The Palestinian graduates of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) and the making of the native cultural Nahḍa

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Palestinian cultural Nahḍa that emerged with local nationalism in the early twentieth century was in part carried forward by members of the Arab-Palestinian Orthodox community. Their status in the Palestinian and Arab society of the time has to be contextualised in their relationship to the Russian language and even more so to the Russian educational enterprise in Palestine. Some of these cultural agents attended the schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS) which were first set up in isolated villages in the Galilee region and later in Nazareth and Beit Jala. This article, based primarily on Arabic-Palestinian sources as well as my research in some of the looted Palestinian archives located in Jerusalem, stresses the relationship between the Russian educational missionary enterprise in Palestine and the leaders of the Arab Nahḍa. The historical development of this Russian enterprise, which included the development of different schools and teaching programmes, is connected to case studies of a number of cultural agents and the fields in which they excelled (teaching, translation, the press, literature, music and theatre). This article finally focuses on the Palestinian Nahḍawi cultural field which has been neglected by previous research for various reasons (linguistics, access to archives and the prevalence of Egypt and Lebanon in the study of Nahḍa themes). Focusing on a cultural approach, this article provides a better understanding of the making of Palestinian national and cultural consciousness. (I would like to dedicate this paper as a tribute to Ḥanā abū Ḥanā (1928-).