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| Khalil Al-Khalidi died in Cairo and was buried there in 1941 (social media) |
Khalil Khalidi was a Palestinian writer and traveler, born in Jerusalem in 1863. He participated in the founding of the Committee of Union and Progress, which opposed the rule of the Ottoman Empire. He died in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in 1941.
Birth and upbringing
Khalil Jawad bin Badr Mustafa bin Khalil bin Muhammad Sanallah Al-Khalidi was born in 1863 in Jerusalem, and his nickname was “Abu Al-Wafa” Al-Khalidi Al-Makhzoumi Al-Dayri.
Study and scientific formation
He studied in Jerusalem and was authorized by Sheikh Muhammad Asaad Al-Imam Al-Maqdisi Al-Shafi’i, then he moved to Al-Azhar Al-Sharif and studied there under the great sheikhs of the era. Such as Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sharbini Al-Shafi’i, the sage of Islam and its philosopher Sayyid Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani, Sheikh Atef Al-Rumi Al-Islambouli, and Sheikh Abu Al-Fadl Jaafar Al-Kanani.
After that, Al-Khalidi moved to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and graduated from the Judges’ School and held positions there.
Sheikh Khalil al-Khalidi is a traditional conservative figure who studied at Islamic religious institutes. He sought to preserve the Islamic character of Palestinian society, and had a strong presence in this context.
Jobs and Responsibilities
The job field was not available to Sheikh Al-Khalidi after he graduated from the Sharia Judiciary School. He spent about 5 years without work, during which he moved between several countries.
He began his journey in Tunisia, where he stayed for a period of time, during which he met some of its scholars and visited its libraries. This tradition became part of his customs in any country he visited, as he would search for the library first and visit it to explore its collections.
After Tunisia, he moved to Morocco, then returned to Egypt where he attended the lessons of Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sharbini. Among his collection of papers, he found many book loan cards from the Khedivial Library (later known as the Egyptian National Library), in addition to a card that allowed him to study in the library.
He also made a trip to Morocco, and about 50 small papers were found in his papers, which he wrote about his trip to the Moroccan scientific capital, the city of Fez. They are letters and thoughts describing its libraries and the books they contain related to his interests.
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| The Turkish "Union and Progress" Society was founded in 1889 (social media) |
His work in the judiciary
He was appointed as a judge in Aleppo between 1901 and 1903, and he was also appointed as a judge in Diyarbakir in Anatolia. He toured the countries of the Islamic West and Andalusia, and returned to Istanbul again between 1905 and 1906. He was appointed as a judge in the town of Kalkandel in the Kosovo province in Rumelia (Bonnese, which was part of what was known as the "Turkish lands of Rum") for a year, and then settled in Jerusalem.
When Mufti Kamel al-Husseini and President of the Sharia Court of Appeal died (in 1921), Khalil al-Khalidi was chosen to head the court. Meanwhile, Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini was appointed Mufti, and al-Khalidi remained President of the Court of Appeal for 14 years. In addition to his position, he continued to teach and spread knowledge in Jerusalem and beyond.
After the establishment of the Supreme Islamic Council, Khalidi disagreed with Hajj Amin al-Husseini, so he joined the opposition ranks and became one of its leaders. In 1935, the Mufti succeeded in removing him from his job, so he was retired.
Positions and responsibilities
Al-Khalidi was a member of the Board of Review of Qur’ans and Books at the Islamic Sheikhdom in Istanbul. He toured the bookstores in Islamic and Western capitals, and examined what they contained of rare books, manuscripts, records, and scientific and intellectual works left behind by our fathers and grandfathers. He became the Islamic world’s trusted authority in this field.
Khalil Al-Khalidi was a corresponding member of the Arabic Language Academy in the Syrian capital, Damascus. He also had a prominent contribution to establishing and supervising the Khalidi Library, alongside its founder, Ragheb Al-Khalidi, until the early 1940s.
The Khalidi Library is the largest Palestinian collection and one of the largest private Islamic collections in the world. Its catalog editor, Dr. Nazmi Al-Jubeh, counted about 1,200 manuscripts containing nearly two thousand titles.
Khalidi warned early on of the danger of the Zionist movement after the start of the Jewish immigration that he supervised in the early 1880s, especially after the first Zionist Congress held in the Swiss city of Basel in August 1897.
Khalil Al-Khalidi was one of the first founders of the Union and Progress Party, and when this party carried out its famous coup in 1908 against Sultan Abdul Hamid, Sheikh Al-Khalidi was addressing the masses and calling on them to accept this coup, and he even issued a fatwa to depose the Sultan.
Committee of Union and Progress
It was mentioned in the book “Political Leadership and Institutions in Palestine (1917-1948)” by Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hout that the association aimed to “eliminate the tyranny of Sultan Abdul Hamid and implement the principles of the French Revolution translated into Turkish slogans of ‘freedom, justice and equality’. It forced the Sultan to grant the constitution without deposing him, but after a while it deposed him and assumed parliamentary rule. However, it soon began to become tyrannical and violently tyrannical until it alienated the Arabs and harassed them in their constitutional rights. Then it put in place the Turkification program, which terrified the Arabs.”
Before the Arabs discovered the dangers of this policy and confronted it by establishing Arab parties, the Union and Progress Society had been able to establish branches in the Arab countries, and in Palestine the city of Jerusalem was one of the most important centers of the Society.
The association's activity among the Arabs did not last long, as they turned away from it when they discovered the true aims it sought, which were the opposite of its slogans. Most of these people became founders and prominent members of Arab associations.
The rest of the righteous predecessors
Historian Ajaj Nuwayhid wrote about him in his book “Men of Palestine as I Knew Them” that “from A to Z, he represents, even with his clothing and turban, the rest of the righteous predecessors whom the Arab nation knew throughout the ages.”
He described him as “calm in his council, sweet in his talk, deep in his meanings, and a discoverer of scientific matters and historical facts that he is unique in, because he is a unique diver in all of this in rare manuscripts that have not yet been printed or have been printed in Europe and are difficult for the general reader to reach.”
Among the positive aspects of Al-Khalidi, which Nuwayhid listed in his book, is that he “tended to master the science of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts, and he developed an ambition in this regard that made him one of those who are pointed out with the finger in the entire Islamic world, and he was considered the living, walking index of manuscripts in the most important libraries of the East and the West.”
He said, "This matter made him travel from one country to another, so he became a traveler who answered the horizons. He visited Andalusia twice, the last time a few years before World War II, and he collected a lot of news about the Arabs in Andalusia, but he did not publish this in a book, but rather he was satisfied with publishing it in the largest Arab magazines."
Al-Khalidi was also widely informed about the philosophy of religion and the rulings of Islamic law and had a deep insight into the laws of evolution. He published most of his research in the monthly Al-Zahraa and weekly Al-Fath magazines in Egypt for his friend, the scholar Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib.
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| The Unionists were able to come to power and ruled in the name of Sultan Abdul Hamid and deposed him (Getty Images) |
His death
Sheikh Khalil Al-Khalidi died in Cairo and was buried there in 1941.