The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (7 page)

So strong had the family become that inevitably some of the other notables resented it. The most hostile was the al-Khalidi family (with
a reputed and well-established lineage that could be traced back to the Prophet Muhammad and a high position in the city and beyond) when it was headed by Sheikh Musa al-Khalidi. Musa was not only a greatly respected
alim
(religious scholar) with good connections in Damascus and Istanbul; he had climbed higher than any Jerusalemite in the Ottoman hierarchy and become a chief
qadi
of Anatolia, second only to the Sheikh al-Islam, the empire’s Grand Mufti. Musa al-Khalidi was well positioned to harm the Husaynis now and then, and to close ranks with the other families.

The year 1790 was an especially tense one in the city. The list of recipients of gifts in Istanbul had grown inordinately long and included persons who were potentially, though not actually, powerful. At first the Khalidis succeeded in removing the Husaynis from their three important posts. Their main allies were the Alamis and al-Jama’is. They got a member of the Alami family appointed as
naqib al-ashraf
in place of Abdullah, and brought about the dismissal of Hassan from the post of
mufti
and of one of his brothers from the post of
sheikh al-haram
. The Alami notable Muhib al-Din was a suitable candidate for the post of
naqib
, which both his father and grandfather had filled. As for Hassan’s replacement there was some poetic justice in it, since the latter had been the most serious candidate for the post of
mufti
when Hassan was appointed to it in 1780.
¹⁸
Hassan had observed in his book about Jerusalem’s notables that this man was among the best qualified for the highest posts in the city. Then Hassan himself became
mufti
, and nine years elapsed before he was displaced by his rival.

However, like the displacement of his brothers, this setback did not last long. Hassan remained in Jerusalem while his brothers lived in exile in Homs. But for two individuals so entrenched in regional politics, exile was a high road to their return to Jerusalem. To create the impression that they were in the authorities’ good books, the two spread rumors that they had the support of the governor of Damascus before they actually had it. Once they actually obtained it, their way home was open.
¹⁹

We lack sufficient information to reconstruct the exact circumstances in which the Husaynis recovered their dominant positions in Jerusalem in 1796. Presumably lavish gifts and good contacts helped restore the family to its former status. That year most of the notables went to the
qadi
and the city’s governor to declare their support for Hassan. As soon as Hassan was appointed, they all – even his opponents – came to congratulate him, since he was now in a position
to harm them and, even more important, to protect them from the whims of the governor and the
qadi
.

The
qadi
sometimes ignored the custom of allowing the members of a notable family to be judged solely by their peers. Only a strong
naqib
could prevent such an indignity. In its turn, the government demanded that Hassan put a stop to some of the notables’ habit of wearing the white tarbush with the green stripe, which was officially the prerogative of Istanbul-appointed judges. This habit was widespread in other provinces too, and it infuriated the Ottoman administration. In past centuries this prestigious tarbush had been worn by all notables, thus giving rise to the misunderstanding. This stylish vogue was viewed as deliberate defiance of the imperial power, and the
naqib
was expected to maintain the delicate balance between local pride and the honor of the central authority.

Abdullah died in July 1797, and his son inherited the
niqaba
. But the new appointee died after a few months, and the post passed to his brother, who also died soon after assuming the
niqaba
.
²⁰
And so once again Hassan stood in the mosque of al-Aqsa to hear the
qadi
declare before the multitude: ‘We have accepted the recommendation of the notables of Jerusalem, who have chosen you, Hassan ibn Abd al-Latif, to be
naqib
, like your father and grandfather before you. Knowing of your good qualities and abilities, we appoint you accordingly.’
²¹

The series of misfortunes that had led up to the rise of Hassan doubtless aroused suspicions that he had had something to do with it, but no one dared to express them in public and they were probably groundless. When Umar, the son of one of the boys who died in 1797, reached the proper age, Hassan passed the post of the
naqib
to him. Theirs was a complex relationship: Umar was not only Hassan’s nephew, he was also his grandson, being the son of Hassan’s daughter who had married his nephew. Such matches were customary in those days, and no one discredited their motives. Certainly the clan as a whole had no doubts about the revered
sheikh
.

The reversals in the family’s status reflected upheavals in the empire, and times of uncertainty and transition prompted people to change the ground rules. The stable, continuous regime in Istanbul ended, and a period of instability ensued. A new century began in which the Middle East would change almost beyond recognition, plunged into a maelstrom of wars and revolutions that continue to the present day. The drama was so high that one would have expected it to drastically alter the life of the Jerusalemites in general, and the Husyanis in
particular. But continuity rather than transformation seemed to be the rule in those anxious times.

The high drama in the empire began in 1789 with the accession of Sultan Selim III, who ruled until 1807. He dared to challenge some of the more conservative power bases of the empire – the military and religious institutions – and thus destabilized the center. As always in such critical situations, the small players on the regional stage had to exercise the utmost caution and exert the greatest effort. Both camps in Istanbul demanded that these regional players commit to a side.

Which brings us back to Hassan sitting in his library, reconstructing the genealogies of Jerusalem’s notables. While the enterprise satisfied his intellectual curiosity, it was also driven by the exigencies of the rivalry in Jerusalem. Responding to Istanbul’s demand for loyalty, the family now asked to be paid in advance for its support. Hassan wrote to the
naqib al-ashraf
in Istanbul, asking that the sultan approve all of the family’s posts, so as to consolidate its religious and social standing. Hassan sought to persuade the great
naqib
that the Husaynis’ lineage was not inferior to that of the Khalidis. The latter’s name, as has been noted, was engraved in the collective consciousness as pure and proven. Hassan’s highly regarded books, and later al-Muradi’s prospography, had completed the usurpation of the lineage of the al-Husayni al-Wafa’i. The sultan’s renewed recognition was thus needed not only for reappointment but also as a final unqualified recognition of the new family name. ‘After almost a hundred years in which the family has filled such important posts,’ Hassan wrote in his letter to the
naqib al-ashraf
of Istanbul (which was accompanied by an especially generous gift), ‘it deserves to be known by the name that attests to its noble lineage.’
²²

But the Ottoman power was not satisfied with the generous gift – it wanted political results. The family had helped to put down a tax revolt in 1789 in the villages of Banu Hassan (the area around modern-day Beit Safafa, in the south of the city). Damascus tended to regard the family as responsible not only for Jerusalem and its environs but also for Gaza, Nablus, Ramla and Jenin. In 1796, when one young Husayni after another was appointed to the post of
naqib
, those towns and cities were mentioned explicitly in their letters of investiture. During the time of Umar, Lydda and Jaffa were also included in the family’s sphere of influence.
²³
These places were always named in the family’s investitures, though its position in them was not invariably strong. But as the eighteenth century drew to a close, the family was seen as an
important factor in these urban centers, and its prestige grew beyond the leadership of the Jerusalemite nobility to encompass a broader field. This would be one of several reasons for the family’s future position at the head of the Palestinian national movement.
²⁴

During this period, marriage with another family was also used to strengthen the Husaynis’ position. In the summer of 1792, Abdullah’s eldest daughter married the heir of the head of the al-Jama’i family. The match sealed the alliance between the two families, though only two years earlier the al-Jama’is had taken part in the coalition that had driven the Husaynis from their dominant posts. But the women of the family were more than diplomatic assets in consolidating its position. As we shall see, the Husaynis helped to advance a progressive Muslim attitude regarding the position of women. Hassan was the first to do so: one of his decisions stated that whoever failed to bequeath to his daughters their proper portion in the inheritance, or who robbed them of their dowry, could not be considered a Muslim. This statement appears as part of his wider criticism of the condition of Islam in the villages surrounding Jerusalem.
²⁵

This is not to suggest that Sheikh Hassan was a feminist ahead of his time: he, too, thought the birth of sons a blessing and the birth of daughters, if not a curse, certainly a disappointment. His first wife bore only daughters, and it was thought that the
sheikh
would have to sustain his family’s position by marrying them off well. But he followed the custom in such cases and married a young woman who bore him his first sons. By the time he died, he had grandchildren by his daughters, and one of them, Umar al-Husayni, was appointed guardian of his half-siblings who were still minors – eight boys and three girls.

The position of women had some weighty economic aspects. From the time he reached adulthood, Hassan had to appear before the Shari‘a court in connection with the estate of his mother, and his sister. Their estates included the debts owed his family by the Jewish and Christian communities in Jerusalem – among them the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish communities, as well as the Armenians. Appearing as the creditor on behalf of his family was not, incidentally, an indication of hostility towards these communities. Indeed, his very first decision as
mufti
, in a dispute between the Muslim inhabitants of the village of Silwan and the Jews of Jerusalem, came down in favor of the latter. The Jews of Jerusalem traditionally bought stone for their tombstones from Silwan, where it was quarried on land belonging to the village’s religious authority. The complaint was that the sale had been carried out
without a permit from the guardian of the religious lands, but Hassan ruled that the vendors – namely, the villagers – had been at fault, and not the Jewish purchasers. This was the first of many decisions that revealed the complexity of Hassan’s worldview, including the issue of Muslim-Jewish relations.
²⁶

The high drama continued with Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and his journey into Palestine and Syria a year later. This, too, was a climactic event that did not affect the lives of the Husaynis, unless one considers the invasion as the onset of modern times in the Middle East and the starting point of its Westernization (a somewhat anachronistic concept with students of the Middle East, who prefer a more synthetic picture of internal and external dynamics to explain transformations in the area over the last 200 years). Certainly, the next century saw the economic and political integration of Palestine into the European scene and exposed the family to the impact of foreign interests and agendas. How the family responded to these new developments is not easy to assess. The evidence from the past is open information: we know what difficulties they faced but less, if anything at all, about how they responded.

What mattered in the early years of the nineteenth century was that Jerusalem’s fate depended greatly on the policies of al-Jazzar, with whom the family maintained good relations. Even while French soldiers were marching on the Palestine coast, the Husaynis corresponded with Acre on trivial and routine issues that reflected Hassan’s agenda. During these dramatic days, Hassan wrote a letter beseeching Ahmad al-Jazzar to ease the burden on the
jaballiya
, the mountain people, poor peasants from the mountains of Hebron, Jerusalem and Nablus who worked as servants of the Haram. The letter sang their praises. We cannot say whether this was typical of the family’s attitude towards the unfortunates in the city and the surrounding country or the expression of a social conscience, but we do know that such tendencies would not always persist in later generations.
²⁷

The notables of Jerusalem as a whole were loyal to al-Jazzar. When the Ottoman government attempted to limit his rule but allowed the governor of Gaza more authority in Jerusalem (translating mainly to the power of collecting taxes), they encountered a rebellious opposition of notables led by the Husaynis. In 1801, the notables caused the representative of the pro-Ottoman Gazan governor to flee and seek refuge in King David’s tomb on Mount Zion. Faced with such determined resistance, the Gazan governor, Abu Maraq, gave in, perhaps
also because he was interested in Umar’s sister. The family had never objected to politically advantageous matches, but we have no way of knowing how Zaynab, the young woman in question, felt about it.
²⁸