The Centuries’ Legacy of Palestine
As the world watches a new bloody assault on Gaza, Palestine, the Muslim and Arab world relives a long history of massacres committed against the inhabitants.
1948: From one occupation to another
In 1948, following the 28-year-long British Mandate of Palestine, three years after the end of World War II, and 31 years after British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour promised “to facilitate the achievement” of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” (who comprised approximately 8% of the population at the time), the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was proclaimed.
To the Arab and Muslim world, this amounted to the transfer of Palestine from one occupier (the British, since the Palestine Campaign that ended in 1918) to another, with complete disregard for the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims as a whole. The Arab world retaliated.
Several Arab countries, many of which had just gained real independence from British control and influence, mobilized thousands of troops for war against the new state. The 1948 war, which lasted for over 9 months, ended with a major loss of land and the expulsion and flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Numerous massacres took place throughout the war, with the number of massacres ranging from 10–70, resulting in the death of hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Since then, the history of the region has been fraught with massacres committed against Muslims and Arabs under occupation, including the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla, Bahr el-Baqar, Qana, and Khan Yunis. But the region’s collective trauma from these brutal mass killings of the Arab and Muslim inhabitants did not begin in 1948, nor even shortly before.
The Jerusalem massacre of 1099
Apart from the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258 and the Spanish Inquisition that began in 1478, no other historic event in Muslim and Arab history incites a sense of collective pain than the massacre that took place when the Crusaders entered Jerusalem in 1099.
The images evoked by chroniclers have been seared into the minds for centuries, and each occupation and act of aggression in Palestine only rekindles the agony felt then. (Arab and Muslim chroniclers used the term ‘Franj’ to refer to the foreign crusaders who invaded the Holy Land.)
“In 492 Hijri, the Franj headed to Jerusalem, and they were approximately a thousand thousand fighters . . . They besieged Jerusalem for over 40 days, and controlled it at the morning dawn of Friday, the 23rd of Shaaban, 492 Hijri. And the Franj remained, killing the Muslims in Jerusalem, for a week, and over 70,000 souls were killed in the Aqsa Mosque, including many Muslim scholars, leaders, [devout] worshippers, and ascetics who had lived by Holy Place. And they [the Franks] collected spoils that cannot be counted.
“Then they surrounded those [who remained] in Jerusalem in the Holy Mosque, and informed them that, should they delay in their exit after three days, they will kill all of them. So the Muslims rushed to leave. As a result of the intensity of the crowding at the door of the mosque, such a large number died that only God can count.”
Al-Anas al-Jalil bi-Tareekh al-Quds wa al-Khalil by the chronicler Majir Al-Din Al-Hanbali Al-Alimi
“And the Franj killed more than 70,000 in the Aqsa Mosque, including many Muslim imams, scholars, [devout] worshippers, and ascetics who had left their homelands and lived by that Holy Place . . . and they took spoils the amount of which cannot be counted.”
The Complete History by ibn Al-Atheer
“And the people fled from al-Sham [Greater Syria] to Iraq, pleading for support against the Franks from the Caliph and the Sultan. Among them was the Qadi [Judge] Abu Saad Al-Harawi. When the people of Baghdad heard of the horrific events, they broke down and cried.”
The Beginning and the End by ibn Katheer
One non-Muslim contemporary of the time, and a crusader himself, Raymond of Aguilers not only recounted similar tales of the massacre that took place, but boasted about it as well. (And labeled the Aqsa Mosque as the Temple of Solomon.)
“Wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the Temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are normally chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it be enough to say this much, at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgement of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies … This day will be famous in all future ages … it marks the justification of all Christianity and the humiliation of paganism.”
Plagued by petty in-fighting, the Muslim world then failed to rally and repel the Crusaders, just as they failed to repel the British in Palestine in 1918 and save Palestinian land in 1948.
During the 12th century CE, it took a new generation and a new caliber of humble and selfless leaders to consolidate a significant portion of the Muslim world and begin the liberation of the Holy Land.
One Nation. One Body. One Trauma.
While the various events of the past century or two have created fictitious lines between us, sometimes splitting single tribes and families, our source of identity remains the same and continues to echo through the ages.
إِنَّ هَٰذِهِ أُمَّتُكُمْ أُمَّةً وَاحِدَةً وَأَنَا رَبُّكُمْ فَاعْبُدُونِ (سورة الأنبياء: 92)
Truly, this, your Ummah is one, and I am your Lord, therefore worship Me.
(Al-Anbiya: 92)
And, as our beloved Prophet and Allah’s Messenger described this Ummah:
The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever.
(Bukhari and Muslim)
