Year of the locust: A soldier's diary and the erasure of Palestine's Ottoman past

Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages

  Tamari, Salim ^a,b  

^a BIRZEIT UNIVERSITY   (Palestine)

^b Jerusalem Institute of Technology   (Israel)

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EID: 84868569457     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (207)

1. For a good selection of World War I soldiers' diaries, see Edward Lengel's "In the Trenches: The Soldier's Experience in World War I," which provides an extensive network of diaries from several World War I sites: http://wsrv.clas.virginia.edu/~egl2r/wwi.html (accessed November 22, 2008).
2. For Ottoman sources, see Altay Atli, Turkey in the First World War, http://www.turkeyswar.com/campaigns/palestine1.htm (accessed December 9, 2009). This site has an extensive section on Palestine.
3. Ashraf were the potentates of the city, claiming lineage from the Prophet Muhammad.
4. John Gerber, "Anton Pannekoek and the Quest for an Emancipatory Socialism," New Politics, no. 5 (Summer 1988).
5. Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cambridge Middle East Studies 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
6. Salah Issa, Rijal Raya wa Sekina: Sira Ijtima'yya wa Siyasiyya (Cairo: Dar Al Ahmadi, 2002).
7. For a history of these units, see Erik Jan Zürcher, "Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I," Working Papers Archive, Department of Turkish Studies, Leiden University, March 2002.
8. Khalil Totah and Omar Salih Barghouti, The History of Palestine (Jerusalem: 1920), 248-52.
9. Omar Salih Barghouti, al-Marahil: Tarikh siyasi [Turning Points: A Political History] (Beirut: al-Mu'assasa al-'Arabiyya li al-dirasat waal-nashr, 2001), 192;
10. Jens Hanssen, "Public Morality and Marginality in Fin-de-siècle Beirut," in Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 186-89.
11. Totah and Barghouti, The History of Palestine, 253-54.
12. The works of Aziz Duri, Philip Khoury, Adel Mana, Abdul Karim Rafiq, Dina Rizek, and Rashid Khalidi come to mind. See most recently Muhammad 'Afifi, 'Arab wa 'uthmaniyyun: ru'ya mughayira (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2005).
13. Goncu quoted by Jonathan Gorvett, "The Forgotten Arabs of Gallipoli," Al Jazira Net, January 14, 2004, http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2004/01/200849135129326810.html (accessed October 2007).
14. Ihsan's exact birth date is unknown. I have calculated it from approximations of his schooling dates and the known birth dates of his brothers and sisters.
15. Mehmed Fasih, Kanlisirt günlüǧü : Mehmed Fasih Bey'in Çanakkale anilari/yay. haz. [i.e., yayina hazirlayan], transliterated and edited by Murat Çulcu (Beyoǧlu, İstanbul: Denizler Kitabevi, Kaptan Yayincilik, 2002), 18-120.
16. Communication with Irvin Schick, Cambridge, June 16, 2009. I thank Professor Schick for his helpful comments on the Fasih diary.
17. Hasan Danisman, introduction to Fasih, Diary, viii.
18. Fasih, Diary, 136-39.
19. Danisman, epilogue to Fasih, Diary, 209.
20. Fasih, Diary, 61-62. Fasih uses the Turkish spelling of these Arab names.
21. The history of this property is told in Thomas Abowd, "The Politics and Poetics of Place: The Baramki House," Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 21 (2004): 49-58.
22. Yawmiyyat Muhammad al Salih min ahali al alquds, 1333 [1914-1915], Manuscripts Department, AP.AR 846, National Library, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
23. Mana's book was published by the Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut.
24. Amit Gish, "Ownerless Objects? The Story of the Books Palestinians Left behind in 1948," Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 33: 18.
25. Sakakini diary, vol. 2, 158-59 (emphasis added). This entry is dated March 28 and covers a ten-day period.
26. All data about Turjman's personal life, unless otherwise mentioned, come from his diary.
27. Hijjat Waqf Qasim Beyk Turjman, Islamic Court of Jerusalem, file no. 201, p. 130.
28. I am grateful to Dr. Muhammad Ghosheh for providing me with this information about the properties of the Turjman family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
29. Hijjat Waqf Ahmad Beyk al Turjman, 1735, Islamic Court of Jerusalem, file no. 227, p. 289.
30. Most of this information comes from Huda Khalidi (Mrs. Abdul Shafie) and from Ihsan's grand-nephew Saleh Turjman (interviews in Ramallah in October 2004 and January 2005).
31. Even today, the road connecting the New Gate to Damascus Gate is still popularly known among the Jerusalem elderly as 'qbet al Manzil.
32. Omar Salih Barghouti, Al Marahil, Tarikh Siyasi (Beirut: Al Mu'assasah al Arabiyyah lil Dirasat wal Nashr, 2001), 154.
33. Sarkis Boghosian. Diary of an Armenian Officer in the Ottoman Army [in Armenian]. 2 vols. (Paris: n.p., 1931).
34. I am indebted to George Hintilian for bringing this diary to my attention.
35. Dahiliye Nezareti, Emniyet-Umumiye Mudiriyeti [Ministry of Interior, General Directorate], Evrak Numarsu [number of telegrams]: 4562-954, 8 Huzeiran, 1335 (June 1919).
36. Khalil Sakakini recorded Ihsan's death in the diaries he wrote while he was in his Damascus jail.
37. William Pfaff, The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), cited by Pankaj Mishra, "A Cautionary Tale for Americans," New York Review of Books, May 26, 2005.
38. Turjman diary, "What Will Be the Fate of Palestine in This War?" 1.
39. Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh, Mudhakkirat Muh{dot below}ammad 'Izzat Darwazeh, 1305 H-1404 H/1887 M-1984 M: sijill h{dot below}afil bi-masirat al-h{dot below}arakah al-'Arabiyah wa-al-qad{dot below}iyah al-Filast{dot below}iniyah khilala qarn min al-zaman, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami. 1993), 258-59.
40. Fasih, Diary, 26.
41. Darwazeh, Mudhakarat, 260.
42. In the north, especially in Nablus, pro-Ottoman sentiments continued to be strong even after the Ottoman defeat in Jerusalem, and were articulated by figures such as Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh and Ihsan Nimr.
43. Najib Nassar, Riwayat Miflih al-Ghassani (Haifa: al-Karmil Press, 1922;
44. Anthony Bruce, The Last Crusade: The Palestine Campaign in the First World War (London, John Murray, 2003), 23-25;
45. see also Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 46.
46. Bruce, The Last Crusade, 19-22.
47. Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, 189.
48. Ahmad Cemal Pasha, Memoirs (Arabic Edition) (Beirut: al Dar al Arabiyyah lil Mawsu'at, 2004), 187-88.
49. Quoted by Geoffrey Lewis, "An Ottoman Officer in Palestine, 1914-1918," in Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period, ed. David Kushner (Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1986), 403.
50. Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, 193;
51. also Darwazeh, Mudhakarat.
52. For a detailed discussion of the southern boundaries of Palestine and the concept of Palestine's administrative boundaries at the end of World War I
53. see Gideon Biger, An Empire in the Holy Land: Historical Geography of the British Administration in Palestine, 1917-1929 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1994), 39-44.
54. Osmanli Atlasi, ed. Rahmi Tekin and Yasar Bas (Istanbul: Osav, 2003), 112-13.
55. Muhammad Is'af Nashashibi, "al 'Arabiyyah al Misriyyah," in Nuql al Adib (Beirut: Dar Rihani, 1947), 161; originally published in Jerusalem 1352 (Hijri).
56. Hasan Ali Hallaq, ed., Mudhakarrat Salim Ali Salam (1868-1938) [The Memoirs of Salim Ali Salam] (Beirut: al Dar al jami'yyat, 1982), 127-28.
57. Wajih Kawtharani, Bilād al-Shām: al-sukkān, al-iqtit{dot below}ād, wa-alsiyāsah al-Faransīyah fī mat{dot below}la' al-qarn al-'ishrīn: qirā'ah fī al-wathā'iq (Beirut: Ma'had al-Inmā' al-'Arabī, 1980), 256.
58. Sakakini, Yawimiyat, vol. 3, The Mandate and Questions of Identity, 1919-1922, (2004), 46.
59. Fasih, Diary, 133-34.
60. James Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), 101.
61. Yacoub Awdat, "Sheik Muhammad al Salih," in A'lam al Fikr wal Adab fi Filasteen ( Jerusalem: Dar al Isra', 1992), 342-43.
62. Martin Strohmeier, "Al Kulliyya al-Salahiyya, A Late Ottoman University in Jerusalem," in Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City 1517-1917, ed.
63. Sylvia Auld and Robert Hillenbrand (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, London, 2001), 57-62.
64. Strohmeier, "Al Kulliyya al-Salahiyya," 61.
65. Barghouti, Al Marahil, 187.
66. Sakakini diary, vol. 2, March 28, 1915, 158-59.
67. Falih Rifki [Atai], Zeytindagi (Istanbul: n.p., 1932; repr. Istanbul: Bates Yaymevi, 1981).
68. I have relied here on Geoffrey Lewis's essay on Rifki "An Ottoman Officer in Palestine, 1914-1918."
69. John Berger, "An Article of Faith," in About Looking (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 130.
70. Darwazeh, Memoirs.
71. "The Government Imposes a Locust Tax Is Imposed on the City's Residents," Turjman diary, Friday, April 23, 1915, 33-34.
72. See Wasif Jawharīyah, Salim Tamari, and Issam Nassar, Al Quds al'Uthmaniyyeh fil Mudhakarat al Jawhariyyeh': al-kitāb al-awwal min mudhakkirāt al-mūīqī Wās{dot below}if Jawharīyah, 1904-1917. [Ottoman Jerusalem: 1904-1917] (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Dirāsāt al-Filast{dot below}īnīyah, 2003).
73. "Jerusalem Whores Celebrate the Anniversary of Sultan Mehmet Rashad," Turjman diary, Tuesday, April 27, 1915, 47-48.
74. "Teachers Bring in Prostitutes to Their Schools," Turjman diary, Wednesday, May 12, 1915, 72.
75. "An Encounter with a Prostitute," Turjman diary, Thursday, April 29, 1915, 50-51. A majidi was twenty piasters.
76. "When Commander Ruşen Bey Is Drunk, All Work Is Suspended," Turjman diary, Wednesday, April 28, 1915, 154.
77. "Veiling and the Status of Muslim Women," April 28, 1915, 155.
78. "Misfortunes Invade Us All at Once: War, Inflation, and Diseases," Turjman diary, Sunday, May 9, 1915, 68.
79. "Sherif Hussein Declares Rebellion against the State," Turjman diary, Monday, July 10, 1916, 181.
80. "I Am Ottoman by Name Only, the World Is My Country," Friday, September 10, 1915, 132.
81. Sakakini diary, 2003.
82. Hanssen, "Public Morality and Marginality," 189-95.
83. Ya'acov Yehoshua, Yerushalaim Tmol Shilshom, part 2 (Jerusalem: Rubin Mas, 1979), 33-36.
84. I am grateful to Yair Wallach for this information.
85. Jawharīyah, Tamari, and Nassar, Al Quds al 'Uthmaniyyeh fil Mudhakarat al Jawhariyyeh'.
86. Strategic marriages across regions existed earlier for upperclass and merchant families but were outside the capacities of ordinary citizens.
87. See Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900-1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).
88. Awdat, "Sheikh Muhammad al Salih."
89. Kamel Assali, Muqaddima fitarikh al-tibb fil-Quds (Amman: University of Jordan Publications, 1994).
90. "I Was Not Touched by a Human," Turjman diary, Friday, September 10, 1915, 262.
91. For Palestine I was able to find three sets of love correspondence for that period: love letters between Khalil Sakakini and Sultana Abdo, Musa Alami's letters to his future wife from Aleppo Alia Jabiri, and the letters of Alphonse Alonzo to his fiancée, Afifeh Sidawi.
92. See Issam Nassar, Laqat{dot below}at mughayirah: al-tas{dot below}wir al-mah{dot below}alli almubakkir fi Filast{dot below}in, 1850-1948 (London: Mu'assasat 'Abd al-Muh{dot below}sin al-Qat{dot below}t{dot below}an, 2005).
93. Abu Khaldun Sat{dot below}i' Husri, The Day of Maysalun: A Page from the Modern History of the Arabs, trans. Sidney Glazer (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1966).
94. In this chapter I use both names: Aref Shehadeh for the war period and Aref Aref (which he assumed after his return to Palestine) for his reflections in the postwar period.
95. Muhammad Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
96. Aref Aref, Mujaz Siratuh 1892-1964 [an autobiographical essay published as a pamphlet] (Jerusalem: al Maaref Press, 1964);
97. Yacoub Awdat, Min a'lam al-fikr wa-al-adab fi Filast{dot below}in (Amman: Wakalat al-Tawzi' al-Urduniyyah, 1987), 400-403.
98. Awdat, "Sheik Muhammad al Salih," 406.
99. The information about his early years comes from his Mujaz Siratuh.
100. Awdat, Min a'lam al-fikr wa-al-adab fi Filast{dot below}in, 405.
101. Aref, Mujaz Siratuh, 2-3. However, the major battle at Erzurum-in which the Russian forces, led by the Grand Duke Nicholas, decisively defeated the Ottomans-was fought on February 16, 1916. Aref may have been mistaken about the dates.
102. Aref, Ru'yaii.
103. Yücel Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 1 (1999).
104. On the high rate of camp deaths, see also Peter Gatrell, "Prisoners of War in the Eastern Front during World War I," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and East Eurasian History 6, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 562.
105. Awdat, Ru'yaii, 4.
106. These letters and postcards have been reprinted in Zvi Alexander, Osmanli sahra postalari: Filistin (1914-1918): Alexander Koleksiyonu (Istanbul: Turkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfi, 2000).
107. Gatrell, "Prisoners of War" (emphasis added).
108. Gatrell addresses only literature on German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners.
109. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia."
110. Gatrell, "Prisoners of War," 561.
111. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," 73.
112. Aref Aref Photo Album and Diary (unpublished), in In'ash al Usra Library. As far a I know, only one issue of Naqatu Allah, no. 35, has survived.
113. Qur'an, Hod:45.
114. For details on the Qur'anic story, see the al Ahsas website, www.ahsas.net/vb/showthread.php?t=4611 (accessed September 1, 2008).
115. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," 77.
116. Awdat, Min a'lam al-fikr wa-al-adab fi Filast{dot below}in, 401.
117. Al-Aref, Mujaz Siratuh, 3.
118. Awdat, Ru'yaii, 5.
119. Aref attributes the news to a letter he received from Rashid Rida, editor of AlManar (Cairo). Rida informed him that several of his comrades from Istanbul days had joined Sherif Hussein and were involved in the siege of Medina.
120. Faridah Aref Amad, "Aref al Aref, My Father," al Turath wal Mujtama', no. 41, July 2005.
121. Gatrell, "Prisoners of War," 564.
122. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," 80.
123. Gatrell, "Prisoners of War," 564-65.
124. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," 81.
125. Faridah Aref Amad describes the encounter in "Aref al Aref, My Father" 1.
126. Bayan Nuwayhid Hut, Qiyadat wa-al-mu'assasat al-siyasiyah fi Filast{dot below}in, 1917-1948 (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Dirasat al-Filast{dot below}iniyah, 1981), 86-87.
127. See also Darwazeh, Mudhakkirat Muh{dot below}ammad 'Izzat Darwazeh, vol. 1, 326.
128. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism.
129. Hut, Qiyadat wa-al-mu'assasat al-siyasiyah fi Filast{dot below}in, 87.
130. See, for example, Aref 's unsigned editorial "Nadhra ila al Ghad," Surya al Janubiyyah 1, no. 48 (March 26, 1920 [6 Rajab, 1338]).
131. Darwazeh, Mudhakkirat, 326-27. Darwazeh was probably referring to al Jam'iyya Arabiyya al Filastiniyah (Arab Palestinian Society), which was disseminating anti-Zionist materials in Damascus.
132. See Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 88.
133. Hut, Qiyadat wa-al-mu'assasat al-siyasiyah fi Filast{dot below}in, 118.
134. Darwazeh, Mudhakkirat, 326.
135. Awdat, Min a'lam al-fikr wa-al-adab fi Filast{dot below}in, 405.
136. Yanikdag, "Ottoman Prisoners of War in Siberia," 74.
137. Quoted by Elias Sahhab, "Sati al Husari: The Intellectual and the Activist," in Naji Allush, The Arab National Movement in 100 Years, 409 (emphasis added).
138. Jawharīyah, Tamari, and Nassar, Al Quds al 'Uthmaniyyeh fil Mudhakarat al Jawhariyyeh', 139.
139. Onbaşi was an Ottoman military rank equivalent to lieutenant.
140. Communicated to me by his grandson, Dr. Sami Awad, Ramallah, July 16, 2006.
141. I have used the Ottoman and Hijri calendars only in this first entry. All subsequent entries use the Gregorian calendar.
142. Newspapers were suspended during the first two years of the war. Telegraphic bulletins and rumors became the main sources of news from the front.
143. A matleek was a small coin in the Ottoman currency, a fraction of a piaster.
144. For a payment of 50 Ottoman pounds, certain categories of the population, such as teachers, could receive exemption from military service.
145. Western time was known as franji time. It differed from Arabic time, which was based on the sundial and was calculated by the solar cycle. Ihsan used both times, as well as three calendars, in his diary.
146. The Egyptian campaign was going badly, and the Ottoman army had to remove public decorations previously put up in anticipation of a victory over the British in the Canal Zone.
147. Milia Sakakini was Khalil's sister and a teacher at al-Dusturiyya College.
148. Ihsan does not identify Lady T or A. B. From the context, however, we can guess that A. B. is either Adel Jaber or Is'af Nashashibi, both of whom he disliked intensely.
149. Hanim (Khanum) was a Turkish title of respect for upper-and middle-class women. This form of address was widely used in the Arab world in this period.
150. The Fourth Army was preparing a second attack on the Suez Canal.
151. Manshiyyeh was the municipal garden and café on Jaffa Road, near the Russian compound. The name of the band, Shami, indicates that it was possibly visiting from Damascus.
152. Hasan Khalidi was Ihsan's maternal cousin and a military officer in the Fourth Army.
153. Eighty-five piasters was an ordinary soldier's salary, slightly less than one Ottoman pound (one hundred piasters).
154. One French pound was equivalent to 90 Ottoman piasters.
155. The full name of the paper is al Himara al Qahira (the Stubborn Donkey). It was founded in September 1911 as a literary satirical publication, published in Haifa, and edited by Khalil Zakkout and Najib Jana.
156. See Yusif Khoury, The Arabic Press in Palestine 1876-1948 (Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1986), 21.
157. Tetley Sirt was a brand of first-class Ottoman cigarettes made in Istanbul.
158. Hafeer and Ibin were Ottoman military posts near Beer Sheva and Areesh (in Sinai). Both had military airports.
159. The wording does not make clear whether the order was not carried out for bureaucratic reasons or because of resistance.
160. Cemal Pasha the Little (Küçük), known as Mersini, was the commander of the Eighth Army.
161. Ibin was an advanced military outpost and airport in Sinai.
162. Abdo was an Islamic reformer and associate of Jamal Din Afghani. Qasim Amin was the author of The Liberation of Women (Cairo, 1901) and an advocate of educating women in Egypt and the Arab East. For an English translation of the book
163. see Amin, The Liberation of Women; and, The New Woman: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).
164. These are Ottoman fiscal years and refer to men in their forties, who were so far exempt from service-hence the invocation of God's mercy.
165. Notre Dame was a French Catholic building opposite the New Gate. It was confiscated as enemy property and became the military headquarters of the Commissariat. Cemal Pasha's headquarters was the Augusta Victoria Hospital in the Mount of Olives.
166. Hilmi Effendi Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1890, studied at St. George, and worked in the civil service, most notably in the land registry in 1921. He was later the district governor of several cities, including Haifa.
167. Tariq Ben Ziad was a commander of the Muslim army that conquered Spain in 732 A.D.
168. The word Shami (Syrian) here includes the Palestinian soldiers, as is clear from the following sentence.
169. This book was apparently a marriage manual. Cheap editions of such books were available in Palestine and Syria during World War I. It is unlikely that Ihsan was reading the book in English; he had an Arabic translation.
170. Mammilla, formally known as Ma'manallah, is the main Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.
171. The Khalidyyeh, which is still open today, is an old manuscript library near the Magharbeh compound at the entrance to the Haram.
172. Nebi Samuel, a village north of Jerusalem, was a strategic location where some of the most ferocious battles of World War I were fought around Jerusalem in 1917.
173. Al Zamakhshari is a classical work of religious interpretation. Zamakhshari was a Mu'tazalite and a free thinker.
174. The coded name here is Sakakini.
175. "In a few years," refers to after the end of the war, when he would have the opportunity to get married.
176. Karm al A'raj is an area in Musrara, north of the old city where the Turjmans had their properties. The family moved there in the 1920s, after Ihsan's death.
177. "The Straits" likely refers to the Dardanelles or Sea of Marmara.
178. Enver Pasha (1881-1922) was the war minister and a leader of the CUP. He was killed in battle at the Russian front in 1922, not in the way Turjman describes here.
179. Ihsan later wrote "lies" in the margin of this page.
180. Baq'a was a southern neighborhood in Jerusalem, on the outskirts of Bethlehem.
181. Elsewhere in the diary Ihsan says that he was told that, as a soldier without means, he was unlikely to be accepted by Thurayya's family as a prospective suitor, even though her mother was favorable to his intentions.
182. Several entries between May and September have been deleted.
183. In the first instance the diarist uses the term al-Umma al Suriyyah (the Syrian nation) indicating the whole of the Arab Levant. In the second mention of the region, he refers to the "Syrian and Palestinian countries."
184. Sofar was the headquarters of the Ottoman Military Administration in Mount Lebanon.
185. Rida Solh was the deputy to the Ottoman Parliament from Beirut. His son, Riad Beyk Solh (1898-1951), was a nationalist figure during the war and later became the prime minister of Lebanon.
186. The expression "I am an Ottoman by name-my country is the world" was often used by Ihsan's mentor Khalil Sakakini.
187. See Sakakini diary, vol. 2.
188. This is the only entry in the diary that starts with a Jerusalem notation.
189. Ihsan probably chose Switzerland because the country was neutral during the war.
190. Dhaheriyyeh lies south of Hebron and north of Beersheva. The seven-hour travel time is by horse.
191. Such a gift might be considered a bribe for having his name removed from the list.
192. Hussein Fakhri Khalidi, the brother of Hasan, was Ihsan's maternal cousin and, like his brother, a medical officer in the Ottoman army.
193. The word mu'ashara is crossed out in the diary. It is not clear what Turjman means, because the Arabic word could mean "sexual cohabitation" or "social companionship."
194. The new Greek prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, was known for his sympathies with the Entente.
195. During World War I, the Jerusalem ratl was equivalent to 3000 grams (3 kilograms).
196. An Ottoman majidi was equivalent to 20 piasters. A soldier's salary was 85 piasters per month, making rice an expensive purchase.
197. Most Jerusalem households at the turn of the century baked their own bread in neighborhood ovens; buying baked bread was exceptional.
198. Ihsan turned twenty-three on this day by the Ottoman calendar. His birth was recorded on 17 Kanun Thani 1309 Ottoman, 1310 by the Hijri calendar.
199. Fredrick Kress von Kressennstein was the commander of the Eighth Army.
200. The German Colony was the templar neighborhood of Haifa, which was on the southern slopes of Mt. Carmel facing the sea. It isn't clear whether the British targeted the neighborhood as a German target or whether they hit it accidentally.
201. al-Salahiyya College, at Saint Anne, was established in 1915 by Ahmad Cemal Pasha as a higher institute of learning for Arab and Muslim civil service.
202. The mufti of Jerusalem was Sheikh Kamil Husseini, brother of Haj Amin Husseini.
203. There is a discrepancy between in the date of this entry and the time of the incident. Ihsan apparently recorded the events after he made the entry date here.
204. He is probably referring to the hospital of St. Louis, on Jaffa Road.
205. Arna'uti is an archaic Arabic word for Albanian that was commonly used in the Ottoman period. In the diary, Ihsan identified the officer as "Turkish Albanian."
206. The Turjman home was inside the Haram compound, but it had an external door that opened to Bab al Silsilah [Chaines] street. At night, access from the Haram area was locked, but people could enter from the street side. The house still exists.
207. This request may indicate that Rustum Effendi was a tenant on their property.