Th e Great War and the Remaking of Palestine Salim Tamari university of california press Th e Great War and the Remaking of Palestine This page intentionally left blank Th e Great War and the Remaking of Palestine Salim Tamari university of california press University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by Th e Regents of the University of California Five of the chapters in this book appeared in shorter forms in the Jerusalem Quarterly. Th ey have been expanded and modifi ed for this collection. “Shift ing Ottoman Conceptions of Palestine”, JQ47–48 (2011), “Th e War Photography of Khalil Raad” JQ52(2013), “Issa’s Unorthodox Orthodoxy” JQ59 (2014), “Nabulsi Exceptionalism and the 1908 Ottoman Revolution” JQ60 (2014), “A Scientifi c Expedition to Gallipoli” JQ56/57 (2014). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tamārī, Salīm, author. Title: Th e Great War and the remaking of Palestine / Salim Tamari. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifi ers: LCCN 2017028637 (print) | LCCN 2017030863 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520965102 (Ebook) | ISBN 9780520291256 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520291263 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Palestine—History—20th century. Classifi cation: LCC DS125 (ebook) | LCC DS125 .T29 2017 (print) | DDC 940.3/5694—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017028637 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix 1 • Introduction: Rafi q Bey’s Public Spectacles 1 2 • Arabs, Turks, and Monkeys: Th e Ethnography and Cartography of Ottoman Syria 14 3 • Th e Sweet Aroma of Holy Sewage: Urban Planning and the New Public Sphere in Palestine 38 4 • A “Scientifi c Expedition” to Gallipoli: Th e Syrian-Palestinian Intelligentsia Divided 67 5 • Two Faces of Palestinian Orthodoxy: Hellenism, Arabness, and Osmenlilik 88 6 • A Farcical Moment: Narratives of Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nablus 118 7 • Adele Azar’s Notebook: Charity and Feminism 140 8 • Ottoman Modernity and the Biblical Gaze 157 Notes 167 Bibliography 185 Index 195 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations 1. Ottoman bureaucrats as monkeys in Yusuf Franko Kusa, Types et Charges, 1885 15 2. Map of northern Palestine, published in Filistin Risales, 1915 19 3. Mersinli Cemal Pasha with son and daughter, Jerusalem, 1915 25 4. Ard Filistin (detail) by Kateb Celebi, fi rst published in 1729 28 5. Kateb Celebi’s map of the Arabian Peninsula and Palestine, fi rst published in 1732 29 6. Ottoman Palestine, from the Osmanlı Atlas, published in 1912 32 7. Ali Ekrem Bey, Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, addressing Jaff a crowds during the celebration of “huriyya” (freedom), the popular reference to the celebration accompanying the promulgation of the new constitution, 1908 49 8. Arrival of the kasweh (Ka’bah cover) from Medina, at the Jaff a Gate in Jerusalem in 1914 56 9. Aerial view of the Beersheba public square, 1916 61 10. Th e gridlike plan of Beersheba, 1916 63 11. Freedom, Brotherhood, and Equality—the Ottoman logo in the masthead of Al-Quds newspaper, January 19, 1911 100 12. Celebrating “huriyya” at Jerusalem’s Jaff a Gate, 1908 121 13. A page from Adele Azar’s notebook, Jaff a, 1914 142 14. Th e staff at the Jerusalem Mouristan Hospital, 1916 144 15. Miss Arnot’s Mission School for girls, Jaff a, 1900 149 16. Adele Azar, “the Boss” in a public ceremony in Jaff a with Yusif Haikal, the last Arab mayor of Jaff a, and Habib Homsi, Jaff a, 1947 152 vii 17. Motorboat on the road to Jericho, in Jerusalem, 1915 158 18. Khalil Sakakini, Jerusalem, 1906 159 19. Khalidi brothers Hasan-Shukri and Hussein-Fakhri in Ottoman Army Medical Corps uniforms, Jerusalem, 1915 160 20. Shul newspaper, underground printing press, Beersheba, 1916 164 viii • Illustrations Acknowledgments I owe a great debt to a number of friends and colleagues who read earlier draft s of these essays over the last fi ve years: Nazmi al-Jubeh, Rema Hammami, Khaldun Bshara, Talha Çiçek, Adel Manna, Rochelle Davis, Seteney Shami, Beshara Doumani, Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Taraki, Sari Hanafi , Suad Amiry, Samera Esmeir, Ayhan Aktar, Selim Deringil, Michael Dumper, Maria Mavroudi, Dana Sajdi, and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi. I am particularly indebted to Alex Winder, Issam Nassar, Penny Johnson, and Carol Khoury, my colleagues at the Jerusalem Quarterly in Jerusalem and Ramallah, where early versions of some of these chapters appeared, for their careful reading and critical feedback. Alex Baramki, who disagreed with almost everything I wrote, was particularly helpful in making me rethink the nature of Ottoman rule in Syria and Palestine. Rashid Khalidi and the late Raja al-Issa, of blessed memory, provided me with copies of the papers and memoirs of Issa al-Issa. I was very fortunate to receive the Jaff a notebook of Adele Azar from her grandson, Dr. Eft eem Azar, who was also very generous in reading the chapter on Azar and giving me corrective advice. Edgar Zarifeh provided me with valuable biographic material on the life of Alexandra Kassab Zarifeh in Jaff a. Research for chapters 2 and 3 was supported by a grant from the Friends of the Institute for Palestine Studies, in the spring of 2012. I would like to thank İrvin Schick, Edhem Eldem, Hasan Kayalı, and Sibel Zandi-Sayek for their comments on Filistin Risalesi and the material on Ottoman ethnog- raphy, and Muhammad Safadi for his expert translations from the Ottoman Turkish. My gratitude goes also to Alex Baramki for guiding me through the mazes of the Library of Congress; to the Cartography Department of Cambridge University and the Mapping Department in the Library of ix Congress; and to Professor Ertuğrul Ökten and Bahcesehir University in Istanbul for providing me with facsimiles of Kâtip Çelebi’s maps of Anatolia and Syria. Mona Nsouli, Jeanette Saroufi m, Mirna Itani, and the staff of the Institute for Palestine Studies archives in Beirut were invaluable in providing me with research material on World War I from their collection. Debbie Usher, archivist at the Middle East Center of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, kindly helped me acquire copies of Khalil Raad’s photographs in the Alan Saunders collection. Th e editors and staff of the University of California Press were invaluable in the preparation of the fi nal draft for publication. I am particular thankful to Niels Hooper, Dore Brown, and Bradley Depew for their guidance and advice. Bonita Hurd’s masterful editorial interventions and suggestions were crucial in improving the readability of the book. Finally, but not least, I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript. Th eir criticism and advice not only helped me avoid some embarrassing pitfalls but also opened up alternative interpretations of the material. x • Acknowledgments one Introduction Rafiq Bey’s Public Spectacles On the eve of World War I, Azmi Beyk Eff endi, the governor of the province of Beirut, commissioned Muhammad Bahjat and Rafi q al-Tamimi, two young civil servants from Imperial College in Beirut (Maktab Sultani), to undertake a comprehensive survey of conditions in the province—which included at the time the districts of Beirut, Akka, Nablus, Tripoli, and Latakiyya. Th e governor felt that the offi cial almanacs (salnameh) for the Syrian provinces were hastily written and inaccurate; moreover, they con- tained mostly statistical information and biographical entries for public fi g- ures. He instructed the authors to prepare “a scientifi c guide” to serve “civil servants and the educated public at large” concerning the civic and social conditions in Palestine and Syria.1 Th e survey, published in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic in Beirut in 1916 in two comprehensive volumes, took two years to produce, and it involved arduous fi eld work in remote areas, including nomadic encampments, as well as visits to scores of villages and district centers.2 It covered detailed ethno- graphic descriptions of habitat, customs, religious practices, and what the authors saw as “social problems” facing these communities. Th e overall frame of their analysis was to examine the modernization schemes of Ottoman reforms (Tanzimat) and the “impediments to the progress” in these com- munities. For a number of selected cities, such as Latakiyya, Tripoli, Akka, and Nablus, it included an investigation of the quotidian “social spirit” of urban life that addressed issues such as “temperament” (mazaj), social dif- ferentiation, leisure activities of the middle and working classes, dialects, and the intellectual milieu of the local elites.3 Th e authors, Bahjat Bey from Aleppo, and Rafi q Bey from Nablus, were accomplished scholars and dedicated civil servants. Although working in 1 unison, they divided the work between them. Rafi q Bey undertook themes related to the archeology, geography, education, social ranks, and religious practices of the communities, while Bahjat focused on dialects, arts and craft s, and what they termed “public spectacles” (mashahid ‘ammah) in reference to urban social conditions.4 Th e bibliography attached to their compendium shows that the authors used the entire stock of geographic and historical lit- erature on Syria and Palestine available then in Turkish, Arabic, French, English, and German. But the bulk of the study was based on their own direct investigation of local conditions through fi eld visits, interviews, and verbatim records of narratives in the regional dialects.