Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Aref Shehadeh Abdul Rahman Mustafa Aref was born in Jerusalem in 1892. He was married and had three sons and four daughters. He studied primary school at the Ma'mouniya School in Jerusalem, secondary school at the "Namua Taraki" School in Istanbul in 1909, and obtained a bachelor's degree in economics, politics and administration from the Faculty of Arts at Istanbul University in 1913. He was fluent in Turkish, Russian, German, English, French and Hebrew. He worked as an editor in the Turkish newspaper Payam (The Message), then as an employee in the translation department of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then as an officer in the Fifth Ottoman Army, then as an editor in the Southern Syria newspaper. During the British occupation, he was appointed as the district governor of Jenin, Nablus, Beisan and Jaffa (1921-1926), secretary-general of the government of Prince Abdullah (1926-1929), district governor of Beersheba and Gaza (1929-1943), district governor of Ramallah and the Jerusalem district in 1943, then he was appointed as assistant to the British governor of the Jerusalem district until 1948, then he became mayor of Jerusalem between the years (1949-1955), Minister of Public Works in 1955, and director of the Palestinian Museum in Jerusalem in 1963.
In his youth, he participated in the battles of the Ottomans with the Russians during the First World War. He arrived in Palestine in 1919, joined the Arab Club in Jerusalem, and was active in reviving religious and national occasions. He participated in the events of Nabi Musa in 1920, fled to Jordan, and then returned to Jerusalem after Herbert Samuel was appointed High Commissioner for Palestine. He supported the Great Palestinian Revolt between 1936 and 1939, and supplied Palestinian and Arab fighters in some locations with provisions, medicines, and water containers in the Jerusalem area during the Nakba events. He supervised the process of absorbing refugees in the Jerusalem and Ramallah areas, and held several meetings with Arab officials, including Prince Abdullah I bin Al-Hussein (the former King of Jordan), field commanders such as Fawzi Al-Qawuqji, and foreign envoys such as the international envoy Count Folke Bernadotte, in addition to the Red Cross delegate Monsieur Croisette. He headed the executive committee of the Wounded Fighter Association in Jerusalem, and was also one of the sponsors of the Family Revival Society in Al-Bireh.
Al-Aref spent a significant portion of his life writing, authoring, and publishing. His writing career began during his captivity in Siberia, where he contributed to the creation of a wall magazine called "Naqat Allah" (God's She-Camel). He then pursued journalistic writing in Palestine and began publishing books on Palestinian history in the 1930s, including: "Justice Among the Bedouin" (1933), "The History of Beersheba and Its Tribes" (1934), "My Vision" (1943), "The History of Gaza" (1943), "A Brief History of Ashkelon" (1943), "The History of the Temple Mount" (1947), "Christianity in Jerusalem" (1951), "The History of the Dome of the Rock and the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and a Glimpse into the History of Jerusalem" (1958), and "The Detailed History of Jerusalem" (1961). His books have been translated into several languages, including English and French. He also has unpublished works such as "Days in Siberia: Memoirs," "Memoirs of Three Years in Amman 1926-1929," and "Gaza Diaries." 1934-1936, and “Aref al-Aref Papers.” A number of Palestinian, Arab, and foreign historians and researchers have written about him.
Aref al-Aref suffered in his life; he was captured in the famous Battle of Erzurum, which took place on February 16, 1916, between the Ottoman forces and the Russian army, and remained in a prison in Siberia for three years. The British authorities also sentenced him in absentia to ten years after the events of Nabi Musa. He lived through the Nakba and its major events, and was forced to live in al-Bireh after the fall of East Jerusalem in 1967, until his death on July 30, 1973.
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