The Rebellions of Sultan Al-Atrash and Shaykh Izz Al-Din
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I i . IN SYRIA AND PALESTINE, 1~3-m ! 3 i I THE REBELLIONS 6~ SULTAN al-ATRASH d i i I B .AND SHAYKH IZZ al-DIN al-QASSAM. I t i d ! 'a i * 'I* / by . 'I
c. v - Dale. ~bbertMartelli
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-3 r( , \ ISBN 0-315-66251-4 8 I '. Rural Rebels and 3atipnalksts ~n , f l7tE OF THESIS: S'yrla and Palestine, 1920-1939: ,T ke- 2i++i-ofta l i& &ege%bL--, - al-ATRASH and SHAYKH IZZ ai-DI? al- QASSAY.
kI LLIAH CL-EVELASD SES I OR SCPERY I SOR
-a HI STORY DEPARTMEfiT:
------JOH5 SPAGHOLO 5 ASSOCI ATJE PROFESSOR HISTORY DEPARTHEST
--- DERRFL MACLEA& - CASADIAN RESEARCH FELLOW HISTORY DEPARTWEST PART tAL COPYR l GHT L l CENSE c
r)
f J
1 hereby grani- to Simon ~raser~nivers i tyfthe right to lend i 1 1 my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown'below) 0 to Lsers of the-Simon Fraser Universi ty library, -and ,to make pact ial Dr 4- '. single copies only for sljch users or in reipon~g~toa request from .rhe
I ibrary of any other uoivers i ty, or.other, educat ioria~institution, .on , its own behalfor for one of its useis. I further agree that permisflon . for mu1 t iple copying of this work for s~holarl.~purposes my be granted ------A- by +e or the Dean of Graduate ~tudi;;. . I t is understood that 'copying
.- or publication of this work far finencia! gain shall not be aljowed i lwithout "y wr4 tten permission. ..
Ti i le of Thes is/~ra:ect/~xtended Essay' \ - V &. ' 3 - \ ABSTRACT 4 . 9 *This thesis-examines the 1925 ~yrlanrebellion and the 1936 - U-. - rgbaAlion and the resp.ective.roles of Sultan al-~tra$k , L. - 5 ------. A -- al-Qassam. he xehel4ions were both peasant . \ I . \ 8 revokts initiated By It is a matter of historical -/ disput% the degree and -the respective heroic rebel leaders were inspired by tradition or modern
i B nationalism. ~ult,anal-Atrash was a ruraa Dryze notable who becaine 6 -e b 8 ' president gf the Syrian P.rovisiona1 Government in 1925. 41-Qassam U 9 was a MFsqXe: ue:ea~~wT penchint for -social work, rem'ious
reform, and political activism. Like Sultan al-Atrash, he adoptgd : . 4 3 ih rebellion as the- means to rid his country of the and at or^ 1 @ - I , authorities. Sultan al-Atrash, al;Qassam, and their rebellions -=*, C I represented the change and continuity of politics in Syria and Palestine, epitomizing the tension betweeh tradition and modernization in the Arab Middle East. Sourcas used include ~iiblished British Mandatory do uments; C 4' f
Royal Commission ~epbrts, heports and Minute? of the Permanent- - - -- Mandates Commission. The work 'of French, Arab and American
C
1 - ,contemporary observers assisted in udderstapdihg perceptions-of
the events in Syria. The unpublished Tega~tPapers, British CID J reports on the activitlds 'of Palestinian mili%ants, contributed to ' the an;lysis &f the British response, to al-Qassamfs threat. All *
il I these documents, along with secondary souzc,es, detail a' complex . , -. situation and enigmatic leade;ship. he comparison and*analysis of .* , ------,.. / Sultan al-Atrash's and al-Qassam's responses to their respective
situations disclosa ideological tension, pragmatic: self-interest,- and political idealism. I would like to ?press my gratitude for the patience and guidance oY my-\ . , \ senior supervisor, Dr. William Cleveland. TRANSCRIPTION * ,-' -p--pppp NOTE ON - - < ' / t%*- I 6' The form of transliteration of Arabic terms and names is based primarily of the usage adopted by Philip Khoury in his book, S_vriaI ) and the French Mandate.
7 LIST OF SPECIAL ABBREVIATIONS 0
AE Arab Executive . h - - B + CUP Committee of Union and progress , -. B HAC Higher Arab Committee
MCA Muslim-Christian Association
PMC Permanent Mandates Commission
SMC Supreme Muslim Council - YMMA Men's Muslim Association.
\ =
------, . . -. z 0 9 - 1 '. - ' ' - IN~~oD61CTION -- -- -A- t - e -. - * d -Y- .. t 0 '
-9. On 5'~und1916, two ,sons of Sharif Husayn, Faysal and 1 proclaimed
Arab independenbe in. the Sharif's name and so began the Arab. reuolt against - \ Ottoinan rule:' Husayn sktdthe revolt in motion because of Britain's pfcimis? *. :' f. C - 1% to srrppdrt the.establishment of an independent--,--- &ab state following victory--- i& .+ - 3 4. i .I .. I - - the war. This ,prdmise ditl not come without ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Britain had to k&$--. * ,_ %. ~reich-inkrests in \ the Arab .~astin midd'. ~k,apparently;* France backed - . - " 1 ------'Arab independence. $n 7 ~ovomberrl918,-' both th& French and Bfitish
j L declared t&ir mutual support for thg* Creatioh
-- / every reayon. to believe -that &iAra6 Gate wed be established. - , Unfortunately for ~usaynand the Arabs, the needs of the ~~enchand .. "7 British Empires .outweighed a few token promises made in' the heat -of 'battle. - - -?
'syria.and '~es6potarnia. ere< carved'up as spoils of war. By 1920, France had
- 1- effectively- occupied Lebanpn and, a truncated Syria, while Britain occupied
. L P ~alestjne,Tr,ansJordan; - and= Iraq. The idea of a pan-Arab state had barely
6, . . . George Antonius, The Arab Awake- , (Beirut: Librairie,du &i b&iy - 1 ST, -9C------,' - .C * Anglo-Ftench bec&aration, ~~~e~iwE, Antonius, p. 435.
C f - - - Qeen. conc6iv@ before it was evis~erated'by Fiench ;id ~ritiih.inqkrial h 'I A - I. - - Jt I - --. - - , -, ip strategic requirements. - I I . Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, ~ra4sjgrdan, andr Iraq became class. 'A' * - ,' , . mandates*under/ the auspices of the his, In theory, meant
_* < k. . + that Britain and Fraqce wer-e charged ith the'task of preparing thk Arabs in & k'*\ .- tkhe reg'ions for evdntual independence. aqd e&try intd the modern political
. i. -i' +
- 2 ". 'world.) - .1n* piactice, %themahdate- system was a reworked form of 'imperialA I -I. s I -7" --*. domination, with the innovative 'twist that each mandatory power would be
-A required to submit annual reports to . the permanent Manda,tes Commission ,, 8,. (hereafter PMC) of the League.. Th Commission, as it happened;-was made < 3 ' up of states possessing overseas territories\) or dreams of acquiring them." To
- <-.-what -;extent the mandate system operated as a 'new principle -.of trusteeship . was undermined by the vested' interests of each involved state.' pan-~rabism,as the ideological framework for the concept of an Arab ' \ ' . state, was therefore segmented into regional nationaliqt ideologies circumscLd ;-. - 1 by the mandate bor'ders. -In Syria and Palestine, this- growing sense of "rgional b @ - national identity was frustrated by the Frenkh .and British presente. The . . resulting discontent and resehtment inevitably led to' violent pdlit a1 upheaval
foq, ..wh&h, ironically, the nationalist agitators had little responsibility. In the
/ cas; of these two pandatks, two traditional leaders of rural brigin ignited the frustration of-be peasant. iqto intense and protracted rebellion. On 18 July
' Elizabeth P. MacC@um, Tbsd-alI- ' (Westport, Conn.: Hyperjon Press, i9811, p:4. Y -V C ' MacCallum, pp. 6-8. '1 - . i ,-
i - 1925,. Druze rebels led by Sultan ' al- trash fired on a French airplane, -and.. on
------a '1 7 21 July laid seige to Suwayda; the capitdl of Jebel Druze. On 21 November 1
1935, a Palestinian rebel band " led ,/ ?Shaykh . ' hi al-Din " aiiassam was - sirrounded by ~ritishpolice, -and in the ensuing exchange of fire, al-~assarn. a -- asd several others of his rebel band were killed.' ~l-~~ssam'sfunkal in
Haifa was turned into a nationalist- demonstration; his 'martyrdom' ignited the \ General Strike and Rebellion of 1936-1939.6 Just as al-Qassam's death incited I-. - the Palestinian rebellion, Sultan al-Atrash's attack in Suwayda inaugurated the t u Syrian Revolt of 1925-1927. Boih-rebellions began with .peasants, revealing the
* -- pp streng?h and extent of oppoT'ltion to ~~anc~and Britain.
Specifically,- the Syrian and PaleStinian revolts' demonstrated to the French
and British that opposition- to. their ruld did not rest only with thk urban- . intell.ectuals and notables. In addition, the rebellions served to disseminate the . . . %
rudimentary nationalist ideology being worked ' our by those very same urban . . t -- . - -- . intellectualspand iotables. . Through-apcompBrativc anawsis ofPEach revolt, tlrrssp- - -
'thesis will show how these national ideas spread from the cafes of ~amascus-
to rural Syiia and Palestine, focussing on .the roles of Sultan al-Atrash and al- t $ -- - - ab Qassah. Furthermore, an examination of the social and political nature of'the
rebellions will assist in understanding -how peasant revolts inspired byrcommunal
'J tradition and religion. were transformed idto nationalist uprisings.
!I !I L - -p--pppS. " Lachman, "Arab Rebellion and Terrorism in: Palest1ne,
Frank Cass, 1977M p. 142. - . ' - 3
'\ '\ = s < - z" z" '0. 3
..1 + - E. . ? <. - -- >, . - The interp;et~tion presented in tiis thesis 'is not without. disdhtei ~dh < .. 0 ... . - rebellions,- according to several accounts, had little or no centralized cgntrol or - Q I * . '. - I coordination managed sufficient unity to keep French and -British forces at ,' . . C bay for- several years: '~x~lanatiodsabound .., as- to the ineptitude of the mandate
I. *. ., . > security for& or administiathe offici'als, explanationsithat-perhaps attempt. -to , .
, undermine'the notion that nationalism had any itrdn C rebgllions. The debate here is whether 'the peasant 0 -- ' . -- to operate 'independently of eaqh ther, were composed of brigands inspired by . . .'"
e the prospeci -of'loot in a time of unrest or rebels '"idspired by traditional . d ', C resistance tp administrative centralization, foreign fiminati0n;--an3,,~-m~t--~- 1 . .. . I
importantly, bi ;he fledgling nationalist ideology propagated i"n the towns. w J ' In the ease of Syria,-the question of Sultan al-Atrash's motivations is a.
> 'matter df contention between Joyce Zaverty Miller and Philip Khoury. For _..'
. , -& Milker, ~qltanal-Atrash acted \out of the trhditionhl ~r&e'particularism'- that - I
; .+
had albays characterized Dfuze relations -with tlie cenlrai -.aptlmsit~'~os~of- -*- ' $" the, so-called 'rebels' who jumped on sultan al-Atrash's bndwagon .were simple . .
brigands. The revolt,. . according lo ~iller,,& a, - nqt the nationalist ,revolt pf a united people against- a. 9, French oppressor but a pbwer sS ruggle among and within < divisive groups in ,an artificial state .who could agree on only one thing: the French must go.' -
-For Miller, ~ul;a~al-Atrash was the most ambitious and most anti-~rench' +
0 ------Y 7--- -L.---- \ * ------4 -P ------. ,, ' 4 - .? \ <- -. -- . I -_ ' Joyce Laverty Miller, "The Syrian ~evolfof i92-5" ; I Internati~~mdJomal of Wle East .St-, 8( 19771, p. 547 ., r k - 6+ 4% \, \ -3 dr I I . '. 7 - t', t', 4 4 ,aCI . ' I \ 1 e , - 'ci - aspirant for power in th6 Atrash family, t'he' leading-- Druze family.' ------L - ppL- interpretation, Sbltan al-Atras-h. rebelled in order .?owacquire power -in the Jebel * " Druze and to preserveb ' feudal' nobility -that the French-induced , mqdernizing - 3 + ""3 i.. -< : trends Jyyte'ned. * a .. -. -, +/ 8 -* , - 8 a ' ' *< a* Khoury, -bn the other ha; arg;es that Sultali ai-@3sh7sVrevolt was +&+\ -=-,$,. 2 "' to a great ,extent by Syrian Arab nationalisin and+rebels, not brigands; b * I .e main players ia the rebellion. &though sultan al- trash's. motives ' - a-*-- .-A- *- ' were 1'deal. in origin i& that-he sought to.prevent, the French from-yndermining,i I - a' the. traditional power struCture of' the ~iuzemountain community, he was also.' -motivated by rhe nationalist irnpube'to unify syr?a. 4)* the very least, Sultan - - J ; by practical politics: to resist domination effectively, Syria hqd to be unified to some 0e.gree. Given tk e c3 mplex social and religious structure of ?he country, Syrian Arab seemed to be 1 available means to achieve unity of' hyrpose. * ', 1 \ Druze economic and political connections with Damasc 1 siltan al-Atxa~hto the Damascene nationalists; he had becoqe "...inheasingly , I " 9 , \ \ infecte~by the idea of nationalism radiating from Damascus.:" The involvement , of the urban nationalists in the subsequent mass uprising served to spread the . i ihea'of a Syrian political identity. By codtiast, Miller cvaracterizbs thejrevolf i \ as signalling "...the end of - - t - -- - p---pp 1 c. Ibid., p. 552. , - 9 - - -p--p- Philip hour$, ttFactionalism among Syrian Nationalnalli--- during the French Mandate", Jnternational Journal of Middle East Studies, 13(1981), p. 455. / < - revealed that Syrian nationalism was both nbn-existent." and nen-viable 'in the ------<, " a Syrian c~ntext,"'~Khoury asserts that th.e" revolt was- a manjfestat'ion of an em6rging and viable popular nationalism in Syria. The revolt succeeded on two couits. It forced the French authorities to re-eval-uate their governing policies ,+ and disseminazed Syrian natiowlism. The political failure 'of the rejlolt ,mtiiy L perhaps be seen in the' context .of the traditional Ottoman administrative . structy're- rather than in- --the non-viability- - of Syrian nationalism.------1b Because of limited objectives and relative weakness, the traditional r7, Ottoman system of rule allowed for local centres of autonomy based, on - ' 1 *. communal or sect-ariah divisk. ns in Syria and Palestine. The Palestinian revolt, . 'like the Syrian revolt, was with division and rivalrA as a result of' this - b system. , Yehoshua Pqrath has shown how this divisiveness weakened the it Palestinian revolt. he initial unity of the rebellisn prpvided by al-Qassam's I . b death found ere^ on the laof internal coherence and the rivalry of the - -. - - notable families. Ann ~oiel~Lesch hbs no arguient with the nationalist ? character of the revolt, but she argues that the national movement and the revolt were undermined by a lack. of commitment from surrounding Arab L. countries,. ~qe@entions also the failure of diplomatic action, the-,. failure of ir British legislat&e council proposals to offer an effective Arab majority, and, finally, simply the overwhelming British military superiority. In short, Porath * F--Td seems to stress internal factors while Lesch seems to stress external factok in? t - - - ( aicountiq for the political and military failure of the revolt. 4 simplistic to suggest any emphasis. , The disunity of the movement. played as -' Pa - 1--- ' important a role as any one of the' external 'factors analyzed. by Lesch; rebel unity could have conceivably worn down 'British military superiority. t r 6 The disputes among h torians .led me to believe that a comparative study G' P - could clarify the& ,and other issues. The- sirnilar3ies between the rebellions a& sufficient to allow such an analysis ynd the differences illuminate, the particular growth of Syrian andPalestinian nationalism. There is no disputeLregarding the fact that both rebellions were peasant in character and that the ~easant'rebels pre-emp~edand galvanized, the urban , nationalists who had up until that time sought political compromise. fn h 0 analyzing the roles of- Sultan &- trash a 'd al-Qassam, I intend to addresi the . .+I #-+ 3 question of "...who speaks to [and fofl the peasant and what is it they, # communicate which' paves , the peasant to violent. political action?"" ~urthermbre,,the role of the rural and-,urban .notable as mediator bgtween the I I-- -- peasant. and a central authority will be examined, particularly in respect to the rD 6% issue of control. On the ideological levkl, the growth of secular nationalism . and its diffuskn will be considered in respect to tradition and Islam. hashort, - this thesis will be thematically structured in terms of peasant rebellion, peasant- X 4 notable relations, aild the r,ole of nationalist ideology and charismatic leadership w ' in Syria and. Palestine. lC * 45'. G Most writers stress fie historical-- -- discontinuity- -- -- of Syria and Palestine after -- 1918. Arab nationalism, the Ottoman collapse, and the European- - mandates- - a~e 1 1 a T . , " Eric R. Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. xii. d aspects of this apparent hirtbrical disjuncture.'' Becauie gf this emphasis, -the continuity of. patterns and processes, such as traditional responses to changing / circurnstanees and ocial relations,' is overlooked. , -. S In order to help redress this imbalance, the analysis of the erevdts will- be anchored in- a brief discussion interlacing the shial, , economic andhpolitical , - I background with ideological developments from the late Ottoman period to the * + post-war settlement. This first cbaaLe~ 'will examine ~e-tr_endsofxentr~zatioL- - . . and secularizatiop set against centrifugal forces resistant to the changes inherent r in these 'trends. Sultan al-Atrash and the Syrian revolt will be discussed in' the. second chapter, encompassing the p'eriod from the 'Vy of Maysalun" (the fall of King . - Faysal an.d h& Arab state in 1920), to the end of the revolt in 1927. Sources . ., c ---*-, include the minutes and reports ot the PMC, sessions, as well as reports by b contemporary observers. J- Secondary sources ate limited with reipect to this - 3 ------period of Syri(a's history, b\lt the intent in' compa'ring the two revolts is to . e- oftset this limitation. As my concentr'ation is on Sultan al-Atrash in particular I . and the peasant rebellion in> general, Eric Wolf's Peasant Wars of the . He asks the question of ".;.what kinds of peasants we refe; to when we speak' ' ..I2 1f imar ~abinovlch, "The Compact Minorities and the Syrian ' -% State, 1918-1945", JournaJ of Conte-v His , 14-(1979), p. 3 r 693. r of peasant - in"olv6inent in political upheaval."" An, important difference this question. The 'kind' of* peasant initially involved in Sultan al-Atrash's 1 > rebellion was- not same ' kind' involved in al-Qassam's movement. The analysis of al-Qassam's significance in the ~iles~inian,peasant rebellion will follow Chapter Two. I will primarily focus Qn the period C between the Wailing .Wall riots of 1929 and al-Qassam's death n 1935. ri - -- - - &--- -- < ' Without going into great detail;- the revolt will be discussed primarily in terms .. .. of the involvement of tHe Ikhwan al-Oassam, the Brotherhood of al-Qassam, in P- \ order to illustrate al-Qassam's impact on the revolt. 'The Tegart Papers (British \ police reports) offer interesting insights into al-Qassam and his movement and I I the British perception of al-Qgssam. ,The PMC mindfes and report* British I Mandatory Reports, Jewish Agency Reports, and Arab Executive Reports flesh -- i out *;he political context of this period and a!-Qassam's movement. , pi . = These reports, partichlarly those contained in the Tegart Pa~ers,'~ointout t .A andther major difference between al-Qassam's movement and Sultan al-Atrash's rebellion. This difference rests on how andAwhat al-Qassam and Sumn al- *, t Atrash communicated- to the peasant that moved him to rebellion." -Al-Qassam had coated his sermons with nationalist rhetoric, and after his death, the - l Ikhwan al-Qassam was noted for its extreme religious piety as we!l as its C commitment to the national struggle. Thus, while Sultan al-Atrash's call was rooted= partic~ism,ai-Qassam's 'call was rooted in puritanical Islam. -- -- * ------Tradition and iswhowever, stand in tense relation to an ideology that is' B essentially a western import. Clifford Geertz, another anthropologist, offers i B vital insights into the nature of this tension created by the continuity of a / parochial theistic 'conception of the world in a period of social and political upheaval. From this period emerges a modern secular conception of social and \ political relations." In this 'sense, al- assa am's and ~ulkial-Atrash's appeal ------r F-f - - rested on 'this inherent tension and in the desire of,the peasant to retain and . \ protect his traditions. This desire 'was translated into rebellion when the - e traditional institutional edifice could no longer protect the peasaht.16 - - t What strongly linked .Syrian and Palestinian nationalism and tempered the tension in the precarious relationship of a secular ideology to tradition and- . I Islam was what* Nadav Safran has described as the negative aspect of 1 nationalism in dependent countries." In the'cases of Syria-and Palestine, this - - negative aspat was express,ed in the at&kpt to drive out France and Britain. a- In this sense, Syrian and Palestinian nationalism 'were ideologically shallow during the mandate period. -Very little was done in the way of constructing a specific, and concrete idedogy with a political and social vision of howi society - was to be built ,after independence was won. This, however, does dot mean - - that a negative national ideolo~is without worth; as James Jankowski writes, a, - 0 - l5 ~lifford-~gertz,'Islam observe&, (Chicago: ~n~i~e~rsit-~~~f: Chlcago Press, 1968), pp. 103-4. - - , 4 l6 Wolf, p. xv. l7 ~adavSafran, -inSekch of Polltlcal. , C-, (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 196 I), p- 102. - 4- "Ideological shallowness ... does not necessarily mean ideological unimp~rtance.'~'~ ------.t --- P. - I . While * theprebelfions differed in form and content, and the' nationalism that would shape the goals of the rebels was exprepsed in negative terms, common grievances- and problems were manifested that would do more than anything else to create fa sense of national unity. '3 The final chapter- will put into 'perspective the, specific- and gtneral notable relations,- ideology, and the charismatic rebel leader. Perhaps the - Druze were simply attempting to realign political relations with France on a more favourable basis; things were going faidy. smoothly at the .outset of, the .maridate.' - And it may be that al-Qas~am and his 6rotherhood were only L - /' fighting to throw out an infidel power. To what extent did each revolt adopt a nationalist character? natponalism a factor in Sultan al-Atrash's ", and al-Qassam's call to arms? Are we dealing with ambitious power seekers - - - - t or -&elfless nationalists? Perhaps, in the end, Sultan al-Atrash was merely , L seeking to entrench his position as Amir in the Druze mountain comm,unity and used the' Damascene ionalip only to throw off rivals. e Qassam $was simply .a puritanical and fanalical preacher, as the British p.olice. ,, c I * deemed him to' be. , Could not his mo&vis bg determined .solely by his abhorience of 'Christian rule? In any case, how could al-Qassam, a Syxian 4,' b. ' ------political refugee, become a martyr for Palestinian- nationalism? , , 18, James P . ~ankwski,Egv~t s Young Ae-, (Stanford: Hoovgr ' University Press, 1975), p. 119. - \* \\ 11 - ' t In linking up ideology.- , pp with.- - peasant rebellion throu~h the persons of v d Sultan ' al- trash and shaykh 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam, I will argue that an ambitious pwer seeker and .a fanatical preacher can also be selfles~ C nationalists, and that'peasant guerrilla bands can .be made up of both brigands and rebels. The broken promises of 1918 :and the post-war settlement provided , \ .. conditions amenable to LreEellion; and I will show that Sultan al-Atrash and al- 2 4 - < new social order within th~framedorkI of tradition, Islam, and a new'secular '3 9r *. 9 C - ideology. e I - a - % r t - '* 1 1 il CHAPTER ONE - - 6 - 'p5tkDrnNN~K)N-' IN - OTTOMAN SYRIA AND PALESTINE, 1798-1918 * I. a ., In 1938, George Antonius published ,one of the first accounts of the Arab movement. For- Antonius, Arab nationalism stretched %ack to the ' Christian Arabs formed a secret society which, for a few, years, plastered placards .to walls of Beirut denouncing Turkish rule and exhorting "...the Arab n population to rise in rebellion and overthrow it."' British consular despatches 'C t -'and, the memory of one of the founders, Dr. Faris.. Nimr Pasha, provided a '~htoniuswith evidence that this society laid the basis for the development of I. 1 * s -. a separate Arab 'identity: "..:the ,society's appeals were ;he first c,, P. trumpet-call emitted, by - the infant Arab movement."? ------Despite his meticulous scholarship and lucid prose, there is an important - I ' * > flaw- in Antonius's arguments. Until 1916, no Arab intellectual or politician seeking to define what constituted being an Arab sought to 'separate from the Ottoman Empire, except fct Antonius's brash young mentin 1875 Beirut. Arab I 1 intellectuals promoted a linguistic and cultural Arab revival withfn the Ottoman Empire. Autonomy not independence was their trumpet-call. '&. Antonius, an I Antonius, pp. 79-80. 4 Ibid., pp. 81-85. n I \ 0 h 13, 6 ! I *. -- - - 7 Arab nationalist, was perhaps constructing, a mythical apparatus necessary to - the notion of Ara3 ~fTonais7iSmffEemerged from the ruins of ~GidWar I. Before 1918, Syria and Palestine were not distinct political regions. The regions were geographically known as 'S'urivvah and Filastin- but the -people whe lived in, the towns and -countryside did not possess a Syrian or Palestinian " political identity. Tliey were Muslims, Christians, Druze, or 'Alawites under 4 r 0 . * Ottoman rule. ~hklegitimacy of the ottoman' state was based on local ------traditions and Islam.' The ~ultantsright .to rule was. sanctioned by his abilityx .- , to, defend - ther2 world of Islam from the infidel threat. The Empire prbvided a - - sense of histbrical greatness, and the glory of the Ottdlnan ~rn~iieand historical Islam was inextricably linked. This historical sense. of glory secured in loose but committea union the incredibly diverse elements of ;he ~mpire.' re b , " u, Thexhiuslim Arabs were loyal to the Iilamic character of &e Empire while the , assorted sectar-an and confessional subject peoples went about their business ? . , with little state interfefence, enjoyifig a sense of security that prominent - in ~uro~enever achieved, even during the Enlightenment Era. L ~istori"call~,the -re was not. in any modern European sense of the * /' \'. word, centralized. (The state Gas structured on a loose administrative basis. * Part of this structureL w&- thg millet system, which allowed non-Muslim Arabs - local auton0m.y in the affairs ,of their community. The cQncerns of Istanbul ' B rested dpainly with tax tollection, rotez zing the Hajj caravan ro;te., .military 1 ------7 , levies and general, maintenance of the social ordes. The ability sf the central A Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey J . '5~ (Montreal: Mc'Gill University pp. 9-10. I 'f % - - I +. ------goveriment to enforce( these concerns ebbed and swelled with tlie fortunes of < ------Empire. ability was underscored by the limitedamanpower, .small garrisons his - - hnd 'm*derate fund5 the central gove;nment afforded-the. , regions of syrii and #.. ~alesti5e.' Because of the millet ;system and the limited concerns of Istanbul, 'i ' varying degrees of local autonomy existed throughout "nineteenth-century Syria .. -. and ~a~est'ihe. , Syria and- Palestine were ------# I. \ (districts), where rural and tribal shaykhs ruled the villages and countryside-and, - _j notable fami ies ruled the towns "...sometimes providing a degree of security 1 - - - which the imperial gove;nment could not maintain."' '.The degree of, autonomy-- . . @ of the shaykh intensified the farther he found himself 'from the urbad centres, J while the notable's power -depended, on his wealth and his tradihonal family prestige. The Bedouin tribes on the desert fringe an'd the 'Alawis, Druze, / . . Mutawalis, and Kurds oithe mountainous fringes. resisted any attempt to delimit - - - -- their local power. The loyalty-of ihese groups-to the ottoman sta'te depended on their ability to maintain their aitonomy. In the nineteenth. ~enfury,this . * P r ,!3 state of affairs- began to change a,nd local autonomy s gradually weakened. By 1914, ~stanbul,for the most part, succeeded in7) establishing central control over these goLps though st~ngthening..thebureaucratic and military apparatus t ' in Syria and .Palestine. This centralization undermined'the regional centrifugal / '. ------ f a4 Moshe Ma,' oz, "Society an&State in Mo_d_-rnnS_yLiiaL, ,in--- . , SocietWw, aed. M. Milson, (New York: Humanities press, 1980), p. 30. Ibid., p. 30. tendencies'that plagued Syria and palestine and -provided a necessary condition 3 ------A, Lp * -- P 4 . .. * -,for . the-& gradual ' d elopment of allegiance to a Syrian or Palestinian patfon ,* . rather thancto a focal region. 0 I The nottibtes and, shaykhs of Syria and Palestine first experienced -a b T* 1 ;mod&niiation. atpclose hand during the years of the Egyptian -occupation. In 1 + 1811, Ibrahim, the son of the pasha of Egypt; invaded Syria and Palestine. By -< August 1832----L--- be had achieve&.effective--- o.ccupation- of the region. 1b;ahim * 1 immediately instituted the modern reforms his father had implemented in Egypt: sf " . administrative centralization, general conscription, and equality df political status / \ *7 I 9- - F- , for non-mu slim^.^ ,His reforms, in effect, threatened the traditional power base d -.- of the urban notables and the rural shaykhs. The subsequent unrest and rebellion, assisled by British military and diplomatic intervention, forced Ibrahim , out of Syria-in .l840. However, Ibrahim did sufficiently shake up the traditional - order of things in the towns and villages of Syria and klestine +a povide & - - - - - conditions necessary for future attempts at change.' I , I The traditional authority of the shaykh rested on a network *of complex % kin relationships. E-ach 'ashair (tribal clan) shaykh's power [and wealth was dbrived from the tax concession ('iltizam) and the maintenance of security of life and property.' The shaykh, ,because of this power and wealth, was thy . .> .> 7 - Maloz, "Society and State' in Modern Syria", p: 33, 1 * C . . - Smith, p. 11; Porath, heen.. . , p. 13. 1 ,I - - --. -- between the peasant and the Ottoman authorities. ~ikrelationship highly- peisonalized and intimate! in fact seryed tb refract the underlying relation? of exploitation, recasting them in terms ++% . 1 consonant with the constitution of amicable interpeponal relations. Class -antagonisms2were also spftened- by the \ shared interestsvof' shaykhs and peasants in defending highland villages from state intervention and irr struggling .& against competing rural confederations.' , -- Thus, until the late nineteenth century, the shaykh was .the power broker in . ' rural Syria and Palestine ballabcing the interests f the village and tribe with the' interests of ~stanbul; - 3 This social order was essentially representative, allowing for communal and sectarian differences, of rural Syria as well.'' This traditional order was the ' basis for the shaykhs' rule over the villages and countryside of 'syria and , rbalestine. It was undermined by the changes inflicted by Ibrahim, the Tanzimat - reforms and Eur'opian economic and political p@ration. syria' and palistine .. r - - -- A - -- - - became drawn into the European economic orbit, and the importation of ~apitalism fundamentally altered the economic and social order. which Smith, p. 172. c lo Both Malozls "Society and State in Modern Syria" and ~ominiqu6~s.Chevallier~s&a Societe du Mont Liban, (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1971) provide thorough analyses of the social relations in Syria and Mount Lebanon during the nineteenth century. The Druze power was based on his kin relationships and his mediate between hi'hpeasants and the c antralgavernment -2ha-c as eoLRasharL~-AiscusssUK-EL Salibi' s , (New York: ~redekick'A. praeger: ~~~,"~~l."fo~l"h",~shaykhl-- s nediating_abilit'~i was undermined by abandoning the interests of his peasants for the interqsts of a central government; in this case, that of Ibrahim. Iliya Harik, "The 'w System in,Lebanon: A Comparative "~oliticSee 1 View", UfeEast Journal, 19(Autumn, 1965). b i 5 P r?. * - - --- .--. - - -. -b supported the authojty of the sbaykh At the- exgense of the shaykh'~power, -. + (. - * -- - - - _, .. J.. , +A-. the' urban notable expanded his-authority into the'countryside." - -,. & .- -. - The urban ~ocaMes, as- a grdup, we& made up .of religious yholars, ; *. - ,r . military garrison leaders, and secular dignitaries. The religious scho1a;s .were , < r 9 -. -the 'ulama. The P ecular dignitaries, or '"ayin, were from families ;hose - ,' .- traditional power base fested on religious- piety, social w~aithand independen" "a,-- B d. ; -. %. access to auth6rity.12 - As agriculture shifted from subsi*nee to market -, ------B " economy, the distance between town and village decreased. The !avan acqllitdd - d control over the land because af thk iieed for capital and changes 'in the tax k -- d - - .La ------a concession. More land owned by the 'avan, providing !hem with -the weaith I .A necessary to lease tax concessions, was one of the change; instituted by I v -P -Ottoman reformeis. The tax concessions further increased the wealth of 'the 2 - - " "ayan and tieir ability'to control the local burea~~oracy." By the end of the @ nineteenth century, the urban notable'jn effect replaced the rural shaykh as the j ------A - - -- - power broker, or mediating power, between peasant interests and government . interests. The shaykh did - % retain vestigial prestige and power as the events of -gsr' 1925 in Syria and of 1935 in Palkstine would demonstrate. \ / Philip Khou~y.r~a-and_-thef&~~lprincetcm: . - Princeton University Przs, 1197). pp. 3-4; Chevallier, pp. 86-89; - - and. Porath, The Emerqence.. ,--p. 11, ------ l2 ~o&*ni, "Ottoman Ref om.. . 'I , p . 53. '1 13 Khoury, -a .and the re~chMandate, pp. 8-10. 4 - - B The reforin attempts of the Tanzimat* period, 1839-1876, were far from - - - -- consistent. -The aim of- the reformers was "...to establish a uniform and LI centralized adminis~ration."'~'. The .process itself was not uniform in, its application, and the strength of resistance to the reforms greatly weakened their-* effective implementation. The capacity for resisiance, however, was I I weakened"first by Ibrahim's- occupbtion and second by European penetration. European trade caused regional andclocal shifts in- power, not just in ------A -- - -+ -- - -- terms of the shaykh and the notable. The Capitulation- ~reaties bf 1740 , allowed European merchant-consuls acckss to the wealth of Syr. and palestine.'* Christian prabs, because of religious affinity, worked as dragomen, or translators. As dragomen, w \ commercial protection accorded the Europeans by the Capitulatiods. Plivileges 7 ' such as a lower rate of duty provide$the dragoman with the means to become a merchant in his own right, competing with his former patrons and without - " t the normal restrictions of th'e ~uslim-&erchants,16 ------ ~ecauseIEhe dragoman could into business activities without the <. P :need of relying on-,notable privilege, a mriddle $ass developed cAnsisting ofm these merchants and workers in Eu~opeanfactories. This middle class-&'. abstracted from bttoman -'socie.ty. ' Under this extension of the capitulations, ", 9 *, the dragomawtrader ould be tried in ' European commercial courts despite V f"? I, l6 .~obertM. ' Haddad, ivrian Christians ~n1 Muslim Society, (Princetori: princeton University press, 1970)% pp. 41-6. - ~ttomadsubjects.'' Thus, along with the cha'nges in ddwer relations between the shaykh and the notable, a socially and eponomically abstracted - middle class emerged that threatened the economic base 01 Muslim mer~ha~nts. a ahd the notables. The Damascene merchant found it difficult to compete . . against the privileges granJed to the ~eirutiChristian dragoman-merchant. The urban notables, because of their traditional privileges, the diminished - r, power of the shaykh, their in~reased~land-holdingad acpsL~autho.rity-were ------. I .the only Muslim class to hold their own in the commercialization of Syria's, * econorn~.'~The Syri asant stood to suffer 'most from these changes. The . traditional social str of the village and patterns of qultivation would be drastically altered. ny peasants who had once been landholders\, became share-croppers, wage laboureis, or were simply dispos~essed.~~ Most of the cultivable la-nd was m, or state land. The village held 3 - this land dn a cooperative basis known as the mushas system. Under this . - - -- system, land was regularly redistributed according to th& size of each household and taxes were collected in a joint farm." he development of a market b economy (requiring increased agricultuqal efficiency), changes in tax collection, land reform, and the growth of private property undermined this system that - - ' had historically provided seFrity for tee peasant-cultivatar. ITk peasant now \ 17 ' Ibid. ,Ip. 46-. -- - Owen, The Middle East in, the- World Economy.-- 1800 - ppL - 1914, (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 21. -( l9 ,Philip Khoury, Urbad ~otables'and Arab -Nationalim, (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni rsity Press, 1983), p. 5.0 20 dohen, pp. 5-7. J \ 4 faced the vicissitudes of2 free-market economy and, given the shaykh's loss of 7 ------power, was forced to rely for protection on the urban notable who benefited .2 B 0. C by'a& those changes that threatenem the peasant. European economic pressures, Ottoman) and the. fberat of . the dragoman7 (along with the sedentarization of tlie nomadic tribes'agd the trading shift' from the interiof lo the coastal cities) initiated, therefore, a process that radically altered the traditional social and pditical fabric of Syria - L ------A - -- -A - and Palestine." Land reforms concentratkd land-wealth. , in the hands of ihe . d notables of ~amaschs,~le~io, Haifa and ~druialem. And through the process / of bureauctatic reform, the centrid authorities, traditionally stronger'in these 'i cities because of the pilgr3mage route, became more and more involved in local B .- :affairs." 7,' I The ottoman' Land Code, apromulgated in 1858,' was intended to. provide state protection for the peasant while weakening the power of the $van. The 9% ' Hitt'i serif of Gulhane, the first great Tanzimat iefbrq ediaptocIaimed on 3 7 Novpber 1839, abolished the hereditary* 'dtizar~replacing it with a personal *' . income tax. Ibrahim had already introduced a personal income tax which, for .= 1 r the rural shaykhs, was a direct attack on their traditional fiscal obligations." -C- b i - 6 I 21 ~hou;~, &n Notables. . . , p. 5-7; .Leila Fawaz, ~erch$nL& \, (London: Harvard University ' 3), p. 46; and see also ~ominique Chevallier, "Aux . oriqines. des troubles-- --- agraires-- libanais en 1858", am ale^, ------22 hop^^, Urban Notables. . . C -. 23 A. Z. Abrahams, anon at Mia-Century, (Washington, -D. C.: University Press of ,&ne%ca inc., 1981)~p. 55. d B 1 21 9 1 Z - rb 4 * ! The Ottoman reformers had simply adapted Ibrahim's tax deipite having made promises TCFThe contrary &ringg tthF~iiia~on2."Conservati~e opposition in . , P the Porte as well as traditional peasant distrusi of any kind of government R 9 'ii interference in their lives crippled the implementation-of the refo~mdecree. F . The 'm acquired control over tax collection thus strengthening their position i, T at the expense of the shaykh. +he Land Code actually furthered this process: \ I I the 'am,'because of the land acquired as a result of this decree, were ablC -L ------i ------to maintain and extend their social and economic power. The government encouraged peasants to regist,er their lands in order to , legalize and rationalize land ownership and pfotect the private property of the +\ ' I peasaus. The reformers assymed ,that the peasants rwould want to fegister their lands. They did not take into account the. traditiocal peasant distrust of 1 , go~ernment.~'Their second mistake was allowing the local administration to implement the Code. This blunder "...allowed the 'avan to register large stretches of land in their own names--L nd to which they also hela tke ' jltizam , I \ rights."26 The impl~mentation of thee'Land Code was thus distorted because - "...its loial interpre ation and execution facilitated the acquisition of land by the very intermediaries Istanbul had set out,to enfeeble."" It has been argued that given the. increasing political and economic' @ interference of the EuTppeans, the traditional notables began to lose groundGto 25 Smith, p. 13. L - ~ I' . ~ 26 Porath, 1 z.. z.. 27 Khoury, 8 the cons lates and*the seaport merchants after 1860.28 The Ottoman authorities ' 4 ' did4rely more on the consulates as ,intermediaries bet~%enthe .confessional L 0 themselves (for: example, the French had adopted the Maronites and Z through a consular agent Richard Wood, had adopted the Dri~ze).'~ , . Buwthe historian Khoury sriows, thd traditional secular notable did not take long to retrench $Dd adapt. with the process 0;-e appropriation of \ property intensified- - - -by - the- - commercialization, and .the - deveclopment of modern- a new interrelated network of urba traditional sources of --- 9 political influence (religious piety, social wealth, and independent access to * authority), ihe ,power of this new class of 'urested on land ownership and access to public office. - By thd turn of the century,' the local power of this class overshadowed that of any other social group. These notables, 'in spite of competition from '. P European tFader-consuls d the Beirut or ~aifadragoman-merchant, I P L successfully - entrenched themselves as the lqddeis of Syrian .and Palestinian s,ociety. They would be of vital importance to the emergepce of Syrian and C t .. Palestinian Arab nationalism. 4 Under Sultan Abdul Hamid I1 '(1876-19dr , ) 'the administration of the Empire was, in relative terms, successfully Thropgh the expansion '' See A. 8. Cunnirgham, ed. # Picud Wood; 1831.-- 1841 ; (London: Offices of the Royal ~istorical' Society, 1966). \of roads, the construction bf the railroad and the telegraph, and the reinforcement of the garrisons, Abdul Hamid was able to extend his authority . . fprther and deeper into the fringes of his $empire. As a consequence, the t Empire's bureaucracy expanded and thus the state school systeme-hadto e4 pand to mee* the needs of the bureaucracy. The refashioned class of notables, 0 because of their weqlth and power in the rural and urban areas; managed to monopolize_- - the-- new administralive ppsts. Their sons went to the~ewstate schools, graduati!ng into the bureaucracy 'or the army. p The religio& families of Be ' ulama. were eclipsed bj lhe- 1andoGhihg bureaucraic notables. They'were onlyable to hold tHeir own through contwl v C of the religious offices, the 'awaaf (religious lands and money for mosques and other religious institutions), and by followi$g suit by sending their sons up the 1 same school-bureaucratic 1adder.j' The landowning bureaucratic elite, whether * 'avan or 'ulama, sacrificed a great deal of autonomy but succeeded ' in ------dominating Syrian and Palestinian society. ~aid,when combined with public .office, ,produced "...for a f$mily and its individuaq members unrivalled power on b . the local s~ene."~'' * From this class of notables emerged the Arab nationalist ideologues after World War I. Until 1918, however, the dominant ideology of the landowning B - d' 'I David Comrnins, "Religious Rqformers and Arabists in Damascus, 18 85 - 19 14, " ~&ernatiml-&ur&~~~~East-S~dliesI- -- 18(1986), p. 408; Khoury, Urban,pp. 28-33; and Porath,,-, pp, 12-13. & 32 Khoury, grban Notables.'. . , p. 30. notables was "Ottornani~m~.~~Two . currents of thought ... - ---L ------characterized Ottomanism: one conservative, idealizing the glories -of early Islam;, r the other modernist, stressing the need to regain the rational * I "6 Islam 4n order to modernize he Empire. Both currents had a common basis 6 h 1 \*, in the commitment to the. Ottoman Empire. Ottomanism, whether conservative or modernist, sought to strengthen the Islamic character of the Empire, combat . .. the European encroachment, and regain a world power position for the Empire. ------The esgential principle of Ottpmanist thought was pan-Islamictfn character. 4 I - Abdul '~amidff-rrsed the pan-Islamic basis of Ot4ommism te swpport +is-c4im - to the Calip4ate.j4 Abdul Hamid's use of conservative Ottomanism to, cement' . ideologicadly .hjs position and prop- up his policy of administrative centralization - d did not go. unopposed. A positive impetus, also pan-Islamic, did not support 1 a. the idea that an autocrat was necessary for the unity and revitalization of thek Tqhe source for this impetus came from a charismatic and miditant al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897). actions ----- would deeply affect the intellectuals of 'Beirut, Damascus and,Cairo and the deyelopment of modernist ottdmanism. B i , - C. Ernest Dawn, From Otto-m & to' &&ism: The Orlam. . of M Ideology, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1975), pp. 160-7; and W. L. Cleveland, The Mauna of an Arab Nationallst,-7 (Princgton: Princeton University Press, l983), p. 13. Sati al- Husrils cbmmitment------to -- Ottomanism- - - - - in the war-years is an example of the ideolbgieal allegiance of the notable class before 1918. -7 - - = 34 Hourani, lc Thou t.. . , pp. 106-7. TheSultan'crolepp a8-Caliph had nevzeen leggimized. % * 35 Khadduri, pp. 56-7. L a 1 - - Beginning in the 1870s, al-Afghani travelled widely throughoutY. the Empire : - - - - - and ~urok.~;;in~ the course of his travels, his presence1 often caused Some i ii form of social disturbance. He was not an intellectual bystander. , Al-Afghani a 9 P was a political agitator as well as a writer and when his writings. did not land - him in. difficulties, his p&litical activities in' cities like- Cairo, Baghdad or Y \ ,- 1 Istanbul g;aranteed trouble.j6 Al-Afghani held that the Empire and Islam were \ not inherently weak; rather, the Muslim people, ------LL fallen from the true nature of Islam. Al-Afghani argued that 'Islam had all 'the necessary-elements th revitalize , ca '%. itself without returning to, some rgma&ically obscured past. Islam had lost I ijt$dd, cthe ability o'f .the individual adherent to interpret rationally and -=I I indepen'dently the tenets of his religion. He was ,arguing from a ' fallen from t h grace' -position but he was not advocating return to some pristine state of k belief. Modern Islam had lost its historic rationality. For al-Afghani, the ------strength and unity of 1slamic c lization could be restored by the reason A% T implicit in the aith. He atgued that Islam'svas the most rational of all faiths . "c - and, unlike Chistendom, Islamic civilization did not need a Reformation to reassert reason. Islam was more than a faith; it was the one true civilization. - . , A11 that was needed was the resurrection of jjtihad, reason and unity in the umma. i * d Al-Afghani's principle disciple, Muhammad. Abduh (1849-1905), turned fjom 'the political activism' of his youth and his to the elaboration of . ------C '6 Hourani, Arabic Thought..,, pp. 109-113.- 26 - al-Afghani's modernist ideology of Ottomanism. Though adopting al-~f~hini's * 0.. views for- the most pw-Atrchh-d ivergedorthrcpesti o n of Is 1am arr&nrde-rn science. Like al-Afghani, he argued that Islam was inherently rational. Abduh, however, argue3 that religion and. science must not be one and the same: ...Islam was perverted by intertwining science 'and reason which ought to be kept separate; so that in the end the Moslems ceased to exercise reasen." * i . ' In a modern Islamic society, science would flourish with Islam acting as the ------"principle of restraint!' /n determining the direction of social change." P asserted t'he superiority of Islam, but by separating science and reason from faith, he made possible the develbpment of secula'h Arapationalism. 1 ' Abduh also held that the fundamental reform of '1slam required a revival * of Arabic studies. Because the Koran was written in Arabic, the Arabic language was essential to any revitalization of Islamic civili~ation.~' Hence, - \ a vn~with intellectualQ opening Islamic society to secularism, his emphasis on I 1 i t$(~:ab essence of Islam-provided a second precondition-for the development - * .of secular Arab nationalism in its t'heoretica-1 form. But we should not mistake Abduh for anything but a modern Ottomanist; despite his strong sense of being . Egyptian and his stress on Arabic, he was committed to the Ottoman Empire.40 w For him, the Ottoman Empire was the only viable context for the reformation and reviv 1 of the umma. ? Q' I' ". '' dawn, From ~tto-sn.. . , p. 134. -- - -- , .I -- '* Hourani, &&ic Thought. . . , p. &I. . - - -- L - -- . - - 39 #!awn, From Ottomanism...,p. 136. d '? 'O Hourani, WicThwht . . . , p. 156. 1'- Abduh's studmt, Muhammad. Rashid Rida (1865-1935), was the next link - f .-----pp----p----- in the ideological chain between Ottomanism and Arabism. Like Abduh, Rida a stressed the importance of Arabic and the essential Arabic character of Islam. But he rejected the implicit duall'sm in Abduh's thought. He wai acutely aware h of the influx of secular ideas and chose to adopt a defensive stance." ' Rida stood opposed to the modernists who were prepared to ..consign Islam to matters outside the realm of everyday experience but he still worked within the - -2p ------ ideological framework of modernist Ottomanism. , He sought an Islamic revival based 'on the teaching of the Prophet and the "Elders" '(salaf); as ?, Sunni, or i i . .orthodox Muslim, his interpretation bas inspired ,by the traditioq of strict i q Hanbalism." This revival would be carried out under the, auspiies of the L 7 Ottoman Empire. Inmthis way, he remained committed to the Ottoman polity and, because he accGted that science and Islam were not mutually exclusive:' s - i Rida remained a modernist. ------t. Rida was very concerned with the secularization of Islamic society and particularly with the generation of young men who had been trained in the new schools and taught within a secular curriculum. His strict Hanbalism - brought him into V'ontact with Damascus 'ulatna who shared his concerns and . 3 his traditionalism." These salafi adherents, who were influenced by Rida, were '5 C 4 1 Khadduri, p. 65. D 'I ? Houran=-, mic---Though& - . . , ppi-2~9-3-~7-s -was- ,,". . . strongly opposed to all attempts at reducing the principles of Islam to a constructian of the human intellicpnce, buLshowe&gre&--- flexibility in applying them to the problems of social lifeu.(p. 18). "I 43 Commins, p: 408. D , ? . - i _ a. - -" 'middle' 'uIam&. They worked as prayer leaders and-teachers in the Damascus mosques.r ThcZyoSrS-ere tflemost vulnera,ble to secularlzafi+.~s the 6 'ulama declined in social fortunes, thste who 'did not hold official religious , posts were the first to find themselves *without a job. They were understandably concerned with government school graduates-'+ who were inclined / to support secular changes to society:" The salafi advbcates, like Rida, &ere 1 \ motivated by their deep religious piety. But they were also concerned kith ------d 1 'a . maintaining their position in Damascus sbciety. c A e - 0 Jamal al-Din h-~asimi(1868-1914) and Tahir al-Jaza'iri (1852-1920) were * - d * the most influential advocates of the syrian salafiwah." Their beiSefs 'that Islam was intrinsically, kitional and the exercise 'of reason thloujh the revival of ijtibd would strengthen and unify the 'Empire conformed with Rida's I" # - arguments. Both 'al-~asimi and al~aza'iri were affected by 4he changes wrdught by European economic and p~liticalpower and the gcular reforms-of \ . 'Z the -. As middle 'ulama, -they were concerned with their diminishing - - importance in society in contrast to the 'ayan. But it was not simply - r I the loss of s~cial~~resfi~eand power that concerned them. Al-Qasimi,iand al- \ Jaza'iri saw their social -marginalization in religious -terms. It would not be difficult to conceive that in their view, as their sm'roles :became less / \ 3/ important, so did the role of Islam.? " How could the ho be :separated? i '' Ibid., p. 40'9. 46 Ibid., p. 402-409. P Al-Qasimi and al-Jaza'iri met with like-minded young men in the -- - - - Damascus cafes at the turn of the century. These young men, unlike 'the u. advocates, came from the 'avan class.47 'In discussions with -al-Jaza'iri and al- \\ Qasimi, they were exposed to the tehets of salafi-Ottomanism. Most ofG.them had graduated from the new state schools only to find themselves without , 3 -1 prospects of employment. As a .consequence, they probably shared similar fears and interests with the salafi advocates. Their class background, however, 9 -A ------d- . - d them from the salafiwah and the concomitant social and political 5 differences brought them under the influence of another Syrian salafi thinker." I It -'Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854-1902), influenced .by al-Afghani, Abduh 1 and Rida, promoted- the salaii tenets of modernist Ottomanism with an '+ ideological twist. He attacked the Ottoman state more forcibly than any of the C @ other writers as the cause for the decay of Islamic civilization. Al-Kawakibi's writings "...differentiated between the Arab movement and. the general pan- - - ~slarnic reqival preacl@d 'byJamaluddin restoration of the caliphat; in Arab hands Islam. THis did not make him very so far as to argue that;the Turks and their desgotic rule were responsible for the weakness of Islam .in the face of European power.'O The Arabs were "...the pre-eminent Moslem people becausk the Prophet was an Arab and the 49 * Antonius, p. 97. -x 'O Hourani, Arabic Thought.. . , p. 272. 4f 30 - ,. P --'x* - - -- - Koran was an ~ribicbook."" The Arabs were in the best position to restore ------the greatness of Islam. In his concentration on things Arab, al-Kawakibi based - political loyalty on Arab identity, not Islamic identity.52 Al-Afghani had talked - * of Islam as a civilization instead of as a religion. Al-Kawakib-i put the priority e / on the Arab character of Islamic civilization. k . e 1. The historian Khaldun al-Husry suggests- that al-Kawakibi \;a's the first Arab thinker- to- -evolve - - the -- modern concept of Arab--- nati~nalism.'~- Al-Kawakibi - 7- Pdid emphasize the special place of Arabs and ,Arabic in Islam. He did / vehemently oppose the rule of Abdul Hamid I1 -in particular and distrust Turkish rule in general. Socialism did seem to have some influence on his thought. Ih these ways, he was necessary* for the development of Arab * - . . nationalist ideology. A4 no time, however, did he call for Arab separation 1 / e Prom the Empire. He dught to put the Arabs back into a central position I within thd~npire.~' 1 - - - - - *- Al-Kawakibi, like ~bduhand-~ida, stressed language as the binding factor for Arabs. In this wqy, he contributed to the development of Arab nationalism because Arabic, in its'special relationship with Islam, could provide a means to \ . . 2 attract devout Muslims to a seculmardeology. G l'- -, ; Dawn, From ~ttomanism..~. p. 84. 1 - - - -2 - I 52 Khaldun S. busry, Three Reformers, (Beirut: Khayats, 19& p. 102. ------L ' 53 Ibid., p. 78. 1 U I' Khadduri, p. 16; Hourani, &&ic Thouaht. . . , pp. 272-3. Because of the influence of al-Kawakibi, al-Jaza'iri'q young notables . .a - - - L- -- - - became known as Arabists. In no way should Arabism before 1918 be construed as anything but an ideological. ahd generational variant from ' \ P G Ottomanism. Ottomanism was the dominant ideology of the Arabists' fathers ,! and the$ were still committed*to a weak version of salafi-inspired modernist 6 Ottomanism. The Arabists came from a particular faction of the landowning '7 ------, . f bdreaucratic 'ayan. Generally from the less wealthy Muslim iarnilics of Damascus, they graduated from Abdul Hamid 11's educationale system or western schools unable to compete ~ in the bidding for posts which was based-on d available cash rather than on merit." Unemployment 1ef&e young men b alienated and frustrate.d. The bonds between these young notables and the # , Ottoman state were frayed at the edges. 6 Al-Kayakibi's strong Arab emphasis and the fiyyah synthesis of modernifypand tradition provided these frustratFd yoiing -TntelEctuals withhe- pp outlines of an ideology and an identity. Western superiority and the heavy- handed implementation of szate centralization angered them. The failure of the conservative upper .class to resist the central government and the family conflict arising in part oit of 'Porte-inspired manipulation created a se&e of dismay. Rising elxpectatio'ns undermined by underemployment compounded their ang'er and fears. All these factors ran roughshod over the already bat~eredMuslim ------identity. Al-Kawakibi and Arabism offered at-Jaza'iri's young notables an 4 5 5 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, pp. 66-8; Commins, p. 412. 7 % * - . alteuiative. Asserting' the piimacy of Arab language and'culture, the ~rabists, - white not ad~catlng~ecess'lOn~~all~~decentralizationin- opposition to the t " * 4 % policies emanating from Istanbul, especially after 19Q8.56 #L hi Young -Turk coup: d'etat' of 1908 initiated a process of '%tate refoim . " & "r, 1 _I r = 7- . 'I I - and centralization thit would 'further estrange the young Arabists: The c 5 F I CUXL ' goverknent made Tutkish -the -'ofhxzd language 'of the schodls land the \- +' $? bureaicrky and th;s a Prerequisite for holding public office. For the ~rahists, *. - - -L------7-- fl- C, this was tintamount to a direct< attack on their call for the rbeasdehioh of \ t P E. Aratic in tlie Empire. This ehange, whether or not .part of a deliberate - 'turkifcation' process, only served to alienate 'the Arabists. Their initial 9 '* 2 t celebration of the Co>stitutionalist Movement of the q.Young Turks petered out h3* ', by 1914. The Arqbists failed to take into accounf the suspicion )the Young G * I Turks &uld have of AraP notables. Any group who had served ~bdul amid Lr . .& % I1 was susp t. The ~rab'istsbad hoped that a constitution and a parliament would be the means to restore the central position of ArabsFin tKe ~b~ire."----- D r* Any such hqpes, were Boon dashed. The fears ofcthe.conservati;e upper class ' jim , . u e a in their opposition to the secular policies of .the 'committee for Union . , J *( a&, ~iogress"(hersatt'er CUP), were proved legitimate. Without suffi ent - 3 9. , * capital and fluency in Turkish, the prospects of the Arabists became even dimmer and -thCir ~rabismbecame their ideological shelter." . , 1 - 4 The Arabists had miscalculated. The CUP, especially' after the ------'unsuccessful counter-coup in April 1909,\contin-ued Abdul Harnid 11's i s P centralization process,.replacing his pan-Islam with*# an emph&isis on the Turkish \ language a d culturaP and thus appeared to de-emphasize Islam. To 1 attempt to b Cr' e replace Islam with Turkish was ,anathema to the sala~and Arabist / 4 86 \ alike. Enthusiasm evolyed into resentment as this policy was pushed even. I \ harder aft ~1911.59 L------4 -. -- - - Y -- In June 191 Arab Congress was codvened in Paris. Independence L - was not an issue. policies of centralization and tuqcation, the Congress argue P for a policy of administrative de~eptraliz~tion.- The Arab 'nation', was emphasized dthin the framework of the ~m~ik.The Congress, . # 1. in essence, desired the reestab6.s hment of tradiiional local autonomy.' Most , representatives to the Congress were notables and given thei; traditional. social , 3 1, station,. wanted thee politics of midiation restored. - - - - ~6weverrepressive Abdul -vmid 1Fs r~ignmay have been, at least he ' , possessed the historical religious sanction the Young Turks seemed intent oh . k undermining. Like Ibrthim's administrative - reforms in the' 1830s and the ' * Tanzimat reforms that followed, the notables and peasants balked at the /----- * I increased interferefice in their affairs. , The fact that this interference did not dp possess the necessary religious sanction made things even worse." The Young L/f - P 1 .s, , \ -. 60 ~o+ura"ni, , p. 293. r 6 1 Khalidi, p. 204. 4 9 - 1 7 I 34 * * _ < - Turk's administrative improvements appeared to be direct secular attacks on .t~a &titianaL Local autonomy,-and the klamirrord erofthing-isapitee VL its own secular tendencies, b~came,a 3defensive front against the CUP'S , . 2 secularization policies. 'T Betweerl 1908)and 1912, a free. press developed providing a forum for ' B f r - the dissemination of Arabist views. The impact* of the CUP retdims. as~isted , )I $he ease of di~semination.~' Though most peasants and townspeople were ------P- -- - - ]Riterate, ni5VspaperFweE common-cSntEpieces of discussion in the cafes of t' Damascus and ~erusalem.~' Soqeone literate would read to those who were 0 -not. Arabist ideolo itted, beyond scho'larly- works, Paris journals and the notable cl these- cafe debates. After 1912, the CUP \ % muzzled the press, t g one more item for the accumulating store of re.sentment and fr~stration.~~ whether or not the CUP government was--in fdct motivgted by Turkish * e patriotism, the dismissals and transfers of Arab officials in late 1909 fostered - - I the conviction that the. Young Turks sought to establish Jurkish national supremacy in the Empire." In the face of this conviction, the public povement / 7- \ for ,Arab rights came underfthe coordinI tion of the "Ottoman Decentralization. 4 \ Party". - Secret. societies such as al-Fatat (young Arab Sotiety) and ad-Ahd i (Covenant Society) were formed to provide support for the decentralization I-- .t i - 63 Ted wede en bur^, "The Role of the Palestinian ~kasantr~in -8 ------the Great Revolt f 93- 39) ,"% in Stur3ies rrr me-Economic and Cent-, eqited by Roger, - Owgn. (London: Macmillan Press, 1982), J p. 187. k "- Antonius, p. 105. 65 Khalidi, p. 218. Z push against CUP policies. ~e4herthe ~eceotralizatiohParty nor the< *secret. / societies, exspt I independen~e.~~ B * \ * In 1908, the CUP gbvernment appointed Husayn ibn 'Ali as Sharif of I, a , Mecca in the Hejaz. When war broke out in 1914, Husayn foun \ - betwe); the ~ritishand the Turks. There was a strong'poss ' I war would mean the end of the Ottoman Empire . Through wondenie with Sir -Henry EilEMaKon, the ~i~h-commissionerfof gypt and the Sudan;, extracted a British promise. Fq assist in the creation of an Arab state us& c' after the war in return for ad Arab re~olt.'~' The Syrian Arabist~ \ enthusiastically supported the repvolt but few Palestinian notables came "out in L.. support of Husayn." The Ottoman government portrayed Husayna's rebellFs . by" an act against the faith while Husayn had declared jihad (holy war) against-the Young Turks. ~ence,both the governmejt and lslame in their J 1 appeals to !he ~rabs.~'Any claim for political loyalty was meaningless unless - -- it was .framed as a traditional Ishmic appeal. *~hiArab, Revolt had malginal , success in galvanizing the population .but became an important myth' al. facet I f in the evolution of Arab nationalism after the war. =l h Dawn, From Ottomanism. . . , pp. 149-50; Antonius., PP- 109- 12. "i 'a Philip ~attar,The Mufti gf Jerusalem, '(~awYork: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 6. 4. 69 W. L. Cleveland, "The Role of Islam as Political Ideology . a in the First World Warw in National and Inte~tiowlP~L~LCFI in ' the Mlddre. . East , ed. Edward Ingram, (London: Frank Cass, 1986), pp. 86 and -95. - with the victory of the Allies in 1918, the Ottoman Empire was I disso1vect. - Hus2yri and -his s0ns-looimito33rftain to fmfTthe promise- OF i s. Arab independence. Husayn did not takd into account ,war-time expediency. * ~rit~in'spromises to the French and the Zionists qua!ified thdse promis& I McMaho*n had made in 1915. . The impulses of mission8civilisatrice and the "white man's burden", along with the needs' of ~m~ire,were nt over " I I the needs of a 'semi-chilized' .race. France gained contr'ol J ov ------* Syria. Britain gained control o;er ,Palestine, Transjordan and- Iraq. Lord Kitchenei, War Minister 1914-1916, had addocateb since 191i that British Egypt b L b needeci' a buffer +tate carved out of Syria and Pale~tine.'~~McMahon7s vague exception o? ".:.portions of Syria $ing to the west of Damascus; Homs, Hama, % - and Alepv to his promises was used to justify the creation of a British- controlled Palestine." !, / . ..6 Ideologically, Ottomanism yas now bankrupt. There. was no longer an Ottoman 'state to attach political and ~eligiousloyalty. -Into the :consequent - - 3+ & intellectual vacuum, Arabism refashioned itself, 'and Arab nationalism emerged. \ Byt just as this ideology surfaced, the Arab nation was carved up with the imposition of the French and Bridish Mandates. Arab nationalism continued to \ B exist only in tke romantic yearnings of intellectual idealists, while more pragmatic individuals reshaped it to *fit the* Mandate borders. 4 1 . ------, - - - -- 'O 'O Khafkdi, pp. 387; 346-9; and 368-70. * " "Sir Henry McMahonfs Secbnd Note to the Sharif HusainUlA . (Cairo,\ October 24, 1915), Append-Px 4 in AntoniusIrp.419. -- This chapter illustrates both the continuity and discontinuity of1 pqli'tical, 1 social, economic and- ideotogical ckveTopmersfrom the early nineteenth century, - I ' to Mandate Syria and Palestine. The penetration of Europe through missionaries, traders and consuls effected a process oi social, political and economic dislocation. European qodernization was culturally and socially at Q" variance with traditional Islamic values because it presupposed secularism and' w political nationalism, both alien and disruptive concepts for ' Islam. The ------+------intensity of the penetration undermined, more importantly, the traditional basis . of Ottoman legitimacy. It became increasingly apparent that the Ottoman state was impotent in the face of European bpenetration. The Ottoman government * took the brunt of a growing frustration with the strength of the European intrusion and with the relative weakness of the ~m~ireto do very much about 8 it. c ANempts to catch up with Europe were very lopsided and created an 3 asymmetrical social and political development - e nineteenth century. The - emergence of - a non-Muslim middle " class - abstracted from Ottoman society " manifests this skewed growth. Th 7 modernization attempts 'of the Tanzimat lacked the necessary concomitant social changes. Hence the ideological C dislocation: either the Islamic bonds would have to be reforged ~qsomehow adapted to; the externally-induced social changes. If this could not be il aocbmplished, perhaps it would be necessary tb adopt modernization fully and ------, overhaul Ottoman society by relegating Islam to the unenviable -position of ------Christian religions in the West. 38. C 1% There is thus a direct link -between the notion of geographical patriotism . ------and the salafi-inipired Ottoman Arabists. They were all evolving responses to the social change set in motion by European traders, consuls, missionaries and . generals. And from Arabist Ottonianisrn emerged Arab nationalism: \ , + Arabism, thehi grew out of moderS)ist Ottomanism and in response to th-e same stimulus ...the modernist justification of the IsIamic East created a basis for Arab -nationalist the~ry.'~ ------The ideological responses to the stimulus of modernization connect the incipient - Syrian ahd Palestinian na'tionalism of the 1920s and .the initial penetration of Western technology and ideas. ~l-~f~hani,Abduh and Rida provided the intellectual conditions for the development of regional nationalis& in ~andatek~riaand Palestine. Rida's cbnservative salak-modernism was the' crucial ideological connection. Rida influenced al-Qasimi and al-Jaza'iri, the Damascus middle-level 'ulama who passed on al-Afghini's, Abduh's and Rida's ideological - tenets to young 'I unemployed notables. - Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, also a Syrian middle-level 3 -9'alim studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo where .both Abduh and Rida taught. His strict adherence to Islam in 'the Hanbalist tradition, which he shared in common with Rida and al-Jaza'iri, and his salafi sense of reform .would merge in an Islamic and nationalist call for rebellion in Pales-tine. The leading urban Palestinian nationalist of the 1920s and 1930s, Mufti al-Hajj Amin' al-fiusayni, also- studiedwith-Rids:'* AKTWamandXzHusayni were the lin6 72 Dawn, From Ottomanism. . ,, pp. 143 and, 145. 73 Mattar, p. 9. 5 C 39 between the teachings. of al-AfghaGi and the ------peasants of the 1930s. v- 8 - Before the Palestinian revolt, Sultan al-Atrash, in 1925, led a Druze 'b revolt against the French which turned into a Syrian nationalist revolt. Abd , al-Rahman al-~hahbzhdar was one of those young unemployed notables who discussed Arab politics and Islamic 'tfeform in the Damascus cafes with al- . I Qasimi and- - -- al-Jaza'iri. Through- -- .the war yews, al-Shahbandar. wiisaniac-tive - Arabist and after the war he became a militant Syrian Arab nationalist: It was through' al-Shahbandark that Sultan al-Atrash became politicized in Syrian - r nationalism and was aple &*turn a local revolt into a national rebellion. Al- Shahbandar was the link between al-Jaza'iri to al-Atrash and the Syrian rebellion of 1925. , CHAPTER. 'TWO ------SULTAN al-ATRASH AND THE SYRIAN REVOLT,1925-1927. $" % i - The sustained revolt of 1925-1927 in the French Mandate of Syria had its A origins in the last weeks of World War I. The interests of Frehch imperialism I. and Arab nationalism clashga and the french acquired control over Syria. In obtaining- Syria,- -- - the- -French -- - - directly -- - - contributed- -- - to ---the development of Syrian nationalism and to the outbreak of a country-wide revolt. In oP er words, the French occupation provided the nece&ry ground for disseminating 'regional iL' . - nationalism over a multitude of disparate social, religious and communal groups. The political opposition to French rule created the conditions for the bringing these groups together under the banner of Syrian nationalisp, and in 1925 Syrian rebels and nationalists attempted to force France to recognise demands for greater control of the political future of Syria. In this respect,-the Syrian Y ------revolt was a violent manifestation of this emerging nationalism. - , Sharif Husayn's son Faysal entered Damascus on 3 October 1918 in ' conjunction with General Allenby's forces. Despite the order that Ph was to keep strictly to his military role, Faysal moved towards establishdg an Arab State. In November 1918, Faysal went t0 London and Paiis as head of the Arab Delegation to the Peace Conference and returned in May 1919 finally - disillusioned with his allies. Faysal inihated the formation of the General - - --v--- Syrian Congress under the chairmanship of Rashid Rida. The representatives -- --- who attended the congress were the traditional power brokers of Syria. Faysal wanted to show the Allies'that there was popular support for his government, He possibly hoped that an appeal to their democratic feelingstmight work whesre ------all else had failed. But on 15 ~eitember1919, an 3 agreement bas reached i between France and Britain on the evacuation of British .forces from the AQ Lebanon< and ~ad~scuszones. In effect, Faysal wa? abandoned by the British, and he could not survive without a French guarantee of his independence. P The Congress proclaimed the creation of an United syriah Kingdom' on 8 8 March 192_0, This proclamation Lma~ifeSte_htheemerging sentirnentuL&aB------ nationalism as the Arabists reformulated'-their ideology to fit the present state of %affairs. As Sati al-Husri wrote: P - ...the principle of Arab unity not only was not ignored but was clearly referred to in the reso-lution. Emit Faysal in his opening address to the Syrian Congress on March 6, 1920 said: "Am before I close my remarks at , this immortal session, I should like to remind you of your Iraqi brethren who fought beside you and suffered a so much for the fatherland.' -7 Presuaably, al-Husri was referring to Faysal's use of the term 'fatherland'. t ------Though the term itself is rather vacuous, and lacking in concrete reference, L Faysal was appealing to sentiments of political loyalty to the notion of an Arab . state. eakness of such sentiments is underscored by Faysal'sb actual reminder. his salute to the 'Iraqi brethren' indicates the strength of regional identity; would the fatherland become Arab or Iraqi? Faysal was concerned not only with the British occupation of Iraq. The Arabs had resisted centralization under the Ottomans; would they be any more inclined to accept ------ it from an Hejazi prince? For the Palestinian nationalists,------the - unity of - P- I 4 1 Sati' al-Husri, The Dav of Mavsalun, trans. Sidney Glazer, (yashington. D.C.: The Middle East Institute, 1966). p. 50. "...Palestine and Syria would have meant Faysal's usurpation of their power?"' p- C This i WieQ ~ec-~tgnitie~1-~tke st~ength&~ee~&seff~-ntsundersmmsth -fbt lack of reality in the notion of "greater Arab unity". And this is why the Congress's resolution stressed decentralization as government policy. b 1 In fact, the internal centrifugal forces in Damascus made Faysal's task that much more difficult. i In a sense, he was a mediator in a very tough 1 / .i power-broker situation. In order to attain some semblance of Arab . ------A - -- &dependence and maintain his political position, Faysale had to balance the interests of the French and the British with those of his entourage, the Congress delegates, and the indigenous Damascene notables. ~aysalfaced a stacked deck. I \ 7- Some of Faysal's supporters, including the young Arabist and now Doctor, Abd al-Rahman al-Shahbandar, had tried to push Faysal into a more militant stance since his Paris agreement. But in April 1920, the San Remo Conference (the ~+ri;d division of s~oils)awarded France- a 'Mandate' for Syria. Al-Shah,bandar's faction attained sqme measure of success when Faysal rejected the Mandate. On 14 July, General Gouraud, the High Commissioner < of the Lebanon 'and Syria, was forced to deliver an ultimatum sg Faysal. Faysal accepted Gouraud's terms knowing full well that the Syrians were no match for Gouraud's forces; even al-Shahbandar recognized this fact. Unfortunately, Faysal's reply was too late. On 25 July 1920, his forces fell to ' Mattar, p. 6. the French. The Mandate became reality while Arab independence dissipated in the ------ The bittersweet rule of Faysal was commingled with the ravages of &ar, the dissolution of a Muslim Empire tical bqotence of the Arab ' Revolt in a stew of disappointment;; frustration and alienation. Ironically, the r Mandates create-d the conditions for the emergence of Syrian and Palestinian regional nathnalism. The idea of Arab nationalism, similar to the experience - - of Ottomanism, was emptied of any feasible or rpeaningful reference. Its . ideological framework and legacy, however, gave birth to a modern nationalist ideology shaped by the Mandate borders and animated by opposition to foreign rule. , - a B ' The. Mandate borders did mirror to some extent areas that had possessed a historical, albeit wea+k, geographical sense of identity. The Mandates reinforced this identity in the ideological context fiovided by the ephemeral (i notion of ,Arab nationalism and the traditional tenets- of- Islam or I communal/sectarian autonomy. The Mqndates also fused the social dislocation ' caused by the war and the occupation within this refashioned nationalist J' identity. From - the traditional autqnomous system of ~komanrule to the ideological and religious responses to modernization, Syrian and Palestinian , !\ Gsri, p. 64 and p. 79;, MacCallum, pp. 30-32; Joadder, pp. 48-49; and Longrigg, pp. 102-4. Arab nationalism developed from the salafi-inspired Ottomanism arid the - secuW&md--becerrtrafistPrrabism-ot-~ewar-ye-a-rs .' In Syria, secular.Arabism was the strongest influence on the intellectuals. (. As Elie Kedourie contends, "At that time [the immediate post-war peribd] it - was fashionable to look upon ' pan-Islamism'. as nefarious and upon the national principle as its efficacious antidote."' What Kedourie means by. the ' national principle' iss the European constructed notion detached from religious - - - -- inspiration. Al-Shahbandar, the "...most influential and controversial nationalist - .a leader of the ;arly Mandate", had rejected the idea that Islam could provide . e the principles for governing a modern, independgnt nation state.6 He was a graduate of al-Jaza'iri's cafe circle and worked as a student leader on the campus of the Syrian Protestant College. Alienated by the "Turkification" program' of the CUP government, he joined the pre-war Arabists. During he war, he worked in Cairo developing close contacts with Brjtish offical~.~.As la key- member of Faysal's government, al-Shahbandarbegan the attempt to create- - a secular Syrian Arab natlbnal identity that would attract a Muslim or Druze- JI' Syrian. He had to deal with the fact that Syrian nationalism devoid of 'Islamic content Pw uld not ahpeal to a Maydan Quarter grain merchant or to a peasant in the hillqbf LstakW On the other hand, he was aware that an Islamic I , 4 Pawn, =Om Ottomanism.. . , p. 143; Hourani, Arabic Tkiouaht ..., p. 298; and Khoury, Urban Notables..., p. 61. ------Cited in Cleveland, "The Role of Islam.. .", p. 46. - - -L-- 6 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, pp. 119-121. ------Syrian nationalism would not captivate a ~abalDruze notable or an Alawite 1 t Al-Shahbandar recognized that the secularization of Syrian Arab nationalism was necessary given the sectarian and confessional diversity ofothe I \ country.. And the capability for resisting secularization had been diminished. B The 'ulama's relations with the peasants and the authoritjes had been. weakened with the social and political' ascension of the secular 'gvany thereby E ------weakening their power to mobilize suppart in opposition to secularization. But. paradoxically, Islam could not be disregat ded. Syrian nationalism could not be -- --- anything but Arab in essence. The sens'h of being Arab was nit-geographical but historical in principle. Arab identity rested on the glory of the Islamic ,explosion of tribal unity in the seventh century. Despite the practical necessity for a secular national identity, Syrian (or Palestinian) nationalism could not be separated from its historical Arab' character and, therefore, could not be 4------severed from Islam I".. secularism~wasnecessary as asyiiemof government but ' how was complete secularism compatible with the existence of an Arab ~entiment?"~ The. evolution of Syrian and Palestinian nationalism initially involved three common principles: achieve self-government; keep alive the idea of &ab unity; and oppose Jewish immigration to Paleitine. National differences, howkver, v 9 were already apparent during Faysal', rule. His entourage was made up of ------ - - 1 Hourani, Arabic Thought.. ,, .pp. 295-7. . - - k - - Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians and Hejazi tribesmen,' and these young officers I ------7 * .- monopolized administrative posts in Fayfal's brief reign. The indigenous > . , notable families resented' this ' state of affairs. he notables had come tw 1 regar-d their pe-asants, not their land, as the domaih of exploitation and this - * ir 2 * & exploitation was only made possible by access to the state bureaucracy.1•‹ - + -. ~a~s~l'syoung officers threatdned the power base'of the notable families. - -- --A ------.------notable's patron-client relationship with the *peasahts was put at risk if they ------2 could not .provide the flolitical benefits of mediation' to the, peasants." * w Palestinian and Iiaqi bureaucrats were not' welcome accompaniments of Arab unity"for'.the Damascene 'ayan. The Syrian Arabists may have continued to . - 0 espouse Arabism but .pe reality was the fact that political loyalty extended - I -from the family to the class, to the town and, perhaps, to the 8' region. Brother rr to cousin was a considerable step in %e,descemding order of political loyalties. i Al-Shahbandar may have held on to the hope that one day a pan-Arab state i P would be created but in the meantime; h& began iprriLin theCdirection of 0 % Qrian nationalism. + + ~amascuspolitics Grried 6d into the Mandate. Any hope that *the . Freqch 'would threaten' Bny less the notable-peasant relations and notable power soon dashed. The instability and illegitimacy of French rule was scored 6y t& dada at or^ government's self-destruciive and imprudent political and ,economic policies. Al-Shahbandar's task of propagating a wide- - > ------u K lo Khoury. +a 'and the French and at.;, pp. 7-9. 4 - "' Ibid.,.p. 13. . , d I. A. spreada "and popular Syrian ~rabnqonalist ideology was made much' e . Betweep 1.920 and 1922, General Henri Gouraud,, the High . - * Commissioner, cut up Syria jnto the autonomous states of Greater Lebagon, / Aleppo, Jabal Ansariyya, Damascus and Jabal Druze. This segmentation was r I justified on the grounds thqt Syria was not a coherent society and therefore fie a interests of the minorities must be ~rotectbdby the Mandatory authorities." ------p- - -- -A -- - - f a One official stated that the "...federal system created in Syria should eventually 1 A lead to a unitary sta'te."13 The French representative to the PMC, M. Rappard, argued at a meeting on 8 August 1922 that 3 ...various expressions of desire among tpe Syrianh populations for internal unity had been brought to his . notice. by appeals, delegations, etc. 'The, report [the , O French Mandatory Report of 19221, on' tht other hand, showed that the Syrian populations were so far removed from favouring national unity that they would resist anything'but the loosest federation.14 - -- As 'one contemporary Frenchman,-Robert de ~eau~hn,obs;Tved, "...la & s- syrienne est mythe."" ~heseviews obviously ran counter to thezinterests I of the nationalists in Damascus and Aleppo. The efforts of the urban \ ? nationaxsts to create a sense of national identity were undercut by Gouraud's a amputations as his policy had intended. The partition isolated the nationalists - -- -/ " Ibid., p. 698: ------I' PMC ~fnutes-andReports, C. 170, m. 26 1922 III(CPM), p. 12. ,\ l5 Robert de BleaupJan, Ou va la Svrh?, ('paris: Editions Jules Tallander, 1929), p. 33. - IGT------ndimperiled any potential iural support& the nationalist platform:" Muslim -' ------policy experts in France understood the development. of Syrian nationalism as 0 'a a threat to French interests h North Africa and therefore ;ought to contail; it." Thus, in ordei to,contain Syrian nationalism, the sepaktist tendenciks of sectarian and confessional groups in Syria were encouraged." To effect this process of destabilization, the Mandate was established along the lines of the - . In applying the Moroccan model to1 Syria, Gouraud was relying on his past experiences as Lyautey's chief understudy and not on any. wbstantial understanding of thk nature of Syrian society. Lyautey's system was ideally d anchored in knowledge of the structures' of the administered society, and Gouraud, in his ignorance of Syria's political and social conditions, failed to adapt his imported Moroccan system td Syrian conditions. Even if it was actually feasible in {he first place, Gouraud was contradicting his 14entor's key - - -A - - governingcprinciple. It would appear that Gouraud and his colleagues assumed / ' that any amount of social and pb litical differences between Morocco and Syria 1 i was irrelevant tp. the application. of Lyaute y's system. From the oulset of the French imperial presence in Syria, the form of - 7 political domiiiation bore little resemblance to that of Morocco despite b, pretensions to the contrary. Syria was a class4A' Mandate which in theory I' Edrwnd Burke I,"A Comparative Under Article 22 of the' Covenant of the Lqague of Nations, the Mandate systedm wa.s described as a means for "...applying the principle that the well- being and development of peoples not able to stand by themselves under the ' strenuous conditions of the modern world formed a sacred trust of civilization."': By definition, French rule was supposed to be transitory; syria . L =@ , was npt' a- -cobnp like - Algeria rn _apratertorate hke-Mococm. bbjc- newspapers in ~amfiscusand Aleppo did not quite see t,he sjtuation- in the same light as either the ~e%~u.eor ,France. The Mandate was characterized as a subterfuge "...whereby the Mandated territories may effectively be prevented 0 from attaining an independent state."'O The nationalist% knew of Article 22 and fai1;d to see how Gouraud'sapartition and other related policies enhanced d the well-being of a 'provisionally recognized independent state'. Resistance to 'f the. Mandatory authorities could be framed in the very principles they were ' - - - - - sworn to uphold. r '7 without sufficient consideration to. the differences and problerps inherent + 1 to Mandated Syria, Gouraud's attempt to 'apply Lyautey's sysym to the letter was flawed from the sta'rt. The necessity of countering nationalism and Syrian - .* I unity, products of*.~ttomancentralization, Islamic reformists and Faysal's brief 1 . - reign, obscured anyqreal appreciations 4of both the internal social and political. differences and the" external differencg concomitant with a class 'A' Mandate ------ l9 MacCallum, pp. 3-4. '20 Longrigg, pp. 112-3; MacCallum, p. 5. .c * status. What worked in Morocco must be able to work in Syria. Like the \ e --- Moroccans, Syrians would be made to see the benefits of French rule. . Lyautey's system was *predicated on the assumption that' effective colonial. administration was indirect in application. Through native affairs officers, nizant of native languages, religion and customs, a rural native elite could strengtheneddin respect to urban notables that would help frame, support and implement French colonial policy." B~ subtle manipulation, the waste and ------u -- ,--- - cost of protracted conventional wars of pacification could be avoided.22 The a Lyautey sy5 tern- meant "rule by association"; the intention of this system wast to develop colonial policy along native lines." This system seemed ideal for- the expectations of Mandate rule. In Syria, the French, however, did not keep a - comfortable distance between central authority and local affiirs and did not enjoy the support of traditional shaykhs and urban nationalists. 6 The negative impact of territorial partition, a misapplied system of ,. ------rule, and mal-administration was compounded by one-dimensional economic3- policies. The authorities forced the exchange of paper for gold currency and concentrated the gold in the basement of the Banque de Syrie ,and Leban in 2 Beirut "...enriching its stockholders at the expense of the Syrian~."'~The new Syrian currency was linked to a weak and unstable franc; an aspect of the Burke, p. 177; R. Montagne,' "French Policy in North AFrica and in Syria"; Jntern-1 Affait~-,-_CMarchL=X)--p26-9-. 22 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, p. 56. -- - '' Ibid., P. 55. *post-war depreciation of curredcy in France. The Ehk also tended to favour d ------Lebanese Christians and French companies in granting monopolies and concessions. These aspects of French economic pelicy in Syria created 1 considerable discontent among Syrian merchants and notables.'~ouraud, in an article in the Revue de France cited by Edmund Burke 111, stressed th'e economic benefits for Syria: "...railroads, port modernization, experimental farms, 2 agticultural- - -LC- credit services,-- irrigation w~rksand vete6nary-servh-as-well-as- P road building, aqueducts, and bridges."26 But the French monetary and . -investment policies, in part, effected a process of economic impoverishm&nt.27 - The Mandatory authorities also attempted to transform agrarian . relations between the notable and the peasant. This was consistent with Lyautey's principle of strengthening the rural element at the expense of urban .. I, I elites." Lyautey's principle ideally involved respect and understanding of traditional rural life. But it was more a matter of trying to buy the peasants L ------" off. with improv&d service$ -*and *.disproportionate representative interests. And .- .* > 4. -.*._ . it -"d-;d";.,,rk for awhile: "The.j first &efliom ot Flctober 1923 'showed this balance of - forces, as support ' for France. came chiefly from the rural ' pop$fatio b s who had most benefited from French rule."29 The authorities were , trying2 t destroy the rural political base w Longrigg, p. 234. ------4 . . - Burke, p:183. ' . , " -*. . 29 Ibid., p. 183. 52 n lax system was designed to sever the relations between the landowning notable and the pwmtand ap the ' .~tenu~es-)rst~t~family~unit~ regularizing land 'registry." As the Ottoman authorities experienced in 1858,' the peasants began to resist French attempts to interfere with their lives: ...the illiterate and conservative peasantry, especially in B the extensively cultivated grain belts of central Syria and the Hawran, was clearly suspicious of French intentions which were regarded as attempts to disrupt a traditional way of life?' 0 France failed to ~nTe~iFethenota6lZs~reIationship~~w3hthepgasarand the e French authorities were left with the. "...sole possibility of playing rural-based landowners and tribal shaykhs against city notables and those notables against each other."32 The revolt would forestall any such attempts. The Moroccan-inspired officials furthered the process of administrative alienation through the imposition of a new court system, non-MusIim control 9 of the 'aw~af,and compulsory teaching of French in schools.33 This last policy - intensified discontent to the same degree as the CUP'S language policy after -- - 1909. The imposition of Rench was a direct attack on the supremacy of 'Arabic. ~oliieswere enacted to break the back of nationalism not foster cultural association b-etween Syria and France.34 30 Khoury, and the French M.~.Q&&, pp. 61-3. Ibid., p. 64. - -- 3 3 Longrigg, pp. 135-8. 34 Rabinovich, p. 698. 53 The French Mandate administration created the conditions for the - - tz, Palestine, and Transjordan and saddled with inept French rule, the ideology, of Arabism, which was intended to include all Arabs, was regionally fragmented 'within the Mandate borders. The obstacles, concerns and goals of the d nationalist leaders in Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem became isolated an& / particular to the respective mandatory situations. The call of the Syrian / 1------_- d --A------General Congress on 8 March 1920 for an Arab Federation remained a dead letter and became further removed from the realm of possibility as historical , circumstances altered the evolution of national identity." Instead of promoting stability and building a solid economic infrastructure as the Mandate.- dictated in principle, Gouraud and his administration directly contributed to the intensification of nationatist ties. Arabism was recast and became the ideological tool used by the notables to strengthen their bonds with the peasantry and unify the confessional and sectarian- groups within the comrr-on resentment to French rule. 31 The intensification of nationalist ties between the disparate confessional and sectarian communities and the urban centres of nationalist activity spread along the econ'omic conriections fostered by the rise of a market economy. As Syria was pulled into the world economy, the traditionally self-sufficient sb communities in the Syrian hinterland relied more and more on the urban - * ma- -- -.; markets in Damascus, Aleppo, Hoxfs, and Beirut ' In particular, the Jabal Druze, ruled by the Atrash family, had become increasingly dependent 3 = I on the grain merchants of the Maydan-Quarter in Damasc~s.~~This economic link was complemented by the Druze Agency in Damascus run by Nasib al- I * '-. Bakri, a supporter of Sharif Husayn and Faysal. Al-Bakri hadJbrganized a - band of Druze against the Ottoman authorities in -1916.'' Sultan al-Atrash was cp involved in the +Arab Revolt wsh al-Bakri who was later appointed by Faysal d , to be his 4 pecial emissary to the Druze. 'Largely because of his association ------. ------with al-Bakri, Sultan al-Atrash gave his support to Fay~al.~'The Druze Agency &' I was maintained into the Mandate and, thus; exposed rural Druze .leaders, particularly Sultan al-Atrash, to the fledgling. nationalist ideology promoted by . 4 The opposition the French created to their rule cemented the - interconnections between rural fears and urban aspirations despite the P administration's attempts to fostdr regional* socio-political. actonomy. Syrian ------nationalism was ideologically negative in that it developed in reaction to foreign rule and did not immediately create a substantial political and social blueprint. L Sultan al-Atrash epitomized this negative focus. His reaction to the French - did not contain any positive political vision or ideological content envisaging what Syria and tne Druze would become after the ~renchoccupation. This is not to deny ideological import, to his actions: As will be shown, Sultan al- 3 7 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, pp. 161-2. 38 Ibid., pp. 161-2. 55 - Atrash reacted within the ideological framework established by the Damascene - n TonaIistsZiid, aToiigwithself-iserest and Druze tradition, his motivation and Y #@ method were inspired by the nationalism of al-Shahbandar and his ~8m~atriots. 'lu -.. * The French,, becausd they grossly underestimated the appeal of nationalism to P elements outside the urban centres, "...ironically ended up fosiering rather, than retarding, the na 9 on list ma~ement."'~ Sultan 1925 was not the first act of violent - - A - - - -- resistance to French rule.' Ibrahim Bey Hananu, an Aleppine nationalist, led sporadic uprisings against the French in 1920. Alawite resistance to French rule, led by Shaykh Galih al-Mi, kanaged to survive until October 1921. The visits of Charles Crane, a self-appointed representative of the U.S. government, provoked several demonstrations in 1922. And for nearly a year in 1923, - Sultan al-Atrash fought the French throughout the Jabal Druze, declaring - himself a nationalist during this first Druze ~prising.~' - ' When the French reached an agreenient- with theCTurks, Hananu and al- Ali's revolts petered out as Turkish aid ende-d. Aware that their fortunes no w longer were tied with the Turkish nationalists, Hananu and the Aleppine nationalists turned to Damasc~s.~'In 1922, the French authorities, more than likely because of overconfidence, aided this reorientation by joining the Alawite, - 40 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, pp. 97-126; p. 154. Ibid., p. 112. - - Aleppo and ~amascus-statesin the Syrian Federation." T~CJabal Druze was ------excluded from this federation and in July 1922, Sultan al-Atrash rebelled. i . An incident involving a nationalist agitator was the pretext for Sultan al- rl Atrash's rebellion. Given his close ties to Damascus, he may have been motivated less by the arrest of this nationalist than by the exclusion of the 1 Jabal Druze from the Syrian Federation. This7interpretation is inferential and e conjectural. It is not clear at this period the -extent to which Sultan al-Atrash - - a ------A ------was tied into the nationalists. The uprising, however, did serve to tighten his d connections to . Damascus. I It has been argued by some historians that Sultan al-Atrash was only seeking to secure his position in the Jabal Druze and realign the power *&r-7 balance between the Druze 'ad the French. Khoury, however, asserts that % Sultan il-Atrash considered himself apnationalist and proclaimed his revolt in the name of Syrian independknce and the Jabal's reunification with ~amastus.'~ - - The problem becomes one of degree. Was Sultan a1:Atrash simply a self- . interested, traditionally motivated Drpie ndtable or was he becoming a Syrian . nationalist? It is the contention of this study that he was acting as a ~ 8 0 traditional Druze shaykh but he was using "a new tool. Ideological commitment -* does not preclude self-interest. It was only a question of whether or not the tool would reshape the interests of its exploiter. To understand how Sultan al- ~tr@ and his community were vulnerable to nationalist ideology requires an 4 2 Longrigg, p. 129. 4 3 Khoury, ,SmUeFrench -, p. 154. understanding of the ~ruzeand the changes the community underwent before The Druze are war-like mountain dwellers with a distinct religious 0 character. The religion of the Druze iS as distinct from orthJdox Islam as C Mormons are distinct from the Catholic orthodoxy. The Druze religion was a # "...logical if extreme development from the isma'ili sect."44 Hamza, who R established the religion in the twelfth century, hated his contemporaneous------14 . organized religion. He looked upon all previors sharia (religious laws) as x- "...necessary but chiefly false historical phenomena which his own revelation * explains and s~percedes."~'Hamza was obviously not terribly 8 orthodox 'ulama and the Druze were pushed into the Syrian mountains where , they developed their fierce sense sf autonomy and e'xclusion. The ~ruiereligion, howeve;, "...defined and justified the social and Ib structure of Druze ~ociety."'~. The Druze community did divide along . - family lines of rivalry but these rivalries-could be quickly overcome in the face of any threat to their politia autonomy. Druze particularism, the sense of - being something different and special, was grounded in their traditions and I mountains. The autonomy of the Druze, had been severely delimited by the Ottomans. In 1910, -the centralizirrg policies of- the CUP .govCrnment had 44 ~avldBryer, - *TheOrlgTni~-of the uruzepRXITion" , Islam, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 19751, LII, p. 50,. ------5 4 Bryer, per Islam, LIII (1976), p. 248. 46 Miller, p. 5.51. - - - - pushed the Druze into revolt but the government was successful in putting it down. The government also attempted to bring the Druze' religio;s leaders, the al,closer to orthodoxy.". Because the Ottoman government had been successful in breaking down Druze autonomy, the Druze were not in the position . after the war to reassert Meir autonomy. Y e Atrash clan had dominated the Jabal since 1860 and maintained the. rei ations with the British - -- -- established during the 1830~.~' After the war, the clan aligned the political relations of the Jabal with Faysal and Damasc~s.~~It is not surprising that the French were wary of the Atrash clan. - * (,- In 1322, the Fr-ench threatened the position of the Atrash clan. Internal t, tribal and clan friction, in p'art manipulated- by the French, endangered the Atrash's alignment with the ~amasce'nenationalists. The French had developed ties wit'h the 'Amr clan in the late nineteenth century in order to undermine British influence in the Jabal. pThe 'kmr clan itself sought out the French ------because of British support for the Ottoman stbte." After, 1920, the Fren9 h used the 'Amr clan to undercut Atrash influence. In reaction, Sultan al-Atrash ' used the Khanjar *inti nt to reassert Atrash, dominance- in the Jabal and to repulse French meddlin C i The incident yas the arrest of the Lebanese activist Adhan Khanjar who . @ was believed to have nationalist connections and was a'ccused of participating /. " Rabinovich, p. 694-5. - -- 49 ~abinovich,pp. 700-701. .J .J 50 Khoury, mia and the French Mandate., p. J52n. I 8 -- - + - in an assassination attempt on Gouraud. He was on his way to visit Sultan * - - - aI-Atras'kwherk~rres~Dnn,ecustom dictated, Sultan al-Atrash '4 - asked the French authorities in Suwayda to place Khanjar in his custody."2 b I Commandant Trenga, the senior French official in Suwayda, refused his request and Sultan al-Atrash responded by attacking the armed convoy transferring Khanjar to Damascus. ~ac~allurnreported that Sultan al-Atrash apparently B attacked "...one of .the cars singlehandedly, dispatching with his sword two ------French~nan."~~As with all myth-building, the fact of whether or not this personal act; of cou;age actually occurred is irrelevant. Sultan al-Atrash's leadership was bolstered by the belief that-he possessed great personal courage. -- I This revolt, sustained for over a year, brought him closer to the nationalist. cause if not for the unity of Syria then for the removal of the Fr.ench, Despite ' very different interpretations, Joyce Laverty Miller and Philip Khoury agree that Sultan al-Atrash did have contact with the D6mascus' nationalists. Miller saw this contaci--as an attempt by the nationalists- to manipulate events while Khoury argues that Sultan al-Atras s committed to I promoting the nationalist cause.') Miller seems to agree the statement made by Robert de Caix, the French PMC delegate and Secretary-Geneial under Gouraud, befgqre a PMC session: "In any case, the le state of Djebel- 53 Khoury, &ria and the French Ma-, p. 167; Miller, p. 550. C < *+ 1 ~ru&[is] of smdl importance and [had] only about 50,000 inhabitant^:"^' e C 9 - - * /r Millerb argues th there were ".:.no nationalist activities in the: state, 'only a . 4 fieice detkrmination to remain autonomous shauld a national state ofkSyria be * created."" she seems to ignork the fact that Sultan al-Atrash, in his opposition to the French, ja,d in fact long standing connections with 'several Damascus ? 0 ,. nationalists including Nasib al-Bakri and, most importantly, Dr. Abd al-R+ahi$an* 0, --- LL - -- 1 : - - alekah-bccd a~;s6---- -4 ' whereas Sultan "al- trash, was a rural chieftain, .al-Shahbandar was a .f Western-educated jntell&tual, son of a prosperous Damascus merchant and married to the daughter o.f a local notable family." 'A$ter the 'fall of n re, al-Shahbah&s participafed in* the formation' of the' Syrian-patestin& Congress. In 1921, al-Shahbandar returned to Syria and, with the financigl backing of I 6 Congress, organized the "Iron Hand Society". Al-Shahbandar and. the Society i incited demonstrations- during the- second- - -visit of- the -King-Crane - - Commission-- - of hqu4April 1922. He was arrested, sentenced to 20 years, and interred =@ on Arwad ~sland.'~ The Crane demonstrations were the beginning of urban 0 resistance to French rule and the Iron Hand Society continued to s i- i- \ - Fationallst a&ivity in ~amascusuntil May 1922 When the French managed , . PMC, Minutes and Reports, 4th Session, (Geneva 1924)~~ p. 31 quoted in Laverty Miller, p. 551. 5 7 Longrigg, ~~147~. =t I 5 8 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, pp. 124-5. t . 61 . - destroy the society.59" , - - - - A 4 - - - With al-Shahbandarin&onanhSulUUU*b, thtsitxmt- in Syria seemed to be settling down. Most French officials became complacent, C /' - assuming -that the benefits of French rule had taken the steam out of i nati~nalistagitation. The new High Commissioner, General Sarrail, felt secure enough tb allow al-Shahbandar to return td Syria and encobrage the formation 7 of the first legal politicaf party in Syria." On 9 February 1925, the "Parti du ------. Ruple" w~foun&~~~l~hahband*efe~ed~tothe Party as "...an. instrument P 1. -J 1 of liberation which would shatter the despotic rule Syria was &xxxd to live i. ~nder."~' The addFesd of Faris. Bey al-Khury, the Party's Vice-president, -- ' . , enumerated the six' principles of the Party platform and was, however, a Y 'restrained appeal; militantt action was not espoused." Yet, if the calm of L I Sarr,ail and the French authorities was not disturbed, then they were misreading - the extent to which nationalism had spread beyond the &ban notable classes - - - - and- - (he impact the Party would have on the populace. I ' \ -A. \ - b ThegParty was fpancially supported by landowners, merchants, professional associations, the Syrian-Palestinian Congress and Syrian-American emigres.13 I ". P Unquestionably, the Syrian nationalism espoused by the Party was an instrument I 4 I. of the Syrian urban upper- and middle-classes. 'The nationalists were either of t# J. 1 e ." Ibid., p. M6. 'i 6a/ MacCallaF, .pp.- lsr9. . ------ 6 1 Cited in Khoury, Svria an$ the French-- Randate, --- p. 1-447--ppy Ib 62 MacCallam, p., 19. 63 khoury, Sviia and the French Ma&.&=, p. 143. H notable oiihin or were corinected to notable interests. Self-interest was - \ certainly a vital' element if fie opposition of the notable families to the ' ~and~te.Through al-Shahbandar'sParty, the notables' sought to guarantee that they would inherit power in independent Syria. Nationalism, as the product of J Arabism and thes post-war Arab world, offered the notables a way to retain their traditional position in the modern circumstances of a Syrian &tatq. / The Syrian nationalism of the Party, in this transitional period, lqcked . ------coierence. The Party was secular in its orientation. This was 1 L pragmatic and ideological acceptance of the sectarian and confessional diversity of Syria. But the Party did employ Islamic symbols'in order .to politicize and ;- mobilize the majority Sunni population. The Par.ty had to counter the French J attempts to "...play off the kral pbpulations against the nationalists in the. /- b e cities."" To attract the rural Sunni population, the Party had to use traditional Islamic symbols but the vital difference between the O!tbmant past and the present state of affairs was that these symbols became part of the nationalist -- . Y doctrine. The urban Jnotables in the Party were responding to a very complex ~. political situation. The ,Party leaders had to adopt whatever political meahs 5. f O. available to salvage the idea of a centralized and united Syria set in motion I- 4 by the Arab ~evo1tO:and the Arab Kingdom of Faysal. e Like al-Shahbandar, mast of the Party leaders were Arabists of the war years and had participated in Faysal's brie.f reign. They still clung to the ------vision of a pan-Arab state but had to accommodate themselves to the,Mandate - - - p-- borders. Most believed that Syrian independence would only be a step towards \ / 64 Burke, p. 182. attaining eventual Arab independence. Hope for a pan-Arab state, an-essential - - L., P- principle of- na timafist rtremric fbskime~Faysa?~bKlngdo m, was - -9 \ difficult to discard. The hardening of regional differences and sentiments would undermine any vision of a pan-Arab "tate but this did not happen overnight. Were the nationalists "grasping at straws" as Miller suggests? The Party k \ did not have a- positive, fleshed out vision of what an inde B endent Syrian state would look7 like. Docs its negative coatent, in the sense that the Party --L- - - -pp ------a possessed only the vision of the political removal of the French, lessen the - % importance of the movem~en.t? The Syrian (and the Palestinian) qationalists had to deal with personal, familial and ideological divisions and th'e imposition of < foreign controlled borders. It would be absurd to assume that the nationalists v were selfless'activists seekiqg the removal of foreign- domination. As sons of f P notable families, the traditions of mediation and power +re influential and simply could-not be overturned by a new ideology of political power. But to argue thal the nationalists were only seekiag to secure- personal power had only -- - - paying lip service. - to the nationalist creed is equally absurd. One would have . > to ignore the impact of 0tioman central zation, Arabist ottomanism, Faysal and the Mandate: Al-Shahbandar. - may have been motivated by self-interest. While F acknowledging his klous dedication to the cause of Arabism", Miller intimates , , ! - that al-~hahbkndarwas ambitious for po itical power." What nationalist activist would not be- politically ambitious? Al-Shahbandar inherited h;s ideology from ------his cafe discussiobs with Jaza'iri; the secular schools he attend@d in Istanbul; -' - [--@L His activism wa's and his subsequent alienation with the Ottoman government. C I, .' 65. Miller, pg.. 558-9. - ' formed in response to Faysal and the creation of the Mandate. of course, al-, - - L ~hahbandarand his fellow nationalists were ambitious power-seekers{ this, again, 1 does not undermine ideological commitment. What undermined the Party and the national movement was the inab lity .a' to achieve pe llitical cohesion. The personal, familial and ideological divisions\* crippled the effectiveness of the movement. Fairly succe sful in disseminating nationalist ideology in the coffee-houses and the mosques and gainingpopular -- - -- L ------support, the party was nonetheless ineffective in confronting French schemes." Focussing on- the grievances of thewpeople but unable to do very much about - their problems, the Party suffered a loss of prestige; consequently, the constitutionalist p;ogram lost credibility. ' The notables had much to fear from - -\ militant action. It-could very well threaten their social and politicw position if they could,not control its course. I /' The Party leaders were acting out the power-broker r'ole in their .. \ --- - constitutionalist program. ' It was an example of- politicalc continuity with a twist; the tGt being the nationalist ideology. Af with Sultan al-Atrash, al- Shahband3r and ihe urban nationalists bridged t&e gap between tradition arid -. modernity. And to a significant degree, their traditional interests and roles .were to be reshaped by thir ne6 political tool. 0 Sultan al-Atrash's revolt in 1925 caught the nationalists off guard and forced al-Shahbandar and his colleagues to adopt "unconstitutional" resistanceV6' ------Miller characterized the revolt as "...signalling the end of the Ottoman- Empire's ------ 66 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate, p. 145. political organization in Syria and revealed that Syrian nationalism was both ------nonexistent aIid nonviable in the' Syrian ~ontext."~' Sultan, al-Atrash, in her \ view, sought only to preserve Druze autonomy against the .J of the mandate *qdministration. The urban notables, in ad similar way, saw B French policies as a threat to theirv traditional power and prestige. The radical nationalists,' like al-Shahbandar, did call for the outright independence and - 4 -creation ------of - a Syrian nation. In many reswfis, Millerls-charac~z~i~n-of-tke------ !political manifestations of the Revolt is quite valid. To argue, however, that the Revolt as initiated .by Sultan al-Atrash was without nationalist motivation - --- is to again ignore his connect.ims with al-Bakri, al-Shahbandar and thus the L nationalist movement. His revolt did become-fragmented by parochial interests, d - owing to the very nature of Syrian society, but this does not preclude thebfact that the 'Revolt also manifested popular Syrian nationalism however crY dely or immaturely developed. - - - - - rl Sultan al-Atrasvs motives were, in part, local in origil-. " - to prevent the French from breaking* the traditional power structure of the Jabal. At the same time, he was. acting from a nationalist impulse to free and unify Syria. This impulse had emerged in his political ond economic dealings with Faysal, al-Bakri, and al-Shahbandar. Su al-Atrash had become "...increasingly infected by the idea of nationalism radiating from Damasc~s.""~ To assume that his rebellious mentionsi ' were inspired_,by Druze particularism ------C and selftinterest alone carries the, taint of reductionism. One cannot depend - - - -- P 68 Miller, p. 546. 69 Khoury, "Factionalism among Syrian Nationali3ts ...aa , p. 455. * on French sources to prove Sultan al-Atrash was not a nationalist. It would - - . . C ee tke W-&k* tke--EMm8te-it~w&w8fttStffta~aM&~+~ become. Until unbiased prcof to the contrary is found, it is safe to infer from Sultan al-Atrash's past actions and connections that he had more on 'his plate C 4 than his own interests. % On 18 July 1925, Druze rebels led by Sultan al-Atrash fired on a French airplane and on 21, July, they laid siege to Suwayda. The arrest of three -- LA- 1 --- - Druze chiefs on 11 July was syltan al-Atrash's immediate provocati~n.~~Sarrail .d refused to accept Sultan al-Atrash's leadership and had attempted to 0 undermine his position in the Jabal. He had invited the Atrash clan chiefs to - Damascus on the pretext of dealing with the ;grievances that had arisen over the rule of Captain Carbillet over the Jabal Dru~e.~'Atrash knew that Sarrail did no.t intend to hear grievances but- rather. to remove him from the Jabal. The arrests forced his hand. Knowing that he faced a similar fate, rebellion . . was his only option. ------ %+ ' Khoury, ~~ria'andthe French ~andite,p. 152. 7 1 gn Svrle et au J~lba,(Imprimerie de YIEclair-Alep, 1933), p. 68. Captain Carbillet had acquired control of the Jabal through an internal ------Druze power .struggle caused by the resignation and death of Sultan al-Atrash's father, Salim al-Atrash, in 1923. Commandant Trenga, as the highest-ranking French- official in- the Jabal, took&er control of the comrn~nity.~' Sultan al- Atrash was in Transjordan at the time. During his absence,< the Atrash clan failed to settle on a successor and the Druze ma!lis (iouncil), through the A 2 machinations of the ~'_AmrAclan,~hore~~arbjll~~~renga~~uc~so+as--as--a temporary compromise." Carbillet was a Lyautey disciple but he turned Lyautey's method on its head. Speaking Arabic and an ardent admirer of all f things Druze, Carbjllet leapt into his role with gusto. He set out to transform the community along moderh lines.74 He built schools and roads, collected taxes in full and disarmed the cornrn~nity.~~These changes did not endear him to the community. mefused to operate .within the framework of Druze political tradition thus undercutting the position of the mailis that had chosen ------ -- ---F------him: "Carbillet's land reforms and personal fule were undermining [the Atrash's] material base in land and the traditional- system of political bargaining and decision-making."76 carbillet was in 'effect attempting to destroy the traditional system- of rule in the Jabal Druze. Ibrahim Pasha had attempted similar I changes in 1833. And, of course, the ~ruzereaction was similar. 73 Miller, p. 552; MacCallum, p. 110. ------ 74 MacCallum, p. 110. c 75 Uiller, p. 552. 76 Khoury, , p. 157. I -- Carbillet failed to win the peasant support which was necessary if his 4 P transfor~ti0n~~of~~~Diu~e~~mmunitywas to succeed.- Despite trying to - effect land reform to the benefit of the individual peasant cultivator, Carbillet . managed only. to createla defiant and sullen air among the peasants. MacCallum claimed that Carbillet, more than any one person, created the immediate conditions for the Druze revolt." French authorities in subsequent years denied that carbillet had any role to play in serving up the revolt. ~h; -- A- - --& - _--___I_------French claimed that the clans exploited the peasants which contribu~d to peasant hostility culmin,pting into the revolt.78 Peasants; however, resented the - -- outside interference. They would rathb) put up with 'exploitation' from the J clans than from the French. The Druze peasants, as rural small landholzers H .or tcrrant farmers, were a' conservative and suspicious socialC group. They did V not see their social structure in the same light that Carbillet saw it. For the peasants, their Clationship with the notables was supported by tradition and - -- any attempt to change this relationship-was an attack-yontradition. Because tradition provides security, the more Carbillet threatened tradition, the more insecur-e the peasants became. 4 But Carbillet, as a man, was symbolic of French rule in Syria. His actions during his rule over the Druze did contribute to the outbreak of t, t, rebellion hut, ,as Khoury argues, "...lest blame for the massive Syria-wide revolt that was to follow be laid unfairly on the shoulders a one man, it must again -p------be emphasized that the cause of the Druze, as of the Syrian discontent lay in 3 ------ " Ibid., p. 114). '* De Bleauplan, p. 71. - - - France's persistence in applying metho,ds learned in North Afri2 a to a very _ - - __ different Syrian sit~ation."'~ Like his fellow administrators, Carbillet did not understand the nature of the society he was dealing with and he failed to consider the resistance of peasants to change to their traditional way of life. L 4 The extent to which the revolt spread throughout rural Syria demonstrates that . - peasant disaffection with French rule went beyond the Druze community and that Carbillet could not be held c accountable for the Revolt ,as a whole, ------A By July 1925, economic conditions had worsened. Because of the loss of Turkish markets, unemployment had become In the summer of 1925, e the peasants faced extreme drought. Famine and disease decimated the rural population. The peasants hung onto their land and barely4sukvived. There were no jobs in the cities and therefore no choice for the small landholder or tenant farmer but to stay on their piece of dried up land." These conditions of drought, famine and disease- could only intensify rural antagonism ------to the ~renth. The Mandate administration was held accountable for the . deplorable conditions in rural Syria and the peasants were primed for rebellion. * . A rapid depreciation in currency contributed to the deepening economic crisis.'* French economic policies favouring French interests ro the detriment of Syrian Muslim interests, seemed bent on dragging Syria down. incoherent .. and insensitive political policies coupled with this wors-ening economic situation 1 ------9 7 Kh,oury, Svria and the French Mandate, p. 152. * , - --- 81 Khoury, Syria and the French Maw.., p. 168. brought the situation to a firing point. Sultan al-Atrash initiated not only a Druze rebellion, but a Syrian rebellion. The Druze,. whether peasant or . - notable, were not the or& community affected by Mandatory policies. These a conditions, Shared by -all syria& served as the- basis fora Sultan al-Atrash's rebellioi to spread throughout Syria. Carbillet was instructed on 23 May 1925 to take a vacation. Hb was replaced by Captain Reynaud who had cultivated a friendship with Sultan al------Atrash. Reynaud warned Sarrail of the strong likelihood of a -revolt and ., French Intelligence in Damascus backed him up. The warnings, ignored by Sarrail for whatever lack of perspicadity, bore fruit in Sultan al-Atrash's siege. * 3. of Suwayda. '( t On 2 August, a French relief column sent to Suwayda was .attacked by Sultan al-Atrash. General Michaud, commanding the column, left theLfield and in 'the subsequent retreat, over 800 Frenchmen webe killed or ~ounded.'~ ------Before this attack, Sultan al-Atrash's siege was considered only a 'local 7 incident'. The destructibn of Michaud's column enriched the and prestigk of Sultan al-Atrash and intensified the country's 9restlessness. The French reacted to the attack by bpmbing local villages and thus forcing 1 peasants to take 'up arms in support of Sultan al-Atrash." The French failure '3 to immediately quell the revolt demoralized French troops while spreading a sense of insecurity throughout ihe co~nt'ry.~'Indiscriminate bombing only served . 84 MacCallum, pp. 119-20. *' Miller, pp. 554-5. to intensify and expand the rebellion. . ------From the beginning, Sultan al-Atrash had proclaimed his revolt in the and despite French assertions that there was no ". becage a popular national revolt however i -sporadic and diso;ganized." The people's Party under al-Shahbandar, thbugh caught off-guard, joined with Sultan al-Atrash. -His rebellion left the urban politicians with little choice. their fears_- of- a peasantrebelhm- L -Ap-pp- superceded by the need to regain control1of the nationalist_.lnitiative and n.ot lose their political lrgltimacy. Al-Shahbandar knew that the rebellion, if - transformed into a national uprising, would spread nationalist ideology more than any amount of political, action i The peasants, impoverished, insecure and inflamed, could be politicized through Sultan al-Atrash because his action represented a traditional rural response to an external threat. v Sultan al-Atrash's appeal rested with his apparent ability to galvanize ------people to action to protect tradition and to fight for 'independence. Going right back to the Khanjar incident, sultan al-Atrash possessed or created all the ,necessary attributes of charismatic leadership. - He was able to inspire peasants because of who he was and what he was prepared to do. The kind i of peasant that this Druze notable inspired was the small landholder or tenant farmer whoTwas prepared to 5gbt tc hold on tovwhat little he had. His traditions and land tenure were under seige by the changes wrought, either by design or by coincidence, under French rule. - Al-Shahbandar &ought Sultan al-~irashinto the fold of his Party. By %! uniting with Sultan &Atrash, al'shahbandar fused the rural rebellion with urban -- 'revolt by the urban nationalists. But to what extent this control was ever - 2 achieved is not as important as the fact that the political and military alliance ,; of the two leaders reshaped the contours of the revolt. It was no longer a locai, rural rebellion. Al-Shahbandar thus "...deserves the most credit -for -- transforming a local,^ isolated rebellion in the Jebel Druze ...intd a nationwide - -- -+ - - -- -A------popular revolt against the French in Syria."" By early September 1925, a provisional government was set up with Sultan al-Atrash as president and al- , - Shahbandar as vice-president with the sarite flag that flew over the Syrian - Congress 'headquarters in Damascus in 1920." 1 * Miller suggests that, al-Shahbandar and the urban nationalists considered . Y the Druze rebels and their "outlaw"' allies as a "...primitive race, backward and . uncivilized." De Caix denied before the PMC that'rhe Damascus nationalists . f e a "...had had continuous relations with the chiefs of the Drwzes.,very rehable I witness [informed de Caix] that the nationalists oT Damascus had .persisted in " 1 A1 1 their despising the Druzes."" This assertion, again, does not aceoxpit . for.- .the / sbcia~ and economic changes that had bffected relations between the Jabal Yi F Druze and Damascus. The conditionsifcreated by thdprench Mandate overrode &any class barriers. The People's Party, an elitist 06ahization of intellectuals. . - 8 7 Khoury,- --"Factionalism among...", p. 447. 88 MacCallum, p. 12b-. - a------" 8 Miller, p.-556. . . 90 PMC, Minutes and Reports, 8th Meeting, .(Geneva, 22 February .. 1926). i and notables, shared a common ground with the Maydan grain merchant, Druze , > - -- chieftain, and peasant cultivator. This ground waS the resentment engendered by French Mandatory policies that were as much a threat to the traditional -' ,basis of power and prestige of urban notables as to the. traditional way of life 3 of the peasant. The sy;ian merchant and 'peasant joined Sultan al-Atrash's I rebellion not because of nationalist rhetoric emanating out of Damascus. . .-. They joined because their precarious hold on their livelihood and traditions were -- -- ____ - - thwtened by the French. The Muslim merchants in the'quarters of ~amaseuswere closely'fied to TI 1 - - - - - the 'avan. These merchants, shut out of the. European market by the , dragoman-merchant, distributed locally-produced manufactured goods and. , a1 products. Education and politics, not wealth, separated thei merchants.L from the notables. ' Since 1909 and the Young Turks, (he merchantsi . had moved closer to the group of notable Arab activists who were to become . YI ------the nationalists of. the l92Os.*l On thi basis of many criminal court registers, 0 .. Khoury shows th%t msrchants, along with notables, artisans; middle-class C intellectuals and peasants, were active participants in the rebellion.*' In fact, ' r Khoury asserts that some of the most "...vehemently anti-French Syrians during the Mandate were the local grain. merchants-. of Damascus; having realized that 1 the Druze wheat crop was lost. and buoyed by the early successes of Sultan al- E I Atrash, the Maydan and Shaghur Quarter merchants were the first to come out -- -- . - -- 'I Khoury. pp. 207-ICY: F. 92 Ibid.. p. 205. 2 1 ' . %9,. fully in support of she revolt. , ,- - - - - C. i* t J ! - -- - ..-1-~erchantc@~n~'a~1~tdth-~elw c CWeakp&rti cifi~1.h '' =. in the nationalist or rebel ranks often brdke from the revolt- to miry favour' , . with the ~rench. Vacillating merchants- or notables were thus suspect and ' d open to' ,rebel attacks. AS would occur in the Palestinian Revolt, (the rebels ' , - . weie as active in prbdding fickle Syrians 'as i~ attacking French-' In - -- - -7 FreXEfi-Eilure to protect the population did ~iotsimply serve to create a - * " fkeling of.sympathy for the rebels, ,as Miller suggests, but acted as one bf the primary reasons, to actively support the revolt. When thk French became more - . , B t successfut in containing ihe rebels, the more fickle became the merchants and * (B - I notablesias :a matter of political survival. The rebels, because they could not . B' a=fford "any loss of support, intensified tvir prodding. - ? % * / Sultan al-Atrash's revolt engulfed the countryside and, given that the 5 French were the-strongest in the towns, the nq.$ionalists were forced out-into j - i 1 1 the country ide, particularly . the- Jabal Druze, to escape" arrest.' The notable t. . a 0 4 , class, il not al-Shahbandar in parti&lar, had a lot to lose if they were to ', , e rebel. The politicdl route had always seemed the most attractive. -Sultan al- * %* L Atrash forced their hand and whatever their choice, their social fortunes were -.5' \ k - threatened either by the French or by the rebel^.^'. i Armed peasant bands were aJ6ndo~ner's worst nightmare. Because 95 f & 3 Khoury, Svria and the French Mandate,. p. 2 14. L P French Mandatory policies attempted to create a wedge between x - ne~bl- th-tradftfo&trix of~elationsbetween the peasants and his patrons was threatened. Peasants became rebels in the attempt to redress these I &ongs. What the notables feared was .the transition from ,rebellion to ------., attempted overthrow of society itself. W@ sultan al-Atrash's ~oca,rural revolt became a country-wide .peasant. rebellion; property was. in jeopardy. To protect their property, disseminate their natisnalist ide~ology, and control the I _ - - A ------revolt, t-he urban nationalists had to join-Sultan al-Atrash's revolt. Peasants, like merchants and notables, Were- n0t.a homogeneous class. peasants could range from wealthy cultivators to landed poor to sharecroppers. Because the economic and social change in Syria had not yet resulted in any extensive ru 1'a1 displacement, Syrian peasants&still, for the most part, worked the L land. Unlike Palestine in 1935, Syria had not experienced any substantial migration of rural peasants to the urban centres. The peasants drawn. into the - * \ 1 Palestinian revolt were the yohng men who had left their-villages-a3d fa.rms -for - - = 1 opportunities in the Gties only to find themselves living in hovels on the urban * edges, working, at best, on a day to day basis. . In 1925, the Syrian peasant, for' the. most' part, 'either owned a small plot of land dr worked' for an -'+ absentee landowner. ' Either way, Syrian peasants still possessed a ,sense of l Q belonging to a piece of land ,and they were prepared to fight fgr this security. The Palestinian peasants, for reasons that will be discussed, lost'this s;curity - and-dthey rebefrTih1936 because of~this loss. The Syrian rebel could be ------se6n as someone Eric: Wolf describes as a 'middle peasant'. Wolf characterizes the middle peasant as sameone ,between a poor or 1. , . ( .. landless peasant and a rich peasant "as someone allied with -the notable or merchant .class interests.% ~hkPalestinian rebels, unlike the Syrian rurai rebel, t were landless peasants while Sultan .al-Atrash's revolt drew support from the , - - middle peasantry. In rebelling to hdld on to their land and tradition, these a 'middle' peasants actually created the conditions for social change. For one a thhg, the peasants were brought into cqntact with urban nationalists and their + relationships betwee.n notable and peasant and the rural lands to the urban centres. ironic that in the very act of fighting to protect tradition, the basis for political and social chang2 is created. Peasants joined merchants and 9 notables in =violent rejection of French administration. This. violent rejection, however successful in political or military 'terms; probably had more impact an t - * Syrian society than allLthe years of French rule.. As Wolf argues, r" ...it is the 96 Wolf, p. 290-2. very attegpt of the mMdle pnd free peasant to rema/i;(traditiopal which makes - him rev~lutionar~"~'- - A-p ------ By the end of August 1925, Shrrail had 10,OUO reinforcements at hand \ but he still could not contain Sultan al-Atrash's rebellion." With the formation -- - of the Syrian Provisional Government, the rebellion was formalized and Sarrail a * only looked to the end of his term:q9 In the summer of 1925, crops were destroyed by pests and French bombing. The ranks of the rebels swelled and >, - most part, considered themselves patriots."''' These patriot-bandits managed to keep the French locked up in the towns and sven on occasion succeeded in J penetrating the- towns in small raids. The tide began to turn in favour of the , French after General Gamelin, Michaud's replacement, lifted the seige of. 'C Suwayda for -a short time on 24 September. By mid-November, Sultan al- Atrash and his rebels .controlled the countryside, whilep the-- pFrench held the - cities. In December 1925, Sarrail was replaced by a civilian admini~tratbr, Henri de Jouvenal. On 7 February 1926, ,de Jouvenal established direct rule fi and the French slowly regained control over the countryside. Druze resistance . A -b . , *was not~.overcome until- June 1927. Suka&@al-Atrash had retreated to . . Transjordan in the .winter but he hskicked' out by the British in the spring, 97 Ibid., -p;-2+2;------ -- 99 Ibid. , p. 127. loo MacCallum, p. 129; ~on~rigg,p. 156; Miller, p". 555. \ momentarily reigniting the rebellionz In-June, along with 600 of his followers~ - - Syria ended.''' f During the course of the revolt, French severity attracted not only the - attention of the rebel leaders and the Syrian-Palestinian Congress ?, x \ the world. The P~c,in the 8th Session of 1926, criticized the territorial' organization of Syria and, in a rare exercise of its power, rejected the French --A ------report for ,1925. The Commission decided to: 1 ...p ostpone its examination of the report on the administration of . the Mandatory Power for the present, since this report, which covers the year 1924, does not provide any information on the - [rebellion]...[ the commission] hoped that in the special report, it - would examine at its extraordinary session in February 1926, it would find explanation of the causes of the present trouble and the - .I remedies which the Mandatory Power proposed to apply ...Io2 The intense ~renihbombardment of Damascus beginning on 18 October 4 - 1925, coinciding with Abd al-Krim's successes in Morocco, galvanized the Muslim. . population and petitions and protests flooded-the-PMC. The ~ukiAwin al----'- , # Husayni, the n list leaer. ii Jerusalem, waB among the most .prolific. On 5 September , the Mufti wrote ',to the PMC drawing attention. to the "...atrocities o ndatory Syria perpetuated agaiast. those fighting for application of article twenty-two of the League's c~venant."'~~' He knew 'that the British were concerned with the French handling Bf the revolt and the -- - '" MacCallum, pp. 159-172; ~on~ri~g,pp. 162-169. ------lUz PMC, ~inut~sand Reports, 8th ~esgion(~eneva,1925), CPM - 312. &. > Cited in PMC, Minutes and Reports. (~sneva.11925/1926). * . CPM 271. I' possibility that it would spill over to Palestine. The Mufti's pan-Arab - Palestinian society, nNewspapers in New York, London and Paris condemned the Fr~nch gove C ment. On 13 January 1926, New Yoik's Nation accused the French military administration of being ".,.arbitrary, unsympathetic and occasionally 1. On 34 October 1926, the Boston Globe. reported that "...France is -- 7------carry~gouTfhis- sacred trust' with the aid of armoured cars, tanks; artillery, bombs and troop&.the Syrian trouble puts the League of Nations once more on trial ... until they decide that there is no meaning in the clause in the covenant which speaks of the ' sacred trust' of civilizati~n."'~~The Dailv Press T -reported- fears that the revolt would "...probably affect the Arabs in Palestine, who are by no meanssatisfied with their subjection to the Zionist regime whicht has been imposed, upon them in the Mandatory area for which the people of 1 this country have been made responsible."" Though su~eiy-invested with self- incere~st,these observations indicate that Sultan al-Atrash's ' local' rebellion had * an impact far beyond Mandatory Syria's borders. Unfortunately forothe Syrians, these public protestations of shock and dismay did little for their cause. * Ir 1 Cited -in PMC, Winufes and Rqofic, ~GG~l926) , CPM 329 .K '-. Cited in PMC, Minutes and Reports, CPM 329. 4 lo6 Cited in PMC, Minutes and Reports, CPM 329; 80 d \ The Revolt failed in part because it lacked strong and unified leadership f! urban families of Damascus, Aleppo, Ho and Hama undermined Sultan al- . Atrash's and al-Shahbandar's attempt to create a unified provisional government. C During the revolt, the urban notables -in these four centres spent as much time , quarrelling with each other 'as with the French. Notables were not unified in ,- F their rejection of the French administration and even those who did want the p-. ------. ~renchout were not in , agreement that the rebellion was the best means. XP\ \ Because the Revolt came from the bottom up, the notables would Mve had I- 2 - very little sense of leadership and were more threatened than encouraged-by the rebellion. In any event, the rebellion did go a longfiay to breaking down some, of. the traditional rivalries of- the urban notables bu for the most part, failed to unify this class especially when things got worse for the rebels. The -. only leadership that the rebellion possesse'd was in the persons of Sultah al- ~trash'andal-Shahbandar but this was-not enough--to-ensure the success d the - - rebellion. As for the actual operation of the revolt, communication lines were difficult tb set hp and maintain because of the very nature of the rebellion. I Roving bands of peasant rebels were difficult to coordinate and made it nearly 5 impossible to maintain some sort of communicajion centre. To some extent, IR as Wolf argues, it is in the very nature *of peasant rebellion to lack military * organi~~tionForaiTappeaPanceS,-theeSyrian rebeII1FEEd any such organization; The rebel barns operated faiZ1y autonomousl~and~hateverlittle. lo' Miller, p. 549. di'rectl'on or coordination that. Sultan al-Atrash was able to give was * romEle.le.m fractured nature of Syrian I society in terms of its minority communities lent itself to this lack of military ' a coordination. To overcome these divisions required revolution. CI I To say all' this is not to accept Marx's thesis that peasants without a political vanguard to supply military and organization cannot make a revolution. ' In Syria, it was the ineffective and divided notables who perhaps may have ------0------been able to form such a vanguard that undermined the rebellion. Syria was a politically and culturaliy complex society and when peasmi rebellion takes place in such a society "...already caught up in commercialization and ' industrialization, [it] tbnds to be self-limiting, and, hence, anachronistic.""' Syrian peasants had always resisted any attempts of the State to alter their b social order which "...they believe can be run without the State; henw peasants in rebellion are natural anarchist^."'^ Sultan al-Atrash and al-Shahbandar, * however, provided the ideologic-a1 and political caste for the-rebellion. Sultan I B, al-Atrash was successful in inciting the to armed rebellion because his actions were 'consistent with tradition. He .rebelled to rid the Jabal of French interference in the same way the4. ruze rebelled against Ibrahim in 1840. He also possessed a personal mythical status of great courage. And hec acted from a motivation that superceded 'his traditional Dr particularism when he took the office of president in the provisional government. Sultan al-Atrash's appeal, rl --- because of these fzorSw&t beyond the Jabal Druze. Where the urban % lo' Wolf, p. 2-94. lo9 Ibid., p. 294. .. nationalists had failed, he succeeded: He was the medium for the disiemi~iafiin--of SjTiZianiktioiYalisIsIsbTcausehe bhdged both worlds. Sultan al-Atrash was not a Syrian nationalist. He was not a traditional Druze notable. He was an 'amalgam of both, and his rebellion reflected this amalgam with all its internal tensions. Along with al-Shahbandar, Sultan al-Atrash, although . unable to achieve military coordination and political cohesion, did keep in check any ,anarchist tendencies the peasant rebels may have possessed because of his charismatic leadership and in his participation in the nationalist vision of an independent Syria. Shaykh Izz a'l- in al-Qassam would also be syqbolic of this tension when, . . with his death, he would ignite the Palestjnian Revolt in 1936. Syrian ' nationalism paralleled the development of Palestinian nationalism. Both evolved * 'from Arabism and salafi-pan-Islamism but *.were cut off by the imposition of the Mandate borders. The urban notables, their position made untenable by - -- , Mandatory policies, found in the nationalist ideblogypa top1 fo bolster suppofi - and protect their positions in their changing so~ieties."~Like the Palestinians * and the British, the Syrians, whether. Druze chieftain, Latakia peasant or Damascus merchant, shared in common the opposition to Infidel rule'. Al-- - B Qassam would galvanize Palestinians with an Islamic call for jihad laced with -, I. nationalist rhetoric. Sdtan al-Atrash incited the Syrian Revolt through \ I . .I resistance to state interference within the framework supplied by the J - an- - - p- b r Damascus nationalists. . , The. revolt successfully disseminated ti$ crude idea of a Syrian national- 110 Phoury, "Factionalism among...", pp. 44-4-2. P state and forced the French authorities to reappraise their policies. Thus the ------two aspects of its traditional and modern structure were actuali The modern aspect was realized in the ad'option of Syrian Arab nationalism as the - , revolt's meager basis of unity. The traditional aspect came about with the French reappraisal; the rebels were successful in forcing a realignment of their relations with the central power. The immediate political failure of the revolt can be understood within the 'context of the traditional Ottoman. strmLre_ltP ------would take time to overcome the divisive effects of the millet system, the b Capitulations and a weak central authority however appropriate these factors" may have been in their time. European interference and the implementation I of the Mandates only served to exacerbate these centrifugal social and political forces. Syrian Arab nationalism emerged out of the ideological milieu of the late Ottoman period and surfaced in Sultan all~trash'srevolt as a negative response to the conditions of modern notable politics and Mandatory rule. CHAPTER THREE SHAYKH IZZ al-DIN al-QASSAM a AND THE PALESTINIAN 'REVOLT, 1936-1939 - (. Ten years after Sultan al-Atrash had fired on the French airplanes near Suwayda, Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and several of his followers were " ------surrounded - - by British p-o_licicn_~~cpve in--the~alile~hillc~heh;LUs_% served many a bandit in past times but they failed al-Qassam. On 20 r". November 1935,- a British police sergeant had fatally stumbled onto his hiding place. Al-Qassam, having declared against the British and the Zionistse and committing his followers to fight to the death, was killed on 21 November in a police battle. . His death, like Sultan al-~trash'dattack, sparked a general strike and a peasant rebellion that engulfed Pakstine. The rebellion became a / - - r ------spontaneous nation'alist uprising for which thefbur.ban nationalist leaders had little immediate responsibility: Like the Damascene or Aleppine Syrian nationalists, the Palestinian notable politicians feared a peasant rebellion and 8 foj many of the same reasons. Land s.ales to the Zionists contributed to the outbreak of the rebellion and many notables who espoused nationalism had '3 -% benefitted' from these- sales. They could as easily be a target of peasant militancy as the Zionists and the ~ritiih. The Palestinian nationalists - - Jerusalem were seeking a political solution and doing their utmost to avoid ------militant action: Al-Qassam's martyrdom ignited a popular uprising that rejected ' the pplitical p'rogramme of the nationalist leaders. % Y 9 I --- -. - - 0th al-~asbam's and Sultan al-Atrash's rebellions were rooted in the - & conditions of the Tanzirn~,European penzration, the, Young Turks, the Arab Revolt and the Mandate. Both leaders possessed charisma in the form of the 8 traditional appeal of defending autonomy or Islam. They melded tradition and nationalism in their violent rejection of foreign rule. Religion, communal devotion an. unacceptable govern&ent inierference were the' ingredients that \ in varyiflg degrees served up Sultan al-Atrash and al-Qassam. , They wffe not * nationalists in the strict sense, but they used nationalism as an instrument of si. &. appeal made necessary by the Mandate conditions. Again, the question is when does skch an ;deological instrument infiitrate the beliefs and actions of , J those who lead *and those who are led. I Al-Qassam's. militancy became manifest during his participationa in the Alawite uprising of 1921 in Syria. He took refuge in Palestine where he had Y' little trouble working his way into nationalist circles. The lines emerging ------f -- between being Syrian or Palestinian were still overshadowed by the common w- bonds of being Arab and under foreign rule? Yet Palestine was regionally different from Syria despite sharing a common historical ground. Al-Qassam's political militancy developed within the Palestinian mfiieu where these regional differences were accentuated by British rule and Zionist settlement. His actions ' in*1935 can only be understood within thi3histoIf cal framework. j Whereas Aleppo and Danfascus were traditionally important because of the ------caravan and *the Hajj route, Jerusalem was one of the three sanctified cities a ------Q in the Islamic world. After Salah al-Din reconquered Jerusalem in 1187, the * - religious and historical significance of the city from which Muhammad departed 9 86 - A - - for his night journey 9to heaven was entrenched throughout the 'Islamic world. - - -- This significanck was gradually extended to the whole of the 'Holy Land.?. a * Th& d: borders were not precise but the Pale~tineof the Mandate %yearsoccupied the . 's- -. core of this ''~01~Land'.' Palestine was never a strictly politically defined areaL I in the Ottoman Empire but. was' part of Greater' ria. . A distinct regional -, identity, however, grew- around al-Nebi Musa, a pilgri'ma'g& ahd religious &+ A - -celebration- -- - centered around the siteofthe-tomh-af-:~ b&h~Jeric*.~ 7 4 The political, social and economic pressures which Syria expeiieFced a150 . . affected, Palestine. By the 1870s, cotton, traditionally the most important crop, -. - lost importance as Palestine's economy changed wit.h com,mercialization. ditrus . 1.5 crops, particularly Jaffa oranges, bkcame the .do,&nant export.' The. central , ~ government treasury took most of the profits leaving only a small share for the \ 3 peasairt-cultivators. This small share was to be whittled down by the e of absentee landholding inadvertently encouraged by the 1858 Land Code. The pp ------, ,. - ca*kinercialization of agriculture benefited the notable families and the &nergihg commercial class of the dragown-merchant at the expense of peasant autonomy. , There was, however, one vital difference between the Syrian and Palestinian .# *'\ experience: the immigration of European Jews to PalestinsGin the late /< 4 nineteenth century with the rise of Zionism, the political movement of Jewish Porath, The. ugence of... , p. 4. * ' ' Ibidr,-p.6r---A * natipnalism., ' ..The Zionists would benefit from and intensify the v commercialization process. These immigrants did not intend simply to make a profit like the European consul,-traders; their objective was the resurrection of a &wish state in Palestine. Palestine was considered barren of civilization and thus of any people worthy of consideration. The 'Zionists viewed the Palestinian Arabs as . * " .P . s& t t d md~uw~~c~~~~~herder~w~~~~~~,~~Y- ---A - e re Jewish: They wire interlopbrs who at best presented a nuisance but could be J - .F ignored. The reality of-Palestinian Arab social and economic development must - have engendered some consternation among those first Jewish settlers. The first I _A ' - .,. .-Cave of immigration in'the 1880s settled in plantation-like estates supported by the Rothschilds, a wealthy European Jewish family. The Arabs were employed on these estates. The second wave after 1905 brought idealistic socialist Jews #- -from Russia who rejected the plantation existence and established communal ------farms called kibbutzim. Arabs were not employed on the kibbutzim, As Jewish immigration and settlement increased and Jewish nationalism intensified on I.- Palestinian soil, the Arabs became increasingly aware of' the threat the Jews ** ' v posed to Palestine. With the emergence of Arabism, this threat took on ideological proportions. As Europeans, the Zionists were no,t welcomed with open arms. Palestinians knew Jews. Many lived in Safad and Jerusalem. But Zionists ------, $ were not the Jews of Safad and Jerusalem. From the start of the Zionist ------enterprise, Palestinians were suspicious a'nd though the Zionists attempted to keep their poliiical motives under the table, the agricultural communities, pp . A ------fouqd themselves bereft of land and home. They became sharecroppers working ! for either the urban notables o; for the Zionists. More significantly, a drift towards the citie; i+n search of work began as the centre of economic activity ifted fiom the rural t~ urban areas. To the Zionists, the peasants had /" Aver owned thqland. Centuries of- 9ltivation were secondary to legal- paper. The effects of the 1858 Land Code were blatantly obvious in this process of sdcial dislocation. On all counts, despite claims that the- Zionist settlement , I benefited-the social and economic development" of peasants; rural Palestinianspp- , increasiqgly resented the presence of the Zionists.' -Z I. I 4.- The urban notapes profited from land 'sales but they had to 'take account . of' this resentment. Anti-Zionist sentiments emerged in the Arab press after I 'b 1908 and Arab deputies in the- dttoman Parliament 'prespuied the government I , , to limit Jewish immigration and land sales. One important Palestinian m.ember I of the ottoman ~ecentralizationParty, ~hukri'key al-'Asali, pointed out that ------~ibniststhreatened the traditional way of life' in Palestine. He spoke of the --2 - - - - - > - 7- -pastu;age rights, la d evictions,'the mildancy and deterpi-nation of the %ionifis, 'I+Y - ---pLpp--L--. %' , . , and the Pa'lestinian fellahin's (peasant) growing resentment. Al-' Asali, as a '.deputy in the Parliament, was taking care of his political interests. In priy$&. ' - ( , 9 . . ." - he was not so adamant an anti-Zionist; be ackqbwledged that his motives were I political not personal i nature: But he did succeed in making Zionism an .. issue outside of- Palestine.' ~ewis6settlement may have represented inmediate *' . , - - ofit- but it furthered the skewed- economic development----~- of Palestinbe. Notables rl 4. in' Darndscus and JeruBalkm had to adapt to similar social and economic - changes but oniy the palestinib notablcs faced the ~ewfshchallenge. The) b 8 - Zionist threat had to be publicized to garner support for 'resistance to this *new - form of ~uro~eanincursion. c W The post prominent notable familiis in Palestine at the turn of the $ -century were the Jerusalem families. The Khalidi family was- among the oldest 0 ' while the Husaynis came to prominence in the. late eighteenth century when I -- -- 'they regained control of \he office of the mufti, thepreligious '4ead;r of \ 4 , Jerusalem'.~nother,family, the Nashashibis, grew to rival 'the Husaynis when - , . - their rural landholdings increased in the early twentieth century.' Through mcnopolization bf religious and government posts and domination of the rural areas, these families were able to contain the threat of European consul"-traders, d Christian .dragomen, and Zionist merchants and retain power and wealth. - -- _ _ -\ ------The Young Turk 'oppression 'and defeat in Wor1d;War I reduced the. P - - -- - \* threat ~ewnfurther.: The Zionist threat, however, was strengthened by the 0 . - Balfour Declaration of 1917 and its inclusion in the .MandaC charter tor . > Palestine. - The -Husaynis, and Nashashibis had to secure t.heir political leadership in order to protect their &conornic -interests. As their power rested on "the patron-client ~el~tionshi~between Chgmselvks and 'their fellahin, the notables . - could not accept the national horn% proposal of the Zionists and the ~ritisb. ------,- -- Y But these notables, in their ambivaleit traditional power broker fashiop, < " "...exercised caution in expressing discontent with mandate policy so as not to - anger their new occupier^."^ The notables had to be seen representing peasant resentment while attempting to maintain their leadership under British rule. , .\ 3 Notable politics had not really changed. The British hEM si.mply replaced the "r: Ottomans. For the notables, however, the difficulty in rnaintalning their pdsition . , , escalated with British rule. & , The traditional position of ~~lestiniannotable families d ered from their Syrian counterparts in the nature of internal political divisions. Syrian notables m \- were +lit along city lines'. In Palestine, Jerusalem had no politich~ rival. Dominaiion of Jerusalem and extepsive rural landholding meant domination of h e Palestine. The Nashashibis and Husaynis competed for prominence in on-e city. A dktinct difference from S'yria'but the upshot was the same: the rivalry of the notable families undermined their own position as peasant militancy ..- i ------d .. , developed within and ate conditions. b ~etweentKe -,notables and the peasants were 'the rural shaykhs. As in b Syria, the shaykhs lost much of their power to the urban notables in the . d" \ nineteenth century but they managed to preserve their social stptus:" The v* d - _i shaykhs had traditionally !ed the great tribal clans, 'ashair, made up of the 9 I - - - buseh~~~iah-~f~siv~b~d~i~~~e ~erksfThe+mhai~as-discussed-- -- .. above, werepnited into the two great tribal confederations, the Qais and the Yam & Disputes between the 'ailah, 'ashair, .and the confederations were 9 * by the shaykhs." They were also expected to maintain security and . ~ < coNect taxes, very little of which reached the Ottoman treasury. As in ,Syria, C the Palestinianshaykhs used their clans to defend against any attempt -tbreduce ' their autonbmy or collect taxes with any degree of effy!iency.l2 Commercialization impoverished ' many of th/ ' ailah . a&- the urban -- . - notables, allied with !he ' ailah who had managed to grow more po'we"rful at Cr. the expense of those who had weakened, replace4 the shaykh as the power,in the countryside. The shaykih qould either maintain his social position because of his iraditional prestige br ally *himself with a notable family." Poverty d produced the need for finankial support and thenotable families had the means to provide this support. - - " Pamela Ann Smith, pp-8-10. - - 12 Swedenburg, p. 171. 1 k. l3 Pamela Ahn Smith, pp. 22-24. - - As the shajkhs bkcame employees of the notable families aid allies of - - the-rn-~mec-traditional relations that governed village life9. brake down. - U, - Peasants could not'hqld onto their land. Failure to pay taxes meant evi~tion-: -. *- and more and more peasants became hired labourers, sharecroppers, or drifred- 1 to the shantytowns that began to grow on the outskirts uf Haifa and Jerusalem. Befbre 1930, Zionist land &chases did not direkly displace' many p,easants but r - &? , ~ewkhimmigration and the concoplitagp increased demand fbr land did escalate -- -d-- , ------land prices furthering peasant displ~ement," Because the traditional crop-iharing arrangements provided the bas Y - - - p* A- social, politiEal an& zhomic relationi of' mutual dependency and obligation, v $+ A, peasant displac_ement contributed to the breakdown of these relations." The Y . . market became the arbitrator of village and farming relations as the sofidarity and strength of the clans diminished in respect to the growth of large landed " - estates.lb Before 1935, agriculture in Palestine had suffered, while the urban 'a P economy boomed." Landless and impoverished peasants-move3- to the cities in - -- - + search of work and thus $'Tin Town" grew around Haifa.18 C " ' 14 Ibid., 32-34. / pp. 15. Ya 'akov Firestone, pCrop-sharing Economics in Mandatory Palestine" in Palestine and Israel in the Nineteenth .Twentieth Centuries, eds. Elie Hedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, (London: Frank Cass, ,1982), p. 153. ?#,+ , l6 Pamela Ann Smith, p. 13. ------up- '' Firestone, p. 179. Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission: Report e of July 1937, (London: His Majesty's Statioxary OffLee, T937-ITP- p. 85-86. la Peel Commission Report, p. 127. B n 6. > ------" > i- * - - - ' : ' The urban notable'i we-alth increased *while thk peasant's lot, was .i ! ------undermined .by the vagariss. d a mgket ecpnomy.' The ~o$abl~s*were a 4L - & P Y P * i leisured class living dk the proceeds of land speculation &@:$rbanf ihvestrneh; an -. 1" - at the samefrme rnamtaining.*theirdsocial and political position in :he villages. < While famillesr like the Husaynis and Nashashibis expanded intb industry, trade, finance and politics, the village was still their main source of economic and- . 1 L- , .. I political power." The expansion orwealth an& land ownership of thkse two y: --A-7 -- - - P- - - /+ -4: - - . - families3&cu;red throughout palestine. This expansion provided the Husaynis and Nashashibis with an ext~nsive.rural base to support their political activities. B .- t "w 5 During the war, most political activity in Palestine- was split between the , C "( trends of Arab decentralization and- Ottoman unity.. --The 1916 revolt -was , +- supported by the .Arabists, the radical yoong men from the less prominent families, while the Ottomanists generally refrained from what was obviously - I 3' ,r treason." The defeat of the Ottomans and the British occupation negated the . ,'- ------ideology the ttomanists and providid the necessary ingredients for Arabist ideology t~ be recast as pan-Arab nationalism. While most ~alestiniannotables ' >- * ~-* - were suspicious of Faysal ,'and Hashemite motives, the radical young Arabists '-*, who supported Faysal organized opposition to the British. In 1920, the al-Nkbi . Musa celebration was turned into a nationalist dem'onstratioii.e Musa Kazim al- \ r Husayni, Jerusalem's mayor, spoke to the al-Nebi Musa procession in Jerusalem 4 praising "...Faysal in his speech, while young activists made 'inflammatory' ------ l9 Cohen, p. 12. 20 Mattar, pp. 5-6. . . a -6 - - - 1 _1 ' declamations from the balcony of the* ~r?b- !,e' ,procession which . Lp- -- *- F included vfilage peasants broke up into a- ' riot responding t~ 'the- . e" ' > - .- activists by .roaming the Streets of the 01 atlaccki~gJewish ;esidenbs.. ' > \- A -tension emerged in Palestinian po\ tics 'between'those politicians whd+SOU~~?~ ' . 1 I I_L. @ t2. 2, accommodation with the new rulers and those activists who adv&ated militancy - . r'' -." f - " i A" Gi * %,I over p&tical,'~am&enship. Until 1929, the moderat~swould &bdld sway over / $1 . b I . , the activists. -- >-- ,? 4 - ---II_?-- - - - i- Faysal's talks with Weizmann in London and his apparent willingntss to . .a . ~ 3 'h - I - . ,,sb:' accept the Zionist programme lost him the support af many ~alestinian'~r,ab'- -' ; .- .. ,------c 5--. - f nationalists."' ~hese~rabisis began to turn to the internal dynamics ,' . Mandate palestine' as regional sentiments were intensified by th'e ~andirak t bdrdkrs. Arab nationalism wat undermined by these conditions and Palestinian * . . I nationalism began to take shape. Zionism contributed to this development. ' - \ because only the Palestinians faced Jewish nationalism: ------1 - - - --\: ...Zionism pushed the Palestiriian Arab community toward unity as a national and cultural grsup... + nationalism came to be equated *with communal m continuity ...to resist, Palestinian Arabs naturally looked to their traditional sources of strength mobilizing along family and ieligious lines." a" This development of a separate Palestinian political identity was initially P - 22 The. Faisal-Weizmann Agreement, Appendix F inJntonius, ------. p.-437-9; Porath, TheEmeraence of.., p. 82. 23 Ylana Miller, Government and Societvinal Paestine, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), p. x. 1920- 1948, . , 4i P 95 '------. "b ------' focussed by two organizatiods formed with - the' supaport of the British- . I authorities. .P -& , - ' , In 1918, the ~uslimkhristian'~kcihtion (hereafter ' MCA'), , composed . -, / . , i 1 of Muslim-dhristian societies in the major cities, 'was. forked.' . The British -B ' - Y military authorities werk aware from the start of tbndate of-the oppositid, 9.n * P ' .a a/. . \ J - of Arabs to the Zionist enterprise: -And tke authorities, under the verm.sd'of ...... 9 , - t1 . the haifour Declaratipn, -were obljged to &sure that the "..:civil and i&ious-* -A - ,. - . \ . % -- I rights of existing non-Jewiih corhrn;nities in', Palestine" ye e Y * @ . Between 1919 and 1920,'publications, speeches, 'demonstrations,- - riot< and attacks, j ' on individu'al .Jews- and ,Jewish settlements were -concrete' and frequent I .expressions of ~alestinianopposition s to ioni ism." g~hese* .acts ' of opposition wereC'organized by the young ydical supporters of1 Faysal. : Because of this , .. C pressure, the MCA, with Musa Kazim al-Husayni as president, took a leading 3 * I * ' ?( *role in the oppbsition to the Zidnist- policy of the a&ninistr5tion. This -, . ' ------oppo$tion was' the public pstGre adopted -by this organizatio? and the Arab ,. . ' , Exechtive (hereafter ' AE'-); formed in 1920 with% Musa Kizim al-Husayni as its , \ -heaQ. The MCA-.and the AE were led -by thosd moderates '&hg6sought -a -' - d .* -- '. pofitical solutidn. By depen$ing on thk MCA societies apd his position 2% the '. . . . L h AE, Musa Kazim a1 ~usa~niwas able io win widespread support and thus . .\.~'i: d -- -2, L - Q ,JI 1 A - 't L. b , -- -.I - - - " ~extof the Baliour Declaration -in ~ntonius, p. 266-7;. Ylana Miller, p. xi: -- -I * ------f 7 \ ------' J c_- - <, - support for the moderate position: Militancy was a threat to b; used if k @ ------# .I. 5 d - necessary, but it had to -be .contained." - * % . .< -. 7+ . The MCA's and-.~~'i'-leadership* was composed of the uppeF class I ". *. notables whose power. wai'based upon access to either the &state br 'religious w bud6cracy. They could not afford tk jeoiardize t'heif pos'ltioiis by.-,taki'ng - / 6 -1 ,'opposition to ~ri'tish-3 - rule -to unacceptable lengths. - For the British military % 7 MCA-- - and the AE were -acceptable conduits for opposit.ion~a~ongla~h- . - --I organizations refrained from inwlrement in any 'activities that might bB d~emed dangerous to the administration. a ------Y In May 1922, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni was appointed by the British to the post qf Mufti. He was to become' a controversial and powerful figure in .. " - Palestinian patimalist politics. Like al-Shahbandar in Syria, al-Husayni was ', ', active in organizing opposition to the Mandate government. * While al- ' Shahbandar married into the notable class, al-Husayni was born idto an ashraf - -. ------family claiming descent from Muhammad. AJ-Shahbandar's politics were secular I I i whereas Amin al-Husayni's were grounded in Islam. Bpstaoth men played out similar roles as nationalist leaders and both ,were by rural leaders with' whom they had varying a' - ~ft~r~his appointmen; as Mufti, al-Husayni pressed for the formation of b * - . a Muslim. council with Control over internal Muslim affairs, such as mosque F appaintments and ' a'wgaf disbursements, without any British interference." In ------1 f \ ------6 , - * - ,. - b I * a. . . .. March 1922, he became president. of the -supreme Muslim Council (hqeafter - . -, . '> P------I=) &~'~iw%-~er~o~t~-pfitee8-f~~~~6~b~Id- exercise pre-eminent control &er Muslim affairs in Palestine, an activity. that 1 had been formerly exercised by the collective authority of the ashraf as a *. *- r whole. 1128 - \ b a The British administration encouraged the formation of a cbuntry-widb & L. Y Islamic oiganization' in order .to .balance Arab interests with Jewish -- A A The .Mufti used the SMC as the basis- fot his -nationalist organization. During \ \ the 1920s, most of his work was religious in nature but,. at the same time, his 7. L political jnfluence increased." As the central figure in the al-~ebiMusa- 1 7 celebrations, the Mufti commanded the necessary national and religious status to represent and disseminate an Islamic-based Palestinian nationalism. With Raghib rl-Nashashibi holding the office of mayor, +positions on the 'AE, &d d extensive lands, the Nashashibis formed the opposition to the Husiiynis. The - admini-stratibn thus had- crganizations tbEunnel-A~ab aspirations and concerns-- - and rivalry fo undermine the effectiveness of these organizations. The final imposition of the and ate in ~e~tember1923 and, conflict over the form of political action to be adopted weakened the AE's polit;cal'punch.31 '% 4 +. Palitical in-fighting among the notable families , also contributed to the weakening of the AE: The rivalry of the urban nota6le families extended into - Pamela Ann Smith, 61. 2 '* p. * .a ------ " Peel Commission, pp: 174-181. I . I -. - - - - -A- " Mattar, p. 29. Lesch, p. 95. . . ------the tointryside and rural- f?ctionilisrn. followed suit: "...as rural dis'organkation . . > . t ry >- -- - irrcrasf3i-r ken, toups began to act 'in theu own interests.,.la~rdow'ners ; . could not be depended on."32 ~m~overished,displaced, alienjited, and irbstrated, the peasants began to turn to- "...local religious figures and holy'men who 8 shared their probdem~and way of life."j3 . , One fervegtly pious and active religidus figure to whom peasants, " / especially the, Haifa "Tin Town" .peasants,. . began to turn was al-Qassam. . -- - Although bulb more is 'known of alpssam's bersonal history than Sultad al- 9t ~trash'kinformation is nevertheless scarce. BHisstory, wheh pieced together, is fascinating because, like al-Atrash, al-Qassam was a traditional leader who - -- , attempted byviolent action to come to terms with modernization. Al-Qassam's political life is also fascinating because he stood in the matriz of ideological connectioqs between al-Afghani, Rida, al-Jaza'iri, al-Shahbandar, 'and Amin, al- r Husayni. b For the British, .al-Qassam was- a-"...fanatical religious sheikh-ofrhe-Gost - . . C 't 't * dangerous typ~."~~He was born -in either 1871 'or 1882, depending on the * source, and he c,ameVfrom the middle strata of the ulkwhose posiPions were J made the most precarious -as secularization of government and society deepehed. L< + I His father was Shaykh, Abd'al-~adir- 31-Qassam, a local mosque teachel in the I GF- ' & 'I CID Report on the al-Qassam Movement, Tegart papers,+. . (undated, Box 1, File 3, St. Anthony's College), p. 1. \ - %.------+ -.+ L ------i (f vjllaie of lablah near Ladhikkiyyah irr ria.^,' He studied dt al-Azhar in Cairo I.. . _. - . ,.? proba'bly "under Muhammad '~bduh.'~while studying .to become an ' alim, he ( . - \ probably also becime familiar with' the ideology of nationalism. and possjbq . participated in anti-British demonstrations ,in, Cairo.)' . After teaching for a short - K time in Ottoman Anatolia, he ieturned tq Jublah yhere he- took ovef his e '. father's position. In '1912, he proclaimedJa jihad against the Italians invading I- North Africa and -maanaged to recruit some 250 volunteers to go tiLibya. -- -- ~hentransport failed to sh'ow ,in Alexandretta, his- band broke up.)' He \\. - partic,ipated in the 1921 Alawite uprising and when tfie Fren~h~~crushed.the uprising after July 1920, he fled to Palestine where he remained in exile.39 He \ , 2- d was sentenced to death in absentia by a French military ~ogrt.~'a Al-Qassam * settled in Haifa from whence he continued on with-his "danger0?& activities"." Bs t-. This time he directed his activiti&, against the Zionists and the British. I't must be reemphasized that in the -1920s lines of national identity were ------. ------still not dearly delineated. The-sense of being Arab smudged any real clear - notion .of bsing Palestinian or Syrian simply because neithe~notion had any A - - 35 . , Lachman, p. 59; Porath, The Paleatunan- Arab Movement. . ,. p. 133. I6 avid Hirst, The ~unand the Olive Branch, (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 76. 1 I' CID Report on the al-Qassam Movement, p. 1. ------, V 40 Porath, The ~Palestlnla. . - Arab Movement.,. p. 133. \ 41 CED Report +on the al-Qas'sam Movement, p. ' 1. / .?i. X -L ------colicrete historic51 sense of ief6?ence, -~&tificbtion with a community or a Ecxl fegion remained'much~stronger than any ties to an emerging but obscure *, =, national polity. What has to be re-emphasized is that, the idea of some + . , Ir I - committed allegiance and consciousness of being Palestinian or Syrian was*vague - . - 'and only beginning to -take shape. Al-Qassam, like Sultan al-Atrash;+was a transitional figure Gn the stage of Mandate politics. H3s first commitrnent,'by his deeds, was to. Islam. 1 The.French6gnd the British represented a threat to A the primacy of Islam. He had little difficulty working his way into Palestinian society because the c bmon bonds. of Islam, Arab culture, and anti-foreign ------sentiments ~suffic~~-t~dverc~m~~~~~egio~aldifferences. But it is at 5 1 a *this very juncture that things began to change. Sultan al-Atrash's traditional / ', Druze response took on nationalist contours because of his relati "6.s with al-- Shahbandar affd the ~amascenenationalists. Al-Qassam's tradition81 Islamic " i a C respoke. to the infidel threat was reshaped by his relations with the Mufti, and b '-, motives, were nationalists in the sense that they were acting in defense of an emkrging notion of nation-hood. This sense of national' defense, bred in the. Fonditions of Mandate and Jewish nationa~ism,was exr' ended to hl-Qassan. The " tool coopted its exploiter. This is how Sultan al-Atrash and al-Qassarn became * I * something oth'er than traditional symbols of defense against the infidel.. The myth of al-Qassam was woven around a person of some prominence ------whose achievements inspired theq peasant guerrilla bands of 1936. The step - - -- L from a Syrian rebel in an Alawite Srevblt to an important figure in Haifa begs for an explanation but, unfortunately, there seems t'o be no evidence to account -. 9. - - I B - 2, &-i 6 J for al-~a;sa&:~ 'rapid :'E& to prominence in Palestine.' One cou\d surmise, as La -- - 7 + - 4 - - - * A ------_P. ;*"----. * I 2' * "> -, * b _-& "- . .-:. the Arab 6jsioiian A. W. Kayyali does, that'flperbaps- his role* as- g rebel -4-- 2 ------. " I M L fombined'\lith his education provided him with a reputationsyfficieht to attract * + ,- I % < _. the -nofice I'of ..the a'yal and ularna of '~aifa. Kayyali describes al-Qassarn .a< I - Y = w " - .' a "..grodinent leader in the Syria4.-1921 revolt ...and a man ' of immense - _' c * ' \ -- i* learnink and an eloquent. riligious orator."" ' His piety and fervour were P + 'Fb? 9 - i ranslated into charisma and he .'became an effective- agitator among theb I? -.C - dis ikl mi &dym thi~r-theLHaifa-sh amyto ww------....A .- P In January 1922, the Mufti appointed al-Qassam preacher of- a *new , r. . . mosque in - -Haifa." - - - - - As- a apreacher; - - his eloquence and learning to - -he- - used------. L - innuence both the disenfranchiseq and: the elitk. He made some nbtables as I nervous as he did the British. His salafi education camePout in his urging - , . .young ,Muslims to adhere to traditional Islamic precepts, a'nd his rebel spirit r. r. 'L was manifested in his calls' for resistance to Zionist settlement and British . rds." ThyBritish became!' aware of his ,activities and saw in his 'preaching r In, ------_ - i- 7 ------, "...inflam.matory speeches.,..calculated to stimula'te a, *spirit 'of religious .4 * - fanatici~m'l.'~ He gathered -disciples around him. and he fervently preached -v , r j - against Zionism and British rule. * .Hi$ unpopularity with the, Mandate b-,-' a&&&stratiqn, his milifancy, and .hi$ &itanical' tehdencies 'made .the iocal 9 ' -,a* *. I' ' t , - ' \ .~ . u ' A. W. Kayyp.li, ~alest~nk,:~odern History, (London: Cro6 m ', ~e'lm,.1978), p. 180. I I . , . . " . Porath, .The ~&t~n~an- ~'iab National, , . , p. 133. 1 - k .------I--- = - C . I 4 4 Ibid., p. 133. '1 - L- ...I A ------.- - -- h - -7 CID Report, "~krrorism1936-1937", Tegart Papers, (Box 1, File 3,'St. Anthony's College), p. 7. P .b 102 L -. * I. * hotpb.les un~ok~fortable.~~'he aubo;ities-kept a careful eye gn his activities -/ _ - . ----- .-but. refriini3 from seildiilg krii %iiG?-t6--S~la. ' .' . al- - According do the ~ritish.police, many "good" Muslims disappr~ved~of Qassam's interpretation of rhe Quran; the implication. being that good Muslims did n.otot-.advocatephysica~ resistance to colonial rule." As president, , of the - . . SMC and Mufti of ~erusale&,Amin amusayni appeared to cooperate 6ith ihc ' 7 - British and,+despite his -involvement in .the 1921 Jaffa riots, he seemed to reject -A . - -A I ------.- -. 7- - --- violent action. for the political route." He used the 'baqf revenue tb -. manipulate Bnd'k'eep a lid on any possible rniti~antaction. The ~~fti;in the - - 1920s; acted like a 'good' Muslim to British 'eyes. Even ~amue-1considered- *, him *a'boderate man.* a The AE constituted .the oppasition to the Mandate and - \ -. - the Mufti was "...too preoccupied with his new dutiecmd religious projects an4 , . with the Opposition."" Al-Qassam stand? in direct contrast to the '~rifti:s L, % position in the 1920s. . DWhat is curious is why the Mufti apparentliQdid not attempt. to curb' the outspoken 'preacher. ' Perhaps -Amin BI-Husayni 'was n'ot, . . prepared to put all his eggs in one basket. . J .' .~l-dass~m'shivities wete out of tune with the tenor of notable politics in athe 1920s. Between 1924 2nd 1928,' the political activity 'of the AE and the 7 0 T ,I, '6. Lachman, p. 60*;.Kayyali, p. 180. .r j Ft J I / I" . I 4 7 , -CID kiport, !'Terrorism 1936-1937"~p. 7. ' ,I r 4'8 ~,atlfar,'pp. 122-3; Porath, Th Emer~enceof.. '., P. 135. -- +---- 1 , L Ln - 1 , > 49 fihttCr,'p. 31 and p. 32. The Opposition, 'led by R~ghihal- * Nashasbibi, ' qttacked the AE andlthe SMC. 'Ffi;st7&ttacks ha&-kittie - to do with policy; it was family rivalry. Ad the historian Phillp , T Mattar relates, Raghib al-Nasbashibi told a friend that "...he , would oppose any position that the Mufti took."(p. 31) I >I i' - I 1 2. - MCA was practically non-existent; by 1926, there was not enough -money to pay L 1926 .giving the impression that perhaps Zionism was not the threat the + - 1 . d nationalists made it out t6 be." The'sense of diminishing danger accorded well li. ." - - * with the Mufti.'s moderate position: "By 1928 the' Mufti had consolidated his '* . religious pawer while increasing his influence in politics, but never at. the expense of his agreemedt wfth the ~ritish"." The historian Philip Mattaj - - -- u - --- - argues that-the ~ufG'spassiveness allowed the ~ioniJtYishuv (community) io solidify. By noj/adopting militant action and by not mobilizing the Palestinians D *'.--A against the Yishuv and the Mandate, he failed in a situbtjod where he might I have been s;ccessfulv in opposing the Balfour policy." This argument assumes .a that the people *ere prirpedx>formiliiant action. The years b2fore:thd 1929 -1 -- " ./ " +!' , riots were quiet not because of the Mufti's inaction but because comditions did P * not warrant militancy. I .a . " * .. I In 1924, irnrhigrant Jews from Eastern ~uro~k' flooded urban- areas, i I investing in urban real estate, capital-intensive citrus groves and ind~stry.'~The " - 1 8 ---\ notable families profited from this demand for land 'and the urban growfh; they I, 1 were .the main beneficiaries of the huge rise in, the cost of $cultivated land in P Porath, The Emeaence of; .' . . p. 243. I < I' Mattar, p. .31. 5 4 Pamela Ann 9. ' .,I , - Palestine.'' Militant action was a threat to these profits acc;uing from the influx of Jewish capital. in hand with carefully opposing the British and Zionist presence and working C 'towards national independence. The notables never stopped playing their role of- power-d;oker. They regarded national independence in terms of replacing the , British the same way the - Syriay nationalists envisioned theif post- .* indepen'dence role. Militaht peasants and irqpassioned preachers were a threat ). , to this vision of thingLto' be. - For the Palestinian peasants, the threat of Jewish domination seemed to recede 'after 1926 when Jewish emigration was greater * than immigration. 'But I . resentment ggaisP$t, the notable families and the British authorities slowly_. .' I - 1.) 1.) i infensified. While citrus plantatioq owners charged exorbitant interest rates to , a '. - peasant rebters, the Britiscin their aim of.-achieving administrative stability *- 1 witholjt altering eiisting social relationships,psed @toman laws as the basis for. keeping public order and collecting taxes. These- laws "ad never been implemented at thg viilagea level.'sb social ' relationships were in a state of extreme hux and the ~dtishattempted to maintain the old order /with kws that .a .never had very much to do with the traditional way of things:- Village. under attack from agriculmral commercializatioh; were being forcedb to fit : standards imposed by infidel authorities, and the notables seemed to be unable- :. ' or unwilling to do very much about the situation. ". - -L. . , . . . I I , ,...... ;. .,. . i Ibid., p.58. ~ ,. 1 I . - 56 Ylana Miller, p. 71. In .the .eifly 19tOs, 'Vladimir ~abotikki,the leader of the ~evisioiist . -- Zionist .Paity,-L&rgued that PalestiiiCn Arab opposition ".,.arose from instinctive patriotism and not as a result of agitation by a few self-seeking individuals ...the 4 Arabs loved Palestine as much as the *Jews and would- resist Jewish encroachment"." The peasants rejected any claim the Zionists may have to b Palestine 'and, despite the arguments .of the latter-dap~ionistapologists, they / had no where else to go. They were not Syrians or Iraqis; their families ha3 ------tilled Paleanian &l for generations and this soil of .their I. \ . %- social and political identity: b ...to the Arabs who lived in it, Palestine ...was still their country, their home,' the land in which their geople for centuries past -had lived and left their graves. Ths .basis for peasant nationalism in Palestine rested on this historical ground and the political 'and economic conditions of the 1920s' contributed to the prokess of politicizing the peasant. : -. Dpspite the subdued nationalist activity during tQe lafief hdf of ;he .. .- 7 ... i- i- l92@$ the social, political -'and. efdnd&ic changes in palestide tqok an immens* -- toll on peasant life. Interest rates, .!and prices, and efficient tax collection Q. " ' were among the factors that pulled .the ground ouf from under the peasant. J He began to turn away 'from tbe -moderatjoq-.;p~ached by the Mufti, the AE ' S ' and the MCA. Al-Qassam and his militant preaching found a receptive - 2- audience in thousands of peasant fringe-dwellers around Haifa. They 6ad ------ -.. - 4 I' ~efloyadaHaini, p. 6. * ' 3 Peel Commission Report*, p. 6. .. - - migrated to Haifa from the villages to find'work in the rapidly growing urban ------economy. ,Most of the work they foudd was casual labour. .;By 1930, almost .. . I. . "...30 percent.- of all Palestinian villagers were landless, while: as -many 3s 75 to 80 percent held insufficient laqd to meet their subsistence'ne-ed~."~~In CID \ reports, the British claimed that al-Qassam had a policy of "...selecting his . A , . + d I.,- . ..+. audience from amongst ;he poor, ignorant *and ihe more .violently dispb&d of +. a the* pious" and through this policy, he secured. - a following in-- Haifa, -Acre and - - - -A - - -- in the villages around Jenin and Naqareth.* \He was probably not in needt of* * J.. a conscious policy; his*teaching had always been directed toward the poor ahd . I* - pious. $hantytown peasaqts, unemployed or poorly paid, are, perhaps, not "5 generally - disposed at all times to, accepting their' fite!. -41-Qassarn did not have I * 4 ft. 2 "\ to reach out too far to find ~"pportersinclined towards violent action. .", Ecolnomic depression from 1925 to ,-1%8, " however, contributed to . C containing any possible kiolent outbreak. The depression was linked to the - - cqllapse of Polish 'currency in 1925- hurting- the fortunes -of newly arrived' Polish . e Jew~.~'For the Reasants whq%,hadmigrated to Haifa to find employment in the -... i , . expanding urban economy, jobs would have been scarce and with ;he increasing -. . -- -concentration in citrus fruits, there would-have been little 'point to'returning t.o . 1- the couh~ryside." Nevi11 Barbour has written that over 11,000 peasant workers , \& 60 CID'R~~O~~,"Terrorism- - 1936-7", p. 7. .-- ..- ,I 61 Britain- and- Information Department Papers' No. 20a ,- -eat- - - Palestine. 1915- 1939, (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 38. >" . 62 Pamela Ann Smith, 'p. 44. , were living in the hovels of petrol-tins around Haifa.63' Scrambling for jobs in P order to swyiwz creates ~s~hitrPavPclitt.lppnp~yto-~t.It h~s * been argued that a sense of- relative deprivation is a- +park of militancy and open revolt. In other words, it is when things are getting better that there is the energy to commit onedelf tomilitant action. Extreme poverty does oil the machinery of rnilitrlncy in the sense-that the.shantytown conditions df Haifa in c 2 , LP -P. .- - the late 1920s surely made the peasant receptive to- al-Qassam's indictment - of -- - 2 ------' I the ~ionists-~nd fhg British. - 1t was only- a matter of time and -improving - , f + - ;economic conditium for, the growing resentment and frustration to boil over. One last condition wasb aitded to the well of simmering resentmant.. Fearful of being overwhelmed or from being perceived as mere colonists, the Yishu-v adopted a p%licy of avodah ivrit. This\ meant that only ~ewishlabour s 1 * could.be used in Jewish e&erprises; This in effect segregated Jewish and Arab:' . labour and created ,a system where Arab workers competed. for fewer jotis with . . , i bges far .lower .than those ~f the Jewish workers." When the: economy began- , - 'the turnaround in 1928, .Paldstinihn p6asants had experienced enough of British . efficiency, Jewish-settlemen. f! and labour policy, interest rates, unemployment and political infighting among their .notables .to blow the well. ' <. C. 63 cited in PamelaAnn Smith, p. 54. Palestine was fast becoming the most prosperous economy in the Middle East becattse-ef srrrpfus capitah a-m- - did not benefit from the economic growth to the degree of the Jewish P \ colonizers and the urban notabled; thos, .a sense. of relative depfi tion , f P - , developed. All this resentment, despair, and alienation fopnd a%.focosin al- Qassam's impassioned preaching. . a - - t - - I'n May 1928, al-Qassam assisted in the formation *of the Young Men's C . ' Muslim Association (hereafter "YMMA") in Haifa.& The YMMA- povided him , C f a I with the opportunity to establish ties with the national movement circles and - pariicularly. Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, Subhi al-Khadra, Mbdin al-Madi; all three of these men were to found- thb ' short-lived Paldestine Istiqlal Party.? Al- + J 4 Qassam's political connections with the Mufti were thus not his only political connections. He worked hand in hand with ~alestiniknnationalists from various - j factionq and these rk1atio.n~ support {he cla'im that, contrary to British h \ Intelligence. reports, he kas not simply a f-anaticai .preacher. . * b * In 1929, al-Qassam was appointed Ma?dhun, marriagea r'egistrar, of the 1. . . , - ~haiiacourt in' Haifa. This appointment was appJoved by .the office -of the * # d C. i ' 66 ~achman, .'-60 : 67 Ibid. , p. 60. - - - J 'r Mufti.' His position as - - - - visiting villaggs- in the Jenin and Nazareth ,areas, spreading his nationalist- s- . . religious gospel and building up a sizeable follo~ing.'~In Haifa, he estabiished ., L P a night school for illiterate adults and combined his preaching with social On the eve of .the Wailing Wall Riots, al-Qassam held three important .. pos'itibns: imam, ma'dhun, and executive member of the Haifa YMMA. These .I I - G -*- ' positionsA- -- brought--ppLA him into ".fcontact- with-- wide---- .segments -- of the Arab population -- - Y a in the north and afforded him the most favourable conditions for diss~ina~on \ 8 of his'militant idea^."^.' .>The,Wailing Wall riots of'1929-would bring al- assa am's -4 i., 'militancy to the centre stage 5f political activity. ? On 24 September 1928, the Jewish Day of ~tonemknt,British bolice removed a screen that the Jews had put up near the Wailing Wall. The A "I Muslim authorities objected to the presence of- this screen ak "innovation of - , . practice". Both the Jqws and . :he ~usiimsvenerated* the Wall." For the b , ------. . Muslims, it became a symbol for - the Zio,nist threat; any activity - 0.4'of the 1 N- - . . ordinary regar@ng the wall was conside&d*part of the Zionist plan td &e& . / *r a Jewish state and rebuild the :Temple. The 'wall -becameL-apdi_tica~./rallying *. crysfor, both the Jews and the Muslims.72: The Mandatory government had' '- .... .,, ,* 68 Porath, The Palmme, . National. p. 133. .~rab . . , - L .. 6g CID Report o'n the -all-passam Movement, p. 1. 70 - Lachman, p, 60, G 72 Report of the hair) Commission on the' Palestine Disturbances of August 192,9, (London: His Majesty's Stationary Office; 19301, p. 74. 110 '@ . 9 0 . v e * I 7 - -- - - I committed itself to maintaining the status quo ante of the Wall and acted ? * . 1- - accoidinily sRshe~uslimomplaint? But in kgust 1929, ripts broke out-. - ~ollowinga Jewish march t6 the ,Wall. - . * Q miirehaving vcry little to do with theGoutbreakof the riots, the Mufti 5 . emerged from these disturbances as the leading Palestinian political leader. The $4. '6- Shaw Commission, a-ppointed to invastigate the riots, found neither the AKbr the Mufti as direrctly responsible for the disdrbance's but did accuse'the Mufti ------A -- of using the Wall -issue as a "...means of incitement ~todi~order."'~ He did * politicize the screen incident, as Mattar argues, but he "...neither incited or - - planned, the August. 1929 violence."" He hadcto'be seen defending the Muslim O', Moly Places but the cost of actually committing himself to militant action was still too high. In any- case,-- he emerged from the political violence as the t, a '= leading ~alestinianpoli;ical leader because people believed that he had taken an active stand against .the Zionist enterprise.76 ? * -- - -- The Mu'fti. was still committed to political oppositio~lto the Mandate but- .. . he "...refrained from openly defying .the authority of the Mandatory government but his ris6 encoursed :and lent impetus to the ... militants ...[ and the Mufti] I secretly encouraged militant groups and helped lay the organizational infrastructure for the underground movement."" He .may not have incited or , . " ~nformation~e~artment Pabers No. 20a. p. 39. . u " Shaw omm mission Report, p. 74. 77- Lackman,+ p. ,55. \ / - \ - 1. . - -1------but it is not inconceivable that in order "I ------, to maintain am8 kxpabd his political position; he would not want any -other conclusion drawy As'he probably viewed the situation, any direct implication . . . f in the riot$ would, have cost him his. position necessary to his continued 2 +. political opposition to the Mandate. Mattar argues- that the ~uftiresisted . ' * A@ Y joining the militants." This does not account for his past supporn of al-Qassam % and his organizatioi of Palestinians in reiponse to the threat to- the Wall. ------Lrr- A In 0c;ober 1929, th; first practical expression of akned rebellion emerged ' .in the form of.' the "Green Hand Gang" (al-Kaff al~Khadra)led by Ah+med - 3 - . Tafish, who was wanted for a murder committed in Safad in the 1929 . Q. *. . P ~afis%waS joined by Fuad Alani, alias "Lebnani", a Druza wanted by the k " - French for various crimes committed during the 1925 revolt.'' The Gang was - not very different from the traditional peasant bands that operated oit of the 2 hills of :Lz Galilee but this particular band had an' "...overt political purp~se."~' ' The Gang members claimed to be Mujahideen, or religious fighters, and went a . . fr6m village to. village collecting money for the nationalist cause.': The r historian Shai Lachman claims that their purpose was toe... stir up the 2 c- \ - < population and create a tense atmosphere in the North thereby encouraging.' I " Mattar, p.31. * 1 8 1 Swedenburg, pp. 183'4. 4. *' CID Report, "~errorigm1936-1937", p. 5. - ""4 b 112 - establishment of similar gangs."" Whatever its purpti$e,:'Tafish's 'band did -- 9 According to the British police, Tafish's whand,adest6yed in the spring of 1930, was backed by the YMMA. Without any dirict evid'ence, the CID .report ' * % - . od the incident connects the Myfti with Tafish through theLfact'that. the Mufti. - 1 =. was a patron of the YMMA. If this were the case, akQassam must also be . . * P ------. , Tmiic5tFfinnf6af h%Tad a direct rke.inthi-i&miition of the YMMA and sat * s on its executive. The insinuation - seems td be an attempt tp link the Mufti . 4 --4 with the "...subversive underground activity of 4.YMMA branch members."" *he 6 .. police may have had some, evidence to support these charges; YMMA branches found to be involved in-subversive activity were closed down by order of i - 5 Government. But any such evidence does not appear in the reports. If such evidence was avaqable, this would back the claim that thk Mufti did provide, ------at the very least, moral suppoft for subversive activity.- -- - . = One possible piece of evidence could be al-Qassam' himself. He had =D received his posts by of the Mufti." The police reports indicate. , . - C .Lachman. p.' 55. A < \ " CID keport. 'hTerrorism21936-,1937",&. 5-6. I 8s ,--~a#ar-a~~ues-~hat-t-he~u~t-~~~a-~-~~ ing position in areas he controlled. (p. 30) He bases this argument on Subhi Yasinia boo - ra;~L- -- - va.al- Kubra fi ~ilg~ti~1936 - 1939 , (Cairo"_l-Th"l-Hana. "1959). Yasin was an ardent supporter of the Mufti and problems with his work are discussed in Lachrnants article. ' \ *. 4 - t \ % ------I- L - - - + 1 that-"...the most ardent branches of tha.Young Men's ~oslem,i4ssociationwere v * * '.&<.'a. *Caw& ------b )those found around Haifa7and Nazareth and Jenin."' As a leadingrmember of a . -. - * c the '~aifaYMMA and as the rna'dhun throughout the !enin-~azareth region and - -. 1 , the most "fanatical a'nd mikitant'l of the preachers selected by. the YMMA to . v \ give lectures, 1-Qassam may have b6h ihe link betweend the' Mufti igd the B 9 - . Green Hand G If in. fact ~afish,Gas fkanced .by the YMMA, al-Qassam tk upport.' And through al-Qassarn, the Mufti, at the very Yl---- ', . L_I d e of the YMMA-~reenHan6 connections and, post probably, provided moral support while being careful not,tb be implicated in j. II - .* - \ -- -- - any militant activities. ' - s w \ _I ' + The. Mufti has been linked to .other groups invoked in clandestine activity. -. r. There were. three such centres of clandestine activity operating independently , of e,ach other during the* early 1930s:'~erusale~-a ama all ah, ~ulkarrd-d~l~i~aand Y- ,A"r' Haifa-Qalilee." The Mufti was hssoiiated with two of the thred centres. ~is. . > r - -- YMMA pohnections with Haifa are dear. 7 TKe commander of--th6-TeruGiEm group was the ~ufti'bnephew, ~bdal-Qadir al-~usaydi:"' The -Mahdatbry % . _' -2 administration acknowledged -.him as the 'leader of the Palestinian comrnlinity while keeping' a close watch-on his .activities. His public posture was one of 5 - - d ' ~ militant moderation. But his leadership, as was traditional in notable-peasant relations, depended "upon hi8 ability to mediate betwee? the forces of . "I * ., v b. 0 .. ' '6 CID ~epart, "Terrorism 1936-1937". p. 6. ' ------a Lachman, p. 57. ii Ibid.. p,. 57. ' ' L ~ . - '* ------A - - - . - - -. --- .--- - - go&rnrneni and the lives of the fellahin.* It- is not idconceivable~hap&cal a ,. -. A - :6:. necessity indued hjm to provide cp,veri moral support,.a~d,.P$ssibly, fi$ancial .. - - -+ - , ' support.- for militant .nationalist fri-nge groups. .- > . The 1929 riots and al- assa am's Islamiq nationalist pro~el~tizationwere t *I. r - . - . - -L I\ A>. factors in the .radicalization of the 'boih the shantytown peasant and the youth * IL 3.- *\ , graduating frorn\blad@ate- p;blic~schbols where ~alestiniannationalism was part A + *+ - ., ., - Y + * -" 1. , :. c& the curricula. -Political, radicalization produced militant groups. ,The, Mufti , - - probably had to 'covertly support these groups or iisk losing his ~ower-broker , i '8p - ,. m > .B status. After the-:riots, he ad attempt toc steer "...Muslid institutionsi.- toward ------i------*- ---- , - - - a more militant course"?9 He may have preferred a nonviolent course; as the . F .-. &, hi&orian Mattar suggests, butf he was - not immune. tot the paces$ of' 'radicali~ation.~ Other AE executive members resisted. his growink milititnt #? teddencies and continued to negotl'ate with the High commissioner over the J- L - creationof a legislative council. The radihhization of the youth wa ssmethirig ------?- - - - L * to fear and both the Mufti-and-themK&oderate AE members were afraidr * a Z - to lose' control of the nationalist movement." :-It owould appear that thk Mufti $4 ! - \ i <. attempted .to keep a few cards ups his sleeve.e" ri I( 5d m t b - 1 * L~sc~,p. 102. ,& I xL' . -+ - - . ,- C -90 'Po assess whether he fai?W.id. his overt policiqs oP - * - position rests on the re-1% of an? covert ties &6 may have'had with the more militant,gzoups,. %5ndsight is a handy tool but it ' , -- ignores tbe diff icdlt y~ih judging-t heberstcoulseofaction-any . . given set,of circu'mstances. The: Mufti may have exhibited bad v _political~2mingS------in- - - adoqting-p - -- open militancy only aft& 1936 but-&- - this d-?e¬ show that,he completely ignored such a course before - ' this time. : (Mattar, p. 121.) ac Lesch, p.'102. I '- .A. + - t - - . - - A - - - -, 7 -- L his process of radifillization was .intensified - by young activists graduating - + - LpL--LL from the A&&&&" "" ertablished hy&e gove&Gnt aid rtaffed by tefacher. - .$ wh-.q were supporters of the nationalist :cause.92 These young men found . themsklves ;sufficiepy -educated to qualify for work in the government 2 bureaucracy but unemployed because there were no administrative jobs avaiiablk. One official' in ,the Colonial off& referred to India, Egypt and West Africa as "...horrid examples of the-dangers of ...turning out large numbers of unemp1byable , ------* ------. clerk~."'~ Thf same situation developed in Palestine. Radical militancy has fertile soil in latge numbers of educated, idealistic and unempldyed young men." 1 - Many of these young men returned to their village; and served as teachers in village-financed school^.^' The government permitted .considerable autonomy for the schools because thby ",..appeared to present no political threat t and ,because [the villagers] were usually require to finance their own school^."'^ . ,P - Dr. *Khalil Totah, headmaster of the Friends School at. Ramallah, appeared -F ------before the Peel Commfssion in 1937. ~-&i~~edtha't "...it was impossible to control thk inherent nationalism of these boys ...on the second of November, I /- Balfour Day, we schoolmasters always expect a day's strike."" Totah went on r , C to compare the expenditure on educgtion in Iraq And P~lestineand argued that ' . . 'L '2 Pee1 Commission Report, p. 340. , +. 93 Ylana Miller, p. 92. 94 ~wedenbu?~,p. 185. . ------7 --- - - 0 P @ 95 Ylana Miller, p. 300; Swedenburg, pp. 186-7. - .- - ---7- - IY 96 Ylana Miller, p. ~~J00.* 4 1 97 Peel Commission Report, p. 340.- llb . < . - .- * tiooal goverrknent~would look at the children differently, take more --- ------2 ' interest in them. .Now. they are just. step-~hiidren."~Though Totah was not d .. employed by the Department of Education, the Peel, Commission ahad "...ample evidence to show that Dr. ~otah'iofficial fellow teachers, though they may be 7 less outspoken, felt at heart what he feels": ., My confrere in Iraq. ..id charge of a Government school, stands on a higher footing than I do. He tells his boys to8 hoist their national flag, to sing their national------anthem, to salutefhe portrait of their King. I can't do that. I am a second-class Arab.* - P By spending little on education, allowing k parate .leiish and Arab school -?c- 3' systems . and providing little opportunity for those few graduates, the government, apart from its -unwanted presence, contributed directly to the radicalization of Palestinian nationalism. , e The early 1930s.were a time of giowing unrest, militancy and anger. The Wailing Wall riots as a .factor in this rising militancy weie joined by increased Jewish immigration, continued skewed economic development, increased land @ purchases, and a growing,sense .that the noiables' mo'derate political policies - were bankrupt.Iw In July 1931, Mr. Lewis French was appointed Director 'of ,> Development- but both the Arabs and the Jews refused to cooperate *with him. - - * An important part of his work was an investigation of .landless Arabs whose ~bik.,pp. 338-340. Between 1931-1937, the average yearly education expenditure in PaLestine was 5 -7-7 percent-afthe+ot-a-L -budget while in semi-independent Iraq, '10 percent of the total budget was spent on education between 1933 and 1934. -- 100 Swedenburg, pp. 184-5. condition was attributed . to ~ewish. , Frerich9's investigations?- . suggested that- few feIlahin - had owhg ToJewish . 'land -I* purchases: "It is a fact that Je-wish land s have not so farrcriateh a n - i -. - ' landless' class of any diqensic~ls."'~~The numbers Frqch's report. rests on Z % depend on the number of Arab claims for "landless status'' at thi Registrar of * Landless ~rab's., By obviously judiciouy criteria, 2,607 families were disallowed landless. status. French also does'not seem to considki Row'many families may .. - -. ------_Lp- have not registered and, instead, sought .work in Haifa or ~affa.19 Palestine also experienced probably the highest rate of population 'increase between 1922 - 2 .. and 1938 of any where in the .world; From 752,048 in 1922, .the population c. grew to 1,418,619: an increase of 90 percent- of which immigratipn accounted for 40 percent., The Jewish population increased by ,477 percent, the Muslim populatian increased by 52 perce d the Christim population increakd by 57 percent. The increases in the Arab p'opLulation were attributed to a i - - cessation of conscripYion and improvemenPin public health.lO' - - i - While the rest of "the industrialized world was gripped by economic depression, Palestine actually experienced an economic' boom. ~overnment revenue doubled between '1931 and 1935 rising from 2.3 million to 5.7 million pounds sterling while expbnditure rose from 2.4 million to 4.2 million pounds Tnformation Department Papers No. 20a, p. 53. Ibid., p. 54. - A -- , 103 For the figures quoted, see- Information Department Papers - - - p. 54n. No. 20a, Y All numbers and percentages are taken from the Information Department Papers No. 20a, pp:56-7. 118 7 sterling, leaving a budget surplus of 6.3 million pounds sterling as of April . < - - - - + -1936.105 In ce~struction,6 million pounds sterling was. invested- by 1934 ind - s-3 imports' and exports. nbarly trebled between 1931 and I 935: - \ imports - 1931 5,9 m~llionpounds sterling - 1935 17.9 " II 11 exports - 1931 1.6 !' If It 1935 4.2 '1 . t~ tt 106 The deficb in favosr of 'imports was covered by. the imported capital of Germ.mJews after 1933. This--hiport capital left no g~vernimFnF-debt.'~'~his- .6 6 boom, however, was skewed. The veritably flood of western consumer goods destroyed the possibility of developing local industry.lO' Because of Jewish immigration 2nd the avodah ivrit policy df the Yishuv -and* the Histadrut 0 (Jewish Labour Organization), access to the expanding job opportunities was * limited for Arab workers.lW In relative kconomic terms, the Palestinians benefitted little from the boom. In politital terms, this expadsion of the r' economy and the increase in Jewish immigration threatened the attainment of - - - -- Palestinian independence and inflamed public ~pinion."~ The economic boom primarily affected urban areas. After four years of .* drought, the 'spring of 1934 found a large propoltion of fellahin' (70 percent d y5 Ibid., pp. 64-5. lo' Ibid. ,--pp. 64-5.- lo' Pamela Ann Smith, p . 2 1. 'lo Pees Commission Report, pp. ' 82-3. 1 . , \ \ / the popu~atbn)in a "...state of destitutiod approaching starvation in some* I cases, and thelivestock dying in large nu&ers."l1' ~or)mostfellahin, ivhen 1 \ their debt surpassed their income, the only choice was to sell their land, an f act which did. little 'more that release them from debt and propel them toward - - the urban slums. Drought, fall in agricultur& prices, capital shortages and heavy debts (with heavy interest rates: 30 percent or more) created a rural In 1934, the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: D ' , * For these factors the Jey tannot be held -. responsible ...the boom which Jewish activities in Palestine were now producing had manifestly relieved the pressure upon the Arab agricultuial population by opening to it new urban markets as well as more lucrative alternative field of empl~yrnent."~ .I -7 Toynbee was right.' Therq wepe more jo and wages were better. Arabs Srom e neighbouring countries did immigrate, legally and illegally, to Palestine because \ of the prospect of higher wages.'14 But for the Palestinians, the-boom serve& Y to increase the social and econonlic separation of ~ewand Arab. The Ya'ad Leurpi had to employ incoming Jewish immigrants-in ordkr'to*justify winston 1)' Churchill's 1921 j'economic absorptive capacity," principle. The policy of. avodah -,iv'iit was thus strenuously applied. In the eyes of the Palestinian fellahin, the 11' PMC, ~inutdanb Reports, (Geneva, 25th Session, 1934), pp. 14 a& 18. + - 'I2 Information ~epartmhtPapers, No. 20a, p. 70. - -- 'I3 Quoted in the Information Department Papers No. 20a, p. 70. 11' Ibid.; pp. 59-60. 4 120 - - - . Jews got the jobs first and they got whatever was leftover. Wages, too, may b ------have increase&--but only in ,relativeGterms.- Jewish wages rose much higher than Ara,b wages creating the conditions for Gurr's principle of relative deprivation."' In 1937, the Peel ~hunissionobserved that "...with almost mathematical . . precision, ;he betterment of the economic situation in Palestine meant the deterioration of the political sit~ation.""~ Sir Arthur Wauchope, who became High Commissiom-in 1931, reported a "...sullen distrust among, the peasants, - - . a - L which could change to noncooperation and hbtility unless every opportunity is taken of demonstrating that the Government 'appreciate their difficulties and is prepared to give them practical help.""'. The Jewish .National Home was I t developing at a tremendous rate. The government appeared to do little to chezk its growth and live up to tho seconb clause of the Balfour Declaration. P The moderate political policy of the established nationalist leaders seemed increasingly ineffective in the -face of the Zionist enterprise. TheT fellahin. - --- - began to turn away from thei; .traditional notable leaders. They gave their L support to those nationalists who argued that violence was the only means to * preservq thk Arab character of ~aiestine."' Awni Abd al-Hadi, a confident of-Faysal in the 1920s and a secretary of the AE after 1928, established tbe Istiqlal (Independence)) Party in 1932. The 'I5- Porath, 2.biLEab~LUkg~;ab National.. ,, p. 129; Pamela Ann - Smith, pp. 54-6. ------'I6 Peel Cammiskion Report, p. 56. - --- 'I7 Quoted in Lesch, p. 70. ' f %I 9 -2 . -+ 4 pan-Arabists of the Party rejected- tha moderation of the AE and appealed to the rising mTlh~cy.'" The'~artyirit~'cisedth~'~uf~i'sappareht collaboration with the British."' The Istiqlal as a political party disbanded in 1934 because it could not attract sufficient support. As well, the AE was i? a state OJ paralysis and dissolved in August 1934 with the death" Musa Kqzim J gf Husaynj. In the municipal eiections of that year, the Opposition party of the i Nashashibis was victorious in almost every town, and in Jerusalem, they won 3 ------out of 4 wards.12' Following this success, the Nashashibis reorganized 3 . tliemselves into the National Defense Party (Hizb al-Difa al-Watani).Th~s,~by R kt, 1934, the two dominant political forces in Palestine revolved around the v. , Nashashibis and the Mufti. \., . -The Mufti's connections with his nephew's bandf the ,YMMA and al- # ~issamgave him credibility with the pobulace.1~~By using Islamic symbols, both. the Mufti and al-Qassam helped to mobiiize the fellah$ along national 2 * lines.'" Al-Qassam's militancy nevei wavered band the fellahin's Fadicalization *. could not but assist to pukh the Mbfti into al-Qassam's camp. The Mufti was 7\ mqting the transition from traditional notable 'to nationalist politician: he was e* .r B being forced-'tp choose between leading his people or. acquiescing to British ." i 120 Swedenburg, p.. 186; Mattar, p. 66-7. - - -- T - *- lZz See ~wedenburg,pp. 188-9 and Lachman, pp. 55-6. L lZ3 Lachman, p. 55. <. . 22 . . C. 122 4 rule.124 ~ecause of the breakdown of traditional villagp life and the displacement & the fellah, the traditional bonds between the fellah and the notable underwent drastic alteration. The notable had to become the politician ., drumming up support rather than acting as -a mediator. As Pamela Ann Smith . points put: ...p easants were no* longer exclusively bound to' preserve andafollow ... anachronistic tribal divisions. For them, they . <\ - yre irrelevant and fhey preferred to---organize---+ C \ - themsdve's around their hostility to the Zionists and the \ British, if necessary without, or in opposition to, their traditional leaders.12' & The Mufti attempted to retain his leadership by taking into account ihese changesvand moving away from traditionat appeals of loyalty. He could not be unaware that the traditiCna1 leadership had shot themselves in their venerable * foot. By touring the countryside in 1934, he demonstrated the extent to which he was becoming a modern p~litician.'~,~What he was losing control over was a the increasing tendency of the fellahin to adopt a gun. d A violent outbreak occurred in ,1930 i s, and between 1930 and 1932, several Jews were -murdered."' British police linked these murders to al- Qassam. Mustapha Ali Ahmed, convicted of one of the murders (Nahalal murders of 1932) and executed, implicated al-Qassam: 3 I am from Saffourieh and I am a member of the a YMMA Saffourieh and the following from Haifa are in 12' Mattar, p. 70. - - "I Pamela Ann Smith, p. 63. lZ6 Swedenburg, p. 188. - 12' Information Department papers No. 20a, p. 72. I the habit of visiting 'our society- in Saffourieh: ...S 1 Izzet Din el Kassam ...the aim of [his] visits is to d$ . - us-& kctube usandde%ke-&eeeks~ I 'There was, however, not enough evidence to convict al-~assa the teachers in *he habit of visiting Saffourieh were disciples \pf al-Qassam: I - &Shaykhs Khalil Eissa (British transliteration of Khalil ', t Abu Ibrahim), Attiyeh Ahmad and Farhan es ~aadi."~;~hese disciplh,were t.0 lead guerrilla bands after al-Qassam's death; they were iart of the AA&AIk w ------Qasisam, the Brotherhood of assa am.'^- G . . - z-. Al-Qassam's. direct involvement with nationalist politics came with the , - - e$tablishment of the Haifa YMMA along with Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, tdk .< ' %J nianager of the Arab Bank, and Subhi-al-Khadra, director, of the Awqaf for the D noithern d'i~trict.'~' In '1930, her keived a fatwa (religious decree) from the Mufti of Damascus, Shaykh Badr al-Din al-Taji al-Hasani, authorising his advocation of violeoce against the ~ioniskand thkritish.l3' He was 'elected * a as acting-president of the YMMA in- 1.932 and succeeded Rashid al-Hajj as- - president of the Haifa YMMA in 1934.13'... Thus by 1934, he had received lZ8 CID Re:portJaCentral Police Station, Haifa, "Statement of Mustapha Ali Ahmed of Saffourieh, 29.5.1933", Tegart Papers, (Box 11, File 3, St. Anthony's College), p. 3. Q 129 CID Report, "Terrorism 1936-1937", pp.,8-9. H0 CID Report .ono+-pawam, p. 2 .& L- r32 CID Report on al-Qassam, p. 8. I lJ3 . . - Porath, The .Palestluan Arab Natio-I. . . , p. 134. s .. r. ,. , ., - --.- ' . \- religious approval. for his -doctrine and he was +in a- political .positibn to' * 6 a i------ A implement it.--- *.# L 0 ~ccofdieg to Subhi Yasin, al- assa am@- had established .. an organized' . *network of cells as early as 1925.'34* His doctrine, preached through this - # network, was based on lam and - the ~~lafi-~~~*noti&of religious refbrm. He \' 2 7 -" condemned folk pfacti&s 'a&d preached religious purificati'ck135 , ' He was ' $'I . virulently anti-Zionist agd anti2British. He linked the Ou'ran and the concept Awl, ---, ------I72 ., /- P of jihad to nati6n4list politics: " .r" c I , 3 " [~l-~&sam.'s]Arabism was of a satientf) religious..' , . ' - as , character and. inseparable from - Islam, ,which in <. jts + militant-political nianifestaiions, wasf consonant pith ,the - , .4 - - - nati&alistfcr sphere.:36 B ' C .. . I 9 a. 1 Withqn hii I fanatical' at&chmefit.., s to .the' fundamental tenkts of- Islam, g]-~~~s~-b I 8 4 . was co@&itted to his Arab lihguistic%ultural id.entlty. is plans included the - - I h <. "- following points: r , - b -, a) abolition of British rule; * - b) resignation of the cuirent ;leadership ;f - the national- - - movement in view of its inagility tb lead rh6 people in its struggle; ., c) preparing the people for the corni~grevolt 'by taining... t stockpiling arms... providing adequate-financi'al resources; i '1. and d) forming alliances with the enemies ofa'gritain in order I - to obtain aid and support for thk organization.'" * In the context of ~alestiniannaiionalist politics, his undeiground organization cited in Porath, Palestlnlan -I _me .. Arab Naw.. . --p--n4. -7- 13'- Lachman, pp. 61-k2. . ' -- -- '" Ibid., p. 65. was thus committed to freeing Palestine from the British and the Zionists by A ------violence. -- - After the Nahalal murders, al-Qassam apparently refrained from any other violent attacks until 1935."' , But he did not stop organising. By 1935, he had enlisted more than 200 men into small .guerrilla bands.139 During this period, , agrarian crime increased. Trees on Jewish lands were uprooted and cattle were ' wounded.- Fellahhsquatte + and_grazed their aniraal~onland-teobe-sdd- while Arab scouts patrolled' the coast to blockcillegal Jewish i=igrants.l4O On .- - " 13 October 1933, the AE, in its dying gasp, called a general strike to pro I / YS immigration and land purchase. For the first time, the government,' considered this outburst as"...a manifestation of Arab4eeling against the government .as L " a\ well as the Jews.""' Al-Qassam bided his time waiting for the opportunity to p-ut his plans into motion. It was not simply a matter of being materially ' prepared. He wanted to wait until the people were primed and ready to . ------rebel. - The murder of Sergeant Rosdnfeld on 7 November 1935 marked ,the > resumption of al- assa am's guerrilla actixities."' News of an arms shipment in J Jaffa on 18 October destined for the Zionists galvanized him to actiony His I38 _ I CID Report on al-Qassam, p. 1. I 140 ~nformatf onbepartment Papers No; 2Cayp. 7r-oTpp-pp 14' Ibid., ,p. 73. -- 14' CID Report ,on al- assa am, p. 1. - Porath, Tho Palestlnran. . atio&,-p. 135. C .', B 1 - A 4 -' ,. . followers were armed at their expense Bnd quariy .porkers had supplied them - with e~pkosk~~~-T1Ip,s ameZt,-aFQas~amVtmizd had leftfa for the .-.Tenin 4 hills to work among the fellahin but &n 6 November, Rosenfeld stumbled on- their hiding p1ace.l4' Al-Qassam was to attack the Haifa police arsenal but he was not readyXto declare a revolt: "...we want to equip ourselves with arms and go the villages to rouse them to- Jihad."146 His men were prepared to die for ------. - - - -- Palestine: "...one of his men sold his belongings and explained that he was . ? going to die for the motherland."14' Religion and nationalism were fused in his movement. He used the traditional .concept of jihad to rally fellah$ to the nationalist cause of liberating Palestine. Rudolph Peters argues that the Qassamite band was in- most respects a *hadmovement where most of the symbols of Islamic+resistance were used.14' This jihad impuise ,extended to most ' - of the fellahin bands that would operate during the rebellion.. 4Al-Q,assam had condensed nationalist rhetoric and salafi- reform components .intopa mo+rn- I revolutionary m0~ement.l~~ P - / - ? I I I jl 1 l4 Lachman, p. 64. '. 14' CID Report, "Terrorism. 1936-1937'", p. 9. . . Cited in Lachman, p.' 70. (1. .a." . - B- - - 14' Porath, me Pa-testrni- 7-rl367 _x- 1"- 14' See, Rudolph Peters, -lam and ~ofoniam,(The H~~G-. . Mouton Publishers, 1979). I + *r "-i Swedenburg, p . 189-90. ' -, - Y F-c , 127 .+, u -- - A L On 20. . November, al-Qassam was hiding in a cave near the village of Ya'bad, west4 Jenin. In a battle with police, al-Qassam and four of his s followers were killed.'" His funeral in Haifa became a massive nationalist demonstration. The Arab press lauded him as a national hero and the first martyr of the nationalist cause: "Dear friend and martyr", wrote one of the newspapers, "I have heard you preach from a platform resting on a sword. Today...y ou are, by God, a-greater preacher than alive you ever' we~e,'''~' His death and funeral had a trenhendous effect on the country. He became a symbol of resistance that roused all Palestinians to, action. The n'ationalist - leaders were forced to grab onto his coattails and adopt a more militant stance. According to Pakestinian folklore, he was the first nationalist fida'ivi~, an ~slamic?warrior,* in the long tradition of battling infidels from the Crusaders to the ~ritish." The people saw him as someone who sacrificed himself ?or I' the nationalist cause. His actions shamed t-oderation of the notables. .He , ------2------was a hero and his grave became a national holi .place.153 His followers, 'the Ikhwan al-Qassam, vowed to carry on his struggle. His iuneral caused thq nationalist pariies to form a coalition and demand .. ' from the Mandatory administration the establishment of democratic government, ', ', the prohibition of land sales to _Jews and the immediate cessation of Jewish 3 'I0 .CID Report, "Terrorism 1936-1937", p. 9. ------'I1 Peel Commission Report, pp. 88-9. ------+. 'I2 David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, (London: Faber ' aqd Faber, 1977). p. 100. 'I3 Swedenburg, p. 190. P k .' d t* d 7 . - .* . . b7 - + -- - "------h~~niigra&on."~The High Comfnissioner rejected. tde second and third.der&nds ,$ ------, - - --7 L "1 but iqdicated-(kat he H$s .preparkd-to move on the first demand: Wauchope's ! proposed legislative c~uncil was rejected by Parliament, convincing the * Palestinian leaders that the Zibnists had preeminent power in London. Jewish immigration peaked atL61-,854 in 1935 and over 73,000 duaams' . . (dunam equals 114 acre) of land were'p~rchased.'~' The threat of the Jewish 'I-, , ,, -Nationdxome -- - - - loobed >larger-, -- -- On the road between ~ulkarmand Nablus, twomJews $ere .murdered on 15 April 1936. On the following day, two ~rabswere murdered in retaliation. - >- - 7 -- . .c- - - - - . Arab mobs rioted in Jaffa on 19 April. Party leaders\. formed the Higher Arab Committee (hereafter 'HAC') on 26 April. - A strike committee was set-up and a general strike declared. Local national committees, formed before the HAC and without the participation of party leaders, gave the HAC the authority t.o , maintain the strike.lS6 *The Mufti was president while Awni Eiey Adel Hadi and - ------Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, former I~tiqlalists, were secretary and treasurer respectively. Raghib al-Nashashibi and Dr. Husayn -el-Khalidi were prominent . ." member^.'^' , By 20 May, the strike had spread throughout the country and the Ikhwan , al-Qassam, with fellahin aid, sabotaged rail lines, attacked troops, police and Ibid., p. 76. 'I' Peel Commission Report, p. 96. - i , . Jewish, colonies~"' death produced 5 cult of armed bands modeled * ~l- ass am's i- '. - - on - the BTot@+50%f."~ - TIGe gGliFeidentified ' tKe Brotherhood and ' "...the -- - grciwing yopth and scout movement as the most probable factors for the disturbances of peace in Palestine in the future".'" The police were proved right. . The General Strike and Revolt of 1936, which lasted from -26 ~~rilto 11 October, was, in a sense, al-Qassam:s revolt. The Brotherhood were - - &--- -+ -- - , - 7-- -- representatives of the devout nationalist freedom fighters al-Qassam had 7 envisioned. They managed to sustain a tenuous unity between the guerrilla bands because of their reputation. Al-Qassam's spirit also managed to sustain ~, a fragile unity between tpe HAC members particularly between the Nashashibis and the Husaynis.16' Among the rebel band members who had criminal records before the revolt, no one of the Brotherhood cnuld+be found.16* C Zionist leaders were quicker than the British police to grasp the political 0, - ,significance of' al-Qassam and his Brotherhooa. Mosfe Beilinson Ldedared . -- - that ... 4 - ...these people are not bandits ...mosque preachers, school directors, chairmen of the Young Men's Muslim Association do not engage in banditry. Not a gang of 158 CID Report, "Terrorism 1936-1937", p. 16. - 15' Lachman, p. 74. 160 See CID Repoit No. 17/F55; 1637.1935, regart Papers, (Box I, hie 3, St. Anthonyls:College) -R ------16' Porath, The Pdestw~raba. Natj onal.L P. 183. 16' Ibid., p. 183. 130 ' - - - . thieves but a body of political terrorists has lately . confronted authorities in Palestine.'63---- L ------avid Ben Gurion added th%t "...this is !he first time the Arabs have seen tha't aP man could be found ready to give up his 'life for an idea and this will be a very important educational factor for the Arab masses."'" The strike and the revolt proved Beilinson's and Ben Gurion's observations more true than perhaps they expected. , L - The rebelKon wa8 a m7Etaary TaZuE. But its significance inthe economic and political transformation of the Palestinian Arab community is immaurable. The revolt was carried out by fellahin imbued with the religious nationalist spirit of al-Qassam. The urban educated middle-class and the notable families - who had initiated the development of the Palestinian nationalist mdvement played little part in the rebellion. Over 65 percent of the rebel leaders were villagers while 22 percent were t~wnsrnen.'~' 4Qassamites provided 25 i commanders: 2 regional, 14 E2-n.d- and 8 sub-band; they w-erd the -&t powerful- group in the &el hierarchy.lM Muhammad al-Salih, ? veteran Qassamite and / 4 renowned for his nationalist-devotion, was killed by the RAF while attempting to mediate - a dispute between two rival band leaders on 13 September 1938.'"' ~assamites,l& ai~~alih,gave the rebellion whateve5koherence it was able t* i 9 \ 16' Lachman, p. 22. 16' Ibid., p. 22. ------16 16' . . I Porath, The Palestrnran Arab National. . ,, pp. 261-4. k 166 Ibid., p. 262. . , 16' Ibid., p. 264. achieve. Significantly, they were shantytown peasants and mosque preachers, ------) not notables. - --. - Like the Syrianf revellion, the ~alestlnian rebellion was a peasant war which was not initiated or mobilized from above. Like Sultan a1:Atrash and - his Druze rebels, al-Qassam, in his death, and his Ikhwan al-Qassam fired a 9 peasant rebellion that caught the national leadership aff-guard. Ragh ib al- Nashashibi, in meetings wiih Wauchope on 5 May 1936; stressed that ... ------h "...the tension in the country was great and the attitude of the leaders Were dictated by .the pressure brought to bea'r upon them by the nation. The pe~ple...at the present time were ruling the leaders dnd.not the leaders ruling the people".'68 b C Al-Shahbandar and Sultan al-Atrash politicized the Syrian peasant. in 1925. In 1935, al-Qassam and the Mufti politicized the fellahin.169 The process af d radicalization and the ideology of nationalism penetrated the rural areas through newspapers, poetry, discussion, and militant teachers."' Al-Qassam's - r- -- - influence was widespread throughout the north and the-Mufti's influence was / throughout Palestine. These influences effected the growth of national - r awareness in the fellahin2 After al-Qassam's death, the fellahin flocked to tke - nationalist cause. ~urinkthe rebellion, the "...urbanL leadership rapidly declined and disintegrated and hegemmy in large areas of the country passed into the I( \ -h armed bands movement, made up almost exclusively of fellahin of the rural hill - -- 16' Tom Bowden, Politics of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine, 1936-39" in W1e&st Stud-, (19751, p= 169. LI C 16' Ibid., pp. 149-50. C 170 Swedenburg, pp. 186-7. 1 p~pulation.""~. Contrary to many accounts of the rebellion, the rebel peasants were fairly \ue& organized and they did develop a semblance of a national - b social program much to t The Brotherhood was again a major factor in unifying the rebellion to whitever extent that unity could be attained and contributing to developing a - social program inherited from al-Qassam's social work in Haifk's Tin Town. Consider the obstacles to unity the rebel leaders had to- overcome-traditional- family, tribal, acd communal rivalries, lack of a central leadership and the very I, inherent anarchial tendencies of a peasant rebellion that explodes from the -ground up. Instead of criticizing the rebel1ion.h terms of its ultimate failure to achieve coherent ahd consistent unity, one should admire the"leve1 of unity i I it did achieve. As for their-austere social program, the rebels' did refuse to pay, taxes. They called for 9'moratorium on debts and levied heavy - contributions against the notable landowning ~1ass.l'~ This may not be a C coherent social programme but these actions did constitute an attack on traditional social relations in Palestine and pointed to a basis for 4' social' - - reorganization if ever conditions would have permitted .such a development. 4 Al-Qassam was as complex; if not as historically illusbry, as Sultan al-- , trash. He was a preachLr and a rdel. he acp4 on his' own while I maintaining political connt5ctions- with both the Istiqlal 'party members and -the Mufti through the YMMA and his religious offices. Rashid al--Hajj and Subhi Pamela Ann Smith. p. 64; Swedenburg, epj.196-7. al-Khadra, whom al-Qassam had helpeatxptlaif;X_XMMA&ecCamee leading members of the Istiqlal while working with the Mufti on the SMC. ~ccordin~- to Jewish intelligence sources, al-Qassam's political organization \ maintained dose ties with the Mufti and during the rebellion, the istiqlib cooperated with the* Mufti's party."3 A Jewish lawyer living in Haifa ' *- ' this period observed that: + Short 6r -Ks - Husayni secretTF ~up~o&ed-~al-~assarn decision to openly and violently ' defy the authority- of the mandatory'government and when it became clear --r i that al-Qassam was serious in his intentions, he expelled him from his party."4 The Mufti was attempting to balance his relationship with the radicals on one hand and the g-ment on the other. These political connections provide the r? ideological conduit .for al- assa am, a pious Islamic cleric, to become a fie& Palestinian nationalist insofar as he fought to free Palestine. Al-Qassam, with pr without 'the support- of- the- -~uftidnd - - - p - other nat_ionalist , leaders, radicalized the alienated fellahin and inspired them to take up arms @ in defense' of. Islam and Palestine. Jewish nationalism and British rule unified Christian and Muslim Arabs in Palestine. This kindled the developme'nt of Palestinian nationalism and served up a peasant rebellion. - - -- <. l7 Mattar; p. 74; Lachman, pp. 75-6. "' . . i Porath, Ealest~n~anmb National. . . , p. 139;' Mattar,, pp. 67-8. e- , . Sultan al-Atrash and Shaykh (Izz al-Din al-Qassam .weie symbolic figures I.. -. of the continuity of social,-politicai, ide~lo~icalAnd economic processes in the i modern developme'nt of Syria and Palestine. All the -changing conditions -and- ' responses are h&toricallY linked- f~crmIbr a him%-oecupa tion -in- 183-kt~ugh-th~ - f". 1858 Land Code, the Damaschs cafes, the ideological development of ottomanism and Arabism, the 1916 Arab Revolt and promises made and broken to Sultan al-Atrash and al-Qassam. . - Through al-~hahbandar,Sultan al-Atrash was linked to those Damascus cafes where al-Jaza'iri discussed salafiwah'tenets 'of Islamic reform and Arab . revivil. ~ikeal-Jaza'iri, al-Qassam was a middle-level alim directly affected by . the bureaucratic-and social changes of the Empire at the tu;n of the twentieth ------century. If he did not frequent the ~amascuscafes, he did come under the influence of Rashid Rida, al-Jaza'iri's teacher, while he studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo. Thus both al-Qassam and Sultan al-Atrash bridged the idedl~gic~aland political development of Palestinian and Syrian nationalism from the modern and conservative Ottomanism of Arabs intellectuals in the late nineteenth century. - The , politicization of Sultan . al-Atrash and al-Qassamsccur~ehinSy~i~ *+ Al-Qassam was part of the 'Alayite rebellion and escaped to ~alestineunder --- the sentence of death. Sultan al-Atrash rebelled twice against the French to -. t. * . L .c - - . -> U protect the traditional social. ' and- political structure of .the Druze community --A " - ---- and, increasing~~,to free Syria as a distinct, political 'entity. His c~mrnunit'~'~ political and economic relaiions with Damascus through the ~ruzeAgency and P -I the Maydan grain merchants 'as well a:. his personal relations with Bakri and , I al-Shahbandar changed what may have remained a traditional and 1.ocalized , Druze response to outside interference .to a country-wide peasant rebe1lio.n that ' 1 , . took on nationalist contours. The French had made themselves quite unpopi~lar, - - - -. - ---- throughout Mandate Syria and Sultan alLAtrash's actions in suwayda' ignited e the simmering resentment into full-scale rebellion, 5 While causing popular resentment, the Mandatory governinents created - t^ the form that this resentment would take as a nationalist movement. . The Mandatory borders shaped what began as a evanescent vision of pan-Arab unity to a more manageable but no less difficult vision" of Syrian and Palestinian- Arab unity. In Palestine, the British did create a different mix of ingredients - - - - - with the support given to the aspirations of Jewish nationalism. While Syrian natidnalists had to contend with the French and intense communal and factional rivalry, the Palestinian nationalists, had to confront similar obstacles to unity 'and deal with the threat of Zionist settlement. The two incipient national movements were both similar in respect to the historical condition of segmented , c d and autonmous communities and the imposition of Mandatory government but & the separate political, social, and economic experiences of the Mandatory years - - -- provided a unique shape to each movement. Both the rural leaders siglialled a change in the class structure. Both the Druze peasant and the Palestinian fellahin had a tradition of resistance to i outside- interference. The patron-client relationship of notable-peasant or L shaykh-peasan&--&asthe traditional nmdekufxfass~ehiionsfhatwas structured to be the buffer between the peasant and the central government. What both fl rebellions mark is, a change in this traditional model. In both cases, peasants , - rebelled spontaneobsly with little or no leadership from the notable class. i, In I' ' . fact, to a great exi>ent, these peasant rebellions became as much a threat3t6 the notables as to the Mandatory authorities. Armed bands in Syria demanded' t - A ------notable contributions while ~alestinianrebels declared a moratcridm on peasant B > . debts. In both rebellions, the rebels attacked notables who waversd in their support. of the nationalist cause. +Peasants took the initiative. The traditional leadership was left floundering. . I - - The peasants responded to al-Qassam's and Sultan al-Atrash's use of . Y .. .. traditional symbols of defense fused with kodern nationalist ideology. Because they yere not the urban notables who had. acquired wealth and power during the latter half of thevnineteenth century, bothT leaders undercut the notables % . with whom they had formed and maintained political connections. They chose ' ,to act while the urban nationalists vacillated, disputed and negotiated. Sultan al-Atrash and al-Qassam had little to fear from a peasant rebellion,. The urban nationalists did have considerable reason to pale at the thought. The anthropologist Eric Wolf has written that:P- Perhaps it, is precisely when the peasant can no 10-nger rely on his accustomed institutional context to reduce ---- his risks 6ut when ali2rnatiikTinstitu~onsare either too chaotii: or too restrictive 40 guarantee a viable commitment to new ways, that the psychological, social anBpo~ZaPte.n~onsSrrmoUnttowardspeasantire beflion and--involvement ' in revolution.' I The, Syriin. and ~alestinianrebellions occurred at. this time when the' peasants > 2 .* . 0 I rejected the rhoderate and .ineffectual policies of the traditional leadership. A17. . Qassam and Sultqn al-Atrash bridged the gap between this rejection and the . I i. new nationalist movement. h he fusion of Druze particularism and Syrian Palestinian nationalism in al-Qassam provided the means for the peasant to adapt secular nationalism to their traditional belief systems. 60th rebel leaders possessed what we* no^ term charisma in the sense tkat they took on mythical parameters greater ,than their actual person. This charisma attracted the - peasants and thus Sultan al-Atrash's and al-Qassam's nationalist ideology, however underdeveloped, was adopted by the rebel peasant. o The disintegration of the t~aditional social order began before the < ------Mandates with European economic penetration. The British, and the French accel'e ted the spread of capitalism which "...severed people from their accustom'a d social mix in order to transform them into economic actors independent of prior social commitments to kin and *neighbours."' This , severance led to the kind of social dislocation experienced in Palestine in the , 1930s. The extent to which such dislocation affected Syria a'nd Palestine leads us to the question of the kind of peasant involved in the rebellions.Wolff ,- I Wolf, p. xv. * Ibid., p. 279. - suggests that revolutionary movements seem to grab hold first of landed + - peasants -had hath .f _the mo~~eancLthwm~&L.~neha~~~-t~ - consider !he degree of economic developmepts to infer that while both 6 rdbellions were peasant in origin, the P~lestinianrebel was more often than not a landless shantytown fellahin. Sultan al-Atrash's rebellion occurred when the development of a free market economy had not advanced to the level the - Palestinian economy had reamed in 1935. Thh rebellions w&e ten years apart. - -- But, m-ore-importantly, Palestiniiin economic ckvelopmgi was intensified by the influx of Jewish capital creating more landless peasants. In Syria, peasants faced impoverishment-. but did not experience landlessness to the extent the Palestinian fellah did. In Syria, peasants rose in&rebellion to protect +what little they possessed. In Palestine, the rebels were the urban fringe-dwellers, landless because of Jewish land purchases, heavy debts, and the intense commercialization of /' agriculture. The Syrian rebellion originated in the fringe rlral Druze community and spread to areas where peasants still attempted to meek out an i existence. Al-Qassam's rebellion was rural but in the sense that it originated % , in the Haifa shantytown, the fringe between urban and rural existence. From this fringe, the rebellion spread to the countryside. French economic policies . P > threatened the livelihood of the Syrian peasant while Jewish settlement. and enterprise took -away the livelihood of the fellahin. ' Ibid., p. 202. The urban notables who adopted nationalism in- response to the changing social and p&tica4 -sk:r&we ~t~-M&&e~~~ket--eeonomj+icF- so, to a great degree, to maintain their traditional political position. The degree to which they failed is indicated by the fact that they had little or no I control over the national revoft when it did break.. out. Al-Shahbandar was, only able to contribute to .the course of the Syrian rebellion through sultan al- Atrash. The Mufti reestablished his influence by adopting the radiial militancy ------Ap- of al- assa am.^ In both cases, the rebellions went along with little or no control by the urban nationalists despite being transformed into national rebellions by Sultan al-Atrash's support of al-Shahbandar and al-Qassam'q martyrdom forcing the nationalist politicians to adopt a more militant course. In the end, both Sultan al-Atrash and al-Qassam and their respective rebdlions were complex affairs. This study has - 0 continuity and political connection$ to show how B in character. Both rebel leaders were 2?t Vth possessed traditienal qualities of leaderKip in tl&r own right. Both 4 4 'W killed $*thea name of Allah and the nationalist cause. Sultan ai- trash could very well have been an ambitious power seeker; most nationalist leaders would p.robably not be effective if they were selfless. Al-Qassam was a puritanical preacher but he also worked in the Y'MMA preaching. tenets of Palestinian nationalism alongside the tenets of salafiyah Islam. One-dimensional portraits \ of them will not do-thIm-justice. Bbtli posSessed76mpiex moti&Xions;Eofh * Sultan af-Atrash and aI-QmSm representea a transition Between theptEiditional world of communal and reiigious loyalties to the modern Y orld of national 9- " & - loyalties. ' This transition- has not been completed. 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