Chapter 2

Muhammad Ruhi al- Khalidi’s “as- Sayūnīzm”:

An Islamic Theory of Jewish History

in Late Ottoman Palestine

e

liezer Ben- Yehuda published his interview of Muhammad Ruhi al-

Khalidi for the readers of Ben- Yehuda’s Hebrew daily newspaper

ha-­Ẓevi.^1 In the interview, al- Khalidi rejected the creation of Jewish

colonies in Palestine and, while he would support the rights of indi-

vidual Jews to immigrate if they were to accept Ottoman citizenship

and assimilate into the Arab environment, he vigorously denounced

mass Jewish nationalist immigration to Palestine.^2 While the exchange

recorded in ha-­Ẓevi certainly reveals al- Khalidi’s hostility toward Zion-

ism, it also offers other insights into how these two men understood

one another, and the peoples they represented.

For Ben- Yehuda, al- Khalidi was a respected intellectual colleague,

“an author who had written articles in Arabic periodicals on Islamic

and Arab issues, and who participated in academic conferences of Ori-

entalists.” Moreover, Ben- Yehuda considered al- Khalidi “an acquain-

tance and friend from the bad days, when we needed to close the door

behind us and whisper out of fear that the spies of [Sultan] Abd al-

Hamid were secretly listening to our words.” Ben- Yehuda had held sen-

sitive discussions with al- Khalidi in the past, conversations, we might

imagine, in which these two individuals sought to understand each

other and the various groups of which they were leaders. After seeking

al- Khalidi’s view on the present Ottoman grand vizier, Ben- Yehuda’s in-

terview then broached “the difficult point,” namely, Ottoman policy on

Jewish immigration to Palestine. While emphasizing that Jewish- Arab

(^1) ha-­Ẓevi, November 2, 1909.
(^2) As a result, al- Khalidi’s position is often cited in the scholarship on the early Pales-
tinian Arab opposition to Zionism. See Mandel, The­Arabs­and­Zionism­before­World­War­
I, 77; Beʾeri, Reshit­ha-­sikhsukh­yisraʾel-­ʿarav,­1882–­1911, 146. On Ben- Yehuda’s motiva-
tions for the interview, see Lang, Daber­ʿivrit!, 623.