Wasif Jawhariyyeh - The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904-1948

The Storyteller of Jerusalem

CONTENTS

NOTE ON THIS EDITION

The complete memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh (b. 1897, d. 1972) are archived at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) in Ramallah. The original handwritten manuscript comprises three volumes that Wasif entitled Books I, II, and III. The collection also includes seven photographic albums.

The memoirs were first published in Arabic in two volumes by IPS in Beirut. Volume I is devoted to Ottoman Jerusalem and the time period 19041917. Volume II covers British Mandate Jerusalem, 19181948, as well as entries through 1968 from the period of Wasifs exile in Beirut.

In this English-language edition of the memoirs, entries have been selected to convey in a single volume the range and richness of the original, with an emphasis on the musical life of the times. As Salim Tamari points out, the Jawhariyyeh memoirs offer readers of history one of the most valuable records of Palestinian urban life that exists anywhere. At the same time they offer simply one persons voice chronicling contested life in Jerusalem, a local artist and patriot telling his story of a city.

Al-Quds al-Uthmaniyyah fi al-mudhakkirat al-jawhariyyah: al-kitab al-awwal min mudhakkirat al-musiqi Wasif Jawhariyyah, 19041917 [ Ottoman Jerusalem in the Jawhariyyeh Memoirs: Volume I of the Memoirs of the Musician Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 19041917 ], edited by Issam Nassar and Salim Tamari (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2003).
Al-Quds al-intidabiyyah fi al-mudhakkirat al-jawhariyyah: al-kitab al-thani min mudhakkirat al-musiqi Wasif Jawhariyyah, 19181948 [ British Mandate Jerusalem in the Jawhariyyeh Memoirs: Volume II of the Memoirs of the Musician Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 19181948 ], Nassar and Tamari, eds. (Beirut: IPS, 2005).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Collecting, preserving, translating, editing, and publishing these memoirs, or selections of them, was an ongoing effort for close to a decade. In the process, numerous individuals helped in various ways to eventually bring the memoirs to light, first in Arabic and now in English. We would like to thank each and every one of them, but listing their names and contributions would require many pages. So our thanks go to them all, those unknown soldiers in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere.

However, without the help of the surviving children of Wasif Jawharieh, the memoirs would not have seen the light, perhaps for many more years. The support, both financial and otherwise, of George Jawharieh was crucial. Aya Jawharieh-Shaker provided us with the manuscript, photographs, and many stories about Wasif that helped us place the memoirs in historical contexts. Special thanks go to Amal Nashashibi, who first drew our attention to the memoirs. The staff at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, especially the librarians, was exceptionally helpful, in particular Mona Nsouli, when it came to the use of photographs from their collection. The staff and members of the Institutes research committee deserve our thanks for their support for this project. We are also grateful to the Music and Letters Trust for its generous financial support.

A special thank you goes to the translator, Nada Elzeer, who did a splendid job and produced a meticulous translation of the selections of the memoirs. Finally, essential to the publication of this book were the patience and enthusiasm of our publisher, Michel Moushabeck, and the contributions of this projects team at Interlink Publishing: John Fiscella (editing), Jennifer Staltare (proofreading), Leyla Moushabeck and Pam Fontes-May (production), and James McDonald (cover design).

Issam Nassar and Salim Tamari

For anyone in search of the sounds of Ottoman Palestine, the memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh provide an indispensable guide. Wasif was a passionate amateur musician who was familiar with the music not only of his native Jerusalem but of neighboring towns and villages. His writings retrieve for us a sense of the beauty of the regions music, its meanings to local people, and its shifting roles under the influence of enormous regional change. We learn about Palestines ritual music, street music, concert music, puppet show music, party music, plus music on gramophone records and the radio station, through anecdotes and invaluable historical snapshots.

As his account leads us from the Ottoman period into the era of British control, Wasif also describes the foreigners who wrote about residents such as himself, turning the lens around and offering us a panoply of musical confrontations. He seems often to have faced the most pressing political questions of his time while involved with music. Thus by following the music in his memoirs we gain more than a new appreciation of the past sounds of Palestine. At once the subject and the observer, Wasif records for us intimate glimpses of how new arrivals from abroadpilgrims, missionaries, colonial officers, educators, Jewish settlersperceived and sought to transform the world of Palestinian Arabs.