Barnard College of Columbia University

BARNARD COLLEGE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

PALESTINE’S SACRED STRUGGLE: THE EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL TOURIST GUIDES TO THE HARAM AL-SHARIF

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE

FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF

BACHELOR OF THE ARTS

BY JENNIFER KOSHNER

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

SPRING 2015

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of the victims of terror perpetrated in the name of defending the Temple Mount.

May their memory be a blessing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...... iii

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………. 1

Chapter 1

Theoretical Conceptions of Sacred Space…………………………………….………….. 8

Chapter 2

A Muslim Palestinian reimaging of the Haram al-Sharif: Pre-1948…..……………..… 16

Chapter 3

The Jordanian narrative of the Palestinian Haram al-Sharif: 1948-1967…………..…... 30

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………… 46

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………. 49

Glossary of Terms………………………………………………………………………………. 54

1

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my deepest gratitude towards two individuals without whom this thesis would not have come to fruition. I would like to thank Professor Gale Kenny and Professor Najam Haider for their guidance throughout the writing process. For their wisdom, encouragement, and support, I am sincerely grateful. Professor Kenny enhanced my approach to this study by broadening my intellectual horizons and framing my analysis within theoretical understandings of sacred space. Professor Haider deepened my understanding of the social and political realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout history by questioning my many presumptions, and motivated me to pursue my academic passions in the years leading up to this thesis. Additionally, I would like to thank the Alan Segal Memorial Fund for their generosity, without their support this thesis would not have been possible.

1

Introduction

“Har Habayit Beyadeinu!” “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” Lieutenant General Mordechai Gur’s famous proclamation on June 7, 1967 that Israel had conquered the Temple Mount realized the worst fears of Palestinians.[1] The Temple Mount, referred to in Arabic as al-Haram al-Sharif, had become emblematic of the Palestinian struggle against Zionist forces before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In the following two decades the Haram al-Sharif, as the last vestige of Arab sovereignty in historic Palestine, was heralded as a national symbol of Palestinians. Though venerated as a sacred space for centuries, the Haram al-Sharif was elevated in significance during the twentieth century, becoming central to Palestinian nationalist thought. This evolution was catalyzed by two Muslim councils responsible for administering the Haram al-Sharif as a religious sacred space:the Palestinian Supreme Muslim Council from 1921-1948, and the Jordanian Supreme Awqaf Council from 1951-1967.

During their tenure the Supreme Muslim Council and the Supreme Awqaf Council published an international tourist booklet in which they reimagined the history and emphasized the significance of the Haram al-Sharif. The narrative of the Haram al-Sharifcommunicated in the guidebooks was an attempt by the Councils to advance their own political agendas, which were influenced by the historical context in which the Councils functioned. Although these Councils did not represent the dominant opinion of the Palestinian community at the time, they would have a significant influence on how the Haram al-Sharif would come to be perceived historically. How then is the political and national significance accorded to the Haram al-Sharif to be understood? Answering this question first requires a familiarity with the Zionist and Palestinian nationalist movements which emerged in Mandatory Palestine.

Nationalist Movements and the Temple Mount

In the last century, religious nationalism has become central to the formation of modern nation-states, especially in Israel and Palestine.[2] Controlling and maintaining holy territory, like the Temple Mount, is an important aspect of the “modern phenomenon of ‘religious nationalism.’”[3] Roger Friedland argues that religious nationalism is “a particular form of collective representation,” wherein “religion is the basis of political judgment and identity.”[4] Religious nationalists, therefore, interpret religiously imbued texts, ideas, and spaces within a political framework. The first politicization of the Holy Land in religious nationalist terms during the modern period came with the advent of Zionism, an ideology that accepts Jews as a distinct people who are divinely bequeathed with ownership of the Holy Land

Zionism first emerged in France in the late nineteenth century, decades before the conflict over Palestine began. Its roots were in the failure of Jewish communities to assimilate into Western European society, in the intensification of anti-Semitism bred over centuries, and in the upsurge of nationalism.[5] Convinced that the problem of Jews was purely national, Theodore Herzl, in 1896, suggested that Jews leave the diaspora, acquire land, and exercise sovereignty in a state of their own creation, in Palestine.[6] Twenty years of lobbying and hard work won the Zionists official British support for their cause, which was promised in the Balfour Declaration. If Palestine was to be the embodiment of God’s promise to the chosen people, the Balfour Declaration was proof of God’s word. With the support of the British, the fledgling Zionist movement became a serious contender in the future of the Middle East. Within Mandatory Palestine, multiple movements that opposed the religiously inspired Zionism existed. Foremost among them, expressed in a diversity of political movements, only some of which are religious in nature, was Palestinian nationalism.

Palestinian nationalism is built around Palestinian identity, a unique self-conception of the Palestinian nation that can only be fully understood in the context of other histories and narratives.[7] This is partially because Palestinian identity has always been fused with “a sense of identity on so many other levels, whether Islamic or Christian, Ottoman or Arab, local or universal, or family and tribal.”[8] It is also partially because the Palestinian narrative historically has intersected with “other powerful narratives, religious and national,” sometimes drawing from them and at other times clashing with them.[9] Edward Said writes in the afterword to Orientalism, “the development and maintenance of every culture require the existence of another, different and competing alter ego. The construction of identity… involves the construction of opposites and ‘others’ whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and reinterpretation of their differences from ‘us.’”[10]

Although Palestinian national identity was undoubtedly forged against the threat of Zionism, it was also “ushered into its own independent existence” resulting from the disarray of the Arab nationalist movement.[11] The Arabs of the Fertile Crescent had only ever been “accustomed to an imperial identity and existence during which political allegiance belonged to a ‘universal’ Islamic state.”[12] As such the Arabs could not immediately develop a sense of national identity after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Therefore separate Arab territorial nationalities emerged. A strong national sentiment, however, did not take firm root among the majority of Palestine’s Christian and Muslim inhabitants until the early twentieth century, when Zionist land purchases and immigration registered as a threat to the native Arab population.[13] Their fears were especially pronounced by increasing Zionist activity in the holy city of Jerusalem. Only then did the “rivalry for control of Jerusalem between Islam and Christianity-a rivalry that began in the seventh century with the city’s conquest by Muslim armies from Byzantium,”abate, with Christian and Muslim Palestinians forming a fully-fledged Arab opposition against Zionism.[14] The conflicts between Palestine’s Arabs and the Zionists were most pronounced over the ancient city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem became a central unifying symbol common throughout most Palestinian narratives, Christian and Muslim. Because of its status as the “geographical, spiritual, political, and administrative center of Palestine,” it was the site of “the most extreme instances of the various local parties’ attempts to assert physical control over the country, and to obtain validation” for their claims.[15] These struggles were most pronounced over the Haram al-Sharif. The issue of political and religious sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif, however,was not of concern to all Arabs who opposed Zionism. Indeed there was no single united movement against Zionism. Rather four distinct trends of Arab opposition emerged: “opposition on the ground that the Jews were not loyal Ottoman subjects, Palestinian patriotism, Arabism, and Islam.”[16] In the course of this thesis I will analyze the evolution of the Haram al-Sharif as a sacred space within the Islamist Palestinian opposition.

The Haram al-Sharif as a Case Study

Historically the Temple Mount was revered as a holy site by many religions and venerated by many civilizations, yet during the twentieth century it was assigned additional significance and identified as the national symbol of Palestine. For example, posters frequently plastered in the streets of Palestine feature the Haram al-Sharif’s Dome of the Rock prominently in the foreground, and Palestinians cite threats to the Haram al-Sharif’s Aqsa Mosque as a justification for resistance against Israeli occupation. The point of this thesis, however, is not to argue that the Haram al-Sharif is the most significant religio-national symbol of Palestinians. This would be an exaggerated claim that fails to take into account the religious and political diversity of the Palestinian nation. Instead I will examine several editions of an international tourist guidebook published by the Muslim religious authorities that patronized the Haram al-Shariffrom 1921 until 1967. In the course of A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, published from 1925 until 1937, the Palestinian Supreme Muslim Council argued that though Jews had historic connections to the Haram al-Sharif, they were mitigated by the modern associations of the site with Islam. The historical narrative championed by the Supreme Awqaf Council, in A Brief Guide to the Dome of the Rock and al-Haram al-Sharif, which was published from 1956-1967, was meant to legitimize the Jordanian regime’s sovereignty over historic Palestine and its people by erasing a Palestinian national identity. I argue that an analysis of the evolution of these historical narratives demonstrates a shift in political agenda that influenced polemical arguments made within the guides. The narratives promoted within these tourist’s guidebooks would have a significant influence on Palestinian society, ultimately determining the character of the modern Palestinian narrative.

Although there exists a wealth of scholarly work on Israeli-Palestinian history and politics from the late 1880s until the modern day, no comprehensive studies on the evolution of the Haram al-Sharif within the Palestinian narrative exist. The absence of such a study is strange given the centrality of the Haram al-Sharifwithin the Palestinian national narrative. Since 1967 the Haram al-Sharifhas percolated all aspects of Palestinian society and has repeatedly been emphasized as the single most important issue to Palestinians in peace negotiations. My evaluation of this transformation will center on an analysis of the historical narratives of the Haram al-Sharif published by the Palestinian Supreme Muslim Council and the Jordanian Supreme Awqaf Council in their international tourist guides to the site. This enables a deeper understanding of the elevation of the Haram al-Sharifwithin the Palestinian national narrative and helps to illuminate how historical forces influenced the perception of the Haram. My thesis is therefore concerned with the social and political climate of these four decades, and the way in which it determined the national agendas of the Palestinian leadership and the Jordanian government, as reflected in the guidebooks.

I turn in my first chapter to a discussion of the various theoretical frameworks that I will employ throughout my analysis. These help to clarify how social and political pressures influence religious and nationalist conceptions of a sacred space. In the second chapter I analyze the historical narrative presented by the Supreme Muslim Council in A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif in the context of Mandatory Palestine. By evaluating the social and political pressures experienced by the Supreme Muslim Council, particularly the rapid influx of Zionist immigrants to Palestine, I explain how the Haram al-Sharif was transformed into a symbol of the Palestinian struggle, advancing the political agenda of the Supreme Muslim Council’s Hajj Amin al-Husayni. My third chapter builds on the historical model of the Supreme Muslim Council, analyzing the various departures of the Supreme Awqaf Council from their predecessor’s version. These departures clarify Jordanian political aims, and how they used the Haram al-Sharif to legitimize their rule. Both close analyses demonstrate that in the case of Haram al-Sharif, the site was coopted to advance the political agendas of religious authorities and that the subsequent narratives they promoted would have a lasting impact on the significance according to the sacred space by Palestinians.

Chapter 1

Theoretical Conceptions of Sacred Space

Nestled in the Judean hills of modern-day Israel is one of the oldest cities in recorded history. Considered a holy site to the three great Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the old city of Jerusalem is steeped in historical significance and religious symbolism. To walk the streets of the ancient city is, to believing individuals, to trace the paths of biblical figures like Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus in the place where God’s presence resides on earth. To others, to visit Jerusalem is to see one of the most ancient and well-preserved physical manifestations of human belief in the divine. This is no more apparent than in the heart of Jerusalem, at the Temple Mount. Used as a focal point of religious activity for thousands of years, the Temple Mount has long been viewed as a place of holiness and sanctity. What, though, does it mean that the Temple Mount is a sacred place, that Jerusalem is a holy city? Answering this question requires understanding how sacred space is ritualized, reimagined, and contested.

The sacred character of the Temple Mount has been enhanced through its location at the nexus of human ritual practice and social life. For centuries it has been the object of institutionalized ritual pilgrimage and etiological myth, identified as “a special place… from which profane life is excluded.”[17] French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that all religious systems divide the world between two categories, the sacred and the profane.[18] “Profane” objects are considered mundane and without any communal rituals to elevate them. This makes them the concern of the individual. In contrast that which is “sacred” facilitates the unity of a collective by constituting “a centre of organization around which a group of beliefs and rites” gravitates.[19] This duality, Durkheim theorized, leads to a hierarchy in which the sacred is considered to be superior to the profane, and is venerated as such. Durkheim believed that this distinction between “sacred” and “profane" in religious life could be applied to geographical properties to distinguish a space as sacred.[20] The Temple Mount has historically functioned in this capacity, and has therefore been uniquely distinguished from the landscape of the holy land.

The sacred element of the Temple Mount has been further emphasized through its identification as the geographical manifestation of divine presence on earth, where the human and the divine meet. The absence of such a divine presence and higher order effectively constitutes a chaos that Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade deemed profane space. These areas “without structure of consistency, amorphous” and homogenous, Eliade theorized, exist as a default whereas sacred space must be actively created.[21] The construction of sacred space occurs through a hierophany, which Eliade defined as a manifestation of the sacred, as experienced through the senses.[22] The experience of the sacred, through the hierophany, fractures the continuity of profane space thereby revealing “an absolute reality, opposed to the non-reality of the vast surrounding space.”[23] These spaces, which acquire an element of sacredness, reverse the chaos of profane areas, transforming them into grounded loci of cosmic order. Eliade argued further that the creation of sacred space facilitates human existence, enabling them “to live in a real sense” by acquiring “orientation in the chaos of homogeneity.”[24]

Durkheim’s and Eliade’s theories form the foundational work for all analyses of sacred space, explaining the religious meaning ascribed by primitive religious peoples to holy sites; yet, these theories do not account for the political aspects of sacred space that are relevant in later historical periods and in a modern context. The patronage of the Haram al-Sharif by Palestinian Muslims, for example, was a distinctly political act that symbolically mitigated the threats to their national sovereignty by Zionist forces. In this way the Temple Mount was ascribed with political significance that became as important, if not more, than its ritual function. Dutch theologian Gerardus Van der Leeuw briefly explored this politicized aspect of sacred space, arguing that a space becomes sacred through appropriation, possession, and ownership. The designation of a space as “sacred,” he suggested, can be seen as a politically motivated action, where the purpose of that action is the “conquest of the space.”[25]

The modern conquest of the Temple Mount by Palestinian and Jordanian Muslim authorities in the twentieth century had it roots in a long history of reinterpreting and appropriating religious sacred spaces. Throughout the centuries, as empires have risen and fallen, victors have established their “new political order as the natural successor of the old by appropriating religious centers associated with the vanquished.”[26] In patronizing principal sacred places, these new powers legitimized their right to rule and reordered the social hierarchy.[27] This practice was essential to the endurance of many empires, especially the Umayyad Caliphate, a Muslim dynasty that spread out from Mecca to conquer most of the Middle East and North Africa.