Atta al-Zir
عطا الزير
Rebel of the Buraq uprising, hanged at Acre
The eldest of the three men hanged at Acre on 17 June 1930. A labourer and farmer from Hebron, he dictated his last letter to his mother in peasant dialect: dance, mother, do not grieve — and plant olives over the grave.
Atta Ahmad al-Zir was born in Hebron in 1895. He worked in a succession of manual trades and in agriculture, and was known from childhood for his physical strength and his nerve. He took part in the resistance to British rule generally and in the Buraq uprising of August 1929 in particular. He was the oldest of the three men the Mandate condemned to hang for those events, and he was executed with Fuad Hijazi and Muhammad Jamjoum at the citadel prison in Acre on 17 June 1930, over Arab protests that had been arriving in London for months.
Of the three, al-Zir is the one with no schooling to record. He is also the one who left the most extraordinary document. Where Jamjoum wrote a political testament in formal Arabic and Hijazi wrote to a newspaper, al-Zir addressed his mother in the fallahi dialect of the Hebron countryside, in rhythmic rhyming speech that is closer to zajal than to letter-writing. It opens by forbidding her to mourn: dance, mother, if news of my death reaches you — dance, do not grieve on the day I am hanged. Whatever the enemy does, my soul, mother, will not part from this homeland. The translations here are the archive’s own, from the Arabic text kept by WAFA.
What follows is not resignation but instruction. Do not wear black, he tells her, because the black day is the day the enemy is in the country. Do not be upset when you call out where is Atta? — all the young men will answer, boys like roses, all ardour and seriousness, and when the homeland calls they come without number. Then the passage that has outlived everything else in the letter: above the grave, mother, plant the olive, and the grape too, mother, and the fig and the lemon; feed the young men of the quarter, do not deny the hungry — this is the testament of a young man who has known deprivation. He signs off with greetings to the neighbours, to the lane, to Hamdan and Abd al-Hayy and Sara, and a promise: I am coming back, mother, and I bring good news.
Ibrahim Tuqan gave him the third and last of the three hours — the hour of the patient man and the great heart, the one who meets death in gladness — and swore in it by al-Zir’s small children weeping for the lion. In the funeral song from Acre prison, by contrast, the couplet everyone knows pairs Jamjoum and Hijazi; al-Zir enters the song further in, in the verse that calls him and Fuad the brave ones who fear neither ruin nor death. The oldest and least schooled of the three is the one whose place in the chorus is least fixed. The archive holds his letter as the correction.
Sources
- الثلاثاء الحمراء: تسعون عاما على إعدام جمجوم والزير وحجازي — WAFA (Palestinian News and Information Agency), 16 June 2020
- In commemoration of executing Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Atta Alzeer — Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, State of Palestine, 17 June 2023
- Martyr Fu’ad Hijazi — Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (PalQuest), Institute for Palestine Studies
Further reading
An external biography or archive holding more on this life than the entry above.
Connected in the archive
16 connected records16 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
born in — 1 record
- Hebronالخليل
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: birthplace: "Hebron, Palestine" → Hebron (Hebron Governorate, southern West Bank)
names this person — 8 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- From Acre Prison
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: On 17 June 1930 the British Mandate hanged three men at Acre prison for the events of August 1929: Fuad Hijazi of Safad, and Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir of Hebron.
- Khalil Beidasخليل بيدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In Acre prison he wrote a short book describing the imperial prison system and the treatment of nationalist prisoners inside it — one of the earliest works of Palestinian prison literature, written in the same fortress where the Mandate would hang Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir a decade later.
- Nuh Ibrahimنوح إبراهيم
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The work of his that outlived everything else was written years before the revolt, for the three men the British hanged at Acre on 17 June 1930: Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir.
- Red Tuesday
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: On 17 June 1930 the British Mandate hanged three men at the fortress prison of Acre for their part in the Buraq uprising of August 1929: Fuad Hijazi of Safad, and Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir of Hebron.
- Red Tuesday — the executions at Acre prison
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Three of the condemned — Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir — were sentenced to death, and on 17 June 1930 the Mandate hanged them at Acre prison.
- Red Tuesday and the Songs of the Prison
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: The Institute for Palestine Studies keeps the photograph of one of them, Fuad Hijazi of Safad, in its encyclopedia of the Palestine question, under a caption that states the fact without ornament: "The British Mandate sentenced three rebels to death on the 17th of June 1930. They were Mohammad Jamjoom, Atta al-Zir, and Fu'ad Hijazi." Hijazi came from Safad; Jamjoum and al-Zir from Hebron.
- and 2 more
named in this record — 4 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Acreعكا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He was the oldest of the three men the Mandate condemned to hang for those events, and he was executed with Fuad Hijazi and Muhammad Jamjoum at the citadel prison in Acre on 17 June 1930, over Arab protests that had been arriving in London for months.
- Fuad Hijaziفؤاد حجازي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He was the oldest of the three men the Mandate condemned to hang for those events, and he was executed with Fuad Hijazi and Muhammad Jamjoum at the citadel prison in Acre on 17 June 1930, over Arab protests that had been arriving in London for months.
- Ibrahim Tuqanإبراهيم طوقان
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Ibrahim Tuqan gave him the third and last of the three hours — the hour of the patient man and the great heart, the one who meets death in gladness — and swore in it by al-Zir's small children weeping for the lion.
- Muhammad Jamjoumمحمد جمجوم
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: He was the oldest of the three men the Mandate condemned to hang for those events, and he was executed with Fuad Hijazi and Muhammad Jamjoum at the citadel prison in Acre on 17 June 1930, over Arab protests that had been arriving in London for months.
on a related subject — 3 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Farhan al-Saadiفرحان السعدي
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Acre prison", "mandate".
- Najati Sidqiنجاتي صدقي
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Acre prison", "mandate".
- Songs of the 1936 Revolt
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "mandate", "zajal".
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Atta al-Zir.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/figures/atta-al-zir.- MLA
“Atta al-Zir.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/figures/atta-al-zir. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-atta-al-zir, title = {Atta al-Zir}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/figures/atta-al-zir}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }