The “Chronicles of Al Shurouf” belong to a biographical series published by the Institute for Palestine Studies pertaining to the social history of Palestine, and is currently known as “subaltern studies”, i.e. the alternative perspective of the elites’ writings. The primary objective of these chronicles is to observe the social life of writers from lower-classes with distinct cognitive and professional backgrounds. The series previously included chronicles for each of: Khalil Sakakini (educator), Wassif Jawhariyeh (musician), Najati Sudki (writer and struggler) and Ehsan Al Tarjaman (Ottoman soldier).
The memoirs of Mohammad Abdul Hadi Al Shurouf discuss his life in four stages: his work as a police officer in Manshiyat Jaffa, the old village and Yazour town throughout the last decade of the British mandate; 1948 war with the beginning of clashes in Jaffa and Mount Hebron between Zionist militias and Arab resistance following the partition plan of Palestine; his return to his village Nuba where he became immersed in reconstructing the remains of his land after Israel confiscated the great majority of the so-called “frontier villages” (Kharas, Nuba, Bait Oula) in Hebron; and finally his transfer following the Nakba to the over weary work in phosphate mines in Jordan as did tens of thousands of Palestinians.