A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine

Palestine History and Heritage Project 1

Ingrid Hjelm, Hamdan Taha, Ilan Pappe, Thomas L. Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429627996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine discusses prospects and

methods for a comprehensive, evidence-based history of Palestine with a

critical use of recent historical, archaeological and anthropological methods.

This history is not an exclusive history but one that is ethnically and

culturally inclusive, a history of and for all peoples who have lived in Palestine.

After an introductory essay offering a strategy for creating coherence

and continuity from the earliest beginnings to the present, the volume presents

twenty articles from twenty-two contributors, fifteen of whom are of

Middle Eastern origin or relation.

Split thematically into four parts, the volume discusses ideology, national

identity and chronology in various historiographies of Palestine, and the

legacy of memory and oral history; the transient character of ethnicity in

Palestine and questions regarding the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists

and historians to protect the multi-ethnic cultural heritage of Palestine;

landscape and memory, and the values of community archaeology and

bio-archaeology; and an exploration of the "ideology of the land" and its

influence on Palestine's history and heritage.

The first in a series of books under the auspices of the Palestine History

and Heritage Project (PaHH), the volume offers a challenging new departure

for writing the history of Palestine and Israel throughout the ages. A

New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine explores the diverse history

of the region against the backdrop of twentieth-century scholarly construction

of the history of Palestine as a history of a Jewish homeland with roots

in an ancient, biblical Israel and examines the implications of this ancient

and recent history for archaeology and cultural heritage. The book offers a

fascinating new perspective for students and academics in the fields of anthropological,

political, cultural and biblical history.

Part 1

Historiography

1.1. Emic and etic historiography and tradition within various disciplines

1 Palestinian historical narrative¹

Hamdan Taha

Introduction

Palestinian history has been a widely debated arena of ideological struggle over the past century dominated by two competing narrative trends: an indigenous Palestinian or a settler-colonial Zionist perspective. This chapter aims to situate the Palestinian historical narrative in the last century within a dramatically shifting political context.

Such narratives have generally been based on religious and ancient texts as well as on Arab and Islamic sources, such as the works of the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun, who established a methodological basis for Arab historiography in his “Introduction” to world history (Muqqadimah), and the volume on prominent cities by the fifteenth-century Mujir ed-Din al Hanbali in The Glorious History of Jerusalem and Hebron. Many books have been written about shrines in Palestine, particularly in and around Jerusalem. Other sources include accounts by religious pilgrims, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European explorers and contemporary archaeological surveys and excavations.

Palestinian historiographies from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have been provided by Abdul Razaq el-Bitar (Syrian), Hasan el-Bureini, Hassan el-Husseini, Khalil el-Muradi, Michael el-Sabbagh and Ibrahim el-Urah. El-Husseini’s work on the notables of Jerusalem in the twelfth century is probably the first modern Palestinian historiography (Abu Amneh 2008: 1–2).

At the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a new generation of Palestinian historians emerged, among whom were Ahmad el-Khalidi, Abdullah Mukhlis, Issa al-Sifri, Mohammad Darwaza, Subhi Yassin, Ihsan el-Nimer, Omar el-Barghouti, Khalil el-Sakakini, Abdullatif Tibawi, Qadri Touqan, Mahmoud el-Abedi, Arif el-Arif, Mustafa el-Dabagh, Tawfiq Cannan and Dimitri Baramki. Although they were without formal training, they used many sources and were often more innovative than their European and American counterparts (Foster 2011: 5–6).

The past four decades have witnessed a growing interest in the documentation of Palestinian historical narratives, which has generally focused on the Ottoman and British Mandate periods, the 1948 Nakbah and the ensuing era of Palestinian nationalist and revolutionary politics. The Nakbah is the defining event of modern Palestinian history, shaping it as a narrative of survival. The first Palestinian review of historiography was A. Abu Ghazaleh (1971), Palestinian Historians under the British Mandate, which details two dominant trends: traditional Islamic and Arabist. T. Khalidi (1981) has reviewed Palestinian historiography from 1900 to 1948 and ascribed the wealth of work from the nineteenth century to the Arab Renaissance (Foster 2011:2–4). From the 1980s, we see many new Palestinian works; e.g. by Rashid el-Khalidi, Walid el-Khalidi, Khalil Athamina, Adel Manaa, A. el-Kayyali, Salim Tamari, Beshara Doumani, Issam Nassar and Maher el-Sharief. El-Sharief (2016) has provided one of the most updated reviews of Palestinian historiography.

The difficulties of excavating the Palestinian past are daunting as the physical and vocal presence of Palestinians has been erased (Doumani 1992).

The first Palestinian historiography of archaeology is D. Baramki’s introduction to Palestinian history and architecture (1969; further, Shaath 1987; Ibrahim 1990). The work of Nadia Abu el- Haj (2001), though focusing on Israeli archaeology, should be regarded as a seminal contribution to the history of archaeological work in Palestine. The revival of Palestinian archaeology over the last two decades has been documented, inter alia, by the present author (Taha 2008, 2010, 2013). Furthermore, the insights of Keith Whitelam, Thomas Thompson and Edward Said have influenced a whole generation of Palestinian historians and archaeologists.

Historiographical work before the Nakbah

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Palestinian students of the Nahda (Renaissance) movement dealt with Western historical and archaeological research. Drawing on history and philology these early studies reflect the new historical awareness of Palestinian intellectuals.

Before the Nakbah, Palestinian historiographical work concerned a wide range of themes. Many books were written on world history (e.g. Ruhi 1922; Thibyan 1923; Dahdah 1926; Harami 1935; el-Sabagh 1935; Ziadeh 1945–1946 and Tamimi 1943). Arab history and, in particular, the history of Bilad al-Sham were major themes in Palestinian historiography as reflected in the works of M. Darwaza (1887–1984) and D. al-Miqdadi (1898–1961), who were among the leading authors of textbooks in the Arab World in the 1920s and early 1930s (Corbett 2014: 122). Their books drew on a variety of available resources, enabling both national and pan-national narratives. Darwaza (1923, 1934) wrote the first modern history of Arab nations in the 1920s and 1930s, narrating the origins of the Semitic peoples and the rise of Islam. M. al-Abedi (1938) and S. Hathwah (1945–1947) wrote textbooks for elementary schools in Palestine. General books on Arab history and culture were authored by Adil Zu’ayter (1945). Ahmad Khalifa and Radi Abd al-Hadi co-authored the History of Arab Kingdoms (1946) and Khalil Totah wrote two books in English and Arabic about the history of Arab Education (1926, 1933).

The Arab Nahda and the relationship between Arab nationalism and Islam were primary themes for Antonius (1938), Haykal (1943), Ziadeh (1945, 1946) and Darwaza (1948–1952). Other aspects of Arab history and heritage, including Arab historiography (Ziadeh 1943, 1945), were addressed by a number of Palestinian historians.

The work of J.H. Breasted, in particular, his 1916 book Ancient Times (Arabic 1926), strongly influenced a generation of Arab and Palestinian historians (Corbett 2014: 121–122). Breasted contended that Arabia was the ancestral cradle of all Semites, who shed their Bedouin ways and developed urban-based civilizations across the Middle East. In this narrative, Hebrew nomads wandered from Arabia into an urban Palestinian society, originally established by the Semites of Canaan. Breasted thus provided post-war Arab intellectuals a pan-national origin, predating the narrative deployed by the Zionist movement and giving unity to ancient and modern Arabs, including Arab Jews. Echoing Breasted, Palestinian historians traced Arab origins to Semites, emerging from the Arabian Peninsula. Corbett noted that in 1919, Muhib al-Din al-Khatib published a synthesis of this “Semitic Wave Theory” in a Damascus newspaper. In 1920, an editorial in the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds al-Sharif differentiated between Palestinian Jews, as part of the community, and European Jews, as outsiders.

Arab historians, after the First World War, were combating colonialism, especially Zionism in a number of books about the history and geography of Palestine and Syria (e.g. al-Sabagh 1923, 1944; al-Khouri 1930; Kattan 1945). Between 1908 and 1914, Palestinian authors began to write about the history of Zionism (e.g. Najib Nassar, Ruhi al-Khatib, Issa al-Isa, Bulus Abud and Saadi Bsisu). The concept of Ard-al Muqaddassa (Holy Land) was introduced into Palestinian historical writing by Khalil Baydas, while the issue of orientalism and the relationship between East and West were addressed by Rawhi el-Khalidi and Bandali al-Juzi (Khalidi, T. 1981: 70).

History of Palestine

The historical and geographical concept of Palestine was addressed by local historians at the end of the Ottoman period. One of the first general studies on the history of Palestine was Rafiq al-Tamimi and Ali Bahjat, Wilayat Bayrut (The Wilayat of Beirut), 1916. Khalil Totah and Habib Khouri co-authored Geography of Palestine in 1923, and Omer S. el-Bargouthi and Khalil Totah co-authored Tarikh Filastin (The History of Palestine) in 1922. Being one of the first Arabic works of its kind, this book is also the first modern synthesis of the history of Palestine, Drawing on Muslim, Christian and Jewish sources, set within a detailed pan-Semitic narrative of common origins (Corbett 2014: 121). It was used as a textbook throughout the Arab world.

Other history books about Palestine were published by the Library of Jerusalem, Maktabat al-Quds (1934), Akram Zeetar and Darwish el-Muqdadi (1935), and for elementary schools by Ali al-Shureiqi and Sidqi Hamdi (1949). A number of historians contributed textbooks (e.g. al-Abedi 1943; Darwaza 1936; Ziadeh 1943, 1947; Anabtawi and Ghunaim 1943). Others contributed to thematic issues as historical geography (Marmarji 1948), Islamic history (Jawzi 1928, Tibawi 1928) and the Crusader period (Tamimi 1945). Ahmad S. Khalidi wrote an eponymous biographical account about Men of Governance and Administration in Palestine (A. Khalidi 1966), preceded by a work on the time of the al-Rashidun Khalifate to the fourth-century A.H. (A. Khalidi 1947). He also edited a series of medieval books and manuscripts (1946) and wrote one of the first books on archaeology in Palestine (1943).

The contemporary history of Palestine was a primary focus of early Palestinian historians (e.g. Sakakini 1925; al-Dajani 1936; Aqel, Najm and al-Nas 1939; al-Sifri 1937; Haykal 1937; Ghandur 1938; al-Bitar 1947). Tawfiq Canaan wrote two books on the Palestine problem during the Palestinian Uprising: The Palestine Arab Cause (1936a) and Conflict in the Land of Peace (1936b). In the later book, Canaan refuted Zionist claims that Jewish immigration was benefitting the Palestinian people, and in the former work, published in English, Arabic and French, he described British policy during the 1936 Uprising as “a destructive campaign against the Arabs with the ultimate aim of exterminating them from their country” (Canaan 1936a; Nashef 2002).

Historiography of Palestinian towns and villages

Another concern in pre-1948 historical works, motivated by the creeping erasure of Palestinian land by Zionist settlement, was the historiography of towns and villages. T. Khalidi (1981: 68) includes among the early group of Palestinian historians of the topographical genre Asaad Mansour (1862–1941), Arif el-Arif (1892–1973) and Ihasn al-Nimr (1905–1985). One should also mention Abdullah Mukhlis (1878–1947), the director of the Department of Awqaf in Jerusalem, who dealt with Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and the shrine of Amrou Ibn el-Aas, while also writing histories of al-Aqsa Mosque, Safad, and Bethlehem.

Some of the first histories of Jerusalem were written by Khalil Sarkis (1874) and Asper al-Ghareib (1918). Khalil Totah and Bulus Shihadah (1920) wrote a series of archaeological guides for Jerusalem. Mansour wrote about the history of Nazareth and Mount Tabor (Foster 2011:58). Jamil Bahri published a book about the history of Haifa (1922), Arif al-Shareif wrote about the history of Hebron and Jerusalem (1939), N. Makhouly (1941) wrote a monograph on Acre and D. Baramki (1953) wrote on Hisham’s palace in Jericho. Arif el-Arif wrote a series of books about Palestinian cities: Gaza (1943), Askalan (1943), Bir es-Seba (1934) and Jerusalem (1947, 1951). A guide for Palestine was provided by Stephan and Afif (1942). In 1927, Mikhael N. al-Akkawi published a book about Daher el-Umar, who was the eighteenth-century ruler of Akka and Safad. Another illustrative example of a regional historian is Ihsan el-Nimer, whose History of the Nablus Mountain and Balka (1938) is a meticulously documented, popular and multicultural history. We may also include Machareous (1904), Saksak (1928) and Shihadah (1925) on the history of churches in Palestine; M. Yunis on al-Husseini’s socio-economic history (1946) and Ilyas Marmura’s pioneering 1936 study on the Samaritans. Noteworthy is also a series of historical and theological dictionaries compiled by some authors.

The first generation of Palestinian archaeologists

The first generation of Palestinian archaeologists and ethnographers emerged in the early twentieth century, among them Yusra, Dimitri Baramki, Naim Machouly, Salem K. el-Husseini, Jalil Baramki and N.G. Nassar. N. Machouly studied at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and was appointed Inspector in the Department of Antiquities from 1920 to 1948. He excavated several sites, including Isfia, Kh. el-Sunbara, Kh....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: creating coherence and continuity: suggestions and illustrations of methods and themes
• Part 1 Historiography
• Part 2 Ethnicity, geography and politics
• Part 3 Landscape, archaeology and memory in the interface between history and tradition
• Part 4 Ideologies of the land
• Index