Grand Orient Ottoman
In 1956, in honour of the 50th anniversary Freemasonry in of the founding of the Barkai (L’Aurore) lodge in Jaffa (today based in Ottoman Palestine Freemasonry Tel Aviv), the all-Jewish lodge published Michelle Campos Diploma of the Grand Orient Ottoman, from the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris a complete roster of its past members.
According to the Masonic editor, the group sought to publicize the names of their former Jewish, Christian, and Muslim members “in the name of a pleasant memory and out of the hope that perhaps days of real peace between the peoples might return and those...[former brothers] can return to us.” Using language like “one family,” “the best of the country,” and the “best of Jaffa from the three religions,” the literature of the Israeli Barkai lodge invokes an idyllic nonsectarian past.
Certainly, one of the important ramifications of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution in Palestine was an increasingly active civic sphere. A rising Palestinian-Ottoman modernizing class emerged, not only from the notables and bureaucrats of the Tanzimat era, but (importantly) from the effendiyya social strata of the white-collar middle class. Having received liberal Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23 educations and belonging to the free professions, these Palestinians were attuned to the advances of the West and determined to forward the interests of their homeland.5 Christians, Jews, and Muslims of this stratum studied in similar schools (where they acquired tools such as foreign languages, accounting, geography), sometimes belonged to the same clubs, and worked and lived in close proximity to one another. Members of all three religions took part in creating a new social network which aspired to transcend communal boundaries for the economic, cultural, and political betterment of Palestine and the Ottoman Empire. In this article, part of a broader work on late Ottoman Palestine, I will analyze the Freemasons in Palestine, their contribution to a ‘bourgeois’ civil society and its contours in the Ottomanist public sphere. Contrary to the ‘separate spheres’ model that still dominates much of the historical literature on the region, I will show that Muslims, Christians and Jews in Palestine were deeply interdependent.
These relationships gradually weakened, however, as the political climate changed and sectarian differences gained prominence. While the Barkai lodge did – as it reminisced – include members of all three religions, and while it did succeed during the Young Turk period in mobilizing across communal lines, by 1913 intercommunal tensions and rivalry had penetrated Freemasonry in Palestine.
This communal divide foreshadowed a coming similar separation within the broader Masonic world. Two different mast-heads of the Barkai lodge letterhead. The first one, with the cross and the slogan “In hoc signo vinces” (By this sign you conquer) was considered anti-Masonic and so the lodge was asked to change it by the Paris headquarters. They did, to the general compass of the second letterhead. Source: M. Campos Philosophy, Progress and Politics in Freemasonry Evolving out of medieval Europe as a guild for mason craftsmen employed in the cathedral boom, by the eighteenth century philosophical Freemasonry had taken shape in England (1717) and France (1720) and soon established itself throughout Europe. Not long after, European Freemasonry had spread from the European metropole to the various colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas.6 Freemasonry also spread to the Middle East, and between 1875 and 1908.
Freemasonry was to prove itself one of the most influential social institutions in the Ottoman Empire. Despite the fact that they were considered outposts of European influence, secularism, and borderline revolutionary ideologies, Freemason lodges in the Middle East were extremely popular and influential. Incorporating a belief in a Supreme Being, secretive rituals, and modern Enlightenment ideals, Freemasonry offered its members a progressive philosophical and social outlook, an important economic and social network, ties to the West, as well as a potential arm for political organizing.
All four of these elements proved central to the spread and impact of Freemasonry lodges in the last several decades of the Ottoman Empire. At its most basic level, Freemasonry offered a world-view based on progressive humanism. In its founding constitution, the Grand Orient de France (GODF), the French Masonic order with arguably the greatest international impact, firmly rooted itself in such an outlook: Freemasonry, which is essentially a philanthropic, philosophical and progressive institution, aims to search for the truth, study ethics and practice mutual support. It works for the material and moral improvement of humanity, towards intellectual and social perfection. (...)Its principles are mutual tolerance, the respect of others and of oneself, absolute freedom of conscience. Believing that metaphysical considerations are the exclusive concern of individual members, it refuses any dogmatic position (...). As such, there was a natural sympathy between Freemasonry and French revolutionary ideals, and it is no wonder that generations of nineteenth century reformers found themselves closely allied with Freemasonry ideals. As we learn from the work of Paul Dumont, Ottoman intellectuals in the mid-nineteenth century were impacted deeply by French revolutionary principles, intellectual pursuits, and social questions of the day.
Dumont writes that most of the Ottoman Masonic lodges at the time discussed themes of the French Revolution: liberty, social justice, equality of citizens before the law, and brotherhood - all of which were timely in the Ottoman context. Thus the Freemasonry lodges of the Ottoman Empire provided a fertile partnership for Young Ottomanist thinkers and reformers such as Namık Kemal,18 and Freemasonry as an institution played a significant role along with other secret societies (including what Zarcone calls “para-Masonic organizations”) in drawing up the 1876 Ottoman Constitution. At the same time, Freemasonry in Egypt provided an outlet for political and social organization in the era of British colonization, and Masons played a role in the ‘Urabi revolution. Anti-colonialist organizers such as the Islamic thinker Jamal al-Din alAfghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, and the noted writer Ya’qub Sannu’ (of Abu Naddara fame) were prominent members of various Egyptian Masonic lodges. According to one source, al-Afghani actively sought out Freemasonry because of its political dimension as a liberation movement: If the Freemason society does not interfere in cosmic politics, while it includes every free builder, and if the building tools it has are not used for demolishing the old buildings to erect the monuments of true liberty, brotherhood, and equality, and if it does not raze the edifices of injustice, arrogance and oppression, then may the hands of the free never carry a hammer and may their building never rise... The first thing that enticed me to work in the building of the free was a solemn, impressive slogan: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - whose objective seemed to be the good of mankind, the demolition of the edifices and the erection of the monuments of absolute justice. Hence I took Freemasonry to mean a drive for work, self-respect and disdain for life in the cause of fighting injustice. Thierry Zarcone argues that, to the east, Freemasonry and para-Masonic organizations that merged Sufism, politics, and Masonry played a critical role in the 1905-1907 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. And, of course, most prominent was the role accorded to Freemasons in the Young Turk revolution of 1908, as well as the founding leadership of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP). Four Salonikan lodges in particular played an instrumental role in supporting the revolution - Loge Macedonia Risorta (Grand Orient d’Italie), Veritas (Grand Orient de France), Labor et Lux (Grand Orient d’Italie), and Perseverencia (Grande Oriente Español).
Furthermore, while it is difficult to quantify the contribution of Freemasonry lodges to the Young Turks before the revolution, a number of important Young Turks were active Masons, and hence the overlapping affinities of the two movements is clear. It has been suggested that CUP involvement with Freemasonry in Salonika was only instrumentally aimed at evading the Ottoman police (who were barred from penetrating European organizations), but there was clearly an overlap between the groups in political, philosophical and social aims. The slogan of the revolution (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”) was the slogan of Freemasonry as well as the CUP, and the crossover was not incidental.
A member of the then-defunct lodge L’Étoile du Bosphore wrote from Constantinople that “all the Ottoman youth carry a ribbon on his [sic] chest with our slogan (Liberty-Equality-Fraternity) written in French, and the army in revolution in Macedonia plays the Marsellaise.” Just two months after the Young Turk revolution, the annual assembly of the Grand Orient de France in Paris included greetings and congratulations to “Brother Masons” within the CUP and throughout the Ottoman Empire, articulating their support for the confluence of Freemasonic and Young Turk ideals and goals. This convention, in the face of the admirable revolutionary movement of the Young Turks, whose patient energy, ceaseless work, and marvellous heroism overcame all the forces of reaction and of cruelty, addresses its fraternal greeting and a cordial expression of its sympathy with the sister lodges of Turkey, take joy in their imposing work of enfranchisement and wish for the complete realization, in Turkey, of the Masonic ideals of justice, freedom, and fraternity. Immediately following the revolution, Freemasonry flourished in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Arab and Balkan provinces. Between 1909 and 1910, at least seven new Freemason lodges were established (or old ones revived from dormancy) in Istanbul alone; most of them had names that linked them to the new spirit of liberty and progress (Les vrais amis de l’Union et Progrès, La Veritas, La Patrie, La Renaissance, Shefak - also called L’Aurore). In Salonika the Freemason lodges multiplied so much so that Dumont has characterized the period as “proliferation that was likely to emerge, shortly, in a true Masonic colonization of the Ottoman Empire.”
We can only assume that the Masonic and revolutionary principles of liberty, universalism and civic engagement played at least some role in the appeal of Masonry to large numbers of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in this period. Freemasonry’s philosophical orientation echoed the broader public enthusiasm for liberty and other liberal ideals that emerged in the post-revolution Ottoman Empire. One surviving application for admission to a Beirut Masonic lodge premises its motivation precisely in this way: “the Freemasonry order is an order that has rendered great services to humanity throughout the centuries and always raised high the banner of equality, fraternity, and liberty. It is an order that seeks to bring together mankind and to better them. I would also like to be part of such an order, to take part in benevolence and the useful works of your order.”
New members swore to abide by these principles as well as to promote mutual aid, public service, and Masonic loyalty, on pain of excommunication. Thus, all Freemasons, regardless of their motivations for joining, were held accountable and complicit in theory in upholding these Masonic principles. Of course, it is also likely that the close relationship between the Young Turks and the Freemasonry movement gave it a stamp of approval, as well as a certain cachet and political expediency, and that these socio-political power considerations played a role in Masonry’s popularity.
Ideology and professed ideals alone do not account for what actually happens on the ground - to have a more accurate picture, one must examine the social consequences of participation in a Masonic lodge. The Grand Orient Ottoman – Nationalizing and Mobilizing Freemasonry Far from its origins as a closeted secret society pursued by the state and its secret police, during the Young Turk period Freemasonry became legitimate and institutionalized as part of the new socio-political order. One indication of the increasingly important role of the Freemasonry movement in the post-1908 Ottoman Empire was that in 1909, the long-defunct “Supreme Council” of the Scottish rite of Masonry within the Ottoman Empire was re-constituted. Also in 1909, the Young Turks sought to institutionalize, ‘nationalize’, and mobilize Freemasonry through the establishment of the Grand Orient Ottoman (or GOO, sometimes called the Grand Orient de la Turquie), an umbrella mother lodge that aimed to bring foreign-sponsored lodges under its control. In the summer of 1909, eight Constantinople-based lodges united to establish the GOO. In its first elections held in August, Ottoman Minister of the Interior Talat Pasha was elected Grand Master of the GOO, assisted by a multiethnic cast of Who’s Who in the capital. Among the GOO’s important innovations was its refusal to use the Masonic concept of “Grand Architect of the Universe,” feeling that such a quasi-deistic formulation would offend its Muslim constituents. Instead, the GOO asserted that the “Grand Architect” was an ideal to strive for, not an actual personage.
The GOO leadership sought to establish an autonomous Masonry in the spirit of political and national emancipation, as well as to form a core of constitutional liberals who would be able to stand up to the numerous reactionaries found throughout the empire.40 Under the aegis of the GOO, Ottoman lodges were established throughout the empire and existed side-by-side with foreign lodges. Paul Dumont has written that initially some lodges expressed reservations at the new Young Turk Masonic institutions, precisely because of their attempts to institutionalize Masonry within a specific political agenda. The GODF lodge Veritas in Salonika, for example, complained that the establishment of the GOO was “entirely premature”: HISTORICAL FEATURES Freemasonry in Ottoman Palestine
Among the reasons which push to me to place obstacles at the development of this new Masonic power, is that I noted, alas, that the lodges subjected to its influence completely neglect the regulations of the Masonic statutes and regulations with regard to the recruitment of the members and blindly are subjects to the instructions of parties which work with another collective aim. Within weeks, however, de Botton’s reservations had dissipated and he wrote to the GODF to ask them to do all that was “humanly and Masonically possible” to recognize the GOO.43 The GOO served as an important link between the new ruling party and the broader Masonic public. In its early efforts to co-opt foreign Masonic lodges throughout the empire, the founders of the GOO invited Ottoman Freemasons to a “national convention” in Constantinople in the fall of 1909. But despite ambitions to become the umbrella lodge for all Masons empire-wide, the founders of the GOO continued to belong to foreign lodges as well as to lodges racked by national schisms.
Freemasonry as a Social Club During this period, religious community played an important role in defining the contours of daily life - Muslim, Jewish and Christian children usually studied in separate schools, and inter-communal civic organizations were limited to professional guilds and bourgeois social groups, among them the Freemasons. As one of the few private forms of organization that existed in the Middle East in this period, Masonic lodges attracted a wide variety of members and supporters. Thus Freemason lodges could serve as rare ‘common meeting grounds’ for the spectrum of religious, ethnic and national communities. According to historian Jacob Landau, “...by the end of the [19th] century, there was hardly a city or town of importance without at least one lodge. Christians, Muslims and Jews mingled freely in these lodges (although certain lodges were preponderantly of one faith...) which were among the few meeting-places for members of different faiths, as well as for foreigners and natives.” Beyond serving as a ‘neutral’ meeting ground for various ethnicities and religions, Masonic lodges also served as vehicles for internal solidarity and social cohesion across various elite and middle-strata groups, including the traditional aristocracy, ruling administration,49 rising merchant classes, and lower-level employees and intellectuals. In Egypt, for example, Muslim Masons by-and-large hailed from similar rural notable backgrounds, had links with the military, were educated in the new school system, and were mostly concerned with efficient rule rather than democracy.51 Masonry provided the Syrian Christians of Egypt not only with an opportunity to push for a constitutional parliamentary regime, but also a means of preserving their ‘insider’ Ottoman status in the face of foreign domination. Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23
In this regard, it is important to note that to a large extent, Freemasonry in the colonies and beyond was another face of ‘humanistic colonialism’, which aimed to spread western ideas of progress, public health, secular education, justice, social laws, solidarity, freedom of opinion, press, and association, and economic and technological development. Among other things, colonial Freemasonry created a social and cultural elite and sought to assimilate the ‘native’ Freemasons to Francophone and European values and culture. Of course, this reception was a dynamic process, and we can assume that local Freemasons adapted Freemasonry to themselves as much as themselves to Freemasonry. Since recruitment to Freemasonry lodges depended on the recommendation of two members, the organization often had the effect of re-affirming class and, in some areas, ethnic or religious distinctions. Furthermore, Masons were also active in other organizations, creating a linkage between Freemason lodges and other civil organizations. In this way Freemasonry helped shape the civic public sphere evolving in the Ottoman Empire. As the site of the ancient temple of Solomon, Palestine was considered the birthplace of Freemasonry’s traditions and ideals.
The first Freemason lodge in Palestine was established in 1873 in Jerusalem by Robert Morris, a visiting American Freemason, Henry Mondsley, an English engineer, and Charles Netter, a French Jew. Morris had set off for the Middle East to forge ties with local and potential Masons; when he arrived in Jerusalem he brought with him a charter for the Royal Solomon Mother Lodge (No. 293) from the Grand Lodge of Canada. According to local Masonic history, most of the members of the lodge were American Christians who had settled in Jaffa. Little is known of the lodge’s work, but in 1907 the lodge’s charter was finally formally revoked “on account of bad management,” and the lodge quietly disappeared.58 After the Jerusalem lodge, Le Port du Temple de Salomon was founded in August 1891 in Jaffa by a group of Arab and Jewish locals, working in French; soon thereafter the Frenchman Gustave Milo, along with other European engineers who had arrived to construct the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad, joined the lodge.60 The lodge followed the Misraim (Egyptian) rite, one of the 154 rites in Freemasonry. Little is known of the lodge’s first decade and a half, other than a report that the members of Le Port du Temple de Salomon wanted to purchase land for a cooperative Freemason village. The endeavour was apparently racked by disputes and never came to fruition.62 According to one Mason historian, because the Misraim rite was not recognized by most other obediences in Freemasonry, Le Port du Temple de Salomon lodge decided to leave the Egyptian grand lodge and transfer its allegiance to the Grand Orient de France (GODF), a leading umbrella organization for Middle Eastern Freemasonry lodges.64 In April 1904, the lodge applied to the GODF, and by March 1906, the lodge was notified that it had completed all requirements for adoption by the GODF, and was renamed L’Aurore (Barkai in Hebrew; Shafaq in Arabic).65 Based on an internal correspondence between the lodge and the GODF, it seems that the Jaffa Freemasons hoped to benefit from European patronage, acting as both catalyst and safeguard. The lodge Venerable (President) wrote to the GODF: “The difficulties and obstacles all being almost surmounted we are sure that under the auspices of the GODF we will be able to work with more freedom and for a long time. We hope to catch up with ourselves over wasted time.”66 Eager to quickly fall in line under the GODF, Barkai asked for a charter, instructions, ritual, constitution, and several books of “catechism” for the first three grades. From the outset, the lodge faced numerous obstacles in Palestine, mostly from the religious leaderships, and it seems they were physically pursued upon opening the new lodge headquarters. Several months after its founding, Barkai wrote to the GODF: We will work assiduously to surmount all the difficulties that we encounter here. It is a country which will take a little time to be reformed; let us not be unaware that it is Palestine the Holy Land. We are bothered by the clergy that drove out us from our premises, and each day, of new congregations forming.
The spirit of the natives is quickly captured by the spirit of the Church, by its men. It is the greatest cause of the delay of our establishment. We had to deploy a great force to hasten the opening and to be in time to send the balance of our account to you, for the appointment of our delegate to the convention.
Although its existence was marred by difficulties, including “abuses and irregularities” by government functionaries in the aftermath of the Young Turk revolution, by the beginning of World War I, the Barkai lodge was the largest, most successful Freemason lodge in Palestine.69 A Study of the Effendiyya In 1906, the dozen founding members of the Barkai lodge were exclusively Jewish and Christian: Alexander Fiani, Dr. Yosef Rosenfeld, Jacques Litwinsky, Hanna ‘Issa Samoury, David Yodilovitz, Yehuda Levi, Musa Khoury, Maurice Schönberg, Moise (Moshe) Goldberg, Marc Stein, Michel Hourwitz, and Moise (Moshe) Yachia.70 Within a few years, however, and due to the changed atmosphere in Palestine in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution, Barkai quickly became a centre for leading members of the political, intellectual and economic elite of all three religions. Importantly, there was significant Muslim participation in the lodge in the post-1908 period. Of the 157 known members and affiliates in the years 1906-1915, 70 were Muslim, 52 were Christian, and 34 were Jews. This composition is particularly significant when we consider that much of the antiMasonic literature denounces Masonry as the purview of the ‘minority’ Jewish, Christian and foreign European communities. The high participation of Muslims in Palestine contradicts this charge, even as we note that Christians and Jews were over-represented in the lodge as compared to the population as a whole. In 1907, for example, Muslims comprised 75 percent of the population of the Jaffa region, Christians 19 percent, and Jews between 6 to 10 percent (depending on whether or not non-Ottomans are considered).72 By 1914, the Jewish proportion of the Jaffa-area population had risen to almost 25 percent, while the Muslim majority had declined to 56 percent and the number of Christians remained stable at 19 percent. Concurrently, Freemasonry became more appealing for Palestine’s leading Muslim families. At the beginning of 1908, Barkai claimed only three Muslim members out of a total of 37; by the end of 1908, another 14 Muslims had joined the lodge along with six Jews and Christians, marking the first time that new Muslim enlistment in the lodge exceeded that of the other two communities. In the six years following, new Muslim recruits annually exceeded Christian and Jewish recruits; in most years the Muslim initiates exceeded new Jewish and Christian members combined. At the same time, Barkai witnessed a dramatic decline in new Jewish membership. The peak for Jewish membership was in the first year of the lodge’s founding; after 1907, Barkai never admitted more than four Jewish members in any given year. Some of this declining interest was offset by the establishment of two new lodges based in Jerusalem, Temple of Solomon (established 1910), and Moriah (established 1913). In Temple of Solomon, Jews comprised 37 percent of the membership, while Muslims and Christians were 41 percent and 19 percent respectively. More markedly, the Moriah lodge, which existed from 1913 to 1914, was 60 percent Jewish, 29 percent Christian, and only three percent Muslim. While some of this can be accounted for by the dramatically different demographics of Jerusalem (where Jews were the majority),73 we will see below that the founding of the Moriah lodge was a political act rooted in a rupture with the Temple of Solomon lodge that pitted Europeans (and their protégés) against Ottomans and Zionists against anti-Zionists.
According to the membership logs, Christians and Jews were more likely to take leading roles within the lodges, and they were more likely to stick around for Masonic promotion. Of the officers of the three Palestinian Masonic lodges, 43 percent were Christian, 36 percent Jewish, and only 16 percent Muslim. That is to say, of the three groups, Muslims were much more likely to remain at the entry-level apprentice stage than Christians or Jews. Of course, this is in part accounted for by their comparatively recent exposure to Masonry, unlike their Christian and Jewish counterparts, some of whom had been among the founding members of the lodge. Further demographic details provide a more vivid picture of just how deeply-rooted and localized Freemasonry was in Palestine. By birth, Freemasons in Palestine were overwhelmingly Ottoman (87-88 percent), and by-and-large Palestinian (60 percent). Of those born in Palestine, 82 percent were born in Jaffa or Jerusalem, with the rest coming from other towns such as Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, and Bethlehem. Only one Palestinian Freemason was born in a village. Thus, Palestine’s Freemasonry lodges were fairly indigenous lodges, much more so than anti-Masonic critics claimed. Only 11% of lodge members were European-born, most of them Jewish immigrants to Palestine (in some cases Ottomanized citizens), and a few of them European Christians employed locally. That most of the lodge’s membership came from Palestinian families of the three religions (60 percent) tells us the manner in which Freemasonry lodges served as social networks for the growing middle class and various elites.
To a certain extent, this sector was largely pre-selected and self-perpetuating. In order to be accepted into a lodge, a prospective candidate had to secure the sponsorship of two lodge members in good standing. These recommendations often came from relatives (older brothers, cousins, uncles, and sometimes fathers), business partners or acquaintances, and also geographically-based extended family networks (for example, strong ties existed among the several Christian families from Beirut in Jaffa, as well as among the North African (Maghrebi) Jewish families).
Family ties were the single most important factor in joining - fully 32 percent of all Freemasons in Palestine had family members who were also member Masons – but educational and professional ties also proved significant. Among the Freemasons in Barkai lodge were at least six recent graduates of the American University in Beirut, in addition to many who had studied in various professional schools in Constantinople. Furthermore, nine employees of the Jaffa and Jerusalem branches of the Ottoman Imperial Bank were Freemasons. Socially, the members of Palestine’s Freemasonry lodges, like Masons elsewhere, were largely of the newly mobile middle classes of the effendiyya in the liberal professions, the commercial and bureaucratic elite, as well as from the traditional notable families.
Though coming from different religious communities, they shared similar modes of modern education, exposure to foreign languages and Western ideas, a relatively high level of economic independence, and a growing socio-political weight in Palestine and the empire as a whole. As a new class, these men were to have an important impact on the future. Rashid Khalidi has observed: By the late Ottoman period, a military officer, a postal official, a teacher in a state preparatory school, or a company clerk was part of a large and growing new elite, not rooted for the most part in the old notable class, and with a modern education involving a number of western elements, and access to quite considerable power. This new social stratum was to play a role of extraordinary importance in the politics of the Middle East throughout the 20th century. The importance of the Ottoman context, and specifically of the universal impact of the changes which had been taking place throughout the empire can be seen here, for the pattern in the Arab provinces followed that in Rumelia and Anatolia, where Turkishspeaking members of these or newly-trained professional groups totally transformed Ottoman and later Turkish politics, through the Committee of Union and Progress and later via the Kemalist revolution.
In Palestine, these Masons came from important families of this new social stratum as well as from more traditional communal and notable families. Among the Muslims, there were quite a few members of the traditional notable families, including: ‘Arafat, Abu Ghazaleh, Abu Khadra, al-Bitar, al-Dajani, al-Khalidi,81 al-Nashashibi and Nusseibi. The Christian families were largely members of the growing middle-classes, employed in commerce and the liberal professions: Burdqush, al-‘Issa, Khoury, Mantura, Sleim, Soulban, and Tamari.
Among the Jewish members, the Ashkenazim were largely colonists who arrived in the 1880s and ‘90s and lived in the early Jewish agricultural settlements, adopting Ottoman citizenship upon arrival. The Sephardi and Maghrebi Jews, on the other hand, were younger members of economically and communally established families: Amzalek,89 Elyashar,90 Mani, Moyal Panijel, Taranto, and Valero. Two-page initiation certificate of Sa’id Nashashibi. Source: GODF Archive, Paris Thus there was a certain degree of what Ran Halevi has called the “democratic sociability” of the Freemasonry movement. The radical innovation of a single organization that would voluntarily encompass both Khalidis and Nashashibis as well as Burdqushes, Manis, and other young men from ‘regular‘ families cannot be overlooked. Most Palestinian Freemasons in this period joined in their mid-20s to mid30s (the average age was 31.8 years old at time of pledging), although they were sometimes younger (especially those with family legacies) and sometimes older. While all of the men had to be fairly independent financially and professionally in order to afford membership dues and other lodge expenses,96 the lodges did not attract the older leaders of each community.
Members were the same men who supported the Committee for Union and Progress, and later, the various decentralization and nationalist parties. The overall professional composition of Palestine’s Freemasons leaned heavily towards commerce and banking/accounting, education, medicine, law, government, and miscellaneous white-collar professions (such as clerkships). Christians were over-represented in these professions due to their more European-style education and knowledge of foreign languages, as well as the fact that they were generally favoured by consulates and foreign companies as potential employees.
Muslim Freemasons, in contrast, were dominant in government bureaucracy, legal and judicial occupations, and military/police work. Twelve members of the local police and military personnel were Freemasons in Palestine, a phenomenon that repeated itself elsewhere. In fact, Freemasons of all three religions penetrated the most central areas of Palestinian society and economy. Most notably, one of Palestine’s representatives in the Ottoman parliament, Ragheb al-Nashashibi of Jerusalem (who later became mayor of Jerusalem), was a Freemason.
Because of this demographic and professional profile, access to these networks played an important role in Masonic appeal and cachet. Inter-Masonic commercial relationships were frequent, and it was not uncommon for businessmen to request letters of introduction with a Masonic stamp of approval. Such a letter was obtained by Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche, himself not a Mason, from then-president of Barkai lodge Iskandar Fiuni (Alexander Fiani) in preparation for a business meeting with a Greek in Egypt. Furthermore, a significant number (22 percent) of Freemasons in Palestine belonged to other Freemason lodges, whether locally or abroad, indicating the extent to which Freemasonry itself served as an overlapping affiliation network. Beyond the direct networking of Freemasonry lodges, there was a great deal of indirect networking and cross-fertilization of other groups and organizations. As was the case empire-wide, one of the most significant groups at the time was the local branch network of the CUP.
Public Participation and Philanthropy Because of its status as a secret society as well as the seeming loss of the Barkai lodge archives, it is difficult to retrace the full scope of the lodge’s activities. Furthermore, we know (thanks to a shocking case of ‘Masonic treason’ within the Jerusalem lodges) that the Freemasons had good reason to be silent about their activities, in order to protect themselves from both religious and government intervention. Nevertheless, we are aware that the Palestine lodges’ regular activities focused on the following areas: philanthropy, mutual aid, and lay education. In this they continued the work of other Masonic lodges, which regularly had committees to deal with justice, welfare, property, general subjects, and propaganda.
Socially, Masonic lodges annually held summer and winter solstice banquets, with elaborate programs and ceremonies; as far as I can tell this was the only Freemason activity to which entire families were invited and were thus semi-open to the public. The scathing critique of the Lebanese priest Father Cheikho centred on his claim that Freemason lodges in Lebanon had unacceptable innovations that challenged the rights and roles of the church, such as performing their own marriage ceremonies along ‘civil’ lines; I have found no evidence of this in Palestine, however, and so it is possibly fabricated or exaggerated. Beyond that, we can only wonder at what sort of Masonic activity was implied when members spoke of their missionary-like activities of “contributing to the diffusion of Masonic ideas in this Ottoman Empire which is our fatherland, which greatly needs to take as a starting point our motto to ensure the well-being of its children.” In this context, Barkai requested that it be allowed to affiliate itself with the Grand Orient Ottoman, in order to coordinate Masonic activities empire-wide: Considering that the current state of our country is a large sphere of activity for the Masonic ideas, that the presence of a GOT in Constantinople as a regular Masonic power would contribute much to the improvement of all the classes of the country, the Barkai lodge asks you to recognize this new Masonic power.
Because of its close ties with leading members of the new government and ruling party, the GOO was an important friend to have, a fact not lost on Palestine’s Masons facing - for example - attack by one of Palestine’s newly elected parliamentarians, apparently an avowed enemy of Freemasonry. By the same occasion we must let you know that the deputy of Jaffa, a backward, fanatical man imbued with retrograde ideas, conducts a campaign against our Freemasons Fawzi and Yahia, police chief and policeman of our city, by denouncing them to the authorities of the capital as reactionaries and guilty of misappropriation, which is absolutely contrary to the truth. His goal is to attack the Freemasons employed with the government. We have informed the GOT of the remainder of these intrigues, as its president is the current Minister of the Interior. But fearing that this intriguing and fanatical deputy does succeed thanks to his influence in directing the authorities, superiors of the capital, against our wrongfully disparaged Freemasons, we ask you to support our intervention with the GOT and to support our Freemasons so that calumnies of the model of this infamous deputy remain without effect.
Eventually in 1910 the GODF did establish “fraternal relations” with the GOO and authorized its members to fraternize with the Ottoman organization.112As a result, in June of that year, several members of Barkai decided to revive the defunct Temple of Solomon lodge in Jerusalem. They wrote to the GODF, and were told they should open it under the auspices of the GOO, since it was the recognized grand lodge of the region. The GODF also instructed them to invoke the Grand Architect of the Universe and preserve the French slogans “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”
Eventually, at least 22 members of Barkai also became members of the new lodge, and there were close relations between the two lodges. Within a few years, however, the Temple of Solomon was to undergo an internal split that would divide Palestinian Freemasonry and foreshadow events to come. Against Foreigners and Zionists By March 1913, a faction of the Temple of Solomon lodge broke off and formed its own provisional lodge, demanding “symbolic and constitutional acceptance” by the GODF. The new Moriah lodge immediately requested catechism books, proposed a lodge seal, began searching for a garden as lodge headquarters, and set strict guidelines for admission to the lodge: only those with “irreproachable reputations” and decent French need apply. According to its new president, the task of the Masons of Moriah would be to defend the ideas of freedom and justice, particularly in Jerusalem where clericalism and fanaticism were strongly against Masonic work.
Avraham Abushadid, newly-elected Speaker of the lodge, urged his fellow Masons to ensure that “mutual tolerance, respect of others and yourself, and absolute freedom of conscience are not words in vain.” According to Abushadid, in the East “the word ‘freedom’ is replaced by ‘servility’ and ‘fanaticism,’ while ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’ are vocabulary replaced by the synonyms of ‘superstition’ and ‘hypocrisy’.” Through their Masonic mission, Abushadid envisioned a renaissance of the Ottoman people: …this new star which comes from our East, continues to shine with an increasingly sharp glare, and our route is clear...the day will come when its luminous clarity will disperse all darkness, and the base of this shaking humanity will collapse and one will see then, all the nations, all the races, all the religions will be erased and disappear, and to make place for a rising generation, young people, free, fraternizing and sacrificing a whole glorious past, for a new era of peace, truth and justice. Despite this claim to the erasure of lines between peoples, the split within the TOS had been a cultural and political division between two separate factions - one Arabic speaking, largely Muslim and Christian, and the other French-speaking, largely Jewish and foreign. Of the eight known Temple of Solomon members who defected Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23 to form Moriah, five of them were Jewish, one Christian, and two were foreigners (Frenchmen).
The ‘natives’ of TOS accused the ‘foreigners’ of being, among other things, Zionists, while they were accused in turn of being “xenophobes.” If before the split TOS had been 40 percent Muslim, percent Jewish, and 18.5 percent Christian, afterwards both TOS and Moriah were far more homogenous lodges. In the face of this schism among Freemasons in Jerusalem, the Jaffa-based Barkai lodge appealed to the GODF to deny Moriah’s request for recognition. According to Barkai president ‘Araktinji, the presence of two competing Freemasonry lodges in Jerusalem would cause discord. His request was politely denied by the GODF, which had long wanted a lodge in Jerusalem. “…Tell our Freemason brothers of the lodge of the Temple of Solomon that they should not look at [Moriah] as a rival lodge, but rather a new hearth also Picture of Cesar ‘Araktinji, long-time Barkai lodge working to realize our ideals of justice president, from a lodge pamphlet. and brotherhood.” Not to be dissuaded, Source: M. Campos ‘Araktinji again appealed to the GODF, stating that the founders of Moriah had acted improperly in founding a lodge on their own. He also asserted that language problems were a catalyst in the defection, since many of the Temple of Solomon members did not know French, and several of the defectors apparently did not know Arabic. Furthermore, most of the TOS members had been initiated under the GODF order through Barkai, and as a result, the GODF owed them special consideration. Finally, according to ‘Araktinji, the main instigator of the defections, Henri Frigere, had promoted personal animosity among Jerusalem’s Freemasons, and he should be transferred elsewhere in the region in order to mend the growing rifts in Palestinian Freemasonry. In their defence, the founders of the Moriah lodge wrote again to the GODF, this time indicting not only the members of TOS from whom they split, but also the Jaffa-based lodge Barkai and all “indigenous” Freemasons. According to Moriah, The indigenous Turkish and Arab element is still unable to understand and appreciate the superior principles of Masonry, and in consequence, of practicing them.
For the majority, Freemasonry is probably only an instrument of protection and occult recommendation [?], and for others an instrument of local and political influence. The work of the lodges consists primarily of [illegible] and recommendations, not always unfortunately, for just causes and in favour of innocent Freemasons. The rest does not exist and cannot exist because the indigenous know only despotism, from which they suffer for long centuries, and their instruction is very little developed, and is not prepared to work with a disinterested aim for humanity and justice. Many events that you have knowledge of will assure you of this point of view, which explains the particular way the Masons in Jerusalem have accommodated the news of the creation of our lodge and their fight against what they ingeniously call competition! This situation, according to Moriah, had caused a deadlock in lodge work, since the “indigenous” lodge members vetoed suggestions of the second faction. Naturally, this letter also carries a racist and patronizing thread woven into Masonry: “natives” cannot be expected to truly understand Masonic principles as “Europeans” do. While proposing universalism on the one hand, Freemasonry lodges in practice expounded a very Eurocentric - and in the case of the GODF, a Francophile - view of the modern liberal man. The irony here, of course, is that only Ottomans who were already predisposed to European language, ideology, or manners sought out membership in European lodges. Members of a certain class and cultural milieu sought fraternity and legitimacy in this very European institution, precisely because of all it represented: cosmopolitanism, liberalism, modernity, and acculturation to a changed global setting. That orientation towards Europe was fraught with tension.
The core indigenous TOS lodge members were reportedly suspicious of the two Frenchmen (Frigere and Drouillard) and their influence over the other defectors. Frigere reported that the TOS leadership “persuaded the other Freemasons that our lodge [Moriah] was created with the aim of facilitating the descent of the French into Palestine...and other stupid stories, which can appear ridiculous by far, but which were not, considering the particular situation of Turkey, without a rather pressing danger.”
Of course, during this period the Ottoman Empire had recently fought and lost several wars, one against Italy over its annexation of an Ottoman province (Libya), and the other against former Ottoman provinces of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro over the remaining Ottoman regions of the Balkans. Furthermore, long-standing local resentments against the privileges accorded foreigners in the Empire under the Capitulations, as well as the arrogance of European consuls who repeatedly insisted on running warships to intimidate and control the local population also weighed into the equation. As a result, anti-European sentiment and suspicions were running particularly high. Of course, general Ottoman resentment against an increasingly encroaching Europe overlapped with the changing contours of Palestine due to the rise of the Zionist movement.
In this period, the Palestinian urban and rural populations were acutely aware of the growing presence of Jewish immigrants in the country; Palestinian opposition to these developments was manifest in the Arabic press, in telegrammed petitions to the central government in Istanbul, and in periodic rural clashes among peasants and Jewish colonists. As a result, by the next year the depiction of the split had changed slightly: Barkai president ‘Araktinji wrote to the GODF complaining that the Moriah lodge had emerged after a failed bid for leadership over the TOS lodge, and that moreover, it harboured Zionists, a fact which had hardened the position of its external opponents and generated its own internal critics. The high officials of the government and the few notables of Jerusalem have remained loyal to their Ottoman lodge of which they are active members and did not want to recognize the brothers of the Moriah lodge. We have gone twice to Jerusalem to appease the hatred and reconcile the brother members of both lodges and we have succeeded only slightly, because Frigere as president did not know well how to behave in the choice of his initiates, the majority of whom are Zionists, an Israelite society having particularistic ambitions in Palestine.
Nobody can ignore the fact that 90 percent of the population of Turkey are fanatical ignoramuses, especially in Palestine; the enlightened are exceedingly rare. It is because of the declarations of Dr. Herzl and his friends the founders of Zionism, through several conferences in Europe on Palestine for the Zionists, which has engendered an implacable hatred against them on the part of the inhabitants of this country. Our brothers in Jerusalem are the high functionaries of the government, they are the notables (though well-educated, non-fanatics) who fear being carried in derision in the eyes of their compatriots and prefer to move away from their Freemason brothers, the Zionists; the proof is that several of them during the slumber of the Turkish lodge, instead of initiating themselves and affiliating themselves with the Moriah lodge, came to Jaffa and presented themselves at the Barkai lodge, such as for example: Nashashibi Ragheb Bey, deputy of Jerusalem, Djelal Bey, General Prosecutor of Jerusalem and at present President of the Commercial Tribunal, Khaldi Djamil, teacher, Tawfik Mohamed, commander of the gendarmerie in Jerusalem, Osman Cherif Bey, General Prosecutor in Jerusalem, Zia Joseph, police chief in Jerusalem, Audi Joseph, large proprietor in Ramallah next to Jerusalem, Assaf Bey, president of the Court of First Instance in Jerusalem, etc. Moreover, several active members of the Moriah lodge who are in the minority of the lodge realized this state of affairs and [in light of] the part taken by the Zionist majority, asked us many times to help them to form a new lodge under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of France of the Scottish rite; we ask them to have patience while waiting to reform their lodge Moriah. According to ‘Araktinji, the members of the TOS would have liked to have joined a GODF-sponsored lodge in Jerusalem had Moriah not undercut them. He again recommended that the GODF withhold its support for Moriah and arrange for the professional transfer of Frigere, which would eventually open the way for reform and reconciliation. In ‘Araktinji’s optimistic view, “the balance at the time of the elections will be right and our brother Zionists will be more useful in secrecy and more content, though the majority of the lodge would be notable natives and senior officials of the government, at least the name of the lodge ceases being a Zionist lodge and will be respected more in the eyes of the population of Jerusalem.”
As it was, the Moriah lodge faced a great deal of persecution by the local ‘clerics’, especially the French among them. In Jerusalem initially [there was] a Canadian lodge of the Scottish whose ritual was adapted perfectly to the very religious mentality then of the population. Then it was the turn of the Grand Orient of Turkey; this one marked already a considerable progress in ideas. The lodge, either because it reached only one certain class of the population or for other reasons, did not excite the fear of the religious communities. But it was not the same for us. As soon as the communities, especially the Assumptionists, learned that a lodge of the GODF had been formed in the Holy City, a fury of fear, we believe, seized them and, although we were careful to avoid causing anything, they adopted a combative attitude immediately.128 The Moriah lodge blamed the French consul and vice consul in Jerusalem, along with a French priest, for striking such an anti-Masonic tone, and went so far to ask that they be replaced. In repeated requests to the GODF to intervene with the Quai d’Orsay, Moriah pointed out that not only did the local French representation act in a way that would not be tolerated in France, they were also negligent in their duties and were neglecting French interests. As they sought fit to point out to the GODF, French commerce and trade in Palestine had declined over ten years from first place to fifth place. Moriah was the only Palestinian lodge that left a record of its activities and projects, and as these were merely propositions made to the GODF we have little way of knowing if they were carried out.
Among the projects Moriah proposed were the opening of a “scientific, sociological and philanthropic library” for the use of lodge members; opening a dispensary under the aegis of the French Consulate in Jerusalem to provide free medical care to newly-enfranchised Moroccans under French protection; and encouraging establishment of a French society to compete for concessions in providing electricity and electric tramways for Jerusalem. Of all its proposed projects, the most idealistic was the establishment of a secular (laïque) school in Jerusalem. At the time, virtually all of the schools in Palestine were private and confessional, including the state school system that educated only Muslim students at the lower levels. In an effort to gain popular support for the idea, the Moriah lodge published an article in a local newspaper and led a delegation to meet with the French consul in the city to request the establishment of a French secular secondary school. The consul said he would recommend to the ministry that a congregational high school be established instead, a proposition that was not welcomed, according to Moriah, from either the French or Masonic point of view. “From the French point of view,” Moriah complained, “the solution of the Consul is not good because all the Greek, Arab, and Jewish elements that are the most numerous will never come to a religious school, and it is precisely at this element which [the project] is aimed. From the Masonic point of view, we would lose an excellent occasion to attract with our ideas the rising generation, which would carry a serious blow to religious omnipotence in our city.”
The Moriah lodge presented a petition signed by 316 heads of household in support of the establishment of a French lay school, representing 622 children. By the next year, however, there had been no progress on the matter of the school, although there were similar Freemason-sponsored ideas floating around both Beirut and Alexandria. A report in the Arabic press of French plans to establish a scientific school of higher education in Palestine along the lines of the American University in Beirut came to naught, as did Moriah’s suggestion that they establish a school for “rational thought.” By 1914, the members of the Moriah lodge had modified their original Francophone elitism and requested permission to establish an Arabic-speaking lodge; while acknowledging that they wanted to keep the “homogeneity and brotherhood” of their French-speaking lodge, they recognized that doing so kept out initiates who did not know French well enough to join.136 The GODF’s response was clear: while they did not object to occasional meetings in Arabic, as necessary, they warned their brothers to “advise you of the greatest prudence with regard to the initiation of the indigenous laymen.”137 With the war, however, all three Palestinian Masonic lodges ceased activity, so Moriah was unable to carry out its plans for an Arabic branch.
Barkai also closed its doors and its president, along with other members, was exiled to Anatolia. In 1919 ‘Araktinji returned from exile to find the lodge headquarters in shambles. From 1920 to 1924 the lodge was shut down due to Jewish-Arab clashes in the aftermath of the British Balfour Declaration and subsequent Mandate over Palestine, which was predicated on recognizing a “Jewish national home” in Palestine at the expense of its Arab inhabitants. With the 1929 clashes in Palestine, most of the remaining Arab members of the lodge left to join all-Arab lodges, and by the 1930s mixed Jewish-Arab Freemasonry lodges in Palestine were a thing entirely of the past, another pillar fallen to the rising nationalist conflict.
Whereas heterogeneity in the Ottomanist context enabled mixed Freemasonry lodges to flourish as long as they assumed a shared outlook, the seeds of sectarian and national discord nevertheless infiltrated the supposedly sacred Masonic order. Masonic lodges and individual Masons did not live separate from Ottoman Palestinian society, but rather were deeply integrated into it, and as such were sensitive to the balance between Ottomanism and particularism, Ottoman patriotism and European influence, and growing inter-communal rivalry. Michelle Campos is the author of A ‘Shared Homeland’ and its Boundaries: Empire, Citizenship, and the Origins of Sectarianism in Late Ottoman Palestine, 1908 - 13. (Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University 2003). She is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II often clamped down on Masonic activities, viewing them as unwelcome European incursions into Ottoman society as well as challenges to his sovereignty. Conservatives in the late Ottoman period considered Freemasonry a danger to the Ottoman regime as well as a danger to Islam. Jacob Landau, “Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry,” Die Welt des Islams, 36, 2 (1996). Freemasonry has been denounced based on its supposed association with Jews, missionaries, communists, atheists, revolutionaries, Zionists, and Satanism. The Catholic Church was a long-time critic of the Freemasonry movement based on its supposed antireligious and ritualistic elements - in 1738 the Church banned Freemasonry in a papal bull issued by Pope Clement XII. “Freemasons,” Encyclopedia Judaica. In the Middle East, local clerical anti-Masonic activities started around the time of Robert Morris’ 1876 trip to the Holy Land; he reported that local priests issued a tract against Masonry in Arabic. See Morris, Freemasonry in the Holy Land,
In 1906 there were a series of persecutions against Freemasons in Mount Lebanon, and a few years later, Beirut-based Father Louis Cheiko published a series of anti-Masonic pamphlets in Arabic calling for a “jihad” against organized Freemasonry. See Archives of the Grand Orient de France (hereafter GODF), Box 685, and al-Ab Louis Cheikho al-Yasu’i, Al-Sirr al-Masun fi Shi’at al-Farmasun (Beirut: Catholic Publishing House, 1910). For a local example of “virulent” Muslim opposition to Muslims participating in Freemasonry lodges, see Yves Hivert-Messeca, “France, Laïcité et Maçonnerie dans l’Empire Ottoman: La Loge <Prométhée> à l’Orient de Janina (Epire),” Chroniques d’Histoire Maçonnique, (1992): 125-6. Critics of the 1908 Young Turk revolution blamed Freemasons, Jews, and other ‘enemies’ for eventually overthrowing the Ottoman sultan; the British government also saw a CUP-Freemason-Jewish-Zionist plot against them. For further reading on these conspiracy theories see Jacob Landau, “The Young Turks and Zionism: Some Comments,” in his book Jews, Arabs, Turks (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993); Elie Kedourie, “Young Turks, Freemasons, and Jews,” Middle Eastern Studies, 7/1 (1971); and Mim Kemal Öke, “Young Turks, Freemasons, Jews, and the Question of Zionism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-13,” Studies in Zionism, 7/2 (1986). Specific examples of local conspiracy theories from the 1908-14 press can be found surrounding the spring 1909 counter-coup against the Young Turks which took on the “Freemasons, the defiers of religion and the discarders of the heart of the people behind them.”
See “The disturbances in Turkey and the victory of the constitution,” in ha-‘Olam, v. 3, no. 14 (27 April, 1909) and “The Jews and the Committee for Union and Progress,” in ha-Herut, v. 1, no. 20 (14 July, 1909). 12 In the aftermath of the French Revolution, French Freemasonry took on a strong anti-clericalist tone, and by 1877 had abolished the required belief in God. French obediences refer instead to the “Grand Architect of the Universe.” L’Histoire (Special: Les Francs-Maçons) 256, (2001): Freemasonry membership is highly hierarchicalinitiates are ‘apprentice’, the second degree is ‘companion’, and the third degree is ‘master’. Each level involves memorization of a catechism and performance of elaborate symbolic rituals. While the British model of Freemasonry was more conservative in bent and generally was supportive of the religious and political status quo, the French tradition of Freemasonry (the one which became more prominent throughout the Middle East, including Palestine) has emphasized liberal, philosophical positions and encouraged political engagement and critique, including support for revolution. Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt from Bonaparte to Zaghloul,” Turcica, (1992). Najdat Safwat, Freemasonry in the Arab World (London: Arab Research Centre, 1980) 1 Jessua, Grand Orient (Gr: Loge) de Turquie also claims that a large number of participants sought to reap benefits from the Young Turks through the lodges. “Each one wanted to become a Mason like the leaders of the new order. Those who entered a lodge by conviction were not very numerous.” In 1910, a debate erupted between the Grand Lodge of Egypt and the Grand Orient Ottoman, both of the Scottish rite, concerning rights of jurisdiction over Scottish Freemasonry in Egypt (formally still an Ottoman vilayet though in essence a British colony). See Joseph Sakakini, Rapport Concernant L’Irregularité de la Gr* L* d’Egypte (n.p.: n.p., 1910) and Joseph Sakakini, Incident avec la Grande Loge d’Egypte: Rapport du Joseph Sakakini (Constantinople: n.p., 1910). The main Grand Lodge of Scotland refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Grand Orient Ottoman over its members in the empire. See Dumont, “La FrancMaçonnerie d’Obédience Française à Salonique”,
These lodges included Vatan/La Patrie, Mouhibbani Hourriyet/Les Amis de la Liberte, Vefa/Perserverance, Resna, Shefak/Aurore, Bisanzio Risorta, Les Vrais Amis de l’Union et Progrès, and La Fraternite Ottomane. Jessua, Grand Orient (Gr: Loge) de Turquie. There was some overlap of Muslim children who were sent to local Jewish schools (particularly those of the Alliance Israélite Universelle as well as the Evelina de Rothschild school for girls. However, by and large, children were sent to primary schools within their own religious community. (The Ottoman state schools, the Rudiyya, were technically open to all three religions though I have found no evidence that any non-Muslims attended these schools). By university, however, there was significantly more crossover, as chosen and accomplished Ottoman youth attended imperial law, medical, and other schools in the capital. Also many well-to-do youth attended the American University in Beirut. The founding of the Royal Solomon Mother Lodge was 7 August, 1873; Mr. Rolla Floyd was reported to be the master of the lodge. File [18368]; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M862, roll 1034); Jerusalem; Numerical File, 1906-10; Central Files of the Department of State, Record Group; National Archives - College Park (hereafter NACP). Among the founders claimed by one Masonic report were Ahmad Bedir al-Khalidi, Gabriel Samoury, Cesar ‘Araktinji, Tamari “and others”; among the Jews were Moritz Steinberg, Yosef Feinberg, Menachem Stein, Ya’kov Litwinsky, David Moyal, Avraham Levy, and Michal Horwitz. See ha-Boneh he-Hofshi (Jan 1935).
According to the Masonic editor, the group sought to publicize the names of their former Jewish, Christian, and Muslim members “in the name of a pleasant memory and out of the hope that perhaps days of real peace between the peoples might return and those...[former brothers] can return to us.” Using language like “one family,” “the best of the country,” and the “best of Jaffa from the three religions,” the literature of the Israeli Barkai lodge invokes an idyllic nonsectarian past.
Certainly, one of the important ramifications of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution in Palestine was an increasingly active civic sphere. A rising Palestinian-Ottoman modernizing class emerged, not only from the notables and bureaucrats of the Tanzimat era, but (importantly) from the effendiyya social strata of the white-collar middle class. Having received liberal Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23 educations and belonging to the free professions, these Palestinians were attuned to the advances of the West and determined to forward the interests of their homeland.5 Christians, Jews, and Muslims of this stratum studied in similar schools (where they acquired tools such as foreign languages, accounting, geography), sometimes belonged to the same clubs, and worked and lived in close proximity to one another. Members of all three religions took part in creating a new social network which aspired to transcend communal boundaries for the economic, cultural, and political betterment of Palestine and the Ottoman Empire. In this article, part of a broader work on late Ottoman Palestine, I will analyze the Freemasons in Palestine, their contribution to a ‘bourgeois’ civil society and its contours in the Ottomanist public sphere. Contrary to the ‘separate spheres’ model that still dominates much of the historical literature on the region, I will show that Muslims, Christians and Jews in Palestine were deeply interdependent.
These relationships gradually weakened, however, as the political climate changed and sectarian differences gained prominence. While the Barkai lodge did – as it reminisced – include members of all three religions, and while it did succeed during the Young Turk period in mobilizing across communal lines, by 1913 intercommunal tensions and rivalry had penetrated Freemasonry in Palestine.
This communal divide foreshadowed a coming similar separation within the broader Masonic world. Two different mast-heads of the Barkai lodge letterhead. The first one, with the cross and the slogan “In hoc signo vinces” (By this sign you conquer) was considered anti-Masonic and so the lodge was asked to change it by the Paris headquarters. They did, to the general compass of the second letterhead. Source: M. Campos Philosophy, Progress and Politics in Freemasonry Evolving out of medieval Europe as a guild for mason craftsmen employed in the cathedral boom, by the eighteenth century philosophical Freemasonry had taken shape in England (1717) and France (1720) and soon established itself throughout Europe. Not long after, European Freemasonry had spread from the European metropole to the various colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas.6 Freemasonry also spread to the Middle East, and between 1875 and 1908.
Freemasonry was to prove itself one of the most influential social institutions in the Ottoman Empire. Despite the fact that they were considered outposts of European influence, secularism, and borderline revolutionary ideologies, Freemason lodges in the Middle East were extremely popular and influential. Incorporating a belief in a Supreme Being, secretive rituals, and modern Enlightenment ideals, Freemasonry offered its members a progressive philosophical and social outlook, an important economic and social network, ties to the West, as well as a potential arm for political organizing.
All four of these elements proved central to the spread and impact of Freemasonry lodges in the last several decades of the Ottoman Empire. At its most basic level, Freemasonry offered a world-view based on progressive humanism. In its founding constitution, the Grand Orient de France (GODF), the French Masonic order with arguably the greatest international impact, firmly rooted itself in such an outlook: Freemasonry, which is essentially a philanthropic, philosophical and progressive institution, aims to search for the truth, study ethics and practice mutual support. It works for the material and moral improvement of humanity, towards intellectual and social perfection. (...)Its principles are mutual tolerance, the respect of others and of oneself, absolute freedom of conscience. Believing that metaphysical considerations are the exclusive concern of individual members, it refuses any dogmatic position (...). As such, there was a natural sympathy between Freemasonry and French revolutionary ideals, and it is no wonder that generations of nineteenth century reformers found themselves closely allied with Freemasonry ideals. As we learn from the work of Paul Dumont, Ottoman intellectuals in the mid-nineteenth century were impacted deeply by French revolutionary principles, intellectual pursuits, and social questions of the day.
Dumont writes that most of the Ottoman Masonic lodges at the time discussed themes of the French Revolution: liberty, social justice, equality of citizens before the law, and brotherhood - all of which were timely in the Ottoman context. Thus the Freemasonry lodges of the Ottoman Empire provided a fertile partnership for Young Ottomanist thinkers and reformers such as Namık Kemal,18 and Freemasonry as an institution played a significant role along with other secret societies (including what Zarcone calls “para-Masonic organizations”) in drawing up the 1876 Ottoman Constitution. At the same time, Freemasonry in Egypt provided an outlet for political and social organization in the era of British colonization, and Masons played a role in the ‘Urabi revolution. Anti-colonialist organizers such as the Islamic thinker Jamal al-Din alAfghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, and the noted writer Ya’qub Sannu’ (of Abu Naddara fame) were prominent members of various Egyptian Masonic lodges. According to one source, al-Afghani actively sought out Freemasonry because of its political dimension as a liberation movement: If the Freemason society does not interfere in cosmic politics, while it includes every free builder, and if the building tools it has are not used for demolishing the old buildings to erect the monuments of true liberty, brotherhood, and equality, and if it does not raze the edifices of injustice, arrogance and oppression, then may the hands of the free never carry a hammer and may their building never rise... The first thing that enticed me to work in the building of the free was a solemn, impressive slogan: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - whose objective seemed to be the good of mankind, the demolition of the edifices and the erection of the monuments of absolute justice. Hence I took Freemasonry to mean a drive for work, self-respect and disdain for life in the cause of fighting injustice. Thierry Zarcone argues that, to the east, Freemasonry and para-Masonic organizations that merged Sufism, politics, and Masonry played a critical role in the 1905-1907 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. And, of course, most prominent was the role accorded to Freemasons in the Young Turk revolution of 1908, as well as the founding leadership of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP). Four Salonikan lodges in particular played an instrumental role in supporting the revolution - Loge Macedonia Risorta (Grand Orient d’Italie), Veritas (Grand Orient de France), Labor et Lux (Grand Orient d’Italie), and Perseverencia (Grande Oriente Español).
Furthermore, while it is difficult to quantify the contribution of Freemasonry lodges to the Young Turks before the revolution, a number of important Young Turks were active Masons, and hence the overlapping affinities of the two movements is clear. It has been suggested that CUP involvement with Freemasonry in Salonika was only instrumentally aimed at evading the Ottoman police (who were barred from penetrating European organizations), but there was clearly an overlap between the groups in political, philosophical and social aims. The slogan of the revolution (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”) was the slogan of Freemasonry as well as the CUP, and the crossover was not incidental.
A member of the then-defunct lodge L’Étoile du Bosphore wrote from Constantinople that “all the Ottoman youth carry a ribbon on his [sic] chest with our slogan (Liberty-Equality-Fraternity) written in French, and the army in revolution in Macedonia plays the Marsellaise.” Just two months after the Young Turk revolution, the annual assembly of the Grand Orient de France in Paris included greetings and congratulations to “Brother Masons” within the CUP and throughout the Ottoman Empire, articulating their support for the confluence of Freemasonic and Young Turk ideals and goals. This convention, in the face of the admirable revolutionary movement of the Young Turks, whose patient energy, ceaseless work, and marvellous heroism overcame all the forces of reaction and of cruelty, addresses its fraternal greeting and a cordial expression of its sympathy with the sister lodges of Turkey, take joy in their imposing work of enfranchisement and wish for the complete realization, in Turkey, of the Masonic ideals of justice, freedom, and fraternity. Immediately following the revolution, Freemasonry flourished in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Arab and Balkan provinces. Between 1909 and 1910, at least seven new Freemason lodges were established (or old ones revived from dormancy) in Istanbul alone; most of them had names that linked them to the new spirit of liberty and progress (Les vrais amis de l’Union et Progrès, La Veritas, La Patrie, La Renaissance, Shefak - also called L’Aurore). In Salonika the Freemason lodges multiplied so much so that Dumont has characterized the period as “proliferation that was likely to emerge, shortly, in a true Masonic colonization of the Ottoman Empire.”
We can only assume that the Masonic and revolutionary principles of liberty, universalism and civic engagement played at least some role in the appeal of Masonry to large numbers of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in this period. Freemasonry’s philosophical orientation echoed the broader public enthusiasm for liberty and other liberal ideals that emerged in the post-revolution Ottoman Empire. One surviving application for admission to a Beirut Masonic lodge premises its motivation precisely in this way: “the Freemasonry order is an order that has rendered great services to humanity throughout the centuries and always raised high the banner of equality, fraternity, and liberty. It is an order that seeks to bring together mankind and to better them. I would also like to be part of such an order, to take part in benevolence and the useful works of your order.”
New members swore to abide by these principles as well as to promote mutual aid, public service, and Masonic loyalty, on pain of excommunication. Thus, all Freemasons, regardless of their motivations for joining, were held accountable and complicit in theory in upholding these Masonic principles. Of course, it is also likely that the close relationship between the Young Turks and the Freemasonry movement gave it a stamp of approval, as well as a certain cachet and political expediency, and that these socio-political power considerations played a role in Masonry’s popularity.
Ideology and professed ideals alone do not account for what actually happens on the ground - to have a more accurate picture, one must examine the social consequences of participation in a Masonic lodge. The Grand Orient Ottoman – Nationalizing and Mobilizing Freemasonry Far from its origins as a closeted secret society pursued by the state and its secret police, during the Young Turk period Freemasonry became legitimate and institutionalized as part of the new socio-political order. One indication of the increasingly important role of the Freemasonry movement in the post-1908 Ottoman Empire was that in 1909, the long-defunct “Supreme Council” of the Scottish rite of Masonry within the Ottoman Empire was re-constituted. Also in 1909, the Young Turks sought to institutionalize, ‘nationalize’, and mobilize Freemasonry through the establishment of the Grand Orient Ottoman (or GOO, sometimes called the Grand Orient de la Turquie), an umbrella mother lodge that aimed to bring foreign-sponsored lodges under its control. In the summer of 1909, eight Constantinople-based lodges united to establish the GOO. In its first elections held in August, Ottoman Minister of the Interior Talat Pasha was elected Grand Master of the GOO, assisted by a multiethnic cast of Who’s Who in the capital. Among the GOO’s important innovations was its refusal to use the Masonic concept of “Grand Architect of the Universe,” feeling that such a quasi-deistic formulation would offend its Muslim constituents. Instead, the GOO asserted that the “Grand Architect” was an ideal to strive for, not an actual personage.
The GOO leadership sought to establish an autonomous Masonry in the spirit of political and national emancipation, as well as to form a core of constitutional liberals who would be able to stand up to the numerous reactionaries found throughout the empire.40 Under the aegis of the GOO, Ottoman lodges were established throughout the empire and existed side-by-side with foreign lodges. Paul Dumont has written that initially some lodges expressed reservations at the new Young Turk Masonic institutions, precisely because of their attempts to institutionalize Masonry within a specific political agenda. The GODF lodge Veritas in Salonika, for example, complained that the establishment of the GOO was “entirely premature”: HISTORICAL FEATURES Freemasonry in Ottoman Palestine
Among the reasons which push to me to place obstacles at the development of this new Masonic power, is that I noted, alas, that the lodges subjected to its influence completely neglect the regulations of the Masonic statutes and regulations with regard to the recruitment of the members and blindly are subjects to the instructions of parties which work with another collective aim. Within weeks, however, de Botton’s reservations had dissipated and he wrote to the GODF to ask them to do all that was “humanly and Masonically possible” to recognize the GOO.43 The GOO served as an important link between the new ruling party and the broader Masonic public. In its early efforts to co-opt foreign Masonic lodges throughout the empire, the founders of the GOO invited Ottoman Freemasons to a “national convention” in Constantinople in the fall of 1909. But despite ambitions to become the umbrella lodge for all Masons empire-wide, the founders of the GOO continued to belong to foreign lodges as well as to lodges racked by national schisms.
Freemasonry as a Social Club During this period, religious community played an important role in defining the contours of daily life - Muslim, Jewish and Christian children usually studied in separate schools, and inter-communal civic organizations were limited to professional guilds and bourgeois social groups, among them the Freemasons. As one of the few private forms of organization that existed in the Middle East in this period, Masonic lodges attracted a wide variety of members and supporters. Thus Freemason lodges could serve as rare ‘common meeting grounds’ for the spectrum of religious, ethnic and national communities. According to historian Jacob Landau, “...by the end of the [19th] century, there was hardly a city or town of importance without at least one lodge. Christians, Muslims and Jews mingled freely in these lodges (although certain lodges were preponderantly of one faith...) which were among the few meeting-places for members of different faiths, as well as for foreigners and natives.” Beyond serving as a ‘neutral’ meeting ground for various ethnicities and religions, Masonic lodges also served as vehicles for internal solidarity and social cohesion across various elite and middle-strata groups, including the traditional aristocracy, ruling administration,49 rising merchant classes, and lower-level employees and intellectuals. In Egypt, for example, Muslim Masons by-and-large hailed from similar rural notable backgrounds, had links with the military, were educated in the new school system, and were mostly concerned with efficient rule rather than democracy.51 Masonry provided the Syrian Christians of Egypt not only with an opportunity to push for a constitutional parliamentary regime, but also a means of preserving their ‘insider’ Ottoman status in the face of foreign domination. Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23
In this regard, it is important to note that to a large extent, Freemasonry in the colonies and beyond was another face of ‘humanistic colonialism’, which aimed to spread western ideas of progress, public health, secular education, justice, social laws, solidarity, freedom of opinion, press, and association, and economic and technological development. Among other things, colonial Freemasonry created a social and cultural elite and sought to assimilate the ‘native’ Freemasons to Francophone and European values and culture. Of course, this reception was a dynamic process, and we can assume that local Freemasons adapted Freemasonry to themselves as much as themselves to Freemasonry. Since recruitment to Freemasonry lodges depended on the recommendation of two members, the organization often had the effect of re-affirming class and, in some areas, ethnic or religious distinctions. Furthermore, Masons were also active in other organizations, creating a linkage between Freemason lodges and other civil organizations. In this way Freemasonry helped shape the civic public sphere evolving in the Ottoman Empire. As the site of the ancient temple of Solomon, Palestine was considered the birthplace of Freemasonry’s traditions and ideals.
The first Freemason lodge in Palestine was established in 1873 in Jerusalem by Robert Morris, a visiting American Freemason, Henry Mondsley, an English engineer, and Charles Netter, a French Jew. Morris had set off for the Middle East to forge ties with local and potential Masons; when he arrived in Jerusalem he brought with him a charter for the Royal Solomon Mother Lodge (No. 293) from the Grand Lodge of Canada. According to local Masonic history, most of the members of the lodge were American Christians who had settled in Jaffa. Little is known of the lodge’s work, but in 1907 the lodge’s charter was finally formally revoked “on account of bad management,” and the lodge quietly disappeared.58 After the Jerusalem lodge, Le Port du Temple de Salomon was founded in August 1891 in Jaffa by a group of Arab and Jewish locals, working in French; soon thereafter the Frenchman Gustave Milo, along with other European engineers who had arrived to construct the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad, joined the lodge.60 The lodge followed the Misraim (Egyptian) rite, one of the 154 rites in Freemasonry. Little is known of the lodge’s first decade and a half, other than a report that the members of Le Port du Temple de Salomon wanted to purchase land for a cooperative Freemason village. The endeavour was apparently racked by disputes and never came to fruition.62 According to one Mason historian, because the Misraim rite was not recognized by most other obediences in Freemasonry, Le Port du Temple de Salomon lodge decided to leave the Egyptian grand lodge and transfer its allegiance to the Grand Orient de France (GODF), a leading umbrella organization for Middle Eastern Freemasonry lodges.64 In April 1904, the lodge applied to the GODF, and by March 1906, the lodge was notified that it had completed all requirements for adoption by the GODF, and was renamed L’Aurore (Barkai in Hebrew; Shafaq in Arabic).65 Based on an internal correspondence between the lodge and the GODF, it seems that the Jaffa Freemasons hoped to benefit from European patronage, acting as both catalyst and safeguard. The lodge Venerable (President) wrote to the GODF: “The difficulties and obstacles all being almost surmounted we are sure that under the auspices of the GODF we will be able to work with more freedom and for a long time. We hope to catch up with ourselves over wasted time.”66 Eager to quickly fall in line under the GODF, Barkai asked for a charter, instructions, ritual, constitution, and several books of “catechism” for the first three grades. From the outset, the lodge faced numerous obstacles in Palestine, mostly from the religious leaderships, and it seems they were physically pursued upon opening the new lodge headquarters. Several months after its founding, Barkai wrote to the GODF: We will work assiduously to surmount all the difficulties that we encounter here. It is a country which will take a little time to be reformed; let us not be unaware that it is Palestine the Holy Land. We are bothered by the clergy that drove out us from our premises, and each day, of new congregations forming.
The spirit of the natives is quickly captured by the spirit of the Church, by its men. It is the greatest cause of the delay of our establishment. We had to deploy a great force to hasten the opening and to be in time to send the balance of our account to you, for the appointment of our delegate to the convention.
Although its existence was marred by difficulties, including “abuses and irregularities” by government functionaries in the aftermath of the Young Turk revolution, by the beginning of World War I, the Barkai lodge was the largest, most successful Freemason lodge in Palestine.69 A Study of the Effendiyya In 1906, the dozen founding members of the Barkai lodge were exclusively Jewish and Christian: Alexander Fiani, Dr. Yosef Rosenfeld, Jacques Litwinsky, Hanna ‘Issa Samoury, David Yodilovitz, Yehuda Levi, Musa Khoury, Maurice Schönberg, Moise (Moshe) Goldberg, Marc Stein, Michel Hourwitz, and Moise (Moshe) Yachia.70 Within a few years, however, and due to the changed atmosphere in Palestine in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution, Barkai quickly became a centre for leading members of the political, intellectual and economic elite of all three religions. Importantly, there was significant Muslim participation in the lodge in the post-1908 period. Of the 157 known members and affiliates in the years 1906-1915, 70 were Muslim, 52 were Christian, and 34 were Jews. This composition is particularly significant when we consider that much of the antiMasonic literature denounces Masonry as the purview of the ‘minority’ Jewish, Christian and foreign European communities. The high participation of Muslims in Palestine contradicts this charge, even as we note that Christians and Jews were over-represented in the lodge as compared to the population as a whole. In 1907, for example, Muslims comprised 75 percent of the population of the Jaffa region, Christians 19 percent, and Jews between 6 to 10 percent (depending on whether or not non-Ottomans are considered).72 By 1914, the Jewish proportion of the Jaffa-area population had risen to almost 25 percent, while the Muslim majority had declined to 56 percent and the number of Christians remained stable at 19 percent. Concurrently, Freemasonry became more appealing for Palestine’s leading Muslim families. At the beginning of 1908, Barkai claimed only three Muslim members out of a total of 37; by the end of 1908, another 14 Muslims had joined the lodge along with six Jews and Christians, marking the first time that new Muslim enlistment in the lodge exceeded that of the other two communities. In the six years following, new Muslim recruits annually exceeded Christian and Jewish recruits; in most years the Muslim initiates exceeded new Jewish and Christian members combined. At the same time, Barkai witnessed a dramatic decline in new Jewish membership. The peak for Jewish membership was in the first year of the lodge’s founding; after 1907, Barkai never admitted more than four Jewish members in any given year. Some of this declining interest was offset by the establishment of two new lodges based in Jerusalem, Temple of Solomon (established 1910), and Moriah (established 1913). In Temple of Solomon, Jews comprised 37 percent of the membership, while Muslims and Christians were 41 percent and 19 percent respectively. More markedly, the Moriah lodge, which existed from 1913 to 1914, was 60 percent Jewish, 29 percent Christian, and only three percent Muslim. While some of this can be accounted for by the dramatically different demographics of Jerusalem (where Jews were the majority),73 we will see below that the founding of the Moriah lodge was a political act rooted in a rupture with the Temple of Solomon lodge that pitted Europeans (and their protégés) against Ottomans and Zionists against anti-Zionists.
According to the membership logs, Christians and Jews were more likely to take leading roles within the lodges, and they were more likely to stick around for Masonic promotion. Of the officers of the three Palestinian Masonic lodges, 43 percent were Christian, 36 percent Jewish, and only 16 percent Muslim. That is to say, of the three groups, Muslims were much more likely to remain at the entry-level apprentice stage than Christians or Jews. Of course, this is in part accounted for by their comparatively recent exposure to Masonry, unlike their Christian and Jewish counterparts, some of whom had been among the founding members of the lodge. Further demographic details provide a more vivid picture of just how deeply-rooted and localized Freemasonry was in Palestine. By birth, Freemasons in Palestine were overwhelmingly Ottoman (87-88 percent), and by-and-large Palestinian (60 percent). Of those born in Palestine, 82 percent were born in Jaffa or Jerusalem, with the rest coming from other towns such as Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, and Bethlehem. Only one Palestinian Freemason was born in a village. Thus, Palestine’s Freemasonry lodges were fairly indigenous lodges, much more so than anti-Masonic critics claimed. Only 11% of lodge members were European-born, most of them Jewish immigrants to Palestine (in some cases Ottomanized citizens), and a few of them European Christians employed locally. That most of the lodge’s membership came from Palestinian families of the three religions (60 percent) tells us the manner in which Freemasonry lodges served as social networks for the growing middle class and various elites.
To a certain extent, this sector was largely pre-selected and self-perpetuating. In order to be accepted into a lodge, a prospective candidate had to secure the sponsorship of two lodge members in good standing. These recommendations often came from relatives (older brothers, cousins, uncles, and sometimes fathers), business partners or acquaintances, and also geographically-based extended family networks (for example, strong ties existed among the several Christian families from Beirut in Jaffa, as well as among the North African (Maghrebi) Jewish families).
Family ties were the single most important factor in joining - fully 32 percent of all Freemasons in Palestine had family members who were also member Masons – but educational and professional ties also proved significant. Among the Freemasons in Barkai lodge were at least six recent graduates of the American University in Beirut, in addition to many who had studied in various professional schools in Constantinople. Furthermore, nine employees of the Jaffa and Jerusalem branches of the Ottoman Imperial Bank were Freemasons. Socially, the members of Palestine’s Freemasonry lodges, like Masons elsewhere, were largely of the newly mobile middle classes of the effendiyya in the liberal professions, the commercial and bureaucratic elite, as well as from the traditional notable families.
Though coming from different religious communities, they shared similar modes of modern education, exposure to foreign languages and Western ideas, a relatively high level of economic independence, and a growing socio-political weight in Palestine and the empire as a whole. As a new class, these men were to have an important impact on the future. Rashid Khalidi has observed: By the late Ottoman period, a military officer, a postal official, a teacher in a state preparatory school, or a company clerk was part of a large and growing new elite, not rooted for the most part in the old notable class, and with a modern education involving a number of western elements, and access to quite considerable power. This new social stratum was to play a role of extraordinary importance in the politics of the Middle East throughout the 20th century. The importance of the Ottoman context, and specifically of the universal impact of the changes which had been taking place throughout the empire can be seen here, for the pattern in the Arab provinces followed that in Rumelia and Anatolia, where Turkishspeaking members of these or newly-trained professional groups totally transformed Ottoman and later Turkish politics, through the Committee of Union and Progress and later via the Kemalist revolution.
In Palestine, these Masons came from important families of this new social stratum as well as from more traditional communal and notable families. Among the Muslims, there were quite a few members of the traditional notable families, including: ‘Arafat, Abu Ghazaleh, Abu Khadra, al-Bitar, al-Dajani, al-Khalidi,81 al-Nashashibi and Nusseibi. The Christian families were largely members of the growing middle-classes, employed in commerce and the liberal professions: Burdqush, al-‘Issa, Khoury, Mantura, Sleim, Soulban, and Tamari.
Among the Jewish members, the Ashkenazim were largely colonists who arrived in the 1880s and ‘90s and lived in the early Jewish agricultural settlements, adopting Ottoman citizenship upon arrival. The Sephardi and Maghrebi Jews, on the other hand, were younger members of economically and communally established families: Amzalek,89 Elyashar,90 Mani, Moyal Panijel, Taranto, and Valero. Two-page initiation certificate of Sa’id Nashashibi. Source: GODF Archive, Paris Thus there was a certain degree of what Ran Halevi has called the “democratic sociability” of the Freemasonry movement. The radical innovation of a single organization that would voluntarily encompass both Khalidis and Nashashibis as well as Burdqushes, Manis, and other young men from ‘regular‘ families cannot be overlooked. Most Palestinian Freemasons in this period joined in their mid-20s to mid30s (the average age was 31.8 years old at time of pledging), although they were sometimes younger (especially those with family legacies) and sometimes older. While all of the men had to be fairly independent financially and professionally in order to afford membership dues and other lodge expenses,96 the lodges did not attract the older leaders of each community.
Members were the same men who supported the Committee for Union and Progress, and later, the various decentralization and nationalist parties. The overall professional composition of Palestine’s Freemasons leaned heavily towards commerce and banking/accounting, education, medicine, law, government, and miscellaneous white-collar professions (such as clerkships). Christians were over-represented in these professions due to their more European-style education and knowledge of foreign languages, as well as the fact that they were generally favoured by consulates and foreign companies as potential employees.
Muslim Freemasons, in contrast, were dominant in government bureaucracy, legal and judicial occupations, and military/police work. Twelve members of the local police and military personnel were Freemasons in Palestine, a phenomenon that repeated itself elsewhere. In fact, Freemasons of all three religions penetrated the most central areas of Palestinian society and economy. Most notably, one of Palestine’s representatives in the Ottoman parliament, Ragheb al-Nashashibi of Jerusalem (who later became mayor of Jerusalem), was a Freemason.
Because of this demographic and professional profile, access to these networks played an important role in Masonic appeal and cachet. Inter-Masonic commercial relationships were frequent, and it was not uncommon for businessmen to request letters of introduction with a Masonic stamp of approval. Such a letter was obtained by Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche, himself not a Mason, from then-president of Barkai lodge Iskandar Fiuni (Alexander Fiani) in preparation for a business meeting with a Greek in Egypt. Furthermore, a significant number (22 percent) of Freemasons in Palestine belonged to other Freemason lodges, whether locally or abroad, indicating the extent to which Freemasonry itself served as an overlapping affiliation network. Beyond the direct networking of Freemasonry lodges, there was a great deal of indirect networking and cross-fertilization of other groups and organizations. As was the case empire-wide, one of the most significant groups at the time was the local branch network of the CUP.
Public Participation and Philanthropy Because of its status as a secret society as well as the seeming loss of the Barkai lodge archives, it is difficult to retrace the full scope of the lodge’s activities. Furthermore, we know (thanks to a shocking case of ‘Masonic treason’ within the Jerusalem lodges) that the Freemasons had good reason to be silent about their activities, in order to protect themselves from both religious and government intervention. Nevertheless, we are aware that the Palestine lodges’ regular activities focused on the following areas: philanthropy, mutual aid, and lay education. In this they continued the work of other Masonic lodges, which regularly had committees to deal with justice, welfare, property, general subjects, and propaganda.
Socially, Masonic lodges annually held summer and winter solstice banquets, with elaborate programs and ceremonies; as far as I can tell this was the only Freemason activity to which entire families were invited and were thus semi-open to the public. The scathing critique of the Lebanese priest Father Cheikho centred on his claim that Freemason lodges in Lebanon had unacceptable innovations that challenged the rights and roles of the church, such as performing their own marriage ceremonies along ‘civil’ lines; I have found no evidence of this in Palestine, however, and so it is possibly fabricated or exaggerated. Beyond that, we can only wonder at what sort of Masonic activity was implied when members spoke of their missionary-like activities of “contributing to the diffusion of Masonic ideas in this Ottoman Empire which is our fatherland, which greatly needs to take as a starting point our motto to ensure the well-being of its children.” In this context, Barkai requested that it be allowed to affiliate itself with the Grand Orient Ottoman, in order to coordinate Masonic activities empire-wide: Considering that the current state of our country is a large sphere of activity for the Masonic ideas, that the presence of a GOT in Constantinople as a regular Masonic power would contribute much to the improvement of all the classes of the country, the Barkai lodge asks you to recognize this new Masonic power.
Because of its close ties with leading members of the new government and ruling party, the GOO was an important friend to have, a fact not lost on Palestine’s Masons facing - for example - attack by one of Palestine’s newly elected parliamentarians, apparently an avowed enemy of Freemasonry. By the same occasion we must let you know that the deputy of Jaffa, a backward, fanatical man imbued with retrograde ideas, conducts a campaign against our Freemasons Fawzi and Yahia, police chief and policeman of our city, by denouncing them to the authorities of the capital as reactionaries and guilty of misappropriation, which is absolutely contrary to the truth. His goal is to attack the Freemasons employed with the government. We have informed the GOT of the remainder of these intrigues, as its president is the current Minister of the Interior. But fearing that this intriguing and fanatical deputy does succeed thanks to his influence in directing the authorities, superiors of the capital, against our wrongfully disparaged Freemasons, we ask you to support our intervention with the GOT and to support our Freemasons so that calumnies of the model of this infamous deputy remain without effect.
Eventually in 1910 the GODF did establish “fraternal relations” with the GOO and authorized its members to fraternize with the Ottoman organization.112As a result, in June of that year, several members of Barkai decided to revive the defunct Temple of Solomon lodge in Jerusalem. They wrote to the GODF, and were told they should open it under the auspices of the GOO, since it was the recognized grand lodge of the region. The GODF also instructed them to invoke the Grand Architect of the Universe and preserve the French slogans “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”
Eventually, at least 22 members of Barkai also became members of the new lodge, and there were close relations between the two lodges. Within a few years, however, the Temple of Solomon was to undergo an internal split that would divide Palestinian Freemasonry and foreshadow events to come. Against Foreigners and Zionists By March 1913, a faction of the Temple of Solomon lodge broke off and formed its own provisional lodge, demanding “symbolic and constitutional acceptance” by the GODF. The new Moriah lodge immediately requested catechism books, proposed a lodge seal, began searching for a garden as lodge headquarters, and set strict guidelines for admission to the lodge: only those with “irreproachable reputations” and decent French need apply. According to its new president, the task of the Masons of Moriah would be to defend the ideas of freedom and justice, particularly in Jerusalem where clericalism and fanaticism were strongly against Masonic work.
Avraham Abushadid, newly-elected Speaker of the lodge, urged his fellow Masons to ensure that “mutual tolerance, respect of others and yourself, and absolute freedom of conscience are not words in vain.” According to Abushadid, in the East “the word ‘freedom’ is replaced by ‘servility’ and ‘fanaticism,’ while ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’ are vocabulary replaced by the synonyms of ‘superstition’ and ‘hypocrisy’.” Through their Masonic mission, Abushadid envisioned a renaissance of the Ottoman people: …this new star which comes from our East, continues to shine with an increasingly sharp glare, and our route is clear...the day will come when its luminous clarity will disperse all darkness, and the base of this shaking humanity will collapse and one will see then, all the nations, all the races, all the religions will be erased and disappear, and to make place for a rising generation, young people, free, fraternizing and sacrificing a whole glorious past, for a new era of peace, truth and justice. Despite this claim to the erasure of lines between peoples, the split within the TOS had been a cultural and political division between two separate factions - one Arabic speaking, largely Muslim and Christian, and the other French-speaking, largely Jewish and foreign. Of the eight known Temple of Solomon members who defected Jerusalem Quarterly 22/23 to form Moriah, five of them were Jewish, one Christian, and two were foreigners (Frenchmen).
The ‘natives’ of TOS accused the ‘foreigners’ of being, among other things, Zionists, while they were accused in turn of being “xenophobes.” If before the split TOS had been 40 percent Muslim, percent Jewish, and 18.5 percent Christian, afterwards both TOS and Moriah were far more homogenous lodges. In the face of this schism among Freemasons in Jerusalem, the Jaffa-based Barkai lodge appealed to the GODF to deny Moriah’s request for recognition. According to Barkai president ‘Araktinji, the presence of two competing Freemasonry lodges in Jerusalem would cause discord. His request was politely denied by the GODF, which had long wanted a lodge in Jerusalem. “…Tell our Freemason brothers of the lodge of the Temple of Solomon that they should not look at [Moriah] as a rival lodge, but rather a new hearth also Picture of Cesar ‘Araktinji, long-time Barkai lodge working to realize our ideals of justice president, from a lodge pamphlet. and brotherhood.” Not to be dissuaded, Source: M. Campos ‘Araktinji again appealed to the GODF, stating that the founders of Moriah had acted improperly in founding a lodge on their own. He also asserted that language problems were a catalyst in the defection, since many of the Temple of Solomon members did not know French, and several of the defectors apparently did not know Arabic. Furthermore, most of the TOS members had been initiated under the GODF order through Barkai, and as a result, the GODF owed them special consideration. Finally, according to ‘Araktinji, the main instigator of the defections, Henri Frigere, had promoted personal animosity among Jerusalem’s Freemasons, and he should be transferred elsewhere in the region in order to mend the growing rifts in Palestinian Freemasonry. In their defence, the founders of the Moriah lodge wrote again to the GODF, this time indicting not only the members of TOS from whom they split, but also the Jaffa-based lodge Barkai and all “indigenous” Freemasons. According to Moriah, The indigenous Turkish and Arab element is still unable to understand and appreciate the superior principles of Masonry, and in consequence, of practicing them.
For the majority, Freemasonry is probably only an instrument of protection and occult recommendation [?], and for others an instrument of local and political influence. The work of the lodges consists primarily of [illegible] and recommendations, not always unfortunately, for just causes and in favour of innocent Freemasons. The rest does not exist and cannot exist because the indigenous know only despotism, from which they suffer for long centuries, and their instruction is very little developed, and is not prepared to work with a disinterested aim for humanity and justice. Many events that you have knowledge of will assure you of this point of view, which explains the particular way the Masons in Jerusalem have accommodated the news of the creation of our lodge and their fight against what they ingeniously call competition! This situation, according to Moriah, had caused a deadlock in lodge work, since the “indigenous” lodge members vetoed suggestions of the second faction. Naturally, this letter also carries a racist and patronizing thread woven into Masonry: “natives” cannot be expected to truly understand Masonic principles as “Europeans” do. While proposing universalism on the one hand, Freemasonry lodges in practice expounded a very Eurocentric - and in the case of the GODF, a Francophile - view of the modern liberal man. The irony here, of course, is that only Ottomans who were already predisposed to European language, ideology, or manners sought out membership in European lodges. Members of a certain class and cultural milieu sought fraternity and legitimacy in this very European institution, precisely because of all it represented: cosmopolitanism, liberalism, modernity, and acculturation to a changed global setting. That orientation towards Europe was fraught with tension.
The core indigenous TOS lodge members were reportedly suspicious of the two Frenchmen (Frigere and Drouillard) and their influence over the other defectors. Frigere reported that the TOS leadership “persuaded the other Freemasons that our lodge [Moriah] was created with the aim of facilitating the descent of the French into Palestine...and other stupid stories, which can appear ridiculous by far, but which were not, considering the particular situation of Turkey, without a rather pressing danger.”
Of course, during this period the Ottoman Empire had recently fought and lost several wars, one against Italy over its annexation of an Ottoman province (Libya), and the other against former Ottoman provinces of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro over the remaining Ottoman regions of the Balkans. Furthermore, long-standing local resentments against the privileges accorded foreigners in the Empire under the Capitulations, as well as the arrogance of European consuls who repeatedly insisted on running warships to intimidate and control the local population also weighed into the equation. As a result, anti-European sentiment and suspicions were running particularly high. Of course, general Ottoman resentment against an increasingly encroaching Europe overlapped with the changing contours of Palestine due to the rise of the Zionist movement.
In this period, the Palestinian urban and rural populations were acutely aware of the growing presence of Jewish immigrants in the country; Palestinian opposition to these developments was manifest in the Arabic press, in telegrammed petitions to the central government in Istanbul, and in periodic rural clashes among peasants and Jewish colonists. As a result, by the next year the depiction of the split had changed slightly: Barkai president ‘Araktinji wrote to the GODF complaining that the Moriah lodge had emerged after a failed bid for leadership over the TOS lodge, and that moreover, it harboured Zionists, a fact which had hardened the position of its external opponents and generated its own internal critics. The high officials of the government and the few notables of Jerusalem have remained loyal to their Ottoman lodge of which they are active members and did not want to recognize the brothers of the Moriah lodge. We have gone twice to Jerusalem to appease the hatred and reconcile the brother members of both lodges and we have succeeded only slightly, because Frigere as president did not know well how to behave in the choice of his initiates, the majority of whom are Zionists, an Israelite society having particularistic ambitions in Palestine.
Nobody can ignore the fact that 90 percent of the population of Turkey are fanatical ignoramuses, especially in Palestine; the enlightened are exceedingly rare. It is because of the declarations of Dr. Herzl and his friends the founders of Zionism, through several conferences in Europe on Palestine for the Zionists, which has engendered an implacable hatred against them on the part of the inhabitants of this country. Our brothers in Jerusalem are the high functionaries of the government, they are the notables (though well-educated, non-fanatics) who fear being carried in derision in the eyes of their compatriots and prefer to move away from their Freemason brothers, the Zionists; the proof is that several of them during the slumber of the Turkish lodge, instead of initiating themselves and affiliating themselves with the Moriah lodge, came to Jaffa and presented themselves at the Barkai lodge, such as for example: Nashashibi Ragheb Bey, deputy of Jerusalem, Djelal Bey, General Prosecutor of Jerusalem and at present President of the Commercial Tribunal, Khaldi Djamil, teacher, Tawfik Mohamed, commander of the gendarmerie in Jerusalem, Osman Cherif Bey, General Prosecutor in Jerusalem, Zia Joseph, police chief in Jerusalem, Audi Joseph, large proprietor in Ramallah next to Jerusalem, Assaf Bey, president of the Court of First Instance in Jerusalem, etc. Moreover, several active members of the Moriah lodge who are in the minority of the lodge realized this state of affairs and [in light of] the part taken by the Zionist majority, asked us many times to help them to form a new lodge under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of France of the Scottish rite; we ask them to have patience while waiting to reform their lodge Moriah. According to ‘Araktinji, the members of the TOS would have liked to have joined a GODF-sponsored lodge in Jerusalem had Moriah not undercut them. He again recommended that the GODF withhold its support for Moriah and arrange for the professional transfer of Frigere, which would eventually open the way for reform and reconciliation. In ‘Araktinji’s optimistic view, “the balance at the time of the elections will be right and our brother Zionists will be more useful in secrecy and more content, though the majority of the lodge would be notable natives and senior officials of the government, at least the name of the lodge ceases being a Zionist lodge and will be respected more in the eyes of the population of Jerusalem.”
As it was, the Moriah lodge faced a great deal of persecution by the local ‘clerics’, especially the French among them. In Jerusalem initially [there was] a Canadian lodge of the Scottish whose ritual was adapted perfectly to the very religious mentality then of the population. Then it was the turn of the Grand Orient of Turkey; this one marked already a considerable progress in ideas. The lodge, either because it reached only one certain class of the population or for other reasons, did not excite the fear of the religious communities. But it was not the same for us. As soon as the communities, especially the Assumptionists, learned that a lodge of the GODF had been formed in the Holy City, a fury of fear, we believe, seized them and, although we were careful to avoid causing anything, they adopted a combative attitude immediately.128 The Moriah lodge blamed the French consul and vice consul in Jerusalem, along with a French priest, for striking such an anti-Masonic tone, and went so far to ask that they be replaced. In repeated requests to the GODF to intervene with the Quai d’Orsay, Moriah pointed out that not only did the local French representation act in a way that would not be tolerated in France, they were also negligent in their duties and were neglecting French interests. As they sought fit to point out to the GODF, French commerce and trade in Palestine had declined over ten years from first place to fifth place. Moriah was the only Palestinian lodge that left a record of its activities and projects, and as these were merely propositions made to the GODF we have little way of knowing if they were carried out.
Among the projects Moriah proposed were the opening of a “scientific, sociological and philanthropic library” for the use of lodge members; opening a dispensary under the aegis of the French Consulate in Jerusalem to provide free medical care to newly-enfranchised Moroccans under French protection; and encouraging establishment of a French society to compete for concessions in providing electricity and electric tramways for Jerusalem. Of all its proposed projects, the most idealistic was the establishment of a secular (laïque) school in Jerusalem. At the time, virtually all of the schools in Palestine were private and confessional, including the state school system that educated only Muslim students at the lower levels. In an effort to gain popular support for the idea, the Moriah lodge published an article in a local newspaper and led a delegation to meet with the French consul in the city to request the establishment of a French secular secondary school. The consul said he would recommend to the ministry that a congregational high school be established instead, a proposition that was not welcomed, according to Moriah, from either the French or Masonic point of view. “From the French point of view,” Moriah complained, “the solution of the Consul is not good because all the Greek, Arab, and Jewish elements that are the most numerous will never come to a religious school, and it is precisely at this element which [the project] is aimed. From the Masonic point of view, we would lose an excellent occasion to attract with our ideas the rising generation, which would carry a serious blow to religious omnipotence in our city.”
The Moriah lodge presented a petition signed by 316 heads of household in support of the establishment of a French lay school, representing 622 children. By the next year, however, there had been no progress on the matter of the school, although there were similar Freemason-sponsored ideas floating around both Beirut and Alexandria. A report in the Arabic press of French plans to establish a scientific school of higher education in Palestine along the lines of the American University in Beirut came to naught, as did Moriah’s suggestion that they establish a school for “rational thought.” By 1914, the members of the Moriah lodge had modified their original Francophone elitism and requested permission to establish an Arabic-speaking lodge; while acknowledging that they wanted to keep the “homogeneity and brotherhood” of their French-speaking lodge, they recognized that doing so kept out initiates who did not know French well enough to join.136 The GODF’s response was clear: while they did not object to occasional meetings in Arabic, as necessary, they warned their brothers to “advise you of the greatest prudence with regard to the initiation of the indigenous laymen.”137 With the war, however, all three Palestinian Masonic lodges ceased activity, so Moriah was unable to carry out its plans for an Arabic branch.
Barkai also closed its doors and its president, along with other members, was exiled to Anatolia. In 1919 ‘Araktinji returned from exile to find the lodge headquarters in shambles. From 1920 to 1924 the lodge was shut down due to Jewish-Arab clashes in the aftermath of the British Balfour Declaration and subsequent Mandate over Palestine, which was predicated on recognizing a “Jewish national home” in Palestine at the expense of its Arab inhabitants. With the 1929 clashes in Palestine, most of the remaining Arab members of the lodge left to join all-Arab lodges, and by the 1930s mixed Jewish-Arab Freemasonry lodges in Palestine were a thing entirely of the past, another pillar fallen to the rising nationalist conflict.
Whereas heterogeneity in the Ottomanist context enabled mixed Freemasonry lodges to flourish as long as they assumed a shared outlook, the seeds of sectarian and national discord nevertheless infiltrated the supposedly sacred Masonic order. Masonic lodges and individual Masons did not live separate from Ottoman Palestinian society, but rather were deeply integrated into it, and as such were sensitive to the balance between Ottomanism and particularism, Ottoman patriotism and European influence, and growing inter-communal rivalry. Michelle Campos is the author of A ‘Shared Homeland’ and its Boundaries: Empire, Citizenship, and the Origins of Sectarianism in Late Ottoman Palestine, 1908 - 13. (Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University 2003). She is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II often clamped down on Masonic activities, viewing them as unwelcome European incursions into Ottoman society as well as challenges to his sovereignty. Conservatives in the late Ottoman period considered Freemasonry a danger to the Ottoman regime as well as a danger to Islam. Jacob Landau, “Muslim Opposition to Freemasonry,” Die Welt des Islams, 36, 2 (1996). Freemasonry has been denounced based on its supposed association with Jews, missionaries, communists, atheists, revolutionaries, Zionists, and Satanism. The Catholic Church was a long-time critic of the Freemasonry movement based on its supposed antireligious and ritualistic elements - in 1738 the Church banned Freemasonry in a papal bull issued by Pope Clement XII. “Freemasons,” Encyclopedia Judaica. In the Middle East, local clerical anti-Masonic activities started around the time of Robert Morris’ 1876 trip to the Holy Land; he reported that local priests issued a tract against Masonry in Arabic. See Morris, Freemasonry in the Holy Land,
In 1906 there were a series of persecutions against Freemasons in Mount Lebanon, and a few years later, Beirut-based Father Louis Cheiko published a series of anti-Masonic pamphlets in Arabic calling for a “jihad” against organized Freemasonry. See Archives of the Grand Orient de France (hereafter GODF), Box 685, and al-Ab Louis Cheikho al-Yasu’i, Al-Sirr al-Masun fi Shi’at al-Farmasun (Beirut: Catholic Publishing House, 1910). For a local example of “virulent” Muslim opposition to Muslims participating in Freemasonry lodges, see Yves Hivert-Messeca, “France, Laïcité et Maçonnerie dans l’Empire Ottoman: La Loge <Prométhée> à l’Orient de Janina (Epire),” Chroniques d’Histoire Maçonnique, (1992): 125-6. Critics of the 1908 Young Turk revolution blamed Freemasons, Jews, and other ‘enemies’ for eventually overthrowing the Ottoman sultan; the British government also saw a CUP-Freemason-Jewish-Zionist plot against them. For further reading on these conspiracy theories see Jacob Landau, “The Young Turks and Zionism: Some Comments,” in his book Jews, Arabs, Turks (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993); Elie Kedourie, “Young Turks, Freemasons, and Jews,” Middle Eastern Studies, 7/1 (1971); and Mim Kemal Öke, “Young Turks, Freemasons, Jews, and the Question of Zionism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-13,” Studies in Zionism, 7/2 (1986). Specific examples of local conspiracy theories from the 1908-14 press can be found surrounding the spring 1909 counter-coup against the Young Turks which took on the “Freemasons, the defiers of religion and the discarders of the heart of the people behind them.”
See “The disturbances in Turkey and the victory of the constitution,” in ha-‘Olam, v. 3, no. 14 (27 April, 1909) and “The Jews and the Committee for Union and Progress,” in ha-Herut, v. 1, no. 20 (14 July, 1909). 12 In the aftermath of the French Revolution, French Freemasonry took on a strong anti-clericalist tone, and by 1877 had abolished the required belief in God. French obediences refer instead to the “Grand Architect of the Universe.” L’Histoire (Special: Les Francs-Maçons) 256, (2001): Freemasonry membership is highly hierarchicalinitiates are ‘apprentice’, the second degree is ‘companion’, and the third degree is ‘master’. Each level involves memorization of a catechism and performance of elaborate symbolic rituals. While the British model of Freemasonry was more conservative in bent and generally was supportive of the religious and political status quo, the French tradition of Freemasonry (the one which became more prominent throughout the Middle East, including Palestine) has emphasized liberal, philosophical positions and encouraged political engagement and critique, including support for revolution. Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt from Bonaparte to Zaghloul,” Turcica, (1992). Najdat Safwat, Freemasonry in the Arab World (London: Arab Research Centre, 1980) 1 Jessua, Grand Orient (Gr: Loge) de Turquie also claims that a large number of participants sought to reap benefits from the Young Turks through the lodges. “Each one wanted to become a Mason like the leaders of the new order. Those who entered a lodge by conviction were not very numerous.” In 1910, a debate erupted between the Grand Lodge of Egypt and the Grand Orient Ottoman, both of the Scottish rite, concerning rights of jurisdiction over Scottish Freemasonry in Egypt (formally still an Ottoman vilayet though in essence a British colony). See Joseph Sakakini, Rapport Concernant L’Irregularité de la Gr* L* d’Egypte (n.p.: n.p., 1910) and Joseph Sakakini, Incident avec la Grande Loge d’Egypte: Rapport du Joseph Sakakini (Constantinople: n.p., 1910). The main Grand Lodge of Scotland refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Grand Orient Ottoman over its members in the empire. See Dumont, “La FrancMaçonnerie d’Obédience Française à Salonique”,
These lodges included Vatan/La Patrie, Mouhibbani Hourriyet/Les Amis de la Liberte, Vefa/Perserverance, Resna, Shefak/Aurore, Bisanzio Risorta, Les Vrais Amis de l’Union et Progrès, and La Fraternite Ottomane. Jessua, Grand Orient (Gr: Loge) de Turquie. There was some overlap of Muslim children who were sent to local Jewish schools (particularly those of the Alliance Israélite Universelle as well as the Evelina de Rothschild school for girls. However, by and large, children were sent to primary schools within their own religious community. (The Ottoman state schools, the Rudiyya, were technically open to all three religions though I have found no evidence that any non-Muslims attended these schools). By university, however, there was significantly more crossover, as chosen and accomplished Ottoman youth attended imperial law, medical, and other schools in the capital. Also many well-to-do youth attended the American University in Beirut. The founding of the Royal Solomon Mother Lodge was 7 August, 1873; Mr. Rolla Floyd was reported to be the master of the lodge. File [18368]; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M862, roll 1034); Jerusalem; Numerical File, 1906-10; Central Files of the Department of State, Record Group; National Archives - College Park (hereafter NACP). Among the founders claimed by one Masonic report were Ahmad Bedir al-Khalidi, Gabriel Samoury, Cesar ‘Araktinji, Tamari “and others”; among the Jews were Moritz Steinberg, Yosef Feinberg, Menachem Stein, Ya’kov Litwinsky, David Moyal, Avraham Levy, and Michal Horwitz. See ha-Boneh he-Hofshi (Jan 1935).
By: Bill Weams
1 Comments
Psychology is a very ancient Science
03/10/2024 4:47 am
Psychology is a very ancient Science that has its origin in the Schools of the Ancient Mysteries. The instructors of the Ancient Mystery Schools were always suspicious of the tendency some people have to use Psychology for selfish purposes (political, economic, social, etc.), and so: Psychology was intelligently disguised as Philosophy.
At the shores of the Ganges river, we can find pure experimental Psychology in the Sacred Vedas of the Hindus. The seven yogas have always been described as “methods, philosophical systems or proceedings”.
In the Arab world, if we study the sacred teachings of the Sufis we will discover that they are part metaphysical and part religious, and in reality they are of a Psychological order.
In ancient Europe, in order to pass by unnoticed, Psychology again wore the robes of Philosophy.
If we do a comparative study of religions, we will see that Psychology has always been intimately associated with all the religious principles.
If we analyze Religious Literature throughout the world, we will discover wonderful treasures of the Psychological Science. In the ancient Mystery Schools of Greece, Egypt, Rome, India, Persia, México, Perú, Assyria, Chaldea, etc., Psychology was always tied to Art, Science, Philosophy, and Religion (or mysticism).
In ancient times, Psychology was intelligently hidden in the form of:
the sacred Dancers
or within the enigma of the remarkable Hieroglyphics
or in the beautiful Sculptures
or in the Poetry
or in the tragedies, dramas and comedies [of the Theater]
and even in the delightful Music of the temples
Before art, science, philosophy, and religion separated to live independently: Psychology reigned supreme in all the Ancient Mystery School