The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty (12 page)

The success of the insurrection depended on the cooperation of the village
sheikhs
, especially those who dominated the northern areas of the Jerusalem
sanjaq
. Each of these
sheikhs
could rally hundreds of peasants armed with muskets or cold steel.
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When the Husaynis joined the revolt, they were able to call on those groups that had demonstrated their loyalty to them during the previous revolt of 1824, and these in turn helped to rally everyone who had ever served the Husaynis. Impelled by loyalty to the Ottoman government and by the injury to their status, many other notables supported the revolt.

But the initiative for the revolt against the Egyptian occupation of the Syrian districts lay elsewhere. Ostensibly the time was ripe for it in 1833, since in May of that year Ibrahim was 300 km from Istanbul, beside the city of Konya. However, though Ibrahim was far away, Muhammad Ali was present in person. With his army not far from Damascus, he demanded and obtained control over Syria’s districts, and now he came to inspect the booty. He arrived in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday, when there were more pilgrims (20,000) than residents in the city. Accompanied by a caravan with banners, he alighted at Nabi Daud. His first order was to open another gate in the city wall, one that had been filled with earth since the days of Umar ibn al-Khattab (586–90).
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It was difficult to revolt while the ruler was making such symbolic gestures. A vast throng filled the streets, and an eyewitness reported that some 500 persons were crushed to death during
the official reception.
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Needless to say, the reception did nothing to improve the situation, and insurrection remained the only solution.

If anyone still doubted it, a new Egyptian decree in early 1834 impinged directly on the grandees. Ibrahim announced his intention of conscripting the sons of notables. The Husaynis, and others like them, had to send their sons to the mountains. All at once,
fellahin
and aristocratic sprigs hid together in the caves and
wadis
in terror of the brutal Egyptian recruiting officers.
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It seems easy in retrospect to analyze the causes of a revolt, as we have done here by summarizing the general consensus among historians some 100 years after the outbreak. But in fact we cannot be sure that we truly understand the course of events more than a century and a half ago. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian army was perceived as alien and hated as such, and the forced conscription of young men and the confiscation of personal weapons may have been sufficient to cause people of all classes and communities – rural and urban, Christian and Muslim, peasants and notables – to rise up, risking their lives, their families and their properties. Some historians, however, have been so impressed by the dangers faced by the rebels and the breadth of their coalition that they describe the revolt as the uprising of a national movement – that is to say, of a population motivated by a spirit of solidarity and patriotism rather than the particular interests of its members. In 1993 sociologists Kimmerling and Migdal described it as the first Palestinian national revolt (as the Druze Lebanese historian Sulayman Abu Izz al-Din defined it back in 1929). Indeed, in the territory that would later be called political Palestine, the resistance against Egyptian rule was unprecedented in scope and intensity. The whole country backed Jerusalem. Though no one proposed an independent nation state and clearly the intention was to restore Ottoman rule, it may be possible to regard the events as the first signs of a national consciousness.
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It is hard to determine exactly where the revolt erupted, but we know that Jerusalem did not immediately join the other Syrian cities. It seems that it all began with an order from Egypt that may not have been to Ibrahim’s taste. Muhammad Ali ordered him to implement the tax policy and disarm the population throughout Syria. The first clash was with Bedouin tribes near the Jordan River who had never paid taxes to the Ottoman government. Later, in the spring of 1834, these were joined by aggrieved peasants, first in Transjordan and then in the village of Sa’ir near Hebron, and soon after by the peasantry of the hills of Nablus. It was only a question of time before the notables
would decide to confront those who had turned them from creditors into debtors. The first of these were the Tuqans and al-Jarars in Nablus, followed by the Abu Ghoshes, owners of the village of Einab whose chief source of income had been the impost on pilgrims en route to Jerusalem, now taken over by the Egyptians.

At this time Ibrahim was staying in his hilltop residence at Zawiyya al-Ibrahimiyya on Mount Zion, his favorite abode in Jerusalem because of his fear of the epidemics that periodically raged in the crowded alleys below. In April, before departing for his usual residence in Jaffa, he made an effort to defuse the imminent outbreak of revolt by inviting the ringleaders to discuss a compromise on the issue of arms. He proposed that only every other man surrender his weapons. It seems that only one family in the district accepted the deal – not surprisingly, this was the Abd al-Hadi family, which would continue to support Ibrahim throughout the revolt and would be rewarded with the governorship of Nablus until the end of the Egyptian occupation.
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The other families rejected the compromise and waited until the end of the month, when Ibrahim would return to Jaffa, where he usually spent the month of May. Qasim al-Ahmad, a Hebron grandee, came to Jerusalem at the head of a large contingent that has been variously described as between 5,000 and 20,000 strong. Together with the men of Abu Ghosh they formed a human barrier on the Jerusalem–Jaffa road to prevent Ibrahim from coming back. When al-Ahmad’s messenger called on Tahir al-Husayni, the
mufti
willingly gave his blessing to the revolt and even recruited other notables in the district of Jerusalem. Even Jaber Abu Ghosh, the governor of Jerusalem – the
mutasalem
– joined the insurrection. On 28 April 1834, the revolt erupted in Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, Galilee and even Transjordan.
³⁴

On 8 May the villagers began marching to the city, and the following day some 10,000 more armed men arrived from Nablus and Hebron. They all camped outside the city gates, and the following morning an impressive sight met the eyes of the Jerusalemites: all around the city’s southern and eastern walls were hundreds of peasants armed with pitchforks and clubs. That evening the rebels penetrated the city by the biblical ruse of slipping in through a disused water channel, and before long they seized control of the whole city except the fortress. They set up their headquarters in the Saraya Building, the seat of the Egyptian governor on the Via Dolorosa. They also besieged the fortress, which was occupied by an Egyptian force between 600 and 1,000 strong. As in 1703, the fortress held
out, and the rebels could not declare a complete victory, though the rest of the city was in their hands.

On 10 May the besieged soldiers demonstrated their own ingenuity. Using a brilliant guerrilla tactic, they seized some of the city’s dignitaries and imprisoned them in the fortress. Then the pendulum swung again, and for the second time the men of Nablus came to the aid of the Jerusalemites. They not only freed the imprisoned men but also captured the fortress with all the soldiers in it. Unlike the rebels in earlier uprisings, they hardly touched the captured soldiers, perhaps because they knew that reversals were not impossible and they did not wish to arouse Ibrahim’s vengeance. Instead they let off steam by sweeping through the city, breaking into some Jewish and Christian houses and looting them (though by and large they did not discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims) and robbing shops and market stalls and peaceful citizens.

It was a heady victory, but not without underlying anxieties. The leaders knew that in the long run a peasant army could not stand up to Muhammad Ali’s formidable forces. It is possible that such doubts also began to trouble Umar and Tahir al-Husayni. Umar was worried about the unstable personality of the Hebronite Qasim al-Ahmad, one of the leaders of the revolt. This Qasim had become a close friend of the frivolous Ibrahim Abu Ghosh, whose father Uthman was imprisoned in Acre. These, Umar felt, were neither easy nor trustworthy allies.
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Without stirring from Jaffa, Ibrahim asked Muhammad Ali to send him reinforcements of 9,000 troops. The reinforcements arrived only at the end of June and consisted of 15,000 men. (These figures, or their close approximations, are significant, especially for historical comparisons. For example, in 1948 some 100,000 Jewish troops fought against a similar force from the Arab countries.) The rebels clearly had no intention of surrendering, and Ibrahim grew impatient and decided to assault the rebellious city before his father’s troops arrived.
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The Abu Ghosh clan had been waiting for precisely this move. Though Ibrahim was able to get across the Qastel Hill on his way to Jerusalem, he arrived there in a poor state, worn out by the harassments of the Abu Ghosh. In Jerusalem his camp was besieged by the enthusiastic popular army, and some report that he considered surrendering. In desperation he appealed to the Abd al-Hadi family, who were indebted to him for giving them the governorship of Nablus in place of their old rivals, the Tuqans. The head of the family, Hussein Abd al-Hadi, distributed gifts and promises among
the Nablusi rebels, with the result that a gap appeared in the besieging ring, enabling Ibrahim to slip out. His famous army having been beaten twice since the outbreak of the revolt, Ibrahim decided to turn his attention to the village of Einab, the seat of the Abu Ghosh family. After a battle that lasted a day and a night, the villagers surrendered to Ibrahim’s 6,000 men.
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After his triumph over the villagers, Ibrahim proceeded to Jerusalem and defeated the city he had abandoned in April. He approached from the north, having beaten the men of Nablus, who then joined his forces in droves. But the Hebronite Qasim al-Ahmad did not yield, and though he retreated from the city, he remained determined to free Hebron, Nablus and Jerusalem from the Egyptian occupation.
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When Ibrahim concluded early in June that he had brought rebellious Jerusalem to its knees, he returned to the coast to prepare for the greater confrontation with the Ottoman sultan. But like a bushfire that flares up again after it appears to be extinguished, the flames of rebellion began to flicker once more around the walls of Jerusalem.

At the end of June, Jerusalem was once again up in arms against the Egyptians, thanks to the urging of Qasim al-Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu Ghosh. Then something strange happened. Whereas in May Tahir and Umar al-Husayni had hesitated to continue the insurrection, this time, against all odds, they joined the men they had previously mistrusted. Perhaps the earlier successes distorted their thinking or, however unusual for them, they underestimated the Egyptian ruler’s dogged determination.

Muhammad Ali had no intention of giving up Jerusalem. On the contrary, despite the city’s marginal strategic value, he meant to devote an unusually large military force to the purpose. The European powers were beginning to assume that Jerusalem was no longer in Egypt’s possession because of its belated response to the revolt, and Muhammad Ali was determined to show the Europeans that the Christian holy places were ruled by Egypt and not the Ottoman Empire.
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Just when the Husaynis had made up their minds to risk supporting the hopeless revolt, Muhammad Ali landed in Jaffa from Egypt with 15,000 men.
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The experienced Egyptian started his campaign by contacting the rebels and proposing a compromise on the questions of weapons and conscription. He promised Ibrahim Abu Ghosh that he would release his father from prison in return for the Abu Ghosh family’s support. Remarkably, Qasim al-Ahmad stood his ground. On the very day when the naval guns of Jaffa announced the arrival
of Muhammad Ali, the rebels stormed Ibrahim’s palatial residence on Mount Zion and looted it.

Muhammad Ali put great pressure on Tahir and Umar al-Husayni to withhold their support for the rebellion, and invited them to negotiate with him in Jaffa. After a sleepless night of consultation, the two men set out, accompanied by representatives of other leading families. Had they been more familiar with Egyptian history, they would have known that the last conciliatory meeting proposed by the imperious Pasha had ended with his opponents having their throats cut. In 1811 he had invited to his fortress some 300 Mamluk princes, members of the Turco-Egyptian aristocracy with whom he had shared the government of Egypt since 1805. He gave them dinner, after which they were all put to the sword.

One cool morning a caravan of donkeys, camels and mules waited outside the Husayni residence near the Haram. Members of the family said good-bye to Umar and Tahir, expecting to see them back home soon. After riding hard for a day and a half, the men arrived in Jaffa to be met by the corpulent, white-bearded Pasha. Reclining on cushions, one leg folded under him and his hand resting on a long, curved scimitar, he paid little heed to the Jerusalemites’ explanations, and a few moments later they were arrested and dispatched to Egypt in the belly of an Egyptian ship.

Fortunately for them, they were not confined in the
qala’as
’s prison in the Salah al-Din fortress that dominates Cairo, from which few ever came out alive, but rather they were exiled and kept under heavy guard. Tahir’s close friendships with the scholars of al-Azhar and Umar’s reputation as a generous host to many Egyptian visitors to Jerusalem, to whom he had shown its mosques and saints’ tombs, stood them in good stead.
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Two years later, the Pasha suddenly freed them and sent them to Jerusalem. Perhaps he hoped they would be grateful and support him in the event of another insurrection, or maybe he was concerned about Tahir’s popularity, in view of the many petitions sent by Jerusalem residents begging him to restore Tahir to his former post. Another less likely possibility is that the Egyptian Pasha was moved by a letter written by seventeen women in the
mufti
’s harem in April 1835 saying that since their master’s exile they had no one to provide for them.
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