Summary
The revolt at Karak in November–December 1910 as narrated in Niqula Khoury’s Memoirs §§11–13: in Khoury’s telling a counter-revolutionary rising after Sultan Abdul Hamid’s deposition, which destroyed his first memoir writings, drove the family back to Palestine, and ended in Ottoman reprisals from which Christians were marked out by the sign of the cross (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.86, p.99-104). The volume’s editors hold the causes to have been local, not counter-revolutionary (PDF p.100).
Details
- Khoury dates the revolt’s outbreak to 21st November 1910, three days after a dream he recounts as a vision of angels, on the feast day of the Entry of the Virgin Mary to the Temple (PDF p.103-104). The published Memoirs elide the revolt narrative itself: after “they reached Karak” the text gives an ellipsis and resumes with the army’s entry on the night the rebels left the city (PDF p.100).
- Khoury’s causal account: Abdul Hamid, destitute and confined in Thessalonica, had followers who kindled counter-revolution across the empire — in the Balkans, Anatolia, Armenia, Yemen and Jabal al-Druze — to spread disorder and demand the Sultan’s restitution, and from there the revolts reached Karak (PDF p.99-100). The editors’ note holds that most researchers locate the causes locally: central-government attempts from 1900 to increase taxes and reduce stipends to tribal heads, exacerbated by Damascus’s decisions to raise taxes, ban breech-loading rifles and arms in Karak, and impose a census of the male population (Gubser; Abujaber, as cited PDF p.100); Gubser explicitly rejects a wider Arab nationalist background and does not consider counter-revolutionary tendencies (PDF p.100).
- The family returned to Karak on 4th December 1910 to find their dwelling empty; the army’s leader, knowing Christians had participated only under duress, asked Khoury’s father to mark Christians by the sign of the cross on clothes and house doors because the army was going to decimate the Muslims; many Muslims used the mark too and were saved by it (PDF p.100-101). The editors’ note attributes the cross-marking role in other sources to ‘Awda al-Qasus, who had been the revolt leaders’ envoy to Damascus before the uprising and sat on the post-revolt damages committee, and calls him a more probable candidate than Khoury’s father (PDF p.100); most historians paint a more random picture of Sami Pasha al-Faruqi’s bloody reprisals (PDF p.101).
- After a month waiting for safe roads, the family fled by the Hejaz railway through Madaba to Jerusalem and Birzeit; Khoury’s mother fell from her mule near El-Qatrana holding Marie, and with the after-effects of an older concussion and the terror she lost her mind until her death (PDF p.101-102).
- Khoury counts twelve years at Karak in all, “the happiest days” of the family’s life (PDF p.103).
Where sources disagree
- Cause of the revolt: Khoury says counter-revolution kindled by the deposed Sultan’s followers across the empire (PDF p.99-100); the editors, citing Gubser and Abujaber, say the causes were local fiscal and disarmament measures, and that Gubser does not consider counter-revolutionary tendencies (PDF p.100).
- Who ordered the cross-marking: Khoury says the army leader asked his father (PDF p.100); the editors, citing Gubser and Rogan, attribute the role to ‘Awda al-Qasus and call him more probable (PDF p.100).
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Niqula Khoury, Karak, Damianos, Committee of Union and Progress