The Husayni family

The Husaynis are the Jerusalem family against which all other Jerusalem families are measured. The clan claims descent from Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad — a claim repeated in family genealogies and treated by historians as a claim rather than a documented pedigree. What is documented is the family’s grip on the city’s religious and municipal offices from the Ottoman period onward. Unusually for Palestine, the Husaynis followed the Hanafi rite rather than the Shafi’i rite of most of the country’s Muslims, and by the mid-nineteenth century the Hanafi muftiate of Jerusalem had become nearly hereditary in their line: Mohammed Tahir al-Husayni held it from the 1860s until 1908, followed by his son Kamil (1908–1921) and then another son, Haj Amin (1921–1937). The mayoralty passed through the family as well — Abd al-Salam al-Husayni in 1869–70, Salim al-Husayni from 1882 to 1897, Hussein al-Husayni from 1909 until the city’s surrender to the British in December 1917, and Musa Kazim al-Husayni from 1918 to 1920.

Under the British Mandate the family supplied the national movement with its most prominent leaders — and its opponents with their favorite target. Musa Kazim, dismissed as mayor after the 1920 Nabi Musa disturbances, chaired the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress from 1922 until his death in March 1934, months after he was beaten by British police at a demonstration in Jaffa. His distant relative Haj Amin al-Husseini became the dominant Palestinian figure of the era: mufti of Jerusalem, president of the Supreme Muslim Council from 1922, and president of the Arab Higher Committee from 1936, before fleeing Palestine in 1937. His wartime trajectory — Iraq, then Axis Berlin and Rome, where he broadcast propaganda and lent support to the Nazi war effort — remains the most contested chapter of the family’s history; he died in Beirut in 1974. In 1948 it was Musa Kazim’s son, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, who commanded the Holy War Army and was killed at the battle of al-Qastal on 8 April 1948, days before Deir Yassin.

The family’s third act unfolded in Jerusalem itself. Abd al-Qadir’s son Faisal al-Husseini (1940–2001) founded the Arab Studies Society in 1979, made the family’s Orient House the PLO’s address in the city, and ended his career as the Palestinian Authority’s Minister for Jerusalem Affairs; he was buried beside his father and grandfather in the Khatuniyya madrasa by the Haram al-Sharif. His relative Hind al-Husayni had, a generation earlier, taken in the orphaned children of Deir Yassin and built the Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi orphanage. Ilan Pappé’s study of the clan calls it, not without reason, a Palestinian dynasty — one whose rise and fall tracked that of Arab Jerusalem itself.

Notable members

• Mohammed Tahir al-Husayni (1842–1908) — Hanafi mufti and qadi of Jerusalem from the 1860s until his death; patriarch of the mufti line.
• Kamil al-Husayni (1867–1921) — his son; mufti of Jerusalem under the late Ottomans and the British military administration.
• Haj Amin al-Husseini (c. 1895–1974) — Kamil’s brother; mufti of Jerusalem (1921–37), president of the Supreme Muslim Council and the Arab Higher Committee; the leading — and most controversial — Palestinian figure of the Mandate.
• Musa Kazim al-Husayni (1853–1934) — Ottoman governor, mayor of Jerusalem (1918–20), and chairman of the Arab Executive until his death following injuries at a 1933 demonstration.
• Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (1907–1948) — Musa Kazim’s son; commander of the Holy War Army, killed at al-Qastal in April 1948.
• Faisal al-Husseini (1940–2001) — Abd al-Qadir’s son; founder of the Arab Studies Society at Orient House and PA Minister for Jerusalem Affairs.
• Hind al-Husayni (1916–1994) — founder of the Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi orphanage in Jerusalem for the children of Deir Yassin.

Sources

• Muhammad Amin al-Husseini — PalQuest biography
• Musa Kazim Husseini — PalQuest biography
• Faisal al-Husseini — PalQuest biography
• Abd al-Qader al-Husseini — Jerusalem Story biography
• al-Husayni family — Wikipedia