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Introduction

This book contains pages from the memoirs of the leader of the Palestinian national movement, His Eminence the late Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, may God forgive him, Grand Mufti of Palestine—President of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine—President of the Islamic Sharia Council—President of the World Muslim Congress. The book also contains a documentary appendix of official international, Arab and Palestinian texts concerning the Palestinian question and certain Arab and Islamic questions, together with some maps and rare historical photographs. All of these shed light on part of the career of this great historical leader.

I have divided the book into three chapters:

• Chapter One:

This contains a brief account of His Eminence the Mufti’s life and his forced departure from his homeland, Palestine, where the British Mandate authorities pursued him and surrounded his home in the precincts of the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque with their military forces to arrest him, attempting thereby to halt his jihad and struggle for the freedom and independence of his homeland.

His absence in the service of his homeland, Palestine, lasted thirty years. He left it disguised in the simple, tattered clothes of a Bedouin woman at exactly seven o’clock on the evening of 8 Shaʿban 1356 AH, corresponding to 13 October 1937, bound for Lebanon. He returned on the morning of Wednesday, 20 Dhu al-Qaʿda 1386 AH, corresponding to 1 March 1967, when the aircraft carrying His Eminence landed at Jerusalem Airport, arriving from Beirut, so that he could resume his jihad and struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

Chapter One contains the account of his struggle from his departure from Jerusalem in 1937 until the end of the Second World War, and his departure from Germany, after it fell into Allied hands, for France, where he was detained in Paris.