The Khalidi family

The Khalidis were the family that wrote things down. Prominent in Jerusalem since Mamluk times — when they carried the banner of the Qaysi faction against the Yamani Husaynis — they made their seat around Bab al-Silsila, the Chain Gate quarter of the Old City, and filled the offices of judges, clerks and scholars. Sun Allah al-Khalidi, chief secretary of Jerusalem’s religious court until his death in 1726, endowed a waqf to preserve eighty-five family manuscripts in perpetuity, the seed of a collection each generation enlarged. In the nineteenth century Yusuf Diya al-Din al-Khalidi (1842–1906) — linguist, author of the first Kurdish-Arabic dictionary, and a man Alexander Schölch called “an Ottoman Bismarck from Jerusalem” — served repeatedly as mayor of Jerusalem and represented the city in the Ottoman parliament of 1877; in 1899 he answered a Zionist overture from the Chief Rabbi of France with a letter that began, “In the name of God, leave Palestine alone.” His nephew Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi (1864–1913), Ottoman consul in Bordeaux, then MP and vice-president of the restored parliament, wrote some of the earliest sustained Arab analyses of Zionism before typhoid cut his career short.

The family’s public roles ran to the end of Arab Jerusalem. Husayn al-Khalidi was mayor from 1934 to 1937, and Mustafa al-Khalidi — “we must recognize the facts,” he said of the Zionist presence, and paid for it politically — was the city’s last Arab mayor, from 1938 to 1944. Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi (1896–1951) served as dean of the Arab College of Jerusalem, the Mandate’s premier teacher-training institution. But the family’s most durable monument is bibliophilic: in about 1900 Hajj Raghib al-Khalidi opened the family collection as the Khalidi Library (al-Maktaba al-Khalidiyya), one of Ottoman Palestine’s first public libraries, housed in a restored Mamluk tomb on Bab al-Silsila Road. It survives to this day — through 1948, occupation, legal battles and a Dutch-funded restoration — holding the largest private manuscript collection in Jerusalem.

The historians of modern Palestine who bear the name are not a separate, coincidental family but documented descendants of this same Jerusalem line. Walid Khalidi (1925–2026), son of Ahmad Samih, co-founded the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut in 1963 and wrote the standard photographic and village-by-village records of the Nakba; his half-brother Tarif is a historian at the American University of Beirut; their cousin Rashid Khalidi (b. 1948) — son of Ismail Khalidi and nephew of mayor Husayn — held the Edward Said chair at Columbia. The family home on Silsila Road, in Khalidi hands since the eighteenth century, was stormed by settlers in 2024, a reminder that the dynasty’s story is not yet history.

Notable members

• Sun Allah al-Khalidi (d. 1726) — chief secretary of Jerusalem’s religious court; his waqf founded the family’s manuscript collection.
• Yusuf Diya al-Din al-Khalidi (1842–1906) — mayor of Jerusalem, MP in the first Ottoman parliament, linguist and author of the first Kurdish-Arabic dictionary.
• Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi (1864–1913) — his nephew; Ottoman consul, MP and vice-president of parliament, pioneer of Arab writing on Zionism.
• Hajj Raghib al-Khalidi (1866–1952) — Islamic judge who opened the Khalidi Library to the public around 1900.
• Husayn al-Khalidi (1895–1962) — mayor of Jerusalem (1934–37); later briefly Jordanian prime minister-designate.
• Mustafa al-Khalidi (d. 1944) — the last Arab mayor of Jerusalem (1938–44).
• Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi (1896–1951) — educator, dean of the Arab College of Jerusalem; father of Walid and Tarif.
• Walid Khalidi (1925–2026) — historian, co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, author of Before Their Diaspora and editor of All That Remains.
• Rashid Khalidi (b. 1948) — historian, Edward Said Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, author of Palestinian Identity and The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

Sources

• Yusuf Diya-uddin al-Khalidi — PalQuest biography
• Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi — PalQuest biography
• An Ottoman Bismarck from Jerusalem: Yusuf Diya’ al-Khalidi (1842–1906) — Alexander Schölch, Institute for Palestine Studies
• Khalidi Library — Wikipedia
• Walid Khalidi — Wikipedia