RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 47his article with al- Khalidi.^27 Between 1909 and 1910 Gottheil lived in
Jerusalem, where he headed the American School of Archaeology;^28
it is likely, given their shared Orientalist interests, that Gottheil and
al- Khalidi came to know one another during that period.^29 It is also
possible that the two were known to one another— or had even met
in person— more than a decade earlier. When al- Khalidi presented his
academic paper on Muslim demographics to the 1897 International
congress of Orientalists, Gottheil was already professor of Semitic lan-
guages at columbia University, an active member of the American Ori-
ental Society, and head of the Oriental department of the New York
Public Library.^30 Moreover, the editors and writers of the JewishEncy-
clopedia were familiar with al- Khalidi’s scholarly work; the encyclope-
dia’s entry on “Islam,” for instance, notes that al- Khalidi’s article on the
demographics of the contemporary Muslim world “should especially
be mentioned.”^31 Al- Khalidi, in other words, was an acknowledged
colleague of Jewish scholars such as Gottheil, Kohler, Goldziher, and
others in the international fin de siècle scholarly effort toward under-
(^27) Al- Khalidi, to be sure, was not the only Arab in Palestine to make use of this Jew-
ishEncyclopediaarticle for his presentation and analysis of Zionism. See my discussion
below of Najib Nassar’s articles and pamphlet on Zionism.
(^28) For a contemporary mention of Gottheil in Palestine, describing him as “the fa-
mous Orientalist . . . head of the School of Archaeology in our city,” see ha-Ḥerut 2:86
(April 20, 1910). The American School of Archaeology at Jerusalem (later renamed the
American School of Oriental Research) was founded in 1900 by the American semiticist
charles cutler Torrey.
(^29) According to Rashid Khalidi, Gottheil is listed among the Khalidi Library’s visitors
in the library’s guestbook. The guestbook that was kindly shown to me by Haifa al-
Khalidi appears to have been first used in the late 1920s, so there is no clear evidence
that Gottheil visited the library during his 1910– 1911 stay in Palestine. An intellectual
biography of Richard James Horatio Gottheil, an American Zionist expert in Arabic and
Muslim- Jewish relations in the medieval period, has yet to be written.
(^30) See JournalofAmericanOrientalSociety 18 (April 1897), 387. Unable to locate a list
of participants at the 1897 International congress of Orientalists in Paris, I am uncertain
whether Gottheil attended that meeting.
(^31) This article was jointly written by Kaufmann Kohler and Ignaz Goldziher. Kohler
(1843– 1926) was born in Bavaria before immigrating to the United States where he
became a leading Reform rabbi and president (1903– 1921) of the Reform movement’s
Hebrew Union college. In 1885, Kohler convened the so- called Pittsburg conference,
which will be discussed below. This JewishEncyclopediaarticle provides evidence that
Kohler was familiar with al- Khalidi’s scholarship; it is not clear, however, whether the
two figures knew one another personally. If they were acquaintances, we might better
understand al- Khalidi’s conception of Jewish history— and particularly the revolution of
modern Jewish history— as laid out below. Goldziher (1850– 1921), a Hungarian Jewish
scholar, was an expert on, inter alia, the history of Islamic hadith and was among the
initiators and contributors to the EnzyklopediedesIslam. See conrad, “Ignaz Goldziher
on ernest Renan.”