The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty

by Ilan Pappe

  Since the Palestinian Authority, to which Faysal belonged, did not enjoy the full support of the Palestinian people, and since the future of Palestinian politics remains obscure, it is not yet possible to define Faysal al-Husayni’s place in his people’s history. The climax of his political career was probably the eve of the Madrid Conference in 1991, where he was a senior member of the Palestinian delegation at the peace talks with Israel. But he lost his seniority to Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, who succeeded Arafat in 2004 as President of the Palestinian Authority.19

  Faysal al-Husayni was born in Baghdad in 1940, when his father Abd al-Qadir was staying there with al-Hajj Amin. But soon afterwards, he moved with his family to Cairo where he spent his first twenty years until he returned to Jerusalem as a young man in 1961. He was very active as a student in Cairo, and in 1958 he founded the General Union of Palestinian Students, which became one of the pivotal institutions in the PLO.

  In Jerusalem he was attracted to the Palestinian nationalism propagated by Fatah, and he worked in the organization’s office in East Jerusalem before the June 1967 war. At the age of twenty-seven, he wished to be even more active and asked to be recruited to Fatah’s fighting units. When the 1967 war broke out, he was attending a course offered by the Palestinian Liberation Army, the military organization created by the Arab League, and he returned to Jerusalem in secret.

  In November 1967, he was arrested for possession of weapons, which he had received from Arafat, who commanded Fatah in the territories and was trying in vain to start a popular uprising against the Israeli occupation. Before giving the slip to the Israeli army and crossing to Jordan, Arafat held a brief meeting in Ramallah with Faysal al-Husayni. At his trial, Faysal said that he himself did not believe in the efficacy of the armed struggle and wanted to dedicate himself to the political path. This statement led the judges to sentence him to only one year in prison.

  When he was released, he married his cousin Najat al-Husayni, who bore him a son and a daughter. For years he engaged in private business, then worked in his uncle’s X-ray institute in East Jerusalem, helped with the development of the lands at Ayn Siniya and in 1979 returned to public life, founding and directing an academic institute of Arab studies. He made an important contribution to the collection of archival and academic material that enabled young Palestinian historians to reconstruct the history of the country and to recreate almost from nothing the Palestinian collective memory that had been effaced by Israel since 1948. Not surprisingly, the Israeli authorities would not accept him as a purely academic figure and several times placed him in administrative detention.

  When the First Intifada broke out, Faysal was in Abu Iyyad’s camp in Fatah, which was looking for a political way to realize the gains of the uprising. He had led the advisory team of PLO delegations at various meetings in the Arab countries that drew up a well-defined Palestinian position and consequently took part in the Palestinian delegation that went to Madrid in 1991 to discuss a comprehensive peace settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.20

  But there was little in Faysal al-Husayni’s modern biography to connect him to the family history. ‘The son who did not follow in his father’s footsteps’, said the Israeli journalist Pinhas Inbari, meaning that Faysal had worked to bring about Israeli-Palestinian peace, whereas his father had fought against Zionism and paid with his life. But it must be remembered that the family had ceased to be a meaningful political body in Faysal’s life and in Palestinian politics as a whole. It was Faysal’s younger brother Ghazi who believed he was following in his father’s footsteps when he joined the Islamic Jihad movement, whose name echoes that of the organization created by Abd al-Qadir, al-Jihad al-Muqaddas.21

  Let us conclude this book not with Faysal al-Husayni, but with al-Hajj Amin. Towards the end of his life, al-Hajj Amin occupied himself more and more with the pan-Islamic world, since he had been deposed from all significant positions in Palestine and the pan-Arab arena had faded since 1967. He tried to participate in the first pan-Islamic conference in Rabat, Morocco, in 1969 but was prevented by the strenuous protests of the PLO, which wanted to eliminate him as a representative of Palestinian nationalism. When the second conference was held in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1974, al-Hajj Amin was invited, since by then he had become weak and his health had deteriorated. The conference took place in February, and in July of that year al-Hajj Amin died of a heart attack in the Mansuriya quarter of Beirut in Lebanon.22

  The following year, the civil war erupted in Lebanon and the former mufti’s house was burned down by the Maronite-Christian Phalangists. Mona Bori, today a refugee in Texas, was a neighbor and managed to photograph some of the archives in the house that burned down. Some of the missing material was seized by the Phalangists, and no one knows where it is or what was contained in the material that perished. But whatever it was, it was not likely to diminish al-Hajj Amin’s grave responsibility as head of the family for his people’s tragedy.

  At al-Hajj Amin’s grave, his only son heard the leaders of the PLO praising and eulogizing his father (his six sisters did not come to the funeral). But Salih remained in Spain and did not follow the family’s political tradition. Nor did the fulsome eulogies last very long. After al-Hajj Amin’s death, the question of his place in Palestinian historiography was raised. He himself had tried as early as 1954 to engrave the ‘official’ version of his life and role into Palestinian history. In newspaper articles and anthologies, he repeatedly described his positive role in the struggle for Palestine, hoping that the catastrophe would appear as a terrible concatenation of irresistible hostile forces. At the heart of his historiographical analysis was the British betrayal. His mixing of rational thinking with demonic mythology served to diminish his historical stature rather than enhance it.

  The discussion continued without him and focused on his responsibility for the Nakbah. Even before he died, Palestinian historians and intellectuals of the left severely criticized the role of the upper class, with the Husaynis at its center. ‘The urban upper class remained alien to the armed struggle throughout the period of the mandate,’ argued Hisham Sharabi. ‘This class especially benefited through that period.’ The problem of the Husaynis, Sharabi stated in 1969, was that they perceived Zionism not as the ultimate danger but as a nuisance, while to the peasants and the workers Zionism was a tangible threat.23

  During the 1980s, the discussion became clearer and more focused. The attack on al-Hajj Amin was led by the Palestinian historian Samih Shaqib, and the opposite viewpoint was presented by the historian Husni Jarar. In 1988 the two conducted a thorough debate that left the mufti’s historiographic image in tatters.24 In the next decade, the picture became more balanced when Philip Mattar published the first comprehensive Palestinian biography of al-Hajj Amin, offering a balance-sheet of achievements and failures.25

  Only Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni’s reputation has remained impeccable, and perhaps it was natural that his son Faysal, rather than al-Hajj Amin’s son Salih, went on to play a part in Palestinian politics. It also redounded to the Husaynis’ credit that Yasser Arafat, the unquestioned leader of the Palestinian revolution from 1969 to 2004, was related to their family on his mother’s side. Furthermore, he always made a point of telling everyone that in 1948 he had been Abd al-Qadir’s personal secretary.

  Above all, al-Hajj Amin should not be confused with his family’s pivotal role in the history of Palestine, for good or for worse. Its achievements and failures – and those of the other notable families – were those of Palestinian society as a whole. And since the Husaynis, more than any other family, were at the center of Palestinian politics on the eve of the 1948 catastrophe, they bear heavy responsibility for its occurrence. And yet, one should not for a moment forget the nature of this responsibility. It was the inability to defend and organize a community that was the object of an ethnic cleansing ideology and praxis. It is very difficult to assess whether an alternative leadership would have fared better in the face of such a calamity.
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  By 1948, the family had declined not only because of the Nakbah but also because the Arab-Ottoman world to which it belonged was gone for ever. In the words of the English travel writer Colin Thubron, who visited Jerusalem in the 1960s: ‘The Husaynis no longer rule over the city’s religious life, nor do the Nashashibis rule over the municipality. A whole generation has departed from the highway followed by their ancestors for centuries.’26

  The Husaynis are not what they had been. Their history shows that they were part of a culture, an experience and a life that vanished in 1948. The desire to resurrect them lies at the heart of the historical-political thought of all Palestinians, wherever they may be. This thought animates the struggle over this country, and if it were understood by the other party in the conflict it could lead to reconciliation.

  Family Trees

  The Tahiri Branch

  Endnotes

  PREFACE

  1. R. Springborg, ‘Patterns of Association in the Egyptian Political Elite’ in George Lenszowski (ed.), Political Elites in the Middle East, Washington 1975, p. 93.

  2. B. Doumani (ed.), Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender, New York 2003.

  3. One such work is D. Ze’evi’s An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s, Albany 1996.

  INTRODUCTION

  1. A. Raymond, Cairo, Cambridge 2000; K. Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858, Cambridge 1992; A. Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century, New York 1989; J. Reily, A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Oxford and New York 2002; L. Fawaz, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth Century Beirut, Cambridge 1983; M. Reimer, Colonial Bridgehead: Government and Society in Alexandria, 1807–1882, Cairo 1997; D. Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540–1834, Cambridge and New York 1999.

  2. E. Toldenao, ‘The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research’ in M. Maoz and I. Pappé (eds), Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within, London and New York, 1997, pp. 146–7.

  3. Ibid., p. 150.

  4. Ibid.

  5. I. M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge 1988, pp. 640–1.

  6. A. Hourani, ‘Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables’ in A. Hourani (ed.), The Modern Middle East, London and New York, p. 87.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. G. Baer, ‘Jerusalem’s Families of Notables and the Waqf in the Early 19th Century’, in D. Kushner (ed.), Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period, Jerusalem 1986, p. 110.

  10. S. Pamuk, ‘Money in the Ottoman Empire’ in H. Inalcik (ed.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, Cambridge 1994, pp. 966–7.

  11. O. Peri, ‘Waqf and Ottoman Welfare Policy: The Poor Kitchen of Khasseki Sultan in Eighteen Century Jerusalem’, Hamizrach Hehadash, vol. 34, issues 133–6, pp. 64–76. Quote from page 68, note 17.

  12. Ibid., p. 111.

  13. Baer, Jerusalem, p. 111.

  14. Quoted in Peri, ‘Waqf’, note 23, Sijjil Jerusalem 279, pp. 36–7.

  15. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, London 1991, pp. 252–5.

  16. Peri, Jerusalem, p. 72.

  17. Ibid., pp. 75–6.

  18. Baer, Waqf, p. 114.

  19. Ibid., p. 118.

  20. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, pp. 252–5.

  21. A. Scholch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic and Political Development, Washington 1993, p. 119.

  22. By 1920, they owned 50,000 dunams; see J. Kano, The Problem of Land between Jews and Arabs, 1917–1990, Tel Aviv 1992, p. 137.

  23. Lapidus, A History, p. 641.

  24. Hourani, ‘Ottoman Reform’, pp. 83–111.

  25. Lapidus, A History, p. 641.

  26. Hourani, ‘Ottoman Reform’, pp. 83–111.

  PROLOGUE

  1. On the period in general and the background for the revolt see M. al-Muhibi, A Summary of the Notables’ Lives in the 11th Hijjra Century, vol. 2, Cairo 1868 (Arabic); Arif al-Arif, The History of Jerusalem, Cairo 1950 (Arabic); A. Cohen, Palestine in the 18th Century: Patterns and Administration, Jerusalem 1973, pp. 170–5. See also extensive parts of Y. Ben-Zvi’s The Settlement of Eretz Israel, Jerusalem 1976 (Hebrew). My descriptions of the city and some of the personalities of the period that appear in the prologue and chapters dealing with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are based on several travelogues, most notable of which are C. R. Conder, Palestine, 1891; J. Finn, Stirring Times or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles, London 1878; A. P. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, London 1887; W. P. Lynch, A Journey to the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, New York 1984; M. A. Rogers, Daily Life in Palestine, London 1984; Y. Schwartz, The Harvest of the Land, London 1845 (Hebrew); A. Yelin, The Memoirs of a Jerusalemite, Jerusalem 1924 (Hebrew); and A. Yaari, Travels in Palestine, Ramat Gan 1976 (Hebrew). Other collections were helpful: M. Ish-Shalom, Christian Pilgrimage in the 19th Century, Tel Aviv 1965 (Hebrew); Y. Ben-Areyh, Palestine in the 19th Century and Its Rediscovery, Jerusalem 1970; Z. Vilnai, Investigative Tourists in Palestine, Tel Aviv 1984 (Hebrew); Y. Shavit (ed.), The Wonders of the Holy Land, Jerusalem 1981 (Hebrew); and N. Shore, The Book of Palestine’s Travelogues in the 19th Century, Jerusalem 1988 (Hebrew).

  2. The description of the naqib revolt is based on A. Manna, ‘The Naqib al-Ashraf’s Revolt in Jerusalem (1703–1705)’, Cathedra 64 (April 1992) (Hebrew), and M. Rosen, ‘The Naqib al-Ashraf’s Revolt in Jerusalem, 1702–1706’, Cathedra 22 (January 1982) (Hebrew). Manna’s article is important in particular as it is based on the sijjilat, the Shari‘a court protocol during those years. On p. 73, Manna mentions a possible marriage connection between the al-Ghudayya and al-Wafa’i families. In a lecture he gave in the Truman Institute in Jerusalem on 4 February 1999, he reported further advances in his research and a deeper conviction about the connection between the two families. Another important source that quotes extensively from the sijjilat is Arif al-Arif, The Concise History of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 1961, pp. 355–7 (Arabic).

  3. Al-Asali’s Jerusalem in the Arab and Muslim Travelogues (Amman 1992) (Arabic) is an anthology of manuscripts of Muslim travelers frequenting the city in various centuries. The anthology includes manuscripts that appear on microfilms in Syrian and Jordanian universities.

  4. Ibid., pp. 110–5.

  5. M. K. al-Muradi, A Guide to the Notables of the 12th Hijjra Century, Istanbul 1882, vol. 3, p. 89 (Arabic).

  6. Al-Nabulsi, p. 245.

  7. The above description is a fusion of information derived from al-Nabulsi’s previous visit, ibid., p. 255; Mustafa Ibn Kamil al-Bakhri’s manuscript as it appears in al-Asali, Jerusalem, p. 111; excerpts from description of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahim’s visit, ‘The Sunna’s Tales of Jerusalem’s Origins’ (Abd al-Rahim was Sheikh al-Islam, responsible for the appointment of the Hanafi Muftis); and from Mustafa Asad al-Qaymi al-Damaiti’s book Thoughts of People I Met on My Trips to the Valley of Jerusalem (Arabic) (al-Damaiti was an Egyptian visitor to Jerusalem in 1724). These two last sources are quoted in al-Arif, Concise History.

  8. G. Winegart, ‘The Religious Muslim Life in 18th Century Jerusalem’, Cathedra 49 (September 1988), p. 79 (Hebrew).

  9. Al-Asali, Jerusalem, p. 264, and A. Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, New York 1993, p. 247.

  10. The above description is a fusion of a second travelogue composed by al-Nabulsi – A. al-Kurdi (ed.), Ismail al-Nabulsi: Fiction and Reality in a Trip to the al-Sham Countries and Hejaz, Cairo 1986, pp. 110–38 (Arabic) – with a description of al-Bakhri’s travels in al-Muradi’s book A Guide, vol. 4, pp. 124–6. I also referred here to the entry ‘Al-Bakhri’ in the Palestinian Encyclopedia, Al-Mawsuat al-Filastiniyya, vol. 4, Damascus 1982, p. 227 (Arabic).

  11. M. al-Hanabli, The Magnificent Man, Cairo, no date (Arabic).

  12.
Al-Muradi, A Guide, vol. 4, pp. 124–6.

  13. B. Abu-Manneh, ‘The Husaynis: The Rise of a Notable Family in 18th Century Palestine’ in D. Kushner (ed.), Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period, Jerusalem 1986, pp. 93–108, and I. M. al-Husseini, The al-Husseini Family, Jerusalem 1988, pp. 1–2 (Arabic). Both sources connect the 1703 revolt with the family.

  14. The Shari‘a court, Jerusalem, Sijjil, vol. 272, p. 147. The Zionist Central Archives, the Mufti Files, Biography.

  15. In his book Historiography and Nationalism (Jerusalem 1995), which is based on Jewish sources, Yacov Barani mentions a totally different hierarchy of the notable families. On the importance of the three posts held by the family see Y. Porath, ‘Al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini, The Jerusalem Mufti – His Rise and the Consolidation of his Position’ in G. Baer (ed.), The Ulama and the Religious Problems in the Muslim World, Jerusalem 1979, p. 223 (Hebrew).

  CHAPTER ONE

  1. This description and most of the chapter was inspired by the very important and comprehensive research of Butrus Abu-Manneh (Abu-Manneh, The Husaynis, pp. 93–106) and on the basis of his ‘A New Light on the Husaynis’ Ascendance in the Eighteenth Century’ in A. Cohen (ed.), Chapters in the History of Jerusalem in the Early Ottoman Period, Jerusalem 1979 (Hebrew). This last article and conversations with its author triggered my original interest in the subject.

  2. The details on the eunuchs are taken from M. Penzer, The Harem, London 1967. The description of the Topkapi Palace is based on a visit to the place and on a tourist booklet published by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism. See The Topkapi Palace, Net Turistik Yayinlar, Istanbul 1987.