تغيير التصورات العثمانية لفلسطين: الجزء الأول: رسالة فلسطين والجَمالان
النص الكامل: 

 

You have now become one nation on earth, Ottomans all–no difference between Arabs and ‘Ajam;

 

No generations will divide you, and no religions will come between you.

 

Brothers together under our glorious constitution, joined together by the Unionist banner flying high. Popular poem published in Beirut on the eve of the declaration of the 1908 Constitution.1


Ahmad Qadri, the Arab physician who was a founder of the Literary Forum in Istanbul in 1909, (and later in 1911 of the Young Arab Society in Paris) records an episode, in his Istanbul diary, which shook his faith in the continued unity of the Ottoman regime and its ability to maintain the loyalty of its Syrian and Arab subjects. He was taking an evening stroll in the imperial capital with his schoolmate and friend Awni Abdul Hadi days after the proclamation of the new constitution of 1908. The city was teeming with excited crowds discussing the dawning of the new liberties, and the end of the Hamidian dictatorship. The two Arabs, a Damascene and a Nabulsi, both considered themselves loyal Ottoman citizens. They came upon an animated speaker drawing a large audience. He was Sari Bey, a young charismatic officer who was singing the praises of the new constitution to the crowd. Then he made a sudden shift and began attacking the supporters and lackeys of the old regime, including “the Arab traitor Izzat” and the “Arab traitor Abul Huda.”2 The reference was to Izzat Pasha al Abed, the Sultan’s private secretary, and Shaykh Abul Huda al Saidawi, a religious scholar, who were part of Abul Hamid’s inner circle.3

 

It had become customary in this period to portray Abdul Hamid’s Arab advisors as monkeys in the oppositional press of Istanbul.4 Abdul Hadi and Qadri berated the speaker: “Why do you single out the Arab identity of Abdul Hamid’s men, when there far more Turks among the supporters of the old regime?” It is quite likely that Qadri, (though not Abdul Hadi) was also upset because he himself sympathized with the regime of Abdul Hamid. Elsewhere he notes how the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) overthrew “the last Sultan who conceived the Arabs as brothers in faith, inspiring Arab intellectuals to support an Ottoman patriotism” which has since then disappeared.5 Over the next several months he began to hear a revival of earlier derogatory epitaphs directed at Arabs, using such terms as pis arap (dirty Arabs), siyah arap (black Arabs), çingene arap (Arab gypsies), and akilsiz arap (stupid Arabs).6

 

Qadri reports how particularly hurt he was by these expressions since his father Abdul Qadir Qadri, was an Amiralei (colonel) in the Ottoman army who had fought valiantly in European provinces, and was later appointed as military commander in Baalbak, Akka, and Basra.7 Both he and his father considered themselves pillars of a multi- national Ottoman order. Qadri regards this episode, and the concomitant ethnic tension that emerged after the attempted coup of 1909, as constituting a turning point in Arab relations with the Ottoman state. This led in his view to the determination of many active members of Arab literary societies in the Ottoman capital to seek autonomy, and then separation, from Istanbul.

 

It is clear however that these ethnic tensions are conceived retrospectively, in the light of events that took place in Syria and Palestine during and after the war. The facts that emerge from the Ottoman military’s own sources tell a more complex, if not drastically different story. One such important document, Filastin Risalesi, is the salnameh type military handbook issued for Palestine at the beginning of the Great War.

 

Filastin Risalesi (1331 Rumi) is an astonishing document that disguises as much as it reveals. Ostensibly a soldier’s manual issued for limited distribution to the officers (hizme makkhsuslir—“special services”) of the Eighth Army Corps, the handbook is basically a demographic and geographic survey of the province which constituted the southern flank for the theater of military operations during WWI. It includes statistical tables, topographic maps, and an ethnography of Palestine. But it also contains two outstanding features that highlight the manner in which Palestine and Syria were

 

seen from Istanbul by the new Ottoman leadership after the constitutional revolution of 1908. The first is a general map of the country in which the boundaries extend far beyond the frontiers of the Mutasarflik of Jerusalem, which was, until then, the standard delineation of Palestine. The northern borders of this map include the city of Tyre (Sur) and the Litani River, thus encompassing all of the Galilee and parts of southern Lebanon, as well as districts of Nablus, Haifa and Akka—all of which were part of the Wilayat of Beirut until the end of the war.

 

The second outstanding feature of the manual is a population map that classifies the inhabitants of Palestine and Coastal Syria by ethnic, communal and religious identity. Contrary to what one would have expected in light of later developments, the population of Syria and Southern Anatolia are not divided by nationality, linguistic grouping or religious affiliation, but by a combination of putative national and sectarian identities. The people of Southern Anatolia are divided into “Turks,” “Turkman” (west of Sivas), and a category of “other Turks.” Bilad al Sham is divided into Syrians (Suri), and Arabs (East of the Jordan River). The rest of the population is made up of ethnic and religious minorities that overlap with these major national groupings: Maronites, Druze, Jews, Orthodox (Rum), Ismailis, Matawleh, and Nusseiris. Another category dispersed in Palestine is “rural Arabs” (arep kuli) and “rural Druze” (druz kuli). We will now discuss the political context of this social mapping.

 

Cemal (Buyuk) vs. Cemal (Kuchuk)

 

Filestin Risalesi was issued by the Eighth Army Corps to its officers. The Eighth Army for much its history was dominated by Mersinli Cemal Pasha, who succeeded Ahmet Cemal Pasha (Jamal Buyuk) to the leadership of the Fourth Army after the routing of Ottoman forces in Suez. In many ways the history of Palestine and Syria during the war years was dominated by these two figures: the first because of his relentless war against Arab nationalists, and the second for his attempt to repair the damage to Arab-Turkish relationships brought about by Ahmad Jamal’s “campaign of terror”. In addition to the two Cemals, the Ottoman forces in Palestine were led by three German generals who were attached to the Ottoman command. Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, who commanded the Eighth Army in 1917 (together with Cevat Pasha), and Otto Liman von Sanders (who was commander of the First Army in Gallipoli). The formation of the Yilderim Army Group in May 1917 by the merger of the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Armies (as well as the German Asia Group) was meant to save the situation in Palestine from defeat. The new Sa‘iqa formation (Yilderim, i.e. “thunderbolt” in Turkish) was led by Erich von Falkenhayn and Otto Liman von Sanders. It was Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) who withdrew the Yilderim forces from southern Palestine, when the front began to collapse.8

Ahmet Cemal took over the command of the Fourth Army from Zeki Pasha (Halepli) in November 1914 and established his headquarters in Damascus, moving in 1915 to Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. He had already established a name for himself within the new political-military elite before coming to Palestine. His name began to sparkle after the 1909 rebellion, when he joined the Action Army to suppress the Hamidian restoration movement.9 As governor of Adana he was put in charge of suppressing “Armenian Revolts” in the region. In 1911 he was appointed governor of Baghdad, again to deal with Arab tribal ebellions. He later joined the Ottoman troops in the Balkan War and was promoted to colonel. In 1913 he was among the inner leadership of the Young Turks who brought the CUP to power in the January coup d’état. He was appointed governor of Istanbul where he was engaged in suppressing opposition to the ruling party.10 Just before the war he was promoted to the rank of general and appointed Minister of the Navy—a position which he held for much of his remaining political career. Before the war Cemal was known for his pro-French sympathies, and he held a number of talks with the French to seek an alliance with them on behalf of the CUP government, but was eventually forced to join Enver and Tal‘at Pashas in concluding the Ottoman-German alliance.

 

Soon after the proclamation of war, in November 1914, Cemal was appointed head of the Fourth Army in Syria. He already had a reputation as an “Arab hand” after suppressing the tribal rebellions in Iraq. When he arrived in Damascus he was greeted enthusiastically by the Syrians. Ahmad Qadri, with whom this paper began, then a leader of al Arabia al Fatah (“Young Arab Movement”) and a medical officer in the Fourth Army, describes the progression of Cemal’s relations with the Arabs. He quotes his maiden speech in Damascus in the plaza of the Ummayad mosque: “There is no conflict between Turks and Arabs in this struggle. We either win together or fail together.” However a series of events in the course of the war led to the deterioration of his (and the CUP’s) relations with the local population and started the campaign of repression against the nationalists. The crucial factor was the failure of the second Suez campaign, and Cemal’s perception of the Syrian soldiers as responsible for it.11

 

But the two direct issues were his interception of secessionist propaganda circulated by the Ottoman Decentralization Party, originating from Cairo, and news that Sherif Hussein was already negotiating an agreement with the British behind his back.12

 

There were several interventions by Prince Faisal with Enver Pasha and Tal‘at Pasha which seemed to have improved relations with Cemal, but only temporarily.13

 

One factor in these vacillations was the fact that within the CUP there were several factions vying for power, and therefore not always coordinating with each other.

 

This became clear before and during the war with the formation of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa (Special Forces) in 1911 under the command of Enver Pasha, originally to fight the Italian occupation of Libya. By 1913 these special forces had evolved into an intelligence unit answerable only to the Ministry of War, and charged with combating separatist movements in the Empire. During the war years each member of the CUP triumvirate, Enver, Tal‘at, and Ahmet Cemal, had his own personal Teskilat-i Mahsusa.14 Cemal in particular used this security apparatus to combat the Arab separatists, as well as to quell internal dissent in Syria and Palestine.15 But he also tried to create a loyalist circle of supporters. Those included the Mufti of Akka As‘ad al Shuqairi, Prince Shakib Arslan, Shaykh Abdul Aziz Shawish, head of the Salahiyya College, and Abdul Rahman al Yusif, the director of Haj organization (Imarat al Haj).16 Their work was extolled as a model of initiating a campaign of Islamic mobilization for the war, while justifying the repression of dissent against it, and against secessionist sentiments. In his campaign for Islamic mobilization Cemal received full support from the CUP leadership and from the Germans, who ran their own campaign of Jihadist activities.17 Tilman Lüdke’s Jihad Made in Germany is a thorough record of Germany’s disingenuous role in this campaign, showing a zeal among the Germans that far exceeded the intentions of the Ottoman leadership.18

 

But in the anti-Arabist campaign it seems that Cemal was on his own, even differing in a number of instances with Enver and Tal‘at. Darwazeh cites the diary of Aziz Bek, head of Ottoman intelligence in Damascus during the war years, to emphasize this deviation.19 He explains the vehemence of Cemal’s campaign against the Arab wing of the Decentralization Party (which in program and action, was far from advocating a separation of the Arab provinces from Istanbul) due to the latter’s alliance with the (mainly Turkish) party of Freedom and Reconciliation (Hurriyat wa I’tilaf), when the latter conducted a briefly successful coup against the CUP government. When the Unionists succeeded in restoring their rule, Cemal commenced his campaign against the autonomist movements, and what he saw as the seeds of “Arab separatism” in particular.20

 

Ahmet Cemal’s military dictatorship over Syria left an everlasting impact on the population’s relationship with Istanbul. Hasan Kayali, who examined the internal documents of the CUP leadership, also suggests that Cemal’s more extreme measures against the nationalist movement (the Beirut-Damascus executions, and the massive deportation of “hostile” elements from coastal regions into Anatolia), were not necessarily supported by the CUP leadership. In particular he suggests that the Turkification campaign introduced by Cemal into state schools and institutions of higher learning in Palestine and Syria was a reflection of the centralizing and modernizing features of the new regime, and was not particularly directed at Syrian or Arab nationalism.21 There were also widespread rumors that Cemal was secretly negotiating special status for the Arab provinces in a future Anatolian-Syrian Federation.22 Nevertheless the damage engendered by Cemal’s systematic campaign of repression was too extensive to salvage. It brought about a rupture with the Ottoman regime in which the Syrian population began to associate natural disasters (famine, diseases, and the locust attack) with the policies of Cemal, and through him with the central government.

 

When eventually, in September 1917, Cemal resigned from his post on the southern front (ostensibly over policy differences with Falkenhayn over Suez) the opportunity arose to have him replaced by Mersinli Cemal Pasha as head of the Fourth Army.

 

The latter also commanded the Eighth Army Corps, took over command from Ahmet Cemal, and fought in Palestine, Syria and Transjordan until the end of the war. Thus when Filistin Risalesi was published, Mersinli was in command. But since we do not know when and who commissioned it, it could very well bear the imprint of Falkenhayn, Sanders, and Ahmet Cemal Pasha.

 

Country Manual or Intelligence Report?

 

As a military handbook Filistin Risalesi may be compared to two types of “country surveys.” The first type comprises those military manuals issued by Allied forces during the war to help their officers manage their movements in enemy territory in the Syrian provinces. The second type of survey consists of Holy Land travel books meant to acquaint pilgrims and visitors with the ways and manners of the Orient. A good example of the first type is The Handbook of Syria and Palestine, issued first by British Naval Intelligence in 1915, and then re-issued annually after the British conquest of Syria and Palestine.23 Another is Harry Luke’s Handbook of Palestine, issued on the eve of the Mandate.24 Luke later became Deputy Governor of Jerusalem immediately after the British Occupation of Palestine.25 Both books contain basic historical, geographic and demographic data, as well as maps and diagrams about the country. The latter, since it also targets the civilian visitor to the country, also contains practical information about transport, prices, and health precautions. But the ethnographic map is unique to Risalesi. Of the second type, Holy Land travel books, we have two sources that seem to have been mined by the author(s) of Risalesi, especially the section on population types. One is Jaussen’s Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab (1908), and the other is Harry Luke’s Handbook mentioned above.26

 

In terms of its ethnic/political assessment of the local populations Risalesi has also a British equivalent for Palestine. This is the series of intelligence reports prepared by the British army in Egypt during the war years. Those include “The Economic and Political Situation West of the Jordan” prepared by the War Office (1918) and Intelligence Reports prepared by the Admiralty in Cairo.27 Muhsin Muhammad Salih, who made an extensive survey of these intelligence reports, concludes that Palestinians were divided in their sentiments about the approaching Allied troops, but there was nevertheless considerable support for the Ottomans, even in the final days of the war. To the extent that people welcomed the British occupation of Palestine, their support was based to a large extent on the alliance the British had with the forces of Sherif Hussein and with the Syrian nationalists, as well as on the promise for the creation of a United Arab Kingdom after the war, to include the southern Syrian districts (i.e. Palestine).28 Although both the Ottoman and British assessments contained respectively in the Risalesi treatise on Palestine, and the War Office Reports on the local population were meant to serve military purposes (orientation for soldiers, intelligence assessment during a time of war, potential loyalty and hostility of the natives), there are clear differences between the two. Unlike the British reports, Risalesi was written in the manner of a monograph on a local population that was clearly seen as Ottoman subjects and not foreigners. For example, the survey of the population mapped out in Palestine contained observations about local minorities and groups that existed in various configurations in all of Syria and large parts of Anatolia.

 

Nevertheless, much of the surveys in Risalesi focuses on geographic and demographic data that mirror European handbooks on Palestine. The topographic part relies on data found in Holy Land surveys and employs language and references that are common in these handbooks, including many biblical references to holy sites. The survey of Palestinian history in particular relies on an eclectic reading of “main events”: Canaanite, Philistine, Hebrew, Babylonian, Arab and Islamic conquests. It is quite striking that the words for conquest fat’h or occupation ihtilal are used in reference to virtually all of these regimes, including the Ottoman conquest of Palestine by Sultan Selim in 1517. The only exception is the reference to the “liberation” (tahrir) of the Holy Land by Salah ed-Din in 1187.29 Regarding the religious communities of Palestine Risalesi focuses on the various minorities (Druze, Jews, various Christians, Matawleh, and Nusseiris) in great detail. The minorities of Syria are included in the discussion of Palestine. Jews are divided into native (Arabic-speaking Jews), and East European immigrants (who spoke Yiddish and their native tongues).30

 

The military aspect of this document becomes clear however in the discussion of the topography of the country. The two central themes are accessibility of the road networks and the presence of water sources for the armed forces. For example: locations which contain sufficient resources for sustaining an army division (firqa) are listed in the vicinity of Yazour, Wadi Haneen, Yibna, Isdud, Majda, and Ghazza (Gaza).31 In the north the document lists Ar’ara and Lajjoun.32 In the center it lists Tulkarm and Deir Sharaf as containing enough water for an army corps (liwa’). The Jerusalem region is listed as very poor in water resources and to be avoided.33 Road conditions are also given detailed attention. The main access roads usable for mechanized army divisions are listed as the Haifa-Nazareth axis, the Tulkarm-Nablus axis, and the Jaffa-Jerusalem axis.34 Other roads, such as those leading to Zeita, Arrabeh, and Jenin, are listed as usable for animal drawn vehicles only. Yet another list is given for roads that are strategic but impassable for mechanized divisions, such as the Akka-Safad road.35 Latron and Nebi Samuel are listed as places for panoramic surveillance.36 Updated notations are given for roads that are being constructed and/or upgraded, such as the Julis-Latroun road, and the Jaffa- Jerusalem road where seventeen military outposts were constructed by Thuraya Pasha, the Mutasarrif of Jeruslem.37

 

By contrast, the British War Office reports lack the ethnographic and topographic mapping that we find in the Ottoman document. Here the central criteria for assessing the Palestinian region were the degree of reliability of the local population and receptivity to the British presence. One hundred villages are surveyed in terms described as “very friendly,” “friendly,” “mixed,” “not friendly,” and “hostile.” 38

 

Some townships, such as Qalqilieh and Safuriyyeh were singled out as “fanatical and hostile.” Despite a tendency in these reports to portray the Christian population as being “more friendly,” there were nevertheless significant exceptions. The population of Akka (Acre), Tabariyya (Tiberias), and Affula (which was largely Jewish) were described as “unreliable,” and in the case of Akka, “hostile,” (possibly because Akka politics were dominated by the Ottoman loyalist Shaykh As‘ad al Shuqairi). Nazareth, Haifa, Anabta, and Kufr Kanna were seen either as “friendly” or “very friendly.”39

 

These reports are also preoccupied with describing social groups, families, and even individual leaders in terms of their political affinities and loyalties. Nablus, like Akka, is singled out as a city of pro-Ottoman sentiments and hostility towards the British. Among those one report names are the Ashour, Tuqan, Fahoum (from Nazareth) Abbas, and Abu Hamad families. Among the pro-British families listed were Hijjawi, Abdul Hadi, and al Dari. The Abudul Hadis were described as influential, moderate in their views, and astute, but also as “ruthless towards their peasants, by whom they were hated.”40 Both Haifa and Jenin are portrayed as anti-Turkish cities,the latter mainly due to their support of the Arab rebellions after the execution of Salim Abdul Hadi, the brother of Jenin’s governor, by Ahmet Cemal Pasha in 1915.

 

Muhsin Salih correctly suggests that much of these assessments were based on intelligence reports from local agents, and were therefore not reliable.41 More likely however is that they were based on immediate temporal assessments during wartime activities. Salih quotes Nablus historian Ihsan al Nimr, who himself came from a prominent Nablus family, for a different perspective. Nimr attributes much of anti- Turkish sentiments in Syria and Palestine during the war to the mistaken policies of Cemal Pasha. He gives credit to the local population for pressuring the Ottoman command to have him transferred to the Caucas. Nimr also cites a number of meetings that took place in Nablus with Ottoman commander Fawzi Pasha, who denounced to the Palestinians the terms of the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration. Several pro-Ottoman demonstrations took place in Nablus after these meetings. After the appointment of Mersinli Cemal as commander of the Fourth Army, the local Palestinians began to cooperate closely with the Turkish command.42 Nimr noted that after the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot Accords became known, several hundred people from the Nablus region volunteered to fight with the Ottoman troops. He then adds a significant note: “It was this factor [i.e. opposition to Western colonial rule], and not any sympathy for the Arab rebellion—which was hardly felt in Nablus—that moved people to fight against the British.”43

 

Thus even though both sets of reports—the Ottoman and the British—tend to contain background demographic assessments of Palestine, and both are meant to serve military-intelligence objectives, they nevertheless diverge in the primacy of the intelligence function in the case of the War Office reports. Risalesi on the surface, by contrast, reads more like a country guide than an intelligence report. It presents us with an elaborate monograph on social and ethnographic conditions in Palestine, similar in scope to the regional Salnamehs, or to Bayrut Vilayeti (1914), the commissioned study by the local administration on the social conditions of Beirut Province authored by Muhammad Bahjat and Rafiq Tamimi.44

 

Mersinli to the Rescue

 

Several Arab writers contrast Mersinli Cemal favorably with Ahmet Cemal. Of those who left diaries and were active in the public sphere we should mention Yusif al Hakim, the Latakiyya judge and public prosecutor; Khalil Sakakini, who was released from his Damascus prison at the order of Mersinli Pasha; and Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh, all of whom spoke of Cemal Kuchuk as a man of clean military record, with “good intentions towards the Arabs. 45

 

Mersinli Cemal’s association with Palestine and Syria was as long as Ahmet Cemal’s, even though it is not recognized in the history of the war. He commanded the Eighth Army Corps in April 1914, before the war was declared, and served in Anatolia and Palestine. Filastin Risalesi was published by the Eighth Army Corps command during his tenure in Palestine. After Ahmet Cemal Pasha was released from his command, in February 1918, Mersinli was appointed as commander of the Fourth Army in Syria and Palestine.46 Towards the end of the war he saw a substantial amount of fighting in Transjordan (Kerak, Salt and the Jordan Valley) as well as in northern Palestine. In both regions he had a positive reputation, which is often contrasted to the other Cemal by his friends and enemies alike. A number of Arab intellectuals from the period attest to the changed political atmosphere after Mersinli’s appointment. Khalil Sakakini was in a Damascus prison when the general took command of the Fourth Army. Numerous entries from Sakakini’s diary describe his communication with Cemal in order to bring about his release from imprisonment (which came about as a result of an order from Ahmet Cemal’s head of security, Aziz Bek).47 When Shaykh Abdul Qadir al Musaghar, acting as Sakakini’s emissary, succeeded in this endeavor (January 10th, 1918) Sakakini wrote enthusiastically: “Cemal Pasha al-Sagheer [kuchuk] may be “little” in his name, but he is great in his reputation. It is with commanders like him that nations are built. Everywhere he goes people show him great love and respect.” 48 One might detect a note of slavish hypocrisy here, except that the entry is in his own private diary, and was not meant for publication. Significantly Mersinli himself was at pains to explain to Sakakini, in an apologetic note sent by his emissary, that his arrest and imprisonment were a mistake.49

 

This view was also confirmed by the German command in Damascus. During this latter period Mersinli Cemal had to coordinate with General Otto Liman von Sanders, and with Erich von Falkenhayn, who was appointed by Enver Pasha as head of the newly formed Yilderim (Sa‘iqa) Army Group to replace Ahmet Cemal Pasha. Von Sanders had this to say about Mersinli in his memoirs:

 

[Mehmet Djemal Mersinli] knew the country of Arabia and the Arabs well from years of service in these provinces. The inhabitants trusted him, because he was considered wise and just. Several times he acted as their representative to lay their wishes before the government. He was beyond question a wise general who could be counted upon.50

 


 

Further important testimony comes from Shaykh Abdul Qadir al Mudhafar, himself a leading member of the CUP and one of the few Arab close associates of Ahmet Cemal Pasha (the others included Prince Shakib Arsalan, Shaykh As‘ad al Shuqairi of Akka, and Shaykh Abdul Aziz Shawish, the head of Salahiyyah College in Jerusalem). During the Suez campaign Mudhafar was attached to one of the Fourth Army battalions in charge of religious mobilization. When Ahmet Cemal was replaced by Mersinli Jamal Pasha, he remained with the army, and was appointed Mufti to replace Shaykh As‘ad Shuqairi.51 He remained loyal to the Ottoman regime till the end of the war, and (unlike Shuqairi) he continued to express pro-Ottoman sentiments even after the British occupied Palestine and Tranjordan. According to Mudhafar, Mersinli was expressly appointed by Istanbul in order to control the damage to the Ottoman state brought about by the actions of Ahmet Cemal. In one episode he quoted Mersinli Jamal Pasha as saying: “The arbitrary actions of Ahmet Cemal [against the Arab nationalists] were based on his own speculative prejudice, and not based on fact”. Not exactly an accurate assessment, given Cemal’s coordination of these activities with Enver and the government, but still significant in that it signaled a policy shift. After his appointment he released several of the Arab prisoners, including several who were awaiting execution. 52 Darwazeh however, thought that these actions of reversal were too little, too late.53

 

 

 

Salim Tamari is an urban sociologist and editor of JQ.

 

Endnotes

 

1 Cited in Mu?ammad ?Izzat Darwazah, Nash'at al-?arakah al-?Arabiyah al-?adithah: inbi?athuha wa-ma?ahiruha wa-sayruha fi zaman al-Dawlah al-?Uthmaniyah ila awa'il al-?arb al-?Alamiyah al-Ul? : tarikh wa- mudhakkirat wa-dhikrayat wa-ta?liqat. (Saida': al-Maktabah al-?A?riyah, 1971), 278.

 

2 Darwazah, Nash'at al-?arakah al-?Arabiyah al-?adithah, 296.

 

3 Darwazah, Nash'at al-?arakah al-?Arabiyah al-?adithah, 295.

 

4 Palmira Johnson Brummett, Image and imperialism in the Ottoman revolutionary press, 1908-1911. SUNY series in the social and economic history of the Middle East. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000).

 

5 Qadri, A?mad. 1993. Mudhakkira¯ti ?an al- thawrah al-?Arabiyah al-kubra´: 1375 H/1956 M. Dimashq: Wiz a rat al-Thaq a fah, 8-9.

 

6 Qadri, 6; Darwazah discusses the progression of the Turkification campaign and the accompanying anti-Arab pronouncements within CUP circles in his Nash'at al-?arakah al-?Arabiyah al-?adithah, 300-304.

 

7 Qadri, pages a-b.

 

8 Darwzah, Nash'at al-?arakah al-?Arabiyah al- ?adithah, 295-296.

 

9 This biographic section is derived from Altay Atli’s Cemal Pasha, in Turkey in WWI, http:// http://www.turkeyswar.com/whoswho/cemal/who-cemal.htm accessed June 8, 2010.

 

10 Atli, Cemal Pasha.

 

11 Qadri, 39.

 

12 Qadri, 39-52. Qadri claims that these secessionist positions were the product of a small faction of the Decentralization Party led by Haqqi al AlAdhm and did not reflect the positions of the Decentralization party which remained loyal (see also Qadri, p. 43).

 

13 Qadri, 47.

 

14 , Tilman Lüdke, Jihad made in Germany: Ottoman and German propaganda and intelligence operations in the First World War. Studien zur Zeitgeschichte des Nahen Ostens und Nordafrikas, bd. 12. (Münster: LIT, 2005), 75.

 

15 Ludke, 76.

 

16 Mu?ammad ?Izzat Darwazah, Mudhakkirat Muh?ammad ?Izzat Darwazah: sijill h?afil bi- masirat al-h?arakh al-?Arabiyah wa-al-qad?iyah al-Filast?iniyah khilal qarn min al-zaman, 1305-1404 H., 1887-1984 M. (Bayru¯t, Dar al- Gharb al-Islami, 1993). 242.

 

17 Lüdke, 55-83.

 

18 Lüdke, ibid.

 

19 Aziz Bey, and Fu'ad Maydani. 1933. Suriya¯ wa-Lubna¯n fi 'al-?arb 'al-?Alamiyah: 'al- 'istikhba¯ra¯t wa-'al-ja¯susiyah fi 'al-dawlah 'al-?Uthma¯niyah (Intelligence and espionage in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine during World War 1913-1918), (Beirut: N.P., 1933),

 

20 Darwazeh, Mudhakirat, 241.

 

21 Hasan Kayali, Arabs and young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 193-194.

 

22 Kayali, 195.

 

23 Great Britain. A handbook of Syria: including Palestine (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1920).

 

24 Harry Charles Luke, Edward Keith-Roach, Arthur Wauchope, and Herbert Samuel, The handbook of Palestine / Issued under the authority of the Government of Palestine, London: MacMillan, 1922.

 

25 Edmund Bosworth, “The land of Palestine in the late Ottoman period as mirrored in Western guide books”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 13 (1) (1986): 39.

 

26 Antonin Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab, (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1908). I want to thank Edhem Eldem for bringing Jaussen’s book to my attention.

 

27 Cited by Musin Muhamad al Salih in “The Position of North Palestinians towards the Ottoman at the end of their rule and the beginning of British occupation;” (Mawqif ahl shamal filistin min nihayat al dawlah al ‘uthmaniyyah wa-bidayat al-ihtilal al baritani”); Majallat al Dirasat al filistiniyyah, Beirut, 63, Summer (2005) 64-65.]

 

28 Muhsin Muhammad Salih, “The Position of North Palestinians towards the Ottoman at the end of their rule and the beginning of British occupation”; (Mawqif ahl shamal filistin min nihayat al dawlah al ‘uthmaniyyah wa-bidayat al-ihtilal al baritani”); Majallat al Dirasat al filistiniyyah; p. 63-4

 

29 Filistin Risalesi, 12.

 

30 Risalesi, 13-14.

 

31 Risalesi, 28.

 

32 Risalesi, 29.

 

33 Risalesi, 38.

 

34 Risalesi, 37.

 

35 Risalesi, 30.

 

36 Risalesi, 34.

 

37 Risalesi, 32.

 

38 Salih, 52-54.

 

39 Salih, 52.

 

40 Salih, 52-53.

 

41 Salih, 41

 

42 Salih, 54.

 

43 Nimr, I?san, al-Ta'rik g?abal Nabulus wa-al- Balqa'. Nabulus: Mat?ba?at al-Na?r al-tig?ariyya. 1961, Volume 3, pp. 66, my emphasis; Muhsin Salih, ibid, p. 57.

 

44 Rafiq Tamimi and Mu?ammad Bahjat, Wilayat Bayrut (Bayru¯t: Mat?ba?at al-Iqbal, 1914). Published simultaneously in Arabic and Turkish.

 

45 Muhsin Salih, ibid. See also Muhammad Izzat Darwazah, Mudhakarat (1887-1984), volume 1, page 280.

 

46 Qadri, 48

 

47 Khalil Sakakini and Akram Musallam, Yawmiyat Khalil al-Sakakini: yawmiyat, rasa'il wa-ta'ammulat. Volume 2, (Ramallah: Markaz Khalil al-Sakakini al-Thaqafi, 2003) 24.

 

48 Sakakni, volume 2, 264.

 

49 Sakakni, volume 2, ibid.

 

50 Otto Liman von Sanders, Five years in Turkey (London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1928) 214.

 

51 Yacoub Awdat, A’lam Filiasteen, “Shaykh Abdul Qadir al Mudhaffar 1880-1949”, pp 584-588

 

52 Sakakini, volume 2; 157, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 245, 264, 305, 313.

 

53 Altay Atli, Turkey in WWI, Order of Battle, http://www.turkeyswar.com/oob.htm