Wasif Jawhariyyeh

Wasif Jawhariyyeh and his father Jiryis Jawhariyyeh in a studio photograph circa 1900. The photograph was preserved in the Jawhariyyeh Collection and published by the Institute for Palestine Studies. Wasif Jawhariyyeh (; 14 January 1897 – 1972) was a Palestinian composer, oud player, poet and chronicler. He is known for his memoirs, The Diaries of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, that spans over six decades from 1904 to 1968, covering Jerusalem's turbulent modern history, including four regimes and five wars. British Member of Parliament Layla Moran is his great-granddaughter.

Biography

Early life Wasif Jawhariyyeh was born to Jiryis and Hilana Barakat on 14 January 1897 in Jerusalem. The Jawhariyyeh's practised Eastern Orthodox Christianity. His father was an active member of their community, as a member of Jerusalem's municipal council and served for a time as tax assessor. He would later pursue a career as a silk farmer, cafe proprietor, skilled icon maker. He also was an amateur musician.

His father, Jiryis (Girgis), was the mukhtar of the Eastern Orthodox community in the Old City (1884) and a member of Jerusalem's municipal council, serving under the Mayors Salim al-Husseini and Faidy al-Alami. Trained as a lawyer he was well versed in Muslim Shari' law and commanded several languages, including Greek, Turkish and Arabic. He worked briefly as a government tax assessor, but later turned to private business, becoming a successful silk farmer in Ezariyyeh and proprietor of a public café over the Jraisheh River. He was also a skilled icon maker and amateur musician—which accounts for his encouragement of Wasif to take on the 'oud early in his youth.

His mother, Hilaneh Barakat, descended from a leading Orthodox family from what later became known as the Christian Quarter.

—Salim Tamari, "Jerusalem's Ottoman Modernity: The Times and Lives of Wasif Jawhariyyeh"

Education

Wasif's education provides an example of the cultural diversity of Jerusalem. The writings of Wasif reflected, "...a substantial degree of formal schooling... His polished language, rich poetic imagination." Among the schools and subjects he studied were:

I. The Dabbagha School (governed by the Lutheran Church) until 1909 and his studies included: basic Arab grammar, dictation, reading and arithmetic.

II. The Dusturiya Nation School - a progressive institution directed by Khalil al-Sakakini. Here he was introduced to the subjects of physical education, English, French, Turkish. As well as Qu'ranic studies, which he later accredits to his, "...mastery of Arabic music and singing."

Music career

Wasif's music career was influenced from the young age of nine. He was tutored by various musicians of Jerusalem. Wasif's music career exposed him to various cultures of the region and well as the West. Most important is the relationships formed with fellow musicians traveling from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Russia. He played with and for Christians, Muslims and Jews. The collaboration of artists transcended the ethnic and sectarian identities.

Wasif's education and musical career were marked by the growing influence of the culture of al-nahda

The Diaries of Wasif Jawhariyyeh

The Diaries of Wasif Jawhariyyeh: (1904–1968), are the memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh (1897–1972), a citizen of Jerusalem and a well known composer, Oud player, poet and chronicler. Jahwariyyeh's memoirs chronicle a period marked by extensive political and socio-economic transformation within the city of Jerusalem. The turn of the twentieth century ushered in an era of modernity within Jerusalem, manifested by advances in technology, industry, government, infrastructure, the arts, and education. Jawhariyyeh's writings serve as an invaluable primary source which have aided the study of the period; primarily on effects of modernization and the role of ethnicity and sectarian identities during the period.

Modernization in Jerusalem The city of Jerusalem, at the start of Jawhariyyeh's writing in 1904, was described as, "a relative backwater of the Ottoman Empire. As such, the city was a rather late entrant into what might be called the 'great nineteenth-century transformation,' and Jawhariyyeh was a witness to that transformation." The modernization of Jerusalem resulted in the proliferation of new classes of society such as "absentee landowners" and "the establishment of municipal councils in cities around the Ottoman Empire, by the close of the nineteenth century."

However, the memoirs of emergence of Wasif Jawhariyyeh writings have provided scholars such as Salim Tamari with a primary source capable of refuting such a claim. Through the records of Jawhariyyeh, Tamari argues the "weaknesses in this paradigm," stated above and suggests,

Jerusalem's modernity was a feature of internal dynamics in the Ottoman City and propose that the social structure of the walled city was much more fluid than generally believed; further I suggest that the quarter system signalling the division of the Old City into confessional bounded domains was introduced and imposed retroactively on the city by British colonial regulations."

—Salim Tamari, "Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Popular Music and Modernity in Jerusalem".

Wasif's experience among various ethnic and sectarian groups was largely amicable. He studied Arabic and the Quran, played with Muslims, Turks, Europeans and referred to the Jews as, abna’ al-balad’ (sons of the country), ‘compatriots’, ‘Yahud awlad Arab,’(Jews, sons of Arabs)." Tamari's argument serves as a rejection of the constructivist narrative, and argues in favor of a structural model in understanding society in Jerusalem at the turn of the century. A period of modernization, imperial control under the British Mandate system account for the modern era confessional boundaries of Jerusalem.