JARALLAH FAMILY

Prominent Palestinian family from Jerusalem.

The Jarallahs belonged to Jerusalem's old Muslim elite, and were counted among the city's ashraf or descendants of the prophet Muhammad. Family members held religious posts in Jerusalem for hundreds of years and emerged at the end of the nineteenth century among the local Ottoman bureaucratic-landowning class, although less influential than the Husaynis and Nashashibis.

In 1921, Husam al-Din Jarallah (1884–1954), a graduate of al-Azhar, received the highest number of votes in an election for mufti (canon lawyer) of Jerusalem. But the rival Husaynis organized a petition campaign and succeeded in placing their candidate, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, in the post. Husam nonetheless served as chief justice of the religious courts, and in 1948 was finally appointed mufti by Jordan's King Abdullah, to replace the anti-Hashimite Husayni. While Husam al-Din was a pro-Hashimite moderate, other family members took stronger stands against Zionism. Hasan Jarallah, for example, in 1918 helped found an organization that took violent action against Arabs who sold land to Jews, called Jamʿiyyat al-Ikha wa al-Afaf (Association of Brotherhood and Purity).

see also abdullah i ibn hussein; husayni, muhammad amin al-.

Bibliography

Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, revised edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

elizabeth thompson