task was to complete the codification and commercialization of the land tenure system that was initiated by the Ottomans in 1858. The memoirs constitute a rich record of these transformation. In the summer of 1920 he made this entry: "The core of the new civil administration is made up of the heads of security, education, finance, customs, justice, and agriculture—all English; the heads of the departments of Immigration, Passports, and Land Administration are British and Jews. Mr N. Bentwich, a Zionist, was appointed as legal advisor to the government. Is this the initial implementation of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine?"
His work in the Land Registry for over two decades (with Sami Hadawi and Stephan Hanna—both of whom later became prominent writers in their own right), provides us with a detailed record of the manner in which the new laws were geared to facilitate the transfer of urban and rural property to the Zionists. This process included the abolition of the tithe and the werko . Both were Ottoman land taxes that were aimed at bringing in state revenue from landowners without regard to its quality or productivity; and the institution of the new graded land-tax, based on use, location, and quality. Finally, it included the expediting of the Land Settlement, whose main objective was a comprehensive cadastral registration of land plots to enhance and simplify the operations of the Tapu.
It is paradoxical, given their later nationalist credentials, how Sami Hadawi and Jawhariyyeh were critical instruments in this process of land alienation, initially unaware of its significance, and certainly unwilling to perform these tasks. But Jawhariyyeh's rendition of the process is typical of early hedonistic years in Jerusalem: passive resistance through delaying work, bureaucratic sabotage, and creating a jovial atmosphere of idyllic celebration in one of the most critical departments of the colonial government. While his colleagues, Jews and Arabs, were struggling with the intricate book entries of the new land registration system in Keith-Roach's administration, he composed the following ditty lampooning the system of recording agricultural statistics:
Homage to Double Book-Keeping
Worst of all is to establish these Rules
We are going mad with these calculations: barley, and wheat and fava beans
Tithes and Werko all year round…round and round till September ends
Go to the books and enter the numbers,
for public accounts and personal liabilities
Imports and Exports past and present
And converting Egyptian Lira
to the impossible Palestinian Pound
Deleting mistakes and animal census
From were we come, we grin and bear it.
والليأدهىمنكلده ترتيبالقواعد
واللهتجنننفضلنحسبونقول كرسنهوحنطهوفول
أعشاروويركوعلىطول وتحصلوتنزلوتدورلغايةشهرأيلول
وأدخلبالأستاذوآتيباليومية منحساباتعامومفرداتشخصيه
ووارداتوصادرات منسابقهوحالية
وتحويلالعملةألمصريه للداهيةالفلسطينية
فيالشطبالدكمات وتعدادالحيوانات
منحيثوليت وإحناصابرين
These mundane anecdotes, satirizing the daily routine of the colonial bureaucracy during the period of the military government, cumulatively draw a larger picture of an emerging liminal identity.
Their main features were a legal vacuum filled by administrative fiat; a hedonistic street culture that celebrated the loss of tyranny, but filled it with new uncertainties; and porous borders that still retained the texture of an older sense of a continuous Shami culture. What 'cemented' these elements together was a strong sense of the local—of Jerusalem being the centre of the country's shifting boundaries, and an anchor against the schemes engineered by the new colonial enemy, which drove many Palestinians into nostalgia for the 'accursed' Ottomans.
Early Rebellion and Ottoman Nostalgia
The honeymoon with the colonial authority did not last long. One of the first Government acts was to conduct the General Census (1921) in which Palestinian were divided into the three confessional categories of Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Jerusalem leadership of the national movement saw the census not as part of the planning instrument as it was heralded, but as a prelude of the realization of the National Jewish Home project. A call to boycott was ensued, but was not entirely successful.
As soon as the Bolshevik Government released the terms of the Sykes Picot secret accords, Palestinian Arabs began to link the terms of the British and French Mandates with the implementation of the Balfour declaration. The national movement began to focus on the twin issues of Jewish emigration (now encouraged by the new authority) and the transfer of land for Zionist settlement.
Unlike the situation in the Ottoman period public ceremonials acts as the lynchpin of confrontation with the British Authorities. The main focus of clashes between demonstrators and the Military Government was the Nabi Musa procession. These clashes began in the spring of 1919 and intensified in the next two years.
Colonel Storrs, in his capacity as the new military Governor of Jerusalem began to regulate the Nabi Musa processions under government supervision—partly as a measure to control the crowds, but also as a plan to regulate religious ritual within the new civil administration of Palestine. In this effort he was acting in collusion with Haj Amin al Husseini, the rising star of the nationalist movement (who also saw himself as a successor of Salah ed Din in this regard) , and recently appointed as the Mufti of Jerusalem. Both the nationalist movement and the British saw in the control of religious ceremonials a mechanism for realizing their objectives.
Along these lines, Nebi Musa processions which under the Ottomans had been one of many syncretic public celebrations suddenly became an official festival, sponsored by the colonial authorities. Haj Amin himself played a critical role also in ‘nationalizing’ the Nebi Musa celebrations under his authority as the Mufti. Similarly Easter Sunday and the rituals of Good Friday and Fire Saturday were also given state sponsorship. It was all part of the process of confessionalization of popular religious ceremonies that conceived of Palestine as a land of three ancient religious communities, rather than a national community freeing itself from communalism. Storrs, the orientalist played a crucial role in the inventing this tradition, was succeeded by the fiercely anti-Arab commander Edward Keith-Roach. Jawhariyyeh knew both governors personally and contrasted their personal style of governing, in favor of the wily and cultured Storrs. But he is also fully aware of Storrs conscious manipulation of religious celebrations, as can be seen in this description of early clashes of the police in 1921:
The army brought a large armed contingent and placed them at Jaffa Gate, reinforced by heavy cannons and tanks. Sir Ronald Storrs riding his horse in full military attire headed the force. All were facing the great procession of Nebi Musa arriving from Hebron, with the objective of diverting the crowds from clashing with the Jews…It took fully six hours for the procession, which included singing bands, sword players, musical bands with drums, and horsemen representing each village in Mount Hebron with their banners, to arrive from the Sultan's Pool to the edge of Jaffa Gate. I was standing there with the throngs when the procession found the gates to the old city blocked by the army. With a signal by Storrs half the procession moved east towards Jaffa Road, but then in a sudden move the leaders of procession turned back and attacked the British troops defying the machine guns and the tanks. It was an unforgettable site. And what did Sir Ronald Storrs do on this occasion? He suddenly sprung out as a Qahtani Arab, and addressed the crowds in eloquent Arabic: "Greetings to the heroes of Nebi Musa…I welcome you according to the age-old tradition of going through the gate of the old city towards the Haram." By doing this he avoided a bloody clash with army. The processionals in turn did not clash with the soldiers when they saw that Storrs himself was greeting them, which is exactly what he had aimed at—namely, to re-route the procession inside the walls away from Jaffa Gate.
Keith-Roach, however lacked both the finesse and the cunning of Colonel Storrs. He described the Palestinians as "a naturally indolent people…pleasant to live among [with] their long loose garments covering a multitude of sins". But by that time (1926) it is also more likely that clashes between the national movement and the Zionists became too severe for it to be contained through logistic manipulations as described here.
Despite the secular character of the Palestinian national movement, exemplified by the political platforms of its main parties (Istiqlal, Palestine Arab Party, Defense Party, and the Communist Party) and the ideological persuasion of its leadership (perhaps with the exception of Qassam Group in the North of Palestine), religious motifs had become essential in formulating its outlook. This is exemplified in the uses of religious ceremonials (such as Nebi Musa processions) in nationalist mobilization—which has hitherto been a syncretic and folk festival; and the location of religious sites (the Wailing Wall/Buraq, and al Aqsa) as centers for clashes between Arabs and Jews. It is also exemplified by the increased use of religious language in nationalist slogans and exertions (“Seif ad-Din al Haj Amin”!).
Another striking turn within the nationalist discourse related to the manner which British “perfidy” has made people—initially exhilarated by the end of Turkish rule—nostalgic to the Ottoman era, and even towards the “Turanic” regime of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, despite his openly anti-Arab credentials. Wasif narrates a performance by the Egyptian-Jewish composer Zaki Murad (the father of singer Laila Murad) in which he sang a tribute to Ataturk in 1921 which became widely popular in Jerusalem:
Ode to Ataturk
The heart beckons to you in adoration
and the eyes are cast towards your beauty
Royalty seeks your concord
the soul is enliven by your presence
[…]
Nobody is your equal
Nobody radiates in your brilliance
الفؤادمخلوقلحبك
الفؤادمخلوقلحبك والعيونعلىشانتراك
والملوكتطلبرضاك والنفوستحيابقربك
راعيربكرققلبك اشفيصبكمنلماك
دور
الجمالمنسوبلشكلك والقمرمحسوبضياك
منيطلولفيالملكوصلك وانتفيباهيعلاك
مينيماثلكمينيعادلك مينيليقلكفيسماك
Although the song was ostensibly composed for King Fuad the First by Ibrahim Qabbani, it was nevertheless seen in Syria and Palestine as a tribute to Ataturk’s victory over the allied troops. The record of this song was in constant demand for some time after the war, especially when Palestinians began to feel “the pernicious objectives of British rule”. Abu Shanab Music store, the main importer of Egyptian records, could hardly keep up with popular demand.
New Public Space and the Absence of Intimacy
War and social dislocation created new conditions of urban life-styles and practices on the eve of the British Mandate in Palestine. Famine, disease and exile contributed to the disruption of the social fabric of whole communities. In Jerusalem, as well as in other cities in the area new public spaces and new behavioral patterns began to emerge. A substantial state sector gave rise to a new the civil service and investments in the national economy invigorated nascent mercantile strata in the coastal regions. These urban changes included the extension of residential communities outside the old city walls. Secular education, cafes, social clubs and recreational centres catered to the growth of new bourgeois tastes and sensibilities. The private writings of this period ushered a sense of individualism and escape from familial and communitarian bonds.
City planning during the Mandate period, drawn by MacLean, Geddes, and Ashbee—and local architects as as George Shiber , contributed to the development of these urban sensibilities. At the heart of Ashbee’s garden landscaping schemes, which seperated the old walled Jeruslalem from its new suburbs was the creation of a “designated route through a sequence of experiences that elicited differing emotions and aroused varied associations.” According to Gitler, the new scheme was specifically planned “to arouse in its visitors emotional or religious sentiments for the city and its walls, which bear so many centuries of evocative history. Similar to the English picturaswque garden, benches were also added in locations offering both rest and enjoyment of the view.” To what extent these intentions succeeded in evoking these subjective associations, while creating a sense of privacy in public space? The answer is difficult to ascertain, except for those limited candid disclosures in the narratives of contemporary native writers.
Wasif Jawhariyyeh’s Memoirs, in common with the vast majority of Arab autobiographies, are infused with this new spirit but suffer from an absent sense of personal intimacy. This judgment may sound paradoxical given the detailed disclosures in the private life of his contemporaries and his own. The memoirs are especially valuable because they expose, ridicule and celebrate the conventional, the hidden, and the unmentionable. These include the insular going-ons of the Jerusalem upper classes, the foibles of Ottoman and British military and political leadership, and the hilarious heroics and scandals of ordinary people. It dwells on the mundane and helps us to see it with fresh eyes. Nevertheless these events are more anecdotal and expository of human foibles than they are intimate.
Perhaps this is not surprising, given that much of these diaries are self-reflections, meant—with rare exceptions—to be seen by the public eye in a society obsessed with notions of personal and family honour. Within the vast corpus of diaries, memoirs, and Arab biographic literature, however, there are few important exceptions to this assessment. One of the most significant of those exceptions is the autobiographical narrative (written in the third person) of Faris Al Shidyaq, published in Paris in 1855. One recalls here the two episodes of Shidyaq wedding night to his Coptic wife in Cairo after a brief courtship, and her subsequent affair with his manservant in Malta. Another is the private correspondence between Khalil al Sakakini and his beloved Sultana Abdo, (later his fiancé and wife) full of recrimination, guilt, and unconsummated passion. We also have the striking section in Omar al Salih’s memoirs where he attempts (unsuccessfully) to entice his reluctant wife to join him as a public companion. In modern Palestinian literature the best case in point can be found in Fadwa Touqan’s childhood recollections about the cruelty of her parents and siblings towards her. In her Nablusi autobiography, A Mountainous Journey, she breaches the general taboo against besmirching the memory of her dead parents in explaining the pains of growing up as a rebellious female in a confining household. But these are few and exceptional cases of private disclosures of intimacies that run against the grain.
In the case of the Jawhariyyeh memoirs this absence is particularly poignant given the substantial amount of ‘scandalous’ disclosures concerning the private lives of Jerusalem notables: their bachelor apartments, defiance of public morality, mistresses, indulgence in alcohol and other implements of keif, and the self-revelations (often self-depreciating) on his youthful indiscretions. Yet all these disclosures happen in an anecdotal fashion and are meant as social observations of the changing pattern of life in Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem. And they mostly happen to other people in which he appears as spectator and a witness. His own family is significantly immune from these observations. Except for a brief section on the lineage of his mother and father—the profile of his siblings (particularly his sisters), his wife and his immediate circle, remain opaque. Suddenly Wasif abandons this caution in the second volume of his memoirs, during early years of British rule, when he devotes a special section to his betrothal and marriage. And again when his wife dies and he contemplates (several years later) marriage for a second time. These revelations are of special value because they stand out as intimate recollections not only of his courtship and marriage, but also because they divulge to the reader what is usually unsaid and unmentioned.
Wasif met his future wife, Victoria, in Jericho during the war years when he was an officer in the Ottoman navy. Her father, Saliba Sa'ad, had originally come from the Birzeit village and owned the Jiljal Hotel in Jericho. Sa'ad was arrested and exiled to Ankara by the Ottomans for inexplicable reasons—at least they were not divulged in the memoirs, with the result that Victoria took over the hotel and managed it successfully with its restaurant-bar. The place became a favourite hangout for British officers—who referred to her as 'Victoria Jericho'. Among her frequent clients were the top commanders like Bols, Moonie, and Stors during the Military Adminstration.
Here we are told the story of the ‘adoption’ of his future wife by the Orthodox patriarch, and her de-facto abandonment by her family; her work in the family bar-restaurant in Jericho during the war years; his struggle with the patriarch in order to secure his blessing for their betrothal, and his honeymoon days in Cairo. These intimate disclosures re-appear again towards the end of the memoirs when the writer is old and lonely and he contemplates re-marriage in order to bring back domestic stability in his life, shattered by the death of Victoria.
This episode nevertheless reveals Wasif as a satirist of the first order. Immediately after Victoria's funeral, Jawhariyyeh is receiving the mourners in his daughter's house in Beirut. Among the visitors appeared a man, unknown to Wasif who proceeded to read long eulogy enunciating the attributes of the departed wife. Wasif is moved to tears by the poem. The poem suddenly shifts to listing the traits of her relatives and her husband, and indicating an intimate knowledge of the family. All of a sudden it dawned on Wasif that the man was a professional mourner, who moves from one funeral to another, singing the praises of the deceased for a fee. Wasif is jerked out of his sorrow and passes few pounds to the man: "Please that's enough, my heart is torn". The man, in his embarrassment, insists that Wasif keeps the written eulogy. "No, brother", insists Wasif, "I am sure you need it more than I do for your next visit".
The setting of the second intimate disclosure is Jericho again, and another devastating war. But while the Great War was an event which triggered great expectations of freedom and liberty, this third war (1948) was the watershed of loss and dispersal for the Palestinians. Jericho was now the site of refuge and devastation of a defeated nation, where tens of thousands of refugees where flooding the Jordan Valley from the coastal areas. It was as if Wasif was trying to re-build his own personal life in an answer to a collective tragedy. He is brutally frank with the reader—as if he is actually talking to himself and seeking his approval—in listing the attributes of his potential life partner. His courting and prolonged negotiations with Karima, his intended wife, is exceptional not because of the intimate disclosure of passion, but because it reflects the truthful self-doubts of an older man—past his sixtieth year, and in love.
Unlike the rest of his diary he directs his satirical knife this time against himself. In the initial attempt at re-marriage he gathers all his strength to request a secluded meeting with the widow he loved in order to propose. The widow rejects him politely but firmly. She reminds him that she had been approached by three men before him who far outstrip him in wealth and status. Wasif was so devastated that he can hardly walk back home. He even avoids walking the Sultan Road—the scene of his rejection for a long period afterwards. The episode is presented as a protracted balancing act of mature love, escape from loneliness, and the need to protect his family from the storms engulfing the nation. All of a sudden the writer is stripped from his satirical defenses and is exposed (or rather he chooses to expose himself) as a fragile, hesitant, but dignified father and husband. He ends his narrative with a dialogue with that tired and relentless exiled Bolshevik from Jerusalem, Najati Sidqi—in every way his opposite-- which spans Wasif's long and intriguing career as a reluctant soldier, civil servant, flanneur, bon vivant, great satirist, and musician.
Endnotes
1. Sahar Huneindi, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, (Arabic edition), Institute of Palestine Studies. Beirut, 2003, pp.42-66.
2. For a discussion of divisions within the British military administration on the issue of Zionism see also Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2000, pp. 85-101
3. For a discussion of the perception of the Mandate in historical debates, see Bernard Wasserstein, “The British Mandate in Palestine: Mythos and Realities”, in Middle East Lectures, volume one, (The Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies, Tel Aviv), 1995, pp. 29-41
4. Ruth Kark, Jerusalem Nweighbourhoods: Planning and By-Laws (1855-1930), The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1991, pp 58-59
5. Rassem Khamaisi and Rami Nasrallah, The Jerusalem Urban Fabric, International Peace and Cooperation Center, Jerusalem, 2003, p. 298
6. Hala Fattah, "Planning, Building and Populating Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period", 1999, www.jerusalemites.org/jerusalem/ottoman/7.htm
7. Quoted by Yadin Roman, "Jerusalem's Wall", Eretz Magazine, February, 2000
8. Alexander Scholch, Palestine in Transformtion, 1856-1882, Institute for Jerusalem Studies, Washington, 1993, p. 121
9. Scholch, pp. 121-122
10.Kark, p. 59
11. Khamaisi and Nasrallah, p. 296
12. Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler, "C R Ashbee's Jerusalem Years: Arts and Crafts, Orientalism and British Regionalism", in Assaph Studies in the Arts, no. 5 (undated), Tel Aviv University, p. 31
13. Storrs, Orietnations, p. 322
14. Storrs, Orientations, p. 323
15. Yadin Roman, "Jerusalem's Wall", EretzWeekly.htm, 2001
16. Storrs, Orientations, p. 323-326
17. Gitler, ibid.
18. Storrs, Orientations, p. 326-327
19. Giteler, "C R Asbhee's Jerusalem Years", p. 45-46
20. Gitler, p. 40
21. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 49
22. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 49
23. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 50. Fifteen years later Prof. T.F. Meisel, the Hebrew University Archeologist visited Jawhariyyeh and wrote glowingly about this model in an article published in the Palestine Post, on August 10, 1945.
24. Jawhariyyeh, al Quds Al Intidabiyyeh, Memoirs Vol 2, Ms. p. 48
25. Jawhariyyeh, ibid.
26. See “The Modernity of Ottoman Jerusalem”, introduction to Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Ottoman Jerusalem, Insitute of Palestine Studies, Beirut, 2002.
27. Adil Mana’, Tarikh Filasteen fi Awakhir al 3ahd al ‘Uthmani 1700-1918, Mu’assasat al Dirasat al Filastiniyyah, Beirut, 2003, pp. 243-244
28. Mana’, ibid., p. 243 and 249
29. Mana’, ibid., p. 247 Mana’ notes also that considerable difference exist between Palestinian historians (eg. Bayan Nweihid al Hut) and Israeli ones (eg. Y. Porath) on the degree of Palestinian support for Arab anti-Ottoman groups), with the latter emphasizing its limitations. Al-Hut suggests that Palestinian represention in Arabist groups was considerably higher than their demographic weight in the Arab provinces (see Mana’, ibid. p. 248). But these differences are more likely to be due to their stress on different time periods.
30. See S. Tamari and I. Nassar (eds.), Alquds al Uthamaniyya fil Mudhakkarat al Jawhariyyeh, Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut, 2002, page 253-254
31. Izzat Tannous, The Palestinians: Eyewitness History of Palestine Under the British Mandate, I. G. T. Company, London and New York, 1988, p. 35
32. Mana', Tarikh Filasteen, ob. cit, p. ?????
33. Izzat Tannous, ibid. p. 36
34. Jawhariyyeh Ms, Volume 2, page 29-30
35. Ibid. 30
36. Although we have the words for this ballad, unfortunately the lyrics were lost. Jawhariyyeh never studied the musical notation system and therefore did not record them.
37. Omar Salih al Barghouti, al Marahil, Beirut, 2001, pp. 192-193
38. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 23
39. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. pp. 40-46
40. Ibid. p. 41-42
41. For a description of these café-bars and their clientele see, "The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem's Prince of Idleness"
42. Jawhariyyeh, Ms, p. 44-45
43. Mudhakarat Najati Sidqi, Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut, 2001, pp. 196-197; see also Mana’, op cit., p. 248
44. On the comosition of the Literary Club in Jerusalem, see Jawhariyyeh, Ms. pp. 26, 86-87; See also Khalil al Sakakini, Yawmiyyat, volume 2.
45. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 26
46. Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London, Nicholson and Watson), 1937, pp 272-273
47. Bayan Nuwaihid al Hut, Al Qiyadat wal Mu’assasat al Siyasiyya fi Filasteen, 1917-1948 (Leadership and Political Institutions in Palestine), Mu’assast al Dirasat al Filastiniyyah, Beirut, 1981, page 66
48. Her name is withheld, presumably because her status as prostitute is not certain.
49. This case is among several court cases cited by Jawhariyyeh, Ms. Section 3, pp. 13-14
50. Jawahriyyeh Ms. Section 1, page 30
51. Jawhariyyeh, Ms., page 161
52. Segev, op cit, page 167
53. Jawhariyyeh Ms., section 2, p. 21
54. The Werko was originally a land and real estate tax levied on Za’amat (sipahis, or feudal estates). With the abolition of feudal estates the werko became a land tax imposed by the state, together with the tithe. For details see, Moses Doukhan, “Land Tenure”, in Said Himadeh, Economic Organization of Palestine, American University Press, Beirut, 1938, pp. 98-99
55. Jawhariyyeh Ms., section 4, p. 59
56. In Jawhariiyeh’s Memoirs the national movement was already divided on the issue of census boycott with Fawzi Nashashibi—a cousin of Raghib and a future leader of the opposition (pro-British) faction already counseling support for the census.
57. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p. 161
58. Jawhariyyeh, Ms Section 3, page 20-21
59. Cited by Segev, op cit, p. 168
60. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. page 84-85
61. Inbal Gitler, “C.R. Ashbee’s Jerusalem Years”, p. 39
62. Imad al Solh, ed., I'tirafat al Shidyaq fi Kitab al Saq alal Saq; Dar al Ra'id al-Arabi, Beirut, 1982
63. Kitab al Saq alal Saq, pp. 272-274
64. Khalil al Sakakikni, Yawmiyyat, Volume One, Ramallah, 2004
65. Fadwa Touqan, Rihla Jabaliyyah, Rihla Sa3bah, Dar al Shuruq, Ramallah, 1999, pp. 18-22
66. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. P. 443
67. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. p.336 and 444-446.
68. Jawhariyyeh, Ms. Section 4, p. 61-62
69. Jawahariyyeh, Ms. Section 4, p. 66
70. Ibid. p. 67
71. This dialogue between Najati Sidqi and Wasif Jawhariyyeh was recorded and broadcasted by Beirut public radio on March 19, 1954
