A “Scientific Expedition” to Gallipoli

This chapter looks at the period of the constitutional revolution as a prelude to the Great War, interpreted by two eminent local historians of the life of Nablus: Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh and Ihsan al-Nimr. It illustrates two contrasting perspectives on how the city potentates, and how its middle classes and artisans reacted to the removal of Sultan Abdul Hamid from power. What is striking in this “farcical moment” was the strength of support for the old regime by the city's merchants and artisans, and the general hostility toward the new freedoms promised by the Young Turks. Nimr attributes this hostility to the substantial autonomy enjoyed by the Nablus region during the earlier periods of Ottoman rule.

Ottoman Modernity and the Biblical Gaze

This chapter talks about the representation of Palestine in the photography of Khalil Raad. The early photographers of the Levant were almost exclusively Armenians, and Raad was one of the few Arab photographers who became prominent in this period. His photos indicate to what extent local artists had internalized the orientalist discourse of European photographers in their “documentation” of the Holy Land. Moreover, Raad's portraits of Ahmad Cemal Pasha and Mersinli Cemal Pasha, the two main commanders of the Ottoman forces in Syria, appearing in relaxed family and social settings, were circulated widely during the war. Raad's portraits of the two men helped him gain access to the inner circle of the Ottoman administration.

A Farcical Moment

This chapter discusses Muhammad Kurd Ali's leadership of a large number of journalists, preachers, poets, and writers from Syria and Palestine who were mobilized in support of the war effort in the Dardanelles. The two compendiums produced for this event (covering the Anatolian and the Hijazi expeditions) address Turkish perception of the Arabs, and Arab perception of the Turks within the Ottoman sultanate, and the possibilities of a future Turkish–Syrian Federation after the war. Even though the language and ideological references of the expeditions are outdated today, they nevertheless reveal hidden agendas and concerns that were uppermost in the minds of the Ottoman leadership.

Two Faces of Palestinian Orthodoxy

This chapter talks about the meaning of denominational affiliation in the conflict between two towering intellectuals of the war period. Yusif al-Hakim was a leading Syrian judge and public prosecutor in Jaffa and Jerusalem, and a significant force in the Arabization of the Antioch Orthodox Church. His nemesis during the pre-war years was Issa al-Issa—arguably the most important journalist in twentieth-century Palestine—who founded, published, and edited the Filastin daily paper. One of Hakim's tasks as a public prosecutor was to apply the Ottoman press laws against talasun (religious blasphemy) and qadhf (defamation of character), which Issa was often accused of. It is no accident that both Issa and Hakim at the end of the war became pillars of the Faisali movement and members of the first independent Arab government in Damascus in 1919.

The Sweet Aroma of Holy Sewage

This chapter analyzes how new urban sensibilities grew out of the secularization of public space. It involved the transformation of ceremonials from traditional religious celebrations to popular carnivalesque avenues for leisure (most notably the Nebi Rubeen and Nebi Musa festivals, known as mawasim), now stripped of their religious motifs. A significant drive boosting these urban developments was the substantial investment in public infrastructure dictated by German–Ottoman war planning. These schemes can be seen also as part of earlier Ottoman policies, beginning with the work of Midhat Pasha in the mid-nineteenth century, to integrate the Syrian urban centers within the Ottoman centralizing state. The chapter shows how these plans involved the development of urban planning, the schooling system, and the introduction of new cultural institutions to buttress the integration of Syria and Palestine within the Ottoman system.

Arabs, Turks, and Monkeys

This chapter examines the evolution of Filistin as a region, as well as the various usages of the term Filistin in late Ottoman cartography and ethnography of Syria. Beginning with the sixteenth century, and possibly earlier, the term Filistin was systematically used to designate the southern Syrian districts—often referring to the region equivalent to the Holy Land in European and biblical travel literature. Both in travel and cartographic publications, the terms Syria and Palestine (Filistin) were used frequently, together and separately, to designate the Shami sanjaqs. Meanwhile, in Ottoman and Egyptian Khedival mapping, the border separating Palestine from Syria was amorphous and overlapping, depending on the political context.

Introduction

This introductory chapter discusses the significance of the remaking of Palestine as an autonomous geographic entity within greater Syria and the Ottoman Arab provinces. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Filistin was not a separate administrative unit within the Ottoman sultanate, but the term Filistin was designated for a region embedded in the provinces of Bilad al-Sham (Syria). It was frequently used to indicate the southern region of Syria, corresponding to the combined sanjaqs (districts) of Akka, Nablus, and Jerusalem. In this regard, the chapter states that the importance of Rafiq al-Tamimi's work is that it provided unique ethnographic distinctions to each of those districts, with detailed and sharp field observations about the customs, mores, and cultural practices of southern Syria as a whole.

Adele Azar’s Notebook

This chapter demonstrates how at the turn of the century, the use of family endowments and benevolent associations created the earliest forms of independent women's groups. It studies the notebook of Adele Azar in light of Halide Edip's educational work in Syria and Mount Lebanon during the war. The main focus of these projects, in Azar's case, was the teaching of destitute girls and their preparation for public employment. Azar's notebook shows that charity and pious foundations not only were not opposed to the evolution of a more substantial independent women's movement, but also were often the very foundation from which these movements emerged.