RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 49directed based on internal textual evidence. Given the manuscript’s
language, of course, the intended audience would have been readers
of Arabic. In the Late Ottoman period in the Middle east, including
in Palestine, the qualification of literacy characterized but a small
minority of the Arabic- speaking population.^34 Al- Khalidi’s intended
readers, by definition then, would have been among the intellectual
(and, by extension, economic) upper class. But al- Khalidi did not as-
sume that his readers would necessarily be as highly educated as him-
self, nor as familiar with european society and languages as he was.
consider, for instance, the opening lines of the manuscript. Al- Khalidi
explains:
Zionism, in the european^35 languages, is derived from the word
“Zion,” i.e., Ṣahyūn, with the addition of the particle “ism,” which
denotes a political view or a religious- philosophical idea. Zion is
the name of the mountain upon which are located the fortress of
Jerusalem and the tomb of david the son of Solomon, peace upon
them, and is used as a general term for all of the holy city of Je-
rusalem and its surroundings.^36In defining Zionism, al- Khalidi betrays certain of his presumptions
about his audience. The reader was not expected to know any eu-
ropean language, requiring an explanation of the suffix “ism”^37 that
would be superfluous for anyone who had studied in europe or had
been educated in european missionary schools in the Middle east. The
text, in other words, does not aim toward the very highest level of
Arab society’s educational elite. At the same time, the reader was as-
sumed to recognize place names within Jerusalem as well as the bibli-
cal and Qurʾanic figures of david and Solomon— whose patrilineage is
(accidentally?) reversed.^38 The readers for whom al- Khalidi wrote his
(^34) For an excellent study of Arabic literacy in Palestine, see Ayalon, ReadingPalestine.
(^35) The word used here is ifranj, literally “French.” According to Ayalon, “ifranj, the
Arabicization of ‘Franks,’ was originally attributed to that particular people as distinct
from other european ethnic groups; by the eve of the nineteenth century, however, it
had come to denote christian europe at large.” See Ayalon, LanguageandChangeinthe
ArabMiddleEast, 16.
(^36) al- Khālidī, “as- Sayūnīzm, ay al- masʾala aṣ- ṣahyūniyya” [copyist version], 1.
(^37) The suffix “- ism,” or a close equivalent, such as “- ismus,” is found in english, Ger-
man, Russian, and the various Romance languages.
(^38) The reversal appears in both the original version and that of the copyist. david and
Solomon are mentioned frequently in the Qurʾan, but there does not appear to be any
ambiguity that Solomon is the son of david, and not vice versa. Sura 27 says that “Solo-
mon succeeded david,” and Sura 38 claims that “We gave Solomon to david.” I assume
that this was simply an accidental error (perhaps al- Khalidi intended to write abūrather
than bin) that was not caught by the copyist.