RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 43Late Ottoman Palestine perceived and comprehended Jews, Jewish his-
tory, and the emerging Zionist movement. In over 120 pages of hand-
written text, al- Khalidi offers the reader a glimpse into his world and
worldview— social, cultural, intellectual, religious, political— at this
critical moment in the history of relations between Zionists and Arabs,
between Jews, christians, and Muslims in Palestine.
In this chapter I closely analyze al- Khalidi’s manuscript, mining its
pages for evidence of the ways in which al- Khalidi conceived of the
Jews and Judaism, Jewish identity and Zionism, and the Jews’ historic
and contemporary relationship to Palestine. I investigate the sources,
in addition to Gottheil’s encyclopedia entry, that al-Khalidi employed
to learn and write about the Jews. The author, we find, went to great
lengths to gain an internal understanding of the Jews and Zionism,
using their own sources, ranging from the Hebrew Bible to at-Talmūd
(a 1909 Arabic book by a Sephardic Jew on the Jewish oral law), to
learn how the Jews view themselves. At the same time, I argue that
even in his sensitive, internal analysis of Jewish history, al- Khalidi read
through a lens colored by his own particular fin de siècle Muslim up-
bringing, by the long tradition of Islamic- Jewish religious polemics,
and by the more recent introduction by europeans in the Levant and by
Arab visitors to europe of european christian antisemitic stereotypes
and discourse into the Middle east. More generally, al- Khalidi’s man-
uscript represents a case study that reinforces a broader claim of this
book, namely, that in the early encounters between Zionists and Arabs
in Palestine, religion played a prominent, and generally underappreci-
ated, role as a category and tool of understanding and interpretation.
An education from al- Aqsa to the Sorbonneconsidering his personal background and upbringing, it comes as no
surprise that religion played a part in informing al- Khalidi’s under-
standing of Zionism. Al- Khalidi spent his childhood years in Jerusa-
lem obtaining a traditional Islamic education in religious schools and
at the al- Aqsa Mosque.^14 The Shāfiʿī mufti of Jerusalem certified that
al- Khalidi had completed training in all the classical subjects of the
Islamic curriculum. His religious studies continued in Jerusalem as
well as in Nablus, Tripoli, and Beirut, where his father Yasin took up
Ottoman- appointed religious positions at various times during the son’s
youth. By age fifteen, al- Khalidi had already been granted a scholarly
(^14) For a succinct review of the development of schools in Ottoman Palestine, and al-
Khalidi’s own education, see Kasmieh, “Ruhi Al- Khalidi 1864– 1913,” 123– 31.