Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (26 page)

Khalidi's invocation of the “will of the nation [
irādat al-umma]”
was significant.
¹¹⁶
Not only does it reinforce seeing the new Ottoman citizenry as supportive of the revolution and seizing it as their own, but it
also indicates the bonds of reciprocity articulated between the citizenry (electorate) and its elected officials. Government appointees may not have a direct loyalty to the people, but the elected representatives must. Their office and their legitimacy come directly from the people. This contract was reiterated by the second MP, Sa'id al-Husayni, who stated briefly: “I am certain that you are following and expecting from us that great deeds and services will come back to you and to us for the good and to protect you and us from every harm, so have full confidence in us and we will remain in your good opinions, God willing.”
¹¹⁷

Beyond Jerusalem, the broader Arabic press took a similar stance.
The Crescent
congratulated the newly elected representatives, saying: “We congratulate the honorable representatives for they were bestowed with the trust of the nation in their learning and the loyalty of their Ottomanism, and they show the goodness of the sons of the homeland and it is no wonder that the nation ties its hopes in them and entrusts them with its political and administrative affairs.”
¹¹⁸

The day of the opening of the parliament was a national holiday empire-wide. City officials were instructed to fire a 101-cannon salute, to give government employees the day off, and to aid the populace in decorating the streets and buildings for the festivities.
¹¹⁹
In Jerusalem and Jaffa, houses and stores were decorated with flags, people wandered the streets shouting in support of liberty, and an official ceremony was held in the military courtyard with speeches from notable locals. The Jerusalem celebration was organized by the mayor, Faidi al-'Alami. The ceremony opened with an invocation by the military imam, then a long speech by a young officer in which he recounted Midhat Pasha's efforts to write the constitution as well as the army's efforts to restore it. Speeches were given by the poet Is'af al-Nashashibi and Yusuf al-Mu'allam, the deputy to the Maronite patriarch, both of whom emphasized the need to fight against religious fanaticism and to promote brotherhood in the Ottoman nation.

Another speaker, Eftim Mushabbak, proclaimed that the parliament represented not only the nation's first step but, indeed, its very rebirth. His sentiments bordered on the utopian, again reiterating the tropes of stark dichotomy between pre- and post-1908 articulated in the revolutionary period.

On the 11th of Tammuz a light shone upon us not from the sky [but from] the capital of the empire—the light of the holy constitution, grantor of justice and freedom and brotherhood and equality…. Today…all our faith has come true and all our hope has been justified…. This day is the true beginning of the life of the Ottoman nation. On this day all the nations of the earth will envy us, and on this day the sky and the earth and the angels and the prophets and the gods will
bless the free Ottoman nation…. On this day hearts rejoice together, liberal sons of the Ottoman nation and their souls are invigorated.
¹²⁰

For their part, the people also had a responsibility in the new political order. Mushabbak informed his compatriots that they would no longer be allowed to be passive beneficiaries or inactive bystanders, but had to take an active and informed role in the country's future.

Today the mute has begun to speak and the deaf hears and even the blind sees. Before the day ends the Ottoman nation must open its eyes and ears and look in its entirety toward that beloved, venerable council to hear and see what is published from it and about it. Today the Ottoman nation together must increase the readers of newspapers so they can know what the representatives are doing and what happens in the parliament.
¹²¹

The ceremony was an orchestrated demonstration of the unity through diversity of the Ottoman nation. We have already seen that Muslims, Christians, and Jews addressed the crowd. As well, ethno-linguistic diversity was given a platform: Ithnasa Effendi Bendazi, the editor of the Greek-language newspaper
The Palestine Herald (Bashīr Filasṭīn)
, also spoke in Greek; after him, several Armenian schoolchildren gave rousing, patriotic speeches in Turkish and Arabic, as did a Jewish student from Aleppo. As another newspaper proclaimed, “Everyone from all the elements of the empire is drenched in love of the homeland and drinks from it.”
¹²²

In fact, the spirit of national unity was so strong that the American consul in Beirut reported to his superiors:

It struck me as very evident that the sentiments which inspired the extraordinary demonstrations, during the last week of July, in honor of the Constitution, still burn within the hearts of the Ottomans, and that the process of emancipation has suffered but slight interruption during the intervening months of meditation. Mohammedans, Christians and Jews still fraternize, and the misgivings of the cynic or of the chicken-hearted have not proved well founded.
¹²³

Rashid Rida, who spoke at three different events in his native Lebanon marking the opening of the parliament, also conveyed the sense that this was a seminal moment in strengthening the bonds of the Ottoman nation. Furthermore, the active citizenship that was represented by the opening of the parliament bolstered the ideas of an imperial public good and shared interest of the Ottomans. At the general celebration in Beirut's central square, in what was his most rhetorical and optimistic speech of the three, Rida informed his countrymen:

Today you became a nation, and how beautiful is that expression in my mouth, how dear to my heart, yes on this day it is correct to apply the phrase “nation”
to you…. On this day the Muslim and the Christian and the Jew and others will celebrate, and the Turk and the Arab and the Albanian and Greek and Kurd and Armenian will celebrate. And the Ottomans in the Ottoman lands as well as those in foreign lands will celebrate, they will celebrate gathered in mixing together because it is a holiday for the whole nation. Look at this celebration, where the political rulers and administrators and
qadi
and army officers and others from the government are mixed with Islamic scholars and Christian priests and the rest of the trades of the nation, from agriculture to industry and merchants, workers, and school students.
¹²⁴

For Rida, as for Mushabbak and countless other Ottomans, the opening of the parliament was a signal that the Ottoman nation had become “a ruler of itself [
ākima li-nafsiha]”:
the nation, not the sultan, not the grand vizier, certainly not the members of parliament themselves, is “the highest authority.”
¹²⁵
In his speeches to the Ottoman Club and the CUP branch, Rida addressed the fears of liberals and reformers in the empire that the revolutionary reforms would prove short-lived. Rida argued that in contrast to the period of the first parliament, which was a pliant body, the nation was now better educated, more informed, and had the army and the CUP to help defend the constitution.

This idea of the nation as the source of legitimacy and loyalty would be taken up by the sultan's critics, who refused to view liberty as being “given by the sultan,” for that would mean it was granted rather than earned, conditional rather than contractual. Is'af al-Nashashibi, the young poet, gave an eloquent speech at the Jerusalem celebrations in December 1908 in which he sought to overturn the notion that
urriyya
had been given or granted; rather, al-Nashashibi proclaimed that liberty was both man's natural state
and
the hard-won birthright of the Ottoman people. While it had been withheld from the people in the past, now the nation would not allow such a thing to happen again: “O Ottomans, O Patriots…. Ottomania sold her soul in order to buy our lives. Great were her deeds, and [God] have mercy on their spilled blood, as the precious from among our heroes were killed. Know that [the first man] was created free, and he lived free, and he died free. And you see that Allah is more just than that mankind should carry two heavy burdens—the burden of life and its evils, and the burden of tyranny and its misery.”
¹²⁶

Likewise the Izmir-based Jewish poet Reuven Qattan echoed the claims that the nation was not awarded liberty out of good will, but rather it had conquered liberty at the same time that liberty was also a sacred, natural right of mankind.
¹²⁷
In other words, if liberty was both God-given and man-won, the sultan—who was, after all, “flesh and blood just like you”—had a dwindling and diminished role in the New Era.
¹²⁸

THE FAILED COUP OF 1909 AND THE “LOVE OF LIBERTY”

Only months after the opening of the parliament and despite the fact that Rashid Rida had assured his compatriots that any danger to the constitutional regime would come from outside the empire, not from within, an anticonstitutional coup was carried out by lower-level soldiers and religious students. Shots were fired in the parliament building, representatives were assassinated, newspaper offices were ransacked, and the leading liberals of the capital briefly went into hiding and exile.

In response, tens of thousands of Ottomans empire-wide took to the streets crying, “The constitution is in danger!”
¹²⁹
In Jerusalem and Jaffa, thousands gathered to demonstrate in front of the government buildings, satisfied only once the senior government officials emerged to swear on the Qur'an that they would “remain true” to the constitution. The local customs officer threatened to stop sending customs taxes to the capital until the new regime promised to uphold the constitution, while another account noted that Palestinians marched to the tax office themselves and declared they would not send in their taxes until the constitutional government was restored. Residents sent telegrams to the relevant offices in the capital, organized into local militias, and threw their full support behind the activities of the CUP seeking to return to power.
¹³⁰

In less than two weeks, the segments of the army that were loyal to the CUP succeeded in crushing the coup and took control of the capital again. The local press response was ecstatic: “The era of despotism was escaped, and liberty and progress face Turkey [
sic
] now,” crowed the Judeo-Spanish paper
Liberty.
The newspaper reports described the scenes of popular joy that recalled the early celebrations after the revolution itself—music, festivities, and all-around admiration for the CUP, “which for the second time managed to save the Ottoman people.”
Jerusalem
triumphantly declared: “Now we have seen that the love of freedom [
hubb al-hurriyya
] is like a great flood flattening the mountains and shaking the earth, and nothing in the world can stop it on its way.”
¹³¹

Once the dust of the so-called March Events had settled, the sultan was held personally responsible.
¹³²
Several newspapers called on Abdülhamid to resign voluntarily; when he did not, he was deposed. Previous sultans had been deposed throughout Ottoman history, and Abdülhamid II himself ascended the throne on the heels of the deposition of his uncle. However, what was significant about his own dethronement was the way in which ideas about political legitimacy were intertwined with constitutional rule. Decades earlier the anti-colonial pan-Islamist activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani had warned the Ottoman sultan and
the Qajar shah that their days were numbered in a constitutional regime. “The nation, crowning him on that oath, tells him that the crown will stay on his head as long as he loyally upholds the constitution. If he should break his oath and betray the constitution of the nation either his head would lose the crown or his crown would lose the head.”
¹³³
In the spring of 1909 that threat was actualized with the blessings of the religious establishment.