ثورة فلسطين - أسبابها ونتائجها
The Palestine Revolt: Its Causes and Consequencesby Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā

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على إنصاف العرب والاعتراف بحقوقهم في يوم من الأيام، وهذا ما جرَّأهم على محاولة انتزاع هذا الوطن من العرب بالمناجزة، دون ما ألفوه هم والإنكليز من نيل مآربهم بالمطاولة، فأوقدوا نار الثورة الحاضرة، ظانين أنه يمكنهم إقناع الشعب البريطاني وسائر شعوب المدنية من وضع تبعته على العرب بالدعاية الكاذبة، فبدا لهم من الله ما لم يكونوا يحتسبون، وحاق بهم ما كانوا به يستهزئون، وظهر للشعب الإنكليزي ولغيره ما لم يكونوا يعرفون، وكانت هذه الفتنة نصرًا من الله للعرب والمسلمين، إذ نبهت شعوبهما كلها إلى التعاون على حفظ حقوقهما الوطنية والدينية في فلسطين.

وجملة القول في الإنكليز أنهم لا يزالون أقرب إلى العقل والفضيلة من غيرهم، وبذلك يمكن الاستعانة بشعبهم على حكومتهم، وقد كان اليهود أقدر من العرب على ذلك إلى أن أحبطت الثورة التي أثاروها عملهم، وعلَّمتْ العرب كيف يظهرون له حقهم، ثم وُجد في هذا الشعب مَن بحث حتى عرف حق العرب واعترف به في بعض جرائده الكبرى، وأخذ يقيم الحجج على ما للدولة من المصلحة في اتباعه، ثم على العرب دون غيرهم إقناعها بالقول والعمل، بما في مودتهم من النفع، وبما في عداوتهم من الضرر بل الخطر، وإنهم لفاعلون إن شاء الله تعالى.

(3)

ماضي العرب وحضارتهم

(1) العرب أعرق الأمم في التاريخ ذكرًا، وأرسخهم في الحضارة قدمًا، فقد ثبت عند المحققين من علماء التاريخ والآثار واللغات، الذين يستمدون علومهم من العاديات أن قدماء المصريين والكلدانيين والفينقيين كانوا من جزيرة العرب، وهم مؤسسو أقدم الحضارات، وأن شريعة حمواربي التي عثر عليها منقبو الآثار في العراق من الألمان عربية، وهي أقدم الشرائع التامة المدونة، وكان معاصرًا لإبراهيم عليه الصلاة والسلام، وإبراهيم من أنباط العرب القحطانيين، وجد العرب العدنانيين، إخوة العبرانيين، فبنو إسرائيل فرع من الأرومة العربية السامية.

English
translation

to treat the Arabs justly and recognize their rights one day. This emboldened them to try to wrest this homeland from the Arabs by direct confrontation, instead of using the prolonged methods by which they and the English were accustomed to attain their aims. They kindled the present revolt, thinking that false propaganda would persuade the British people and the other civilized peoples to place the blame on the Arabs. But something from God appeared to them that they had not expected, and what they had mocked overtook them. The English people and others saw what they had not known. This strife was a victory from God for the Arabs and Muslims, for it alerted all Arab and Muslim peoples to work together to preserve their national and religious rights in Palestine.

In short, the English remain closer to reason and virtue than others. Their people can therefore be enlisted against their government. Until the revolt they provoked frustrated their work and taught the Arabs how to show that people their right, the Jews had been better able than the Arabs to do this. Then some among the English people investigated, learned the Arabs' right, and acknowledged it in major newspapers. They began to argue that the state had an interest in following that right. It is then for the Arabs, and no one else, to convince it by word and deed of the benefit in their friendship and the harm, indeed the danger, in their enmity. God willing, they will do so.

(3)

The Arabs' past and civilization

(1) The Arabs are the earliest of nations mentioned in history and the most deeply rooted in civilization. Researchers in history, archaeology, and languages who draw their knowledge from antiquities have established that the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians came from the Arabian Peninsula and founded the oldest civilizations. They have also established that the law of Hammurabi, discovered in Iraq by German excavators, was Arab and was the oldest complete written law. Hammurabi was a contemporary of Abraham, peace be upon him. Abraham belonged to the Nabateans of the Qahtani Arabs and was the ancestor of the Adnani Arabs, brothers of the Hebrews. Thus the Children of Israel are a branch of the Arab Semitic stock.

Analysis

Riḍā blames Jews for kindling the revolt, calls it a divine victory for Arabs and Muslims, and predicts that English opinion may turn toward Arab claims. The British Shaw Commission, published in March 1930 after this essay, found that the 1929 outbreak in Jerusalem began as an Arab attack on Jews for which no excuse in earlier Jewish murders had been established. It identified Arab animosity and hostility toward Jews, tied to frustrated national aims and economic fear, as the fundamental cause. It also treated the full series of Western Wall incidents as immediate causes and judged the Jewish demonstration of 1929-08-15 the incident that contributed most to the outbreak. This later inquiry rejects Riḍā's single assignment of cause while recognizing that one Jewish demonstration contributed to the immediate crisis. His description remains evidence of his own political and religious reading.

His account of Hammurabi also contains specific errors. The Louvre identifies Hammurabi as king of Babylon, dates the inscribed collection to about 1750 BCE, and says French excavators found the stele at Susa in Iran in 1902. It was not discovered in Iraq by German excavators. The Louvre calls it a collection of 282 legal judgments rather than a code in the modern sense. A University of Pennsylvania Museum publication identifies the Sumerian law collection of Ur-Nammu, about three centuries earlier, so Hammurabi's was not the oldest known written law collection. Neither source supports Riḍā's description of Hammurabi's law as Arab.

Riḍā then makes a broad claim that Abraham was a Nabataean of Qahtani Arab ancestry and that the Children of Israel were therefore a branch of Arab stock. A Metropolitan Museum publication places the earliest Greek evidence for the Nabataeans around 312 BCE. That evidence cannot support identification of Abraham with that much later historically attested people. Abraham's historical date and identity remain outside what these sources can establish.

The larger origin claim also conflicts with the checked archaeological and linguistic summaries. The British Museum traces ancient Egyptian civilization through long development among Nile Valley communities and describes the Phoenicians as descendants of coastal Canaanites with indigenous Levantine origins. Its Ancient Levant gallery also emphasizes indigenous Israelite origins. Kees Versteegh classifies Arabic within the Semitic language family while placing Hebrew and Phoenician in its Canaanite branch. These sources support linguistic relationship among Semitic languages. They do not turn that relationship into Riḍā's single Arab ethnic genealogy or support his unqualified derivation of ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians from the Arabian Peninsula. The museum summaries do not exclude all migration, contact or cultural exchange.

A further ancient-origin check does not support Riḍā's Chaldean genealogy. Encyclopaedia Iranica identifies the Chaldeans as West Semitic tribes of southern Babylonia attested from the early ninth century BCE. That evidence gives a historical location and classification but does not trace them to the Arabian Peninsula. It cannot rule out every earlier migration hypothesis, so the precise origin claim remains unsupported.

Riḍā's statement that Hammurabi was Abraham's contemporary cannot be fixed as history. John J. Collins notes that the Bible's internal chronology places Abraham around 2100 BCE, but that older attempts to identify Genesis's Amraphel with Hammurabi were abandoned for lack of evidence. The Louvre dates Hammurabi's stele to about 1750 BCE. Hammurabi can be dated within ancient Near Eastern chronology, while Abraham cannot be securely synchronized with him from the surviving evidence.

The 1929 violence did produce a major British policy review, but only after Riḍā wrote. The government appointed the Shaw Commission, commissioned Hope Simpson's inquiry, and issued the Passfield White Paper in 1930 with new statements on land and immigration. This supports his expectation that the events could alter public policy. The inquiries did not accept his single assignment of Jewish causation or recognize every Arab claim, and the resulting policy was later qualified.