My Grandmother and Other Stories: Histories of the Palestinians as ...

Ihsan’s father, Hasan Bey al-Salih, inherited some of these properties but most were
tied to public endowments or leased land. The family lived inside the Haram at the
entrance of Bab al-Silsilah in a three-story house that overlooked the Haram plaza
from the east and the Wailing Wall and the Magharbeh Quarter from the south. Hasan
Bey lived for two decades in a childless marriage until his first wife prevailed on
him (according to contemporary stories) to marry his second wife Nabiha al-Khalili–
descended from Sheikh Ali al-Khalili, a prominent Jerusalemite and one of the first
city dwellers to build a mansion outside the city walls in al-Baq’a neighbourhood.
Nabiha bore him six children (three boys and three girls), of whom Ihsan was the
eldest. 27 But Hasan remained faithful to his first wife, Safiyyah, and continued to live
with her after his second marriage in a separate apartment on the third floor of their
home until she died during the first war.
Ihsan grew up with Safiyyah as his second mother. He studied in Qur’anic schools
by the Haram, and then went to a local Nizamiyyah school for his primary education.
After 1909, he joined Khalil Sakakini’s Dusturiyyah College, which offered an Arab
secular curriculum. To the end of his days, Ihsan considered Sakakini his mentor and
confidante, as is evident from his diary.
When the general mobilization was announced by Ottoman authorities in November
1914, Ihsan was conscripted and sent to central Palestine. He was on the verge of
being sent to the Suez front in Sinai when he was transferred to serve in Jerusalem’s
military headquarters under the commander Ali Roshen Bey.
Roshen Bey was an Albanian officer whose administrative skills promoted him
to become the military Qa’immaqam in charge of army logistics on the southern
front. His headquarters, known as ‘the Manzil’, were in the sequestered Notre Dame
building opposite Jerusalem’s New Gate. 28 In that capacity he became the highest
military officer in Ottoman Palestine, subject only to Jamal Pasha as commander
of the fourth army. The latter was based in Damascus during the war and visited
Jerusalem periodically.
Ali Roshen’s official title was residence inspector (mufattish manzil) and his domain
included the mobilization and training of soldiers for military and auxiliary tasks, and the
overall administration of army logistics–food, munitions, and establishing army camps
in southern Palestine. 29 Omar al-Salih attributes the initial success of the Ottomans on
the Egyptian front to the organizational skills of Roshen Bey. 30 Ali Roshen remained
in Jerusalem to the very end, where he directed a battalion and fought tenaciously–
according to an eyewitness account–against General Allenby’s advancing army in Nebi
Samuel, a strategic area north of Jerusalem. 31 He was last seen with retreating fighters
in the village of Jib. Aside from local contemporary sources, such as the Barghouti and
Jawhariyyeh memoirs, 32 very few records have been found that describe the fate of
[ 36 ] HISTORICAL FEATURES The Short Life of Private Ihsan