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of this [matter], God willing.”^140 But before ending the passage on the
Zionist Organization, Makaryus adds:
It behooves us not to disregard the fact that among the effects
of these organizations and their charities is the purchase of the
village of al- Mutallah^141 in the district of Marjayoun in the vilayet
of Beirut and the Israelites’ settlement there; and the purchase of
lands in the areas of hula, Tiberias, Jaffa, haifa and so on, which
the Jews settled. they transformed their conditions from poverty
to prosperity [minʿusrilā yusr] and from barrenness to fertility
[minjadbilākhiṣb].^142remarkably, Makaryus, cofounder and coeditor of one of the most im-
portant arabic journals of the time, expresses a strikingly positive atti-
tude toward the Jewish colonization of palestine. Indeed, the descrip-
tion of the Zionists’ success in making the desert bloom,^143 as it were,
could easily have been written by a Zionist.
Why would Makaryus write so admiringly of the Zionist movement?
his expectations about the book’s readership may have played a role.
One indication of the identity of this readership comes from the book’s
dedication to Felix Suares (1844– 1906),^144 scion of one of the most
affluent Jewish families in Egypt. In his dedication,^145 Makaryus writes
that Suares is among the greatest of a people that includes “distin-
guished men of religion, science, and politics.” Of this people,^146 Ma-
karyus writes:
(^140) One wonders whether Makaryus intentionally avoided the subject so as not to
upset readers of one political perspective or another; the anticipated second edition
never appeared.
(^141) the Jewish Colonization association’s purchase of al- Mutallah (hebrew: Metul-
lah) and the removal of its primarily Druze residents from the land sparked a significant
controversy among Zionists concerning the impact of Zionist colonization on palestine’s
natives and the ways in which the negative effects might be mitigated. The conflict with
the Druze fellahin of al- Mutallah after the purchase of the land was a primary subject of
Yitzhak epstein’s 1905 speech, published two years later as “a hidden Question.” See
Dowty, “ ‘A Question That Outweighs All Others.’ ”
(^142) Makaryus, Tārīkhal-isrāʾīliyyīn, 202– 3.
(^143) For a critical examination of this trope, see George, “ ‘Making the Desert Bloom.’ ”
(^144) On Felix Suares and his family, see Krämer, The Jews in Modern Egypt, 1914– 1952 ,
39ff.; Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, 256.
(^145) Strangely, the dedication page is missing in one of the two copies of Makaryus’s
book that I was able to locate (though the dedication is listed in the table of contents).
the tattered copy found in Columbia University’s Butler Library includes the dedication
page.
(^146) Makaryus uses the term umma here in reference to the Jews, suggesting that he
was not quite consistent in his distinction between umma and shaʿb and in his insistence
that the Jews no longer constitute an umma.