The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty

by Ilan Pappe

  But still it was not enough. The learned governor had discovered that in the distant past it had been customary to present the governor with robes and shawls made of camel hair, and he demanded the same. He finally left on 15 April, but not without a parting blow – he took Umar al-Husayni and Abd al-Rahman Abu Ghosh with him. ‘You will be my guests in Damascus until this unruly city does its duty,’ he explained.17 Curiously, he let the Christians and Jews go. Abu Ghosh’s furious family seized some sixty Christian pilgrims and held them hostage. Umar was fortunate: the governor changed his mind at the last moment, deciding to wait in Nablus until the Husayni and Abu Ghosh families paid the ransom, penalty, tax – whatever payment that all Jerusalemites, regardless of religion or class, were obliged to remit.

  But here he went too far. In July the people of Abu Ghosh rebelled, and they were soon joined by the Christians of Bethlehem. Together the peasants and townspeople succeeded in driving the military out of Jerusalem. The governor’s troops fled to Nablus and remained there with him for twenty days. The unfortunate inhabitants of Nablus were forced to pay double to make up for his loss of Jerusalem’s taxes.18

  But the rebels did not have only the governor in mind – they were determined to oust the Albanian troops stationed in the city. That day Tahir al-Husayni sent a youngster to the fortress, which was occupied by 450 men of the Albanian guard known as the Arnauts. The lad had memorized his speech to the commander of the Arnauts, which said that the inhabitants of Bethlehem had declared war on the city’s southern villages and, ‘If you please, Your Honor, send a large force out there to prevent bloodshed.’19

  The commander agreed and at once set out with most of his troops on the main road to Nablus, leaving only a small number of officers and men at the fortress. As they drove out, Tahir summoned a large crowd to al-Aqsa mosque and roused them to march on the fortress. The fortress immediately surrendered to the throng, and one of the Albanians was forced to load and fire the cannon to warn the population that something was afoot. The commander, who had not yet gotten very far, heard the explosion and understood that he had been tricked. Apparently deciding that prudence was the better part of valor, he proceeded to Damascus to await the return of Governor Mustafa.

  Tahir summoned the families of the notables and the heads of the Christian communities to his naqib’s office and informed them that the tax demands on the city had been lifted. The meeting was attended by the leaders of the masheikh, the strongmen of the mountains and outlying country, the sons of the Abu Ghosh, Qassem, Jarar and the Nablus Tuqan families, who reported that they had proclaimed ‘independent republics’. For a brief while Jerusalem, too, became an independent entity, as it had been in 1704. This time the rebels even had a flag, which they flew from the top of the fortress. It is not known who decided to spare the lives of the commander of the fortress and the governor. The latter would later be captured by the rebels when he tried to attack the city after his exile in Nablus.

  Jerusalem was now administered by two men: the commander of the local force, who had joined the rebellion (as the Janissaries had done), and a local resident. The leading notables, including the Husaynis, supported the rebellion but for obvious reasons avoided leading it openly. This brief regime was one of the strangest the city had ever known. On the one hand, ‘non-resident Arabs’ were executed, while on the other hand, the cancellation of the special taxes imposed on the Christians apparently brought the Christians and Muslims closer together. Thus not only peasants and effendis but also Christians and Muslims had a share in this historical moment.

  The cooperation between these communities was all the more extraordinary in 1824, in view of the titanic conflict that had broken out between them in Greece. Palestinian historians would later point to this cooperation as proof that this was the moment when the Palestinian national movement began and that it therefore preceded the advent of Zionism. More recently, a historian wrote that the leaders of the revolt in Jerusalem behaved like the rulers of the sanjaq (an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire). Like all new rulers, they were generous to their protégés and exempted the villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem from paying taxes that year. Yet everyone knew that the imperial government would not tolerate these developments, and less than a month later, in August, the troops of the governor of Damascus appeared on the Mount of Olives and began to bombard the city.

  When the Greek revolution ended with the establishment of an independent Greece, Sultan Mahmud II turned to the rebellious Jerusalemites. The first national uprising against Ottoman rule would serve as a model for several other nations, first in the Balkans and later in the Middle East. But now the sultan ordered Abdullah Pasha to crush the Jerusalem rebellion. Abdullah sent a representative to warn the rebels, but they were euphoric and vowed to remain in power.

  When Rabbi Yehoseph Schwartz came to Jerusalem nine years later, he heard horror stories about the thick smoke and the fires that had been started by the exploding shells. ‘Nevertheless,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘the Lord in his mercy protected the city and the shells did not harm anyone.’ The Jews of Jerusalem would not forget the day when the Husaynis capitulated – it was on the last day of the festival of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) that the guns fell silent and Jerusalem could rest.20

  The siege had lasted five months, and only the shelling of the city from the summit of the Mount of Olives drove Tahir to negotiate with Abdullah. An agreement was reached at length, which, if not improving the plight of the surrounding peasantry, at least lifted the threat that had hung over the Husaynis. Umar went back to his house, and life seemed to return to normal, though Abdullah’s shadow would hang over the family until the Egyptian occupation of the country in 1831. Abdullah had been reined in thanks to the family’s good connections in the Ottoman capital; the reformist Sultan Mahmud II had not forgotten the family’s support for his predecessor and patron, Selim III.

  Once the rebellion was over, life went on smoothly enough, despite being disrupted now and then by the whims of the governor of Acre. In the late 1820s, he issued several edicts forbidding people to enter or leave the city without his express permission. Modern life unfolding in Jerusalem brought injustices as well as marvels. The Turks, British, Jordanians and Zionists all followed Abdullah of Acre in periodically restricting the movements of the inhabitants on some pretext. But this practice was suspended in 1831 when Ibrahim Pasha invaded Syria. It was one of those military events that alter the political reality at a stroke and in the long run induce profound changes in society and its way of life.

  Once again a man from the Balkans overturned the Ottoman order. The Albanian Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman army officer who had fought brilliantly against Napoleon, employed one of the most sophisticated, elaborate campaigns of intrigue in modern history to achieve the governorship of Egypt. Before long, he expanded his realm, first in the service of the empire and then in defiance of it. His first goals were Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula, and when the sultan summoned him to help put down the Greek revolt, Muhammad Ali demanded the Syrian provinces in payment. But the Egyptian Pasha was unable to fulfill his side of the bargain. Aided by France and philhellenic Britain, the Greek David defeated the imperial Goliath, trouncing the Ottoman-Egyptian allies. The sultan, therefore, felt free to break his promise to the Egyptian Pasha, but this was not, from the imperial viewpoint, a good moment to turn down an ally. The sultan had just resolved to create a new army and physically annihilate the commanders of the Janissaries, who had prevented him from turning the empire into a modern, European-like state. Without the old army and not yet in possession of a new one, the empire presented an irresistible temptation.

  When Muhammad Ali persisted in demanding compensation for his efforts against the Greeks, the sultan ordered the governor of Syria to launch a preemptive strike against Egypt. But his letter was intercepted by Muhammad Ali, and it strengthened his resolve to move north. His pretext for the action was feeble enough: 5,000 Egyptian peasants had deserted his
army for Syria during the Greek war, and the Syrian governor was refusing to extradite them. Still, a pretext was essential in those chivalrous times. Moreover, the Pasha claimed that the governor of Acre owed him a large sum of money from the Greek war and therefore his campaign was a punitive one against a defaulting debtor. Encouraged by the French king Charles X and his foreign minister Chateaubriand, Muhammad Ali began to prepare his campaign to the Levant, possibly even to Istanbul, and in 1831 tens of thousands of soldiers crossed the northern Sinai Peninsula under the command of his nephew Ibrahim Pasha, whom he treated like a son.21

  Ibrahim reached Jerusalem that year. The Husaynis had heard from their relatives the Tuqans that someone was already preparing for the political reversal – the Abd al-Hadi family, or rather its head, Hussein Abd al-Hadi, who offered concrete help to the invader. This would turn out to be a fateful error on the part of the Abd al-Hadis, because once Ottoman rule was reimposed they would lose status. Thus Hussein felt so attracted to Ibrahim’s family that he conducted a love affair with the latter’s sister, who would eventually poison her Nablusi lover.

  The Husaynis, however, not only avoided such colorful and dangerous liaisons, they were also extremely cautious politically. When Ibrahim Pasha besieged Acre and, like Napoleon before him, was unable to storm it, he asked the notables of Jerusalem to support him. But Umar and Tahir persuaded their fellow notables to send a courteous refusal and declare sympathetic neutrality.

  When the Egyptian Pasha defeated Acre and came to Jerusalem, Umar and Tahir were among the first to greet him. But the Egyptian, presumably remembering Umar’s wavering, treated him with hostility. It was a traumatic encounter. The heir of the famous Pasha addressed the notables with meticulous care, spelling out their titles and past deeds, all in accordance with protocol. Then he declared that times had changed – henceforth the notables and qadis would not rule supreme, and the administration of the district would be entrusted to an advisory council that would include Christians and Jews. And this was not all. The Christians and Jews would henceforth be allowed, for the first time since the Arab conquest, to ride horses in the city, to wear Muslim garments and to repair and restore their houses of worship. When he went on to say that the testimony of foreigners would also be admissible in court, Umar, who occasionally served as qadi, could not believe his ears. Shortly after this meeting town criers circulated through the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming: ‘We hereby abolish the special penalties and taxes imposed upon the churches in Jerusalem, and the tax imposed upon Christian pilgrims, and undertake to protect the lives and honor of the Christians.’22

  Historians are divided about Ibrahim’s motives. Some attribute to him a modern egalitarian outlook, while others argue that the abolition of special taxes was part of his agreement with France, or at any rate a conciliatory gesture to induce France to support him and his adopted father against the other European nations, which were less than happy about Muhammad Ali’s conquests.

  To add insult to injury, Ibrahim obliged Tahir, in his role as mufti of Jerusalem, to accompany him on a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.23 Hitherto it was the Christian notables who called on the Muslim clergy to pay their respects on Muslim festivals, reflecting the hierarchy and balance of power in the Muslim empire. Ibrahim expressed his admiration for the beautiful church and was fascinated by the eternal flame that burned inside. There, in Tahir’s presence, he announced that Christian pilgrims would no longer pay a special impost. This, like his decision to abolish the jizya (the special poll tax paid by Christians and Jews), was a severe blow to the Husaynis since this tax paid Umar’s salary as keeper of the holy shrines. Worse was to come. The Egyptian rulers were intensely suspicious of anyone who was close to the sultan’s court, and the elaborate edifice of connections to Topkapi Palace was a liability under their rule.

  Now the Khalidis and their associates were the favorites, while the Husaynis were regarded as enemies. The Egyptians made a point to promote those notable families whose star had waned under the Ottomans and to sideline those who had been predominant. Thus in Nablus the family of Abd al-Hadi became powerful at the expense of the Tuqans, who were allied with the Husaynis.

  The worst year for the Husaynis was 1833. The ambitious Ibrahim, wishing to outdo Sultan Mahmud II in Istanbul and Muhammad Ali in Egypt, sought to turn Syria into a showcase modern Middle Eastern state. Safe roads, advanced agriculture and commerce, industrialization and a secularized judiciary – Ibrahim’s advisers regarded these as the principal features of such a new political entity. And it all cost a great deal of money. The wealthy Husaynis were among the first to be hit by the Egyptian ruler’s methods of financing.

  Six different taxes were imposed on the population. Jerusalem was also required to provide cannon fodder for Ibrahim’s army – one fifth of all adolescent boys were conscripted (a total of several hundred in the city, and several thousand from all of Jerusalem’s districts). The conscription did not proceed very well: the peasants fled in all directions, and the Egyptian army soon suffered a serious shortage of manpower.24 But the main purpose of the operation was to seize all the weapons in the possession of the dignitaries, which symbolized their standing vis-à-vis the government and society. The largest arsenal in the area of Jerusalem belonged to the Abu Ghosh family, the Husaynis’ allies. But the Abu Ghosh family were not the only ones who called on the Husaynis to help them resist the weapons roundup – the Tuqans, who were their allies and relatives by marriage, had a substantial quantity of arms that the Egyptians had their eyes on.25

  If asked to pinpoint which was the most resistance-provoking aspect of the situation, we would probably concur with the historian Arif al-Arif that it was the financial blow to the notables, including the Husaynis. Not only were they compelled to pay taxes, they were denied the right to collect them. The Egyptian ruler’s abolition of imposts on the roads to Jerusalem also caused a major reduction in the income of their collectors.

  By the end of the year, Tahir and Umar had formulated the family’s position. Up until then, they had tended to support the Egyptian’s rule, however harsh. In 1832 they had actually endorsed a manifesto drawn up by the sheikhs of al-Azhar against the sultan and in favor of Ibrahim. Tahir had gone even further. Escaping the heat of Palestine in the summer of 1832, he stayed as a guest of Ibrahim Pasha in the encampment of Bashir II, governor of Mount Lebanon. There he quoted to the two potentates, who shared power over the areas stretching between the Taurus Mountains and the Sinai Peninsula, the well-known hadith (Prophetic tradition), ‘May God curse the weak sultan’ – namely, Mahmud II.26 This act, and the signatures on the manifesto, would not help the Husaynis when confronted by Muhammad Ali a few years later, nor would the sultan forget it after he regained Syria.

  In any event, in 1833 the heads of the family were ready to rebel. The revolt broke out the following year. But although Umar and Tahir were regarded as its leaders, they did not initiate it. Perhaps they helped to set off the rebellion known as ‘the second peasants’ revolt’ by encouraging the surrounding rural population and the populace of Jerusalem to close ranks against the foreign invader. The burden of taxation enraged the peasants, as did the compulsory military service imposed on them by the Egyptians. Moreover, the efficient new rulers made it difficult to evade either tax payment or military service. And on top of it all, the improved situation of the Christian community exacerbated the Muslims’ feelings of grievance and helped bring the rebellion against the Egyptian ruler to the boil.27

  The success of the insurrection depended on the cooperation of the village sheikhs, especially those who dominated the northern areas of the Jerusalem sanjaq. Each of these sheikhs could rally hundreds of peasants armed with muskets or cold steel.28 When the Husaynis joined the revolt, they were able to call on those groups that had demonstrated their loyalty to them during the previous revolt of 1824, and these in turn helped to rally everyone who had ever served the Husaynis. Impelled by loyalty to the Ottoman government an
d by the injury to their status, many other notables supported the revolt.

  But the initiative for the revolt against the Egyptian occupation of the Syrian districts lay elsewhere. Ostensibly the time was ripe for it in 1833, since in May of that year Ibrahim was 300 km from Istanbul, beside the city of Konya. However, though Ibrahim was far away, Muhammad Ali was present in person. With his army not far from Damascus, he demanded and obtained control over Syria’s districts, and now he came to inspect the booty. He arrived in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, when there were more pilgrims (20,000) than residents in the city. Accompanied by a caravan with banners, he alighted at Nabi Daud. His first order was to open another gate in the city wall, one that had been filled with earth since the days of Umar ibn al-Khattab (586–90).29 It was difficult to revolt while the ruler was making such symbolic gestures. A vast throng filled the streets, and an eyewitness reported that some 500 persons were crushed to death during the official reception.30 Needless to say, the reception did nothing to improve the situation, and insurrection remained the only solution.

  If anyone still doubted it, a new Egyptian decree in early 1834 impinged directly on the grandees. Ibrahim announced his intention of conscripting the sons of notables. The Husaynis, and others like them, had to send their sons to the mountains. All at once, fellahin and aristocratic sprigs hid together in the caves and wadis in terror of the brutal Egyptian recruiting officers.31