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the nations [al- umam] among which they resided as a people without a
homeland or country [shaʿbanlāwaṭanlahu wa-lābilād],” a people with
nothing but “the memory of the past and their beliefs.”^134 Makaryus
presents this statement about Jewish history, one surmises, to explain
to readers the challenges he faced in writing the Jews’ history. But the
way in which he describes postbiblical Jewish history is significant
for our understanding of his perception of the Jews and, in particular,
their relationship to palestine. the lack of “a homeland or country” is,
in Makaryus’s view, a— perhaps the— defining feature of the history of
the Jews after the Bible. Moreover, this lack not only defined but nec-
essarily limited their history. all that Jews had left during their many
centuries of exile was the “memory” of their former political achieve-
ments and their beliefs. Makaryus appears to assume that the history
of the Jewish Diaspora was not a genuine history because it lacked na-
tional, political sovereignty (an assumption Makaryus shared, it should
be noted, with many Jewish nationalist historians of the fin de siècle
period and beyond).^135 the Jews’ history, he suggests, must be culled,
in a most undignified way, from the “proper” histories of other nations
that had their own states.
In the passage cited above, Makaryus apparently distinguishes be-
tween shaʿb and umma, terms that are often used interchangeably and
ambiguously. If we may infer definitions from this passage, a shaʿb, for
Makaryus, is a people that lacks a sovereign state, whereas an umma (pl.
umam) is a people that has achieved sovereignty. this particular distinc-
tion between these terms is peculiar and reflective of the fin de siècle
emphasis on the relationship between nations and sovereignty.^136 One
notices this restrictive definition of umma again in Makaryus’s chapter
on “the Dispersion of the Jews after the Destruction of Jerusalem.” the
chapter opens with the explanation that “the history of the Israelites as
an umma ends here. after the destruction of Jerusalem, as was noted
earlier, they were dispersed throughout all of God’s lands.”^137
Before continuing with this discussion of Makaryus’s perspective on
the Jews’ homelessness, it is worth briefly noting that an alternative
(if not contradictory) view of Jews’ stateless condition was expressed
in Zaydan’s al-Hilāl. In one of this journal’s numerous articles on the
rothschilds, the author addresses the Jewishness of the famed banking
family. he explains:
(^134) Makaryus, Tārīkhal-isrāʾīliyyīn, 77.
(^135) On this subject, see the work of David N. Myers, including Re- Inventing the Jewish
Past and Resisting History.
(^136) See ami ayalon’s discussion of these two terms and the relationship between
them. ayalon, LanguageandChangeintheArabMiddleEast, 48– 52.
(^137) Makaryus, Tārīkhal-isrāʾīliyyīn, 77.