RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 45It would clearly be wrong to reduce al- Khalidi to an essentialized
image of “a traditional Muslim” or a homoislamicus^20 — not only be-
cause such an essentialized image could never be an accurate depiction
of anyone but also because, as we have seen, he received an advanced
Western education. It would be equally inappropriate, however, to
disregard al- Khalidi’s religious identity and background altogether,
especially when our concern is a religiously educated individual’s un-
derstanding of a people distinguished by, perhaps most prominently,
a different religion, and all the more so when that other religion (Ju-
daism) is one for which there is an inherited discourse. Al- Khalidi’s di-
verse backgrounds must all be considered, then, in analyzing his man-
uscript and his perceptions of the Jews and Zionism.
The Manuscript and Its StructureWhen al- Khalidi died in 1913, his manuscript was in the process of
being transcribed by a professional copyist, presumably in prepara-
tion for publication. With the author’s passing and the traumatic world
war that began several months later, however, the manuscript was
placed aside and, it would seem, forgotten. Within only a few years,
anyone who came across it in the Khalidi family’s Jerusalem library
would likely have deemed it hopelessly outdated, a victim of the Bal-
four declaration and the terms of the Mandate for Palestine that the
new League of Nations had granted to Great Britain.^21 It would regain
readers’ interest only as a relic of the past. The manuscript was dis-
covered decades later by the scholar Walid Khalidi among his family’s
papers, and he has written the only academic article, in Arabic, exclu-
sively devoted to the text, offering a detailed summary of its content.^22
(^20) See Lockman, ContendingVisionsoftheMiddleEast, 73– 78. Lockman employs the
characterization of the homoislamicus— especially the nineteenth- century european Ori-
entalist perception of the “Islamic man” as “something quite separate, sealed off in his
own specificity”— set forth in Rodinson, EuropeandtheMystiqueofIslam, 60.
(^21) The Khalidi Library was formally founded at the end of the nineteenth century with
manuscripts and books collected by members of the family over centuries. Today the
library exists in two separate locations, both just outide of Bab as- Silsala in the Old city
of Jerusalem. One location contains an extensive collection of Islamic manuscripts; the
other, known as “the annex,” holds printed books, journals, and newspapers in Arabic,
Turkish, and european languages. See conrad, “The Khalidi Library.”
(^22) See al- Khālidī, “Kitāb as- sayūnīzm aw al- masʾala aṣ- ṣahyūniyya li- Muḥammad Rūḥī
al- Khālidī al- mutawaffā sanat 1913.” In this article, Walid Khalidi offers a biography
of Muhammad Ruhi al- Khalidi and outlines the structure and content of the text. See
also Kasmieh, “Ruhi Al- Khalidi 1864– 1913,” 136– 40, which relies entirely on Walid al-
Khalidi’s article.