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- Country of residence: Portugal
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Adel Aref Jabr was born in Jaffa in 1885. He was married and had two sons and a daughter. He studied primary school at Sheikh Ahmed Al-Saati Private School in Jaffa and at Al-Rashidiya School, and secondary school at the French Frères School in Jaffa until 1905. He studied at the French Commercial Institute in Istanbul and obtained a bachelor's degree in social and economic sciences from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
He began working in journalism, and together with Martin Alonzo, he published the newspaper “Al-Taraqi” on the eve of the declaration of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908. It was one of the first newspapers published in the city of Jaffa, but it ceased publication after six months. He worked as a private secretary to the Sultan of Marrakesh, Moulay Abdelhafid, during his trip to the Hijaz. He became a teacher at the Constitutional School in Jerusalem, then a teacher at the Salahiyya College until 1918. He took over the management of the government teachers’ college in Palestine and was an assistant to the Director of Education between (1918-1921). He worked as the director of the library at Al-Aqsa Mosque, and as the curator of the Islamic Museum in 1922, and as a professor of economics and political science at the Palestinian Law Institute in Jerusalem in 1923.
Jabr became involved in public affairs, was an active member of the “Literary Society”, was a member of the Jerusalem Municipal Council between (1939-1945), a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Antiquities, an honorary member of the Scientific Institute, and of the Geographical Society and the Society of Anthropological Sciences in Switzerland, and broadcast literary and scientific lectures at the Palestinian Broadcasting House in Jerusalem.
He began publishing his articles in newspapers, including the daily newspaper “Lisan al-Arab” published in Jerusalem. He worked in translation, translating from French a chapter from a book on nationalism by Max Nordau (a Zionist writer), which he published under the title “The Spirit of Nationalism” in “Lisan al-Hal” in 1922. He also wrote a booklet for tourists about the history of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, and participated in the two conferences on ancient antiquities held in Cairo in 1921 and 1924.
He founded, along with Khair Al-Din Al-Zarkali and Khaled Al-Dazdar, the daily newspaper “Al-Hayat”, which was published in Jerusalem between (1930-1931), and he edited, with Fouad Saba, the weekly magazine “Arab Economics”, which was published in Jerusalem between (1935-1937).
He established a private library in his house located in the Hazboun building in the Upper Baq’a neighborhood of Jerusalem, and it gained a good reputation among the major private libraries established by Palestinian intellectuals and writers such as Khalil Beidas, Khalil Sakakini, and Ajaj Nuwayhid.
Jabr was an independent before the Nakba, but he sided with the Jordanian regime afterward, and became a member of the Jordanian Senate.
Jabr suffered greatly in his life; he was forced to flee Jerusalem during the Nakba, and the occupation forces seized his home and confiscated his library. He died on December 19, 1953.
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