Alexander Scholch was a leading light among the new geographic historians of Palestine and Egypt when he died prematurely in the 1983 at the young age of 43. We are reprinting here his profile of Yusuf al Khalidi, from his path-breaking book, Radical Transformation of Palestine, long out of print, because it sheds significant light on the interaction of biography and collective national identity at a crucial time in the transformation of the Arab East.
Yusuf Effendi al Khalidi (1842-1906) was a significant figure, though relatively unknown, in the early Arab Renaissance - although as we shall see he was not a precursor for the Arabization movement. He was an Ottoman patriot and an active participant in the reform of the system following Egyptian withdrawal from Syria. His rise to prominence accompanied the emergence of Jerusalem as a significant provincial capital. For several years he served as mayor of Jerusalem, and parliamentary representative of the city’s population to the Imperial Parliament in Istanbul. He also served in a number of posts outside the Arab provinces: in Istanbul as a government translator; in the Russian Black Sea as Ottoman consul to Poti, and in several other public posts for the High Porte, including as governor of the Jaffa District; governor of Hasbayya and Jabal al-Druze, and governor of the Kurdish district of Betlis. As a writer he was also very productive. He was scholar in residence at the Oriental Academy in Vienna, and in that capacity he authored an Arabic-Kurdish dictionary.
Along with several revisionist historians of the Ottoman period, Scholch recognized the significance of interpreting Khalidi’s life (based on his autobiography) and writings in the context of internal debates among contemporary Levantine thinkers about the direction of the Ottoman state, rather than as a nascent leader of Arab resistance against Turkish hegemony. In other words Khalidi, who was proud of his Jerusalem and Arab heritage, was a relentless reformer of the Ottoman system from within, rather than a precursor of Arab, or Syrian independence from the Ottomans. He continuously refers to his homeland (watani) as Jerusalem, and his country (biladuna) as the Ottoman Empire.
Scholch’s essay is still poignant and fresh a quarter of a century after it was written. Only his complaint at the beginning about the absence of autobiographical works on Palestine needs to be updated. Since then two works have arrived to fill this gap: Adel Mana’s A’lam Filasteen fi Awakhir al ‘Ahd Uthmani, Beirut 1990; and Ya’oub al Odat, A’lam al Fikr wal Adab fi Filasteen, Amman 1992.
Directing attention to an individual historical personality and analyzing his position in society and his political-administrative work require an initial justification. There are two aspects to such a justification.
Until the mid-1860s, Jerusalem was not a political focal point or administrative center of outstanding significance. Socio-political confrontations in Palestine were concentrated in the local power centers of Jabal al-Khalil, Jabal al-Quds, Jabal Nablus, and in the lower Galilee. Only after the defeat of the rural power centers by the Porte [the Ottoman government], and within the framework of the fundamental administrative reorganization of the provinces since 1864, did Jerusalem become a significant political-administrative center (initially, to be sure, of only southern Palestine), since the establishment of a vilayet encompassing all of Palestine foundered in 1872. Instead, the mutasarrifliq of Jerusalem received a privileged status in 1874; it was subordinated directly to the Porte.
Yusuf al-Khalidi embodied, as it were, this rise of Jerusalem in the tanzimat period following the Crimean War. For many years, he was president of the municipality (ra’is al-baladiyya), which had been established back in 1863 by a special firman1 of the sultan, and from 1877 to 1878 he represented the mutasarrifliq in the short-lived Ottoman parliament. By examining in detail his career, his activities, and his views, we can gain an insight into the socio-political transformation process in Palestine during that decisive period. The second aspect of our justification has to do with the lack of sources, which requires a focus on certain examples. In the biographic references for the Arab Middle East in general and for Syria and Palestine in particular, we find only scant information on representatives of the Palestinian intellectual and social elites of the nineteenth century. Of these, we are familiar with only a few written accounts of their careers, their social positions, or their political views. But the quest for source material about Yusuf Khalidi, the most prominent political member of the upper class of Jerusalem of his time, has brought to light two political autobiographical texts, in addition to numerous documents from European archives (including his personal documents from the former Oriental academy in Vienna). The following presentation is based on these sources, which until now have gone unused.
Yusuf Diya’addin al-Khalidi was the scion of one of the two old noble families of Jerusalem who contested one another for rank and influence during the nineteenth century: the Khalidi and the Husayni. The Husayni were the larger and wealthier of the two families, but according to the German consul, the Khalidi made up for this through greater unity and intelligence.2 The influence of the Khalidis in the city was anchored institutionally in the position of the bashkhatib and na’ib of the shar’ia court, which the family held continuously through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yusuf’s father, Muhammed ‘Ali al-Khalidi, administered this office for six decades.
Born in 1842, Yusuf Effendi3 was around 14 years old when the Ottoman reform edict of 1856 was proclaimed in Jerusalem. We can assume that the implications of this decree were thoroughly discussed in his father’s house, and that the maturing philosophical and political convictions of the young Yusuf were influenced by such discussions. At age 17, as he wrote one and a half decades later in his autobiography, he began to ponder the state of the world and the dignity of man, and to reflect on what one must do so as to be able to view oneself as a free man. At the same time he realized that the Europeans were surrounding the Middle East on all sides, and robbing it of its material as well as spiritual treasures. He saw as the cause of this condition the deficient knowledge in the Middle Easterners, or the superior knowledge of the Europeans. The Middle East lack qualified philosophers, physicians, teachers, and historians. Too many useless things were studied, which brought only vanity, and worthwhile efforts were not directed towards the interests of the country.
He wanted to take a different path. First he asked his father to send him to an Egyptian school. When the latter explained to him that this would require an invitation from Egypt, he asked to be allowed to travel to Europe. His father denied this wish. Thereupon Yusuf ran away from home with his cousin Husayn. They got as far as Malta, where they were admitted to the Protestant college there through the mediation of the Anglican Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem. (Long before the first Protestant institution in the “Holy Land” was established, Malta had been chosen as the base for the missionizing of the Middle East.4) After two years, Yusuf’s brother Yasin succeeded in getting him away from Malta to Constantinople, where he entered the Imperial Medical School. (This was most likely the school for military doctors that is mentioned in the literature.5) However, Ysusf was not at all satisfied with this institution. It could not offer what he sought; it brought no fulfillment, no ‘salvation’. After a year, therefore, he transferred to Robert College, the American school at Bebek, outside Istanbul, founded in 1863.6 He was a student there for one and a half years, after which the death of his father called him back to Jerusalem.
Yusuf’s thirst for knowledge and personal initiative had led the young Jerusalem effendi on a remarkable educational journey. Perhaps more important than the English missionary and American and French influence (this last from the medical school) was the contact with the tanzimat supporters and their enthusiasm for new ‘useful’ educational institutions of all sorts which he came to know in Constantinople. He wanted to establish similar institutions in Jerusalem. In the year AH 1283 (AD 186667) he began preparations for the founding of a rushdiyye school (state middle school) in his home city. In his autobiography, Yusuf lamented the fact that at first he found no support at all for this plan. He traveled to Damascus to secure an order for the mutasarrif in Jerusalem to found such a school (probably from the reform-governor Rashid Pasha). From Muslims and Christians Yusuf Effendi then collected 12,000 piasters, and with this sum had an old medrese restored. When the school was opened in AH 1284 (AD 1867-68), he initially suffered a bitter disappointment. He had hoped to be appointed a teacher or administrator of the school, but a Turk was brought in from Constantinople. Instead of that, however, he was installed as president of the renewed municipality, which (according to his own testimony) he subsequently headed for a total of nine years.
In this office, Yusuf al-Khalidi devoted himself especially to the improvement of city streets, the construction of a water main from the Pools of Solomon to Jerusalem, and the construction of the first road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, which he undertook alongside the governor. After completion of this road, wagon traffic actually ran for three whole months between these two cities. Unfortunately, the mutasarrif was then transferred and his successor, Kamil Pasha, wanted to do everything completely differently. A conflict arose between Khalidi and the new mutasarrif regarding this wagon traffic. Yusuf was forced to sell the wagon and draft animals, as Kamil Pasha thought the undertaking too primitive. After an intense argument, Khalidi was dismissed, and only after six months - during which he traveled through Syria – was he return to office under a new mutasarrif.
In early 1874, Rashid Pasha, the foreign minister, reformer, and former vali in Damascus, brought Yusuf Effendi to the translation office of the Porte in Constantinople. This does much to explain the close contact between the Khalidis and the Ottoman reformers. (Yusuf’s brother Yasin was a mainstay of Rashid and later also of Midhat in Syria, and generally the Khalidis were known as supporters of the “Reform Party” [hizb al-islah].7)
Yusuf Effendi worked in the translation bureau for six months; then he was sent as the Ottoman consul (shahbandar) to Poti on the Russian Black Sea coast, where again he was able to remain only six months. When Rashid lost his foreign ministry post, Yusuf Effendi was also let go, and - as he bitterly lamented - replaced by an illiterate agha.
Since Yusuf al-Khalidi was already on Russian soil, he wanted to get to know that country more intimately. Via Odessa, Kiev, and Moscow, he traveled to St. Petersburg, and from there ultimately arrived in Vienna in January 1875, where in the meantime Rashid Pasha had become Ottoman ambassador. Through his mediation, Yusuf Effendi was offered a position at the Oriental Academy, which was looking just then for an instructor of Arabic, and another for the “fine Ottoman colloquial language.” For free room and board and a wage of 90 florins (fl) a month, Yusuf Effendi temporarily assumed both jobs. He did not want to undertake a final long-term obligation until he had settled some family matters at home.
Toward this end he set out for Jerusalem in August 1875.8 His hoped-for return to Vienna was put off, but in the summer of 1876 he again declared his readiness to assume the post once more, although in the meantime he was again practicing his former office of ‘mayor’. (At this opportunity, he demanded a future wage increase to 100 fl., which the administration of the Oriental Academy was prepared to give.) All the same, Yusuf Effendi’s next field of action was to be Constantinople.
In early 1877, the administrative council of Jerusalem named him as representative of the mutasarrifliq in the Chamber of Deputies of the Empire, which had been convened in Constantinople. A provisory voting regulation of the Porte of 16-28 October 18769 had established that local administrative councils should send the deputies to the chamber, since the law regulating the general elections had still to be enacted. Since the councils were established by popular elections, as they were euphemistically called, such a delegation of deputies had the same cache as one established through direct elections. The representation would also be ‘indirect’ for the second and last session of the Chamber of Deputies, namely in the administrative councils of the mutasarrifliq (in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Hebron, and Gaza). Yusuf Effendi, against whom ‘Umar Effendi ‘Abd al-Salam al-Husayni ran, remained the delegate. In Jerusalem he received 8 of 14 votes, including that of the governor.10
In Constantinople, the Jerusalem delegate showed himself to be a devoted constitutionalist and a loyal Ottoman. Khalidi’s main actions as a deputy,11 even in the first public session of the Chamber, were directed against violations of the young constitution by the sultan. Such an institution, he was clearly convinced, made sense only if all its decrees were observed strictly, without reservation. Because of his daring, he was termed one of the leaders of the opposition in the Chamber and even counted by officials among the four ‘most dangerous’ deputies. When the sultan dissolved the parliament in February 1878 because he could no longer put up with its critical attitude, Yusuf Effendi was one of the ten deputies ordered immediately expelled from Constantinople. He arrived in Jaffa on 4 March.12
It should be stressed that Yusuf’s criticism in the Chamber had been directed only against administrative arbitrariness and corruption, and against the unconstitutional actions of the sultan. It was certainly not criticism against Ottoman rule directed by a representative of an Arabic province. He considered himself entirely an Ottoman in the sense of the 1869 law on Ottoman nationality.13 This is expressed clearly in a long letter written a month before the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies to the Orientalist Wahrmund, under the depressing influence of the Russian advance near Constantinople.14 In the letter, Yusuf called Jerusalem his homeland (watani al-Quds al Sharif), but stated that the nation (al-milla) to which he belonged was the Ottoman nation, and the country, the state in which he lived (biladuna, diyauna, dawlatuna), was the Ottoman Empire. He also spoke of the empire generally as his fatherland (watan).15
Yusuf Effendi attached great importance to the integrity of the empire, but the empire was threatened from without and within. Now that hopes for English assistance during the just-concluded military actions had been dashed, an immediate alliance with England and Austria was required, he wrote, in order to be able to fend off the onslaught of the “barbarians from the North”. However, the empire was also threatened with complete collapse unless there was an end to the process of dissolution of the nation (al-milla) fomented externally, particularly by Russia, in all portions of the empire including Syria and Egypt.
Successful consolidation of the empire required, above all, an intellectual regeneration, the realization of a new political philosophy. The centuries of ignorance (jahiliyya) must now finally be left behind; now was the time to ascend the steps of knowledge to personal freedom (li al-huriyya al-shakhsiyya), the foundation of all happiness. It was the individual duty of every statesman to strive for this, to distinguish himself through his knowledge of useful sciences (ul-‘ulum al-mufida), to become versed in the affairs of other states, and to be patriotic and dutiful, with a Bismarckian turn of mind (afkar bismarkiyya).16 Then matters could again progress.
There is no evidence that Yusuf Effendi strayed much from his former imperial allegiance after the dissolution of the parliament and his banishment from Constantinople. Of course he did notice that five of the ten expelled deputies came from Syria (one, he himself, from Jerusalem; two from Beirut; two from Aleppo).17 In any case, he would have lamented the setback for the reform policy that he supported. He and his family were soon to personally feel the effects of the new political course.
After his return to Jerusalem, Yusuf al-Khalidi first resumed his work as president of the municipality. In October 1878 he was even sent by the mutasarrif Ra’uf Pasha to Karak at the head of 40 horsemen to maintain order there.18 But the rule of the Khalidis and the Husaynis in the city was a thorn in the governor’s side. According to the detailed reports of the German consul, the governor had long petitioned Constantinople to allow him to put an end to “patrician rule”. The opportunity came in autumn 1879, when reorganization and ‘re-election’ of the local court and administrative bodies were impending. With the express authorization of the Porte to appoint the majalis [councils] of Jerusalem according to his own judgment and discretion, the mutasarrif relieved all the Khalidis and some influential members of the Husayni family of their offices. He accused them of disloyalty, dereliction of duty, and corruption, and even had some of their property titles scrutinized. The two families thereupon forgot their rivalry for a time. At the initiative of the Husayni, they assembled on 9 October 1879 to form an ad hoc alliance to fend off the frontal assault on their positions in the city. In several telegrams they lodged complaints (on 9, 10, 11 October) with the Porte regarding the illegal action of the mutasarrif and demanded his recall. A petition was sent with the same demands; the petition allegedly bore the signatures of 8,000 of their followers. Finally they also lodged complaints with the European consuls, in hopes of gaining their support.
Jerusalem was in an uproar, and a supra-personal political dimension was ascribed to the actions of the mutasarrif. According to the report from the French consul, the signatures were collected under the argument that Ra’uf’s action was unequivocally anti-Arab in nature. The Arabs, in particular the two concerned families who were descendants of the prophet, were to be driven from their offices and replaced by Turkish officials. These would then complete the ruin of the country already begun with the high material and personal sacrifices demanded of Palestine during the war against Russia. In his letter to Wahrmund, Yusuf Effendi wrote that of the more than 100,000 dead in the war, more than 50,000 had been Arabs; Palestine and the Balqa’ alone had more than 10,000 to mourn.
Such arguments assuredly fell on fertile ground, Again and again the European consuls (in this case the Germans) reported that Turkish rule in Palestine was “neither respected nor popular.” The Turks were considered usurpers, and the populace still pined for the Egyptian regime, which it mistakenly remembered as an Arab rather than a Turkish one. However, they lacked the unity, as well as a leading personality the likes of the Maronite Yusuf Karam, to promote a resistance movement that could pose serious difficulties for Ottoman rule.19
In fact, the situation in Jerusalem soon quieted down when it became evident that it was primarily the Khalidis who would be affected. After these replacements, the Husayni continued to be represented in the Jerusalem administrative council - Tahir al-Husayni remained mufti, and ‘Umar, the former rival of Yusuf al-Khalidi for delegation to the Ottoman parliament, was even appointed the successor of Yusuf Effendi in the office of municipal president. A vote of confidence, which Ra’uf Pasha had organized in response to the petition of the effendis complaining of him, was signed by the Husaynis remaining in office!
Although such biased action was perhaps not Ra’uf’s original intention,20 the retirement quickly revealed itself as a punitive action against the Khalidis. Since the mutasarrif operated with the full consent of Constantinople, we can probably assume that he was even compelled in this one-sided weakening of the Khalidis, the family of an ‘opposition leader’ in the dissolved parliament.
The consuls (the German and the French representatives, at least) fully supported the mutassarif, who was depicted as a capable and energetic administrator fighting against the nepotism and corruption of the ‘effendi clique’. The French representative gave a delegate of the Khalidis seeking his support reason to understand that the family deserved no other treatment.21
It appears that with this blow the long political-administrative dominance of the Khalidi family came temporarily to an end. Among the 16 mayors whom the city saw between 1877 and 1917, six were Husaynis, four were ‘Alamis, three Da’udis, and only two Khalidis,22 namely Yusuf Effendi until 1879 and his brother Yasin at the end of the 1890s, but only for a short time between two Husayni tenures.23
Yusuf Effendi remained in Ottoman service. We see him in 1881 as qa’im maqam of Jaffa,24 at the end of the 1880s as governer of a Kurdish district in the province of Bitlis25 and in the 1890s as qa’im maqam at Hasbayya and in Jabal al-Duruz.26 But a Khalidi would not again play a similarly important role on the political stage of Palestine until 1908, namely when Ruhi al-Khalidi (1864-1913)27 was elected to the new Ottoman parliament. By then Yusuf al-Khalidi had already died (1906). His last known, practically prophetic, political act was a letter to the French head rabbi, Zadok Kahn, a friend of Herzl, written in the spring of 1899. In it Yusuf al-Khalidi expressed his fear that the Zionist movement would jeopardize the friendly association of Muslims, Christians and Jews in Palestine, and out of a “holy duty of conscience” and “in the name of God” appealed to the Zionists to leave Palestine in peace.28 The letter was passed on to Herzl, who answered it on 19 March 1899 from Vienna. In his reply, he emphasized the great benefit that the Ottoman empire in general and “la population non juive en Palestine” in particular would derive from Jewish immigration to Palestine. He hoped that the sultan understood this. To this he added, threateningly, “S’il n’acceptera pas nous chercherons et croyes moi nous touverons ailleurs ce qu’il nous faut.” [“If he will not accept it, we will search and, believe me, we will find elsewhere what we need.”]29
Yusuf Diya’addin al-Khalidi was, next to his nephew Ruhi, undoubtedly one of the more educated, intelligent, and enlightened leaders that Jerusalem produced in the nineteenth century.30 His literary training, his linguistic knowledge, and his practical linguistic abilities were praised unanimously by all unbiased contemporaries. It is no coincidence that he worked in the Translation Bureau of the Porte, and at the Vienna Oriental Academy. In Vienna he edited a volume of poems, in Constantinople he founded a literary circle, and as the fruit of his tenure in the Bitlis vilayet he wrote a Kurdish-Arabic phrase book.
The core of his thought and his convictions was not Muslim theology, but philosophical-humanist in nature. Eventually Yusuf’s enlightened philosophizing was too atypical to find favor among many of his European contemporaries, who preferred to complain of ‘Muslim fanaticism’. The German consul Baron von Munchhausen, one of those overbearing representatives of the “lords of human kind”31 in the Near East, called Yusuf Effendi a “notorious babbler”32 and criticized his “constant declamation of half-understood humanitarian principles”.33 The American representative in Constantinople, on the other hand, reported that Yusuf Effendi was “the finest orator and the ablest debater in the Chamber”.34
Yusuf’s first question was not how he could become a reformer and remain a good Muslim, but rather what was his task as an educated, unprejudiced, free man. The worst sin was ignorance, and right after that came the accumulation of irrelevant, useless knowledge. His religious open-mindedness extended so far that contemporaries even reported a flirtation with Christianity.35 This was undoubtedly groundless; one can scarcely imagine Yusuf Effendi as a near-convert. Religious confession for him was simply not a dividing line within human society. According to the American consul general in Constantinople, Yusuf Effendi was “almost as liberal as a French Republican, both in politics and religion”.36 During his time as a delegate, he lived in a Greek monastery in the capital,37 and when the topic in parliament was a reduction in state spending, he urged the elimination of state wages for mosque prayer leaders, as they were quite capable - as he put it - of earning their bread themselves.38
Yusuf al-Khalidi was, so to speak, an Ottoman reformer from the provinces. By his lights tanzimat politics had to have five goals: construction of an educational system oriented toward European models; elimination of administrative ineffectiveness and arbitrariness; establishment of religious tolerance; assurance of constitutional rights and freedoms; and infrastructural improvements. In his attempt to realize these goals, Yusuf remained a loyal Ottoman. We have no indication that his attitude changed fundamentally after the disappointments of the late 1870s. As was elsewhere the case, loyalty to Constantinople was not shaken in Palestine until after 1908, as a result of Turkification.39
Thus Yusuf Effendi was a Palestinian representative of the tanzimat period, but he was certainly not a prototype of the social and intellectual elite of Jerusalem or even of Palestine of his day. As an individual he was, in the literal sense, an extraordinary representative of the social stratum from which he sprang. His career and his deeds made two things clear, however. They show that the politics of reform and renewal of the 1860s and 1870s fell on fertile ground, at least for some members of the Muslim upper class of Palestine. Yusuf Effendi even tried to implement them with greater élan than many a Turkish reformer. Thus a ‘progressive’ integrative function for holding together the empire might have befitted a continuous, comprehensive tanzimat policy. Instead, from 1878 Abdulhamid took the path of repression and pan-Islamism. When the conservative Husaynis gained the upper hand in Jerusalem after the Khalidis, that accorded quite well with the political direction in Constantinople.40
Within the Palestinian framework, the role of Yusuf Effendi also documented something else, however, namely the rise of Jerusalem – indeed - of the urban elites of Palestine in general, and the corresponding decline of rural power centers. Since the mid-1860s it was no longer the shaykhs of ‘Arraba, Sanur, Qaryat al-‘Inab, and Dura in the northern, central, and southern part of the Palestine highlands who determined local events and claimed the undivided interest of European observers. In the 1870s, their place was taken by, among others, the mayor and parliamentary delegate of Jerusalem, a scholar, politician and administrator committed to the tanzimat idea.
Excerpted from the book Palestine in Transformation 1856 – 1882: Studies in Social, Economic and Political Development, Institute for Palestine Studies (Washington, DC: 1993).
Endnotes
1 Gutmann, Edwin Emanuel, The Development of Local Government in Palestine, PhD Thesis (New York: Columbia University, 1958) 45; ‘Abd al-Aziz Muhammad ‘Awad, Mutasarrifiyyat al-Quds fi-l-‘ahd al-‘uthmani 1874-1914, (Cairo: ‘Ayn Shams University, 1970), 43; ‘Ali Sa’id Khalaf, Shai’ min tarikhina (Jerusalem, 1979) 212; for the development of the municipalities, see Ilber Ortayli, Tanzimattan Sonra Mahalli Idareler 1840-1878 (Ankara, 1974) generally, 163ff; on Jerusalem see Ruth Kark, “The Jerusalem Municipality at the End of Ottoman Rule,” AAS 14 (1980).
2 ISA-DKJ, A. III.9. (Jerusalem, 11 November 1879); see also Jurji Zaydan, “Filastin. Tarikha wa-atharuha,” Al-Hilal 22 (1913-1914), 346.
3 The description of his career here follows his autobiography (Sura musawwada), when no additional sources are mentioned. There are short biographical references in Hair ad-Din Zirikli, Al-a’lam 8 vols., (Beirut, 1979) 235; Zaki Muhammed Mujahid, Al-a’lam al-sharqiya fi-l-mi’a al-rabi’a ‘ashra al-hijriya, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1949-1963), No. 943; ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Al-mufassal fi tarikh al-Quds (Jerusalem, 1961), 297; ‘Irfan Sa’id Abu Hamad al-Hawari, A’lam min ard al-salam (Haifa, 1979), no. 1561; Mustafa Murad Dabbagh, Biladuna Filastin, 11 vols, (Beirut, 1965-1976), X/ 2, 359-62. No reference is made here to errors and inaccuracies in these short biographies.
4 See Joseph Hajjar, L’Europe et les Destinees du Proche-Orient (1815-1848) (no publisher, 1970), passim.
5 See Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford, 1968), 84f; Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856-1876 (New York, 1973) 27, 44, 277.
6 Lewis, 122; Roderic, 245.
7 See Ruhi Khalidi, Al-Muqaddima fi-l-mas’ala al- sharqiya, (Jerusalem, n.d.).
8 He was by no means relieved of his position, as the German asserted. AA-I.A.B.q. (Turkey) 108, vol 9 (Jerusalem, 25 January 1877). On the contrary, they were very much hoping for his return in Vienna.
9 Sublime Porte: Instructions concernant le mode de’election proviso ire et pour un an des members qui doivent composer l’Assemblee Nationale de l’Empire, in AA-I.A.B.q. (Turkey) 108, vol 8.
10 See in this regard the reports of the German consul in Jerusalem of 25 January and 30 November 1877, in AA-I.A.B.q. (Turkey) 108 vol. 9 and vol. 13. The second document is a later copy and was erroneously dated 1878. In 1877 the Khalidis enjoyed the full favor of the governor, while one of the Husayni had even been jailed; he was freed through the intercession of the British consul, among others: PRO – F.O. 78, vol. 2615 (Jerusalem, 14 April 1877).
11 See Robert Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period (Baltimore, 1963) on his activities there, 148, 156f, 166f, 182, 199, 204, 241-43, 247f, 267.
12 ISA-DKJ, A. XXXIX.4 (Jaffa, 1 April 1878).
13 Text in Testa, VII, 52f.
14 Reprinted in Adolf Wahrmund, Lesebuch in Neu- Arabischer Sprache (Giessen, 1880) 180-83.
15 When in connection with Wahrmund’s Arabic- German dictionary he also speaks of friendly ties between the two peoples (al-qawmayn), he most likely means the Arab and German people.
16 If genuine, another example of Bismarck’s reputation in the Middle east as an enlightened statesman was an early 1877 petition to Bismarck from Midhat Pasha, in which he sought support against Russia: Denkschrift Midhat Pashas an Furst Bismarck. Published by Baron C. Dirckinck-Holmfeld after the French text, 1877, in AA-I.A.B.q. (Turkey) 108, vol 9.
17 Devereux, 248, note 25. This fact may also have given new impetus to the 1877-78 independence and/or autonomy movement of Syrian notables, which probably held its conference in Damascus after this expulsion and with which at least one former deputy (Husayn Bayhum) was in contact; see Steppat, “Eine Bewegung unter den Notabein Syriens” [“A Movement among Syrian Notables”], ZDMG supplement I no 2 (1969).
18 PRO-F.O. 78, vol 2849 (Jerusalem, 28 October 1878); allegedly this was the first time that a Turkish armed force had entered Karak.
19 Regarding his activities in those years, Steppat, 637-40.
20 ‘Ali Ekrem, governor in Jerusalem from 1906 to 1908, later wrote approvingly of Ra’uf to the Interior Minsitry: “From the time when Rauf Pasha was appointed Governor of Jerusalem he put into effect a system aimed at liquidating the domination of these parasites over the common people and showing these influential people of the province…what their limits are”: Yehoshua Porath, “Social Aspects of the Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement” in Menachem Milson (ed.) Society and Political Structure in the Arab World (New York 1973) 99.
21 The French representative in Jerusalem had nothing good to say of Yusuf al-Khalidi anyway. Back during the war of 1870-71 he was accused of a pro-German and anti-French attitude. When Yusuf Effendi lost his mayoral post temporarily in 1873, this too was ascribed by the French to his alleged anti-French and anti-Latin attitude. MAECPC, Jer. Vol 11 (Jerusalem, 7 August 1873). What this is supposed to have consisted of is not known. One possible indication is an extremely spiteful report in the periodical Das Heilige Land regarding the role that Yusuf Effendi played as an executive organ of the governor Kamil Pasha in a conflict of officials with a monastery under French protection: “Gloreiche Heidenthaten Sr. Excellenz des Paschas von Jerusalem,” HL, XIV (1870), 191-95. Nor do we know how the alleged pro-German attitude manifested itself. We only know that on the occasion of the visit of the Austrian emperor oin 1869, Yusuf Effendi was decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Franz-Josef (HHSTA-Archive Jer. N. 16, Dossier, Reises S. M. des Kaisers, 8-14 Novembre, 1869) and that he told people that he had been overlooked during the usual order awards on the occasion of the visit of the Prussian crown prince in the same year. He was granted the Order of the Crown Second Class five years later, in May 1874, by the Germans, but it could not be presented, as Yusuf Effendi was then consul at Poti! See ISA-DKJ, A.XXIV.4n (Hannover, 28 September, 1871; Pera, 7 May 1874; Jerusalem, 30 May 1874.
22 Gutmann, 53; see also Dabbagh, X/2, 201.
23 Butrus Abu Manneh, “The Rise of the Sanjak of Jerusalem in the Late 19th Century,” in Gabriel Ben Dor (ed). The Palestinians and the Middle East Conflict (Ramat Gan, 1978) 32, note 47.
24 MAE-CPC Jer., vol 14 (Jerusalem, 17 November 1881); ISA-DKJ, A.XXXIX.4 (Jaffa, 31 March 1881).
25 Zirikli, VIII, 235.
26 Friendly note of Linda Schatkowski-Schilcher (to English archives).
27 Regarding him, see Nasir ad-Din al-Asad, Muhammed Ruhi al-Khalidi - ra’id al-bahth altarikhi al-hadith fi Filastin (Cairo, 1970) 35-46; Khalidi, I-V; Mujahid, no 1071; Ya’qub al-Audat, Min al-a’lam al-fikr wa-l’adab fi Filastin (Amman 1976) 155-60; al-Hawari, no 545; Dabbagh, X/2, 363-69; ‘Ali Mahafiza, “Attayyarat al-siyasiya fi Filastin fi ‘asr al-nahda (1850-1925),” in Jami’at Dimashq (ed.) Al-mu’tamar al-duwali al-thani litarikh Bilad al-Sham, vol 2 (Damascus, 1979) 316.
28 See Neville J. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (Berkeley, 1976) 47-9; Khalaf, 214, maintains that Yusuf al-Khalidi was the first Arab who pointed out in the parliament the danger of Jewish usurpation. He mixes this up with the letter to Zadok Kahn.
29 Theodor Herzl, Gesammelte zionistische Werke, vol 5 (Amman, 1971) 484-86.
30 See also the biography of Khalil al-Khalidi (1866-1941) in al-Hawari, no. 477.
31 VG Kiernan. The Lords of Human Kind. European Attitudes towards the Outside World in the Imperial Age (Harmondswarth, 1972). However, one must ungrudgingly concede a certain diplomatic wit to Baron von Munchhausen. When Midhat Pasha, the governor of Damascus, wrote a letter in October 1879 to the German consul addressed to “Monseuir Schonhausen,” Baron von Munchhausen directed his response to “Son Altese Damas Pasha” (ISA-DKJ, A.XXII.4).
32 ISA-DKJ, A.III.9 (Jerusalem, 11 October 1879).
33 AA-I.A.B.q. (Turkey) 108, vol. 9 (Jerusalem, 25 Jerusalem, 1877).
34 Devereux, 267, note 40. 35 In Vienna Doughty noticed “two Semitic strangers in red caps in the public places.” He learned from the Orientalist von Kremer that they were a merchant from Basra and Yusuf al- Khalidi. He wrote of the latter: “He was a literate Moslem, a school-teacher (a vaunter of his noble lineage, who has won some-turns [sic] made profession of Christianity) in Jerusalem, who had some smattering of European languages”; Charles Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols (London 1936) 448.
36 Devereux, 267, note 40.
37 Probably he could live there for free. Arif reports (274) that during the Greek struggle for independence, and order of the sultan to execute the monks of the Greek monastery, who were accused of collaboration with the rebels, was thwarted by Yusuf’s father Muhammed ‘Ali; then na’ib (judge) in Jerusalem. They never forgot the al-Khalidi family for this. In the great hall of the monastery there still hangs an oil painting of Muhammed ‘Ali al-Khalidi. See in this regard also SN Spyridon “Annals of Palestine, 1821-1841,” JPOS 18 (1938) 66-73.
38 Devereux, 204 and 267, note 40. 39 See also Simon Shamir, “Midhat Pasha and the Anti-Turkish Agitation in Syria,” MES 10, no 2 (1974). 40 See Abu Manneh, 271.