Scholars, Chroniclers, and Jerusalem Archivists

Palestine in the Nineteenth Century Library (no. 963 in the catalogue) sources, and its members may be written by a certain Muhammad put forth confidently as the direct Scholars, Chroniclers, ibn Àbd al-Rahman ibn Àbd ancestors of the modern family. al-Àziz al-Khalidi who, as we can The series begins with Shams deduce from internal evidence, lived al-Din Muhammad ibn Àbdullah in the mid-eleventh century, and al-Àbsi al-Dayri al-Maqdisi who and Jerusalem most probably before the Crusader was born in Jerusalem around 1343 occupation of the city in 1099. We and died there on November 2, know that this occupation caused 1424. His father was a merchant, a mass exodus from Jerusalem, originally from a Nablus district Archivists scattering its families in all called al-Dayr. Encouraged by directions. A family tradition has it his father, Muhammad studied in A History of the Khalidis that the Khalidis sought refuge in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Cairo the village of Dayr Ùthman, in the and then became a Hanafite mufti province of Nablus and returned to of Jerusalem and a distinguished Jerusalem after Saladin recaptured scholar and teacher. the city on October 2, 1187. When Two of Muhammad’s five sons they came back, they were known achieved the same renown as as Dayris or Dayri/Khalidis, but this their father: Sa`d al-Din Sa`d who remains a mere possibility because it was born in Jerusalem in 1367 is unattested in the sources. he history of families is a and died in Cairo in 1463 and notoriously difficult subject. In the The third stage in the premodern succeeded his father both as chief Arabic-Islamic world, in particular, period is best attested in the judge of the empire and as rector the attachment to genealogy has By Tarif Khalidi been so deep that it has overcome the strictures of the Qur’an and Arabic manuscript. Prophetic Hadith. In numerous Arab homes from Morocco to Iraq, one will find a prominently displayedT family tree that allegedly traces descent from some eponymous hero of the Golden Age. But why is the subject notoriously difficult? Because the stronger a family’s attachment to a time and a place, the more determined it is to construct and, by constructing, to invent a history of belonging. The family tree is, of course, the most common way to display such belonging, but it can in no way be regarded as certain proof of lineage unless each branch of that tree and each bird on that branch are attested elsewhere in histories, biographies, or court documents. The tree by itself is no proof. This must be posited as a caveat before we begin this step-by-step sketch of the Khalidi family history. The Khalidis assert that they are descendants of Khalid ibn al-Walid, a towering conqueror of early Islam, a Meccan aristocrat, and an eleventh- hour Muslim who retained in many of his character traits something of the rebelliousness of the pre-Islamic period, its attachment to freedom, its epic spirit. Did he die childless, as many early and modern accounts claim? Well, not quite. Al-Qaysarani al-Khalidi, a poet from Aleppo who died in 1153, traced his ancestry back to Khalid. This is mentioned in a famous biographical dictionary of the thirteenth century. All we can say at this point is that the claim to descent from Khalid was alive and well in the twelfth century. What is the earliest attested mention of someone called al-Khalidi in Jerusalem? It occurs in a manuscript on jurisprudence in the Khalidiyya 24 THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE 25 Palestine in the Nineteenth Century From the sixteenth until the judges, jurists, and scholars whose eighteenth century, the family lives impacted the political life of supplied all rectors of the Madrasa their age. Farisiyya in Jerusalem, appointed The first was Musa Shafiq (d. 1831), by an edict issued by the sultan grandson of Sunàllah mentioned in Istanbul. They also seem to above. Musa Shafiq rose in the have monopolized the offices of judiciary ranks of the Ottoman chief clerk of the Sharià Court Empire until he became Judge of in Jerusalem and deputy judge of Medina, a prestigious appointment, the city right until the end of the given the city’s sanctity in Muslim nineteenth century. The family was culture. He then became Kaziasker, Ottoman in sentiment until the very a chief military judge of Anatolia end of Ottoman rule in 1917. and the second-highest judiciary The eighteenth and nineteenth post in the empire, and ex officio centuries were particularly rich in member of the Imperial Council. prominent sons and daughters of On July 17, 1798, he addressed the family, now numbering perhaps an open letter to the notables of a few hundred. Among them, two Palestine, informing them of the women played crucial roles, the first fall of Alexandria to Napoleon and in establishing the core collection warning them that the ultimate goal of manuscripts (MSS) and the of those “accursed French” was second in housing that collection the conquest of Jerusalem. Musa in the Mamluk mausoleum, the Shafiq must, of course, have seen site of the Khalidi Library since Napoleon’s expedition as a latter- 1900: Tarafanda Khanum joined her day crusade. Exactly one hundred husband, Muhammad Sunàllah, years later, other Khalidis publicly in establishing around 260 MSS warned of the dangers of Zionism. as a pious endowment or Hajj Raghib Khalidi, founder of the library, here photographed later in his life as judge. waqf, dated February 4, 1787. About a hundred years later, Khadijah Khanum of the Khaniqah. The second son, Dayris continued to fulfill the same left a considerable sum Burhan al-Din Ibrahim, was born functions both in Jerusalem and of money in her will to in Jerusalem in 1407 and died in elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. refurbish the mausoleum and Cairo in 1471. This father and two It is almost certain that the Dayris house its collection, a task sons were the first in a long line of became Dayri-Khalidis in the accomplished by her son, notables in a scholarly Jerusalem mid-seventeenth century, at a time Hajj Raghib, in 1900. dynasty that has remained unbroken when many families of notables Scholars do not generally and well attested in the biographical throughout the Arab world stretched dictionaries and court records until lead “exciting” lives. Hence, their lineages back to distinguished in selecting to highlight the the present day. Their lineage back to ancestors. The reasons are not the Khalidis of the eleventh century following four nineteenth- entirely clear but may have been century biographies, I chose is unattested, but their connection related to a surge of Arab proto- with the long line of judges, muftis, national sentiments among these and scholars who followed is city notables that need further richly documented. Many of these investigation, feelings that in any descendants had careers in both case were never entirely absent from A page from one of the rarest and Cairo and Jerusalem, and when the oldest Khalidiyya manuscripts, consciousness and explain the later depicting the battle of Hittin and Ottomans replaced the Mamluks as appeal of Arab nationalism. celebrating Salaheddin Ayyoubi’s overlords of Syria and Egypt, the victory over the Crusaders. 26 THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE 27 Palestine in the Nineteenth Century The second Khalidi in this list is Muhammad-Àli (d. 1864), a nephew of Musa Shafiq, who succeeded his father as chief clerk of the Sharià Court and deputy judge of Jerusalem. During the Russian- Ottoman war of 1828–29, an edict arrived from Istanbul ordering the execution of the Greek Orthodox patriarch and his clergy. Relations between the family and the Christian communities had always been cordial, so, at a great risk to himself, Muhammad-Àli disobeyed the imperial order and hid the patriarch and his clergy in a cave near the Bab al-Àmud (Gate of the Column, also known as Damascus Gate). When The scholar, chronicler, and traveler Sheikh Khalil Khalidi. the war ended, everyone applauded Bab al-Silsila. his action. In appreciation, a large portrait in oil still hangs outside the office of the patriarch of Jerusalem. qada in the Bitlis region, and later of Sultani) in Istanbul. Having graduated The third is Yusuf Dia Pasha Khalidi other qadas), where he composed with flying colors, he immediately Musa Shafiq’s other intervention in (d. 1906), son of Muhammad-Àli. the very first Kurdish-Arabic was offered judicial posts in politics came 28 years later when He was probably the first in the dictionary. He was the first mayor Palestine – which he adamantly as Kaziasker of Anatolia he issued a family to receive both a traditional of Jerusalem (1867–1873) and the refused, insisting against strong legal opinion (fatwa) which permitted Islamic and a European education. deputy for Jerusalem in the first parental objections (especially those the Sultan Mahmud II to abolish the Joining the Ottoman civil service, Ottoman Parliament (1876–1878). of his doting mother) on completing Janissary Corps and form a modern he rose to become governor of Yusuf Dia was a reformer and his education in Europe. So he finally army in 1826. Anatolian Kurdistan (qaimaqam of a constitutionalist and a friend of the ended up in what was to become celebrated Muslim reformer Jamal Sciences Po (the Paris Institute The original tombstone of one of the fourteenth-century Mamluk princes buried in the library courtyard. al-Din al-Afghani. He also taught of Political Studies) where as an for some years as a lecturer at the impoverished student, he studied University of Vienna, where he edited European history and international the Diwan by Labid, a major pre- relations.

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