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

In his diary, Turjman expressed hostility to both Nashashibi and Jaber for their
arrogance and elitism. But he was particularly venomous towards Adel Jaber, whom
he accused of being an apologist for Jamal Pasha and at one point, a secret agent for
the government. 57 He narrates how on 15 May, 1915, Jaber was sent to Jaffa on behalf
of Pasha, most likely on a mission related to recruitment for the Salahiyyah College.
At the end of the entry, he approvingly quotes his cousin Hasan al-Khalidi, indicating
that Adel Jaber is “an Ottoman spy”. 58 Jaber himself never disguised his pro-CUP
sentiments, and defended Ottoman policy in heated debates with Nashashibi, Sakakini,
and Musa Alami, and continued to do so until the end of the war. In his political
leanings, he was not alone.
This episode reflects the tension building in that period between Arab secessionists
and Ottomanists within the Palestinian (and Syrian-Lebanese) intelligentsia. There is
no indication whatsoever that Ihsan’s spying accusation against Jaber had any basis in
fact (it is possible, on the other hand, that Adel was secretly vying for the attention of
Suraya, Ihsan’s woman friend). It was this schism in the ranks of Arab political groups
that Jamal was seeking to foster between what he considered ‘extreme nationalists’,
and moderate Arab nationalist. 59 He saw al-Salahiyyah as the institutional base from
which he could build a cadre of a loyalist Arab civil service for the new regime. 60
Another major objective for the Salahiyyah was to create an intellectual base for a
pan-Islamic movement under Ottoman sponsorship. According to Martin Strohmeier,
Jamal Pasha aimed at training “theologians who would be both open-minded and
intellectually equipped to deal with secular and scientific concepts” in the spirit of
Muhammad Abdo. 61 The latter was greatly admired by Sakakini’s circle–the group
that later became known as the party of ‘Vagabonds’, but they moved beyond Abdo’s
objectives of Islamic reform, adopting essentially secular (and sometimes antireligious)
perspectives. With British troops approaching southern Palestine, Jamal
Pasha moved the premises of the college, together with the students and teaching staff,
to Damascus. Subsequently, the Salahiyyah college failed, being unable to recruit
students from outside the Syrian-Palestinian areas (that is, from India and Indonesia)
as Jamal had anticipated, and too short-lived to develop an independent school of
thought. Sakakini and Rustum Haidar soon defected and joined the Arab rebellion.
Ihsan’s own readings while serving under Roshen Bey were very eclectic. The family
had a substantial library at home from which Is’af al-Nashashibi and Musa Alami
used to borrow books. He also added several volumes during his apprenticeship at
the Dusturiyyah college. In the long hours at his desk, he used to read al-Zamachshari
and other Arab classics, such as the History of Arab Civilization by Muhammad Kurd
Ali, who was a chief supporter of al-Salahiyyah’s pan-Islamic program. Ihsan read
and admired Qasim Amin’s book Tahrir al-Mar’a (The Liberation of Women, Cairo,
1899). But he also was a heavy consumer of romantic novels–what would be called
Jerusalem Quarterly 30 [ 45 ]