Defining Neighbors Read online

  6 As of the Ottoman reforms of 1864, the empire was divided into a number of different levels of administrative units. The first level was that of the vilayet, or province, which was ruled by a governor (vali). Vilayets were divided in turn into a number of sanjaks, or districts, which were themselves composed of subdistricts that were governed by kaymakams (subgovernors). An exceptional status was that of the mutasarriflik or independent sanjak, which, though much smaller than a typical vilayet, was under the direct authority of the sultan rather than through the intermediary of a vali; as we shall see, mutasarrifliks were typically created to bypass the standard Ottoman administrative hierarchy to satisfy particular political interests, whether domestic or foreign. See Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, 136ff; Gerber, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914; Gerber, State and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 9:33–76. On eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Acre, see Philipp, Acre.

  7 Scholars differ on what motivated the Ottomans to make this change. Haim Gerber argues that the change was due to external factors, particularly “the impact of the West.” Gerber, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914, 6–7. Cf. Abu-Manneh, “The Rise of the Sanjak of Jerusalem in the Late Nineteenth Century,” 41–42. Abu-Manneh highlights the internal Ottoman factors that, he argues, were at least as important as the European in accounting for Jerusalem’s rise in status in the nineteenth century. Porath points to “the internal interest in Jerusalem and the dispute between various Christian sects over the rights to the Holy Places.” See Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918–1929, 15–16. David Kushner highlights the importance of Egypt’s “record of expansionism in the nineteenth century,” which “made Palestine a vulnerable border region and enhanced the importance of its internal and external security.” Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem, 23.

  8 Schölch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882, 12. See also Hanssen, Fin de siècle Beirut.

  9 On the variety of ways the borders have been imagined, beginning in the Hebrew Bible, see Havrelock, River Jordan. For different post-Ottoman Zionist versions of the imagined borders, see Shelef, Evolving Nationalism, 25–106. On Islamic views, see, e.g., Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement 1918–1929, 1–16. The Qurʾan refers to the “Holy Land” in Q. 5:20–21, in which Moses says, “O my People! Enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will you be overthrown, to your own ruin.” Cited in Abu Sway, “The Holy Land, Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque in the Qurʾan, Sunnah and Other Islamic Literary Sources,” 88. See also Q. 17:1–4, which refers to al-masjid al-aqṣā, “whose precincts we have blessed.”

  10 The presence of missionaries in Jerusalem is discussed further below. See also Perry, “ha-Naẓrut ha-maʿaravit: Protastantim”; Perry, British Mission to the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Palestine.

  11 A classic study of Zionist ideology is Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology. For a recent introduction to the history of Zionism, see Engel, Zionism. Zionists in the pre-1948 period often translated Ereẓ Yisraʾel as “Palestine.” After the creation of the State of Israel, and especially since the 1960s, there has been a marked ambivalence among Zionists toward the use of the term Palestine, associated as it is with a competing nationalist movement.

  12 On the complex phenomenon of Palestinian identity, see Khalidi, Palestinian Identity.

  13 As Yuval Ben-Bassat writes, “in order to embed the discussion on proto-Zionist-Arab encounters in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century into a broader historical context, it is important to examine the Ottoman framework in which Jewish-Arab relations unfolded.” Ben-Bassat, “Beyond National Historiographies,” 112. While my study focuses on texts found in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel, I have learned much from several recent scholars who have begun mining the Ottoman archives for Ottoman-Turkish language materials concerning the Arab-Zionist encounter. See, for instance, Ben-Bassat, “Rural Reactions to Zionist Activity in Palestine before and after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 as Reflected in Petitions to Istanbul”; Fishman, “Palestine Revisited.”

  14 The Turkish word millet comes from the Arabic millah, a Qurʾanic term of Aramaic origin. The term, according to Bernard Lewis, originally meant “a word” and came to represent a group that accepts a particular word or revealed book. In the Ottoman Empire, explains Lewis, “it became a technical term, and was used for the organized, recognized, religio-political communities enjoying certain rights of autonomy under their own chiefs.” See Lewis, The Political Language of Islam, 38–39. See also Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East, 19–21.

  15 Scholars have questioned to what extent the millet system was indeed a “system” (rather than an ad hoc set of practices) when it actually was instituted (in the early years of the empire or in the nineteenth century) and when it was dissolved (during the Tanzimat or at the end of the empire). See Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. One direction for future scholarship in this area is to use these revisions to understand how this imperial system informed and affected intercommunal relations. One wonders whether Jews and Arabs in the Late Ottoman period viewed each other in different ways from their predecessors given the evolving ways in which religious communities related to the empire. The case of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine suggests that Jews and Arabs in the Late Ottoman period may have come to view each other in terms that at least in part mimicked the religious basis of the communal structures imposed by the Ottoman state. At the same time, it also reveals how extra-Ottoman influences, such as European race-thinking, could simultaneously penetrate communal consciousness in this era.

  16 “Distinction” is not necessarily equivalent to negative “discrimination.” Notwithstanding the Tanzimat reforms of the mid-nineteenth century, though, there were certainly areas of discrimination as well. For a discussion of intercommunal relations in the Ottoman Empire and the forces of distinction, see Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, 174–79.

  17 Further complicating this study is the fact that, as Quataert puts it, “ethnic terms confusingly often described what actually were religious differences.” In the Balkan and Anatolian lands, for instance, “Ottoman Christians informally spoke of ‘Turks’ when in fact they meant Muslims. ‘Turk’ was a kind of shorthand referring to Muslims of every sort, whether Kurds, Turks, or Albanians (but not Arabs).” Ibid., 175. As I will demonstrate in my analysis of Hebrew newspapers, Late Ottoman Zionists sometimes appeared to use the term Arab when they actually meant Muslim.

  18 See “The Tanzimat Era” in Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. For a variety of theories explaining the Ottoman motivations for the Tanzimat, see Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, 65–68.

  19 Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 74.

  20 There were also “secular” courts, which were formally recognized in 1847. As Glidewell Nadolski explains, “these were independent of the Shariʿa and Christian courts in that they dealt with international commercial relations, an area that had traditionally been outside the jurisdiction of the Shariʿa.” Nadolski, “Ottoman and Secular civil Law,” 522–23. See also “Ḳanūn,” in eI 3.

  21 Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, 75–76.

  22 Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem, 35–36.

  23 The term Capitulations refers to a set of agreements between the Ottoman Empire and various European powers, beginning as early as the sixteenth century, with Selim II’s agreement with France in 1569. The agreements would permit the foreign subjects to travel in the Ottoman Empire under the rule of their home country’s laws, exempting them from Ottoman “legal and fiscal jurisdiction.” Initially temporary measures, by the eighteenth century new agreements came to be regarded as permanent. A non-Muslim Ottoman subject was able to receive from a European representative a certificate, known in Ottoman as a berat (title of privilege), which would grant the person the equiv
alent status of a European subject, thereby also exempting the person from Ottoman taxes. See Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, 79.

  24 Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism, 11.

  25 Ibid., 174.

  26 On “the complex and contradictory nature of the Tanzimat” with regard to their impact on non-Muslims in the empire, see Nadolski, “Ottoman and Secular Civil Law,” 521–25. James Gelvin has noted the irony that a “policy of promising equality to all inhabitants of the empire regardless of religious affiliation hardened communal boundaries and precipitated instances of intercommunal violence.” Gelvin, “Secularism and Religion in the Arab Middle East,” 121.

  27 “The traditional poll tax, or jizya,” explains Stillman, “which had symbolized the dhimmī’s humble, subject status since the early days of Islam was now [through the Tanzimat] rescinded. The fiscal change was, however, cosmetic, in a sense, since the jizya was replaced with a new levy, the bedel-i askeri … which exempted non-Muslims from military service, for which they had become technically liable with the granting of civil equality. This destigmatized tax was entirely suitable to most non-Muslims, who had no desire to enter the army.” Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, 9. Zürcher points out that the bedel, just like the jizya before it, “was paid collectively by Christian and Jewish communities to tax-farmers and, later, salaried treasury officials.” For a detailed analysis of the Ottoman military conscription system, see Zürcher, “The Ottoman Conscription System, 1844–1914.”

  28 See Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, 123.

  29 On the decision to impose universal conscription, see Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 150–53. On the persistence of the Ottoman bedel-i askeri even during the First World War, despite its high cost (ranging from thirty to fifty gold Turkish pounds), see Penslar, Jews and the Military, 68.

  30 According to Hanioğlu, the Young Turk Weltanschauung, “as it developed between 1889 and 1902, was vehemently antireligious, viewing religion as the greatest obstacle to human progress.” Despite this perspective, the Young Turks “attempted to use religion as a device for modernization.” Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 305–6.

  31 For discussion of this policy, see chapter 2.

  32 On the Ottoman government’s ineffectual attempts to limit Jewish immigration and land purchasing in Palestine, see Mandel, “Ottoman Policy and Restrictions on Jewish Settlement in Palestine,” 328; Mandel, “Ottoman Practice as Regards Jewish Settlement in Palestine.” According to Mandel, Ottoman resistance to Jewish immigration to Palestine was motivated by the Sublime Porte’s fear of “the possibility of nurturing another national problem in the Empire” and by its desire not “increase the number of foreign subjects, particularly Europeans,” and even more specifically Russians, “in its domains.” Mandel, “Ottoman Policy and Restrictions on Jewish Settlement in Palestine,” 314. Mandel summarizes the development of the policies as follows: “the Government placed restrictions on Jews entering Palestine from 1882 onwards, which were designed to prevent Jewish settlement in the country. One decade later, it also imposed restrictions against Jewish land purchase in Palestine. Its opposition to Jewish settlement was heightened in 1897 when the Zionist Movement … was founded; and in 1901 the restrictions were against Jewish entry and land purchase in Palestine were revised in the form of consolidated regulations.” Mandel, “Ottoman Practice as Regards Jewish Settlement in Palestine,” 34. On the various methods Jews used to bypass this policy, including departing from Jaffa and reentering in Haifa or Beirut, see Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem, 68–69.

  33 This line is found in the the fascinating 1906 report written by Ali Ekrem Bey about Jewish immigration in Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem, 184.

  34 For Ali Ekrem (similar, as we shall see, to Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi), the primary motivation for Jews to come to Palestine in particular was their religious “fervor” (taʿaṣṣub). Jerusalem, he wrote, “is the Jews’ precious paradise.” Ibid., 182. He understood this population, which he surely recognized was not uniformly religiously observant, to be defined and driven nonetheless by their religion.

  35 For a clear, concise narrative of the revolution, see Masters, The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 211–13. For a study of the effects of the revolution on the Jewish, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox leaderships and communities of Jerusalem, see Der Matossian, “Administrating the Non-Muslims and the ‘Question of Jerusalem’ after the Young Turk Revolution.”

  36 Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 150; Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 82. On the hopes of certain Arab proponents of Ottomanism (including Ruhi al-Khalidi) in the immediate wake of the Young Turk Revolution, see Abu-Manneh, “Arab-Ottomanists’ Reactions to the Young Turk Revolution.”

  37 Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 147. On the “national and racial outlooks” associated with the rise of Turkish nationalism, see Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908, 41–49.

  38 Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 297. According to Hanioğlu, after the revolution the Young Turks ceased discussing race in public as they shifted their rhetoric to Ottomanism, but in private correspondence race remained central to their thinking.

  39 Türk, no. 158 (March 14, 1907), 1. Cited in ibid., 68.

  40 Cited in Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 82.

  41 This affair has been the subject of several scholarly studies, including Elshakry, “Darwin’s Legacy in the Arab East”; Jeha, Darwin and the Crisis of 1882 in the Medical Department.

  42 An English translation of Lewis’s speech, which Jeha argues was originally written in Arabic, is found in Jeha, Darwin and the Crisis of 1882 in the Medical Department, 160–70.

  43 See Farag, “The Lewis Affair and the Fortunes of al-Muqtataf.”

  44 Elshakry, “Darwin’s Legacy in the Arab East,” 28.

  45 Ibid.; Elshakry, “Global Darwin.”

  46 See Bernasconi and Lott, The Idea of Race, 54–83.

  47 On Social Darwinism, see Hofstadter’s classic, Social Darwinism in American Thought.

  48 E.g., the 1900 al-Hilāl article “Aṣnāf al-bashar.”

  49 Zaydān, Ṭabaqāt al-umam aw as-salāʾil al-bashariyya. The book draws on the work of the Irish scholar Augustus Henry Keane. On Keane, see “Dr. A. H. Keane,” Nature 88 (February 8, 1912), 488. Keane’s work on race is important in this context given his views on Jewish and Arab racial qualities. “Expansion and progress are the dominant characteristics of the Aryan, concentration and immutability of the Semitic intellect, a special reservation having always to be made in favour of the Jews, most versatile perhaps of all peoples.” Keane, The World’s Peoples, 328.

  50 On Zaydan’s work on race and its use of Keane, see El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory, 58–60.

  51 Troutt Powell highlights the writings of, among others, Muhammad at-Tunisi, Selim Qapudan, Rifaʿa Rafiʿ at-Tahtawi, ʿAli Mubarak, Yaʿqub Sanuʿa, and ʿAbdallah Nadim.

  52 Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism, 5.

  53 Ibid., 17.

  54 An irony, of course, as Ben-Yehuda is best known for his efforts to revive Hebrew as a quotidian, spoken language and for his stubborn refusal to speak to his son in any language other than Hebrew.

  55 Benarieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century—the Old City, 185–86.

  56 Perry, “ha-Naẓrut ha-maʿaravit,” 141–45.

  57 Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century—the Old City, 250–64; Perry, British Mission to the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Palestine.

  58 On the issue of race in the ideology of American Christian missionaries in the Middle East, see Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 262. Of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, Makdisi writes, “The college’s Christian idealism and missionary character were nevertheless refracted through a mid-century American racialist reading of the world. As its first president, Daniel Bliss, put it so succinctly: ‘We open its doors to the members of the most advanced and most backward of races. As for me, I w
ould admit the Pigmies of Central Africa in the hope that after a lapse of a few thousand years some of them might become leaders of Church and State.’ ” Ibid., 209.

  59 Efron, Defenders of the Race; Hart, Jews and Race; Falk, “Zionism and the Biology of the Jews,” 587–607.

  60 For a discussion of the problems associated with demographic analysis in Ottoman Palestine, as well as an impressive attempt at engaging in such an analysis, see McCarthy, The Population of Palestine, especially 2–5. The work that generated perhaps the most controversy and debate on this question is Peters, From Time Immemorial. See also Said and Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims, 296. For an insightful discussion of the demographic ambiguities of Late Ottoman Palestine, see Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 3.

  61 McCarthy notes one exception: “Official statistics of resident noncitizens,” he explains, “were published only in 1895 (for the year 1893).” McCarthy, The Population of Palestine, 23.

  62 On the Capitulations and the Jews, see Friedman, “The System of Capitulations and Its Effects on Turco-Jewish Relations in Palestine, 1856–1897.”

  63 For our purposes, if the actual numbers were somewhat higher or lower, this book’s argument would not be much affected. I base my estimates primarily on McCarthy, The Population of Palestine.

  64 Abassi, “Temurot ba-ukhlusiyah ha-muslimit bi-rushalayim 1840–1914.”

  65 Mannā‘, “ha-Ukhlusiyah ha-ʿarvit: Ḥevrah, kalkalah ve-irgun,” 8:164–65.

  66 The Ottomans created this position to replace the prominence of the shaykhs and thereby gain a stronger hold on the rural population. Ultimately the shaykhs maintained much of their power. Ibid., 173.

  67 Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine, 5; Harani, “ha-ʿEdot ha-noẓriyot”; Ervine, “Yerushalayim ha-armanit”; McCarthy, The Population of Palestine, 8–13.

  68 On village life in the region around Jerusalem, see Oren-Nordheim, “ha-Merkhav ha-kafri bi-svivot yerushalayim be-shilhei ha-tekufah ha-ʿot’manit.” On the urban nature of the Christian community, see Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine, 3.