Summary
Palestinian Orthodox priest, educator and nationalist (born 1885 in Bir Zeit near Ramallah; the volume’s title gives his life as 1885-1954, its Introduction dates his death to 1964 — see the source page’s Open questions), son and grandson of Orthodox priests, author of the memoirs presented in ‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954) and, with his cousin Shehadeh Khoury, of A Survey of the History of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem (1925), and a leading figure of the Arab Orthodox Movement against the Greek hierarchy of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.19, p.22, p.52).
Details
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His memoirs, written in formal Arabic in Lebanon in the 1950s or early 1960s and found in 2018 in the archives of the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, run from the final Ottoman decades through the First World War and the Mandate into the first years of the Nakba, which drove over 700,000 from their homes (PDF p.19, p.22). He lost his memoir materials three times — through the 1910 Karak Revolt, the First World War and the nakba — and wrote them down for the fourth time in exile (PDF p.9).
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He is quoted on his dead children: “we planted a baby in every city we lived in, Karak, Ramla, Jerusalem, and Birzeit, as a result of all the calamities we went through, but we thank God in every circumstance” (PDF p.10). From 15 November 1948 he served the church of Wadi Shahrour in Lebanon without a fixed salary, dependent on Archbishop Elia Karam (PDF p.11).
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A follower of Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, he believed Christians and Muslims are both Palestinians and nationalists, headed off a Christian-Muslim clash in Ramla, orated at al-Aqsa mosque, and headed a Christian Palestinian delegation to the Balkans to win Orthodox support at the League of Nations against partition (PDF p.10-11). He was a vocal backer of the 1936–1939 uprising (PDF p.21).
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As a communal activist he held that the Arab Orthodox struggle should be grounded in “hidden historical facts” and written in the indigenous language; the 1925 Survey answered the Greek narrative of the Jerusalem Church and called for a mixed council, rejection of the Patriarchate’s supposed Greek character and an end to Greek cultural imperialism (PDF p.52-55). The Survey sold poorly at a loss of four hundred Egyptian pounds, and in the Memoirs he presents the controversy mainly in religious terms — religious elites v. parishioner underdogs (PDF p.55).
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His parish experience underlies the Memoirs’ picture of congregational autonomy: parishes traditionally had a say in their own priest, and the Patriarchate normally ordained the community’s choice, even in his case (PDF p.56). He describes his village school as “more as homely gathering than a proper school” and later headed the community’s National Orthodox School in Jerusalem; he served as a member, then head clerk and consultant, of the ecclesiastical court and recounts his effort against its bribery and corruption (PDF p.57-58).
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His alignment with the Mufti set him against the Arab Orthodox lay leader Yaqub Farraj, a Nashashibi ally; he was elected secretary of the Ramallah parish priests’ Clerical Committee in the 1930s patriarchal election struggle, believed the camp’s division a major factor in Timotheos’s election, and was blocked by Farraj from representing the Arab Christian clergy before the Peel Commission (PDF p.57-58).
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The Introduction confronts his anti-Jewish comments and his associations with Miron Cristea and Amin al-Hussaini: his remarks largely follow the Orthodox theological strand of Antisemitism, but his Balkan-travel comments rest on racialised stereotypes, and he proudly circulated Cristea’s signed anti-partition statement (PDF p.34-40). Nassif’s Introduction section holds his memoirs to be marked by an oversized ego and a desire for self-aggrandisement, to be taken with a grain of salt (PDF p.40-42).
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Papastathis presents him as at once a conservative religious man and a homo politicus — a local supporter of the Young Turk Revolution (1908), later an Arab Palestinian nationalist — with an imprint in the political, intra-communal and intra-religious fields (PDF p.48-49).
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Papastathis’s §3 traces his shifting alignments inside the Patriarchate: sheltered and funded by Damianos in 1910 (a hundred and twenty gold francs) yet barred from the Monastery of the Cross seminary and ordained in 1928 only under British High Commissioner pressure, with Damianos sending Bishop Meliton in his place; in the 1930s he backed Athens’ protégé Keladion against Timotheos and was paid five pounds by the Greek consulate in Jerusalem in each of 1931 and 1932; his feud with Timotheos — over the Matari book, the withheld Cristea medal and his uncanonical failure to commemorate the Patriarch — ended with his Cairo appointment blocked and his return to Jerusalem under supervision by the hierarchy and Yaqub Farraj’s associates (PDF p.63-65).
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His declaration of loyalty to King Abdalaziz Al-Saud in Cairo, as a member of the Executive Committee of the Second Arab Orthodox Conference — “that the Muslims and Christians in Palestine place their sacred sanctuaries under your custody and trust them to your poignant sword” — alienated King Abdullah, who, Khoury says, had proposed making him the “Arabs’ Patriarch”; Papastathis reads Abdullah’s resulting pro-Greek stance as founded on diplomatic grounds, the Status Quo of the Holy Places and good relations with Greece, rather than on Khoury’s explanation (PDF p.65-66).
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The Memoirs themselves (Chapter 3, §§1–10) give his early life in his own telling: born in Birzeit in mid-July 1885 (Eastern Calendar) on a Thursday and named for Saint Nikolaos, third child of the priestly Dar al-Qassis family; seven years in Birzeit’s village schools “without getting any benefit worth mentioning”; the family’s move to Karak in autumn 1899; the Saint Demetrios seminary in Jerusalem from September 1901 until his exclusion in early 1905 when the Synod converted the school to commercial subjects; appointment as teacher at Karak in September 1905 after his father intercepted his Balamand application; marriage to Sara at Birzeit on 1st November 1906; and his secret membership of the Committee of Union and Progress, whose Karak branch made him associate secretary (PDF p.86-97).
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In the Memoirs §§11–23 he narrates the Karak Revolt (1910) and the family’s flight to Birzeit; the move to Ramla in 1911, where he became headmaster on 15th September 1912; his First World War service as clerk and then officer responsible for issuing stores in Jerusalem, through which his brothers, relatives and friends obtained safe postings; the wartime deaths in the family, including his mother and Sara’s sister Zarifa, killed by a Turkish soldier stealing her jewellery; his post-war wheat trading and private school; his heading-off of the Easter clash in Ramla and the chandelier presented to the Great Mosque; his resignation from the Patriarchal schools for the government system; the Haifa conference and the ruinous 1925 History with Shehadeh Khoury; and the family’s move to Jerusalem in October 1926 under a three-year contract to administer the community’s national school at 15 Egyptian pounds a month plus 30 pounds a year for housing (PDF p.99-113).
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In the Memoirs §§23-43 he narrates his Jerusalem years and the 1937 delegation: restructuring the National Orthodox School, ordination as priest for Jerusalem on, as printed, 7th February 1928 after community pressure on the Patriarch and High Commissioner pressure in turn (PDF p.116-117); his Mar Yaqub preaching, ecclesiastical-court clerkship and campaign against its bribery (PDF p.118-119); his election as unanimous secretary of the 1932 Ramallah Conference of Orthodox Arab Priests (PDF p.120); his revision of the Euchologion under Keladion and refusal to print it under Timotheos (PDF p.121-122); his brother Yaqub’s disappearance in summer 1932 and his father’s death in Birzeit in July 1934 (PDF p.122-124); his part in the General Strike of 1936, his refusal of ‘Mister Rekz’s’ offer to testify before the Peel Commission for reward (PDF p.129), and the Balkan and Geneva delegation with Emile al-Ghouri — Istanbul, Sofia, Bucharest (where he kissed Miron Cristea’s hand and circulated Cristea’s signed statement that ‘Palestine should remain Arab for its Arab people’), Belgrade, Geneva, Athens, Alexandria and Cairo — returning to Palestine on 27th October 1937 (PDF p.130-154). The editors note he may have been ‘either naively enthusiastic or self-aggrandizing’ on his Bucharest press coverage (PDF p.141).
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In the Memoirs §§44-65 he narrates the returned Cristea medal and his resignation and non-commemoration of Timotheos (PDF p.155); the missing manuscript pages 45-46 and the revolt’s chaotic end (PDF p.156); his Cairo priesthood of September-December 1943 and its blocking (PDF p.157-158); his standing with Jerusalem’s military commander-in-chief (PDF p.158-159); the January 1946 delegation to Abdulaziz Al-Saud and Abdullah’s vengeance (PDF p.159-166); his speech from the minbar of al-Aqsa on 1st May 1946 (PDF p.167-168); his testimony to the Anglo-American Committee with Bishop Georgios Hakim and Pastor Najib Qubain (PDF p.169); the partition decision, the Committee of the Christian Union’s formation, and his March 1948 Damascus mission asking in writing for weapons for “two thousand Christian men” with himself at their head (PDF p.170-172); the family’s flight to Lebanon on 28th April 1948, Sawfar and Wadi Shahrour, where Elia Karam made him the village’s legitimate priest from 15th November 1948 without a fixed salary (PDF p.174-178); the deaths of Bulos, Issa and Salem (PDF p.179-180); and his Silver Jubilee and promotion to Protopapas on 1st-2nd February 1952, closing the Memoirs (PDF p.180-181) (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.155-181).
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Arab Orthodox Movement, Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Shehadeh Khoury, Yaqub Farraj, Miron Cristea, Grigorios Hajjar