Negotiating Palestinian Womanhood

Negotiating Palestinian
Womanhood

Encounters between Palestinian Women and American Missionaries, 1880s–1940s

Enaya Hammad Othman

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Names: Othman, Enaya, author.

Title: Negotiating Palestinian womanhood : encounters between Palestinian women and American missionaries, 1880s-1940s / Enaya Hammad Othman.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016037410 (print) | LCCN 2016040111 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498509237 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781498509244 (Electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Women--Palestine--Social conditions--20th century. | Americans--Palestine--History--20th century. | Quakers--Palestine--History--20th century. | Women missionaries--Palestine--History--20th century.

Classification: LCC HQ1728.5 .O84 2016 (print) | LCC HQ1728.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.4095694/0904--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037410

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To my mother and all women of her generation whose determination and strong will have inspired this book. I also dedicate this book to my
children and future generations whose lives have been impacted by the legacy of these strong-willed women.

Acknowledgments

The American Friends Schools in Ramallah became of special interest to me when, as a child, I learned from my mother that she wanted my older sisters to attend the Friends Girls School (FGS) in the 1960s. I was puzzled to learn that my mother had to sell the gold coins on her Iwqah, her traditional headdress, to pay for the tuition for my older sister, who attended the school for a few years before she was pulled out in order to get married. As I became aware of the difference in the education and curriculum between private schools operated by foreign missions and public schools, I became determined to research the influence that these mission schools had on Palestinian students. I am hopeful that this book will contribute to scholarship in the field.

I would like to thank former students of the American FGS, who were delighted to talk to me about their experiences at the school, including Najla Cook, Nazeha Abdul Jawad, Da`d Jubran, Mary Khalaf, Salwa Tabri, Nahida Harb, Jameela Ismail, and Sara Ismail. I regret that a number of them are no longer living: Aida Audi, Berta Butros, Fadwa Tabri, and Fadwa Totah.

I would like to thank all of those who directly or indirectly helped me, either upon my request for information or by giving me important critical comments, who include Thomas Ricks, Salim Tamari, and Nancy Gallagher. I am also extremely thankful to Donn Hitchinson, who helped me obtain firsthand sources and provided me with contact information for former FGS students. The Friends Schools administration and staff were absolutely great; they opened the school’s archive and library for me during my visit in 2005. I am especially grateful to Joyce Ajlony. The staff at Lilly Library at Earlham College, Haverford College Library, and Swarthmore College were extremely hospitable and offered me with all the help that they could provide in order to make my visits fruitful.

My emails and correspondences with Joy Hilden, the daughter of Eva Rae Marshal, a former American teacher in the interwar period and Khalil Totah’s wife, were very engaging and helped me understand and appreciate the life and contribution of her mother to the Ramallah Mission. I am deeply thankful to Ellen Fleischmann for her important comments, encouragement, and overall support of this project.

Special thanks go to my friends and colleagues at Marquette University for their valuable critical comments, including Steven Avella, Phillip Naylor, Michael Donoghue, Jodi Melamed, Ann Ostendorf, and Eugenia Afinoguénova.

I would like to thank the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for providing me with a Gettel Faculty Research Grant and the Peace Center at Marquette University for their grant awards. Lauren Marten Parker and Rick Hanson were invaluable in their help with the editing of the manuscript. My deepest appreciation goes to my family, my husband, Islam Ismael Othman, and my children, Sinan, Leean, and Yaman, for their support and patience during the research and writing of this book.

Introduction

“Womanhood, not scholarship, is the first aim of education,” wrote Palestinian students at the Friends Girls School (FGS) in Ramallah in a 1938 edition of their newsletter, the New Light.[1] For them, “womanhood” meant motherhood and wifehood supported by modern education and training in domesticity. The FGS in the Palestinian city of Ramallah is an educational institution which was founded during the Ottoman Empire and later became a site for the implementation of Quaker education. It was a colonial site where Western education intersected with national and social forces, and allowed for the girls’ negotiation of multiple discourses about nationalism, womanhood, and motherhood. The implementation of Quaker education in Ramallah reinforced women’s domestic roles which were integral to the Arab/Palestinian national ideals that valued educated women as mothers of the nation’s new citizens.

FGS students’ writings in the 1920s and the 1930s integrated discourses that connected women’s education to the progress of their society and the nation. For example, Muhja Saba, an FGS student in the graduating class of 1925, criticized the way in which girls are denied an education, stating, “People in our country do not take interest in educating girls. They consider providing the girls with modern education and aesthetic arts is an unnecessary treat.”[2] Muhja along with other students from the same graduating class insisted on education as a necessity and a right which would enable the entrance of women into the public sphere. Education would allow them to work outside of their homes, especially as educators because they believed themselves more suitable than men to educate the young generation. They argued that Palestinian women should assert the right to the gender equality that had been achieved in Western and some Arab countries, such as Syria and Egypt, which had propelled women outside their homes and into the workforce.[3] The FGS compositions exemplify the way in which Palestinian girls were engaged actors in the formation of nationalist discourses; coming mainly from upper and urban middle classes, they valued scholarship and higher education as pathways to participation in the construction of national norms and standards. They actively debated and negotiated the limitations which were imposed on them as a result of rigid gender roles and called for access to college education which would increase their agency.

The spread of Western schools in the Ottoman territories provided the local population with modern education, but was also viewed as an opening for cultural penetration and conversion. Western missionaries achieved great success in education and medical enterprises, but not religious conversion; Quakers were only able to convert a handful of Palestinian families. Other missions, such as the Swedish Salaam Mission in Egypt and the Church Missionary Society among Muslims in Sudan, as Heather Sharkey and Beth Baron indicated in their works, also failed in converting the local population. Likewise, in Lebanon, locals challenged missionary attempts at conversion with opposition led especially by the leaders of different religious communities, as is described by Ussama Makdisi in his treatment of early American missionaries in Lebanon.[4] In Palestine, the Muslim Supreme Council (MSC), al-hay`ah al-Islamyya al-`aluya, worked earnestly to combat missions’ conversion attempts among the local population, as is shown in the correspondence between the President of the Council and the Secretary of the High British Commissioner.[5] Nevertheless, beginning in the late nineteenth century, American missionaries’ educational endeavors succeeded in influencing the cultural and social developments of the region. These endeavors are epitomized in some of the colleges and schools that are still operational today, including the American Quaker schools in Ramallah, Palestine, and the American universities in Lebanon and Cairo.

This book examines the influence of Quaker and “modern” education (as opposed to traditional forms of education) on Palestinian women’s views of gender and nationalism, and the ways in which it allowed them to advocate for postsecondary education and negotiate the ongoing social and cultural changes that affected their roles at home and in the public sphere. The students’ experiences at the FGS along with their awareness of the ongoing social and cultural transformation in Arab and Western societies influenced the way in which these students perceived their roles. They internalized and adapted the education that they received in five ways. First, modern home economics classes provided them with the skills needed to become household managers, which included the budgeting of the household income; this was a transformation of their traditional domestic role and therefore an empowerment in itself.[6] Second, the Quaker emphasis on reform and service to others allowed the students to claim public spaces and led them to embrace their roles as active citizens. Third, the scholarly preparation that they received allowed them to enter college and empowered them to argue for gender equality in education and employment outside their homes. Fourth, Quaker ideals of internationalism, peace, and nonviolent means in conflict resolution made the students advocate for cultural nationalism, Arab unity across tribal and religious lines, and responsible citizenship, as many of their writings in the 1920s and 1930s illustrate. These ideals simultaneously caused students to be ambivalent about Palestinian resistance to colonial forces. Fifth, the national and intellectual discourse that occupied many writers and reformers since the late nineteenth century concerning women’s issues such as access to education, unveiling, and women’s roles in the national discourse influenced the students’ views of their own gender and national roles.

The intersection of the issues of domesticity, nationalism, and a Quaker education which centered on peace and pacifism played a major role in the formation of FGS students’ national and gender identities. In particular, Quaker education affected the ways Palestinian women, coming primarily from Muslim and Christian upper and middle classes (a small percentage were from villages and other humble backgrounds), negotiated larger public roles within their society’s structured power relations. While FGS students either appropriated or altered Quaker ideals, their choices contributed significantly to the formation of their personal and political identities. These experiences of FGS students especially underscore the formative importance of historical context as well as social and cultural location and transaction. While the Quakers shared the agenda of other public and private schools in gendering education, Quaker education in particular in addition to the ongoing social and political transformation in Palestine produced mixed results in which many Palestinian women showed emancipatory desires to change their roles and responsibilities in either radical, moderate, or conservative ways. This demonstrates that education and the social and cultural atmosphere did not produce the same results for all students. After World War I, the general atmosphere in Palestine encouraged academic competition among private and mission schools, and made all schools search for ways to enhance their curriculum and raise their standards. There was a large shortage of teachers in public schools and the graduates of the mission and private schools were in demand to fill this gap. Simultaneously, the expanded use of media and entertainment and the growing awareness of the population of their national aspiration and needs called for improved educational opportunities for Palestinians. In the context of these changes, the conceptions women held about their roles and limitations evolved.

The FGS students were engaged in debate about Arab and Muslim women’s situations, and the importance of providing modern education to prepare young girls for their national role as fit mothers of the nation’s new generation. This was a discourse that occupied many writers of the Nahda (a pan-Arab cultural revival and intellectual movement), as well as nationalists, reformers, feminists, and women’s movements. The nationalists, intellectuals, and reformers highlighted, reconstructed, and stabilized the ideals of domesticity in the wake of modernization and colonization in the region. Admittedly, the ideals of domesticity which were iconized in the image of the “new woman” by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century came to convey both nationalist and colonialist agendas. These were not new ideals, but rather were an extension of the old traditional Victorian gendered division between public and private spaces. As a consequence of the “new woman” idealization of separate spheres, women tended to learn strategies to negotiate modernity with their designated obligation of home life. Moreover, while men and women’s spheres were separated, the confinement of women to the home was only a projection of societal ideals.[7] In reality, there was not a concrete gendered separation between the spheres, as middle- and upper-class Palestinian women were engaged in political activism, charitable work, and some careers, though mainly limited to teaching and office jobs. Peasant women, of course, were already tending their fields with their husbands and fathers. In this context, Palestinian women including FGS students pushed their boundaries by negotiating between the discourses of colonial/Western education, long-standing religious and social values, and Arab nationalism to expand places of importance for them in both the public and private spheres.

The colonial subtext of Arab nationalism and the subsequent context of the Western intellectual tradition is undeniable. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment period philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced Nahda thinkers who advocated educating women for the purpose of fulfilling their duties as wives. These writers included Rifa`a Rafi`a Tahtawi (1801–1873) and Butrus al Bustani (1819–1883).[8] Hence, Arab women writers including the women’s press that amounted in the first half of twentieth century to sixty-two journal and magazines adopted the same male Nahda writers’ discourses of womanhood including Hind
Nufal (1860–1920), Rose Haddad (1903–1930), and Labeba Hashim (1906–1939). The idealization of educated mothers and wives in discourses of womanhood became the focus of the Arab press and women’s magazines. Women writers “initially justified girls’ education on the ground that the nation would advance, if mothers and wives were better prepared for religious and domestic roles.”[9] Thus, the women’s press in particular called for improvements in the domestic sphere, which “was seen as the best strategy for raising women’s status, and the outpouring of domestic literature instructing the wife, mother, and ‘mistress of the house.’” Moreover, “domestic work became professionalized with its own schools, texts, journals, and Jargon” as Beth Baron contends.[10] The importance of women’s education and the issue of unveiling as manifestations of national progress were major issues in the writings of Qasim Amin (1865–1908), an upper-class Egyptian and French educated reformer, in his two seminal works, Tahrir al-mar`a (The Emancipation of Women) in 1899 and Al-Mar`a al-jadida (The New Woman) in 1900. His works generated debate and influenced a generation of nationalists, Arab feminists, and writers including Huda Sharawi (1879–1947), an upper-class Egyptian, and Lebanese writer Zaynab Fawwaz (1864–1914), who advocated for education and the unveiling of Muslim women as part of the plan of national progress where educated women’s roles were to raise and educate the nation’s new generation.[11] Arab women’s activism was circumscribed by the gender-oriented discourse that it “may benefit some women but that [it does] not further feminism as a politics of equal opportunity, social justice and self-realization.”[12] As mainly upper- and middle-class women benefited from modern education, the horizon of what they perceived to be legitimate women’s rights was bounded by the national gendered agenda. This agenda focused on providing women with modern education in order to become capable mothers and demanded equality in only some public spaces, specifically in education, the press, and in philanthropic organizations. This explains why the women’s press and writers focused their literature on the doctrine of domesticity, attempting to reform only issues of marriage and childhood development. This discourse “gave women greater responsibility in the home without challenging its boundaries.”[13] Remarkably, this national agenda came into accordance with colonial and missionary objectives and the purposes of their educational enterprises that were open to form colonial girls. In the colonial context of Palestine, public, private, and mission schools that instructed both Arab Christian and Muslim students played an important role in the evolution of women’s movement and its womanhood nationalist politics, as Ela Greenberg explains in her study. The gendered education Palestinian girls received accorded with nationalist and modernist anticipations.[14] This confirms Ellen Fleischmann’s emphasis that modern and nationalist discourses about educated mothers and wives shaped upper-class women’s perspectives on their part in the nationalist struggle, and thus allowed them a larger public role.[15]

The Arab and local Palestinian press promoted the importance of gendered education for boys and girls as a tool to divide roles among men and women and enforce the separation of the public and private spheres. By 1908, Palestinians gained access to the Arabic press as a result of the restoration of the new Ottoman constitution and Young Turk Revolution. By the outbreak of World War I, thirty-four new Palestinian newspapers appeared.[16] Two Jaffa-based newspapers that were distributed and read throughout Palestine, Filastin and al-Karmil, were voices for modernity and anticolonial sentiments against the Zionist project in Palestine and British imperial policies. Both promoted the modernization of Palestinian life through furniture and clothes—especially among the middle- and upper-classes.[17] As Ami Ayalon contended, these issues were communicated orally even among the illiterate humble class. Verbal communication “by which a single competent reader verbally conveyed written messages to a listening crowd and a single literate family member updated the rest,”[18] reflects the long-standing Arab oral tradition of transmitting news and information. The Palestinian press also tackled gender roles regularly by the 1920s. The accomplishments of women in the West and the Arab world, especially in Egypt, were praised; however, the press emphasized education for women for the benefit of the children of the nation.

The process of educating young women to become mothers and wives with authority over their households brought with it a complicated set of discourses which enabled Arab women, as in the case of FGS students, to argue for and design their roles in an anticolonial and nation-building context.[19] Palestinian students negotiated an identity that was not confined to Arab cultural ideals, Western educational concepts, or Quaker religious beliefs. Their identity incorporated self-selected segments from all of these influences. Moreover, despite the colonial underpinnings, domesticity, with its national expression in women’s roles, gave Palestinian women agency to express their political identity in the areas of citizenship, motherhood with its modern managerial home skills,[20] and in public spaces—especially in education and office service posts, and social, philanthropic, and cultural organizations.

I intend for this book to contribute to the existing scholarship on gender and cultural encounters in colonial settings. This is the first analytical study to examine the American Quaker educational enterprise since its establishment in the late nineteenth century during the Ottoman rule and into the British Mandate period. Quakers shared other missionaries’ goals of modernizing and educating Arab women; however, certain aspects of their work made it different from other Catholic and Protestant missions, notably their ideals of peace and internationalism along with their conflicting views on the management of these ideals in relation to Arab nationalism and British support for the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.

I am using the FGS as a site of interaction between Arab and American cultures to uncover the manner in which the Palestinian students received, translated, internalized, and responded to a Quaker education to change their position in their family and society. They negotiated the ideals of domesticity and service to others (i.e., as philanthropists) to claim an active role in building society and obtaining gender equality, especially in the area of education and work.[21] Nevertheless, we need to take into consideration that women negotiate within the already produced system of power.[22]

This study makes use of a wide range of published and unpublished sources. Primary sources related to the history of the Quaker Mission in Ramallah include accounts written by missionaries like Rosa Lee, Christina Jones, and Nancy Parker McDowell.[23] There are also two accounts by Palestinian Quakers who received their education at the FGS: Anisa Ma`louf, whose account is written in Arabic in 1939, and Anisa Audi, the daughter of Elias Audi, one of the first converts to Quakerism. Anisa Audi’s mother, Emily Aramoonie, was a teacher at the FGS. My research on the FGS in Ramallah benefited from extensive archival material I found in the United States and Palestine. In 2005, I visited Lilly Library at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where I researched vast collections of letters and reports since the establishment of the mission in the late nineteenth century. The collection also includes Quaker missionary teachers’ letters and reports to the Friends United Meeting. Some of these teachers served in Palestine during the British Mandate, such as Sara E. Hadley (1945–1947), Nancy Parker McDowell (1938), Mary E. Minnick (1935–1936), Katharine Haviland (1935), and Mildred White, a long-term Quaker teacher who served in the mission in the 1920s and 1930s. I also visited the Friends History Library at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, which holds a great collection of missionary papers and accounts, including the reports of FGS teacher Annice Carter (1936–1937). Magill Library at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, also provided me with an opportunity to examine its collection from the early years of the mission, including Eli and Sybil Jones’s mission reports (1888–1917). Magill also holds a collection of issues of the Ramallah Messenger, a newsletter published in Providence, Rhode Island, by the American Friends that included teachers’ reports and other news of the Ramallah Mission between 1903 and 1911. It began as a monthly paper and then continued as a quarterly from 1906 to 1911.

The FGS collection in Ramallah includes the New Light, a monthly newsletter published by Palestinian students of the FGS between 1938 and 1949, which provides us with a substantial amount of information about students’ experiences, their ways of thinking, and their perceptions of their school and teachers. It engaged a substantial number of editors (six) and reporters (ten) from first and second secondary classes. The New Light also covered news which reporters found entertaining and interesting; its articles indicate that the girls were following international events and women’s movements. The newsletter also covered news about students’ involvement in athletics, including competitions with other schools in sports such as tennis, volleyball, and gymnastics.

At the FGS archive, I also found a collection of Maruf al-Rusafi’s Arab national poetry which was taught to students in Palestine and memorized by them. Khalil Totah collected a selected number of al-Rusafi poems in a booklet; its introductory paragraph was written by Issaf Nashashibi, the principal of the Training College in Jerusalem, where both Totah and al-Rusafi worked in the 1920s. Donn Hutchison’s private collection of twenty-five graduation essays and other materials from the FGS archive, entitled “School Days,” includes writings ranging from one paragraph to one and a half pages by students who attended the FGS during the 1920s and 1930s. These two collections are important in uncovering the students’ own thoughts and aspirations. The graduation essays in particular cover a number of issues, including women’s right to education, their participation in the workforce, the importance of home economics classes, the veil, nationalism, peace, the creation of a strong civic society grounded in individualism, and the importance of charitable and social advocacy organizations.

I was lucky enough to interview twelve women who attended the FGS between the 1930s and 1950s; only three among them were Muslims. These interviewees were among the few still alive and living in Ramallah during my visit in 2006. Contact information and consent were obtained with the help of Hutchison, who, as a teacher and resident of Ramallah since the 1960s, knows most of the former graduates of the FGS. The interview questions I posed focused on the students’ experience in the boarding school, the kind of education they received, its impact on their lives after graduation, and their interaction with their American and Palestinian teachers.

The increased number of American women joining the foreign mission was part of the late nineteenth-century women’s foreign mission movement. This explains the substantial number of single and married Quaker women who joined the Ramallah Mission. Nonetheless, single women made their imprint on the progress of the mission and tended to stay for a longer period of time, such as in the case of Alice Jones and Mildred White. They saw themselves as reformers and social workers, and not as proselytizers seeking converts to Quakerism. Women missionaries pleaded to the board to change its initial strategy of direct conversion of Palestinians to cultural conversion through education. Missionary accounts clearly show preoccupation with Palestine as a biblical land, a fact that affected their perception of its inhabitants; judgments and generalizations allowed them to romanticize contemporary Palestine as a biblical landscape and whose inhabitants were perceived as living in a static, ancient tradition.

The Quakers’ missionary activities in Palestine were accidental, experimental, and both conventional and unconventional. The mission did not begin as a preplanned attempt by American Quakers to have a permanent mission in Palestine, nor it was staffed or managed in its foundational period by American missionaries—at least for the first twenty years. The mission came as a response to local Palestinians’ request for the founding of a girls’ school in Ramallah.

In 1869 Mariam Karam, a Palestinian girl educated in a German missionary school in Jerusalem, appealed to the American Quaker couple Eli and Sybil Jones to open a school for girls. That year, the Joneses, along with two British Quakers, were on an evangelical mission tour to Greater Syria (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, historic Palestine). Although Karam had a modest education, her request included that she serve as the teacher at the proposed school. Karam was apparently seeking a source of funding for an educational institution intended to benefit women in her community. The Joneses granted her request; a few short years later, Karam and another Palestinian, Jacob Hishma, were able to open the doors of the first and only American Quaker educational mission in Palestine.

This was an important instrumental period which presented to the American Quakers New England Yearly Meeting evidence of potential success in establishing and investing in a permanent Quaker mission in Ramallah by 1889. The basic curriculum emphasized religious education—including Arabic literacy for the purpose of Scripture reading, though readings in English and Turkish were also used during the Ottoman period. The curriculum was broadened over time as expression of the increasing educational standards of Quaker education and as a response to the cultural and social transformations in Palestine.

What distinguished the Quakers’ work from other foreign missions in Palestine were the American missionary women who played principal roles as teachers, administrators and key figures in the Ramallah Mission. They assumed important leadership positions at the schools and led the initiative proposed in the 1930s and 1940s to transfer the Ramallah Mission to Palestinian nationals. Arab women joined their efforts and helped configure important social, cultural, and gender issues. These Arab and American women left their imprint on the mission before their departure. The works of the American missionary and teachers Rosa Lee, Alice Jones, Christina Jones, Mildred white, Eva Marshal, as well as Katie Gabriel (Arab teacher and principal) , Helanie Totah (Arab teacher and Bible woman), Emily Audi (Arab teacher and Bible woman), Martha and Hannah Nasr (Arab Bible women), Wadia Shatara (Arab teacher), Victoria Hannush (Arab teacher and principal) and many others created and sustained the first American institution in Palestine—an institution that still functions today.

While the Quakers Ramallah Mission can be described to a large degree as a colonial site where the relationship between Palestinian employees, students, and converts was never equal to American missionaries, nonetheless, during different stages of operating this site, I see it “as an arena of exchange.”[24] This encounter reflects a combination of cross-
cultural exchanges accompanied by tensions which motivated attempts from the missionaries to rework strategies in order to function effectively with the Palestinians. Palestinians took full advantage of the educational opportunities and were able to transform their social, cultural, and gender roles, while refiguring the place of the American missionary schools in the heart of a Palestinian Christian town. The American Friends schools served as a channel for the transmission of American culture to Palestinians through English language and literature, American movies, Christmas celebrations, and other mechanisms.

The schools were also a site where nationalist ideas were filtered to students via Arab nationalist staff and educators. The American missionaries’ encounters with Palestinian students and culture also exposed them to a world very different from their own. This experience was predictably complex, and contradictory predicaments such as misrepresentations, misconceptions, modifications, and recognitions were often the norm. The Palestinian students emerged from this convergence with an identity that was neither identical to, nor totally removed from, their missionary teachers on the one hand, and Arab culture on the other. The American teachers, especially those who stayed the longest, were also transformed by the experience.

This book consists of five chapters which examine the complex, identity-transforming encounters at the FGS from 1889 to 1948. In order to help us better understand the historical atmosphere during which the early American Quakers arrived, chapter 1 provides background information about the various developments and interactions between the United States and Palestine from 1800 to 1948. It also offers a glimpse of American activities in Palestine and the historical background of the American Quakers and their establishment of the Ramallah Mission.

Chapter 2 examines the American teachers as missionaries searching for a social role where they could feel empowered as females working to better the conditions of other women abroad. Undoubtedly, these missionary women’s perception of “Eastern” women was not that much different from that of modem liberal feminists which “had hardly escaped orientalist influence.”[25] Their work with the Palestinian girls gave them self-worth and fulfilled their desire to work in the public sphere as missionaries. They came to Palestine with preconceived notions about the country and its people, and viewed Palestinians and their culture as backward and oppressive to women, especially in regards to marriage traditions and household chores. They believed that true Christianity (Quakerism) and education were the best means to overcome these social ills. These missionary women believed that the utilization of their Christian values and domestic skills were the most effective methods to prepare Palestinian girls to be good mothers and wives, an important aim of Quaker values. Following the American missionaries’ early encounters with Palestinians, they modified their evangelical aims and gave up direct conversion, adjusting their strategy to better their communication with their students.

The encounters between Palestinians and Quaker missionaries in Ramallah changed both groups in distinct ways and affected them as groups and as individuals. In chapter 3, I examine the impact of this change on American missionaries after World War I and highlight the factors that played a role in changing the perceptions of missionary women in their interactions with Palestinians and their culture. The longer the period of time missionaries interacted with Palestinians, the more they showed gratitude toward the people and the culture among which they lived. Also, their new sense of Palestine as a Biblical landscape during British control allowed them romanticize Palestinians and their culture as remnants of Jesus’ time, in contrast to the previous period when the Muslim “Turks” controlled the region where they gave only a negative portrait of the inhabitants and their landscape. In addition, the new strategy of cooperation among the different Protestant missions encouraged linguistic and cultural training among Quaker teachers, leading to more communication with local Palestinians and an understanding of Arab culture.

This cooperation was also a recognition of the role of the rising nationalist-minded educated class, exemplified by figures such as Khalil Totah, a Palestinian educator. His family was one of the few Ramallah families to convert to Quakerism and he was one the first pupils at the FBS after its opening in 1905. After receiving his PhD from Columbia University, he served as Government Arab College principal and then as the FBS Director.

The increased national sentiments in the country and the availability of Arab-educated staff made missionaries willing, through “devolution,” to examine the possibility of transferring positions of authority in the Ramallah Mission to local educators. The modification of missionaries’ views does not imply that they had always viewed Palestinians in the best or most accurate light. No doubt, it reflected the mode of Orientalist thinking they held even after living in the region and interacting with the Palestinians for a period of time. Their perceptions evolved, but continued to be noticeably Orientalist; they appreciated the culture as authentic but static, the people as graciously hospitable, but in need of Western help. Long-term Quaker missionaries at the Ramallah Mission showed more tolerance and receptivity to changing their preconceived notions than short-term missionaries. In addition, the educational developments throughout the country made American Quakers steadily improve the educational standards of the Friends schools in Ramallah to enable the girls to pass the British Matriculation Exam, a requirement for college entrance. This motivated the school to modify its educational agenda and focus on secular education.

When the educational program expressed the values shared among American missionaries and Palestinian students, both sides met in a middle ground and negotiated their interests. For example, home economics education was seen from both sides as an important component of a girl’s education. During the British mandate, when the school had to change its educational program because of the increasing need to prepare the girls for the British Matriculation Exam, the girls had to choose between home economics and math. The girls contested this decision and the teachers eventually approved their demands for both types of classes. The home economics department was enlarged and remained important as the school stressed the importance of graduating qualified mothers and wives, as well as professional women.

Chapter 4 examines the teachers’ and students’ experiences of the school’s regulations, rules, and activities. The available archival material written by the FGS graduates during the 1920s and 1930s, the students’ newsletter, and the interviews conducted with former students who experienced school life between 1929 and 1948 provide insights into the Palestinian experience of this encounter. This contact, for the most part, was productive for the American missionaries and their students. The girls enjoyed their life in the Friends boarding school and their relations with their American teachers. For example, the walking trips collecting wildflowers and their Saturday night readings where they exchanged American and Arab stories were enjoyable moments for both sides. The girls did, however, critique the imposed norms and limitations through breaking school rules or writing about their lack of freedom, but they ultimately viewed their education as a strategic tool which would enable them to further participate in the public sphere.

Chapter 5 examines the impact of education in shaping the FGS students’ way of thinking, as well as their identities. The FGS secular education had the deepest effect on the students’ personalities and careers. Unlike many of their peers, most of the FGS graduates planned to receive college educations which would qualify them to become educators. The Palestinian girls emulated the American Quaker women’s profession as teachers and looked at teaching as a suitable career for them to pursue. Also, they perceived teaching as an arena where they could institute changes in their society, which explains why such a large number of the school’s students pursued a teaching career after graduation.

Quaker education and ideals of internationalism, world peace, pacifism, and exposure to Arab and European literature, magazines and American movies contributed to the girls’ identity construction and worldviews. On the other hand, Palestinian students were also influenced by their Arab teachers’ comments on nationalism as evidenced by their recitation and memorization of Arab national and cultural songs. The girls also benefited from being exposed to Arab literature by Arab Nahda writers, who emphasized the importance of Arabic language and history. The students also had access to available Palestinian newspapers such as al-Karmel and Falasten. This exposure made them advocate for a revival of Arab culture while simultaneously tempering their national political rhetoric as way of coming to terms with the Quaker ideals of internationalism, pacifism, and political neutrality.

Notes

1.

The New Light 1, no. 1 (Ramallah, Palestine: FGS Historical Collection, March 12, 1938).

2.

“Muhja Saba, Luzum Taleem al-Fta fi Filasteen/The Necessity of Educating Girls in Palestine,” 1925.

3.

Donn Hutchison, Friends Girls School Graduate Papers, personal collection, Ramallah, Palestine. Partha Chatterjee sees women as passive symbols of the nationalist male agenda; however Tanika Sarkar argues that women were actors in this nationalist discourse. For more information see Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Partha Chatterjee, "The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question," in Recasting Women, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 238–39.

4.

Heather J. Sharkey, “Empire and Muslim Conversion: Historical Reflections on Christian Missions in Egypt,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 16, no. 1 (2005); Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014); Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

5.

The Supreme Muslim Council Papers (1920s, 1930s, and 1950s), Abu Dees Islamic Center Archival Collection, Abu Dees, Jerusalem.

6.

Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

7.

Amanda Vickery, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history,” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 383–414.

8.

William Boyd, History of Western Education, 5th ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1950), 300.

9.

Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), 142.

10.

Ibid., 155.

11.

For more information see Qasim Amin, The Liberation of Women and The New Woman: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism (Cairo: The American University Press, 2004); Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Margot Badran, preface to Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, by Huda Shaarawi, trans. Margot Badran (New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1987); Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt, 4–6.

12.

Marilyn Booth, Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces: Writing Feminist History Through Biography in Fin-de-siècle Egypt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 6–7.

13.

Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt, 166.

14.

Ela Greenberg, Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2009), 4.

15.

Ellen Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

16.

Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 65.

17.

Fleischmann, Nation and Its “New” Women, 164.

18.

Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 3.

19.

Fleischmann, Nation and Its “New” Women.

20.

A. Burton, “House/Daughter/Nation,” Journal of Asian Studies 57 (1997): 921–46.

21.

“Gender” here is an analytical tool that defines women as a “social group” in relation to men. For more information see Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, eds., Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2003), 6; Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press. 2000), 4.

22.

Michel Foucault and Colin Gordon, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).

23.

Rosa Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” in Holy Land Missions and Missionaries, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press. 1977); Christina H Jones, Friends in Palestine (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1981); Nancy Parker McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 1939 (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 2002). Lee’s account gives insight into her perception of the Ramallah population and students in the Girls Training Home (GTH, the former name of FGS). Her account also gives a detailed history of the mission and was originally published by the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions in 1912. It covers the early years of the mission, from the 1880s until 1912.

24.

Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 8.

25.

Charlotte Weber, “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911–1950,” Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 127.

Chapter 1

Education and Missionary Activities in Nineteenth-Century Palestine

Missionary Activities in Palestine

Missionary activities aimed toward religious conversion are ancient phenomena dating from long before the birth of Christianity and found in many religious traditions. In modern times, Western missionary activities signified important means of exerting political influence and gaining a stronghold in Palestine. Education and medical help were the most essential tools missionaries used to attempt to convert the indigenous population. The founding of schools was used as one form of religious and cultural conversion.

Missionary schools varied in their educational and religious strengths. For example, the Catholic schools, which focused their energy on religious studies, provided better education than the Orthodox schools in Palestine. The two oldest Catholic schools were Beit Sahour and Beit Jala in the Bethlehem area founded in 1756. Most of the Catholic schools were opened with French support. The Roman Catholics were the first to introduce Christian education based on the French model in Haifa. Before 1841, the Catholic schools were only for boys and it was not until after 1841 that schools for girls started opening in Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem. St. Joseph Nuns’ Society opened a school in 1848, a hospital in 1851 in Jerusalem, and a school and clinic in Bethlehem and Jaffa in 1849. Also in Jaffa, the Latin Patriarch opened an elementary school for boys in 1853. The Nazareth Nuns opened a school and orphanage in 1854, followed by other orphanages and schools after 1883. The Colon Society established in Germany in 1855 to support Catholicism in Palestine formed five schools in different towns scattered throughout northern Palestine in 1899. A Roman Catholic religious order called the Brothers of Christian Schools became active in Palestine, founded by Jean Baptiste De La Salle. In 1883, the society established two schools in Jaffa and Haifa. Bethlehem was also an important target for the society’s missionary activities. It opened Dar al-I’bteda`, or Beginning House, in 1885 to prepare Arab Christian men for priesthood, and another school in 1892 to prepare teachers to work in Catholic schools.[1] These mission educational enterprises, as A. L. Tibawi indicates, show “the bewildering diversity of the foreign schools [was] due to the diversity of the nations and the religious denominations involved.”[2]

Mission schools as well as building health clinics and hospitals were the two major areas where Western missionary activities blossomed. Early health projects were created for the Jewish community as a means to increase conversion activities in the 1830s. For example, a British mission, called the London Jews’ Society, offered the first medical help for the Jewish community in Jerusalem. In the early 1840s, the Church Missionary Society established a small hospital in a house comprised of twenty beds and a pharmacy. It opened other hospitals in Nablus, Jaffa, and Gaza.[3]

Early American Activities
and Interest in Palestine

Early American contacts with the Arab world were typically commercial, with some diplomatic activity and occasional military confrontations. The American-Mediterranean trade during the early decades of the New Republic was regulated through Boston, the major port which trafficked commerce activities, especially with North African states. Trade relations with the region were usually peaceful, with the exception of the early years of the nineteenth century that marked the outbreak of the first war between the United States and the Muslim Barbary State, Tripoli (1801–1815).[4] Generally, the New Republic was able to negotiate trade treaties with North African Barbary States and the rest of the Ottoman Empire, securing peaceful trade relations. American traders usually conducted and regulated their trade with the help and protection of their assigned consuls and/or through the British Levant Company.[5] The European Enlightenment period writers of the eighteenth century such as Thomas Trenchard, Robert Gordon, Charles Secondat, Baron Montesquieu, and Voltaire, as well as American traders, missionaries, consuls, and travelers’ reports and writings were the primary body of information which helped structure the American government’s early attitudes toward the Ottoman Empire and its Arab regions including Palestine.[6]

Foreign missionary activities in the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine, accelerated during the late nineteenth century. Palestine composed an important part of the southwest corner of Greater Syria, or Bylad al-Sham, (made up of Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, and Syria today). The religious importance and strategic location of Palestine served as a bridge which connected the African continent with Asia, and the Mediterranean with the Arabian Peninsula desert, made it a center of attention for the European powers. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516. Most of Palestine’s previous administrative and political systems remained consistent during Ottoman rule, except for some territorial organization such as dividing the Ottoman territories into thirty-two eyelets or provinces, fourteen of which were located in the Arab regions.[7]

American theological convictions which generated major interest in Palestine were linked to a conception of its sacredness derived from the Bible and the prophecy of the second coming of Jesus. The Holy Land was perceived as a Christian place controlled by the evil Muslim Ottomans who needed to be rescued and restored to the Jews.[8] The Presbyterian pilgrim Thomas de Witt Talmage travelled to Palestine in 1880 and expressed that he felt that Jesus’ land was declining under the horrible Turks and “prayed, ‘May God remove the curse of nations, that old hag of the centuries, the Turkish government.’”[9] The central position of the Old Testament and ancient Israelites impacted American thought and led to the emergence of the millenarian and revivalist movements in America during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Palestine became the spiritual site where these movements directed their beliefs of the second coming of Jesus which would lead to the restoration of the Jews who would eventually become Christian converts in the “Holy Land.” Consequently, Palestine became an object of attention to missionaries, archaeological and biblical scholars, tourists, travelers, and consuls, as well as unsuccessful early American colonizers.[10]

The writings of these early Americans who encountered Palestine were the major source of knowledge that the American public and government acquired about the region and the Arab people. These writings were comprised of early Orientalist images and perceptions of the inhabitants and demonized the Ottoman Turks who controlled the region. These accounts typically underrepresented the Muslim population and focused on the Christian and the Jewish communities as the oppressed minorities needing protection and help from Western powers.[11] Some of the early American missionaries were Levi Parsons, Jonas King, and Pliny Fisk, who were sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to establish the American evanglical mission to Palestine. Parsons in 1819 described the Turks as “giant beasts.” Jonas King, accompanied by Pliny Fisk, on his journey to Jerusalem in 1823, described Palestine as part of the “empire of sin” controlled by the evil Turks. When King saw the Bedouins in the Sinai Desert, he imagined them as “fiends from the world below” who would attack him at any given moment. William Goodell, an American missionary who established a Protestant mission in Beirut and schools in Istanbul in the 1820s, noted that the long-bearded Turks reminded him of “the Anakims of old,” a tall and giant race whom the ancient Hebrews were able to control.[12] American Quaker missionaries who emerged in Ramallah during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were influenced by these misconceptions and misrepresentations. Some of these views continued into the second decade of the twentieth century, as stated by American missionary Eva Rae Marshal, who came to serve in the Ramallah Quaker schools in the late 1920s. Marshal admitted being surprised to learn that her students and the people of Ramallah were all Arabs and not Jews as she had initially assumed they would be.[13]

The motive of some nineteenth-century American writers was to explore Palestine’s geographical places in relation to the biblical stories mentioned in the Torah and the Old and New Testaments.[14] American travelers such as Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, mentioned the surge of religious groups who were trying to establish their presence in the region. Presbyterians, Catholics, Methodists, and Episcopalians all had missions in Palestine during this period.[15] Other American visitors included politicians such as William Henry Seward, who served as Secretary of State under the administrations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant in an 1877 to 1879 tour around the world. In preparation for his travels to Palestine, President Ulysses S. Grant read the Bible similar to the way a tourist might prepare by reading a travel guide.[16]

The early emergence of the modern American mission can be traced to a young Baptist preacher, William Carey, whose well-known pamphlet, “An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen," was published in 1791[17] As a result of Carey’s ideas and enthusiasm, the Baptist Missionary Society was formed in 1792 to raise funds for missionary endeavors abroad, beginning with Carey’s journey to Calcutta, India.[18]

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, religious revivals in Britain and North America promoted a renewed evangelical fervor, known in the United States as the Second Great Awakening. The “religious enthusiasm of the Second Awakening could not be contained within national boundaries,” as not only the nation “but the world was to be redeemed.”[19] The Roman Catholics had the oldest missionary orders in Christian history, but their orders were hindered for a period of time after Pope Clement XIV decided to dissolve the Jesuits in 1773. In 1825, a Catholic missionary revival emerged, allowing for the renewal of the old missionary tradition that was carried out to other lands.[20]

The American missions abroad were subsequently advanced by the creation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Boston in 1810. Most of its members were graduates from Williams College. Beginning in 1812, the board sent missionaries to different countries and regions that were determined to be in need of the “new light.” These countries and regions included India, Hawaii, China, Singapore, West and South Africa, Syria, and Palestine. The American Board became the central body that provided the financial support to missions abroad. The ABCFM directed a special amount of attention to countries in the Middle East, especially Palestine. Members of the board resented the fact that the birthplace of Jesus and Christianity was under Muslim control.[21]

The board missionaries were adamant in their beliefs that American culture and society were superior, and emphasized the importance of spreading their Christianity among the “corrupted” Eastern Christians, Jews and Muslims. The latter group was especially hard to convert because the Islamic law forbade Muslims from conversion to another religion. Muslims believed that their religion was the completion of Judeo-Christian religious progression. Because of this, American missionaries focused their work on Eastern Christians and Jews. One of the earliest attempts of the board to establish a mission in Palestine occurred in 1819. Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons raised $2,932.31 to form a Protestant mission in Jerusalem. Parsons arrived in Jerusalem in February of 1821 and stayed until May. Fisk journeyed to Jerusalem, but did not succeed in establishing a mission there and left for Beirut with Jonas King. By October 1823, two American missionaries, William Goodell and Isaac Bird, received instructions from the American Board to establish their residency and mission in Jerusalem. They were “thwarted in their hopes to reach Jerusalem,” and decided to, instead, open a mission and small schools in Beirut in 1825.[22] By 1827, the mission opened thirteen free schools in Beirut and its surrounding area, providing education for six hundred children, among them at least one hundred girls. Seven years later, Goodell became the first American missionary to establish schools in Istanbul and assisted the Ottomans in forming public schools.[23]

When the American missionaries worked to convert other Christian sects, they were met with rejection, resentment, and hostility from the local Christians such as the Roman Catholic Maronites. When the Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Turks in 1826, the Maronites took advantage of the political instability in the region and attempted to drive Goodell and his faction out of Lebanon. The bishop of the Maronites, who resided on Mount Lebanon, threatened to excommunicate any person who rented a house to the American missionaries.

During the 1830s, American missionaries Mr. and Mrs. George B. Whiting and Mrs. Asa Dodge, engaged in evangelical and educational activities in Jerusalem and Syria. Mr. Whiting became a missionary after being influenced by the religious revivals of the early 1800s in the United States. He spent a majority of his time traveling between Jerusalem and Beirut, until he died in Beirut in 1855. The journals of Mr. Whiting touched on the hostility he experienced from the Greek priests and friars in Bethlehem and Beit Jala.[24] Ultimately, the Jerusalem mission was closed in 1844, whereas, the missions in Syria and Lebanon experienced some success.[25]

Palestine held a particularly unique place in the religious revival movements that emerged during the early and mid-nineteenth century. The most notable to emerge was the Millenarian movement that centered around the belief that the second coming would be hastened through the return of the Jews to Palestine. One of the early American groups that tried to formulate their beliefs into practice was the Millerites, established in 1831. This group followed William Miller, who preached that the second coming of Jesus was near.[26] The Millerites came to Palestine and established a permanent colony at Jaffa in 1853 called the Mount Hope. It was similar to the seventeenth-century’s Puritan colonies in North America, both of whom saw themselves as divinely ordained religious communities. The colony did not last long and in 1866 George Adams, a leader of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), came from Maine with a group of followers to establish their colony at Mount Hope.[27] Around 150 followers who wanted to introduce modern agriculture to the local population and serve as hosts to other Westerners accompanied Adams. The group led by Adams called itself the Palestine Emigration Society and failed in their endeavors for several reasons.[28] Their failures can be attributed to their ignorance of the land and its people, the unreliability of their leader Adams, harvest failures, their isolation from the rest of the population, and the critical fact that the Ottoman authorities did not welcome their presence. Among all the American colonies, Adams’s was the “largest and the most disastrous. It epitomized the level of American identification with the territory and the intensity of the desire to inhabit it. It also demonstrated, though, the degree to which visitors were capable of blinding themselves to the contemporary realities of Turkish rule and Arab life.” Adams’s colony received a fair amount of attention from the American press who considered it as a renewal of the Puritan colonial epic.[29]

The American Colony in Jerusalem was another American missionary attempt established in 1881 by the Presbyterian lawyer Horatio Spafford and his wife Anna from Chicago.[30] The American Quaker Mission staff at Ramallah praised the Colony’s philanthropic works among the local population. They also visited and attended activities organized in the Colony regularly. The colony worked during the British Mandate until the late 1940s when it was closed.[31]

In sum, the American Protestant missionaries’ attempts to establish colonies and missions in Palestine began in the early nineteenth century as a result of the evangelical religious revivals in the United States. While these attempts were mainly unsuccessful, they present a clear indication of the meaning Palestine held in the imaginations of these different religious groups. It was not until this historical missionary stage that the early New England Quakers arrived in late 1860s and established a mission in the Palestinian Christian town called Ramallah. The American Quaker Ramallah Mission is the only American missionary endeavor that has survived in Palestine to the present day. Their flexibility in altering the missionary’s strategies from direct to indirect conversion, their neutrality and humanitarian services, and the high standard of education which they provide contributed greatly to their survival.

Before the opening of the American consulates in the Ottoman Empire, American travelers, missionaries, and traders were regarded by the Ottoman authorities as similar to British subjects. Therefore, they were under the protection of the British, who had an embassy in Istanbul and consulates in different cities in the Empire. This dynamic continued until 1830, when the United States signed the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with the Ottomans in Istanbul. Following that year, David Porter became the first American representative to the Sublime Porte (the court of the Ottoman Sultan).[32] By 1844, the United States opened a consulate in Jerusalem and the Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, appointed Wader Cresson, a Philadelphia Quaker, as the first American consul in Jerusalem. Cresson’s beliefs centered around the restoration of the Jews in Palestine as a requirement for the second coming. Shortly after his arrival to Jerusalem, Cresson issued counterfeit papers of “protection to resident Jews until he was forced to renounce his claim to the consulship.” After his conversion to Judaism in 1848, he returned to Philadelphia and “faced some troubles with his family and subjected to two ‘lunacy’ trials for a few years.” In 1852, he returned to Palestine and established an agricultural colony in the valley of Raphaim, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The purpose of the colony was to encourage Jews from all over the world to colonize Palestine as an important step to fulfill the Biblical prophecy of Jesus’ second return. Cresson died in Jerusalem in 1860 and his story shows that the notion of encouraging Jews to colonize Palestine was centered in fulfilling the prophecy of the second coming of Jesus, which dominated the thoughts of many Protestant Americans.

The consular agents were established in port cities such as Jaffa and Acre, while the headquarters were located in Jerusalem, where business included negotiating trade terms and gaining concessions from the Ottomans through the capitulation system (extraterritorial privileges). The consulate also provided legal protection to American traders, travelers, and missionaries.[33] The American consuls’ reports were sent directly to the Secretary of State until 1871. Between 1871 and World War I, the first and second assistant of the Secretary of State received them.[34] The American consuls and their offices in Palestine were a lower level of diplomat who represented the interests of American merchants, missionaries, and their government. Many were Protestant ministers who were not neutral in their politics because of their religious convictions. These early diplomats included Reverends Frank S. DeHass, Selah Merrill, and Edwin S. Wallace. Their fevered beliefs played a role in the restoration of the Jews in Palestine and their negative views of the Ottoman rule contributed significantly to shaping American public perceptions of the region and its people. Their perceptions also influenced the State Department’s policies in the Middle East, particularly when looking at policies that encouraged and pressed for a British Mandate to increase immigration and settlements of European Jews in Palestine in the interwar period.

Frank DeHass served as the American consul from 1873 to 1877 and was also a pastor and archaeologist. He conducted archaeological research with the American Palestine Exploration Society, was a member of the American Geographical Society, and had close relations with the English Palestine Exploration Fund. The Jerusalem Hebrew newspaper, Havatzeleth, noted his close and favorable relations with the Jewish community.[35] Edwin S. Wallace served as a consul from 1893 to 1898 and viewed the six-hundred-year Ottoman rule of Palestine as catastrophic, calling for the restoration of the Jews in the region. He issued American passports to Jews living in Palestine in order to provide them with protection as their consul.

Selah Merrill served as the consul of Jerusalem for the longest period of time from 1882–1885, 1891–1893, and 1898–1907 and also had archaeological interest in the biblical Holy Land.[36] Merrill was originally a preacher in Le Rou, New York, San Francisco, and New Hampshire. His archaeological interests in the “Holy Land” developed after he traveled to the region before his first appointment as a consul. He soon became engaged in archaeological activities as part of the American Palestine Exploration Society expedition. His archaeological findings were criticized for being inaccurate by members of the British Palestine Exploration Fund and the British consul-general in Beirut, who accused him of not having sufficient training in archaeology.[37]

Early American diplomats in Jerusalem exerted missionary fervor and lobbied their government to exert policies to facilitate a Jewish national home in Palestine. Merrill, for example, petitioned President Benjamin Harrison to “support the convening of an international conference to discuss Jewish claims to Palestine.”[38] Another consul with strong fervor toward the Jews was the Protestant Minister Otis A. Glazebrook. He was a friend of President Wilson, served as the American consul at Jerusalem during World War I, and played a distinguished role in Palestine in 1919.[39] His favoritism toward the Jews in the region was popularized in American media such as The New York Times. He distributed the American war fund relief to the Jewish community in Palestine.[40] The American consulate during these years became a large financial institution and “its clients were almost entirely Jews.”[41]

The American consuls in Jerusalem supported the Quakers’ educational mission in Ramallah and nearby villages, viewing the mission as a door to exert United States influence and culture. Their strong and favorable relations with the Ramallah Friends Mission are best seen in their continued visits to the mission. They attended the social and educational events in the schools, presenting the graduation certificates to students and aiding the mission in its affairs with the local Ottoman authority. The American consuls played a significant role in helping the Ramallah Friends Mission obtain building permission for the Girls Training Home building in 1894. American Consuls, including Wallace, praised the work of the mission among Palestinian females.[42] This close relationship continued after World War I and demonstrated the continuous support that the American and British officials gave to the mission for their work. For example, in 1927, the American Consul and his daughter attended a program at the Boys Friends School in Ramallah with British and American citizens and officials.[43] In the same year, another “benefit program” for the Friends schools occurred under the patronage of the American Consul’s wife in their home in Jerusalem.[44] Sara Hadley, a Quaker teacher at the Ramallah FGS from 1945 to 1947, described the American consulate’s attempts to culturally infiltrate Palestinian students. She indicated that the American vice-consul in Jerusalem visited the school in Ramallah and brought with him six reels of American movies to show to the Mission’s students. Hadley remarked that “it was interesting to see what our State Department considers typical of our country and worthy of presenting to schools abroad.” She listed the major displays the government wanted to present in these reels as the “life of the middle western farmer, the new England fishermen, the Ozark people and the facilities of the Congressional Library, with a health picture were the educational ones.” Walt Disney’s Pluto cartoons “received much greater applause from the boys and girls.”[45] The close relations the consulate office in Jerusalem had with American missions, particularly with that in Ramallah, demonstrates the role played by these missions as a mechanism for the spread of American culture among Palestinians. In this way, Americans sought to exert influence and gain a cultural foothold in the country.

Education under the Ottoman Rule

The American Friends schools, specifically the FGS, was one of the first girls’ boarding schools in the region. It drew students from cities, villages, and towns in Palestine and nearby regions. The FGS arrived at a time when the educational system under the Ottomans was progressing slowly and aimed, primarily, at benefiting boys. During the nineteenth century, the majority of the Palestinian population was comprised of poor peasants, or fellaheen, and only a small portion of the population belonged to the classes of landowners and merchants. However, with the opening of new schools in cities and large towns, a new educated class emerged that held new bureaucratic positions in teaching, journalism, the army, small businesses, and government, which contributed significantly to the cultural life of Palestine.[46]

Education in Palestine and Syria, as in the rest of the Ottoman Empire during the early nineteenth century, was limited to elementary education. Both Arab Christians and Muslims concentrated their curriculum on religious subjects. Primary education for Muslim students was typically held in the kuttab, a single room within the school run by one teacher and an assistant, who was usually the best performing student. The class could also be held in the Zwayah, a religious institution similar to the mosques which was used for religious educational purposes. These religious-centered schools provided education in the Quran, Arabic, basic arithmetic, and Islamic history.[47] Palestine, under the Ottoman rule, had a system of education that recognized the right of each millet, a sect or community, to administer its own schools “with little or no state” interference.[48] Muslim pupils attended the available public schools that were open to all Ottoman subjects because most of the Christian pupils joined their community or missionary schools.

The primary public secular education for boys was introduced during the six years of Egyptian occupation of Syria and Palestine from 1833 to 1839. This secular educational system outlived the Egyptian occupation, as some attempts were made to reform and develop it during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid (1839–1861). He issued the Tanzimat, a reform program, to strengthen the Ottoman rule in the Empire and to satisfy the European colonial powers.[49]

The Tanzimat was instrumental in introducing secular education to the empire. Officially, the Ottoman public school system began in 1869, when the Ottoman Public Education Law was issued, although this law was not fully effective until the rule of Abd-ul-Hamid II (1876–1909). The construction of the comprehensive public school system was undertaken and was built upon emphasizing a secular curriculum with five forms of schools: Subyanyah, a lower elementary three-year school; Rashidiyah, a higher elementary level with three years of schooling; I’dadyyah, five to seven years as a lower secondary school; sultanyyah, higher secondary schools; and ‘aliyyah, high schools. The language of instruction in these schools was Turkish.[50] These educational reforms were initiated to create modern educational alternatives to Western missionary schools, strengthen the subjects’ loyalty to the Ottoman’s Muslim Sultana, and limit separatist and local national movements. The educational system under the Turks became centralized and controlled by the Ottoman officials. The imperial officers and the Vilayet controlled secondary and higher elementary education, while the lower level schooling remained under the control of local committees. The educational standards of these schools were exceptional compared to the traditional Kuttabs, but were still not sufficient enough to serve the entire population.[51] Providing schools for boys in urban areas took major precedent, while schools for girls in rural areas remained scarce and without sufficient support.

Christian missionaries focused on opening schools for girls in urban centers and major towns. In the few instances where small girls’ schools existed in rural areas, locals held the responsibilities of providing the money, the means of construction, and board for teachers. Public schools were primarily situated in cities, especially in the Jerusalem, Acre, and Nablus districts. The first i’dadiyyah (lower secondary school) was established in 1889 in Jerusalem, followed by one in Acre in 1895 and one in Nablus in 1897.[52] During the 1890s, four Rashidiya girls’ schools existed in Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, and Hebron. The number of students in each school ranged from fifty to one hundred.[53] Four hundred and thirteen government schools had been built during the Ottoman period until 1914 in the sanjak, a district which included Jerusalem, Acre, and Nablus.[54] The number of governmental and private schools for girls in Jerusalem alone was fifty-six in 1910.[55]

Missionary schools served as a crucial component in the social and cultural transformation in Palestine during the late period of Ottoman rule. The establishment of these schools began in the seventeenth century and escalated in the nineteenth century. This escalation was during an increase of European infiltration and subsequent concessions made by the government to satisfy Western powers. For example, Russia gained considerable influence by protecting the Orthodox Christians, France protected the Catholic Christians, and England watched over the Jews and Protestant Christians.[56]

Educational institutions were also used to gain influence by serving as an important instrument in the diffusion of Western culture and language. Girls’ schools were of particular interest to Western missionaries during the mid-nineteenth century because the belief that motherhood played a crucial role in embedding Christian morals for the good of the society took precedent. However, missionary schools varied in their educational objectives and standards. For example, the Anglican girl schools in Jerusalem and Haifa, “provided upper-and middle-class Arab and Jewish girls with a strong academic education and cultivated their desire to serve society, under shared civic identity.”[57]

Other Christian communities, such as the Greek Orthodox neighborhoods, established their own schools due to their fear of losing followers through the influence of the missionary schools. During the Ottoman period, the Greek Orthodox was the largest Christian community in Palestine that constituted three quarters of the Palestinian Christians.[58] Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Bayt Jala, Bayt Sahur, Ramallah, and surrounding villages were areas of concentration for the Orthodox population.[59] Missionaries from outside the Ottoman Empire focused their enterprises in these areas including Ramallah and its surroundings, as mainly Christian Palestinians populated these towns.[60]

In general, the Protestant missionaries did not succeed in proselytizing the Arab Christians and the Jews residing in Palestine for multiple reasons. One noteworthy reason is because the Eastern communities already practiced their own religions and did not feel it was a necessity to convert to different ones. Moreover, Arab Christians saw their religion as the authentic form of Christianity. For example, Hanan Ashrawi, a graduate of the Friends Girls School, spoke about her mother’s perception of her religion after American missionaries knocked on her door to preach the gospel. Ashrawi stated that her mother told the missionaries, “You didn’t have to come here. We don’t need missionaries to come all the way from the United States to Palestine. We are the ones who know Christianity directly, culturally, historically. Jesus was born here,” she reminded them, “right next door.”[61] The failure to proselytize the Arab Christians and the Jews was also due to the existence of the millet system which organized non-Muslims “into semi-autonomous communities.”

The religious leaders of these communities administered their members’ affairs. According to the millet system, each community had its own legal system and courts that regulated everyday matters, such as marriages and inheritance. In other words, the millet was the social and religious support system with which the community members identified. When a person converted to another religion, they were ostracized from the community, abandoned by their family, and left with a fragmented identity as they were treated as an outsider. Conversion also meant the individual would lose any legal and social rights, including inheritance. Protestantism did not exist in Palestine before the surge of Western missionaries in the early nineteenth century. Moreover, the Western missionaries “paid little attention to the norms of the millet. Therefore, their activities were viewed as disruptive to social and religious peace by both the Muslim majority and the minority religious communities.”[62]

Education under the British Mandate

The British replaced the Ottomans and occupied Palestine after World War I. By April of 1920, they legally ruled the country under the mandate system. After the British occupation of Palestine, public schools already operating under Ottoman rule were reopened, although their educational system was neither compulsory nor comprehensive. The Arabic language replaced Turkish as the medium of instruction, even though there was a minimal number of teachers fluent in Arabic. The British government maintained the Turkish policy toward private and missionary schools, enabling them to operate as independent entities. The British also placed Arab public schools under a centralized educational administration.[63]

In 1919, the military’s budget for public education was 53,000 pounds sterling. Between the 1920 and 1930 the budget gradually increased.[64] The government schools provided education to approximately 20,288 students, with only 942 of those being girls. The private Muslim and Christian schools, among them the missionary institutions, provided education to an additional 23,797 students while 79,544 children still remained without any education.[65]

Christian missionary organizations concentrated their energy on expanding secondary schools in major towns and urban areas. The students at these schools were predominantly Christians, with smaller numbers of Jews and Muslims. These students were primarily from elite families which, as evidenced by the percentages of Muslim students, lead to a wide education gap between Christians and Muslims.[66] In addition, large numbers of Muslim children were refused admission to government schools because there was not enough space for them.

The 1931 census showed that the Arab population in Palestine totaled 850,559. That same year, the report of the Department of Education listed 308 schools, 589 male teachers, and 155 female teachers in Palestine. Of the 308 schools, 255 were in the villages, which meant one school existed for every four villages. Only eight girls’ village schools, with a total enrollment of 669, existed at that time.[67] In 1930, the shortage of accommodations encouraged parents to demonstrate “in front of the offices of the Governor of Jerusalem.”[68]

In 1935 the women’s rural Teacher’s Training Center in Ramallah opened, but only the top two girl students from each class could attend. The British director of education between 1920 and 1936, Humphrey Bowman, “emphasized the importance of educating Arab girls in domestic skills over book leaning,” and thought girls only needed some elementary education.[69] However, the government tended to blame its failure to provide a comprehensive education on financial barriers.

The Department of Education issued a yearly grant to private schools. For example, the American Friends schools in Ramallah were given two hundred pounds in the beginning of 1921.[70] Even though the amount was not adequate to meet all of the schools’ expenses, it provided some assistance. The financial assistance that was given demonstrated the British Ministry of Education’s attempt to overcome the shortcoming of the mandate on public schools which were unable to provide enough room for all those looking for enrollment.

By the 1944 to 1945 school year, the number of students in all government schools totaled 71,662, including 15,303 girls. However, until the end of the mandate period, secondary education remained attached to elementary schools. Few students received any secondary education, while secondary education for girls came even later than for boys. In the early 1930s, the only public secondary education for girls was offered by the Women’s Training College. The few students who were selected for secondary education were chosen for being the top of their class.[71]

The obstacles to education in Palestine under the British Mandate were an issue of concern to many Palestinian educators, many of whom were products of a missionary education. The total number of pupils receiving secondary education was selective and very small. For example, in 1929 there were only 353 secondary students. Abdulqadir Mohammad Yusuf explains that in 1920 under Bowman, two public educational systems were created based on racial and linguistic features. These systems continued to develop until the end of the mandate period in 1948. One system used Arabic as a medium of instruction and the other system used Hebrew to instruct Jewish students. This was “in spite of the fact that one system was made for an overwhelming Arab majority of 93 percent and other system was made for a small minority.” However, contrary to the Arab school system, the Jewish community controlled its public educational system and was free to create its own curricula based on its own national aspirations and political agendas.[72]

Ironically, the government funds for Arab and Jewish schools were equal even though at that time the Arab population was still the majority. Bowman explained that the British justification for enabling the Jewish community to control their own schools was the Jews’ higher percentage of previously well-educated people. European Jews had also brought with them to Palestine European educational traditions and, therefore, were fit to manage and develop their own educational system as Bowman justified.[73]

When a British Royal Commission came to Palestine to investigate the reasons for discontent among the Arabs in the aftermath of the Great Revolt (1936–1939), the commission heard a great deal of complaints from well-known educators. Among these were George Antonius, a former assistant director in the Department of Education.[74] Antonius expressed that “the system of Administration did not fit the social and cultural development of the people, because it was ‘rigid and inelastic,’ designed ‘to produce friction’ and ‘lack of contact between the government and the Arab population.’” The commission interviewed another Quaker educator, Dr. Khalil Totah, who served as the principal of the Friends Boys School in Ramallah between 1928 and 1944.[75]

Totah articulated the causes of the educational problems by clarifying that the core of the Arab complaint arose from their desire to control their own educational system. He believed that the Arab educational system was “either designed to reconcile the Arabs of this policy (of establishing a Jewish national home) or to make that education so colorless as to make it harmless and not endanger the carrying out of that policy.”[76] It was in this disposition that the missionary schools resumed under the mandate with greater power, independent from any government supervision. Missionary activities were met with feelings of discontent and indignation amid both the Arab Christian and Muslim populations, who viewed them as trying to deprive Palestinians from being “united in an Arab national cause.” The International Mission Conference in Jerusalem in 1928 provoked a strike and violent protest among Palestinians, where students served as active participants in leading these reactions. Many local Arab Christians and Muslims attempted to find alternatives to missionary schools by establishing their own national schools.[77]

The local Muslim representative body, the Muslim Supreme Council (MSC), al-hay`ah al-Islamyya al-`aluya, pursued alternative approaches to improve the Muslim educational system while competing with the existing missionary schools at the same time. The MSC stressed its fears of the missionary activities among the Muslim population under the slogan of religious freedom. In a correspondence between the President of the Council and the Secretary of the High British Commissioner, the MSC explained these fears on the grounds that the British High Commissioner in Palestine personally attended several missionary conferences in Syria and Palestine. They also emphasized their disapproval in appointing a large number of Christian teachers in public schools where a majority of students were Muslim, such as in the Jaffa High School and the Lud Girls School.[78]

The British also limited the growth and opening of new public schools, particularly in areas with a predominant Muslim presence, in attempts to compel them to attend missionary schools.[79] The foreign missions in Palestine during the British Mandate flourished, striking fear and anxiety among the Muslim population. Examples of this fear manifested in the MSC’s papers and letters from the 1920s that show discontent and protest against the kind of literature the missionary schools introduced to their students. One specific letter was sent from the Islamic Science Council, al-hay`ah al-`almya al-Islamya, to the supreme judge qudy al quda protesting against the Friends’ schools in Ramallah for exposing the students to literature such as The Talisman by Walter Scott. After investigation and translation of the literature, the letter stated that parts of the text being used in the classroom cursed the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. The literature also stressed the position of the British Protestant mission to create a Jewish national home in Palestine by attempting to convince the population to sell their land to Jewish immigrants.[80]

The MSC consistently agitated the British Mandate to improve the educational system for Palestinians. The council sent a long letter in 1924 to the British High Commissioner in Palestine requesting the opening of more public schools for the Muslim Palestinian population, many of whom were left to either attend missionary schools or go without any education.[81] The MSC managed several boys’ schools during the Mandate and was granted permission in 1925 to open the Islamic Girls School in Jerusalem to overcome the influence of the missionaries among Muslim girls.[82]

The British Mandate’s unequal educational policies were responsible for the many deficiencies in the public education system. This was made evident by the demonstrations carried out by Palestinian writers, leaders, and educators who protested the public schools’ curricula under the mandate for contradicting Arab national aspirations and enforcing a type of colonial education that sustained the status quo. Moreover, the Department of Education was hesitant to encourage the Arab staff to take full responsibility for their educational system or even to share some responsibility in its administration. The educational needs of Palestinian villages and towns were disregarded and the minimal amount of schools in these areas had insufficient resources to provide an adequate education, typically consisting of one classroom and an unqualified teacher.[83]

Quakerism and Foreign Missions

The Quaker faith and the ability of its missionaries to cope and adjust to their ever-shifting situation in Palestine contributed significantly to their survival and to the success of their mission—especially in the field of education. Originally, Quakerism was a form of English Puritanism preached by George Fox, whose beliefs were influenced by Martin Luther and John Calvin. According to Fox’s teaching, humans enjoyed God’s grace not based on human merit, and valued a direct relationship with God without the need of a priest as a mediator. Quakers believed that each human being possessed an inner light, or God’s spirit. They rejected the notion of predestination, baptism, and engagement in state politics and wars. The name Quaker “reflected the physical shaking aroused by inner struggles of individuals facing their inner motives ‘under the light’ in the Quakers meetings.” Quakers called themselves “the Camp of the Lord,” a name changed after 1670 to the Society of Friends. Quakers pursued simple, prosperous, family-centered lives in urban areas, with intermarriage being a common practice.[84]

The missionary zeal among the Quakers was a reflection of the sect’s history and formation. Since the 1660s they were engaged in spreading Fox’s words in the American colonies, Holland, western Germany, and the West Indies. An important aspect of Quakerism was Fox’s insistence on the universality of his message. Shortly after the arrival of the Quakers to the New World, other Protestant groups, such as the Puritans, persecuted Friends who engaged themselves in transmitting their messages.[85] During the eighteenth century, Quakers began to lose their prominent presence and influence in the American colonies. They ignored the promotion of higher education in their community and their avoidance of education resulted in “the Age of Quietism,” which was characterized by stages of stagnation, traditionalism, and isolation among the second- and third-generation Quakers. This period lasted for almost a century.[86]

The Age of Quietism was brought to an end during the nineteenth century, when a division occurred within the Quaker community, thus dividing it into three groups. The evangelical doctrine carried by the English Quaker preachers contributed to this division and led to the formation of separate yearly meetings that challenged the elder authority.[87] Joseph John Gurney, an English evangelical minister, caused a division in New England in 1845 and Ohio in 1854.[88] His followers, the Guerneyites, were a majority and were centered in rural and western areas. The Hicksites, or the Great Separation, began in 1827. They took their name from Elias Hicks of Long Island, a devoted American Quaker dismayed by
the increasing influence of English evangelicalism. Hicks traveled to American cities and towns preaching traditional Quakerism, based on the belief of the Inner Light.[89] The Hicksites were a minority and were present mainly in the East around Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. John Wilbur also opposed Gurney and a schism in New England and Ohio developed when he insisted on the authority of the Inner Light over the Bible. The Wilburites were a mixture of Hicksites in their way of worship and the Gurneyites in their evangelical theology.[90] This tension was also accompanied with a revival and recirculation of William’s Penn pamphlets that reject wealth and called for simplicity.[91]

The Gurneyites’ theology increasingly became more evangelical. Their once silent meetings developed into vibrant, busy gatherings with Bible readings and interpretations. Theologians preached of the second coming of Jesus, sanctification, faith healing, and other principles all interpreted from the Bible. These fundamental principles led the Quakers to change their position on religious services and proselytizing. With this new form of theology in hand, Quakers became engaged in missionary work abroad, much as other Protestant groups.[92] The duty of these evangelical Quakers was centered on beliefs about spreading the “Truth” and saving the “heathen” in distant lands. An early missionary endeavor in 1821 by the Quakers “beyond seas” on the West Coast of Africa was regarded as unsuccessful.[93] An increasing interest in foreign missions became more apparent after the 1860s when they expanded their efforts in India and Madagascar.[94]

The Quakers’ mission abroad differed from other Protestant missionary endeavors as most of the early attempts originated from personal initiatives and were not coordinated by an organizational body. For example, the Indiana Yearly Meeting (IYM) formed a Foreign Mission Society in 1870, with the main purpose being to support individual missionary attempts in Mexico that had been established by Samuel Purdie and his wife. Another example is the creation of the Women’s Society of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which established a mission in Tokyo, Japan in 1885.[95] By the late 1880s Friends missionary attempts expanded to six different countries, including Palestine. Palestine came to be the responsibility of the New England Meeting by 1889. During that same year, the Western Yearly Meeting, which supported the IYM’s missions in Mexico, opened their own station in Mexico in 1889. In the following year, the Ohio Yearly Meeting opened its own mission in China. By 1889, the need for a stronger organization, to administer, finance, and coordinate the work of these missions as they grew substantially, became essential. Consequently, the Five Years Meeting (renamed the Friends United Meeting in 1963) established the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions (AFBFM) in 1894. The board’s authority increased gradually, and by 1912, nine yearly meetings placed their missions, among them the Friends Ramallah Mission, under the board.[96]

Ramallah History and the
Arrival of the American Quakers

Ramallah, located ten miles north of Jerusalem, was a small Christian town during the nineteenth century and part of Jerusalem’s Sanjak district. The town’s name is composed from Ram, an Aramaic word meaning “hill” or “high place,” and Allah, the Arabic word for God. It seemed that Ram or Rama was the name used for the town until the word Allah was added after the seventh century Muslim conquest. During the sixteenth century a Christian Arab tribe, the Haddad, who emigrated from Karak and Shoubek east of Jordan River, settled in Ramallah. Before the immigration of the Haddad tribe, only a minority of the settlers were Muslim families.[97]

An anecdote from the history of Ramallah speaks to a conflict between the Haddad and the Bnu Amr tribes. The story talks about Rashid Haddad leaving Karak, traveling to el-Bireh, and buying the land of Ramallah from the original people, the Ghazawneh. The land purchased was full of pine trees and wood, a source needed for the Hidadh or blacksmith handcraft. In 1750, a group people called the Ajluni settled in Ramallah, from their Christian village in Jordan, Ajloon. Other Christian families came to settle in Ramallah, such as the Hishmeh family in 1775, Nazzal in 1805, Arzj, Zagroot, and Shahla around 1810, and ‘Audi Yousef' ‘Audi el Debeny arrived between 1855 and 1860.[98]

The American traveler Edward Robinson happened upon Ramallah during his journeys and estimated that the town’s population in 1838 was between three hundred and nine hundred people. Thereafter, more people arrived and settled in Ramallah. By 1870, the population increased to approximately two thousand people. In 1859, an English traveler described Ramallah as “a Christian village, numerously populated [about three thousand inhabitants], clean and prosperous.”[99]

The Ottomans began to recognize the village’s importance as part of Jerusalem Sanjak and with that recognition they fixed and updated the road that connected the town with Jerusalem in 1901. Moreover, in 1902 Ramallah became a town and the center of nahiye (called nahiyat Ramallah) that included five villages and three tribes. In 1908, Ramallah’s City Hall was established with three hundred Palestinian jynah as its budget.

The English army occupied Ramallah in 1917 during the First World War, after two clashes in Ayn Musbah, on Ramallah’s west side, and the other in al-Ballw` north of al-Bireh. During the mandate period, Ramallah became Quda`, a center for fifty-eight villages. The town continued to advance and prosper and by 1935 had access to electricity. In 1938, Ramallah participated in the uprising and did its share in the struggle against the British occupation. The Palestinian fighters, under the lead of Muhammad Ummr al-Nubany, attacked the British police station in Ramallah, seizing weapons and ammunition. The battle resulted in the death of the British police inspector and thirty Arabs were killed. A few hours later, the fighters were forced to leave Ramallah after the British reinforcements arrived from Jerusalem.

Ramallah passed to Jordanian rule in 1948 after the United Nations’ partition plan in 1947. After annexation, the Jordanian government divided the West Bank into three administrative districts: Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron. Ramallah belonged to the Jerusalem province. Prior to 1856, Ramallah’s population was predominantly Greek Orthodox. During 1856, the Roman Catholic Church arrived in Ramallah and opened a boys’ school. This was followed by the appearance of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who opened a girls’ school in 1873. By 1904, Ramallah’s population reached four thousand people, a majority of whom remained Greek Orthodox.[100]

The American Quaker Mission in Ramallah began as an individual initiative of the Quaker couple, Eli and Sybil Jones. After they secured approval from the China Monthly Meeting they left on their missionary exploration journey to Palestine in 1867. On their way, Alfred Lloyd Fox from Falmouth and Ellen Clare Miller from Edinburgh joined them with permission from the Yearly Meeting of Friends in London.[101] The group reached Lebanon in October and stayed for three months, visiting the Syrian Protestant College renamed as the American University of Beirut, and other missionary schools such as a boys’ school led by the well-known Arab Nahda writer and educator, Boutros Bustani.[102] They were impressed by the English Quaker mission in Brummana as well as other English schools in Mount Lebanon. The group failed to reach their target destination of Palestine, which forced them to travel back to England after Sybil’s health deteriorated in February of 1868.[103]

During the early months of 1869, Ellen Clare Miller once again joined the Joneses on their missionary tour. After reaching Palestine, the group began visiting the homes of important figures, such as the mayor of Jerusalem, where Sybil lectured the women in the “harem’s quarter,” and Eli gave a lecture to the men. They also toured the schools, assembled meetings, and preached the gospel in Jerusalem.

After Jerusalem, the group was welcomed in Ramallah and traveled with a guide, Jacob Hishmed, who spoke English well. They held meetings with both women and men, and Sybil also held meetings solely for women, where she eagerly preached as the women and young girls listened keenly and with great interest. Eli and Sybil also visited nearby villages, such as Beitin, al-Bireh, Bir Zeit, and Ain Arik. During this period, Ramallah only had two boys’ schools: one Roman Catholic and the other Greek Orthodox. Ironically, the Joneses did not plan to establish a mission in Ramallah, but they reconsidered their options of opening a school for girls after a request from Mariam Karam, a fifteen-year-old girl native to the area. Karam spoke some English and studied at the German Deaconess School in Jerusalem. She offered to be the teacher in the school, a fact which made the Jones’ decision to open a school much more feasible.

The American couple entrusted some money to Hishmeh, who became the director of the Quakers’ mission. Schools that held classes four days a week were opened in different parts of Ramallah. One of the schools was Hope School, which opened in August 1869 and was attended by twenty girls. By 1873, fifty girls attended the four schools and by the year 1882 several seven-day Quaker schools educated a few hundred children. The schools were in Jifneh, El-Janieh, Ain-Areek, Nablus, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Jaffa. The Quakers also funded an orphanage in Bethlehem.[104]

The American Friends in New England helped support the Ramallah and Brummana missions spiritually and financially. However, American Friends were not yet ready to take the full responsibility of these missions and the English Quakers managed both missions until 1889.[105] The New England Friends raised money for the Brummana Mission after the appeal of Swiss missionary Theophilus Walemeier to Friends in New and Old England to open a Boys Training Home. The school opened in late 1879 and Walemeier eventually became the inspector of schools in Beirut, Damascus, and the surrounding villages. Eli and Sybil especially influenced Walemeier after he met with them, listened to them preach to the students, and was touched by the principles of the Quakers.[106] In 1882, Eli Jones, accompanied by Charles M. Jones, went to Syria to attend the dedication of a new school for girls in Brummana, and then to Ramallah to visit the Mission there.[107]

In 1888 the New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) took time to seriously consider being more involved with the Quakers’ missions in Syria. The American and English Quakers reached an agreement to separate the responsibility of the Lebanon and Ramallah missions in 1889. The NEYM took full responsibility in the same year for the Ramallah Mission and opened the first boarding school for girls, the Girls Training Home (GTH), which was renamed after World War I as the Friends Girls School (FGS). The NEYM also took on responsibility for the small day schools in Ramallah and the surrounding villages. The Quakers Mission in Ramallah, from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, was called The Eli and Sibyl Jones’ Mission.[108] The GTH educated 141 girls between 1889 and 1909, most of which eventually worked for the Friends’ Ramallah Mission as teachers at the GTH, the Friends’ day schools, or as Bible women.[109]

Ten years after the establishment of the GTH, the American Quakers decided to open another boarding school for boys. In 1901, the Board of Foreign Missions of the NEYM appointed Timothy B. Hussey and George L. Crosman to direct and raise money for the Boys Training Home (BTH), which was renamed the Friends Boys School (FBS) after the First World War. The BTH was established in October of 1901, with fifteen children enrolled and with the Quaker biblical scholar and Haverford professor, Elihu Grant, as the first principal.[110]

The Quaker Meeting House (QMH) in Ramallah was established in 1890 by the Quaker couple William and Susan Taber Thompson with an estimated 25 to 35 members. The first Palestinian families to help establish the QMH were Elias and Emily Aramouni Audi, Easa Abu Shahla, Abdullah Totah, and Sliman Salah.[111] These families and their descendants have been permanent members of the QMH and Friends schools.[112] Huldah Leighton who was the matron of the GTH served as the Meeting’s minister until her retirement in 1895. After she left, the Meeting was no longer active until Elihu and Elmy Grant arrived at the Mission in 1901 and carried on the Meeting responsibilities.[113]

Timothy and Anna Hussey, during their terms of service at GTH in 1894, 1896 to 1899, 1900 to 1905, and 1909 to 1910, also directed the Meeting.[114] However, the Meeting was under the ministry of Edward Kelsey for most of the time between 1903 and 1944. He left the Mission after resigning from his post at the BTH between 1927 and 1939, and also after the appointment of the Palestinian Quaker, Khalil Totah, as the principal of the Friends Boys School. During the late nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, Kelsey showed complete control of the American Friends at the QMH and the manner in which it was administered. The American Friends viewed the Palestinian Friends as too incompetent to administer the Meeting alongside them. However, the Quaker enterprise survived several political rules and progressed to become one of the most successful and prestigious educational institutions in the areas. The original few day schools expanded to include the two major boarding schools, the GTH and BTH, renamed FGS and FBS, the village day schools, the Bible women’s post, and the QMH. All these played various roles in the social, cultural, and educational life of Ramallah and the surrounding villages.

Notes

1.

Muhammad Abd Allah Shalh, Al-Ta’lyem fi Falasteen fi Ahad al-Dawlla al-Uthmanyah, 1516–1917 (al-Qahirah: Dar al-Ahya’ al-thaqafi, 2003), 234–42.

2.

A. L. Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine: A Study of Three Decades of British Administration (London: Luzac, 1956), 61.

3.

Falesteen Newspaper (March 26, 1913): 230; Ruth Kark, “The Impact of Early Missionary Enterprises on Landscape and Identity Formation in Palestine, 1820–1914,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 15, no. 2 (April 2004): 219. Vasily N. Khitrovo from the Palestine Orthodox Society opened also a clinic in 1882 for the Arab population and Russian pilgrims.

4.

Michael B. Oren, American in the Middle East: 1977 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 22–50. Oren surveys the early American contacts with the Middle East. After the American Revolution American trade ceased to be under the British navy protection. American traders had to deal with the North African Barbary States, which included Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. The Congress voted to create a navy in 1794, which was aimed to provide protection for American trade against North African Barbary States.

5.

A. L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1900: A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 2.

6.

For more information on how missionary diplomacy helped shape American foreign policy in the Middle East see Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1910–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971).

7.

Emil Tuma, Filastin fi al-ahad al-Uthmani (Amman: al-dar al-Aarabia l`nashr, 1983), 11, 19.

8.

The idea of the recreation of Israel was rooted in the American colonial imaginations. For example the Puritans’ establishment of the New England colony was linked to “Old Israel.” Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana; Or, The Ecclesiastical History of the New-England (Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son, 1855), 156. books.google.com/books?id=iHS4h8BFkg0C&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=Cotton+Mather+and+The+Eccl
esiasitcal+History (accessed January 15, 2009). For more information see Conrad Cherry, ed., God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971). For more information see Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Lester I. Vogel, To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); John Davis, The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Milette Shamir, “‘Our Jerusalem’: Americans in the Holy Land and Protestant Narratives of National Entitlement,” American Quarterly 55, no. 1 (March 2003): 29–60.

9.

Gershon Greenberg, The Holy Land in American Religious Thought, 1620–1948: The Symbiosis of American Religious Approaches to Scripture's Sacred (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 8.

10.

Beshara B. Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine, Writing into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 8.

11.

Adel Manna, “Continuity and Change in the Socio-Political Elite in Palestine during the Late Ottoman Period,” in The Syria Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical Experience, ed. Thomas Philipp (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992), 69.

12.

Timothy Marr, “‘Drying up the Euphrates’: Muslims, Millennialism, and Early American Missionary Enterprise,” in The United States & the Middle East: Cultural Encounters, ed. Aabbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson (Connecticut: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 2002), 130.

13.

Eva Rae Marshal, Unpublished Autobiography, 38. This source was obtained from Marshal’s daughter, Joy Hilden.

14.

Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine,” 8.

15.

Obenzinger, American Palestine, 84–98; Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (San Francisco: H. Bancroft, 1869), 511.

16.

Ibid.

17.

For more information see Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey (Birmingham: New Hope Publishers, 1991).

18.

George Pierce Baker and Henry Barrett Huntington, Principles of Argumentation (Whitefish, Montana: Kissinger Publishing Company, 2007), 295.

19.

Winthrop S. Hudson and John Corrigan, Religion in America (New Jersey: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 163.

20.

For more information see Angelyn Dries, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History (New York: Orbis Books, 1998). On Catholic missionaries abroad see Arnulf Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History, 1956–1998 (Boston: Brill, 2000); Edmund Hogan, Catholic Missionaries and Liberia: A Study of Christian Enterprise in West Africa, 1842–1950 (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 1981).

21.

Lawrence Davidson, “Christian Zionism as a Representation of American Manifest Destiny,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 14, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 158.

22.

Paul William, Nothing but Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 51. The American Board also established an Arabic printing press at Malta in 1821 as a tool to facilitate their missionary and educational work.

23.

William Ellsworth Strong, The Story of the American Board (New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969), 80–83; Bayard Dodge, “American Educational and Missionary Efforts in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 401 (May, 1972), 15–22; Kamal Salibi and Yusuf K. Khoury, ed., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria, 1819–1817, Vol. 4 (Amman, Jordan: Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 1995), 1, 7; See also Adnan Abu-Ghazaleh, American Missions in Syria: A Study of American Missionary Contribution to Arab Nationalism in 19th Century Syria (Vermont: Amana Books, 1990), 19–27.

24.

Kamal and Khoury, ed., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria 1847–1860, Vol. 3 (Amman, Jordan: Royal Institute for inter-Faith Studies, 1995), 41–44.

25.

Robert T. Handy, The Holy Land in American Protestant Life 1800–1948: A Documentary History (New York Anro Press, 1981), xv.

26.

Kark, American Consuls, 21–23; Moshe Davis, American and the Holy Land (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), 148; Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarter, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 301.

27.

Handy, The Holy Land in American Protestant Life, xix.

28.

Davis, The Landscape of Belief, 39–40.

29.

Ibid., 40.

30.

Alexander Hume Ford, “Our American Colony at Jerusalem,” Appleton’s Magazine 8, no. 6 (December 1906): 644–46, 649–52. This is a firsthand account on the American Colony. Ford traveled to Jerusalem and visited the colony twice during Merrill’s service as the American Consul in Jerusalem. He showed sympathy and praise in his writing of the experience of the American Colony in Jerusalem. Generally speaking, relations were good between the American consuls and missionaries, but there were some exceptions. One of these few strained relations occurred between Merrill and the American Colony in Jerusalem. The conflict emerged between the American Colony and Merrill shortly after the death of Horatio Spafford in 1887, a Presbyterian Chicagoan who founded the colony with his wife. Merrill ordered archaeological digging in the American cemetery in Mount Zion in 1892 during which Spafford’s coffin was left opened. After that, an uneasy relationship existed between the consuls and the American Colony’s missionaries, who asked the British Consul for help to protect the cemetery. Merrill also succeeded in stopping financial aid to come to the colony from Chicago. He accused the colony community of immorality and heresy. However, the relationship changed when Henry Gilman, the new American Consul in Jerusalem, was appointed under the Cleveland administration. Gilman praised the colony’s charitable work among the indigenous population and the high morals of its colonists.

31.

Ibid., 644.

32.

Cagri Erhan, “Ottoman Official Attitudes Towards American Missionaries,” in The United States & the Middle East Cultural Encounters, 315, 318.

33.

Kark, American Consuls, 14.

34.

Ibid., 136.

35.

Ibid., 319–20. Richard Beardsley was appointed by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish as a consul in Jerusalem between 1870 and 1873. He studied international law and knew many languages.

36.

Ibid., 329.

37.

Oren, American in the Middle East, 281; Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land, 224–25.

38.

Shalom Goldman, “The Holy Land Appropriated: The Careers of Selah Merrill, Nineteenth Century Christian Hebraist, Palestine Explorer, and U.S. Consul in Jerusalem,” American Jewish History 85, no. 2 (June 1997): 151–72.

39.

Robert T. Handy, The Holy Land in the American Protestant Life, 1800–1948: A Documentary History (New York: Arno Press, 1981), xix.

40.

“Found Unrest in Palestine; Consul General Glazebrook and the Rev. Dr. Peters Arrive Here,” The New York Times (August 11, 1920), 10; Davidson, America’s Palestine, 29.

41.

Oren, American in the Middle East, 356; Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land, 326, 334. Nageeb Arbeely was assigned as American consul in Jerusalem between 1885 and 1886. He was of Greek origins. His appointment did not last for long after President Cleveland took office. Bertha Spafford-Vester praised him and his consulship was welcomed by the Muslim population as well.

42.

William Coffin, “A Letter from our Consul,” The Ramallah Messenger 8, no. 1 (March, 1911): 8.

43.

Eva Rae Marshal letter to her Family (September 25, 1927).

44.

The Friends Boys School Report (1948), Friends Boys School Collection, Ramallah, Palestine; Marshal Letter to her Family (November, 22, 1927).

45.

Sara Hadley’s Letter to the American Friends (January, 19, 1946), Sara Hadley Letters, SC 283, Friend Historical Library, Swarthmore College; Christina Jones, Untempered Wind, Forty Years in Palestine (London: Longman Group LTD, 1975), 50–51.

46.

Muhammad Abd Allah Shalh, Al-Ta ’ lyem fi Falasteen fi Ahad al-Dawlla al-Uthmanyah, 87.

47.

Muhammad Abd Allah Shalh, Al-Ta ’ lyem fi Falasteen fi Ahad al-Dawlla al-Uthmanyah, 103–8.

48.

A. L. Tibawi, “Religion and Educational Administration in Palestine of the British Mandate,” Die Welt des Islams, New Ser, vol. 3, Issue 1 (1953): 1–14, 2.

49.

Shalh, Al-Ta ’ lyem fi Falasteen fi Ahad al-Dawlla al-Uthmanyah, 2–10.

50.

(Stuttgrat: Steiner, 1992), 124.

51.

Abdulqadir Mohammad Yusuf, “The British Educational Policy in the Arab Public Schools of Palestine during the Mandate,” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1956), 93.

52.

Kasmieh, “Ruhi al-Khalidi 1864–1913,” 124.

53.

Greenburg, “Educating the Muslim Girls,” 1.

54.

Shalh, Al-Ta’lyem fi Falasteen fi Ahad al-Dawlla al-Uthmanyah, 192.

55.

Ibid., 119, 131, 160. Students were required to take were Turkish writing and composition, math, geography, French language, geometry, natural philosophy, Ottoman laws, logic, chemistry and general history. These subjects differed from one educational level to another, but in general were similar for boys and girls. The first girls’ school opened in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople in 1861, and in 1870, a women’s teacher’s college was established to prepare a staff of qualified teachers for the high school level. Girls were allowed to study for the Rashidiya a high elementary level of three years of schooling. Girls’ curriculum was similar to boys, except girls were encouraged to take training in household arts, such as sewing and music classes, however, these were not compulsory.

56.

Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Education, Culture and Civilization: Anglican Missionary Women in Palestine,” in The Christian Communities of Jerusalem and the Holy Land: Studies in History, Religion and Politics, ed. Anthony O’Mahony (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 172.

57.

Greenburg, “Educating Muslim Girls,” 2, 36.

58.

Falesteen Newspaper (March. 26, 1913), 4.

59.

Daphne Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank Since 1948: An Historical, Social, Political Study (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1993), 33.

60.

Shalh, Al-Ta’lyem fi Falasteen, 218–20. The Greek Orthodox established a school in Ramallah in 1876 (in 1903 had thirty male students) and another four in the surrounding villages of Abood (in 1901 had twenty-five students), Beir Zeit (in 1901 had thirty students), Jeffna (thirty-five students), and Taibba (in 1903 had thirty students). In 1905, another two Greek Orthodox schools were established in Ramallah and Ayn Areek. Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Education, Culture and Civilization: Anglican Missionary Women in Palestine,” in The Christian Communities of Jerusalem and the Holy Land: Studies in History, Religion and Politics, ed. Anthony O’Mahony (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 173. By 1860 the American Presbyterians established thirty-three schools in various areas in Greater Syria. One-fifth of the students, about one thousand, were girls. By 1866 the American Presbyterians increased their educational level when they established the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut and used Arabic as the language of instruction.

61.

Hanan Ashrawi, This Side of Peace: Personal Account (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 24.

62.

Lester Groves Pittman, Missionaries and Emissaries: The Anglican Church in Palestine 1841–1948 (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1998), 30–31.

63.

Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine, 24. The higher level of elementary and lower and higher levels of secondary were under strict government control. Only lower elementary was kept under local educational committees’ supervision under the British.

64.

Khalil Totah, “Education in Palestine,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 163 (September 1932): 156. In 1923 the educational budget was £97,279 ($486,395) or 5.94 percent of the total government budget in Palestine. By 1930 the amount increased to £150,156 ($750,280) or 6.52 percent of the budget; See also Khalil Totah, “Letters to the Editor of the Times on Issues of Current Interest,” New York Times (Oct 17, 1937): 73.

65.

Totah, “Education in Palestine,” 153.

66.

Daphne Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank Since 1948: An Historical, Social, and Political Study (London: Praeger Publishers, 1993), 139.

67.

Totah, “Education in Palestine,” 156. In 1923 the educational budget was £97,279 ($486,395) which was 5.94 percent of the total government budget in Palestine.

68.

Ibid., 156.

69.

Greenburg, “Educating Muslim Girls in Mandatory Jerusalem,” 4.

70.

Minutes of Palestine Mission, June 1921. Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Friends United Meeting, Wider Ministries Record, film 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. The minutes were signed by the Mission Secretary, Edward Kelsey. The amount that was granted by the mandate increased a small amount a few times during the British Mandate.

71.

Tibawi, Arab Education, 47–49; Yusuf, “The British Educational Policy,” 20, 96–97.

72.

Yusuf, “The British Educational Policy,” 20, 96–97.

73.

Tibawi, Arab Education, 28.

74.

Antonius was an Arab Christian who was educated at the King’s College, Cambridge. He was appointed as assistant director in 1921. In 1923, Jerome Farrell, a British educator was appointed as the second assistant director. Antonius was in a higher position than Farrell in the administrative hierarchy, however, by the mid-twenties, Antonius was given some assignment outside Palestine and upon his return found that he had been stripped from his position, and ultimately resigned. With this action, Arabs lost any high level of participation in the educational administration. See Tibawi, Arab Education, 28–29.

75.

Yusuf, “The British Educational Policy,” 103

76.

Ibid., 104.

77.

A. L. Tibawi, “Religion and Educational Administration in Palestine of the British Mandate,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series 3, no. 1 (1953): 7.

78.

The Supreme Muslim Council Papers (1920s, 1930s, and 1950s), Abu Dees Islamic Center Archival Collection, Abu Dees, Jerusalem.

79.

A letter from the President of the Supreme Muslim Council to the British High Commissioner (April, 1924), the Islamic Center of Abu Dees Archival Collection, Jerusalem, Palestine. The long letter of eight pages goes in more details about the reason of discontent among the Muslim population. It stated that the British government support the missionary activities and conferences and provide military protection by providing police to accompany missionaries in their preaching trips such as in Beir al-Sabe` in the southern part of Palestine among the Bedouin.

80.

The Supreme Muslim Council Papers (1920s, 1930s, and 1950s), Abu Dees Islamic Center Archival Collection, Abu Dees, Jerusalem.

81.

A letter from the President of the Supreme Muslim Council to the British High Commissioner in Palestine (April, 1924), Abu Dees Islamic Center Archival Collection, Abu Dees, Jerusalem.

82.

Greenburg, “Educating Muslim Girls in Mandatory Jerusalem,” 4.

83.

Yusuf, “The British Educational Policy,” 3–4; Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine, 28–29.

84.

Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, The Quakers (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 5–15. In the 1630s King Charles I rejected the Puritan call to reform the Church of England. Some Puritans left England to North America in order to create “God’s commonwealth.” Others stayed and took part in the Civil Wars of 1642–1649, when Charles I was defeated. The outcome of this upheaval was many religious reforms especially in area of religious authority and the role of priests and sacraments. Quakers believed that the real meaning of Christianity was the submission to God’s commands, chiefly, purity of heart, truthfulness and simplicity.

85.

Henry T. Hodgkin, Friends Beyond Seas (London: Headley Bros. Publishers, 1916), 15; Barbour and Frost, 5, 8–15. The first Quaker prophets (twenty of them) came to America in the 1650s and preached in Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina. Their task was difficult and some Quaker preachers were executed because of their beliefs. For example, four Quaker preachers were executed in Boston, Massachusetts; others lost their ears and were expelled. Quakers at that time lived on the periphery of the Puritan colonies such as in the Cape Cod, Rhode Island, Maine, and Long Island. Fox and his followers sent delegations to Indian tribes of America and the blacks in the West Indies in order to save them through Christianization and “civilize” them. All this was important in their process of forming of “kingdom of God on earth.” In 1675, New Jersey became the Friends’ colony where they practiced their beliefs without persecution and in 1681 William Penn’s Pennsylvania became the foremost Quaker colony among six other colonies where Quakers had a prominent presence. After 1750 Quakers rejected the slave trade and slavery as an immoral institution. They saw a contradiction between submission to Gods’ demands and holding government power. This explains their opposition to the American Revolution and their refusal to hold office. In the nineteenth century, Quakers settled in groups in various part of the country especially western Ohio and Indiana where the free soil attracted them. Some moved to Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and California. In Indiana the largest Yearly Meeting of 30,000 members formed in 1835.

86.

Kay Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends Africa Mission , and the Development of Education in Western Kenya, 1902–1965” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1973), 48–56. The outcome was a decline in the number of Quakers during the nineteenth century. The religious focus of the second and third generations was on mysticism only and a spiritual quest attained through silent and individual process to Truth. However, the second religious awakening and the movement of Quakers to settle westward sparked the Great Separation in the Quaker sect in 1827. The number of members attending the East Coast monthly meetings decreased with Quakers’ westward migration. New Quaker centers were established in Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. A social gap became apparent between Eastern city Quakers, who were wealthy and adopted the city dress and way of life and Quakers in rural areas, who maintained the old ways of simplicity in dress and manners.

87.

William Wistar Comfort, Quakers in the Modern World (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), 48–56. Comfort stated that the separation in Philadelphia was caused by “rural resentment against the authority of Philadelphia elders.” Philadelphia’s Great Separation began over the controversy about “biblical authority versus Inner Light.”

88.

Ibid., 58–59.

89.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends,” 54–55. Hicks adopted John Locke’s liberal thinking (rationalism) in his preaching instead of Fox’s spiritualism. The conflict grew between Hicks and the elders, who were orthodox Friends influenced by evangelicalism and in control of the Yearly Meeting. When it was clear that the orthodox followers would not compromise, the “Hicksites” left and formed their own yearly meeting.

90.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends,” 56.

91.

Frank Fox, “Quaker, Shaker, and Rabbi: Warder Cresson, The Story of Philadelphia Mystic,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April 1971 (126–94), accessed online at journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/viewFile/42734/42455.

92.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends,” 56–58. A revival force among the Gurneyites emerged by young fundamentalist Quakers. The new young leaders of the Society of Friends were able to recruit new believers and enlarge the Society to a considerable number by 1900. The Inner Light principle was undermined by this revival trend.

93.

Hodgkin, Friends Beyond Seas, 25–26. Four missionaries, Hannah Kilham, Richard Smith, and Ann and John Thompson, went to the West Coast of Africa. This first attempt to establish a mission did not succeed. When two died the following year the other two returned to England. However, Kilham was determined to return. In 1827, she reached Sierra Leone and in 1830 learned the local language, opened a school, and translated sections of the Bible. Kilham died of fever in 1832.

94.

Ibid., 48–52. In the early 1860s Friends missionaries went to Madagascar and Calcutta, India. In 1862 reports from the Calcutta mission were read at the Friends Yearly Meeting. In the same year £1,000 was raised for the Madagascar Schools in a joint effort with the London Missionary Society.

95.

Christina H. Jones, American Friends in World Missions (Illinois: Brethren Publishing House, 1946), 38. Another examples were the Iowa Yearly Meeting that supported Evi Sharpless’ mission in Jamaica in 1883 and Kansas Yearly Meeting in 1887 that established Quaker mission in Douglas, Alaska.

96.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends,” 60.

97.

Abraheem Nyruz, Ramallah, Goghraphia, Tarikh, H`dara/Ramallah: Geography, History, Civilization (Ramallah, Shurouq, 2004), 187; Naseeb Shaheen, A Pictorial History of Ramallah (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1992), 11–31.

98.

Ibid.

99.

Ibid.

100.

Ibid.

101.

Ellen Clare Miller, Eastern Sketches: Notes of Scenery, Schools, and Tent Life in Syria and Palestine (Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Company, 1871), 3; Mustafa Murad Dabbagh, Biladuna Filasteen: Fi Dyar Beit Al-Muqdas, vol. 8 (Beirut: Dar al-Talyah Lltybaha wa al-Nashr, 1974), 235, 236. See also Yusif Jerjus Qudura, Ramallah History, 238–39; Emile Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967 (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1988), 11. This was not the first missionary trip for Eli and Sybil Jones. Previously they went to preach the gospel in Liberia and West Africa in the early 1850s. For detailed information of their trip to Africa see Rufus Mathew, Eli and Sybil Jones: Their Life and Work (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1889).

102.

Ellen Clare Pearson, 56, known also as Ellen Clare Miller. Ellen also volunteered as Eli and Sybil Jones’s translator in some of their meeting and events in the area.

103.

Rufus Mathew, Eli and Sybil Jones: Their Life and Work (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1889), 190–92; Christina H. Jones, American Friends in World Missions, 6.

104.

Christina H. Jones, American Friends in World Missions, 8–10; Rufus Mathew, Eli and Sybil Jones, 193; Lee 43. After Eli and Sybil finished their tour in Palestine, they went to Mount Lebanon and spent a week in various villages and cities along their way including Jiffna, Nablus, Sebastia, Nazareth, and Damascus. After spending some time at the English mission in Brummana, they headed back to New England.

105.

“Religious Life in Our Mission Field,” Extracts from the Minutes and Proceedings of the Yearly Meeting of Friends (American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana, 1948), 165; Christina Jones, American Friends in World Missions, 9, 10.

106.

Matthew, Eli and Sybil Jones, 139.

107.

Christina Jones, Friends in Palestine, 10–16.

108.

The Ramallah Messenger 1, no. 9 (August, 1904): 4.

109.

Wilma Wilcox, Quaker Volunteer: An Experience in Palestine (Friends United Press, Richmond, IN, 1977), 10.

110.

The Ramallah Messenger, Haverford College Library, vol. 1, no. 9 (August 1904): 4.

111.

Lois Harned Jordan, Ramallah Teacher: The Life of Mildred White, Quaker Missionary (Indian: Yearly Meeting Committee, 1995), 55.

112.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 5.

113.

“Religious Life in Our Mission,” (Richmond, Indiana: American Friends Board of Missions, 1948), 169.

114.

Rosa Lee, The History of the Ram Allah Mission (Manchester: The Nutfield Press, 1912); “Religious Life in Our Mission,” 169.

Chapter 2

Quaker Missionary Women
in Ramallah, 1889–1914

First Encounters

Joseph John Gurney, an English minister, influenced a surge of Quaker missionary activities after an age of “Quietism” and stagnation. Gurney’s evangelical doctrine preached the second coming of Jesus, sanctification, and faith healing. Quakers recommencing missionary activity in the nineteenth century was not a new tradition, but in part a revival of a long tradition of preaching Fox’s words.[1] Nonetheless, the nineteenth-century Quakers’ missionary zeal and its implications should be seen in the context of nineteenth-century Western missionary activities and the age of colonialism and cultural imperialism. Samir Khalaf argues that American missionaries after the mid-nineteenth century became embedded with imperialistic impulses and a mission to spread American culture abroad.[2] They believed, as Khalaf argues, that the notion of their “Manifest Destiny” was to carry out a civilizing role around the world as a combination of “patriotism, chauvinism, and spiritual beliefs.”[3] The belief of cultural superiority and the motives behind American “Manifest Destiny” were rooted in “spiritual imperialism,” which American missionaries felt inclined to spread in their missions abroad.[4]

American missionaries’ activities in Palestine conveyed the notion of “Manifest Destiny” with an impetus toward religious conversion that intended to reclaim the Holy Land as a Christian space. The special meaning of Palestine as the Holy Land and the place of the second coming of Jesus were accompanied by varying forms of Western Christian and American encounters, such as the colonization attempts made by the American Millerites and George Adams discussed in chapter 1.

Regardless of the Quakers’ history as gospel preachers and their humanistic stance with Native Americans in colonial America, their engagement in missionary endeavors since the nineteenth century showed similar motives and methods to other colonial powers, which placed the Quakers’ mission easily “in the context of the global hegemony.”[5] Like other Western missionaries, the Quakers held a universal perception of their role as those who would enlighten and uplift Palestinians. They, similarly, held the belief in Palestine as a biblical land where the second coming of Jesus will take place. These convictions prompted their encounters with Palestinians and placed their interactions with Palestinians in terms of hierarchical power relations. Since the beginning of their
initiative, the Quakers’ Mission in Ramallah forged very close relationships with British and American diplomats, and secured their place in Palestine with diplomatic aid. They also had close relations and cooperated with other Western and American missions in Palestine—including the American Colony and the YWCA in Jerusalem.[6]

In this context, Quaker women joined the Ramallah Mission and attempted to carry out their mission of “civilizing” the local populace. The focus of their work among Palestinian women revolved around extending their domestic roles to other spheres such as missionaries, educators, and social workers. Their engagement in missionary activities abroad was part of a social and political movement for reform during the progressive era—an era that focused on curing the ills in American society which had emerged as a result of industrialization in the late nineteenth century.[7]

Their educational mission abroad underlined ideals of domesticity on which white middle-class womanhood is based. Central to these ideals are notions of virtue and morality which bound women to the private sphere.[8] Moreover, the notion of modern “educated motherhood” replaced “Victorian notions about the sacral quality of maternal love and instinctually religious tendencies of the True Woman.”[9] The newly emerged concept of “educated motherhood” merged with the ideals of “The Cult of True Womanhood,” that epitomized the pious, submissive, domestic, virtuous woman.[10] These ideals inspired global momentum and reformed the homes, hearts, and minds of non-Western women.
Besides promoting religious education and household skills, this ideology focused on promoting health and hygiene as a way to uplift the positions of non-Western women. Therefore, the missionary movement of American women was focused on reforming the experiences of women and far from promoting “political, legal, or economic equal rights with men.”[11]

They kept their social and educational reform movement and their engagement in public places within the already established gender relations in which patriarchal hierarchy was still in place. The missionary women focused on these patriarchal ideals and utilized the languages of domesticity and Christian piety. These languages helped them to propagate their version of feminism and legitimized their work beyond the home by increasing their responsibilities as reformers and teachers. Their version of feminism can also be seen as a strategy to counter the more radical ideals of the feminist movement during that time.[12] This enabled them to carry their mission of “benevolent imperial social reform” to their sisters abroad. Transforming Palestinian women’s manner of living seemed to take precedence over their evangelical call and efforts at religious conversion.[13]

Due to the American Quakers’ notion of the supremacy of their ideals of womanhood, Quaker women rationalized their roles and positioned themselves as superior to Palestinian women. Palestinian women were perceived as victims of social and cultural degradation, and in need of rescue. To demonstrate the importance of their roles and contributions, the writings of Quaker women reflected clear paternalistic attitudes and an evangelical zeal that orientalized Palestinian Arab women and employed reductive binary differences to affirm the superiority of Western culture.[14] Nevertheless, Quaker discourse of orientalizing Arab women carried “its unique articulation” during this historical moment and place.[15] The construction of this self-oriented discourse enabled the missionary women to attain a sense of self-worth and to fulfill, with missionary zeal, the goal of rescuing and civilizing the “Other.” By validating their roles abroad and showing the degraded positions of other women, missionaries initially maintained a social and cultural distance from women in Palestinian society.

Some scholars considered this as a form of imperial feminism among middle-class Western missionary women toward Eastern women.[16] These notions of cultural and religious supremacy are evident through the analysis of the Quakers’ missionary newsletter the Ramallah Messenger, the monthly journal the Friends Missionary Advocate, and other missionaries’ accounts including Rosa Lee.[17] The lifestyle of the Palestinians before they were touched with Quakers “civilizing mission” was primitive as “every woman went barefooted. Not a single family had plates. All ate from the same bowl with their hands except a few of the richest had wooden spoons” as Lee contended.[18] However, she maintained that even though “many of the above conditions are still found in Palestine but in the villages where schools have been established they are slowly giving place to better ways of living.”[19] American women conceptualized themselves as saviors due to their perception of their mission in Ramallah as a progressive social force present to elevate Palestinian women. This is a striking orientalist notion of their superiority and important role as women carrying on their “Manifest Destiny” of civilizing Palestinians especially among women. This perception is not unique to American missionaries but was definitely held even by all Western women’s movements. “First Wave feminists of all stripes readily accepted a key element of the West’s orientalist legacy—namely, the unquestioned belief in the superiority of ‘Western ways.’”[20]

In 1910, the American consul in Jerusalem best articulated the Quakers’ missionary work by saying that they fostered “freedom of women and manliness of men.”[21] While the “freedom of women” is ambiguous and might have referred to the transformation of the role of Arab women after receiving an education, the “manliness of men” was a reference to the enforcement of social gender roles and a patriarchal hierarchy. The work of the Quakers maintained the separate spheres paradigm as they concentrated on providing service in education of domesticity and health. Concentration on these fields allowed them to avoid apparent conflicts with Palestinians, in contrast to other American Protestant missions that focused primarily on conversion. The religious and evangelical message remained, but education and social services took the forefront.

Despite the misconceptions missionaries held about Palestinians and their culture, the opening of the GTH, in Ramallah provided needed services for both Palestinians and Americans. The cultural encounters between American Quaker women and Palestinians altered the lives of both groups.[22] Inequality notwithstanding, the Quakers’ perception of Palestinian girls and culture were altered after World War I—as will be discussed in the following chapter. The change of perception resulted in the creation of a middle ground that helped sustain the mission of Quakers into the present time.[23] Regardless of the assumptions held by the missionaries, Palestinian girls and their families were looking for ways to enhance their household skills in order to become more skillful mothers and wives, and were also eager to extend their responsibilities beyond the home. Moreover, missionary women at the GTH eventually opened up a path for communication when they relinquished their efforts to immediately convert the young women to the Quaker religion. Instead, they opted to take part in gradual proselytizing or cultural conversion.

Through this process of interaction, Palestinian girls were able to form an identity that was neither identical to nor totally removed from their missionary teachers or their Arab culture. For example, they were receptive to Western dress codes and modern education. However, they maintained their religious convictions and viewed the Quakers’ Christian values of simplicity, peace, and compassion as universal and already existing within their indigenous Christian communities. Despite their education at the GTH, the Palestinian girls did not defy deep-rooted social customs such as the norm of arranged marriages.

As a consequence of their education, the students changed some of the social and household practices of their families, specifically in regards to household skills and child rearing skills. Other transformations, such as postponing marriage, became more pronounced after World War I. Postponing marriage led to many women becoming teachers, helpers, or Bible women. The domestic education they received raised their health and hygiene standards and allowed them to modernize their homes by acquiring a material culture similar to that introduced to them in the GTH.

American Quaker Women as “Evangelists”

Upper- and middle-class women’s activism in nineteenth-century America was a significant factor in reforming the role of women in society. Participation of American women in religious, educational, and social reforms was part of a larger movement by women that emphasized women’s rights and was epitomized in the monumental Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848. Quaker abolitionist women such as Lucretia Mott were leading figures in the movement at the time. The outcome of the convention was the publication of the “Declaration of Sentiments” which outlined women’s demands for economic, social, and political reforms that would grant women their rights to own property, to vote, and to run for elected office.[24] Missionary women joined the women’s rights movement as social reformers. Most of these American missionaries were college graduates and belonged to the middle class. They desired to extend their social roles by engaging in certain arenas in the public sphere that would not contradict the society’s view of the nature of women. These women took their Christian moral qualities and domestic ideals and injected them into reform movements and philanthropic services. They also pursued professional careers such as teachers and nurses.[25]

The American Quaker women’s long tradition of social work, human rights improvement, and peace advocacy had been entrenched in their religious heritage since the founding of the religion. Similar to women from different denominations by the early 1860s, Quaker women demonstrated their independence and equality by forming their own missionary societies separate from men.[26] They were initiators and promoters of women’s leading roles in social reform and religious work. For example, Sybil and Eli Jones from China, Maine, made their missionary trip to Liberia in 1851. As previously discussed, Sybil joined her husband as an equal partner and minister, not only as a missionary’s wife.

After the Civil War, the Joneses proceeded on their foreign mission, traveling to Palestine and visiting England, Scotland, and Southern France on their way. Other Quaker couples traveled in different directions around the world as missionaries. Hannah and Joel Bean of West Branch, Iowa, traveled to the Sandwich Islands in 1859, and Sarah and Louis Street of Richmond, Indiana joined the British Friends in Madagascar in 1867.

In 1881, Eliza Armstrong Cox from southern Indiana, inspired by the Women’s Foreign Mission Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, formed a similar Friends organization, the Women’s Missionary Society of Western Yearly Meeting. This encouraged other Quaker women, who formed groups from different meetings, including ones from Philadelphia, New England, Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas, and New York, to take the lead in starting new missions or supporting missions abroad. The Women Foreign Missionary Society of the New England Yearly Meeting (1880s) supported Ramallah’s Mission for eight years. The society paid the salary of Katie Gabriel, the head teacher and later, matron of the GTH. Gabriel was an Arab Lebanese educated in mission schools. Before her work for the Ramallah Mission, she taught in Nazareth and Beirut. She was the only Arab woman to serve as the principal of the GTH for almost two decades (1889–1906). She played an important role in consolidating and strengthening the Quakers’ educational endeavor in Ramallah. Additionally, the different women’s societies meetings supported and paid for the expenses of individual girls at the GTH.[27] The economic involvement of missionary women was significant due to the ways in which they supported the work of other women outside the home through providing them with education that prepared them to work outside their homes especially as teachers and Bible women. Although Quakers focused on domestic education and the production of capable mothers, there was an underlying rejection of the ideals of domesticity and the separation of spheres. There was a strategic dimension to their involvement in the domestic training of women which, though originating within the boundaries of the feminine ideal, propelled them beyond it.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it became a common practice for single women to engage in missionary work abroad. Mary Whitall Thomas, a clerk of the Maryland Women’s Yearly Meeting, explained a woman’s position in the Society of Friends, saying, “the women in the Society of Friends hold a different position from that held in any other church.” She emphasized the assumption of their equality to their “brethren in the society.” She urged women to take the place “God has given you . . . for perhaps we have not yet fully taken it as we ought.”[28]

As a result of women’s work, a national organization was formed in 1890 from all the yearly meetings, the Women’s Foreign Missionary Union of Friends in America, which was later renamed the United Society of Friend Women in 1948. Friends Yearly Meeting dismissed this organization because many Quaker men viewed women as unequal partners, which explains why the women continued to work separately from the Friends Yearly Meeting.[29] As a result of engagement in missions abroad, women gained the ability to exert some independence and received a greater sense of self-worth. By the late nineteenth century, they joined the modernizing and civilizing missions of America’s evangelical culture with an eagerness to spread the gospel to all humankind; especially those whom they thought urgently needed the “Light” in “heathen lands.”[30] They took their social reform programs to other lands, which included women’s education (with an emphasis on religious education), temperance, and promotion of health, ending poverty, and encouraging peace.[31] These issues were linked to the prevailing ideology of American womanhood and were considered universal ideals. Thus, good mothering and skilled housekeeping became the cornerstones of their educational mission.

Ironically, transporting the issue of temperance to Ramallah was another sign of the missionaries’ self-perception of “moral superiority,”[32] as well as an indication of their unfamiliarity with Palestinian culture. In majority Muslim societies, alcohol consumption was not a pressing social problem—even in a Christian town like Ramallah. The Quaker biblical scholar, Elihu Grant, who wrote extensively about Palestinian society during this period noted, “there is almost no drinking of alcoholic liquors among peasantry.”[33] Alcohol existed in cities among Christian populations, but not without restriction of its consumption in public places.

When the influence of alcohol reached the country villages, it came “through foreign ecclesiastics in the convents, monasteries and patriarchates . . . and sometimes the example of missionaries.”[34] Talking about alcohol as one of the pressing social ills that threatened the Palestinian society was overstated. Missionaries usually perceived and dealt with Palestinian society as a temporal and physical space with ills echoing those of American society. These views also made them believe that the types of reforms carried in the American society among immigrants and poor classes could be transferred and carried out in Palestinian society and among the natives without any regards to the social and historical context. This explained the degree to which Quaker women campaigned against selling and drinking alcohol shortly after the establishment of the mission’s schools in Ramallah. In efforts to speak out against alcohol, Sunday school services were used to lecture the students and their parents on the harmful effects of alcohol. The Friends missionaries observed the day of November 29, 1903 as “Temperance Sunday.” During graduation ceremonies in 1910, one of the graduating girls, Kati Ma’louf spoke about “why she was a temperance girl and also of what each one could do to rid the world of this great evil.”[35] The teacher of the Sunday school class, Ms. Ramza, a graduate of the GTH in 1903, also gave temperance lessons in her school. She indicated that the girls in her class, some of them from Jerusalem, made a promise to her that they would not drink when they went home during the holidays. Ms. Ramza confirmed that they kept their promises.[36]

Similar to the women’s campaign at the school for girls, the BTH established their Temperance Society and held meetings every Sunday to discuss the vices of drinking and smoking. Rosa Lee indicated that temperance tracts and flyers were written in the Arabic language and distributed among the population as a way “to sow the seed which we hope will grow into a hedge of public sentiment around us.”[37] The sentiment of teaching the youth about the harmful effects of drinking alcohol was echoed throughout the missionaries’ schools and gave a clear indication of the missionaries’ stance on temperance.

The ideology surrounding womanhood which was held by the missionary women extended into their religious missions to the “heathen lands” and further explains the “feminization of the mission force” during this period.[38] American Quaker women highlighted the advantages single women had enjoyed when they entered evangelical enterprises and worked with their own sex in other countries, where women were “drudges, slaves, or victims; but equal or companions, never.”[39] These American women alluded to the advantages they had over male missionaries in such endeavors. Their rhetoric demonstrated the essentialist conceptions of femininity in the United States during this period of time:

Woman is pre-eminent above man in her sentimental emotional and religious nature; so it is that she holds the very keys of the domestic sanctuary in the opportunity to form the youthful character. She has marvelous capacity for teaching and endurances. She is especially fitted to care for, sympathize with, and reach her own sex. Hitherto in our own denominational schemes she has been neglected, and her work almost ignored. But now the time has come when her sagacity and capacity, her intelligence and consecration, bid faith to constitute her the leader of the modern mission.[40]

Quaker women in the above quote use what theorist Gayatri Spivak coined “strategic essentialism.”[41] Their argument here is twofold. First, it focused and reinforced the essentialist notions of gender and simultaneously advocated for a larger role in the missionary enterprise (as they are marginalized and subordinate group compared to men). Second they use their collective identity as women to argue for their capability and skills to reach out to their sisters abroad.

By 1885, the Quaker women published a journal, entitled Friends Missionary Advocate, and used it as a mouthpiece to propagate the ideology of “women working for women.”[42] The journal encouraged single females to become missionaries abroad and explained that they would have the ability to enter a “native” woman’s private dwelling, unlike male missionaries. The male missionaries, as the journal argued, “labored in heathen countries for nearly a century, among heathen people, without making much impression upon the women. Why? Because, almost invariably, male missionaries are denied access to native women.”[43] Although missionary women were able to sporadically enter the homes of “native” women, this was not where their influence was most significant. An even more powerful influence was the enduring contact guaranteed through the establishment of boarding schools. Through these schools, the missionaries detached the girls from their surrounding environments, which granted them the ability to exert an unchallenged force and authority over their students.

American missionary women’s writings constituted an influential medium that easily touched the hearts of American readers, generating financial support and encouraging new volunteers for the mission.[44] By writing negatively about the situation of Palestinian women, the achievements of American women may have been highlighted in comparison to the achievements of other women around the globe. Thus, by emphasizing their objections to the status of Arab women, American missionaries simultaneously pointed out the importance of continuing to work for women’s rights in American society.

The American Quakers who came to serve at the Ramallah Mission, such as Rosa Lee, Alice Jones, Etta Johnson and Ruth Murray, were typical characters of this generation who traveled with eagerness to spread the gospel and aid the “native” women. They brought the cultural baggage of the American middle-class ideology of womanhood wherever they traveled. For example, Johnson was a missionary worker at the GTH. In her description of the girls’ school, she gave the reader a detailed account of its daily routines, from the food consumed to information about the Palestinian cook Umm Saleem, who worked on an American-style stove and communicated with American missionaries through an interpreter. Johnson also portrayed early marriage in Palestine as one of the major problems that prevented the girls from completing their education, and noted the progress of the Quaker teachers at the time. By contrasting the two cultures, portraying one as superior to the other, while reflecting on the accomplishments of American women in the lives of Palestinian women, they stressed the importance of their work abroad and the virtue of their womanly mission. Furthermore, American missionaries constructed dichotomies in order to portray themselves as the opposite of their Palestinian students, servants, and employees employing the essentialized binary of the civilized and civilizer. This is embedded in racist ideologies that construct the identity of the white colonizer through the degradation of the “Other.” Here missionaries’ discourse of colonial “Othering” and race-based dichotomous thinking has inherited the legacy of Manichean binaries, where the opposition between good and evil stems from the opposition between light and darkness, and leads ultimately to the mind-body dualism, where the corporeal is in opposition to the mind. Ironically, this mind-body dualism is employed in patriarchal systems to elevate the rational male above essentialist conceptions of female corporeality. Here, women are coopted into this hierarchical way of thinking, where they become the rational, virtuous civilizers in relation to the uncivilized natives.

Quaker Women’s Perceptions of
Palestinian Social Norms

Quaker missionaries that went to Ramallah during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought with them preconceived notions of what the region was like. These preconceptions were reflections of their understanding of the Bible or from earlier missionaries’ and travelers’ writings. The condition of women in Palestine was portrayed in the latter sources in the most negative light. The document below typifies the impression of Palestinian women circulated by male missionaries in the early and middle nineteenth century, which later Quaker women missionaries in Ramallah would inherit and act upon. It describes the impressions of two early American missionaries in 1836 and was published in the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ monthly journal, the Missionary Herald:

It is the custom, say Messrs. Bird and Goodell, of this country that women must never be seen eating, or walking, or in company with her husband. When she walks abroad, she must wrap herself up in a large white sheet, and look like a ghost; . . . [women] Throughout the whole Palestine they are slaves; and their character is that disgusting compound of childish ignorance, foolish superstition, impertinence, and vulgarity, which is commonly the product of such degradation. . . . Female schools are therefore indispensable. . . . It was deeply affecting to see them . . . with heavy loads of wood upon their heads, and bending under burdens which their weaker frames would ill sustain.[45]

American male missionaries used the female body “as a marker of racialised difference.”[46] They pitied Palestinian women in their perceived childlike state and used the dress code as a cultural marker. Missionaries judged the way Palestinian women dressed as unfashionable, outdated, and oppressive. The phrase “wrap herself up in a large white sheet,” signaled that the missionaries were unable to see the shape of a woman’s figure. These types of signals indicated the missionaries’ desire to know more about women in the “Orient,” who were taboo to strangers in this period. Because male missionaries were not allowed into the private female sphere, their lack of knowledge resulted in the view that Palestinian women are mysterious and exotic. Rather than recognizing the Arab woman’s way of dress as a sign of modesty, missionaries interpreted their public appearance as a form of gender suppression.

The writings of Quaker women at the Ramallah Mission echoed the same language as these early male missionaries. Shortly after their arrival in Ramallah, the Quaker women began portraying Arab women as slaves to their husbands, being “overshadowed by ignorance, superstition and sin.”[47] Ramallah was seen as living in “primitive darkness” until the American Friends missionaries established their mission. The town prospered as its children’s “hearts and minds” were “trained together.”[48]

Missionaries’ descriptions of the local Arabs imitated the images they held before their arrival in Palestine. The American Quaker missionary, Rosa Lee, described two Palestinian men who came to welcome her and upon their arrival, the other missionaries said, “The bright colored turbans, flowering robes, bare legs and sandals, expressed much to us, but their smiling faces and broken English expressed more.” The language Rosa Lee chose to describe the Palestinian men was orientalizing and exoticizing, identifying the men as “absolutely other.” Her thoughts express her initial impression meeting the men, where is she taken back by their exotic dress and she also shows her sincerity by remarking on how touched she is by their smiles and attempts to speak English.

Her descriptions were a reiteration of the orientalization of Palestinians by placing them into a separate category, as different from the West. Lee “realize[d]” they “were indeed in the Orient and among a people different from those in the home-land.” However, she was also “conscious that we were among Friends.”[49] Her consideration of them as “Friends” was a reflection of her Quaker beliefs that the “inner lights” manifested in each person included natives whom she met for the first time. It is also an indication of Quakers’ stance in dealing with “others” on the assumption of forging friendships and good relations. The language of the Quaker women that depicts orientalization is muted when compared with the Quaker beliefs of the “inner light,” presented in each person regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender and their ideal of global friendship and cooperation. Here in addition to a discourse of Orientalism and degradation, there were also accounts which were tolerant and accepting of Palestinian cultural and religious differences. This can be translated as part of the religious concept of the “inner light,” that counteracts the stereotypification of the Palestinian people.

Due to the context of the degradation of native women and the exotic nature of Palestinian society, American Quaker female missionaries began to understand the main reason for opening the girls’ school in Ramallah was “to educate and uplift the womanhood of the land.”[50] Lee went on to acknowledge that the Quakers “had long since realized that there is not much hope for a nation if its women are kept in ignorance and degradation.”[51] Etta Johnson, another Quaker missionary, declared in 1892 that as a result of the Quakers’ education “twenty girls in the Training Home have made excellent progress in their studies, housework, knitting and sewing.”[52] During this time, education was seen as the key to the emancipation of Palestinian women. Missionaries’ views of Palestinian women and their degraded conditions were relayed to American readers through publications such as the Ramallah Messenger and Friends Missionary Advocate. These writings served as a way to contrast the living conditions of women in two localities, wherein the missionary women felt they held the knowledge to speak on behalf of other women and reflect on the unfortunate living situation of the “others,” which were worse than American women.[53]

Johnston portrayed the existing Ottoman government in the most negative light, stating that when the American Friends arrived at the Ramallah mission the Syrian boys and girls had welcomed them by waving the American flag and singing welcome songs for them because there was “nothing about their own government to love or respect.”[54] While these writings emphasized to their readers the importance of their work and contributions, they included a stereotypical portrayal of Palestinian Arab women as backwards, trapped in biblical times due to the long period they were under the Ottoman rule.

The stance portrayed by the missionaries was similar to the attitudes of English women travelers who yearned for the imposition of change through Western imperial intervention “to colonize the region metaphorically, and ultimately politically.”[55] Presenting Arab Palestinian womanhood as barbaric and degraded emphasized the missionaries’ attempt to show the “inherently oppressive and unfree nature of the entire cultural tradition”[56] of Arab and Islamic culture and the need for rescue by missionary women. These portrayals connected the progress of an entire nation to the elevation of womanhood through education. These writings also revealed the cultural differences missionaries sought to stress between themselves and Palestinians. They insisted that the people of Ramallah, even though they were Christians, had become spiritually and culturally desecrated because they had lived under Muslim rule for centuries. Therefore, Quakers’ educational and religious enterprises were not only justifiable, but necessary. Here, religion is used to disguise colonial aspirations.

American Perceptions of Palestinian Marriage Customs

Historically, until the end of the seventeenth century, the institution of marriage worldwide, including in Europe and European America, was based on economic and political considerations. In general, it was a family affair that involved not only the parents, but also other relatives. Even among upper-class families, socially influential figures such as judges and governors could be involved—especially when marriage involved forging military or political alliances. Matchmaking for sons and daughters served the purposes of increasing wealth, organizing inheritance rights, or forging political or military alliances. Moreover, cultural norms such as gift, tribute, and dowry exchange meant that marriage involved economic gains for almost all members of the two upper-class families (and kin) when their sons or daughters married.

Marriage among the lower classes had its own economic and political considerations, but “on a smaller scale,” such as marrying their son or daughter to someone whose family property bordered their property. By the early eighteenth century, families started to gradually move away from arranged marriages and consideration of the mate’s individual characteristics became a requirement for successful marriage. The ideal mate was expected to be fair, kind, and have a good temper. For example, the American president John Adams wrote in his diary, that upon choosing one’s ideal marriage partner, a person should excuse “faults and mistakes, to put the best Construction upon Word and Action, and to forgive Injuries.”[57] Fundamental changes continued during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, making marriage only an affair between the two individuals who were getting married.

Marriage in the West eventually became based on the “sentimentalization of love.”[58] Also, society’s cultural norm in the marriage institution viewed the “husbands as providers and of wives as nurturing homebodies.[59] This idea of marriage based on companionate love and the concept of women as nurturing mothers were the basic ideals of the American womanhood ideology that the Quaker women referenced on their expedition to Palestine in the late nineteenth century.

Since marriage based on a companionate love was one of the dominant features in the American womanhood ideology, missionaries judged other marriage cultural norms in Palestinian society as degradation for women and inferior to their own, and thus in need of reform. Quaker missionary women found three features of women’s roles in Ramallah’s society especially worrisome, none of which conformed to their views of womanhood: early and arranged marriages, the concept of dowry, and women’s relations to men in their families.

The writings of these women missionaries on these social norms in Palestinian society illustrate their dismay at these customary practices. For example, when Rosa Lee gave her immediate reaction to the tradition of marriage in Ramallah among Greek Orthodox Christians, she characterized these practices in the most unfavorable light and demonstrated her disturbance and disapproval. She emphasized that the two families of the bride and the groom, whose sons and daughters had no voice, usually arranged these marriages. While she expressed her disdain of matchmaking in general, Rosa Lee used a less egregious tone when presenting the Protestant version. Her religious prejudices were clear when she made discriminatory comparisons between the Palestinian Greek Orthodox and Protestant parents, giving the impression that the latter were much more liberal in dealing with dowry money than the former, whom she portrayed as setting prices for their daughter’s betrothals:

The parents have much to do with “making the match” and the boy or his father pays so much to the parents of the girl as a price for the bride. One of the girls from the Training Home was married last year. The young man’s father is dead and his uncle paid one hundred napoleons, or about four hundred dollars for her. Her people are Protestants so they did not keep the money, but gave it to her in the way of furniture for her new home.[60]

She expressed a similar reaction and religious prejudice toward the “Mohammedans,” whom she thought of as the least advanced among the three local religious groups: Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Muslim. Lee presented them as families who sold their daughters to the man who paid the most money, without taking into consideration the age of the groom or the disapproval of the bride.[61]

In the imaginations of the missionaries, parents negotiated their daughters’ marriages as they would business deals, with daughters being sold to the highest bidder. Their generalization held even in obvious cases when money was hardly the issue. For example, in Jyfneh, a village near Ramallah, one of their day students, a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who was from a well-to-do family and who many men wished to marry, married her cousin. Lee described her marriage as being “forced,” although it was evident that money did not take precedence in the marriage decision. In the Arab custom, a cousin had the first right to marry the girl. Lee, after acknowledging this custom, says that the cousin offered to pay a good amount of money to her family, which affected their decision of marrying her to him.[62]

The result of missionary education did not always meet the missionaries’ anticipated goals. Rather than accepting all the things missionaries taught them, the Palestinian girls were selective about the aspects of missionary education they considered appropriate to their situations. The first girl to attend the GTH, Zareefie Audi, consented to her family’s decision to pull her out of school in order to get married. Lee criticized the decision and described “[t]his Oriental custom of selling girls in marriage” as “strenuously objected to by the Mission and largely overcome as regards our school.”[63]

Palestinian students created a middle ground when dealing with the missionaries’ religious, educational and social influences during this period. The middle ground produced mixed results within unequal paternalistic relations and gradually transformed missionaries as well. Soon after the war, long-term missionaries would agitate and champion for a more equal relationship with Palestinians instead, as chapter 3 explains. Students were receptive to the secular education of the missionaries and interpreted the Quakers’ religious message as universal and similar to their eastern Christian rites. Moreover, they continued to adhere to their Arab societal values. In the case of Audi, her years of schooling in missionary institutions made her a “good wife and mother” and a Bible woman, which the missionaries celebrated.[64] However, Audi’s years of education in the missionary institutions did not lead her to defy her family’s decision to marry her. This also meant that her husband approved of her new role as a teacher; a role that was culturally and historically well respected by the society and seen as well-fit to women’s nurturing nature.

Palestinian girls accepted the American ideology of womanhood by modernizing and extending women’s domestic roles to the public sphere through enabling indigenous women to become better housewives, teachers, and Bible women. Thus, missionaries appeased themselves when they used the phrase “Christian teacher” to signify that these teachers had Christianizing capability obtained from their education at the GTH. There were some cases where Quaker missionaries interfered in the marriage process for their female students after graduation. Lydia Damisnkey, from Lydda, received her education at the GTH and worked in the school after graduation. When a Syrian missionary asked for her hand in marriage, the mission superintendent, Edward Kelsey, asked her to take time to get to know him and visit him in Jerusalem before making her decision. After receiving her father’s consent, Lydia married the man and the couple left for German East Africa.[65]

As illustrated by Lydia’s story, whenever possible, the Quakers tried to create change in the process of arranged marriage by encouraging the bride to interact with the groom for a prolonged period of time before making her final decision. Such encouragement is a departure from the traditional form of arranged marriage at that time, but still requires the family’s consent. After receiving education, girls had more say in their marriage, as education and work gave them more freedom to make decisions concerning their lives.

However, it is evident that American missionaries did not grasp the differences in marriage practices between Palestinian and American cultures. Arranged marriages were not as simple and outrageous as Lee’s presentation describes. There were complex cultural norms that forged a social support system for males and females in Arab families. An arranged marriage was looked at as the joining of two families in an alliance, not only the uniting of two individuals. Because families shared in the choosing of their child’s spouse, they also shared the responsibilities in case of an unexpected life event, such as death of the husband or divorce. The widowed or divorced wife would find support from her family (and to a lesser degree from her husband’s family) both financially and emotionally.[66]

This support system was the norm in a society based on a tribal social system, where family, clan, and tribe played important roles in social support and protection. This dynamic explains the relative lack of interest in the ideology of romance, as it was known in the West. In Arab society, after marriage, it was assumed that acquaintance, respect, and love would develop between the new couple. Thus, the tradition of arranged marriage was well established and was rarely challenged by the marriageable generation. In normal circumstances, arranged marriage did not mean forced marriage but instead, the consent of the bride and the groom had first to be obtained. Even decades after the establishment of the missions in Ramallah, arranged marriage continued to be the dominant form of marriage among young men and women who graduated from the GTH and the BTH. However, the process of arranged marriage did change as the females had more say and would get to know their future partner before giving consent to the marriage.

By attempting to change these cultural practices, missionary women viewed Quaker education as the stepping-stone in the path of change in women’s status and for giving women a voice in certain social practices, notably in postponing marriage age and increasing marriage choices. This can be observed through a play written by the American missionaries for the girls to perform for the Mission’s students and their families. The play’s main characters were two Palestinian women with biblical names. The characters were Merriam, a single Palestinian woman and a teacher at a Friends school, and Martha, a married woman living in Ramallah.

Merriam visited Martha and tried to transmit to her the Friends’ message. Martha was depicted in the play as an oppressed woman whom Merriam tried to reach. Merriam explained to Martha how her new Quaker religion and education gave her more social freedom, and now her father would even listen to her decision about marriage. Merriam said to Martha, “I know you think I have nothing to do with it (marriage)—that a girl’s father always decides whom she shall marry and that she has nothing to do with it. But now that I can read and write, my father listens to me.” Merriam goes on explaining her new religion as different to that of Ramallah’s Christians who “worship plaster idols in the churches.”

She warned Martha of the men’s reaction to girls’ education. “Men here will say [what] they always do, that girls are no better than cattle, that we can’t learn anything anyway.” When Merriam asks Martha if her husband was cruel to her, Martha remains silent and then rushes to the field to help her husband, which was meant to indicate his oppressive nature.[67]

Quaker women saw the type of education they were bringing as a means to intervene in what they perceived as woman’s subordinate status. This play shows that missionaries saw education as a solution to the plight of women. Through education, Merriam postponed marriage, giving her more power in the family, and gaining both independence and an ability to voice her opinions in relation to the men in her family. This was in contrast to the uneducated Martha’s situation as an oppressed woman.

Through plays such as that mentioned above, missionaries encouraged the girls to stay in school and, hence, increase their age at marriage. However, there was not a single case where missionary teachers were successful in encouraging their students to defy their families, or were able to prevent girls from being pulled out of school when the family decision was made to marry them. However, the existence of the GTH gave a reason for some parents to postpone their daughters’ marriage—an understandable circumstance because before there were schools for girls, there was no reason to not marry their daughters at an early age. Therefore, with the existence of female educational opportunities, the marriage age increased gradually, but not significantly.[68]

Missionaries believed that the GTH culture and the American teachers’ influence would prevail after graduation and leave an imprint on the girls in their future lives. When one of their former female students mentioned that she and her husband had affectionate love for each other, missionary teachers congratulated themselves, thinking it to be a result of their teaching. The American Quaker missionary Alice Jones sent a letter she received from her former student, Asma Eid, to the Board, which was published in the Ramallah Messenger. Eid wanted to share the news of her engagement with her American teacher. She wrote how she was “pleased with this engagement . . . [since] we most affectionately love each other and began to feel the true meaning of life.”[69]

Cases such as Asma Eid’s did not provide clear evidence that her marriage was not arranged because she could have known her groom through their families’ network. Both families became more liberal in giving more space for their son and daughter to meet and get to know each other, usually under supervision, before they made the decision to accept one other. This kind of transformation in the arranged marriage process was predictable in Akka, the port city home to Eid’s well-to-do family. Many social, demographic, and economic transformations happened in Akka during this period that boosted the emergence of a middle class. These adjustments effected changes in social norms and customs unrelated to the missionaries and may have potentially contributed to Eid’s marriage choice.[70] Stories such as Eid’s showed that Quaker education in the form of plays and Western literature might have influenced or contributed to the girls’ thinking in the importance of affectionate love in marriage. However, even when the potential bride and groom met each other without their families’ involvement, both of their families had to approve of their marriage.

Along with their disapproval of marriage rituals, missionaries criticized the way Palestinian women did housework and their relations to men within the domestic sphere. They assumed that their hard work of washing clothing, carrying water from the spring to their homes, grinding wheat, and other errands associated with the everyday running of a household made them the servants of their husbands. Hence, this kind of work was seen as a type of domestic oppression.

While women were seen as powerless victims, men were portrayed as lacking any feelings of love toward their wives. For example, Alice Jones commented that “One day she [I] saw a little wife doing her washing, she was very small, and was probably not more than twelve or fourteen years old. Her life of hard work for the man who bought her (husband), who probably has no love for her and whom she will probably never love.”[71] The sense of cultural supremacy is clearly apparent here, as Jones presumed that just by looking at a woman whom she did not know or speak to, she could make a judgment about this woman’s experience of spousal affection.[72]

Ironically, the same Alice Jones who viewed women’s work as a kind of social oppression in the early twentieth century viewed these chores as positive and vigorous during the 1920s. Village women also engaged in outdoor activities, such as bringing water from springs, gathering brush for fires, and helping their men. Their outdoor work was part of the village lifestyle in which these women actively participated. Another Quaker missionary at the GTH, Ruth S. Murray, mentioned that the married woman was “not the cherished wife, but the household drudge; never considered companions, but only servant of their husbands, and despised by their son.” This condition made women “appeal largely to our (mission’s) sympathy and aid.”[73]

Murray also gave her readers hope that change was “taking place, and the true position of women is beginning to be understood.” She exclaimed that “fathers ask for places in the schools for their daughters, and the light is dawning.”[74]

The Educational Endeavor of
the Ramallah Mission

The American missionaries provided education primarily to create a path to cultural conversion, in an attempt to “uplift” the “native” women’s social position. Through intense religious education such as mandatory Bible classes, regular prayers, and Sunday services, they attempted to inspire religious conversion to Quakerism as well, but ultimately failed. However, they were successful to some degree at modernizing the students’ lifestyles and changing their self-perception. Their overall successes are demonstrated in the development and longevity of their institutions—the GTH developed into a prestigious secular day school, called the Friends Girls School, after World War I, which is still operating to this day.

Converting Muslims was not a possibility for the Protestant missions because of the strict Islamic laws in place, but the Ottoman authority left a free hand for the foreign missionaries to convert the indigenous Christian minorities.[75] Because of the Islamic laws and the hostility of the Ottoman government toward missionaries who tried to work among Muslims, foreign missions’ activities, especially in the area of education, targeted mainly Eastern Christians.[76] Only small numbers of Palestinian Christians converted to Quakerism, which helped American women understand the impracticality of using aggressive and direct conversion methods.

When it became evident that direct conversion was unsuccessful, the Board in Indiana urged the missionaries to redouble their efforts. However, female Quaker missionaries were insistent that they were fulfilling their role in the best way possible.[77] They thought that education was the arena that would eventually lead to conversion. Their reports to the Board expressed hesitation in directly imposing their religious beliefs onto the “natives.” However, the missionaries emphasized that their educational strategy would pave the way for more aggressive religious work later on. They reminded the Board of their continuous efforts assuring “those who have thought or said that more aggressive religious work ought to be done at Ramallah . . . that valuable work is being done, and that the way is opening for more aggressive work along this line in the future.” When the American Quakers recorded an increase in the attendance of their weekly Meeting, which by May 1904, numbered only twenty-five attendees for the weekly prayers, they noted this increase as a sign of success.[78]

The American Friends rhetoric about the importance of conversion was in no way abandoned by the Ramallah Mission. The failures that they experienced with aggressive direct conversion methods forced the Quaker missionaries to adjust their expectations. The missionaries believed that continuing to preach the gospel to the families in Ramallah and teaching religion to the girls in the GTH were significant strategies that would lead to the gradual increase of converts. This belief proved to be illusory because only a handful of Ramallah families entered the Quaker faith.

The belief missionaries held of the importance of female education was shared by important segments of Muslim elites and middle class Christians in Greater Syria.[79] These groups formed a consensus around the value of elevating women as good mothers and wives through education as an important component of the social and national development of their country. Sybil Jones, the first Quaker woman missionary in Palestine during the late nineteenth century, visited the houses of many distinguished Palestinians in Jerusalem and talked to the wives of the mayor, the Pasha, and the chief judge. Jones emphasized to them that “true elevation of their country . . . must largely depend upon the education and piety of the mothers and daughters, and that if they would have great men, they must first have good mothers.” It is quite evident that a shared ideology regarding female education existed on both sides, as the wives responded, “It is our chief desire.”[80]

Female education was desired even among the poor villagers. In Ain Areek, one of Ramallah’s surrounding villages, the people not only welcomed but requested the American Quakers to establish a day school and offered “to pay the rent of a school house and even board the teacher” if the American Quakers followed through with their request.[81] Similar cases of requests are noted in other villages surrounding Ramallah. Only a few years after the opening of the GTH, Palestinian parents pleaded with the American missionaries to enroll their daughters in the school, even though doing so was a new experience for the families. In general, by the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, education for girls became more desired and requested by parents especially among the middle and upper classes.

The early history of the FGS is a sign that missionaries and Palestinians shared a belief in the value of education. Eli and Sybil Jones opened the first Quaker day school for girls in 1869, as a result of a request made from a Ramallah girl, Mariam Karam. In 1889, when the GTH opened, Palestinian parents were increasingly receptive and found great importance in having their daughters receive an education to become good mothers and wives. By the 1890s, the boarding school was able to accommodate up to twenty girls.[82] Parents would travel far distances, as far as from the East side of the Jordan River, to enroll their daughters in the school.

The influx of parents wanting to enroll their girls caused the American Quakers to enlarge the school building in order to accommodate more students and by 1908 the GTH had the ability to enroll up to fifty girls.[83] American Quakers also opened two girls’ day schools in Ramallah to provide education for those who were not able to attend the GTH. The American Quakers provided education for a hundred students with the other two-day schools for boys.[84]

The GTH eventually became more selective in their admissions as the school became more successful and well established.[85] Many girls who attended the Quakers’ day schools wished to enroll in the GTH, but very few of them were given the opportunity. The Quaker missionary, Rosa Lee, told the story of a father from Jordan who came to Ramallah with his two daughters. He wanted the oldest to be admitted and found it noteworthy to mention “he had brought her shoes with her.” After she was found unsuitable by an examination, the school offered to admit her little sister instead, who was “in good health and looked bright and promising.”[86] The younger sister, Helanie, would later graduate from the GTH and become a teacher for the Tayyibeh village school, where her family eventually moved.

There were other cases where girls came from territories outside Palestine such as Armenia (four girls), Smyrna (one), Crete (one), and Beirut (six). After the school became established, tuition was required and the amount increased gradually as the GTH’s enrollment grew over time, especially when the boarding school expanded to accommodate more girls. Between 1889 and 1909, the GTH received 141 new female students who stayed at the school for an average of five years. Ten of the girls died while at the school, thirty-one left school to become wives and mothers, and thirty-seven began work as teachers after graduation. The vast majority of these girls came from villages and towns in Palestine.[87]

Arab teachers working for the Mission helped validate the American Quaker missionaries’ concept of “uplifting” Palestinian women. These new teachers were seen as exemplars of the new role Palestinian women should hold and became cultural converts. Through their years of schooling at GTH, these “native” teachers were also trained to be good future mothers and wives, and were taught to modernize their homes by acquiring tables, chairs, stoves, sewing machines, bed frames (instead of mattresses on the floor) and other utilitarian material goods.

The GTH favored village girls who had fewer educational opportunities than city girls.[88] Many of the girls who came from the city were already exposed to some kind of Western lifestyle, especially those coming from Jerusalem, Acre, and Jaffa, where Western penetration was more extensive through commerce, the influence of pilgrims, and missionary schools. Accepting girls from different villages made it possible for these girls to work as teachers in their villages where opportunities for education were scarce. The Quakers were in the beginning stages of laying down the foundation of their mission and in order to show the success of their work to donors and the local population, they needed to demonstrate the significant impact their work would have on disadvantaged girls from villages. The Quaker missionaries’ reports, letters, and entries in the mission journal Ramallah Messengers, emphasized the names and roles played by village girls to spread the Quakers’ message and instigate change in the communities of villages and towns. Also, the shortage of American teachers, especially those familiar with Arabic language and culture, encouraged the missionaries to train and employ Arab teachers and helpers, who were needed as intermediaries between Americans and Palestinians.

Arab Quaker Missionaries:
Teachers, Helpers, and Bible Women

Heather Sharkey urged scholars of American missionary history to investigate the role of native employees and converts as missionaries in their own right.[89] American missionaries designated their titles as native/Arab teachers, helpers, matrons, and Bible women, which tended to minimize the role these Arabs played in consolidating the Ramallah Mission and spreading the Quakers’ education and religious message to nearby Ramallah villages and towns. Here may be seen a clear notion of American missionaries’ superiority to Palestinians. Missionary education would produce an educated but subordinate class of Palestinian employees who no matter how and to what degree they would negotiate power relations, they would only be able to “mimic” the colonizer but cannot be independent to manage their affairs without the employer’s help.[90] Nonetheless, the role of these native missionaries was very important because they did not only fill the shortage of American missionaries and teachers needed for the mission to move forward, but their bilingual skills and familiarity with the Arab culture, along with the training they received in mission schools, gave them a significant advantage in their work.

More importantly, these native missionaries were trusted by the villages because they communicated with them in their own language, used the same cultural expressions, and shared meals and helped villagers with chores when possible. Their work as intermediaries between two cultures was essential in maintaining smooth relations between the American missionaries and Palestinians. These women were indoctrinated through scripture and religious education, as well as the taught the value of leading a sanitary and healthy lifestyle.

Hannah Nusr explained her role as Bible woman saying: “[I] spoke about the Bread of Life that sustains the soul and gave a piece of soap, a towel and a wash cloth to the woman. . . . Washed three little girls’ hands, faces and feet, cleaned the room and put things out into the sun.”[91] Nusr’s quote shows a clear race-based relationship between “soap” and civilizing mission. The soap was “a symbol of purity and cleanliness,” and used in racist colonial advertisements to emphasize race hierarchy and whitewashing of the dark races—recall the dark-light binary.[92] Moreover, providing the soap for the natives symbolize the notion of washing away their sins. The services native missionaries offered to villages in the areas of education, health, and hygiene were appreciated greatly by the local population and created a positive image of the Ramallah Mission among the Palestinians, which was essential in providing needed services that would transform their society.

Katie Gabriel, a Syrian Arab woman who trained in a Protestant missionary school in Mount Lebanon, played an instrumental role after being appointed head teacher for the GTH in 1889. Gabriel used her position to mediate between American missionaries and the “nationals,” as former student Anisa Ma’louf called the Palestinians. These Palestinian Arab nationals were most likely the few Quaker converts and employees in the Ramallah Mission. According to Ma’louf, Katie Gabriel often helped ease tensions between the nationals and the missionaries. Ma’louf described Gabriel’s services and efforts in the following manner:

She was also the translator of the most crucial assignments and official forms. This was not an easy task; it was a very difficult one because of the constant differences among the foreign employees within the mission, every newcomer mistakenly tried to implement (his/her) ideas in the new position. So, it was up to Katie to fix these mistakes and ease the missionaries’ method of interaction with the nationals, while the nationals felt that she was obligated to take their sides, for the most part it took her longer time to show them that as a fair mediator between the missionaries and the nationals she must support justice as she saw.[93]

As the above quote demonstrates, relations between the Missionaries and Palestinians were not harmonious at all times. It shows the amount of receptiveness Palestinians held toward what the Quakers offered; however, both groups had to negotiate conflicts as they arose. Arab employees like Gabriel helped ease tension during negotiation and avoid further conflict.

One of the American missionaries who was serving in Ramallah during Gabriel’s tenure was Huldah Leighton. She served as a matron for the GTH and superintendent of the Mission until 1895. She also served at the Ramallah Monthly Meeting as minister. After Leighton’s retirement, the monthly meetings stopped assembling because, as the Friends reports claimed, “the local Friends did not feel equal to the task of carrying on the monthly meeting themselves and it was laid down.”[94] The meetings resumed in 1901 after the arrival of Almy Grant, Elihu Grant’s wife and a missionary in her own right, and George Barton, a biblical scholar and professor from Haverford, when they reorganized the meeting.

Gabriel’s role during this early period was instrumental in consolidating the GTH and the mission for the American Quakers. Gabriel’s proficiency in both languages, training in different Protestant missionary institutions, and her prior employment in an orphanage in Nazareth and in an English girls’ college in Beirut for seven years provided the background needed for her job at the GTH.[95] She remained in this position until the New England Yearly Meeting sent Alice W. Jones to replace her in 1906.[96] Gabriel stayed on as the matron of the school and a “native” helper to Jones for twenty-three years until 1929 when they both retired.[97]

Her role during this formative stage of the mission was indispensable, as she helped foster a middle ground between the missionaries and Palestinians that sustained the mission. It is arguable that Gabriel’s role at the GTH, as well as the roles of other native employees such as Jacob Hishma and Mariam, is what made the Ramallah mission survive and progress after World War I.

Being indoctrinated by missionaries, Arab women located their role in society as reformers and social workers, while sharing their American employers’ mission to reshape their society and improve the situation of women. In 1891, Emily Audi was assigned as the Bible woman for the mission. She had previously been a teacher in one of the mission day schools. Audi conducted Bible classes for women in the Ramallah meeting house in Arabic twice a week. During the week, the meeting house was used for another Quaker day school, Hope School. Audi’s meetings were successful and increased to three times a week, being held in the eastern, western, and northern parts of Ramallah. After Audi graduated from the GTH and resigned from her position, Helanie Totah became the Bible woman in 1909.[98]

Martha and Hannah Nasr, two sisters from Lebanon, came and provided valuable help to the newborn mission. Martha became the Bible woman and took charge of the day schools. She also provided some medical help to women in Ramallah and the nearby villages. In 1899 she received an offer from Edward Strawbridge and his wife in Philadelphia to study in America and receive training as a nurse. After her departure, her sister Hannah took over her work in the Ramallah mission. Martha returned in 1904 and put her nursing education to practice in the Mission, and then served as matron for the Boys Training Home. Hannah continued in the footsteps of her sister and also served as matron in the Boys Training Home, where her job was to feed and care for thirty boys, whom she “taught how to make beds, sweep rooms and look after dining tables—in fact trained [them] to live in such a clean, comfortable way that they will always desire it for themselves and their people.”[99]

Bible women were indigenous women, mostly Arab Christians of the Greek Orthodox faith who were among the few Quaker converts. These women spread the religious messages of American Friends in Palestinian towns and villages by telling Bible stories to the villagers. The Bible women themselves spread the ideology of womanhood by improving village women’s health standards and sanitation. They mainly reached poor Muslim villages such as al-Bireh, Atara, and Ain Areek, where there were no schools, except the day schools provided by the American Friends.[100] The Bible women visited local women regularly and conducted meetings to talk about issues that concerned them, such as their children’s health, hygiene, and mothers’ well-being. They made friendships among willing audiences who listened to the Bible women’s instructions and gospel stories. The Bible women were portrayed in the American missionary writings as effective instruments of transferring the missionary message to Palestinian women across language and cultural barriers. These indigenous Bible women were able to reach the ordinary population by speaking the same tongue and sharing the same culture. Providing medical services, such as treatments for sore eyes, also helped Bible women forge trusting relationships with the villagers.

The arrival of the Bible women in these villages was welcomed. Women gathered together, bringing their embroidery or wheat that needed cleaning, while sitting, working, and listening to the stories and instructions of the Bible women. In explaining the need for “native” Bible women, Alice Jones said:

There is much need of Bible women in this land that we feel perhaps God will call Jameeli to that work. These native Bible women are very welcome in the homes and their visits eagerly looked forward to. Even in the Muslim villages they are gladly received, and the Muslim women easily believe the truths taught them, and often become secret disciples.[101]

As the writings of American missionaries depict the importance of Bible women in providing needed services to the villagers, these native women should also be seen through another important lens. These women should be seen not only as missionaries spreading the Quakers’ religious education and domesticity ideals, but more importantly, they were the early negotiators of a middle ground. Admittedly, this median was based on unequal power relations between the Americans and Palestinians, but nevertheless, the work they accomplished surpassed the role acknowledged or played by the American missionaries.

Bible women continued to play an important role in the Ramallah Mission for decades to come, particularly during the period of the British mandate. Villages became more familiar with the Bible women’s tasks, especially their medical services and child rearing training. The audiences of the Bible women were very receptive in listening to their stories and did so in the same manner they would listen to the Hakawati, or village storyteller.[102] In fact, when the villagers listened to the Bible women’s stories, they regarded this as a type of entertainment similar to the folktales circulated among them for generations. These Bible stories were appealing because they were told by a woman and directed mainly to her sister villagers. Moreover, Muslim women saw a similarity between these stories and the ones told in the Quran.

Life in the Girls Training Home (GTH)

The GTH as a boarding school was “the most important site of the encounter”[103] to immerse students in American culture and Christian ideals of domesticity in which Palestinian girls learned and practiced a new lifestyle that was epitomized as modern, disciplined, and spiritually oriented. The American women missionaries performed two roles in the boarding school: virtuous Christian mothers, and teachers. Virtuous motherhood consolidates the private role of women, while the role of teacher extended the domestic into the public sphere. These were the two roles missionaries aimed to train the students to play after graduation in order to uphold their duties in the household and society.

Quaker missionaries believed that Christianizing and “uplifting” the Palestinian girls would be accomplished most effectively through gathering the girls and placing them in a staged “healthy Christian home”[104] as a way to produce exemplary Christian mothers and teachers who would spread Quaker ideals and religion.[105] Moreover, cutting off the girls from outside influences, especially their homes, would serve to the advantage of the American missionaries who would exert complete authority and influence on their pupils. Missionary women living in the GTH with a close proximity to their students created an environment where a mother-daughter-type relationship was developed.

The missionaries tried to model the girls’ dormitory on Western styles and in contrast with most standard Palestinian homes. Alice described the girls’ dormitory as the “most attractive, with the thirty-five white beds,” with sunshine flooding into the room. She continues, confirming that everything in the room was in opposition to the atmosphere of Palestinian homes. Jones, in describing one of these homes she visited, contended that it had “dim light,” “smoky walls and dirty furnishings.” She commented that the girls’ life in the boarding school made them appreciate their residence there. She hoped they would take this experience with them when they return to their homes, “at least the cleanliness and order,” and most importantly “a higher ideal of what life should mean and home duties and home loves.”[106] Missionaries used descriptions of contrasting spaces to present Western and native cultures. They used whiteness to symbolize purity and cleanliness to describe their spaces, while dark and smoky spaces were used to describe the spaces of Palestinians, which were viewed as dirty and unhealthy environments.

Alice Jones viewed the girls who came from the villages as being more backwards than those who came from cities or large towns. The use of bedsteads for the village girls “was mysterious,” but once they found they “were not to get under them, and the little white beds were opened and they were tucked in, they were very happy. At the table the use of the spoon had to be learned, and one little girl thought the tablecloth was to be used to wipe the plates off after eating.”[107] Rosa Lee reported to the Friends Board an “amusing” incident of a mother who came with her daughter to the GTH at the beginning of the school year. The mother was looking at the bed where her daughter was going to sleep and she urged her to “hold fast with both hands all night lest she fall out and get hurt.” The daughter was “accustomed to sleep on a bed upon the floor.”[108] Another example stated that one of the girls slept on the floor under her bed for three nights because she “had no idea of the use of the bedstead,” however, “these girls show a wonderful power of adaptation and the new methods were quickly learned” as Ruth Murray claimed.[109] The girls became acquainted with the new life in the GTH and were presented by the American missionaries as open to change their old habits.

In the boarding school, girls were taught prayer rituals, hygiene standards, time regulation, and punctuality. When a girl was admitted to the Home she would be given a bath where her scalp and hair were carefully cleaned. A girl previously in the Home would act as an older sister or mother to the new girl entering the Home. The older girls would look “after her clothes, seeing that her hair is combed, shoes laced. . . . At night she has her prayers with the other girls and goes to sleep in her clean, white bed.”[110] At six o’clock in the morning the girls would wake up to the bell sound and get dressed, air their beds, and with the next bell sound, all would kneel next to their beds and complete their morning silent prayers. After breakfast, they would make their beds and perform their assigned chores in the Home. By half past eight everything in the Home would be in order. Then, after the chapel exercises, the morning program began with the Bible lessons. Other subjects were taken such as reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history, with special attention paid to physiology and hygiene. The afternoon program began each day with recitation, singing, or writing. The rest of the afternoon was spent learning domestic skills such as mending, sewing, and ironing.[111] Promptness, cleanliness, and neatness were among the first lessons the girls at the GTH practiced. The school song that the girls learned highlighted these values. Examples of some of the verses include:

Be still! Be still! You’ll hear this trio sing,

Be still! Be still! And you shall wear a ring,

For voice low and gentle are considered quite the thing,

At the Girls Training Home in Ramallah

There are all the lamps to clean, the wash to put away,

The guest room put in order for friends may come today,

And every place kept tidy where little children play,

. . .

Keep step! Keep step! We’re going for a walk,

Keep step! Keep step! Be sure not to talk,

Until we have passed the village, we all must walk not talk,

. . .

When we go upstairs to work, Miss Bedeah’s surely there

Seeing that the room is swept, not missing e’en a hair,

And that all the clothes are folded neatly on a chair,

. . .

Be quick! Be quick! Put out the beds to air,

Be quick! Be quick! Don’t loiter on the stair,

And on Wednesday morning, please, inspect each bed with care,

. . .

Be neat! Be neat! You hear the benches squeak,

. . . [112]

These poetic verses are a clear affirmation of the societal standards of femininity and marriage. The students here are encouraged to inhabit these characteristic such as “low voice” and “stillness” in order to be able to “wear a ring,” meaning to be suitable for marriage. Patriarchal suppression of the voice of women is evident in these poetic verses.

Attendance was mandatory at the Friends’ religious services every morning. For Christian girls the service was important and stressed universal Christian messages that did not contradict their eastern Christian rites. The few Muslim girls also memorized sections from the Bible and recited the service, usually without any objections. However, for some of the Muslim girls, participating in the entire religious requirement was not comfortable. For example, the Mudeer or governor’s Muslim sister, Hulda, was afraid that her brother would pull her out of the GTH if he discovered that she was doing the entire religious requirement in the school. But he was open-minded about this issue according to the American teachers.[113] Because the brother did not want Hulda to stay for Sunday meetings, the missionaries made sure that she would “attend six days for prayer and Bible classes and Christian influence in other ways.”[114]

Hulda’s case shows missionaries illustrated how education and family position were the reasons the mudeer family sent their daughter Hulda/Haldiya to the GTH. Her brother, the government director mudeer nahiye in Ramallah, was educated in Constantinople, as were the other male members in the family, none of whom objected to sending her to an American missionary school.

The case of a Muslim Jerusalemite, Joseph/Yousef Pasha, exhibits another instance where missionaries associated the acceptance of Muslim parents to admit their daughters to the GTH due to their class status. The families also previously had contact with Western ideas and culture prior to sending their daughters or sisters to the mission school. In April of 1904, two of his daughters graduated from the GTH. Missionaries elaborated on this by mentioning that they were the daughters of an upper class Jerusalemite. The missionaries celebrated his presence at the graduation day, and invited him to a dinner two days after the ceremony.

Joseph Pasha was described as “an old man, traveled, educated, liberal in his views and very kind to Christians.”[115] Missionaries claimed education, exposure to Western culture and modernity, as well as class affiliation as the reasons why some Muslims were more open-minded toward mission schools and Christians. More importantly, the phrase “kind to Christians” carried a hint that an uneasy relationship between Muslims and Christians existed and cases such as Pasha’s were the exception.

Upon their admission to the GTH, girls were instructed to adopt a European style of dress. Clothes seemed to present a symbol of division between Arab/Muslim and American cultures. American teachers looked at the dresses and veils of Muslim girls as outdated, strange, and impractical. Removal of the veil represented “a compassion for a victim who was waiting beyond the fetters of the veil, for the missionary ‘rescue.’”[116] Thus missionaries use dress to perform both gender and societal status. Garb represents a visible marker delineating the insider from the outsider. In colonial discourses, native garb is made to visibly represent lower hierarchical status. Recall oppressive racialization and the visibility of skin color.[117] Once she was accepted in the GTH, Hulda was instructed to take off her veil and her thob, a long silk dress-like garment. At first, according to the missionary teachers, the girls feared any male contact. Even eye contact from Mr. Peck or Nikola, the school servants, frightened them. In Hulda’s case, after a short period of time, she was “no longer afraid of the men connected with the mission.”[118]

Her fear of engaging in eye contact with any male was an indication of the middle- and upper-class Muslim women’s cultural norm of seclusion. Even when recognizing the existence of a patriarchal tradition within Palestinian Muslim society, the extreme depiction of the young woman’s fear seems less convincing when considering possible alternatives: such as standards of modesty and bashfulness that could also explain the girl’s attitudes toward the male servants. Also, the act of taking off the veil in front of male strangers was taboo. The daily life and the rules in the GTH compelled the girls to adopt the modern dress as seen more fit by the missionaries. The GTH graduation photographs for early classes until the 1930s present the girls in a white European/American dress style.[119]

While much instruction was in the Arabic language, the English language was emphasized and the older girls were required to speak in English during recess and recreational hours. Missionary teachers enforced English by punishing those caught speaking Arabic. Miss Katie punished one girl, Asma, by pinning a card on her back with the word “Indolent” written on it. She had to keep the card on her back until she wrote a letter to Miss Katie. Asma’s letter said:

My Dear Miss Katie,

With sad heart I’ll write you this letter to tell you that I am indolent in talking Arabic during this week but I’ll promise you that I will talk English from now till we go home and please excuse me for what I have done.[120]

Teaching the English language to the girls was one of the most important mediums of cultural penetration. Along with Western styles of dress, proficiency in the English language was strongly encouraged as a sign of westernization and hence modernization.

Domestic skills were a top priority of the GTH’s agenda. For this reason, the Mission’s reports highlighted the teachers’ academic qualifications, as well as their abilities to be good housekeepers. Rosa Lee, for example, declared that Mrs. Rosenberger and Mrs. Gilchrist were good housekeepers and expert teachers.[121] These qualifications made them suitable to teach the girls to become good housekeepers and teachers.[122] The domestic skills taught in the GTH were the same skills the missionary teachers learned during their schooling in America. The domestic skills taught to the Palestinian girls were eagerly received by the students and pleased their parents.

The gender roles present in Arab society dictated the form of education offered and the Ramallah mission’s education reinforced the gender roles already in existence. Ironically, American missionaries and Palestinian society shared many similar gender ideals, as seen in the validation of the Mission’s domestic training by Palestinian families. Also, the manual skills and land cultivation training for boys, which were emphasized in the early years of the establishment of the Boys Training Home, found support among Palestinians who saw this as typical training for males.[123]

The boys, as the Ramallah Messenger indicated, “need land, to cultivate and improve, to keep them near the soil which has been the support and business of their fathers and many past generations of ancestors.” Industrial/mechanical training was also provided to the boys in order to enable the new male generation to transform the Arab society through the development of trade skills. This type of education was a universal aim for Quaker missions. In Africa, the Quakers’ objective was to teach natives manual and practical skills that would not only help change their society, but would also aid in sustaining and providing financial support for the Friends’ mission.[124]

In a letter written in 1911, Mrs. Rosenberger indicated that Miss Jones, the GTH superintendent, asked her to give more attention to teaching the girls domestic skills. Upon this request, Rosenberger “planned out a course modeled after that given by the domestic science schools at home.” In her letter, she explained what the girls learned in sewing class:

Each girl is preparing her book of samples, which begins with pasting and running seams, hemming, filling, French seaming, overcasting, overhanding, batching, matching stripes and plaids and checks, gathering, ruffling, facing, banding, placing gusset, button holes, buttons, hooks and eyes, darning, etc., etc., some twenty to twenty-five of the simple, ordinary stitches to be taken in plain sewing. . . . You know how difficult it is to get them to do anything accurately.[125]

Missionaries saw these as vital skills that would prepare the girls to be good mothers and wives and those who would work after graduation as teachers would be equipped to train other girls in the same fashion. The American Consul in Jerusalem, W. Coffin, praised the Ramallah Mission for their efforts in preparing the girls to be good housekeepers. He indicated that the Friends were doing “splendid work.” Coffin went on to indicate that getting the girls to “follow the principles of hygiene” after graduation would be “a great monument to its [mission] work.”[126]

Graduates were expected to exert influence in their families and spread what they learned from the Friends American schools. The Ramallah Messenger bragged, “It was sweet to see the place in the home that a girl graduate of our school occupies when she returns home to live. How differently she stands, how she reigns like a queen as she sweetly exercises her acquired graces with parents, brothers and sisters!”[127]

The graduates of the GTH, especially those who gained access to the public sphere, exerted more responsibility and power at home. For example, Helanie, a graduate from the home, worked as a teacher in Tayyibeh and earned an income of $120 a year. She used the money to purchase clothing, furniture such as a table, chairs, and a sewing machine for the family home, and paid the GTH $20 for her sister’s tuition. Lee described her life in the village of Tayyibeh as “a candle in a dark room.”[128] The education and training she received at the GTH and the work provided to her by the American Quakers gave her autonomy at home and enabled her to manage her money the best way and with limited parental interference. Her purchase of the sewing machine symbolized the influence of the Quaker women’s teaching of modern domestic skills. Also, Martha’s purchase of the furniture, when the custom in most Palestinian villages and towns was still to sit on a floor mat, demonstrates the influence of the missionaries’ teachings of living a modern domestic life.

In 1906, upon making some home visits to former graduates of the GTH in Ramleh and Lydda, coastal cities in Palestine, Anna Edward Kelsey indicated that these girls were living up to the teaching of domesticity which they acquired in their education at the Home. For example, she found Footine Sh’bitah using the household skills she learned while helping her mother take care of her siblings. Kelsey also found Footine’s cousin, Foomia, married to a doctor who was a graduate of the American College in Beirut. Kelsey commented on the effect of the American missionary education on the couple and contended that their home “had several rooms well furnished, and the general appearance of the home, the parents and their little child gave evidence of the training received in two American schools in this land.” In Lydda, Kelsey found graduate Emily Karem teaching the older girls in the Church Missionary School. Her students were mostly Muslims but she observed “the seed of the Gospel was taking root in their young hearts.” The Ramallah Messenger reported that among the GTH graduates Nazha`Rodeslie (1895), Ramza Fiani (1903), Nabiha Barakat (1903), Helanie Badhal (1903), all became teachers in the GTH. Julia Garabidian (1903) became a teacher in the Boston Day School, Amelie Abdo (1903) at the Hope Day School, and Saada Audi (1900) at the North School. Helaine Totah and Ahzeezie (Aziza) Rafeedia (1903) taught in Ain Areek Day School, Marth Abdo (1900) in Jyffneh Day School, and Jameely Rizk in Tayibeh Day School.

All these “native” teachers were equipped with the Quakers’ training, which emphasized the teachings of the Bible, basic reading and writing, hygiene and domestic skills. These teachers were also required to be good mothers and wives when they got married.[129] After twenty years, according to their own standards, Quaker women perceived their work to be a success, based on the same criteria on which it was founded, elevating women to become good mothers, wives and “Christian teachers” (instead of slaves and home drudges).

In evaluating their progress in their Christian educational work, two decades after the establishment of the Friends Mission, the Ramallah Messenger emphasized that their mission’s objective was to “preside over our Ramallah girls who have learned of Christ and how He would have them live as wives and mothers.” Moreover, after twenty years of “Christian effort . . . [t]here is more freedom for women, more manliness among the men and much more consideration of each other’s rights.” When the American Counsel, Thomas R. Wallace, visited the school in early 1910, he praised the Friends’ work in Ramallah and its surroundings. He commented that the “villages where the schools are located have greatly improved in intelligence and general manner of life since its schools were opened.”[130]

Wallace continued, recognizing that the students “who graduated from its schools are much favored as teachers. They take high rank and find good places.” His observations confirm and complement that of the missionaries. The American Consul in Jerusalem sent a letter in November of 1910, affirming the positive influence of the Mission schools. When speaking about the students, the letter said, “If, when they leave the Mission, they follow the principles of hygiene you (said to Mr. Rosenberger) inculcate at Ramallah, that alone would be a great monument to its work.”[131] This is not unique to American diplomats in this period who were of the same mind-set as the missionaries, both of whom saw themselves as the carriers of American Manifest Destiny—transforming the underprivileged and uncivilized world through their superior culture and Christian values that transcended those of the inferior “Others.”[132] Now the girls would at least have a “choice as to marriage,” live “with clean, industrious habits,” and “make [a] happier home.” And, if she became a teacher, she would be a good missionary to her society.[133]

Women’s roles as mothers and wives should be seen here in a cross-cultural patriarchal context. Missionaries failed to or chose not to acknowledge the similarities between cultural gender roles, in regard to the role of women as mothers and wives, which the two societies already held in common. They interpreted success in areas where Palestinians felt amenable to change already, such as in modernizing their domestic sphere by acquiring furniture and other material goods.

Missionaries also seemed to ignore the fact that certain skills were already held among local women, like training in sewing and needlework for which Ramallah women were already famous. By initially portraying Palestinian women as “slaves,” and not as mothers within society, this allowed the missionaries to define their students’ roles as wives and mothers, a change facilitated by the missionaries and the training they provided. In fact, Palestinian mothers looked for ways to better their children’s lives and learn new techniques in housekeeping, when their material conditions permitted such changes. As Ellen Fleischmann argued, “Missionaries were largely responsible for merely ‘modernizing’ the domestic dimension of Middle East women’s identity.”[134] This sphere’s cross-cultural similarities confirmed shared principles of motherhood among women in both American and Palestinians societies, even when American missionaries failed to recognize the resemblance.

The twentieth century can be considered as the period of time that harnessed the initial stage of interaction between Palestinians and Americans, which was one of misunderstanding and misconception. American Quaker women were unable to place themselves in the Palestinian cultural context. Their focus on Palestinian women’s supposedly degraded conditions led to a concern with improving these conditions according to American middle-class Christian values and domestic ideals of good mothers, wives, and daughters. Elevating the position of Arab women through changes which corresponded to particular social and cultural norms served as a justification for the presence and work of the missionaries. Their writings not only showed disapproval and dismay of social customs concerning women’s status, but also expressed the enthusiasm and confidence of their role as exemplary figures and instruments of social change through their Christian educational message. Despite the missionary women’s attitudes toward Arab culture and society, their interaction with Palestinian students in the GTH led to the creation of a middle ground, where both students and teachers would negotiate their relationship in order to produce more accommodation and understanding.

Notes

1.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia, the Friends,” 56–58.

2.

Samir Khalaf, Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820–1860 (London: Routledge, 2012), 14–15.

3.

Ibid., 14.

4.

For more information on ‘Manifest Destiny’ see Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995); on missionaries ideologies see Torben Christensen and William R. Hutchison, Missionary Ideologies in the Imperialist Era, 1880–1920 (Århus, Denmark: Aros, c1982).

5.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Feminist Review, no. 30 (Autumn 1988): 61–88, 64.

6.

Report of the FGS, Ramallah, Palestine, January 1945 to December 1945.

7.

For more information on women’s engagement in the nineteenth-century reform movement see Tiffany K. Wayne, Women's Roles in Nineteenth-Century America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007); Karen Pastorello, The Progressives: Activism and Reform in American Society, 1893–1917 (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2014).

8.

J. S. Reed, “‘A Female Movement’: The Feminization of Anglo-Catholicism,” Anglican and Episcopal History 57, 73–95 (1988): 199–238; see also Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: New Avon Books, 1977); Barbara Welter, “The Feminization of American Religion, 1800–1860,” in Clio's Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women, ed. Mary Hartmann and Lois Banner (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).

9.

Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1985), 5.

10.

Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer 1966), 151–74.

11.

Gulnar Eleanor Frances-Dehqani, “The Gendering of Missionary Imperialism: The Search for an Integrated Methodology,” in Gender, Religion and Diversity: Cross-cultural Perspectives, ed. Ursula King and Tina Beattie (London: Continuum, 2005), eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed July 6, 2015), 127.

12.

For more information see Frances Cogan, All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1989).

13.

James Midgley, Social Development: The Developmental Perspective in Social Welfare (London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 263.

14.

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994).

15.

M. Yeggenoglu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 71.

16.

Antoinette M. Burton, The White Woman's Burden: British Feminists and the Indian Woman, 1865–1915 vol. 13, no. 4 (1990): 295–308.

17.

Rosa Lee began her work at Ramallah’s Mission in 1903. She served in different posts, including matron, English teacher in the Girls and Boys Training Home, and supervising the day schools in Ramallah and the surrounding villages.

18.

Rosa Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” in Holy Land Missions and Missionaries, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 12.

19.

Ibid., 12.

20.

Weber, “Unveiling Scheherazade,” 127.

21.

The Ramallah Messenger, no. 2 (June 1910): 7.

22.

For more information on this process see Karen Seat in "Providence Has Freed Our Hands": Women's Missions and the American Encounter with Japan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008).

23.

The term “middle ground” originally was used by Richard White in The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1991). In this work White investigates the Native American interaction with Europeans, especially the French, between 1650 and 1815. He explains how a middle ground culture was created because of the inability of one culture to dominate the other. The middle ground would vanish after 1812 as the American culture became dominant and the Indian culture became seen as backward, exotic, and alien.

24.

Margaret Hope Bacon, Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (New York: Walker Publishing, 1980).

25.

For more information see Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980); Geraldine Jonçich Clifford, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

26.

Ida Withers Harrison, Forty Years of Service: A History of the Christian Woman's Board of Missions, 1874–1914 (Indianapolis, IN: Christian Woman's Board of Missions, 1914).

27.

Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 76–175; Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah mission,” in Holy Land Missions and Missionaries, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 31; The Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (Dec. 1910), 4.

28.

Bacon, Mothers of Feminism, 179–81; see also Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1985).

29.

Pink Dandelion, An Introduction to Quakerism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 159.

30.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia,” 59.

31.

Leslie A. Flemming, “Introduction: Studying Women Missionaries in Asia,” in Women’s Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia (Colorado: Westview Press, 1989), 5.

32.

Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World/Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

33.

Elihu Grant, The People of Palestine (Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1921), 66.

34.

Ibid., 66.

35.

“Commencement,” Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 3 (September 1910): 4.

36.

Rosa Lee, “The Temperance Cause at Ramallah,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no. 5 (April, 1904): 3; “Notes,” Ramallah Messenger 6, no. 1 (March 1909): 4; Ruth S. Murray, “Palestine,” Friends Missionary Advocate 7, no. 5 (May 1891): 67.

37.

Rosa Lee, “The Temperance Cause at Ramallah,” 3.

38.

Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 14; Also see Patricia Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 2.

39.

“Women Missionaries in Foreign Lands,” Friends Missionary Advocate 8, no. 8 (August, 1892): 119.

40.

Ibid., 119.

41.

For more information on “strategic essentialism” see Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 1996).

42.

“Women’s Work for Women” was a phrase used by the Women’s Foreign Mission Society of the American Presbyterian Church. It was used in 1870 as the title of their magazine. This phrase held a conviction of the superiority of Western women’s Christianity and civilization and thus their duty to elevate the status of women in other countries.

43.

“Women Missionaries in Foreign Lands,” Friends Missionary Advocate 8, no. 8 (August 1892): 118.

44.

Etta H. Johnston, Eli and Sybil Jones Mission: Ten Miles North of Jerusalem (Ramallah, Palestine, 1890) Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. This pamphlet was published for the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of New England. It describes the life in the GTH to the Women Friends Missionary Society. The purpose of this account was to encourage the continuous financial fund the society was providing to Ramallah Mission.

45.

Kamal Salibi and Yusuf K. Khoury, ed., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Ottoman Syria 1847–1860, vol. 3 (Amman, Jordan: Royal Institute for enter-Faith Studies, 1995), 31–32. Bird and Goodell were two of the first missionaries who went to Syria and were accompanied by their wives in 1823.

46.

Reina Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism, 142.

47.

For more information see Rosa Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” in Holy Land Missions and Missionaries, ed. Moshe Davis (New York: Arno Press, 1977).

48.

“A Story,” Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (December 1910): 7; Etta H. Johnston, Eli and Sybil Jones Mission: Ten Miles North of Jerusalem.

49.

Rosa Lee, “Words of Welcome,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no. 4 (March 1904): 2.

50.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 10.

51.

Ibid., 14.

52.

Etta H. Johnston, Eli and Sybil Jones Mission: Ten Miles North of Jerusalem, 9.

53.

Rhonda Anne Sempl, Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism, and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission (Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003), 111.

54.

Etta H. Johnston, Eli and Sybil Jones Mission: Ten Miles North of Jerusalem (Ramallah, Palestine, 1890) Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College.

55.

Stockdale, 10.

56.

Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (Nov. 1989): 622–33, 622.

57.

Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking, 2005), 21.

58.

Ibid., 5–7.

59.

Ibid., 8.

60.

Rosa Lee, “Snap Shots in Palestine,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no. 8 (July 1904): 4.

61.

“Notes,” Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (September 1910): 8.

62.

Rosa Lee, “Stories from Life,” Ramallah Messenger 5, no. 2 (June 1908): 4. This was a Muslim village family. Generally, according to Muslim marriage customs, the bride had to agree on the groom and could not be forced. To ensure her free-will agreement and that she was not forced, the Imam, the religious man who made the marriage contract, had to ask the girl personally for her agreement.

63.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 25–26.

64.

Rosa Lee, “Stories from Life,” Ramallah Messenger 5, no. 2 (June 1908): 4.

65.

Ibid.

66.

For more information about women and family in the Arab world see Suad Joseph, “Gender and Family in the Arab World,” In Arab Women between Defiance and Restraint, ed. Suha Sabbagh (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1996). Usually the widow’s and her children’s inheritance right would be warranted as well.

67.

Palestine Reports, 1911–1938. Friends United Meeting, Wider Ministries Records, microfilm 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

68.

The average girls’ marriage age was predominantly between fourteen and sixteen during this period. Three decades later the average marriage age became between fifteen and nineteen.

69.

Asma Eid Letter to Alice Jones, “An Appreciation from Ramallah,” Ramallah Messenger 6, no. 3 (September 1909): 7.

70.

For more information on the social and cultural developments in the Palestinian cities see Ruth Kark, “The Contribution of the Ottoman Regime to the Development of Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1840–1917,” in Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period Political, Social and Economic Transformation (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1986).

71.

Alice Jones, “Letter to the American Friends,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 1 (March 1907), 6.

72.

“New England Yearly Meeting, Palestine,” Friends Missionary Advocate (April 1908), 2. The Twelve Annual Report of the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, Part of the Friends Society of American Friends Board of Missions Annual Reports, 1900–1914, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Alice Jones studied Arabic before she went to Ramallah in 1906, but there is no indication in the report of her proficiency in Arabic.

73.

Ruth Murray, Friends Mission at Ramallah, Palestine (Friends School, Ramallah, Palestine, 1890), Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, 8.

74.

Ruth S. Murray, “Palestine,” Friends Missionary Advocate 7, no. 5 (May 1891): 67.

75.

For more information on this subject see Lester Groves Pittman, Missionaries and Emissaries: The Anglican Church in Palestine 1841–1948 (PhD diss., University of Virginia, August 1998).

76.

Adel Mana, `Tarikh Falasteen, 225; Shalh, Al-Ta’lyem fi Falasteen, 202–3.

77.

The degree and the manner of implementing the spiritual message among the Ramallah Mission students continued to be an issue of concern and anxiety among the American missionaries in Ramallah and the American Board in Richmond, Indiana until after World War II.

78.

“Notes,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no, 6 (May 1904): 2. The missionaries thought that the number was impressive after more than two decades of starting their mission in Ramallah compared with the very low attendance they received in the early years.

79.

Grater Syria was also called during this period Bilad al-Sham, and included Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon as classified during the British and French Mandate period between the two world wars.

80.

Ellen Clare Miller, Eastern Sketches: Notes of Scenery, Schools, and Tent Life in Syria and Palestine (Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Company, 1871), 133–34.

81.

Timothy B. Hussey, “The Mission at Ramallah,” Friends Missionary Advocate 5, no. 10 (November 1889): 157.

82.

“The Eli and Sybil Jones Mission, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Palestine,” Friends Missionary Advocate 7, no. 4 (May 1891): 70.

83.

“New England Yearly Meeting, Palestine,” Friends Missionary Advocate (April 1908): 2. The Thirteenth Annual Report of the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, Part of the Friends Society of American Friends Board of Missions Annual Reports, 1900–1914, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College.

84.

Timothy B. Hussey, “The Mission at Ramallah,” Friends Missionary Advocate 5, no. 10 (November 1889): 158.

85.

Lois Harned Jordan, Ramallah Teacher: The Life of Mildred White, Quaker Missionary (Richmond, Indiana: Print Press, 1995), 54.

86.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 30–31.

87.

Ibid., 30–31.

88.

Ibid., 30–31.

89.

Heather J. Sharkey, Cultural Conversions: Unexpected Consequences of Christian Missionary Encounters in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed July 3, 2015), 11.

90.

See Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis 28 (Spring 1984): 125–33.

91.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 19.

92.

Oihane Petralanda Prados, “In What Ways did Nineteenth Century Advertising Reflect, and Perpetuate, Ideas of Empire?” Consumer Culture & Advertising (28 April, 2014): 4. www.academia.edu/6903736/In_what_ways_did_nineteenth_century_adver
tising_reflect_and_perpetuate_ideas_of_empire. See also Peter Kareithi, “White Man’s Burden: How Global Media Empires Continue to Construct Difference,” Rhodes Journalism Review 20 (2001): 6–19.

93.

Anisa Ma`luf, Mu`asasat al-Asdeqa`al-Amrecan fi Falasteen men Sanat 1869–1939/ The Society of the American Friends in Palestine, from Year 1869–1939 (Egypt: The Modern Press, 1939), 62–23. Translated by the author.

94.

The Minutes and Proceedings of the Yearly Meeting of Friends (American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana, 1948), 169.

95.

Ma’louf, Mu`asasat al-Asdeqa`al-Amracan, 62.

96.

The Minutes and Proceedings of the Yearly Meeting of Friends (American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana, 1948), 169; H. Johnston, Eli and Sybil Jones Mission: Ten Miles North of Jerusalem (Ramallah, Palestine, 1890), Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College.

97.

The Minutes and Proceeding of the Yearly Meeting of Friends, Religious Life of our Mission Field (London: Brook Hill Quaker College): 167–68.

98.

A. Edward Kelsey, “A Sabbath in Ram Allah,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no, 7 (June 1904): 3; vol. 4, no. 1 (March 1909), 2; Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 38.

99.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 18–19.

100.

While they never converted Muslim girls, missionaries still claimed success in exerting a Christian influence among these villages. The influence of the Friends’ missionary work spread to the Muslim villages and was emphasized by the missionary teachers. Henrietta Johnston Camp, for example, in 1910 stated when she returned to Ramallah from America with a group of visitors that they “noticed the influence of the Christian village (Ramallah) upon Beeroth (Bireh) and other nearby Moslem villages—new houses, cleaner people, day school. . . . A few other Palestinian towns now, because of the presence of Christians, seem just emerging from primitive darkness.”

101.

Alice Jones, “Letter from Alice Jones,” Ramallah Messenger 5, no. 1 (March 1908): 3.

102.

For more information see Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, Speak Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1989). Folktales circulated orally among the people and were transmitted from one generation to another. The tradition of storytelling was entrenched in the Arab popular culture through folktales developed since the pre-Islamic times. After the emergence of Islam, storytelling continued and became influenced by religion and supernatural spirits (the jinn). The old Arab folktales held assertions of Arab values, such as bravery and generosity, as well as a religious message of good ethics and distinction between right and wrong.

103.

Ellen Fleishmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions in Lebanon on the Construction of Female Identity, c. 1860–1950,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 13, no. 4 (2002): 413.

104.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 8.

105.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 10, 14; Cora L. Pullen, “The Holy Land,” Friends Missionary Advocate 11, no. 6 (June 1893): 86.

106.

Alice Jones, “Letter to the American Friends,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 1 (March 1907), 7; Alice Jones, “Living Pictures at Ayn Arik,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 3 (September 1907): 4.

107.

Alice Jones, “Letter of Alice Jones,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 4 (December 1907): 3.

108.

A. Rosenberger, “Notes,” Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (December, 1910): 4.

109.

Murray, “Palestine,” 5.

110.

Alice Jones, “Letter of Alice Jones,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 4 (December 1907).

111.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 32–34.

112.

Friends Girls School collection, Ramallah, Palestine. No date.

113.

Alice Jones, “Haldiya,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 3 (September 1907): 7; Almy Grant, “A Training Home Graduation,” Ramallah Messenger 1, no. 5 (April 1904): 2.

114.

Alice Jones, “First Moslem Girl in Training Home,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 3 (September 1907): 7. When the mudir requested the mission to take his fourteen-year-old sister as a student in the GTH, the teacher missionaries wanted to accept her but were hesitant because they feared the Ottoman authority, who usually questioned mission schools’ aims in admitting Muslim girls. However, after the mudir’s assurance that he would be responsible in case of any trouble from the authorities, the school admitted his sister.

115.

Alice Jones, “Haldiya,” Ramallah Messenger 4, no. 3 (September 1907): 7.

116.

Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and “Heathen Lands” American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s–1940s (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 125.

117.

For more on performance theory see V.W. Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1988); J. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York; London: Routledge, 1993).

118.

Jones, “First Moslem Girl in Training Home,” 7.

119.

In the first two graduate classes of 1895 and 1898, the girls dressed in a dark colored Western-style dress. The rest of the classes after that were all white Western-style dresses except for the 1924 dresses were white but with Ramallah embroidery cross-stitched cultural design and the 1931 class dress which was not white and had some flowers.

120.

“Notes,” Ramallah Messenger 3, no. 5 (September 1906): 7–8. The students at GTH formed the Girls’ Peace Society during the early years of this period. The society was established by Henrietta Johnston, the English teacher who arrived in Ramallah in late 1889. The pledge of the Peace Society was repeated every Sabbath: “I promised by help of God to live as peacefully as possible with everybody and to try to induce others to do the same.” The aim of the society as Lee explained was “keeping down petty jealousies in the school and in helping keep the girls sweet and kind.”

121.

Rosa Lee, “Extracts from a Personal Letter,” Ramallah Messenger 8, no. 1 (March 1911): 8.

122.

“Notes,” The Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (December, 1910): 8. Home economics were important for the Palestinian girls after graduation from GTH, especially for those who were going to be teachers in the different Friends’ village day schools (Jyfneh, Ain Areek, Tayyibeh, Bireh and Boston, Hope, and North in Ramallah), or in different regions, such as Nahmi Abushahla in Port Said, Egypt, and Aneesa and Najla Malouf in Cairo.

123.

“Notes,” The Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 4 (December, 1910): 8.

124.

Stafford, “The Southern Abaluyia,” 64.

125.

Rosenberger, “Mrs. Rosenberger Letter,” Ramallah Messenger 8, no. 1 (March 1911): 7.

126.

W. Coffin, “A Letter from Our Consul,” Ramallah Messenger 8, no. 1 (March 1911): 8.

127.

“If I Prefer not Jerusalem Above My Chief Joy,” Ramallah Messenger 6, no. 3 (September 1909): 4.

128.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 30; “Jifneh,” Ramallah Messenger 8, no. 1 (March 1911).

129.

“A Product of the Mission,” The Ramallah Messenger 3, no. 4 (June 1906): 5.

130.

“A Story: Chapter V,” Ramallah Messenger 7, no. 3 (September 1910): 8.

131.

Ibid.

132.

Ibid.

133.

Lee, “The Story of Ram Allah Mission,” 31.

134.

Ellen Fleischmann, “‘Our Moslem Sisters’: Women of greater Syria in the Eyes of American Protestant Missionary women,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 9, no. 3 (October 1998): 319.

Chapter 3

Changing Attitudes
after World War I

The new political reality after World War I enabled the American Quakers to operate their mission in Ramallah under the British colonial project. This is in contrast to the prewar period, in which they operated under Ottoman rule. According to American missionaries, the British mission to modernize and civilize the society replaced the long period of languishing and despotic rule of the Turks. During the interwar period, the encounters between Quaker missionaries and Palestinians influenced both groups in a variety of ways.

Cultural contacts tend to produce a middle-ground discourse that affects participatory groups in different ways, which formulated and produced outcomes conditioned by the political, social, and cultural contexts. The creation of the middle ground expresses the interests of these groups who desired to benefit from their encounters, yet within the power structure that conditioned these negotiations. Nevertheless, while missionaries had more control of their educational and spiritual operations, Palestinian students, teachers, and parents, along with the political and cultural developments, had a space to negotiate their interests using strategies to adjust and amend aims and rules implemented by missionaries.

Relationships between cultures were flexible and subject to change, regardless of the initial goals set forth by the people engaged in these encounters. This observation confirms that “cultures do not survive in isolation but are interconnected and interdependent. This presupposes that any social contact between two groups impacts upon both sides.”[1] Therefore, the encounters between Palestinians and Quaker missionaries in Ramallah changed both groups in distinct ways and affected them as groups and as individuals. This chapter will examine the impact of these encounters on American missionaries after World War I and highlight the factors that played a role in changing the perceptions of missionary women as a result of their interaction with Palestinians and their culture.

Myriad cultural and social developments in both Palestine and America encouraged the emergence of new perspectives. Such developments include the Quakers’ religious ideals of peace, internationalism, and nonviolence that came to redefine their perception of Palestine as a biblical landscape in the midst of political tensions. This perception resulted in ambiguous teaching while focusing on the centrality of Palestine to the Abrahamic religions (further discussed in chapter four). After World War I, a new strategy to conduct cooperation emerged among the different Protestant missions. Linguistic and cultural training was encouraged among missionaries and resulted in better understanding of local culture; missionaries with long periods of contact with Palestinians tended to adjust and change their preconceived notions.[2] Although some missionaries changed their perception, not all Quaker missionaries transcended their prejudices and misconceptions, as some teachers still showed insensitivity toward the local culture.[3] Due to social, political and cultural developments in Palestine and America, many missionaries voiced the necessity of adjustment to new realities and amendment of their working strategies among Palestinians. In this chapter I survey important developments that lead to changes in the perceptions of missionaries while providing examples of social practices and school histories including students’ backgrounds and enrollment during the Mandate period.

The Friends Girls School (FGS)
during the Mandate

Between 1914 and 1919, with the outbreak of World War I, the Friends schools were closed and the American Friends in Ramallah left the country. However, two of the Friends women missionaries, Alice Jones and Rosa Lee, along with Edward Kelsey, the superintendent of the FBS before the war, were able to reenter the country as volunteers in the Red Cross relief program in June of 1918 for one year. Alice Jones took care of an orphanage and Rosa Lee worked with people among the villages that were already acquainted with her from her previous work in the Friends Ramallah Mission prior to the war.[4]

The Friends schools in Ramallah were reopened as soon as the war ended. The public schools were under strict and full British colonial control, while mission and private schools were free from any government interference. Therefore, the Quaker administrative staff could determine their schools’ curricula and objectives jointly, with the Board Mission in Richmond, Indiana. The Department of Education in Mandate Palestine issued a yearly mini grant to private schools. Beginning in 1921, the Friends schools were granted two hundred pounds per year.[5]

American Quakers supported the British Mandate because they recognized that opportunities for greater freedom were granted to their missionary activities than during Ottoman rule. Their apparent celebrative language of the British conquest of Palestine expounded an end of a stagnant stage under Turkish rule and the beginning of a promising period of development.

An example of this optimism is found in the writings of Christina Jones, an American missionary who came to Palestine after World War I along with her husband Willard—who became the principal of FBS and the Secretary of the Ramallah Mission—stated that “the whole country had suffered neglect and the lack of progress,” during “four hundred years of rule from Constantinople.” Now, under the British control, the country would progress and graduates from the Friends schools would find jobs as the “English government in 1918 needed young people who knew English and had some education and understanding of Western people.”[6]

In the Annual Report of the American Mission in Ramallah, the Friends viewed the British Government in Palestine as “effective.” In many areas, the developments were “fast” and there was “evidence of material prosperity on every hand.” Prosperity was measured by looking at the girls who attended public school in Ramallah who all “wore shoes and stockings. Only few years ago Ram Allah people did well to furnish such luxuries for the boys of the family.” Ecological changes were present as well; Ramallah streets were “now cleaned by scavengers in place of the dogs that used to do the work. They were lighted and patrolled at night.”[7] This perception was typical of other Western missionaries who welcomed colonization of the “Eastern” societies as a way to transport and progress toward civilization.

In 1919, the GTH was renamed to the Friends Girls School (FGS) as enrollment of both day and boarder students increased. When the school was reopened after the war, due to the economic situation and high cost of food, it was hard to admit more than thirty-two boarders—even with reduced fees. Ten of these girls paid full tuition and the rest either paid half or more of the standard fee.

During the summer of 1925, the FGS building was remodeled in order to house more incoming students and reached one hundred girls, seventy of whom were boarders.[8] By 1934, the school building was enlarged significantly and had three floors with two halls, called Swift and Whittier after Sara J. Swift and Alice Whittier Jones.[9] The annual report of the FGS indicated an increase in the number of day students and a decrease in the number of boarders in 1927 compared to the previous years. An explanation for the decrease of boarder students could be related to the opening of public schools in different towns and cities for girls, which made attending schools closer to home more accessible.

More girls from Ramallah were enrolled in schools than before, which was a large contributing factor to the increase in the number of day students.[10] In addition, the increased number of Ramallah girls indicated that the student body at the FGS became more diverse, as the majority of the girls belonged to the lower and middle classes. From 1931 to 1932, there were 180 students with 96 boarders, with 19 of them being young boys.[11] During the 1933 to 1934 school year, enrollment increased to 106 boarders and 75 day students. Among the boarders were 75 girls and 30 boys under ten years old.[12]

The younger boys typically lived in rented houses near the FGS because the older girls acted as mothers and were able to aid their teachers. In the following school year, the FGS opened with 160 students, with eighty-three of them being boarders.[13] The slight decrease was a result of the economic and political situation of the country and partially due to the increase of tuition fees.[14] During the years of the Great Arab Revolt (1935 to 1939), enrollment declined, but the reduction was not significant enough to prevent the school from opening. During those years, there were 73 boarder girls and 25 younger boarder boys. However, in 1940, enrollment increased substantially, reaching 219 students, with 87 boarders, 8 of whom were young boys.[15] In 1943, there were 93 boarders; among them were eight young boys, with a total of 199 students.[16] In the 1940s, it was typical for the number of elementary level students to decrease due to the lack of availability of government schools. However, the secondary level classes showed continuous increase.[17] Many parents preferred to send their children to school for elementary level education because the government schools required little or no fees.[18] Those who wanted their daughters to pursue secondary education would send them to private schools, such as the FGS, because there was limited access to government secondary education.

Many of the FGS students came from middle- and upper- class families from cities and towns in Palestine including Nablus, Acre, Jaffa, and Jerusalem; poor students constituted a small percentage and came mainly from villages and small towns surrounding Ramallah, Birzeit, and Tayba. It was typical that girls from villages were awarded scholarships when they showed “special usefulness if education could be provided.” Christina Jones notes that most students came from families who could afford to pay tuition.[19] The ages of the students varied from nine and ten years old to fifteen and sixteen years old. Cases also document students that came from neighboring countries, including Jordan and Egypt. For example, Lily Harami, a fifteen-year-old girl from Alexandria, Egypt, attended the school in the 1920s. Also, in the 1944–1945 school year, the Ethiopian government sent three girls to the FGS with plans to receive an education and then return to their home country, where they were expected to work as teachers, nurses, or social workers. These girls were Coptic Christians.[20]

The majority of students before World War II were Palestinian Christians. Muslim students after World War I at FGS and FBS constituted one-third of the boys and 10 percent of the girls. Many Muslim students also were admitted as day students.[21] Part of the Quakers’ educational objective was to prepare female teachers who would carry Quaker messages to their villages and communities. It was assumed that students who would work at village schools would more likely be from humble backgrounds.

The majority of the students at the FGS remained Christians. However, by the 1940s, the number of Muslim students was increasing significantly, which became a major concern for the American Friends. With enrollment in 1943 reaching 224 students, many of the Muslim students’ applications were denied.[22] However, during some school years, the number of the Muslim boarder students outnumbered that of Christians. During 1944, there were 89 boarder students, with 49 of them being Muslims.[23] From 1945 to 1946, there was 267 students enrolled among them were 68 Muslims and the rest Christians from different denominations (118 Greek Orthodox, 25 Catholic, 56 Protestants). Among these students were 29 young boys who, after fourth elementary level, would be sent to the FBS. In 1947, the amount of students enrolled was 212, with 63 of them being Muslim girls and 149 of them being Christians, of whom only five were Friends.[24]

It seemed that the Friends schools’ tuition kept increasing over time. The FGS missionary staff acknowledged that by the 1940s with increasing school fees, the school would become mainly an institution for students from “high economic levels.” This fact meant the school had to change and modernize its departments to meet the expectations of the students. The report explained that these students:

Come from homes which possess many of the comforts, refinements, and many cases luxuries of modern home. But our boarding department, especially at the girls’ school, and also to some extent at the boys’ school, represent conditions in existence many, many years ago when the people of the country did not have the refinements in their home life that we find today among many of the people. Consequently, if our school is to furnish a satisfactory home life for many of these young people, the schools must look forward to a modernization of their boarding departments.[25]

The increasing school fees of the FGS were always a concern to the parents, especially among families in Ramallah. During particular years when the tuition increased, parents asked Ramallah’s mayor to serve as a mediator between them and the school administration to voice their concerns. Mediation is a widespread social practice in Palestinian society, and is used to settle disputes among families or clans (hamulas). The mayor, Salim Za`ror, sent an official letter in March 1941 to the Friends schools’ superintendent, Khalil Totah, to explain the dissatisfaction that the people of Ramallah expressed, and indicated that he received a large amount of complaints about the tuition increase.

According to Za’ror, the fee increase had no justification, especially during the war when most Ramallah people experienced financial difficulties. Often, the money they relied on from family members who had emigrated was unable to arrive due to the war. The increase was a hard hit mainly for the FGS boarder girls. The mayor explained that this action by the school’s administration was not acceptable, mainly because the increase was made without any previous notifications or consultation with the parents of the students.

The letter also mentioned that the tuition paid by the boarder girls was the highest among all schools of the same educational level. In Totah’s response letter, he indicated that a reduction in tuition could not be made solely for the purpose of keeping the school’s educational standards. However, as a result of the parents’ persistence backed by the Ramallah municipality, a temporary reduction was made. Za`ror expressed his thankfulness for the reduction and appreciation for the services the Friends schools provided for Ramallah’s children and youth.[26]

In the Annual report to the Board, it was mentioned that the FGS lost some of its younger students who were not able to pay the tuition of $37.50 per semester, and who more than likely switched to the public school where they only had to pay 50 cents for tuition. The school tried to make up for the loss of students by increasing the tuition of the secondary students. The report did not mention any discontent shown by parents of the students in response to this tuition increase. On the contrary, the report stated that the “welcome increase in the secondary girls makes up for the other loss.” In 1946, the Friends Schools had to increase the tuition in response to inflation and high food prices, and it was also necessary to pay the teachers a fair salary.[27]

Some other major issues that existed between missionaries and students’ parents beside the tuition fees were the concerns of Muslim parents who worried about the influence of Christian religious education on their children. This notion was not different from other American protestant mission schools such as Sidon Girls School in Lebanon, as noted by Fleischmann, who pointed out that “in more than one instance, girls or their parents contested the compulsory attendance at Christian religious services and the religious training in the schools.”[28]

Usually the missionary reports assured the Board that the Muslim students and their parents consented to the school’s religious agenda. By 1935, the number of Muslim students was steadily increasing as their families came to accept their children being exposed to Bible classes and school prayers. One incident mentioned in the missionary reports to the Board indicated that a wealthy Muslim man from Gaza still sent his children to the Friends schools, even though the school refused his request of teaching his children the Quran. Another Muslim shaykh from Nablus asked that his granddaughter not study the Bible, and then proceeded to take the Bible home in order to read it and check whether any of the teachings were offensive to Islam and the prophet Muhammad.

All these incidents showed the Board in Indiana that the Friends schools in Ramallah did not compromise their objective in spreading Christian values among the natives.[29] In the annual report of 1926, “the changing attitude toward Christian missions on the part of the Mohammedan population” was noted. The students of both boarding schools, the FGS and FBS, were “coming under constant religious instruction and seldom do the American missionaries [we] note any opposition to our teaching.”[30] Mildred White, a long-term missionary who served as teacher and principal at FGS, also assured her readers that “there were no objections on part of Muslim students or parents to Bible study, or to attending worship services and Christian celebrations.”[31]

In another case in the FGS, an Arab “prince” was enrolled in the younger boys section. Although his father wanted him to be escorted at all times with a nanny and be excused from Bible classes, the school refused his requests and the boy continued his studies in the school.[32] The school refused these requests in an attempt to avoid a “distinction between Muslim and Christian students.” It was also the case that “all the girls are members on one of our three Reserve groups that focus on religious education and Bible study. The President of the secondary Girls Reserve is a Muslim.”[33] Kermit and Grace Schoonover indicated in their report to the Board that the “boys and girls, Moslems as well as Christians, seem to have good interest in their Bible study . . . Moslems and Christians study Bible together . . . these classes . . . (had) . . . greatest opportunity of being a helpful influence upon the lives of these young people.”[34] The American missionary teachers mentioned these examples to confirm to the Friends Board that the Ramallah mission was progressing and overcoming obstacles related to their religious objectives.[35]

However, the satisfaction of the missionaries and the FGS with the progress of religious education was not shared by a few of the American Missionary staff that called for the closing of the Ramallah mission by the late 1930s.[36] Their rationale was that even though Quaker principals were well spread and praised among Palestinian youth, conversion to the faith was very limited and unsuccessful. In a letter sent to the American Board in 1937, Grace and Kermit Schoonover, who were in charge of the Ramallah Meeting House, criticized the Mission’s inability to produce converts. They stressed that the Quakers’ principles appealed to the educated Palestinian class, especially because of “the simplicity of Friends position, its freedom from ecclesiastical clutter, its presentation of a real moral way of living. However, at the same time no effort was made from them to join the Friends faith even though they were ‘fed up’ with the formulation, the superstition, the magic, the ignorance of priests, and the lack of moral and spiritual content in most of Eastern Christianity.”[37] Criticism and success based on actual conversion numbers stemmed from American employees who were at the Ramallah mission only for a short period of time. Missionary teachers who stayed at the mission for a considerable period of time typically justified their progress by measuring it through the cultural conversion that took place and the acceptance of the Quakers’ message by Palestinian students. During my interviews with former students, particularly Muslim students, they spoke about the positive views they held about the Quakers’ religious message and favorably acknowledged that the teachers did not try to convert them. This will be discussed in the following chapter.

FGS principals were Americans most of the time, except during the early period of the school when Katie Gabriel was in charge (1889–1906) and the few years during the interwar period when Victoria Hannush (1934–1947) was appointed. These were exceptional cases as discussed in chapter two (Gabriel) and four (Hannush). However, the school increasingly appointed Arab teachers, due to the unavailability of American teachers at the FGS. Many of the graduates who wished to work with the mission before World War I were appointed in the Friends day schools as helpers or Bible women. However, this changed after the war as the school started to appoint more teachers.

For example, in 1921 there were four teachers in the FGS who were former students and had been trained in other Friends day schools. Edward Kelsey described them in his annual report to the Home Board as “very loyal to the ideal and spirit of the school.”[38] Palestinians in positions of some authority had been a great use since the beginning of the Ramallah Mission. At the FGS, most of the Arab teachers were assigned to the newly opened and enlarged primary department. Palestinians on the teaching staff were mainly assigned to the primary level because the American missionaries viewed the secondary level classes as critical in preparing students according to their missionary standards and important for preparing the girls for college.

There were frequent requests from the Ramallah Mission to the Board to send qualified American teachers. The available American staff was mostly assigned for secondary level classes where English was the language of instruction. This meant direct and easier communication with the students in which American teachers felt in control and able to assert their religious and educational message. When appointing Palestinian teachers, the American missionaries preferred only Christians. In 1929, the teaching staff in the Ramallah Mission’s schools were all Christians including Americans, Palestinians, Syrians, English, and Armenians. There was one Muslim teacher, Abd II Hameed Yasseen from Lydda, who White described as “a real Christian in his life and spirit.” The Minutes also indicated that the Mission “were unanimous in their decision not to engage Mr. Fuad Judoq, the present teacher of physics in the Boys School for another year. This is because of his lack of sympathy toward our religious program and his unwillingness to attend religious services.”

During the early 1930s, the effects of the Great Depression were felt at the Ramallah Mission. Nonetheless, the Ramallah mission’s situation was better than that of other American missions, where the financial hardship forced them to abandon their foreign missions. The Friends in Ramallah were able to manage primarily because the schools were able to sustain themselves financially from the tuition students paid. However, the Ramallah Mission had to abandon all but two village schools and the teachers’ salaries also felt the burden. However, the financial troubles did not affect the quality of education the students received, and instead the number of students increased during the following years as noted earlier.[39]

As the political situation worsened, especially during the Great Revolt, the school kept its strategy of political neutrality and concentrated on education. Willard Jones stressed the policy of the schools when he said the Friends schools “continued to uphold its principles of friendly cooperation and to insist upon scholarship rather than political activity as the proper concern of its students and teachers.”[40] This general principle defined Quakers’ attitudes and actions during the interwar period.

Reasons for American
Missionaries’ Changing Attitudes

In the aftermath of World War I, American Quaker women viewed the Palestinian culture in ways quite different from the first phase of their engagement. Many of them employed a favorable language that indicated more sympathy and recognition of their students’ culture and customs. Instead of viewing Palestinians as a backward population controlled by ruthless Turks, they saw Palestinians as becoming more modern under British rule and romanticized aspects of Palestinian culture as authentically connected to Biblical times. Moreover, some missionaries who lived in Palestine for a considerable period of time recognized educated Palestinians who worked alongside them in the mission as their equals, and called to transfer the control of the mission to them. This depicts a radical divergence from their initial perception when first arriving to work at the Ramallah mission.

American missionaries changed their attitudes toward Palestinians and their culture for numerous reasons which are far too complex to reduce to one cause. I will discuss a combination of those different reasons that affected the experiences of missionaries. It should be noted that the missionaries used two different languages to describe their mission and interactions with Palestinians.

They used one form of language in their reports and letters because they held the possibility of being published in missionary newspapers to generate financial, personal, and moral support for the mission and to illustrate the importance of their mission among Palestinians. The intent was that the American Friends, and not the Palestinians, would read the writings. The language expressed a lesser degree of courtesy to the Palestinians and their culture. Since these contained such negative views, missionaries were cautious and adamant that Palestinians did not have access to these writings. They knew that Palestinians would be offended and the relationship between both groups would be jeopardized.

Sara Hadley, a Quaker teacher at the FGS, demonstrated this point in her writing. She was conscious that her correspondences were “pretty much becoming public property” in America because they were read, circulated, and published by the American Friends. However, she cautioned her family not to let anything “get back here (Ramallah) via Friendly News Flashes, Missionary Advocate,” the two American missionary Quaker publications. Hadley explained her fears after she heard from American teachers in Ramallah about the “most embarrassing experience,” which had happened to Christina Jones when some of her personal letters were published in the missionary newsletter, the Friendly Flashes. These issues were circulated in Ramallah and “it was discovered that the comical (to an American but not to a Palestinian) situation she had described,” became known in Ramallah. These “caused a great deal of resentment and hard feeling, for the people felt she was poking fun of them, which of course she was doing, but she thought confidentially.” Hadley explained to her family that her letters had “quite a lot of the same situations Christina Jones was describing.”[41]

The other kind of language missionaries used were meant to be read by any reader, such as the articles written by Eva Rae Totah (nee Marshal). Marshal arrived in Palestine in 1927 and tried to write objectively and accurately about Palestinian culture to her American readers. For example, she described Palestinian wedding customs and asked some of her Arab friends to read her writing to make sure that her record of the Palestinian culture was accurate.[42]

Marshal’s background and training in America shaped her experiences in Ramallah. She was an active suffragist and became the Secretary of a Women’s Suffrage League that she helped organize in 1917 at William Penn College. Marshal also was affected spiritually by the YMCA’s role among college students and the Students Volunteer Movements. She earned her master’s degree in sociology from Haverford in 1919, and wrote her thesis on the Music Settlement Movement. This kind of education enabled her to become a social worker for the city of Philadelphia. Marshal taught at Penn College after she finished her two years of study at Columbia College of Expression in Chicago. When Marshal received the request of Willard and Christina Jones to take a leave from teaching at Penn and to join the Ramallah Mission for one year, she showed enthusiasm and explained, “I had always been interested in the Bible, and in the land and people of the Bible. I felt could help out at the Mission while gaining much in the knowledge of Bible lands, manners, and customs. This would be a great inspiration in my field of Religious Drama, especially in drama of the Bible.”[43] Marshal’s description of her reaction to joining the Mission was a combination of her sense of mission to provide social and educational services to Palestinians and to learn about the people and the culture of the “Bible land.” Her disposition to learn and not just to teach reflected a mental preparedness for change upon encountering the “others.”

As seen in the cases of both Marshal and Hadley, missionaries became more aware of the implication of their writings if they reached Palestinians. They were compelled to change their writing depending on their audiences and were cautious to use more neutral language that would not jeopardize their relations with the Palestinians. The training and experience of the missionaries prior to joining the mission, such as their perception of the region as the “Bible land,” and the new strategy implemented by Protestant missions after World War I, contributed to the general tendency of change in the missionaries attitudes and language, which I will further explore below.

Greater Interest in the Holy Land

Quaker missionaries were to some degree sensitized to Palestinian culture through their own studies and images of biblical archaeology and customs. Historical and archaeological interest in the Holy Land had been steadily growing in the West. In the mid-nineteenth century, a growing interest in philology turned its sights on biblical translations and words and was compelled to go back to ancient sources to determine the meaning of the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic words in translated biblical accounts. A group of biblical scholars were quite interested in establishing a fuller historical context for the Bible and embarked on archaeological and archival studies of biblical life and times in order to confirm the Western/American Christian ideas about the significance of these contemporary geographical sites to biblical legacy. The field of biblical archeology launched after the publication of the monumental work of Edward Robinson in 1941.[44] Moreover, interest in the Holy Land did not begin as a nineteenth-century phenomenon; it was rationalized historically and mentally connected the American landscape to the Orient through early New England Puritans who imagined themselves as reconstructing the “new Israel” as the names of American cities such as “Zion” and “Salem” indicate.[45]

However, during the nineteenth century, romantic narratives and biblical stories that were popular in the United States fueled more interest in the holy land.[46] The writings of travelers and missionaries were widely read in the West and underrepresented the Muslim population and Muslim historical sites by keeping the focus on Christian and Jewish minority communities. American archeological and biblical scholars such as Samuel Ives Curtis, Lewis Bayles Paton, Edward Robinson, and the Quaker Elihu Grant attempted to bridge what was then present-day Ottoman Palestine with ancient biblical Palestine.

These kinds of attempts also informed and defined Western/American identity as it created a familiar religious connection to the land of Palestine. Grant described Ramallah and other Palestinian sites extensively through their relation to biblical times. Historians give different explanations for the significance of these accounts to contemporary Palestinian history. Nancy Stockdale (identify) argued that English travelers and missionary accounts placed the contemporary Palestinian population in biblical time as a way to help the English imagine Palestine as a familiar place they could control. These works of literature contributed to create an image of Palestine as a “British Space,” which ultimately became a reality after World War I when the British colonized Palestine.[47]

Not all missionaries were biblical or historical scholars, and many became quite curious about the land of Palestine “on its own terms” rather than through the prism of Western preconceptions. Eva Marshal seemed to reflect this point of view when she wrote to her family that she was trying to read and acquire knowledge about “the history and atmosphere of the Near East. There are so much of romance and thrill about it” because of its connection to the Bible and Old Testament.[48]

Empathy and spiritual fulfillment in many cases overwhelmed feelings of superiority and helped transcend some of the negativity that occupied missionaries during the previous period of the encounter. The gratitude the American Quaker missionaries expressed about being in the Holy Land improved their notions of Palestinians and their culture. It was a bounteous experience for them, “returning to the very land where Jesus had lived.”[49] Mary Minnick’s personal reports to the American Friends Board of Foreign Mission emphasized that her experience working in the “Holy Land” was enough for her. She did not feel the urge to know or see “the place where Jesus did this or that—the exact spot has no enchantment for me [her]—but just to be among these mountains, seeing the same stars” where she would pass the areas where Jesus traveled made her “lose my [her] breath.”[50]

By stressing this connection, missionaries were validating their activities among the indigenous Palestinians, the inhabitants of Jesus’ land. Relating it to the ancient heritage was a reminder that this land should be re-Christianized into the true form of Christianity. The preconceived notion of biblical Palestine forged spiritual, as well as emotional connections to the country before the missionaries even arrived. They knew nothing about modern Palestine, and their preexisting knowledge came “mostly from the biblical country of our Sunday-school days” as the Quaker missionary Christina Jones, and other travelers and missionaries affirmed in their writings. For example, Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and the missionary William Thomson’s account, The Land and the Book were widely read among American middle class readers.[51]

Being physically present in Palestine allowed the Quakers to rediscover the “Holy Land” by connecting their previous knowledge from the literature and producing a discourse that yielded more compassionate and appreciative views of Palestinian culture and customs. The language used by some of the missionary women exemplifies the sensitivity they felt toward the people and the country with expressions of pity mixed with a genuine admiration.

These missionary accounts described the locals as still untouched by modernity, which could be reflecting fruitless and inert living, but they also perceived customs stuck in historical amber that fed Quakers’ pity. For example, Nancy Parker McDowell, a Quaker teacher at the Ramallah Mission who arrived to Palestine in 1937, described a trip from Haifa to Ramallah, saying that “Camel trains and laden donkeys are more common than cars. Most of the people dress just as they did in biblical times, living in the same houses and the same way.”[52] These portrayals undoubtedly aimed to stress two objectives: to rationalize and legitimatize the work of missionary women in areas genuinely connected to Christian faith through these illuminative biblical images and to generate financial, emotional, and moral support for their mission. Romanticizing biblical images of Palestinian women through cultural dress and accessories, and demonstrating their oppression through domestic work generated empathy and pity among American donors.

McDowell depicts Palestine’s “Oriental atmosphere” as one where “Women in beautifully embroidered dress and head shawls walk around with huge jugs or baskets on their hands.”[53] Likewise, Eva Rae Marshal contended unhappily that the women did the hardest work and men “were sitting at the gate just sitting as in the days of Bible times.” Marshal also made sure to mention that the country had “not changed” much since the time of Jesus.[54] Taken together, these impressions of the Palestinian people and the landscape made missionaries reconsider their previous views that stressed the backwardness of the Palestinians, and to instead appreciate them in the context of biblical simplicity and consistency under British control.

Quaker missionaries gave rich accounts of Palestine’s geographical sites for American audiences. A typical example was Mildred White’s description of her trip with Rosa Lee to the Palestinian village of Taiyibeh:

It is the ancient village of Bible times—the home of Gideon. We saw the threshing floors and also the winepress, which is like the one Gideon worked in, hiding from his enemies. We visited the ruins of an old Christian church. The village has been Christian ever since the time of Christ. We saw the Dead Sea and the sand dunes beside it. From Attara we could see Mount Hermon. We saw a shepherd boy wearing a coat of many colors. They are still popular and very attractive. . . . I have a little pot of maidenhair fern we brought from a cave near the place where Deborah sat under the palm tree to judge Israel.[55]

In these accounts, missionaries appreciate living and working in a place they can relate to their religious education and interpretation of biblical images. It is arguable that living life in the villages was a kind of escape from the gilded age that brought numerous social and cultural complications to the Quakers’ ideal of simplicity. In another account by Marshal, she described the time when she spent a day in the vineyard and fig orchard with Bahia Badran, a FGS student who graduated in 1930. She gave lavish details about how they ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in an area similar to the biblical lands of the shepherds. She imagined the time she spent in the orchard’s tower as identical to life during the time of Jesus, simple and removed from the modern world. The plain nature of the tower with no furniture, except for a mattress to sit on, clean and comfortable, gave her a spiritual closeness to nature and feelings of delight to be in such an atmosphere.[56] On occasions such as these, missionaries interacted with Palestinians and modified earlier fears of eating from the same plate and the same loaf of bread with Palestinians.

These kinds of images were also a way of showing how Palestinians dealt with their land as their forefathers did during ancient times. Nature was beautiful and yielded the same kinds of fruits mentioned in the Bible: the grape, almond, and olive. Christina Jones emphasized the blessing of eating the same fruits mentioned in the Bible when she wrote:

To read one’s Bible is to realize how close to nature the people of Palestine have lived and how well they knew how to use the land in all its variety. The Bible is full of references to the sun and the moon and the stars, the mountains and the valleys, the trees and the flowers, the vines, the olive, the almond, the fig and the pomegranate. No passage in the Bible confirms this picture of Palestine before the Hebrew entered it better than that found in Numbers, 13:16–23. There it tells how Moses sent scouts into Palestine to spy out the land, and they came back bearing a branch cut from a vine bearing a single cluster of grapes, some pomegranates and figs. These were the fruits of the land, they reported, and truly it was a land flowing with milk and honey, the natives were strong, and the cities fortified and powerful. Three thousand years later, we ate the grapes of Hebron from whence the spies cut theirs and we can testify to the fact that they have lost none of their excellence.[57]

Members of Western delegations who were present at Ramallah when the American Quaker Mission hosted the Workers’ Conference in September 1930 also stressed the above notion. Mildred White stated that one delegate remarked that “the huge branches of Ram Allah grapes made him sympathize with the Hebrew spies to the land of Canaan, as they always made him feel that he wanted to come up and possess the land!” Not only is this a clear indication of Palestine’s natural bounty of plants and fruits that are connected to the Bible, but more importantly, to the Hebrew’s ancient history by foreign Protestant missionary societies.

These notions reflected the missionaries’ sympathies and mentality toward rationalizing and legitimizing colonization of the land, a discourse that contributed to contemporary Zionist political claims of establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. These remarks were also made in the 1930s amid a highly charged political atmosphere which was a result of the British policies that facilitated Zionist colonization and increased the admission of Jewish European immigrants during the Second World War. However, these remarks were not representative of the American Quakers’ views that were working in the Ramallah Mission. Most of the American Quakers there were either neutral on this issue as a reflection of their long-standing peace and noninvolvement ideals in political disputes. Some showed sympathy toward the Palestinians’ situation as they listened to the experiences of Palestinians after the policies set forth by the British to fulfill the Belfour Declaration.

A Revised Understanding of Cultural Practices

A significant number of Quaker missionaries who worked at the Ramallah Mission after World War I arrived with more emancipatory attitudes toward Palestinians and their culture. They felt as if they were receiving a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to physically experience the “Holy Land.” This made them conscious that they should observe and try to understand Palestinians and their customs in an authentic way that optimized their learning experience. An attitude of willingness encouraged them to interact with Palestinians more closely, which led to an increase in favorable views of certain cultural practices and customs.

Protestant missions, including the Quakers in Greater Syria, also adopted a new strategy after World War I. This strategy called for more cultural and linguistic preparation of missionaries who would work among the “natives” by training them to speak the Arabic language and learn the region’s history. This strategy played a significant role in allowing missionaries to understand Palestinian culture and history, while facilitating more positive interactions between both groups. I will discuss this strategy in greater detail in the next section. There were two kinds of missionaries who served in the Ramallah Mission, short-term and long-term. The long-term missionaries fostered closer connections to the Arab people and their culture in the longer period of time they had, which led to stronger changes in preconceived notions compared to the short-term missionaries.

Attending social events and communicating with locals became one of the missionaries’ direct sources of information and contributed to their modified attitudes. Marshal explained her experience at a local wedding on her first day in the Palestinian coastal city of Jaffa. After witnessing a Greek Orthodox wedding, she learned the most about “the manners and customs of Bible lands,” to the point that she “could have returned to the States that very night feeling I had already gotten my money’s worth. I had seen, smelled, heard, and felt so much—and all in the time of one day.” Marshal’s writings reflect a tourist mentality when using the expression of “my money’s worth,” rather than the missionaries’ sense for “uplifting” the “others.” Her mentality may be part of the reason as to why she wanted to learn from what she described as “only the beginning of many years of learning these colorful folkways, not to mention trying to understand and feel with the people all that they were feeling in their hearts. Little by little, Palestine began to get under my skin.”[58] These examples signify American Quaker missionaries’ appreciation of the rediscovery of Palestine’s “romantic” culture and atmosphere. Contemplating this experience from a modern tourist mentality beside that limited them to a strictly civilizing the “other” notion as the early missionary generation did.[59] Marshall feels as if she’s entitled, here in exchange for money, to examine the natives and will ultimately come to fully “know” the peculiarities of the exotic “other.” In addition, one should note that Marshall uses a language of rationality and the acquisition of knowledge to describe her reaction to the Palestinians and their culture, while emphasizing affect in relation to the Palestinians.

The modern Palestinian women’s hospitality and clothing were viewed as a continuation of Jesus’ mother Mary’s culture. Sara Hadley informed her readers about a visit she took with a few other missionaries to the home of one of their students. The missionary remarked “one could easily imagine this homemaker, with her lovely native dress, to be just the kind of hostess that Mary of Nazareth would have been two thousand years ago.”[60] American Quakers appreciated the local women’s dress and hospitality, contrary to their views before World War I, which showed dismay and disapproval of women’s dress and hesitation when it came to eating in the Palestinians’ “unhygienic” homes.

To generate interest in the Quakers’ Mission in Palestine and to narrow the geographical distance to the holy land in the minds of Americans living in the United States, missionaries not only sent reports, articles, and letters but also sent cultural objects from Palestine, such as souvenirs and pieces of monuments that emphasized the “oriental,” exotic, and biblical lifestyle. This manner of exhibiting Palestine was part of “Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear,”[61] and in need of missionary work. Images and objects, such as pieces of traditional embroidery, were displayed in bazaars and sold for fund-raising. The material objects were linked closely to Jesus’ space among Americans at home, who were unable to travel to Palestine. Here we see an ambivalence in the treatment of Palestine by the Quakers. On one hand, they revered the connection of the land and its people to the biblical tradition and, on the other hand, they confined the Palestinians and their culture to ancient times in order to emphasize the need for civilizing and modernizing efforts which, ultimately, legitimated colonization.

Also, the personal speeches the Mission workers made, when either returning home or visiting their families in America, left a powerful impression. Mildred White, for example, went back home in July 1926, and worked hard to inform the American Friends about Ramallah’s Mission. After speaking to her own community in Indiana, especially the women’s societies, she made trips to towns and Friends meetings in Portland and South Durham in Maine, various towns in Massachusetts, Baltimore, Maryland and Wilmington, Ohio.[62] While the purpose of these visits and speeches was to raise money for the Ramallah Mission, the audience was very receptive to the information about Palestinian society and took what was presented during these speeches as fact.

In many respects, American Quaker women often admitted their lack of actual knowledge about contemporary Palestine and on arrival, realized that some of the knowledge they held about the people and culture was false. For example, Marshal thought she was going to the Ramallah Mission to teach Jewish, not Arab students. She was astonished to discover on her arrival that she was among Arab people and their culture. In 1927, on the first day she arrived in Ramallah, she learned about the history of Palestine before the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The perceptions she held were shaped by the knowledge she gained after her arrival, especially through her interactions with Wadia Shtatra, a Palestinian teacher and a former student of the Friends Girls School. Marshal stated that:

Before I slept that night, I had been immersed in the history of Palestine that since the days of Christ, and specifically that of the last five hundred years during which Ramallah was settled by the present families. I learned that nine-tenths of the population of Palestine was of Arab culture when the Balfour Declaration was issued. They were descended from or absorbed by the Canaanites, the indigenous inhabitants of the country. The disturbing element in the country was the Zionists who, through forced immigration, were trying to displace the Arab majority. All this was pretty hard for me to grasp in my first encounter, but before I went to sleep that night, Wadia had given me plenty to think about. I was fully aware of the Arabs in the country now, and I found those I had met and seen alive, friendly, and stimulating.[63]

After her encounter with Palestinians, Marshal became aware of their habits and social ethics and she judged that “I have always felt that if the Jews of love and peace had come as individuals, and settled in the country to share their gifts and skills in the development of the country, they would have been accepted with open arms and given the best to be had. There is nowhere a greater host than the Arab, and it is his nature to give the guest anything he wants.”[64] Her comment is a clear indication of how the direct contact she had with Palestinians changed her initial notions. It also shows how receptive she was to listen and digest information told to her by Palestinians.

Cooperation

Another factor contributing to the modification of missionary views was the emergence of the strategy of cooperation among the different Protestant missions in Syria and Palestine after World War I. After decades of working in the region to convert Arabs, protestant missionaries acknowledged their failure to achieve significant results. Moreover, the emergence of middle-class urban Arab nationalists pressured missionaries to adjust their missionary activities to meet the demands of native nationalists for more control of the mission schools. Therefore, after World War I foreign missions adopted new strategies that dramatically changed their approach in conducting their missionary activities.

Dana L. Robert researched the American women’s missionary movement, including the development of women’s mission theory. She contended that during the 1920s, “women’s mission theory was part of mainstream Protestant missiology, emphasizing under the concept ‘world Friendship’ such themes as ecumenism, peace education, higher education for women, and partnership and cooperation between first and third-world churches.”[65] This Protestant missiology can be traced to Caroline Atwater Mason, the first missionary writer with a Quaker background to evoke this idea of cooperation.

Mason wrote World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest in 1916 in response to World War I, in which she called for the foreign missions to use different approaches toward the “target nations.” The book stressed aiming for world peace as Christ preached it. She stated that World War I was not a failure of Christianity, but of Christendom as a political force that had permeated the world since the time of Constantine. She maintained that war with all the suffering and destruction it brought proved that “there is no far nor near, no native and foreign; that if one nation suffer, all nations must suffer with it.” The real fight was now “between the material, the destructive, the divisive, and the spiritual, the constructive, the unifying.”[66]

This kind of writing gave birth to the ideology of cooperation that stressed teamwork among the different Protestant missions to overcome their differences and work toward a common strategy in order to promote and strengthen all missionary work. However, another important part of this ideology was the promotion of forging new relationships with the “natives,” based on cooperation and fraternity. Thus, the devolution and nationalization of foreign missions became indispensable to this new vision and eventually led to the natural development of the strategy of cooperation and fraternity.[67]

Within this context, the United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine (UMCSP) was established and emphasized that the essence of the relationship between the natives and missionaries after World War I was based on cooperation and therefore, more mission responsibilities should be given to “native colleagues.” In order to enhance relations between the locals and missionaries, the UMCSP conference in 1920, called upon Protestant missions to train their workers to become proficient in the Arabic language and acquire knowledge of Islam.[68]

During the conference held in 1927, the UMCSP emphasized the need to “work out plans . . . [to] strengthen the indigenous organizations for the task for which they are ultimately responsible.”[69] For this purpose, the UMCSP established different committees for different missionary fields. The purpose of the committees was to reenergize missionary work and, more importantly, to coordinate missionary activities among the different denominations. The Committee of Education was among one of the most crucial committees, besides the Evangelistic Committee that coordinated the work among different missionary denominations.[70] Cooperation in recommending textbooks, changing the curriculum, and the institution of “fundamental relationship with governments,” were the major aims of the Committee of Education.[71] The American Friends were represented in these committees and held active roles as members of the UMCSP.[72]

In response to the surge of missionary activities, the MSC and al-hay`ah al-Islamyya al-`almya, the Muslim Science Committee, saw the interwar period as an expansion of missionary activities under the slogan of freedom of religion with the support and the encouragement of the British Mandate government. The MSC vocalized their fears about the missionary activities and the concern and suspicion among the Muslim population of a plot and cooperation between the Mandate government and the foreign missions—especially the British. In a correspondence between the President of the council and the Secretary of the High British Commissioner, the MSC rationalized their fears on the ground that the British High Commissioner in Palestine personally attended several missionary conferences in Syria and Palestine.

The MSC also stressed that there was a plan to appoint Christian teachers in the public school where the majority of the students were Muslims. In schools such as Jaffa High School and al-Lud Girls School, the entire student body was made up of Muslims, but the teachers were predominantly Christians, with only one Muslim teacher out of a total of six teachers. The British also limited the enlargement or the opening of a new public school, particularly in areas where Muslims were a majority of the population in an attempt to compel the Muslim students to attend missionary schools.[73] The Foreign missions in Palestine during the British Mandate flourished like never before, which caused fear and anxiety among the Muslim population, as MSC’s papers and letters from the 1920s revealed. The papers also mentioned the position of the British Protestant missions on the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine—which most of these missionaries advocated for and even tried to convince the population to sell their land to Jewish immigrants.[74]

The new strategies adopted by foreign missions also called for increased cooperation with local nationalists. Driven in part by the political and cultural transformations in Palestine during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an educational national class was produced where members began looking for acknowledgment and leading roles in their society. The American Quakers’ Mission in Ramallah was an active participant in the formation and development of one of the agencies created in 1920 to promote cooperation, the UMCSP. One important aspect of this cooperation policy insisted on better preparation of missionaries by introducing them to the Arab culture and language. The council stressed the necessity of the mission workers’ knowledge of Arabic and Islam in order to ensure the success of the cooperation strategy.[75]

The American Quaker missionary who worked in Ramallah mission, Elihu Grant, viewed the work of the American missionary endeavors in Syria and Palestine as important and productive, and thus, missionaries had to promote a new kind of relationship with the “natives” based on brotherhood and fraternity. In Grant’s perspective, a missionary endeavor was where one “true” giving culture encountered a receiving one, which was unable to give in return. Grant emphasized the relationship between the people of these two cultures as based on partnership. He advised missionaries to give “as partners not as those who condescend or confer.” Missionaries were “not lords but brothers. There is flattery for the ego in acts of bestowal but no good can be done in that way,” he remarked.[76]

The United Missionary Council conference in May of 1927 declared the need to open a language school in Jerusalem to engage in the new strategy of cooperation and understand the culture of the mission’s target land.[77] However, in June of 1927 the Ramallah Friends expressed their disappointment in the “failure of the Executive Committee of the United Missionary Council for Syria and Palestine” to open the “proposed language Study Center.”[78] The Home Board made a separate allowance to language study and the strategy was made for the American Friends in Ramallah mission to teach at least one year of Arabic, especially for the new mission workers.

The 1920s marked the decade when most foreign missions expressed their concern over the importance of learning the language of the nation. For example, Mildred White and Rosa Lee during the summer months of the early 1920s went to an English college in Jerusalem to learn the Arabic language. The school was primarily for missionary workers, government employees, and their wives. White reiterated how difficult it was to learn a new language and how vocabularies that were similar to one another made it even harder for her distinguish between the languages.[79] Although White had difficulty learning Arabic, she continued her studies in a Presbyterian center in Suk-el-Gharb, Syria.[80] Willis Beede who came from America to visit the Friends Mission in Ramallah, indicated in his report to the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions how important it was for the missionaries to learn Arabic in order to converse and communicate effectively with their students and the local population. He proposed that these American teachers, such as Edna Haviland, whose Bible classes he attended, should be given less school work in order to find enough time to study Arabic. Beede recommended “she should be kept free from heavy school duties until she has had time to gain a working knowledge of the language.” He emphasized that the Friends “work in Palestine has been greatly handicapped because the missionaries have not been given enough time to learn Arabic.” The success of the mission would lay on the creation of “a corps of missionaries who can converse easily in Arabic.”[81] The board sent Quaker missionaries to centers in Syria and Jerusalem to learn Arabic and provided a separate allowance for language study for the American missionaries. Those selected from the American Friends of the Ramallah Mission had to study at least one year of Arabic.

Some missionaries petitioned the Board to send them to Arabic classes in Jerusalem or Syria and showed eagerness to learn the language. Marshal, for example, wanted to study Arabic upon her arrival. She confessed that Arabic was a hard language to learn through conversation because English was the spoken language in the school. She asked the Board to assign her to study Arabic full-time, stressing the importance of an American missionary knowing the language in order to communicate and understand the people in the Ramallah community.[82]

Marshal enrolled in the Language School in Jerusalem and also attended two lectures about “Mohammedanism” while learning Arabic. She explained that the topics of these lectures focused on the history of the caliphate in Islam and the contemporary problems that were facing Islam. She also managed to read articles written by Muslim writers in newspapers. Marshal praised both lectures which she enjoyed, and called Arabic “God’s language.”[83] The efforts of Marshal, and those like her, to learn the language and history helped create a middle ground between Americans and Palestinians.[84]

Another aspect of cooperation occurred in 1927 through “devolution,” a new term used by the Ramallah and other foreign missions after World War I “for the emphasis of placing nationals in positions of responsibility, and replacing missionaries when possible.”[85] With the board’s agreement, the Quaker missionaries in Ramallah decided to hire Palestinian nationals, such as Khalil Totah to run the Mission. Totah was a former student of the Friends Boys School and a Quaker.[86] He proved to be a capable Arab national Palestinian who brought distinctive academic and financial innovations to the Mission.[87] During Totah’s tenure as a principal between 1927 and 1944, missionaries became divided on the issue of Palestinian control over the mission.[88] Ambiguity and irresoluteness of how “devolution” would be accomplished and the ramifications of transferring the mission to the nationals on the progress of Quakers’ spiritual message were issues of concern to many missionaries. Palestinian Christian nationals, such as Totah, exerted too much independence in their educational and administrative powers, which was viewed as undermining the authority of the American Friends’ in the Ramallah Mission.[89]

Mildred White, a long-term missionary in Ramallah Mission, who worked as a teacher and a principal at the Friend Girls School, encouraged “devolution.” White traveled to Ramallah to teach in the Friends Girls School in 1922, and became the principal of the school in 1928 after the retirement of Alice Jones. White’s service at the Ramallah Mission, interaction with Palestinians, and knowledge of the Arabic language allowed her to move past her initial attitudes, and reshaped her views of the indigenous people and their culture. By the 1930s she became an advocate for transitioning the Mission into the hands of the Palestinian nationals. For this reason, she took it upon herself to make a list of five points on which the American Friends should focus:

Develop a genuine fraternal procedure in the Mission.

Bring the efficiency of the church work up to the standard of the school. Develop an institutional church with multiple activities. Ultimately the meeting should have a national as a pastor.

All missionaries should possess correct speaking knowledge of the language of the people.

Continue the development of the efficiency of the schools, especially along the lines of preparing young men and women who will be the intellectual and spiritual leaders of the future. The development of a waiting list for entrance, the limitation of enrollment to the capacity of the school to render the maximum contribution and gradual increase in the requirements of teachers, are advisable.

The development of a strong peace program and the growth of non-violent method of solving conflict problems. Both the church and the schools are vital factors in the development of this attitude.[90]

White contended that the paternal relationship between the American missionaries and the students was outdated and a new configuration needed to be based around brotherhood and equal cooperation. Amid the fears expressed by many short-term missionaries about the transfer of the Ramallah Mission from American to Palestinian national leadership, White petitioned the Board to continue working toward “devolution.” She was one among several of the American Friends, such as Christina and Willard Jones, who believed in the viability of such a transformation. However, by July of 1937, the American Friends revisited the issue of conversion. The Mission asserted that the use of English in the religious services and the failure to “develop national leadership in ministry” were prominent reasons in the shortfall of their goals for conversion. To overcome this problem, the Ramallah Friends suggested using more Arabic in the religious services, forming a pastoral committee “to cooperate with pastor of the Meeting,” and preparing a “native” pastor.[91] However, when steps were taken to centralize the Mission schools and Meeting, and to establish powers in the new position Totah invented, missionaries portrayed him as incompetent and tyrannical in order to undermine arguments for native leadership.[92] By the early 1940s, the strategy of devolution was abandoned, and Totah was forced to resign from his position as Mission Director.

In general, the American missionaries modified their attitudes toward Palestinians and their culture depending on the time they spent at the Mission, the manner in which they linked Palestine to its biblical history, and whether they took full advantage of the cooperation strategy in order to learn the local languages. These factors contributed significantly to creating a middle ground in which missionaries were trying to find ways to meet with and adjust to Palestinians and their culture. The result of the newly created middle ground does not suggest one group overwhelmed or controlled the other, nor does it intend to mean that all of the results were exclusively positive. For example, while “devolution,” a product of this middle ground was not successful, the process itself and the willingness of missionaries to attempt to find ways to better their interactions and negotiations with Palestinians was a noteworthy accomplishment. Moreover, the encounter between both groups did not result in great changes for the Palestinian students, but affected the missionaries who changed their attitudes in order to acquire knowledge and learn from their experiences.

The New Approach: More Practical Practices

The American Mission staff members who spent considerable time in Palestine became more familiarized with the “native” customs and more conscious of the importance of preparing new missionaries for these customs before the encounter occurred. The willingness of the missionaries to transcend their prejudices toward Palestinians influenced their relationships not only momentarily, but long term and forged a long-standing flexible correlation that led to sustaining the Quakers’ schools in Ramallah regardless of the changing political sphere and ruling powers over time. These changes and the willingness of missionaries to adapt to Palestinians’ cultural traits can be best demonstrated through the way they adjusted and viewed some social practices, including food and marriage. Even though the writings of missionaries continued to highlight the differences between the two groups and the timelessness of the Arab culture, as did writings of the previous missionary generation, at this time their language noted admirable features and became more selective.

Words that had been used in earlier accounts to describe the primitiveness of the indigenous culture were avoided and modified considerably. Now, missionary women used words such as “beautiful” when speaking about Ramallah’s traditional dress; “lovely” when commenting on Ramallah’s folk dance; and “delicious” when mentioning food.[93]

The eating habits of Palestinians were some of the issues that concerned the missionaries, as Palestinians did not want to change or modernize certain practices according to Western standards. A popular practice was the manner of eating a favored dish called mansef, or a dish comprised of rice, meat, and a yoghurt sauce, which Palestinians prepared and often served during special occasions and celebrations. Ellen A. Winslow, a missionary teacher for a one-year term at the FGS in 1925, praised the welcome she received from Ramallah’s people. Her welcome was joined with the “feast of the roof,” a local custom of celebration after the roofing of a new building. The reason for this celebration was the roofing of the third floor of the FGS, when the Mission decided to enlarge in order to accommodate more students. The Mission celebrated the roofing of the third floor of the school in the same manner that the Palestinians celebrated the expansion of their buildings. Traditionally, the meal is eaten without utensils and Winslow was cautioned before the meal that no spoons or forks were to be used. She showed appreciation and satisfaction with the meal, which she ate with her hand, and also mentioned that American Missionaries only shared the dish she ate, the “mansef.” Winslow remarked that:

We sat down on the ground in groups under the pines and for each group there was a big wooden bowl heaping full. We ate with our fingers out of the common dish, first the rice mixed with the whole dark grains of wheat, each picking out also a big chunk of the mutton, then gradually digging down to the bread and gravy in the bottom. It was well cooked and seasoned and really very appetizing, for only Mission people were at our bowl. The native bread was very delicious.[94]

Winslow’s attitude toward the food and the traditional way of eating differed from early accounts that showed disgust for this custom and emphasized that it was unhygienic. She mentioned that she shared her dish only with Americans, which seemed to make eating the mansef without utensils more agreeable.[95] This statement shows underlying prejudice. While Winslow’s attitude shows more condolence than earlier missionary generation, nonetheless, eating with only Americans from the same dish make the meal, which lacks utensils, more agreeable.

Marshal explained that “the manner of eating mansef” was “to form balls of the rice, bread, broth and meat and throw it into the mouth,” which demonstrated her understanding of the rules in eating mansef. She talked about how the Arab family gave special treatment to their American guests by providing them with spoons to use, and nonetheless, the entire experience demonstrated the change of the missionaries’ attitudes toward the local eating custom. Even though the missionaries were offered utensils, they chose to eat with their hands instead.

Marshal went on to praise the food and the hospitality of the family.[96] Regardless of the spiritual and social uplifting the families adopted from Quakerism, members of the Meeting House, and the Friends schools, Palestinians still upheld and cherished their cultural practices, as they did not perceive them as contradictory to their modernity.

Growing acclimated to Palestinian food was one of the most-frequent cultural comments missionaries highlighted in their writings. Marshal indicated in a letter to her family that she enjoyed Palestinian food “very much,” even though it was “different from ours.” She also went on to mention that the kitchens were ill equipped, yet local women were able to prepare large amount of delicious food. Even the school kitchen had a small stove and the cook sat on the floor to prepare the food. Marshal contended, “It would seem absolutely impossible to an American housewife to cook at all under such conditions.”[97] This comparison with American women showed how Palestinian women were resourceful and skillful and made an effort to moderate the binary of superiority and backwardness between the two groups.

Mildred White also praised the food in Palestinian villages, noting that she “liked the flat loaves of whole wheat bread baked in the village oven.”[98] McDowell learned to substitute butter with olive oil, which was “poured over things and to dunk the bread.” Also “the cheese(s) are strong and sour, often made with sheep milk, but I learned to like them especially with marmalade.”[99] Accepting and accommodating themselves to the diet of the indigenous people and participating in Palestinian culture built cultural bridges with the Arab people of Ramallah.

Clothes were used as a cultural marker during this period as well, but with a more complimentary tone than the earlier missionary generation who perceived traditional dress as backwards and obsolete. Missionaries’ modified views of Ramallah’s clothing was a reflection of their appreciativeness of the cultural meaning and distinctiveness that the clothes signified.[100] Ramallah women’s clothing was praised as attractive with “lovely Ramallah handwork,” and their headdresses were described as “distinctive and very pretty.”[101] The embroidery on the long dress, called the thob, required great skill and was beautiful and artistic. Missionaries went even further to understand and learn the social meaning of the cultural clothing worn by people in Ramallah. For example, Marshal described Palestinian women in their “native” custom saying:

[T]he women looked very picturesque as they wound up the hill with their Ram Allah costumes and pretty bright colored shawls thrown over their head dress. I should have said that these head dresses tell how much a woman is worth and what her standing in the community is. Early the little girl is given a head dress which she continues to wear through her girl hood and after her marriage. Money (gold or silver coins) is sewed on rows about it, if she is poor it is silver, if she is rich it is gold, so the head dresses are a matter of great pride. The women have little that is beautiful in their homes so they put their artistic work on their clothes.[102]

Marshal mentioned her intention to send to her mother some clothes that had Ramallah embroidery on it, like the “combaz,” which she described as similar to a kimono with some embroidery. She also sent some pieces of Ramallah embroidery to America to be sold in a bazaar. Marshal’s description of Ramallah’s clothes and the social significance of the headdress were similar to that of an anthropologist living among people for the purpose of studying them.[103]

Nancy McDowell also showed appreciation of Palestinian customs when she sent a blue bead to America as a gift for her newborn niece/nephew. This was to be hung around the infant’s neck or on the clothes in order “to keep away the evil eye,” a social custom Palestinians typically practiced when a baby was born.[104] McDowell also owned a thob, called Mukhmal, which she wore on several different occasions, even to a Christmas party in America, and kept for a long time. She was in her seventies when I interviewed her in Richmond, Indiana. She expressed to me that she still used her Ramallah thob and was planning to give it away to a museum, after owning it for over forty years.[105] These examples indicated that missionaries were engaged in constructing a middle ground, since some Arab customs were appreciated and understood in their local context.

Missionaries also treated local marriage customs during this period in a different way than the earlier generations had. Sara Hadley defended arranged marriage to American readers and challenged earlier preconceptions that viewed the practice as harsh treatment toward women. In a letter for American readers, she reminded them of the high divorce rates in American society and did not judge the norm of arranged marriage as a result of her cultural background.[106] Marshal also explained how the arranged marriages remained the norm in Ramallah even after more than four decades of Quaker education. She mentioned one case where one of the Friends Girls School alumni honored “her family’s decision in the matter, although she did not know the man, she knew his father and thought that he must be good.”[107]

Hadley described the groom, Wadeaih Terejy, who was educated at Haverford and Pendle Hill after receiving Williams’s fellowship as a “cultured sort of fellow quite prominent in the Arab League in Jerusalem.” He was about forty years old and married one of the sixteen-year-old students at the FGS. She maintained that Ramallah men who resided in the United States would come back to Palestine for “wife-hunting, and most of them take young brides.” Her writings also indicated that marriage was about more than just a union between two individuals, but made it clear that the girl’s knowledge of the groom’s family was one of the most important considerations before accepting the marriage proposal. Accentuating this fact indicated that the girl was the one who considered accepting or refusing the proposal.

Missionaries such as Marshal and Hadley demonstrated greater cultural sensitivity than earlier missionaries when they described the marriage customs in Muslim and Christian Palestinian homes. Reporting her observation when attending a Muslim wedding in al-Bireh, Marshal wrote knowledgably about Palestinian culture and customs in their local historical context, positively emphasizing the status of women in a Muslim household.[108] Marshal noted that the marriage she witnessed was arranged, but with the consent of the bride. Moreover, the groom promised “in the presence of the villagers to be loyal to her and to take her with him wherever he may dwell.”[109] Similarly, Marshal made positive remarks about a Palestinian Greek Orthodox wedding that she attended. When she recorded her observation of this wedding, she pointed to the similarity of the marriage customs between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims. Both weddings played identical songs, ate similar food, danced the same dances, and both brides dressed alike. Both the Muslim and the Christian bride were veiled in the same manner.[110]

Marshal’s description of a wedding of one of the Friends Girls School students did not contain negative remarks about their young ages, unlike earlier generations of missionaries. In writing about one of her students who married at fifteen years old, she mentioned her age but did not condemn the marriage because she acknowledged that arranged marriage practices were understandable. While some former students of the FGS wore the traditional dresses during their wedding, others wore the “American bridal style instead of the village costume.”

Marshal described the students who were attending these weddings as “lovely” dancers while wearing their “wonderful” costumes.[111] She praised the simplicity of life in Ramallah and remarked that the daily life of Ramallah people went where “weddings, Christenings and funerals, all in the same day. The community shares its joys and sorrows. I am coming to feel the one-ness of these little communities . . . while they may not live as sanitarily as we do, they get a great joy and peace out of life. Their . . . life is simple and meaningful. I feel that we of the West can learn a great deal from the East.”[112] Missionaries’ engagement in a middle ground with the local population allowed them to look at Ramallah’s way of life in terms of simplicity and appreciate their close community ties rather than viewing their social life as primitive, as the earlier Quaker generation had viewed them.

Sara Hadley displayed her admiration of a Muslim marriage ceremony that she attended in al-Bireh by noting that they were the “most ancient wedding traditions” and she had “never seen a more handsome man than the groom on his beautiful horse . . . dressed in the finest wedding garments.” The bride looked picturesque “with jewelry and gorgeous embroideries, not to mention the colored decorations on her face.” The bride was surrounded by celebrations of singing and dancing, while she rode a horse to the home of the groom and was eventually welcomed by the women of the home. There, she would “conceal her glory with a beautiful veil.” The groom entered and “throws off the veil, to make certain he has the right girl (remember Jacob’s disappointment), then finally place a gold coin on her forehead.” Singing and clapping accompanied each step of this celebration.[113] The language Hadley chose to use expressed the enjoyment she felt during the experience and also displayed the connections of biblical images she made to compare present and ancient Palestinian social practices.

The missionary observations about Palestinian customs, such as Marshal’s and Hadley’s, showed similarities to the perceptions of Elihu Grant, a Quaker missionary and Biblical scholar, who evaluated the Palestinian culture on its own merits with a language that diverted from the negative East-West binary comparison. He also served as the superintendent of the Boy’s Training Home at the Ramallah Mission during the early twentieth century and wrote extensively on Palestinian society. His knowledge of the Arabic language, his readings about Islam and Arab society, and his observations of Palestinian customs and society showed his intentions to understand the culture within its own context.

The commentary and descriptions he gave when speaking about Palestinian women in society showed his understanding of the local culture. Grant’s writings were well read by American Quaker women, and many missionaries such as Marhsall were influenced by Grant’s ideas. For instance, Grant remarked that “the village peasant woman of Palestine enjoys life fully as well as the male villagers,” and the woman’s position and condition was a product of culture and custom in which “she yield obedience a little more gracefully than do many of us. She goes about her work cheerfully if she is well.” Marshal and Hadley also became aware that marriage in the Arab world “is a state entered into dutifully by all sons and daughters. It builds the tribe or great family which is at bottom the object of a Syrian’s greatest devotion next to himself, and often before himself.”[114] Quaker writers such as Grant influenced some of the Quaker missionary women’s attitudes toward Palestinian marriage customs.[115]

The hospitality shown by the indigenous Arab people was another local custom that missionaries wrote about in a positive manner. This Arab norm was acknowledged appreciatively and praised by many Quaker missionaries, especially if the invitation came from people who were connected to the Mission, or came from families with greater financial means. The missionaries received frequent invitations from the Ramallah people to visit their houses or vineyards during school holidays. Many teachers received invitations from their students who lived in different cities or towns in Palestine. Marshal described the hospitality she and other missionaries’ received from a Muslim family when they went on a trip to Gaza, including the valuable gifts she was given that had come from Mecca. The food that was laid out for them on the beach was also outstanding. Marshal remarked about this generosity she experienced by saying, “Such was their hospitality.”[116] When McDowell visited Jerusalem with her friend Gertrude, another teacher at the FGS, a brother of Friends Girls School teacher, Kareemeh Nasser, helped them. The brother, Labeeb Nassir, who was living in Jerusalem, arranged for their stay in the city and secured them permits to visit Muslim sacred sites while paying for all of their expenses. McDowell described his behavior by saying that “Labeeb always arranges things easily and then pays all the bills as if it were a privilege.”[117] These incidents show how Americans and Palestinians were interacting and where cultural norms, such as hospitality, became understood and more appreciated by the Quakers.

McDowell had very minimal knowledge about Islam upon her arrival. Everything she learned about Islam and Palestinian Muslims was based on her observations and encounters with some students and visits to Muslim homes in the Ramallah area. In a letter to her mother in December 1938, McDowell mentioned her visit to a Muslim home, where she admired a hanging rug and learned that it was a prayer rug used for the five daily prayers. She called one of her students in the FGS as one of the “more strict Moslem students” because she did her prayer on a similar rug. During the fasting month for Muslims, she explained that the teachers “had a bad time because so many of the students fasted for a month before the feast of Ramadan. . . . Some of them got very weak and did poorly in their studies.”[118] As well as exhibiting the teachers’ views of Muslim students, these examples also show that Muslim students who attended Bible classes and daily Christian prayers chose to keep their religion and Islamic practices. The students’ compulsory attendance of Bible classes and daily prayers may have potentially “provided a stimulus for the assertion of their own identity, as well as experimentation with challenging authority.”[119]

Long-term Quaker teachers such as Alice Jones, who perceived women’s chores in the early twentieth century as a type of oppression, revised her opinion after more than a decade of encounters with Palestinians. By 1920, she came to view the chores, for which the village women took responsibility, as positive and vigorous, in contrast to her prior interpretation of them as harsh and oppressive. In comparing the life of village women and city women, she came to the conclusion that the latter lived an idle life. The purpose of her conclusion was to legitimate the necessity of providing more vigorous Christian education to Palestinian urban upper- and middle-class women. However, her views of village women as having an active lifestyle came to contradict the views of short-term missionaries, which will be considered later.[120]

With regard to women’s chores, some differences of opinion seemed to exist during this period. The missionary Quaker, Winslow, perceived the chores of Palestinian village women as a form of cruelty or oppression similar to the opinions of the early missionary generation. According to her, the Arab society was trapped in pre-Islamic times where old practices were still common:

[T]he peasant women work very hard, have very few pleasures. . . . The wife must bring on her head the water for all the family, . . . must bake the bread in the common village oven and cook the other food over a small earthen “canoon,” . . . must do much of the hard work connected with planting, weeding and gathering the harvests; must help gather the olives and figs and raisins for winter food and then dry and prepare them; and sometimes must even grind the wheat into flour with one of the old stone hand mills such as was used in Jesus’ time. There is much superstitions and very little knowledge of hygiene or care of the sick. If the blue heads do not keep away the evil spirits—and the infant mortality is forty or fifty per cent in some villages—the woman is taught to say “Min Allah,” God wills it, and feels no responsibility, but accept her hard fate without a murmur.[121]

As seen, even though cultural accommodation was on the rise, some of the American missionary teachers, especially those who served for a short term, showed less understanding, and reverted to the attitudes of the earlier missionary generation. Such attitudes were demonstrated during a trip to Baalbek, Lebanon, in April 1939, when McDowell and Gertrude tried to find a compartment on the train. McDowell did not “like to ride with Arab women, because they are sloppy and noisy and carry dirty babies.”[122] They found a compartment with four old men who invited the women to eat with them but McDowell and her friend declined because “they carry the food wrapped up in dirty scarf, and spread it on the seat.”[123] In other words, McDowell declined the men’s invitation because she viewed their food as unclean, and chose not to ride with the women because they seemed to be from the poor class as evidenced by their lack of middle-class social habits.

McDowell’s comparison between Arab and American women’s way of dress and public manners revealed a continued sense of Palestinians as the “other.” She described that when American missionaries “walk around the town we are often scolded because we don’t wear headdress and long sleeves as proper women do,” and continuously mentioned that Ramallah women “never speak to a man on the street.”[124] White’s description of the Palestinian women also assured her listeners that Palestinian women “still wear a veil when they appear in public and especially in the market place one never sees a woman unveiled.”[125]

Even during this period of modification, on many occasions, the racial and cultural differences between both groups were highlighted to confirm white supremacy through skin color and physical characteristics. Christianity had become connected to whiteness and thus whiteness to cleanliness, which many missionaries projected in their writings.[126] For example, White described the physical appearance of Palestinian women who, for the most part, had dark hair and skin and occasionally “a girl is born with fair hair.” When this happened the fathers considered it a “great honor.” White explained, “The combination of fair hair and dark olive skin is not attractive to western eyes but is so admired in Palestine.”[127]

White measured beauty as related to whiteness, and characterized individuals through the white-dark binary of racial hierarchy which was ever so present in America during the early twentieth century. She also described the music she listened to when attending a Ramallah wedding as “strange,” and the two little girls dancing as “looking so cunning in their native dress with little bare brown feet,” as they were “executing a strange and charming little dance together.”[128] Also, White described her students during her first week of teaching as “cunning things.” One of her students was “a beautiful little Greek girl who is talking English, Arabic, and French . . . and doing fine.” Two new Palestinian students, Modallaleh and Na`meh, who were presumably Christians from Ramallah and still wearing their “native costume—dresses to their ankles, and headdresses trimmed with coins, and shawls” possessed an indication of being untouched by modernity. White also described Rasmieh who was “a little Moslem with light curly hair and a cunning little shrug when she doesn’t understand.”[129]

In a missionary report a village girl named Nabeeha was described as a pretty girl “with fair hair and blue eyes, very unusual, inherited possibly from some Crusader ancestor.”[130] She attended the Friends village day school and finished seventh grade. She wanted badly to attend the Friends Girls School, but her family was poor and could not afford the tuition.[131] The missionaries showed their motives by highlighting the differences between the two cultures, and focusing on the physical appearance of Arab women through exoticization and racialization. When they noted shared physical features between European and Arab women, they emphasized how these traits were praised and favored by the locals. Remarks similar to these, even though more refined than the previous generation’s language, still projected racial and cultural superiority.

After White spent a few years at the Ramallah Mission she became familiar with the educational needs of many girls from poor families who were not able to gain admission to the Friends Girls School. She favorably described the appreciation and happiness of a poor Christian family from Bir Zeit village for the acceptance of their daughter, Farideh, in 1925. A Friend in America offered to sponsor the expenses of one child’s education, and the school chose Farideh.[132] White mentioned Farideh’s happiness at joining the Friends Girls School, but also her fear of not being able to compete with the city girls from Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem who were “very strong,” since she was “just a little fellaha (peasant).” However, Farideh promised her mother she would do her best.[133]

White portrayed Farideh as obedient, with the potential to be a bright student. Missionaries characterized the students differently depending on their social class. City girls, from the upper and middle classes, were portrayed as better able to construct stronger personalities because of their social status and their contacts with Western culture through education, movies, and press, while obedience was a quality American teachers preferred in village girls, typically lower class, because it reflected their preparedness to obey their teachers’ rules and internalize Quakers’ educational and spiritual message. Village girls were seen as the ideal students to imitate American missionary teachers an expression of what Homi Bhabha called “mimicry,” a strategy of colonial discourse.[134] The villager is viewed as the “tabula rasa,” (or blank tablet/page) on which the colonizer can forge his or her own imprint. The cultural context and background of the villager was invisible to the colonizer.

Missionary teachers found other aspects of Palestinian life as favorable. American teachers attributed their Palestinian students’ eagerness for education and good manners to their culture. They even stated that Palestinian students’ good morals were either similar to or would sometimes surpass American children. One example was the way McDowell described her students who come from a mixture of Christian and Muslim families. She maintained that the “people of the East they have beautiful manners and, in the classroom, more enthusiasm than American youngsters.” She explained that even though from seventh grade and up the students took all their subjects in English, “We American teachers must keep reminding ourselves they are working in a foreign language.”[135] Another American teacher sent a personal report to the Board in 1936, indicating that the Friends Girls School was “quite like any Boarding School . . . in America. Nice building, home-like atmosphere, comfortable surroundings; artistic taste.” This teacher described Palestinian students as just “like American boys and girls, coming from some of the finest homes. . . . The language spoken is almost entirely English and really the neat uniforms and general tidiness does, I have to admit, surpass a number of our American schools.”[136] Although this is a positive view of the school and its students, it is still reinforcement of the superiority of the “American way.” American schools remain the standard against which the success of the mission school is measured.

The views missionary teachers held about their students, especially those who came from Muslim families, showed greater modification than earlier periods of missionary work. Sara Hadley described one of the Muslim girls, Asam Abdul Haddie, in some photographs she took in a wildflower trip. She indicated that Asma was the “most intelligent and capable person. She recites both English and Arabic very well and had amazing self-control and poise for a girl in her age.”[137]

Marshal presented another example when she explained her experience visiting the house of a Muslim girl. One of her best students at the Friends Girls School, Subhia, invited her to spend a week in Nablus. The girl had four brothers, all of whom were well educated with degrees from either the Sorbonne in France, a German university, or the American University in Beirut. Subhia’s mother had died, and her oldest sister, regardless of her blindness, performed as the head of the household. Subhia’s “second sister had married young, and had five children,” but got a divorce and finished her education at the Friends Girls School. Then she returned to her husband and children after graduation.[138] Marshal said that Subhia’s “brothers and sister(s) created the most beautiful and close-knit family I have ever been introduced to. The week I spent with them in their gracious old home proved to me that Moslem homes are like other homes that I have known. There was love, respect, cooperation, and feelings of great enjoyment of each other’s companionship.”[139] Hadley and Marshal’s examples present clear indications of how American missionaries began to show more understanding and appreciativeness toward Palestinians and their culture.

American Quaker women who served at the Ramallah Mission were more prepared mentally, culturally, and linguistically than their earlier generation. As a result of different factors, they were able to appreciate the native culture and the norms of Palestinian society. Their increased interactions with Palestinians and their receptiveness to learn the language and culture contributed immensely to their modified attitudes. Mildred White contextualized her experience and encounters after retirement saying that her “life with the Arabs was rich and satisfying. Their warmth and hospitality can never be described. Their kindness and eager sharing in the work for Palestinian youth was a joy that was far beyond my hopes.”[140] Understanding from the missionaries became more pronounced than earlier periods and forged a middle ground for Palestinians and Americans. Even with a newfound mutual understanding, misconceptions were not completely absent during this time.

Notes

1.

Gulnar Eleanor Francis-Dehqani, “The Gendering on Missionary Imperialism: The Search for Integrated Methodology,” in Gender, Religion, and Diversity: Cross-cultural Perspectives, ed. Ursula King and Tina Beattie (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005), 134. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed July 13, 2015).

2.

For more information about the new strategy of cooperation see Caroline Atwater Mason, World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest (West Medford, Mass: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, 1916) and Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996).

3.

Ellen Fleischmann, “‘Our Moslem Sisters’: Women in Greater Syria in the Eyes of American Protestant Missionary Women,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 9, no. 3 (1998): 312–13. Some writers such as Ellen Fleischmann gave more credit to the late nineteenth-century missionary generation. She argued that this generation had more communication skills (usually mastered the Arabic language) and had the ability to cope with the cultural and social realities that existed in the Middle East, contrary to the next generation during the early twentieth century that showed insensitivity toward Arab culture. Fleischmann gives as example that of Mary Eddy, the first women who was granted imperial diploma in 1893 from the Ottoman authority and was given permission to practice eye medicine on equal footing with male physicians. Fleischmann also indicated that many missionary wives were knowledgeable of more than two languages during the nineteenth century. The example Fleishmann gives during the 1920s for the insensitivity of American women missionaries was when Elizabeth Freidinger showed insensitivity when visiting a new mother with a Bible woman. Freidinger was worried that she had to drink the Arabic coffee from a cup used by other guests.

4.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 60–61.

5.

Minutes of Palestine Mission, June 1921. The minutes were signed by the Mission Secretary, Edward Kelsey. The amount that was granted by the mandate increased a small amount a few times during the British Mandate.

6.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 62.

7.

The Annual Report of Palestine Mission, December, 31, 1926. The report also viewed that tourism also improved and that the “aggressive Zionism are pouring millions of American gold into the country and bringing a prosperity undreamed of in former days.” The report also indicated that automobile and improved roads made it easier for the Ramallah mission to coordinate with the Friends in Brummana.

8.

The Annual Report of Palestine Mission, 1925.

9.

Friends Girls School, Ramallah, Palestine, 1931, 6.

10.

Annual Report of the Girls Friends School. Friends United Meeting collection, Richmond, Indiana, 1927.

11.

Friends Schools News, No. 3 (November, 1932), Ramallah, Palestine, 4.

12.

Friends School News, No. 5 (October, 1934), Ramallah, Palestine, 1.

13.

Friends Girls School Papers, 1935. One went to British-Syrian Training School in Beirut, one to Junior College for Women in Beirut, two to Jerusalem Girl’s College, and one Muslim girl to the Government Training College for Women in Jerusalem.

14.

FGS Reports, 1935.

15.

American Friends Mission, Ramallah (the report written by Khalil Totah), February, 17, 1941. In 1930 there were approximately 152 girls in the FGS.

16.

Friendly Flashes, Vol., XV, No. 10 (November, 1943). A monthly newsletter, American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana. This newsletter was edited by Christina Jones. The FBS had 124 Boarding pupils and 173 day students.

17.

Annual Reports of Ramallah Friends Mission, January 1943. the Boys school had 254 students in 1943.

18.

Report of the Friends Girls School, Ramallah, Palestine, January 1945 to December 1945.

19.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 15.

20.

Friendly Flashes, June 1946

21.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 69

22.

The Ramallah Mission general Report, 1943, Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966.

23.

American Friends Mission yearly Report, Ramallah, 1944. (the report written by Alice Jones), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

24.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 184.

25.

Friendly Flashes, vol. XIX, no. 2 (February, 1947), 3.

26.

Salam Za`ror, letter to the Friend Society council, Ramallah Municipality, 1941. This letter was found among the archival collection owned by the Friends Girls School, Ramallah, Palestine. The Friends also had to raise the tuition again in 1943 to meet the financial hardship of the war and to increase the teachers’ salaries by 50 percent to meet the wartime expensive prices. This was mentioned in the General Report of 1943 prepared by Khalil Totah.

27.

Annual Report of the Friends Mission, Ramallah for 1941; Minutes of Ramallah Mission, Jun, 9, 1942. An increase of the fee was made in 1942–1943 for the boarder students. The increase was five pounds over the existing fees.

28.

Ellen Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions,” 418.

29.

Friends Schools News, October 1935, Ramallah, Palestine, 3.

30.

The Annual Report of Palestine Mission, for year ending December 31, 1926.

31.

Jordán, Ramallah Teacher, 63.

32.

Friends School News, No. 7. December 1936, 4. Most likely the word “prince” meant the students came from a prominent Arab family and not literally a real prince.

33.

Friends Girls School Report for 1937, Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966.

34.

Kermit and Grace Schoonover Personal Report to the Board, February 2, 1937.

35.

Ellen Fleischmann gave similar examples occurred in the SGS, the Sidon Girls School in Lebanon.

36.

The Friends Ramallah Mission in early 1930s estimated the Quaker members of the Meeting 118. This includes the children, the schools’ employees (including the American teachers) and absentees. Report of the American Friends Mission, Ramallah, 1932. Palestine Reports 1915–1966. Friends United Meeting Collection, Richmond, Indiana

37.

Grace and Kermit Schoonover Personal Report to the Board, 1937. Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966.

38.

The Annual Report of the American Friends Mission in Ramallah (January, 21, 1921). The report was written by Edward Kelsey, the superintendent of Ramallah Mission during this time period.

39.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 138.

40.

Ibid., 183.

41.

Sara Hadley Letter to Her Family (March 29, 1946), Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

42.

Eva Rae Marshal Letters to her family (October 16 and 30, 1927); Marshal Autobiography, 25–35. Eva’s name became Eva Rae Totah after her marriage to Khalil Totah in 1928. Marshal taught Bible, Ancient and Medieval History, Hygiene, English, Rhythmic, and other sports and gymnastics classes at the Friends Girls School. She also instructed the Girls Reserves.

43.

Marshal Autobiography, 25–35.

44.

Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 52.

45.

Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 84.

46.

One example of these popular novels was Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880).

47.

Beshara B. Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 7–8; Anthony O’Mahony, “The Christian Communities of Jerusalem and the Holy Land: A Historical and Political Survey,” in The Christian Communities of Jerusalem and the Holy Land: Studies in History, Religion and Politics, 9. For more information see Adel Manna`, “Continuity and Change in the Socio-Political Elite in Palestine During the Late Ottoman Period,” in The Syria Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical experience, ed. Thomas Philipp (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992). Nancy L. Stockdale, “Gender and Colonialism in Palestine 1800–1984: Encounters Among English Arab and Jewish Women,” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000), 56. See Also Lester Groves Pittman, “Zion as Place and Past, An American Myth: Ottoman Palestine in the American Mind Perceived through Protestant Consciousness and Experience,” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 1984), vi, 195; Robert T. Handy. The Holy Land in the American Protestant Life 1800–1948: A Documentary History (New York: Arno Press, 1981), 143; See also Pittman Lester for information on European archeologists in Palestine. The Prussian vice-consul Schultz was interested in Oriental studies. He stayed in Jerusalem to study the geography of the region and examine the archaeological sites. Biblical scholars worked through institutions such as the American Palestine Exploration and American School for Oriental Studies looking for something from the past that would link the modern Palestine with the ancient and primitive Holy Land as described in the Bible. Others, such as the American Pastor Adam Clayton Powell (1865–1953), toured Palestine in the early twentieth century and wrote about Ramallah in his book Palestine and Saints in Caesar’s Household. He also made the tie between the contemporary Ramallah he observed and the ancient space with its religious heritage. He wrote: “We next reached the town of Ramallah. Ramallah deserves to be mentioned, because the best authorities believe this was the ancient Arimathaea where lived Joseph, who presented his own tomb to the family of Jesus to prevent Him from being buried in the potter’s field. At the west end of this town is a convent stood the home of the man who was the best friend to Jesus in the hour of His shameful death.”

48.

Marshal Letter to her Family (November 4, 1928). Joy Hilden Personal Collection. These letters were written during Eva Rae Marshal’s service in Palestine in the Friends Girls School and the Friends Boys School during 1927–1928. Eva Marshal worked her first year at the Ramallah Mission as a teacher at the Friends Girls School. The next year she moved to the Friends Boys School. She married Khalil Totah in 1928 after his first wife’s death, and stayed in Ramallah until 1944. In her letter written on October 2, 1927 Eva Marshal also mentioned details about the situation in Palestinian villages. She indicated that water was scarce and this was the main reason why villagers were “dirty, and the disease of the eye is the worst thing there to combat.”

49.

Daniel Martin Varisco. “When Did the Holy Land Stop Being Holy,” in Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept, ed. Michael E. Bonine et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 131.

50.

Mary Minnick Personal Report to the American Friends Board, Part of Mary Minnick Scrapbook, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

51.

Christina Jones, The Untempered Wind, 3. Christina and her husband Willard came to Palestine in 1922. These accounts were very popular and well read by Americans including Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (New York: Signet, 2007); and Thomson account was published in 1859. He mainly connects Palestine’s landscape to the biblical geography. The book sold over 200,000 copies. David H. Finnie, Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 187. For more information on how Thomson connected the Holy Lang to the Bible see Daniel Martin Varisco, “When Did the Holy Land Stop Being Holy,” in Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept, ed. Michael E. Bonine et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012)

52.

Nancy Parker McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 1939 (Richmond, Indiana: Friends United Press, 2002), 9–20.

53.

Ibid.

54.

Eva Rae Marshal to her Family (August 6 and October 2).

55.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 67. The letter was sent in February 1922. Lee also worked in the Friends Girls School between 1903 and 1906 and between 1908 and 1911.

56.

Marshal to her Family (September 2, 1928 and September 16, 1928).

57.

Christina Jones, The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine (London: Longman Group, 1975), 26. This is a biography of Christina Jones during her years working as a missionary in the Ramallah Mission for almost four decades. Mildred White, “Workers’ Conference at Ram Allah,” 1930, FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine.

58.

Eva Rae Marshal Autobiography, 37.

59.

Sara Hadley also described Palestinian Christian marriage customs as an “old tradition of Ruth’s time, of being sure that no man in their own family or tribe wants the girl before she is given to anyone who is no kin to them. Closest relatives—excluding brothers of course—are given first consideration.” Sara Hadley Letter (June 16, 1946), 5.

60.

Hadley to Family and Friends (August 24, 1947), 2. At a fund-raising party for the Ramallah Mission, sponsored by the American Consul’s wife, Mrs. Heizer, the same impression of Mary the good hostess was staged. The Mission sent a group of Friend Girls School students to Jerusalem to serve the mainly British and American guests tea in their traditional costumes, whom Marshal described as looking “very picturesque.” Marshal to her Family (February 21, 1928).

61.

Said, Orientalism, 22.

62.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 109.

63.

Marshal Autobiography, 38.

64.

Ibid, 62.

65.

Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996), xviii.

66.

Caroline Atwater Mason, World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest (West Medford, Mass: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, 1916), 261.

67.

Ibid.

68.

The United Missionary Conference of Syria and Palestine (May 5–7, 1920). In the 1920 conference held in Beirut there were represented most of the foreign missions working in that part of the world such as British Syrian Mission, Danish Mission to the Orient, Friends Foreign Missionary Association (British), American Friends Mission, Christian and Missionary Alliance, London Society for Promotion for Christianity Amongst the Jews, Irish and Scottish Reformed Presbyterian Mission, Edinburgh Medical Mission, Syrian Protestant College and American Reformed Presbyterian Mission. These missionary societies became also the charter members. The conference proposed the opening of a school for evangelistic training for Bible women. In the constitution of this conference cooperation between the different foreign missions was stressed as the primary motive of the conference.

69.

The United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine, eight years, Proceedings of the Joint Meeting at Beirut (Beirut: American Press, May 2–5, 1927), 4; Letter to the Member Missions of the United Missionary Council (January 5, 1928). The letter discussed the issue presented by the “native Syrian and Palestinian Council” of requesting that “the native Evangelical Churches of Syria and Palestine to represented in the membership of the United Missionary Council.” In the 1920 conference held in Beirut there was a representative on the British Syrian Mission, Danish Mission to the Orient, Friends Foreign Mission Association, Christian and Missionary Alliance, London Society for Promotion for Christianity Amongest the Jews, Syrian Protestant College and American Reformed Presbyterian Mission. By the time the UMCSP conference met in 1927, the strategy of cooperation used as clear rhetoric the importance of working toward gradual transference of the missions to local nationals. The conference declared that “we (Protestant missions) are one in the work of Christ’s Kingdom, and shall at the same time strengthen the indigenous organizations for the task for which they are ultimately responsible.” Caroline Atwater Mason, World Missions and World Peace: A Study of Christ’s Conquest (West Medford, Mass: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, 1916), 261.

70.

The other committees were Literature Committee, Missionary Preparation Committee, Social and Moral Questions Committee, Medical Committee, and Committee on Conference.

71.

The United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine, eight years, Proceedings of the Joint Meeting at Beirut (Beirut: American Press, May, 2–5, 1927), 10; Minutes of Ramallah Mission, March 7, 1930. From the Ramallah Mission the conference elected Willard Jones as the Secretary Treasurer officer, James Sutton one of the members of the Evangelistic Committee, Mrs. James Sutton in the Committee of Education, and Alice Jones in the Social and Moral Questions Committee. One of the conferences of the United Missionary Council in Syria and Palestine was held in the Friends mission buildings in Ramallah upon the council’s request in September 1930.

72.

Also, within the same frame of thought the Friends Meeting in Syria and Palestine in 1929 proposed the establishment of nondenominational Friends Center in Lebanon that would work in connection with the American University in Beirut as student hoster. The center, as Nejib Saad, the Secretary Friends Service Committee of Syria and Palestine Yearly Meeting, indicated, would work as a place that kept the students protected from the “evils of a great city (Beirut) and help develop the kind of character the Friends stand for.” Half of the students were Christians from different religious denominations such as Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, and Copts. The rest were Muslims, Jews, Bahais and other sects who came from different countries such as Egypt, Transjordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Persia. Syria and Palestine Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 1929 and Oct, 1929, Palestine Reports 1915–1966.

73.

A letter from the President of the Supreme Muslim Council to the British High Commissioner, April, 1924. Part of the collection of the Islamic Center of Abu Dees, Jerusalem. The long letter of eight pages goes in more detail about the reasons for discontent among the Muslim population. It stated that the British government support the missionary activities and conferences and provide military protection by provide police to accompany missionaries in their preaching trips such as in Beir al-Sabe` south part of Palestine among the Bedouin.

74.

The Supreme Muslim Council Papers, 1920s and 1930s, Abu Dees Islamic Center, Jerusalem.

75.

The United Missionary Conference of Syria and Palestine (May 5–7, 1920). In the 1920 conference at Beirut, the missions were represented by the Danish Mission to the Orient, Friends Foreign Missionary Association (British), American Friends Mission, Christian and Missionary Alliance, London Society for Promotion Christianity Amongst the Jews, Irish and Scottish Reformed Presbyterian Mission, Edinburgh Medical Mission, Syrian Protestant College and American Reformed Presbyterian Mission. These missionary societies also became the charter members. The conference proposed the opening of a school for evangelistic training for Bible women. In the constitution of this conference cooperation between the different foreign missions was stressed as the primary motive of the conference.

76.

Elihu Grant, “The Opportunity of Friends in the New East,” Palestine (April, 16, 1927), 1.

77.

The United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine, eight year, Proceedings of the Joint Meeting at Beirut (Beirut: American Press, May, 2–5, 1927), 7.

78.

Minutes of Palestine Mission, June 29, 1927.

79.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 81.

80.

Ibid., 81, 85–88.

81.

Willis Beede Report to the American Friends Board of Foreign Missions (1921, no specific date) (Palestine Reports, 1915–1966), 3.

82.

Eva Rae Marshal Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions. Palestine Reports, 1915–1966. Friends United Meeting Collections, microfilm 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

83.

Marshal to her Family (September 2, 1928 and September 10, 1928); Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (September–December, 1936). Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Friends United Meeting Collection, microfilm 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana; Marshal autobiography, 39. In a contrasting example, missionaries such as Elizabeth Haviland indicated that “the knowledge of Arabic would be advantage although not necessary.” The problem for her when communicating with the younger children was not the inability of the American teachers of speaking Arabic, but the “limited knowledge of English” of these young ones. Haviland perception that her knowledge of the Arabic language was not necessary undermined her ability to learn about the people and the culture. Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (September–December, 1936), Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. Annice Carter also explained her frustration at the difficulty of learning the Arabic language. She exclaimed she wished that the “Arabic language could be acquired through the process of injections, tablets, or some other simple process.”

84.

Eva Rae Marshal to her Family (September 25, 1927). Learning the language and the culture influenced Quaker missionaries’ life in Palestine. Christina Jones spoke Arabic very well and learned a great deal about the local culture. She liked to use her knowledge in the market in Jerusalem. Marshal praised her ability to communicate with Palestinians in Arabic comfortably. Her son Richard who was born in Palestine grew up speaking Arabic “like a native and speaks it rather than English.” The Jones family was accommodating to the Palestinian lifestyle to a considerable degree. Christina and her husband Willard Jones were working part time as teachers at the Friend Girls School and full time at the Boys Friends School. Willard after giving up his post as the principal of the Friends Boys School to Khalil Totah stayed responsible for the local meeting and the village schools during the 1927.

85.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 79.

86.

Minutes of Ramallah Mission (December 1, 1926); Minutes of Ramallah Mission (January 12 1927), Friends United Meeting Collection, Palestine Reports 1915–1966, microfilm 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana; Minutes of Ramallah Mission (October 18, 1933); Rosenberger letter (December 11, 1933), Friend United Meeting Collection, Palestine Reports 1915–1966, microfilm 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. Mildred White recommended Victoria Hannush to be the principal of the FGS for the 1935 especially after Totah was appointed as the Secretary of the Mission as he would be overwhelmed by keeping the responsibility as the acting principal of the Friends Girls School.

87.

Totah accepted his new post and returned to Palestine in 1927 after completing his PhD in Education from Columbia University in New York in 1926. He had been one of the first students of the Friends Boys Training Home. His strong Arab national identity was reflected in his writings, especially his doctoral dissertation titled “The Contribution of Arabs to Education” reflecting his belief on Arabs’ significant contributions to human civilization. Some of his other writings also highlight his interest in nationalizing the educational system under the British Mandate in Palestine. His emphasis on Arabic language and literatures in the Friends schools’ curriculum during his service at the Ramallah Mission was a clear indication of his nationalist objectives.

88.

The criticism Totah received came mainly from short-term missionaries such as Katharine Haviland who asked the board to reduce Totah’s responsibilities. Katharine Haviland to the Board (January 20, 1935). Friends United Meeting Collection, Palestine Reports 1915–1966, microfilm 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. Personal report from Kermit and Grace Schoonorer. Richmond, Indiana (January 25, 1935); Khalil Totah letter to Merle L. Davis of the American Friends Board of Missions (January 27, 1937), Friends United Meeting Collection, Palestine Reports 1915–1966, microfilm 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. In response to these criticisms, Totah gave directions to the Mission’s workers in the 1936 to send their personal reports directly to the Board in which they were free to give their evaluation of the way the Mission‘s work was being carried out. This was Totah’s way of demonstrating to the board that the Mission’s work was progressing under his guidance, and that Haviland’s complaints were not shared by the rest of the Mission’s workers. It also indicated that Totah was confident of his ability to handle the Mission’s work and felt that the majority of the staff would be objective in their reports. He was also taking the steps necessary to confirm continuous cooperation between the Board and the Mission. Totah replied to these criticisms by stressing that the Mission under his supervision showed full “cooperation, loyalty, and devotion from [his] colleagues.”

89.

Letter to Edward Kelsey (from the Board?) (February 6, 1934), Friends United Meeting Collection, Richmond, Indiana; American Friends Board of Missions letter (May 10, 1934); James Sutton Letter to the Willis Beede, the Secretary of the American Friends Board (February 16, 1935), microfilm, Series 157, no. 17, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana; Katharine Haviland Letter to Board (January 20, 1935). Friends United Meeting Collection, Palestine Reports 1915–1966, microfilm 53, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

90.

Mildred White, “Palestine Survey,” Annual Board Meeting, April 1936, Friend United Meeting Collections, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

91.

Ramallah Mission Minutes (July 14, 1937). Other figures who were long-term missionaries were Edward Kelsey and Willard Jones.

92.

Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (September–December 1936).

93.

Nancy L. Stockdale, “Gender and Colonialism in Palestine 1800–1984: Encounters among English Arab and Jewish Women,”153, 168. Stockdale saw the English women’s portrayals such as travelers and missionaries of Palestinian society as static and frozen in biblical time as part of a larger imperial project to colonize the region “metaphorically and ultimately politically.”

94.

Ellen A. Winslow, “Palestine as I Saw It,” 4. Winslow’s travel account of her trip to Palestine in 1925 (no publisher, or place of publication, or date). This account was given to the author by Don Hutchison who works currently as a teacher at the Friends Boys School.

95.

It is important to note that these kinds of festival meals are commonly used even today not only in Palestine but in most of the Arab world, especially on occasions such as marriage, roofing of houses and buildings, or celebrating the arrival of relatives or loved ones from long trip. They are also used during mourning occasions when someone dies.

96.

Eva Rae Marshal to her Family (November 13, 1927). Part of Joy Hilden Personal Collection.

97.

Eva Rae Marshal to her Family (October 30, 1927).

98.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 82.

99.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 18; Laura Davis Personal Report to the Board, 1940, Palestine Reports, 1915–1966. Friends United Meeting, Wider Ministries Records, film 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. In her report Davis describes Palestinian men and women’s clothing, food, engagement and weddings celebrations.

100.

Ibid., 168. The historian Stockdale argued that the English missionaries portrayed women’s clothing as “beautiful, but their ancient forms and functions were misunderstood and not fully realized for what they were: proof of the verity of the Bible’s historicity.” This kind of description was to show Palestinians that “Only by learning from the English” they could “escape the pitfalls of their material culture.”

101.

Marshal to her Family (November 13, 1927).

102.

Marshal to her Family (November 13, 1927).

103.

Marshal to her Family (November 13, 1927).

104.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 28.

105.

MacDowell Interview, June 2006, Richmond Indiana.

106.

Hadley to Family and Friends (June 16, 1946), 5. The correspondence was composed of five pages.

107.

Marshal to her Family (November 1928). The girl’s father chose from among two men from Ramallah people who were living in America. Presumably he decided on the younger man who he thought would be a better match for his daughter.

108.

Marshal to her Family (October 16 and 30, 1927). In both letters Marshal mentioned her intention to write the article about the Muslim wedding and send it to her father to give it to the missionary society.

109.

Eva Rae Marshal, “Wedding Customs in Palestine” (October, 1927), 1. This article was in the possession of Joy Hilden, Eva Rae Marshal’s daughter.

110.

Marshal to her Family (November 13, 1927).

111.

Marshal to her Family (February 5, 1928).

112.

Marshal to her Family (February 12, 1928).

113.

Hadley to the American Friends (August 24, 1947), 3. Hadley describes the story of the groom and the bride and how their marriage was very romantic (the bride waited for the groom for years while he was in prison) and needed to be told in a novel.

114.

Elihu Grant, The People of Palestine (Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1921), 48–49. Grant was a Biblical scholar who was engaged in archaeological studies and excavation in Palestine. He was the first principal of the Friend Boys School in Ramallah in 1901 to 1904. He was also the director of the graduate school in Haverford. He died in 1942. He wrote other works about Palestine. He had an earlier work called The Peasantry of Palestine in 1907. Grant seemed to apply cultural relativism when studying Palestinian culture.

115.

Joy Hilden phone interview with author, September 10, 1980. Hilden is Marshal’s daughter and stated her mother familiarity with Grants’ writings.

116.

Eva Rae Marshal letter to her family (September 14, 1927).

117.

McDowell, “Palestine as I Saw It,” 72.

118.

McDowell, 33.

119.

Ellen Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions,” 419.

120.

Alice Jones report of the Friends Girls School (January, 31, 1920). FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine.

121.

Winslow, “Palestine as I Saw It,” 13.

122.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 82

123.

Ibid.

124.

Ibid., 9–10. McDowell also described a peasant fallah home in more positive manner than did earlier missionaries. She indicated that his “living room is kept clean, and below it is a store room, where are kept provisions and the family donkey.” This is a divergence from the attitude of earlier missionaries, who always described the villagers’ homes as unhygienic, dark, and where they shared the same space with their animals.

125.

“Social Happy: Miss White Guest at Mrs. McDonald’s Tea” (November 10, 1935). Friends United Meeting Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

126.

For more information about how Christianity has been linked to symbolism of color see Roger Bastide, “Color, Racism, and Christianity,” Color and Race. Vol. 96, No. 2 (Spring, 1967): 312–27.

127.

“Social Happy: Miss White Guest at Mrs. McDonald’s Tea” (November 10, 1935). Friends United Meeting Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

128.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 66–67, 125. Jordan’s book had a collection of the letters Mildred White sent to her family from the early 1920s to 1950s. The letters White wrote to her family the first year after her arrival in Palestine expressed unfamiliarity with the local culture. For example, in her letter in February, 26, 1922, she viewed negatively arranged marriage practices. Then showed how Palestinians who were influenced by the American Quakers’ education disapproved of the practices of early marriage. She gave as an example a comment from a former Friend Boys School student who accompanied her to the wedding and condemned the practice by saying “It is a pity. She is too young to marry—and knows nothing!” White tried to show her readers (her family, friends, and presumably the board) how this former student, because of his education at the Mission’s school, became aware of the negativity of the arranged marriage. American missionaries depicted Palestinian men as polite and well mannered. This was different from the earlier generation of missionaries who depicted these men as oppressive in their treatment of women. White in later years, for example, not only showed a modified attitude toward Palestinian people and the culture, but also transmitted these modified views to her family in Indiana through the letters she sent to them from Palestine. In a letter written by Frances White, Mildred’s sister, describing a visit by a Palestinian, Salim Jaber, who visited the American Friends Mission Board in Richmond and Whites’ family house. He used to work for the Friends’ Mission in Ramallah as a driver. Frances saw him as a “charming man,” and contended that Mildred told her that “all the Syrian men are very courtly in the manners—are taught that from childhood.” The same remarks Frances made when she met Anees Khouri who came to American to study Semitic languages at Chicago University. She said that he was a “charming young man . . . from an educated, refined, Christian family. . . . He has that same gracious, courtly manner [as Salim Jaber].”

129.

Ibid., 68; White’s teaching subjects were sixth grade Arithmetic and English reading, eighth and sixth grade English reading and Composition, and fifth grade composition when she began teaching at the FGS. See also McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 19. McDowell described how Friends Girls School Muslim students arrive to school “with their faces covered by a black veil.” However “[I]n school they do not need to veil.”

130.

“Home Life in and Around Ramallah,” Friend Boys School collection, Ramallah, This report was published by American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond Indiana, no date, 7.

131.

Nabeeha story was popularized by American missionaries in this manner in order to generate funds to Friends Mission in Ramallah.

132.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 97.

133.

Ibid., 101.

134.

For more information on this discourse see Homi Bhabha. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” October, Vol. 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (Spring, 1984): 125–33.

135.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 15. In early levels of schooling the children were taught in Arabic (and mainly by Arab staff).

136.

Personal Report from Ramallah Mission to the American Friends Board of Missions (The sender unknown, no name signed) (January 20, 1936); Also in the science class, McDowell found the students “amazed when they learned about sex. The teachers told [me] her they [are] were not supposed to know about that until they marry.” She asked satirically, “None of our teachers are married. How did they know?” McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 62. The textbooks used at the FGS were mainly Americans. Sara Hadley Letter to the American Friends (January 19, 1946).

137.

Hadley to Family and Friends (March 29, 1946), 3. Sara Hadley mentioned that she still could not memorize her students’ name, too hard for her to do so.

138.

Marshal autobiography, 41; Marshal to her Family (December 10, 1927). In 1927, Eva Marshal mentioned in her unpublished autobiography that Subhia’s sister “had wanted an education, so her brothers arranged a divorce for her that she might attend our school. After she graduated from our school she felt fulfilled. She remarried her former husband and brought up her large family.” Eva Marshall reported that there were eighteen “Mohammedan” boarding students at the FGS. She described them as “sweet and devoted girls and I like them especially. They are careful about going out in the public unless they are covered, and do not go to our Sunday services at the church, chiefly for that reason I think, but nearly every other part of our activities they take full part in.”

139.

Marshal Autobiography, 41. However, in other occasions Palestinian students were portrayed as grade-conscious students. They were seen by some teachers as only studying to get good grades. Elizabeth Haviland “It is very hard to get the girls to study for the joy of knowledge. They are prone to study for grades only.” Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report (September–December, 1936). The missionary teachers also seemed to think that as a consequence of their religious education their students should be ready to be left alone to do their exams. However, Palestinian girls were portrayed as not ready to be trusted during examination regardless of their years of religious education. Sara Hadley Letter (February 19, 1946). Sylvia Clark in 1947 declared that two classes in the “school can left alone during a test. Every other class has somebody in it who could not stand the moral strain.” Sylvia Clark Friend Girls School, 1947, FGS Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine.

140.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 221. The last year of Mildred White’s service in Palestine was 1947.

Chapter 4

Changing the Women

The Impact of Teachers and Curriculum

Missionary schools, including the FGS, were opened for girls in colonial societies as a modernizing project that aimed to uplift and change the situation of women. Colonial authorities, the Western feminist movement, and the local nationalist agenda all supported the modernization of the women’s domestic sphere through an education that produced middle-class ideals of womanhood. These ideals of womanhood fundamentally informed the gendering and division of the domestic and public spheres. From the perspective of the early twentieth-century women’s movement, the aim of integrating the new sciences in girls’ education was to prepare them to become effective, educated mothers and modern wives as women were still viewed as the incubators of morality and values and nurturers of the nation’s new generation. However, within the production of this “new patriarchy,”[1] modern education enabled women to become managers of the household, supplanting their husbands. This was an empowering moment for women, who then claimed the right to further their education.[2] Moreover, women’s education in Mandatory Palestine was “integral to the nationalist and modernity narratives”[3] and worked to complement the religious message of the Quakers.

The Arabic literature introduced to schools during this period also provides a good illustration of the relative commonalities that existed between national movements in the colonial context. Poems and songs, as well as other kinds of literary production, were intended to propagate the national role of women and their obligations as modern mothers and wives in raising national citizens. A collection of poetry written by Maruf al-Rusafi, an Arab nationalist poet, was found in the FGS archive, and used in private and public schools during Mandatory Palestine.[4] This Palestinian Arab nationalist discourse produced a “new patriarchy” that kept men and women in separate spheres. It was no coincidence that this strategy aligned with the British educational program in Palestine. Humphrey Bowman, the British director of education between 1920 and 1936, “emphasized the importance of educating Arab girls in domestic skills over book learning.”[5] This shows the collision between paternalisms—British, American missionaries, and Palestinians—regarding women’s roles both at home and outside of the home. However, FGS students translated their education and its centrality to their roles at home as educators and nurturers of children into a call to extend their service as teachers and reformers in the public sphere. The form of education they received at the FGS and the opportunities afforded them to pursue post-secondary education influenced the Palestinian girls’ formation of social and national identities.

“Womanhood, not scholarship, is the first aim of education,” noted Palestinian students at the FGS in their school’s newsletter, the New Light, which they published during the British mandate period of the 1920s and 1940s.[6] This statement reflects how the students’ Quaker education reinforced the primacy of their roles as wives and mothers, roles that overlapped with the Arab/Palestinian ideals of womanhood and with the qualities that the Palestinian national movement valued in mothers of the nation’s new citizens.

At the same time, Palestinian girls increasingly valued scholarship and higher education as a response to social, cultural, and educational developments. Secular education for girls achieved an elevated status, and the steady rise in standards, together with the national and social developments in Palestine, resulted in a new sense of identity for the students and the school. I will discuss this sense of identity in chapter five.[7]

Quakers shared goals with the other missionaries to modernize Arab women, but certain aspects of their work differentiated them from Catholic and other Protestant missions. Such differences included Quakers’ ideal of internationalism and their views about how to manage this ideal in connection with Arab nationalism and British support for the Zionist colonial project in Palestine, also to be discussed in the following chapter.

Quaker Education in Context

While Quakers shared the agenda of other public and private schools in gendering education, Quaker education in particular produced mixed results in which many Palestinian women showed emancipatory desires to change their roles and responsibilities in either radical, moderate, or conservative ways. This demonstrated that education and the social and cultural atmosphere did not produce the same results for all students. After World War I the general atmosphere in Palestine encouraged academic competition and made all schools search for ways to enhance their curriculum and raise their standards. Social and cultural changes were taking place that expanded the use of media and entertainment, and the growing awareness of the population called for improved educational opportunities for Arab Palestinians. In the context of these changes, the conceptions women held about their roles and limitations evolved.

The educational problems and the lack of schools, particularly secondary schools, available to accommodate the Palestinian Arab population was one of the major shortcomings of the British Mandate government and the Department of Education. Other issues related to education were of concern to many Palestinian educators and nationalists. For example, when a British royal commission came to Palestine to investigate the reasons for discontent among the Arabs in the aftermath of the Great Arab Revolt, the commission heard complaints from well-known educators, such as George Antonius, a former assistant director of the Department of Education, and Dr. Khalil Totah.

Antonius stated, “The system of Administration did not fit the social and cultural development of the people, because it was ‘rigid and inelastic,’ designed ‘to produce friction’ and ‘[a] lack of contact between the government and the Arab population.’” Totah made it clear that the essence of the Arab complaint was due to their desire to control their own educational system. The educational system under the British Mandate, according to Totah, was “either designed to reconcile the Arabs of this policy [establishing a Jewish nation] or to make that education so colorless as to make it harmless and not endanger the carrying out of that policy.”[8] Furthermore, voices to enhance and spread female education became a major concern among educators, nationals, and the foreign missions. Inger Marie Okkenhaug, in her work on the Anglican mission in British Palestine, points out that schools such as the Jerusalem Girls College wanted to compete with boy’s schools. The missionary schools were meant to train girls in modern domestic science as well as provide an academic education that would enable Palestinian females to assume educational and governmental civil jobs.[9]

Quakers “were flexible and adaptable” from the beginning of their work in Palestine.[10] As a response to these cultural changes and as a result of their own sense of providing good quality education, the FGS altered the curriculum to include significantly more subjects, including English, science, and mathematics.[11] “Christian missions have exerted far-reaching influences (cultural, political, and economic) that have affected even those who consciously rejected missionary appeals”[12] In the preparatory classes, Arabic was the language of instruction, and English was taken as a second language, while all subjects in the secondary classes were taught in English.[13]

The emphasis on English language and literature was perceived as the “doorway to higher education” and modernization, and was a requirement for college preparatory exams.[14] Moreover, the girls’ linguistic proficiency made it easier for them to enter college or get civil or secretarial jobs in Mandatory Palestine. A significant number of FGS graduates planned to go to American or British universities. Sylvia Clark, a Quaker teacher, indicated that the school added a fourth Secondary class that was supposed to prepare the girls for their London Matriculation Examination. This exam was usually taken at the end of June, and was created due to the rising standards of the American University of Beirut.[15]

It is evident that Palestinian female students saw higher education beyond the secondary level as a path to their emancipation and acquiring more roles in the public sphere. Najla Cook, who attended the FGS from 1929 to 1940, indicated that many girls in her graduating class went to the American University of Beirut.[16] By the 1930s the Friends Schools in Ramallah were “listed in the Government Year Book . . . with the ‘schools of standing’ in Palestine.”[17] The spread of the English language was part of the “imperial Mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England,” in order “to strengthen Western cultural hegemony in enormously complex ways,”[18] including preparing a Western cultured workforce to fill the colonial government civil jobs. It is argued by Heather Sharkey that:

In other places, missionaries galvanized anticolonial nationalists and sharpened corporate conceptions of non-Christian identities. . . . Missionary work sometimes led, more generally, to the recon figuration of family relations, gender relations, and even relations between young and old. By changing notions of property, mobilizing labor in new ways, and shaping physical environments, missionary work revised economic relations as well.[19]

In contrast, missionaries played a part in the spread of education among Palestinian girls, but were not the sole agents of change among locals. The girls utilize some of the tools which were introduced by the missionaries to subvert the gendered norms and standards which limited their agency within and without the domestic sphere. As a result, they went beyond secondary education and called for gender equality within the workforce and became agents within the nationalist movement. Some of these women, whom I will discuss in chapter 5, became transnational citizens and participated as agents of change in eradicating the limitations on women’s education, as they themselves earned graduate degrees in various fields.

The Quakers’ Ramallah Mission promoted migration to the United States among many of the FGS and FBS students, as well as Ramallah people in general, who migrated to the United States to pursue careers and education. In Anisa Audi’s case, she chose to immigrate from Ramallah to the United States with her two sisters and brother after the outbreak of World War I. Their parents entrusted their care to Edward Kelsey, the American Friends missionary who was the superintendent of the FBS. He accompanied Anisa and her siblings to the United States and facilitated their immigration process. In America they joined relatives who were already established there, which allowed them the opportunity to continue their educations and pursue careers that would not have been accessible in Ramallah.[20]

It is important to note that American missionaries’ educational and social messages in Ramallah during British rule were also influenced by the developments taking place in American society regarding women’s roles and status. The concept of the “new woman” had spread in American society in the late nineteenth century and an increasing number of middle-class women enrolled at colleges and universities and began assuming more public roles.[21] Women were gaining even more access to public life during the 1920s, increasing their responsibilities in politics, and they were given a political voice with the Nineteenth Amendment. They also became more conscious of clothing and decorative fashion, especially those women from the middle class who became part of a mass consumer culture that dominated the 1920s.[22]

Both students at the FGS and the general Ramallah population were exposed to American culture through periodic visits as well as permanent migration to the United States. The condensed historical perspective would be that immigration to the United States intensified after World War I and reached its peak in the 1940s when British policies continued to facilitate the Jewish colonization of Palestine, which resulted in the nakba, the displacement of Arab Palestinians from their homes and the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Part of the transnational missionary endeavors was the creation of local agents who would be cultural converts, reinforcing the proliferation of notions of Western superiority.

As part of these cultural transformations and the alteration of the Quaker educational program, the new FGS curriculum became well equipped to influence the students, especially city girls who were more likely to pursue careers or higher education.[23] Women’s new social roles prompted missionaries to adjust and broaden their agendas, even as they maintained their propagation of women’s basic roles as good mothers and wives. Access to professions for women was encouraged, especially in jobs such as teaching that would spread the Quakers’ message and would not contradict women’s perceived nurturing and caring nature.

This kind of work was attuned to the cultural and religious norms of Palestine that maintained the “gender-segregation through women’s work with other women in segregated women environments.”[24] Furthermore, FGS students were expected to help their sisters from the poor classes in Palestinian villages and cities through the teaching careers they undertook after graduation and by either leading or being involved in charitable and/or social organizations. Quaker reports described the influence of the teachers in broadening the lives of women in the following manner:

What we are most wanting to do for the girls of Palestine that come under our influence, perhaps we would answer it best in these words, ‘To help fit them for service’. For the most part the women of Palestine have felt no responsibility outside their four walls, and often the life within those walls has been narrow and cramped.[25]

In Mandatory Palestine, middle- and upper-class women were already benefiting from and responding to the social, political, and cultural changes that were taking place, including the emergence of organized women’s movements in Palestine and the Middle East in general.[26] These transformations influenced women’s education and increased their social and cultural choices. In the matrix of these changes, women’s conception of the roles and boundaries of their identities changed. The availability of women’s press allowed for access to different forms of cultural entertainment and productions such as movies, magazines, and local and Arab newspapers.

The American Quakers at the FGS observed the new atmosphere, acknowledged some aspects of the emancipation of women, and described the role the school should play:

With the changes that have been coming so rapidly in the last two decades, the life of women has broadened. There is much more society life; the graceful, beautiful dance of the women by themselves do not belong to cities where the modern European dancing is becoming fairly common. There are cinemas, and much attention is given to the latest styles in dress. There are magazines for women and the news of the big outside world is common news. And while all this means that life is growing bigger for our women, it is not always growing in the right way and they have as yet learned very little about the joy and duty of service for others. Every girl in our school ought to get a vision of the work that is waiting for her in her own village or city.[27]

An FGS education was meant to prepare the students to contribute to their society after graduation in ways that would combat the artificial, imitative notion of excessive modernity. Integral to Quaker principles were the values of temperance, promoting health, encouraging peace and coexistence, simplicity, ending poverty, and passion for social and philanthropic work. Young women were to receive the training and the education to have the abilities to carry out the Quakers’ mission that would reform society as a whole.[28]

The school continued to carry its message of simplicity and the writings of the Quakers displayed their increased concerns of excessive consumerism that accompanied modernization and westernization during the 1930s. The school economics department was forced to combat the corrupt and undesirable remnants modernization produced among the FGS students. One of the missionary teachers said, “this land is passing rapidly from primitive ways of living to the most modern ideas of dress, home building and furnishing, and amusements taken from Europe and other countries of the West.”[29] The school also attempted to mitigate these influences on their students by proposing a strict dress code and guiding students away from materialist values. In describing the methods of countering the extensive use of modern materialistic lifestyle, the report said:

The strict rules of the school about the dress, the school costume for every day, the careful supervision of all personal spending of money by the girls, all help to keep a sensible balance. But, unless this discipline in school is accomplished by more training in domestic economy, to develop the tastes and ideals of the girls and give them actual independent practice in dealing with domestic problems, it will not be sufficient to make them wise homemakers when they are out from under the school control. . . . In their sewing courses they learn darning and fine mending and how to make over garments, as well as how to cut and sew new garments. In their cooking classes they are learning a great deal about food values and cleanliness in preparing food; about food of children and sick people and about the economy in purchasing food stuffs.[30]

The home economics department attempted to counter girls’ attraction to excessive styles of dress and home furnishings by continuously adapting home economics classes with the central theme of simplicity in the forefront. In 1935, there were twenty-two girls taking these classes, where “simplicity in dress,” home furnishings, home budget management, and thriftiness were taught, as the Palestinian upper and middle classes were adopting modern material culture to a large extent.[31]

The FGS missionary teachers kept raising their educational standards to prepare the girls for the college entrance exam, while simultaneously enforcing religious education. The American missionary schools were shaping their female students’ modern characters and enforcing their sense of responsibility and domesticity through the transmission of values of “neatness, self-control, love of the scriptures and fear of God.”[32] In addition, American Quakers at Ramallah emphasized peace and internationalism, love of reading, simplicity, and passion for social and philanthropic work that oriented the students’ national identity and reflected through the students’ visions to their national role and civic duty. The Palestinian girls responded favorably toward these teachings and absorbed these ideals in ways that made sense to them.

Shaping the Girls’
Character, Body, and Mind

Religious Education

While secular education was linked from the beginning of the mission schools with religious messages, this approach “would result in uneven, unpredictable results in their students, as well as sending conflicting signals that were interpreted in ways they did not anticipate,” as Ellen Fleishmann pointed out. She maintained that both missionaries and Syrians especially after World War I “linked female education to economic development and professionalism.”[33] This notion was affirmed by the United Missionary Conference of 1920 that stressed the missions’ strategy after World War I was working toward “higher education for women” in Syria and Palestine. The Conference indicated that it:

Urges workers in the field and societies at home to look forward to the future development of education for women in Syria and Palestine on college and university lines. It is felt however that the time has not yet come to fix the administration or location of such a college, seeing that it will take the existing secondary schools for girls some years to regain their pre-war standard, and that the right way for a college to come into being is through the natural growth of these schools.[34]

Missionaries continued to view religious education as a remarkable experience and spiritually fulfilling for the students. For example, the mornings spent in the chapel were described by Mary Minnick as an important “devotional period” that prepared the students for the rest of the day’s activities. All of the students, regardless of their religious backgrounds, had to attend and participate in the morning chapel service. This period of time usually included a “hymn, Bible Reading, prayers, short talk by a teacher and meditation.”[35] It also was a “challenge to the teacher in charge,” as Minnick had “to sound the proper note, to prepare the thoughts for the day!! It is an opportunity that also spells RESPONSIBILITY—it makes one want to give of the best.”[36]

Muslim girls completed all the religious requirements, but they also maintained their faith and performed their rituals such as praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan.[37] The students did not reject or feel offended by the religious education they received from the Quakers; on the contrary, they came to interpret it as a form of religious values shared by all the Abrahamic religions. They found interest in learning about and participating in religiously related functions such as the “White Gifts,” where students collect money to help underprivileged groups. While the message related to this type of charity was humanitarian in nature, one may see that racial hierarchy influenced the labeling of the gifts as “White.” This discourse of whiteness is a continuous vein that runs through missionary terminology that uses whiteness and darkness.

Nazeha Abdul Jawad, a Muslim student who attended the FGS between 1937 and 1945, viewed her Quaker religious education as useful and similar to Muslim teachings. She maintained that people should learn about “God’s books” (kutub Allah al-samawya). She said, “We went to the chapel, Bible classes. . . . All are God’s books. . . . Now I still read in the Bible, for education.”[38] As long as there was no attempt at direct conversion, the students did not interpret the religious education as incongruous with their beliefs. This influenced the students’ views about the Quaker missionaries not as hegemonic teleology, but as a form of interfaith discussion. As Cook explained in an interview, “we [students] went to all religious programs and classes, but they [Quaker teachers] never tried to convert us.” This Quaker education aimed to transform students into productive citizens who would be involved in peacemaking and community building after graduation.[39]

Missionary reports and letters to the Board stressed their strict rules in providing religious education to all students regardless of their religious background. They also celebrated their school’s academic reputation as preferable to other institutions, and how it became popular among all segments of the Palestinian population. The Quakers’ teaching strategies and positions from their religious education were successful. To prove this point, they spoke in detail about specific cases:

A wealthy man from Gaza wanted us to teach his children the Koran and not allow them to attend our prayers. We replied that we had much respect for the Koran and recommended that he send his children where it is taught. As for us we were out to teach the Bible, and to have prayers after our custom without compelling any student to subscribe to them or to repeat anything against his conscience. As a result of ‘sticking to our colors’ that wealthy man from Gaza of Samson sent us six boys and girls.[40]

Here, as noted in the previous chapter, missionaries did not measure the success of their religious message through conversion, but rather through the way they shaped the character of their students who absorbed the Quakers’ ideals and acted upon them in their lives after graduation. The students even appreciated and noted the practicality and simplicity of the religious rituals of the Quakers. However, while they acknowledged the Friends’ educational contributions to the society of Ramallah, they regretfully recognized the inability of the Friends to enlarge their congregation. Mania David, a graduate of the FGS in 1925, indicated, “Their manner of worship and teaching is that of simplicity and informality . . . do not appeal to the oriental mind which is inclined to formal and gorgeous worship.”[41]

Nevertheless, the Quakers’ social, political, and religious message was implemented among FGS students in different ways. In their roles as effective and well-informed reformers, peace advocates, and mediators, the girls were trained and encouraged to take part in educational programs and activities that increased their awareness of global issues. They were to write and publish the World News Bulletin, which dealt with an array of issues around the world such as the issues of women, world geography, and disputes involving political borders. Other issues were also discussed such as politics, economy, art, world peace, and internationalism.

The bulletin also included images and illustrations that were taken from magazines such as the New York Times. Important world figures such as Gandhi, Ramsey MacDonald, Philip Snowden, and the Prince of Wales were introduced and their accomplishments were discussed.[42] The secondary students were required to read the bulletin and study it for their history test.[43] These activities stimulated the girls’ awareness of world news and strengthened the girls’ ability to write and think globally, especially on issues concerning women’s movements around the world. The bulletin reported on the accomplishments or setbacks of women’s movements in different countries, such as the defeat of the women’s suffrage bill in Japan.[44]

By learning about activism in other countries, the girls gained knowledge about strategies they could adopt to change their own situations. During this period, upper and middle-class women were already modernizing their lifestyles as they obtained access to education and information through different cultural channels. An FGS education aimed to promote these changes, while broadening girls’ views and knowledge about the world around them and shaping their personalities according to Quaker ideals.

The Friends female education in Ramallah did not challenge the traditional gender classification of the Palestinian patriarchal society where a woman’s place was defined within the domestic sphere. Modernized education tended to equip students with more scientific skills that helped Palestinian girls in their roles as mothers and wives, such as using math to budget income and basic medical skills to help their children. Male-dominated societies and institutions, such as schools and religious bodies, moved to redefine and readjust the role of women through national requirements and obligations. These redefined roles enlarged women’s traditional domestic responsibility.[45] The Palestinian girls at the FGS believed in their roles as “modern” mothers and wives extended to the public sphere, where the skills required of a modern mother extended to jobs such as teaching, nursing, secretarial work, and social reform. In Palestine there was a high demand for teachers. The public schools were unable to accommodate all students, as mentioned in chapter 1. This worldview, of course, was widely shared then and now.

Extracurricular Programs and Social Responsibilities

Education in the importance and functions of charity and human relief work was a hallmark of Quaker education and provided training for the social and national roles of Palestinian women. Quakers’ engagement and implementation of their principle of peaceful coexistence, mediation to resolve conflicts, and relief of human suffering was part of the Quaker tradition since the seventeenth century.[46] Through the students’ construction of and participation in grassroots humanitarian organizations, the Quakers projected their vision of creating a peaceful civic society where the students took an active role in community building and social life.

In doing this, they aimed to create a Christian personality where “‘home life,’ ‘character,’ and ‘service’” were brought together.[47] Life for the students at the FGS was structured to reflect this ultimate aim of their education.[48] The FGS students were engaged in the Sunday school by teaching the Ramallah children what they had already been taught at the Mission schools. By doing this, they gained a sense of service to others, transmitted the Quakers’ educational message, and acquired teaching experience.

They also participated in the school’s charity programs, where they contributed and distributed gifts to the needy, and demonstrated compassion and charity toward the society as caregiving agents. A tradition of social responsibility was formed among the middle- and upper-class girls that encouraged them to assume leadership roles in their society. The girls developed strong characters and communication skills by creating clubs, a newsletter, and literary programs, where they acquired experience in public performance and social work.

The Ramallah Mission organized women’s charitable societies and programs that left a significant mark in Ramallah and the surrounding towns, villages, and communities. The students, graduates, and Ramallah women participated at different levels and different scopes in these organizations. Some of the most prominent were connected to the Friends Meeting House led by American missionaries, where the teachers formed social and religious organizations for upper- and middle-class women.

The purpose was to accustom these women to organizational work for religious and social issues in which FGS students were to get engaged after graduation and marriage. One organization, initially called the Women’s Club, was created and later renamed to the Women Friendly Club. It had twenty-eight members in the early 1930s; among them were the wives of the magistrate, the mayor, and the governor of the Ramallah district. The most active form of work in which the club was engaged was sewing for the needy families in the area.[49]

Marian Kelsey, a Quaker missionary, created and supervised another club called the Young Girls Christian Society, later renamed to to Al-Munjydate (Women’s Help Society) in 1920. The name change reflected the increasing number of Muslim students enrolled during this period and the influence of the political and cultural developments in the country. Kelsey also established the Sisterhood Club, Nady al-`Akhawat. When the Kelseys left in 1927 and returned to the United States, Christina Jones, Phyllis Sutton, and Eva Marshal took over the responsibility of administering these clubs respectively.[50] In 1935, Marshal became the president and indicated in her personal report to the Board that it was not an option for locals to assume the presidency of the club. She claimed that from “past experience we have learned that some natural divisions tend to disrupt the club when left to local leadership,” therefore she would take the leadership temporarily until she “could turn it over to the new pastor’s wife.”[51]

The club’s work during the General Strike period expanded and was extremely active in the Ramallah community. During the intense political situation and the polarization of social, economic, and everyday human concerns, the club became the only “social outlet for mothers” during the strike. Women’s charitable work in the club increased, as sewing and raising money were the main areas that provided help to families in need. A large amount of material goods went to a school for the blind in Ramallah.[52] These kinds of activities helped to get Palestinian Arab women involved in and aware of community needs and social problems, while also giving the girls a sense of their national responsibilities.

Student clubs and programs were an important part of the Quakers’ educational program that attempted to alter the students’ personalities, as well as their social and cultural responsibilities. The Girls Reserves at the FGS was a club created to train the students in domestic skills and bring awareness to societal needs. The club engaged with students starting from the fourth grade, and different groups were created according to students’ ages and grade levels. Two teachers worked as advisors and coordinators for each group, held meetings, and arranged talks for special guests. Some groups encouraged hobbies such as knitting and handiwork. There were also drama and literary groups. A senior club, made up of secondary students, helped plan programs during Christmastime, sewed material goods for families in need, and arranged an Easter egg hunt for poor children. On Saturdays, the group gathered wildflowers, arranged them into bunches, and dispersed them to patients in the Jerusalem hospital on Sundays.[53]

The emphasis on the Girls Reserves continued into the 1940s, and the girls continued their work through the Friends Meeting and Sunday school.[54] The FGS encouraged their students to adopt a girl from the school for the blind, for whom they were raising money to cover her expenses. They also sang for and entertained the blind girls, particularly during the holidays.[55] Programs to fight illiteracy among women and girls were set up by the Girls Reserves as well. Teachers for the illiteracy program were chosen from the FGS’s students, who were admitted to
the school on scholarships and needed the small salary they received through their teaching.[56]

Moreover, the FGS students’ societies and clubs also coordinated outreach activities with other social and philanthropic organizations to further expand the girls experience in community service. The students kept in close contact with and took part in national and international organizations that coordinated their work and activities with the American Quakers in Ramallah, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The Girls Reserves met regularly with representatives from the YMCA in Jerusalem, to encourage social and religious leadership roles among the girls.[57]

For example, the girls met with the YMCA director and selected students from other missionary schools to coordinate joint fund-raising activities and distribute money to philanthropic institutions, such as schools for the blind and orphanages. In 1921, the FGS established a girls’ branch of the YMCA for older girls to coordinate their charitable work with other branches.[58] Edward Kelsey indicated that such a branch proved to be beneficial for the girls and as an outcome of these activities, the FGS graduates exerted important influences in their “homes, school-rooms, and in some cases in offices,” during the early 1920s.[59]

The girls’ engagement in these organizations was to prepare them for their roles as good mothers, wives, teachers, and also social and religious leaders or influential members of charitable organizations. In 1923, the American Friends Mission in Ramallah hosted a YMCA conference for Egypt and Palestine. The American missionaries discussed the “work for girls in the Eastern countries,” and how to train them to assume responsibilities beyond their homes as reformers and humanitarian relief activists. American missionaries claimed that Palestinian students learned “team-work as yet is not much understood” or appreciated among Ramallah people in the context of social and religious organizations.[60] Occasionally, the YMCA held its regional summer programs on the FGS grounds, such as the August 1931 Jerusalem and Egyptian girls’ camp.[61] Engagement in social and religious organizations was part of the Quakers’ educational program to better prepare the girls’ to develop their characters through political and national identities.[62] As a manifestation of the global civilizing mission, the Quaker mission in Ramallah worked in a network with other American international organizations, such as the YMCA. However, this connected the Palestinian girls with their counterparts in other parts of the Arab world, such as Egypt.

In addition, a program established by the Friends Schools was the “White Gifts” program. This was a charity fund that engaged all of the students at the Friends schools in order to foster their sense of giving and care for the poor, especially during important religious holidays such as Christmas. The Friends in America were the major financial donors, but the school’s students also contributed some of their own money to the program. The program prepared the girls for a philanthropic role by incorporating it into their daily lifestyle. Ramallah’s villages received much from this program and its gifts were helpful in times of economic crisis such as the late 1930s and 1940s.

This program was seen as a form of aid for many village families, who received wheat, lentils, blankets, soap, molasses, and garments.[63] The “White Gifts” became a tradition and by 1945, the program was funded by students, House Meeting members, and American Friends, and allowed the school to pay the yearly expenses for two adopted orphans, as well as contribute to other charitable institutions, such as the American Colony Baby Home, the Cripple Home in Jerusalem, the Blind School and poor families in Ramallah.[64] The FGS students took turns distributing money to the needy and other charitable institutions and later shared their experiences with other girls and teachers in the school. White wrote about the objective for taking the students along, in her letter from January 1945:

Laura (Davis) went to the home for crippled people in Jerusalem with Na’meh Shahla (the bible woman) and two schoolgirls to take fifteen pounds contributed on the White Gifts Sunday for the needy. Sixty pounds were raised that day . . . [some of the pounds] for our two orphans . . . for the blind school, the home for abandoned children, a baby home run by the American Colony, and some for the poor of the community. We wanted the students to learn more about these institutions, so we are having them take the money in person. They see so much to tell others . . . and so stimulate interest.[65]

The Vacation Bible School was another program created to prepare girls for positions of leadership, social service, and teaching. Mildred White emphasized the importance of these activities to the FGS students and explained that the “spirit of Jesus in all the youthful activities of their lives” motivated the girls.[66] The Daily Vacation School was usually held during the summer and admitted 100 to 150 children. The principal and the teachers of the Vacation School were from the FGS teachers and students and the program showed continuous progress due to the sustained efforts of the students.[67]

In addition, the Quakers established the Vocational School, which was another type of program that provided education to disadvantaged students and helped the FGS girls to gain experience and confidence in assuming jobs and participating in community service. More importantly, it inculcated a sense of mission in educated women to contribute to their societies through roles outside the home.

Sports were also vital and enforced self-confidence, strong bodies, teamwork, competitive spirit, and unintentionally fostered the national identity and gave the girls a sense of pride in their accomplishments not only as Friends school students, but as individuals. Many athletic teams and clubs were established as early as 1920 in Mandatory Palestine. Men’s football teams were the most popular and were initiated at the mission schools, including the FBS since its establishment.[68] Sports were stressed in the school’s instruction manual as an important part of the school’s program to build strong and healthy bodies.[69]

The American Friends believed the physical development of the girls would enable them to give birth to healthy children. Focusing on constructing the ideal of womanhood, physical abilities gained through engagement in a variety of sports ensured that healthy mothers and wives were equipped for their modern domestic role. Also, sports would foster the girls’ disciplinary character and correct undesirable manners in the Christian daughters, wives, and teachers. The annual report of 1925 indicated that sports activities for the girls were proposed to “help in the discipline and in promoting good spirits and healthy mental attitude.”[70]

Teams were organized in all of the schools and teams would compete within the same school, as well as with other schools. Approximately fifteen to twenty girls choose to play tennis as their special sport. Volleyball, called “net-ball” by missionaries, also became very popular among the girls who were engaged in competition on a regional level, especially within the Bethlehem and Jerusalem districts. In 1936, the elementary team of the school entered a competition under the direction of Miss Lubbat and Miss Piper, and won the district Cup.

FGS students were renowned for their training in sports. For example the FGS’s junior volleyball team won the cup six years in a row.[71] The New Light newsletter devoted much of its editorial space to stressing the importance of health and physical fitness to the girls.[72] Undoubtedly, regardless of the missionaries’ stated goals in encouraging sports activities among women, these social and cultural activities where students from different religious and social backgrounds participated as teams encouraged national loyalty and unity among Palestinian students.

Missionaries’ integration of sports as part of the FGS curriculum intended to create the ideal image of a “modern woman” with a strong, healthy body and a caring mind. In order to do so, certain sports and “exercises [were] chosen which increase vitality and have to do with functional health as well as health of mind.”[73] Every week all the FGS students had one hour of gymnastics, one hour of walking, and one hour of another sport as stated in their weekly schedule.[74] This practice continued into the 1940s. During periods of political upheaval in the country, these sports became increasingly popular among the students and became part of the lifestyle of the urban upper- and middle-class students.

Another activity for students was the literary program that fostered creativity, literary knowledge and criticism, and confidence in presentation and expression. The students formed a literary club called Jam`yat al-Qata`f, which promoted reading, writing, and drama. American literature seemed to constitute a large part of the girls’ intellectual and entertainment medium.[75] In the New Light, a section was always devoted to encouraging engagement with Western literature. For example, in one of the issues, the newsletter promoted and recommended some books for the girls to read, such as Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s North to the Orient. In the early 1930s, Morrow Lindbergh was the first woman to fly to different regions in the world in a small plane with her husband Charles. Other books were Helen Louise Cohen’s One Act Play that promoted interest in drama.[76] Both authors were women who took unconventional paths in life, while demonstrating strength and creativity in their characters.

By the 1930s, the school began to introduce more Arabic literature, which was reflected in the school literary program.[77] McDowell mentions that she had worked with another Arab teacher to direct the literary program in 1938. During this period Arab literature became an integral part of the school curriculum. The girls were introduced to the Arab Nahda writers, including Arab national songs and poetry. The girls sang in English and Arabic and performed a Palestinian folk dance, the “dabka.”[78] Some Arab folktales were performed wearing the traditional Ramallah costume, such as Joha’s folktale plays.[79] In addition to the introduction of Arabic literature, McDowell also produced a drama for the FGS students based on European history. She saw that the girls who were acting had “no idea what a drama is . . . (but) . . . learned their lines.”[80] Marshal trained them to perform a dance drama similar to what she had been taught at Penn College. She said, “Although they had never had a chance to do anything of this kind, they were very responsive and eager to do something new to give them aesthetic fulfillment.”[81] During Christmas 1928, the school had a performed program about the birth of Jesus and Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” in Arabic.”[82]

The celebration of Christmas was part of the school tradition that the students and their teachers engaged in each year. Typical Christmases at the FGS were exemplified by the 1938 celebration, where gifts were exchanged, decorations were hung, a Christmas tree was set up, a play was performed, music was sang, Santa Claus appeared, and seasonal food was prepared. These American traditions all became part of the Christmas tradition at the FGS.[83] Both the teachers and students celebrated Christmas with hustle, bustle, and excitement.[84]

The usual Christmas celebration at the school was diminished in 1939. Victoria Hannush and Annice Carter wrote a letter to the Friends in Richmond, Indiana, detailing the situation during Christmas and revealing that the school’s tradition was being disrupted due to the political situation in Ramallah during the Great Revolt. Even Muslim students urged to their teachers that “the school MUST have a tree—why, we ALWAYS have a Christmas tree!” The Palestinian teachers and their students enjoyed receiving gifts from American Friends. In 1939 the school received gifts of towels and washcloths sent by the American Friends in Richmond. Palestinian teachers agreed, “American towels are softer and nicer than those from other countries.”[85]

By 1945, the Christmas celebration became one of the largest and most popular events during the school year. Tickets were sent to selected guests to ensure organization and reduce overcrowding. The music teacher, Linda Clay, produced “a beautiful Christmas pageant. The story of the Nativity of Christ was told in a dialogue, readings, and song, with lovely costumes.”[86] In general, these literary programs gave the students the opportunity to perform for an audience and build their self-confidence and poise. The performance included pieces from both Arab and Western literature, which indicated acceptance and respect of each culture. Christmas trees and the exchange of gifts became symbols of sharing, and were also parts of the process to globalize American culture at the mission. Even the Muslim students became engaged and interested in this cultural and religious display.

Music played an important part in the school’s life. The development of the music department received the full attention of the American teachers and the board as a way to raise the students’ social standards. Piano classes were introduced in 1914, and by the 1930s the school had a much improved music department, with Miss Clay as its major contributor.[87] The department produced different musical entertainments for the various social and graduation programs. Piano lessons were given once a week, but the girls were able to practice during other times. Students who advanced their skills would perform with a glee club “in a joint recital. The piano members consisted of solos, duets, and trios.”[88] As one of the graduating students stated, “with their talent in music they help others to enjoy a high type of pleasures and by their refinement and good character they help others by her life in the home.”[89] Music was introduced in the school to these students as a type of entertainment that future mothers could utilize to entertain their guests and family members, but not to perform in public as a career. The exception to this was teaching. These activities reinforced the class and gender expectations shared between missionaries and Palestinian society.

There were many attempts to prepare a music staff from the students of the FGS, and the school succeeded by training some of the girls who would become music teachers after graduation.[90] The school trained Lily Sahtara and a few other girls who were “talented,” in music through the Mary Williams Scholarship Fund.[91] Lily was seen fit to “interpret the spirit of the Friends and the culture and country from which she comes,” as the scholarship indicated. Rolla Foley, an FGS music teacher, saw the need to train music teachers in the Near East. While the major goal of training the students was to provide the school with a music teacher, especially after Mr. Foley left the Mission, it worked toward advancing music and song culture in the school. The relationship between these Palestinian and American teachers became progressively more associated with a cross-cultural process. Arab music teachers introduced Arabic songs and folk music that brought an authentic flavor to the school’s programs.

The FGS curriculum included extracurricular activities that tended to develop the girls’ physical and social abilities beyond the classroom. While it aimed to shape the girls’ minds, characters, and personalities, it also influenced their national and political identities, which instilled a disposition to participate in community building and civic engagement.

Academic “Regular” and Home Economics “Practical” Classes

Home economics became a modernizing project connected to professionalism in managing household affairs, and gained much support from all groups in Palestinian society.[92] As Najmabadi asserts, it empowered women by transforming her traditional role as mother and wife to “manager of the house.”[93] Acquiring these skills entitled women to become their husband’s partner, and in some cases, the sole head of the household in managing the family’s budget and expenses. This training was also attached to a nationalistic impulse and therefore endorsed by leaders of the male-dominated nationalist movement. These leaders believed that it would equip upper-class and middle-class women to be “self-sufficient and independent rather than reliant on household help,” and would also provide modern household skills for poor women, who could use them to earn a living.[94]

Furthermore, Palestinian female students learned about their domestic roles through the recitation and memorization of poetry. In the archives of the FGS, a collection of poems and songs written by Maruf al-Rusafi, an Arab national poet, provided a clear message that the nation needed educated women to carry out their role of preparing the youngest generation for the future. One of al-Rusafi’s poems entitled “Inshwdat al-bint” (“The Girl’s Song”) was written from a first-person perspective in which a girl requests that her mother send her to school to learn not just sewing but all kinds of arts, including how to behave as a virtuous woman, since the success of children was dependent upon educated mothers.[95]

Due to the number of science classes added to the curriculum, the FGS needed to figure out how to fit home economics classes into the schedules, because science classes needed to remain due to the belief that they “fit them [the girls] to enter high schools.” Therefore, in the first year of secondary classes the school gradually began to eliminate “courses in sewing and cooking, home nursing and care of babies for algebra and geometry.”[96] For example, sewing classes that were part of the curriculum before World War I, where each girl had to complete six hours in sewing, were reduced significantly during the early years of the mandate period.[97] However, by 1925, in order to preserve home economics while modernizing the curriculum, the school decided to experiment by creating “regular” and “practical” classes.

The “regular” classes were aimed to prepare the girls who were looking for higher education after graduation; the “practical,” or home economics classes, were to prepare the girls who were aiming to get married and become housewives.[98] The school also stressed the importance of providing “a course for girls who were to be married and who had never had an opportunity to go to school after the primary grades.”[99] The students who failed the academic classes were transferred to home economic classes. However, the plan failed in terms of implementing long-term change. By 1927, many girls in the secondary level who were on the top of their academic classes were choosing to take home economics classes as substitutes for algebra and geometry. Palestinian families were encouraging their daughters to get training in household work, and the school did not rigorously enforce the separation which made the girls alternate classes.[100]

Interestingly, the popularity of the home economics department increased by the late 1920s, especially after the enlargement of its classes to reincorporate sewing and introduce home management, accounting, home nursing and baby care. Christina Jones was a well-known teacher who taught cooking and “Baby Care” classes in the homes economics department, which was headed by Annice Carter.[101] The department offered many classes, some of which the students favored over the others. Former students Najla Cook and Salwa Tabri indicated that they liked all home economics classes except sewing. Where Cook favored classes about cooking and flower arrangement, Nazeha Abul Jawad, a Muslim student, liked classes that focused on home management and engineering and sewing.[102]

The “Baby Care” class became the most popular among the girls and due to the increasing demand the school built the home economics cottage in 1929.[103] The cottage worked as a model of a small and simple modern Palestinian home.[104] The initial intention in building the cottage was to select a group of girls to live full time with their teacher to gain the most from the modern housekeeping experience. The cottage was used for few years in the 1930s until it became the residence of the permanent principal.[105] The purpose of situating a cottage as a modern model for the middle-class home was similar to settlement houses that were established in the last decade of the nineteenth century by middle- and upper-class American women reformers. By 1910, there were over four hundred settlement houses in American cities.[106] This reform movement aimed to introduce the middle-class ideals of womanhood to immigrant and working-class women.

Child rearing training, as a part of the middle-class ideals of proper domesticity, was emphasized theoretically and in practice. Annice Carter tried to expose her home economics students to real-life experiences in dealing with infants through the interaction with Palestinian mothers coming from humble village and city backgrounds who were in need of child rearing reforms. She arranged visits to the government clinic where mothers would take their children to be weighed, receive nutritional instructions from the nurse, and be given baby food if they were in need. Carter criticized the custom of wrapping the infants under their arms as this habit made the infants “look so stiff and uncomfortable.” However, these mothers were good listeners to “instruction concerning food and feeding and endeavored to follow the instruction given. But for clothing and wrapping they get little interest.” Carter viewed the baby clothes as “so pathetic to me that I long to teach mothers how to choose materials and patterns for children. Some of their dresses were long plaids or figures and with skirts that reach the ankles.”[107] The American missionary women’s came with hierarchical notions of middle-class ideals of domesticity in order to civilize these native women, while simultaneously consolidating the proper space of women at home.

By the 1930s, the school once again reiterated that students had to choose between the college preparatory and housekeeping classes, and that they could not alternate by taking both or some from each section. Annice Carter, upon her return to Ramallah, claimed that she found the Home Economics “stronger in some ways than when I left,” but regretted the fact that the students had to “make a choice between math and home economics.” The decision to only allow students to take courses from one field made the number of girls taking Home Economic courses decline. The girls typically were forced to choose math because most of them were planning to pursue a college education and needed it “to meet entrance requirements.” Carter stated, “if we (the FGS) could arrange for our Secondary to have home economics in addition to the college requirements, we would have many more girls in that department.”[108]

Ultimately, the experiment proved to be unworkable and students and their families vocalized their dissatisfaction, and by 1937 home economics classes became “compulsory for all girls.”[109] Carter declared her pleasure and satisfaction about how well trained the students became through their sewing classes. They did “their work neatly and quickly” and by 1946 the graduating class was being taught even more sewing and cutting, to the extent that the girls were fully able to sew their own clothes.[110]

The home economics department remained important for missionaries, students, and their families. It was improved and enlarged along with the regular classes required to pass the British Matriculation Exam. Students absorbed the message from the school and the nationalist movement that emphasized the centrality of home economics in preparing them for their new roles as women. The students desired training that would help them become good citizens and also wanted to take the regular classes that would prepare them for the London Matriculation Exam, which would enable them to pursue higher education.

School Life, Rules, and Activities at the FGS

The life of the girls in the FGS was scheduled, organized, and controlled by bell rings. They woke up at six in the morning, got dressed, aired their beds, did their individual prayers kneeling next to their beds, ate breakfast, made their beds, and completed their assigned chores. Older girls were considered to be the “mothers” for younger ones, in order to prepare them to be good mothers for their own children. All cleaning and assigned chores were to be done before the girls left to attend chapel at eight o’clock each morning. After chapel service, the girls began their day with regular classes where “the Bible lesson has an important place.” There was an assigned teacher for each subject: reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, and physiology and hygiene, as well as gymnastics. Two afternoons per week were designated for recitations and the rest were for teaching girls household skills such as sewing, mending, and ironing.[111]

Life in the boarding schools was described as “monotonous and scheduled.”[112] The main aim of the boarding school was to enforce the home atmosphere of a “big family,” with a relationship that was “somewhat of a Mother-Daughter attitude between the teachers and students.”[113] Najla Cook, a former student mentioned above, affirmed, “We lived as family with our teachers.”[114] Everyone who lived in the school had their duties “from dusting and cleaning to the making of flower gardens.” American teachers were supposed to be a “model of neatness and promptness.”[115] The teachers described the duties and the rules of the school vividly when they told the story of their life at the school. Their “duty day” was supposedly a “full day” for the teacher on duty. Quaker teachers showed varied impressions of their “duty day,” where some undertook their routine duties and obligations with more enthusiasm than others. Mildred White viewed her “duty day” as the busiest school day. In this day the teacher on duty had to rise sometime before six o’clock to get dressed, ring the bell at six o’clock to wake up the girls, and then direct all the school activities. The duties included administering the girls’ dressing, prayers, chores, meals, recess time, study hall, and bedtime.[116]

During school days when the daily classes ended at 3:30 in the afternoon, the teachers usually took their tea break before they supervised the sports and other extracurricular activities. During 1938, Nancy McDowell’s responsibilities included teaching history, science, English, health, geography, and a class for the Sunday school, as well as preparing a chapel speech once a week. Like the other teachers, she was responsible for fifteen girls, whom she referred to as family, and supervised the girls in cleaning a number of classrooms. As indicated by Frantz Fanon, in European civilizing missions, “the family is a miniature of the nation.”[117] The missionaries instill this hierarchical perception of family dynamics in order to influence the way in which the girls shape their local environments and the larger nation in correspondence with the colonial legacy.

McDowell also taught the girls how to play baseball, and[118] described her “duty day” as the “heaviest day.”[119] Everything was executed promptly, especially the religious rituals. She stated that when she rang the bell at 6:20 in the morning the girls would immediately “kneel down and say their prayers.”[120] Additionally, Mary Minnick, another FGS teacher, enjoyed the “duty day” and carried out her responsibilities eagerly. She felt emotionally satisfied on this day due to the fulfilling mothering feeling she experienced. She explained how by the end of the day she would tuck “the girls in beds where they received their “whispers of ‘goodnight Miss. Minnick,’ . . . End of another day?? No not just ANOTHER day—it seems more than that.”[121] Minnick enjoyed working with the students and the faculty even when she had too many responsibilities and had to adjust to poor teaching materials and conditions. As a music teacher, she had “24 piano students, 2 violin students and of course the regular singing classes plus a Glee club at each school.” Even with the shortage of musical instruments, books, and sheet music she was still able to manage willingly.[122] Minnick’s experience reflected the experiences of many single woman missionaries who felt in executing their duties at the FGS and living in a boarding school with a mother-daughter environment, it fulfilled their duties and responsibilities without needing to become wives and biological mothers.

The teachers reflected their enjoyment and favoritism working among Palestinian girls in the FGS. These Quaker women thought they would be more productive and more giving when working among female students. For example, during World War II, because of a shortage in the FBS’s teaching staff, Mildred White taught English in the boys’ school, supervised the boys during mealtimes and taught them how to clean up after meals. She also had other responsibilities in helping in the Mission village day schools and the Ramallah Meeting.[123] White expressed her happiness at going back to teach the girls, by emphasizing her closeness, appreciation, and understanding of girls’ needs and concerns. She explained that she would “accomplish much more from a spiritual point of view when working with girls, with whom I have more contact in a natural way, and whose needs and problems I can understand so much better” than those of the boys.[124] Marshal also expressed her enthusiasm and pleasure of working with the Palestinian girls. She exclaimed that “[y]ou will believe me when I state that there was never a dull moment in that class. Still, there was plenty of evidence of consideration, love, and helpfulness.”[125]

During bath day, which was usually assigned on Saturdays, the older girls were responsible for helping the younger girls bathe, dress, and comb their hair.[126] In the early morning, the girls started taking their turns in their weekly bath, and changed and washed their bedsheets. Saturday was typically the most extensive household day of the week at the FGS. All girls were assigned to duties related to school upkeep and they were graded on their chores.[127] The girls had to finish all their assigned household work before the afternoon. No one would be exempt from these chores, not even the little girls who had to sweep the playroom and balconies.[128] Once, McDowell stated that she was not able to enter her room because “a little girl is scrubbing the stone floor and the mattresses are hanging under the sun.”[129]

Saturday afternoons were times of greater interaction between the teachers and the students as they studied, read, or practiced piano. From four to five o’clock the teacher would tell the girls stories and in exchange, she would listen to their stories in Arabic.[130] These moments of social interaction are a clear indication that both Americans and Palestinians negotiated their relationship through cultural cross points as both sides traded stories from their respective cultures. Saturdays also served as time for teachers to better acquaint themselves with the students outside of the classroom.

Sanitation in the school was a high concern. McDowell stated they had to keep up with cleaning the school and the girls because at some points the American teachers were “having an awful time with the fleas. We seemed to have picked them up somewhere, off the streets I guess, because this building is clean enough.”[131] Sundays were designated for cleanliness inspection of the girls’ hair, fingernails, shoes, and cups. It was also the day when important religious programs were carried out, and all of the boarder girls were required to attend the Friends Meeting House in the morning.[132] Sunday School was important, as both teachers and recently graduated girls led classes. On some occasions, the girls had the opportunity to go for a walk in the valley and pick wildflowers during the spring. White would typically accompany the older girls in the afternoon to the weekly YMCA meeting. In the evening, one of the teachers would stay with the girls at supper, while the rest of the teachers would eat their supper alone as some students served as their waiters.[133] Only during “Thanksgiving would the teachers waiter for the students who enjoyed a very delicious meal.”[134] White indicated that in the evening the FGS students and teachers would go to the Friends Boys School “for singing and Bible study.”[135]

The FGS functioned as a “compact model of the disciplinary mechanism”[136] in which “the disciplinary apparatuses hierarchized the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ subjects in relation to one another.”[137] The Friends teachers viewed the methods and rules as necessary and to be followed closely by the students. After the arrival of the girls to the FGS, they became part of a disciplined family, whose members’ work ethics removed the distinction between teacher and student. Elizabeth Haviland explained how the girls “get used to the strict discipline necessary for any control of classes and for the continual repetition of directions.”[138] “It is very hard to get the girls to study for the joy of knowledge. They are prone to study for grades only.”[139]

Girls from well-to-do families were trained like the rest of the girls in household chores. Lily Harami, one of the few girls who came to attend the school from Egypt, came from a wealthy family. Her parents tried hard to get her exempt from household chores to no avail. Harami learned to obey, respect, and be engaged in the everyday school life and learned to do the various school chores quite well. Mildred described Harami as a good learner who “waits tables with a will and likes to hike over the rough trails after wildflowers like the others.”[140] This part of the school education was primarily to “send out girls who will become ‘real Christian’ wives and mothers who know how a well-ordered house should be kept and who love to have things clean and neat, who knows enough of the laws of hygiene to take care of a family.”[141]

Mandating that all of the girls, regardless of their socioeconomic class, complete the same chores made the students feel as if they were part of one family, especially the poor village girls who were admitted through scholarships. This was different from other missionary schools, especially some Catholic schools, such as the Dames de Sion (Notre Dame) in Jerusalem, administered and run by French nuns. The nuns separated the girls into three groups according to their social status where the groups were not allowed to interact with one another and studied in separate classrooms. Moreover, orphan students were supposed to do all the cleaning in the school and had fewer learning hours.[142] This contrasted with the FGS where all the students lived together, shared the same dormitory, classrooms, household chores, studied the same amount of hours, and were not distinguished by their class or religion.

For the most part, the students showed eagerness and appreciativeness of their teachers’ rules, education and instructions. Hadley explained that even though the “attitude of the classes and their problems is entirely different, the girls all are very appreciative—often rising at the end of the class period with many ‘Thank-you’s’”[143] McDowell also stated that Palestinian students usually listened to instructions and were “very orderly. . . . When I give the signal they march in and stand at their places. The girls have beautiful manners. When I enter the classroom they stand and say ‘Good morning, Miss Parker.’ Only they say Miss Barker. They can’t pronounce ‘P.’”[144]

Although some students expressed their gratitude, other students viewed the rules as strict, as if their lives were regulated by a “military clock,”[145] but still followed the rules well. The members of the student council who were from the upper two grades confirmed their adherence to and acceptance of the school rules and indicated that one of their major duties was to share responsibilities with their teachers by keeping the school regulations. For example, a statement written and signed by the members of the council in March 1920 stressed that the members’ role was to set a good example for the younger girls through their language, conduct, and respect for others. The teachers emphasized that the aim behind establishing the student council was “to make the girls feel some responsibility for keeping the school ideal sky high” and to teach them self-control.[146] This student council can be also seen as an expansion of the mechanisms of surveillance, a “growth of the disciplinary networks,” that reinforced certain colonial gendered Quaker ideals;[147] the older girls internalized the school rules, becoming themselves an embodiment of the school’s ideals, and they then acted to influence the conformity of other girls through surveillance. Some of the students criticized the school’s restrictions and regulations, but, at the same time, acknowledged the importance of these in developing their character. At times, the girls attempted to break the rules, but still held an amount of respect for them. It seems with all the restrictions, duties, and punishments, the girls found their own ways to get around the strict rules and enjoyed breaking them, especially when they were not caught. These significant actions represent the girls’ expression of their agency in defying the limitations imposed upon them within the colonial space of the school.

A glimpse of the school experience was described by Awjny Asad and Na`mah Daoud, graduates of the FGS in 1926. Both stressed the school’s strict instructions with which students needed to comply. When they chose not to follow them, they would receive consequences such as a grade reduction or other forms of punishment. When Asad broke the rules, she was obliged to repair bedsheets on the day her sister planted her tree, a tradition in the school for new students. Asad was given this punishment because as she mentioned, she hated sewing. In her first and second years, she usually lost four credits a week for not following the rules. She described how hard her first year was because she did not speak English and called herself as “a deaf person in a party,” because all the other students and teachers were communicating in English. Asad’s comments shed light on the ways in which discipline, described as a technology of power by theorist Michel Foucault, produces a reality characterized by “rituals of truth.”[148] She satirically stated that the students should be on their best behavior “as angels without wings . . . if we smiled or talked we were to blame, even though, we were advised by the ra`esah (head teacher on duty) in prayer time to be cheerful and always smile.” Asad’s wingless angel represents what she views is both the proliferation of the ideal of the submissive Christian woman by the Quaker teachers and the imposition of a hierarchically inferior position in relation to the teachers who surveilled, disciplined, and punished the students. All the while, she maintains that all these punishments and strictness were necessary for the girls ‘education and development. In a complex manner, the girls felt that their enrollment at the FGS was strategic because the skills learned at the school enabled them to claim better positions in society.

Daoud enjoyed her life at the school and talked about her ability to break the rules without getting caught or punished. She sarcastically recalled how she and her classmates used to “memorize the school rules but upside down!” She would tell the other girls to laugh and talk when she was the teacher helper and when the teacher on duty asked her about their behavior she would tell her that her classmates were on their best behavior. Daoud received many bad grades for community spirit, disobedience, self-control, effort, and bad manners. She complained that wherever she went there were grade reductions for improper attitude.[149] Daoud’s disobedience was a form of contestation of colonial notions of organized space and time. The minor forms of resistance displayed by Daoud were, in fact, significant because they reflect veiled challenges to colonial regulation which might not be perceived as direct threats by the teachers.

Najla Cook, who enjoyed her years in the school, told stories where she and other girls broke the rules “just for fun.” She said “we used to joke around . . . steal cheese. One of the girls stood by the stairs to watch if Miss Hannush or other teachers were coming, another girl stood in front of the kitchen door . . . and one entered and got the cheese . . . breaking the rules, it was a hobby, I loved these days. We just did it for fun.”[150] It seems that methods of punishments changed over time. In the late 1930s, the New Light emphasized the students’ good behavior and established sense of self-control. A new punishment included placing the girls that misbehaved in a lower grade for some time.[151] The punishment of the students by stripping them of their educational rank exemplifies the way in which hierarchy of class grade levels in colonial educational institutions propagates the class hierarchy in society.

Overall, the girls respected their teachers and showed an understanding of the importance of establishing and following school rules. They also emphasized that both American and Arab teachers alike enforced these rules, stating that the latter enforced them more than the former. Aida Audi who recalled her best school days in the 1930s, indicated that the students “respected Miss Hannush, she was very strict, very firm, but not in a wrong way. She wanted us to respect the rules.”[152] Cook confirmed Audi’s opinion of Miss Hannush and added, “When we hear her steps coming, we panicked.”[153] School regulations and rules were typical for missionary boarding schools. Incidents of girls breaking the rules were not direct challenges to their teachers, but were rather attempts at challenging colonial hierarchies and confining ideals.

The American Quakers trained the girls in modern domestic science, including duties in and around the school such as cleaning, washing, and planting vegetables and flower gardens, and extracurricular activities in order to prepare the girls to exert strong personalities and a passion for community and social service. The girls’ acceptance of the school’s educational agenda highlights their belief in values shared with their teachers: education, domesticity, and social work. This shared space of values made it possible for both groups to exert change on each other. Moreover, this kind of education enabled the students to modernize and extend their domestic roles beyond their homes and consequently envision their national obligation beyond the anticipated aims of their education, as will be discussed further in chapter 5.

Notes

1.

Partha Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 627; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 7. Chatterjee discusses in his writings the nationalist movement reproduction of the “new patriarchy” in Bengal in which the places of men and women were still in separate spheres.

2.

Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 109.

3.

Ela Greenberg, Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine (California: University of California Press, 2009), 4.

4.

FGS Collection, 1921.

5.

Ela Greenberg, “Educating Muslim Girls in Mandatory Jerusalem,” Middle Eastern Studies 36, no. 3 (2004): 3.

6.

New Light 1, no. 1 (March 12, 1938). New Light had six editors and ten reporters from first and secondary classes. The newsletter staff in 1938 included: Bahia Aq`l (Editor), Abla Eid (Associate Editor), Meggie Kattan (Business Manager),Fatima Murad (New Editor), Violet Zarou (School Editor), and Victoria Ackal (Feature Editor). The reporters were: Meriam Arnaout, Faika Habbash, Aida Nashef, Soumaya Ramadan, Biloune Selami, Nimet Baaiso, Wijdan Boudairi, Alice Boursalian, Najieh Tabori, and Nemat Abdo. The feature editor, Victoria Ackall, called on the first secondary to carry on their work and continue publishing the newsletter. The New Light covered international news including the issue of modernity, such as how technological advancement affected Palestinians at home. Topics ranged from reports on household technologies to work shortages in Brazilian gold mines to women’s rights in Australia and Japan. These examples show the breadth of news that students had access to through the international, regional, and local media. However, the New Light was concerned mainly with the FGS news, especially students’ activities and accomplishments.

7.

Ellen Fleischmann, “Our Muslim Sisters: Women in Greater Syria in the Eyes of American Protestant Missionary Women,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 9, no. 3 (1998): 307–23; Omnia Sharkey, “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the Century Egypt,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran.” For information on American domesticity see Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820–1860.” American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151–74; and, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973).

8.

See Yusuf, Abdulqadir Mohammad, “The British Educational Policy in the Arab Public Schools of Palestine during the Mandate” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1956), 3–4, 103–4; Tibawi, A. L., Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine: A Study of Three Decades of British Administration (London: Luzac & Company, 1956), 28–29.

9.

Inger Marie Okkenhaug, The Quality of Heroic Living of High Endeavor and Adventure: Anglican Mission, Women, and Education in Palestine, 1888–1948 (Leiden: Bostonl, 2002), 137.

10.

Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, 160.

11.

FGS Historical Documents, Mission Booklet 1914. The manual stated more the rules the girls had to follow. They had to pay for anything they broke because of lack of attention. They had to pay extra every day if they choose to stay during winter break.

12.

Sharkey, Cultural Conversions, 2.

13.

The school manual for Palestine Mission, 1931–1933, Ramallah, Palestine.

14.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 63.

15.

Sylvia Clark FGS Report, 1947, FGS Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine.

16.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006.

17.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 72,

18.

Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (Columbia University Press: New York, 1989), 2–4. The spread of the English language was part of the American Friends mission in spreading Christianity and a Western type of education. Some writers, notably, Gauri Viswanathan, argue that the “discipline of English came into its own in an age of colonialism.”

19.

Heather Sharkey, Cultural Conversions: Unexpected Consequences of Christian Missionary Encounters in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia [e-book] (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 1.

20.

The FGS also played a role in introducing students to the Western world and encouraging continued contact with Western ideas. Consequently, a considerable number of FGS students immigrated to countries in the West, such as Germany and Holland, though the greatest number settled in America. All of the Audi children were former students of the Friends Schools. FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine (1931), 6; Anisa Audi, From Ramallah, Palestine, to Lake Wales, and in Between (New York: Vantage Press, 1992), 1–4. Anisa’s father, Elias Audi, was the first member of the family to join the Friends Mission. The Mission sent him to study at the Friends School in Brummana as a teenager. Her mother Emily Aramoonie, who was Lebanese, taught at the FGS in Ramallah. During the English mandate the number of people from Ramallah who immigrated to the United States increased considerably. Immigration intensified further after the Israel was established as a nation in 1948, when the city became overpopulated by Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homes.

21.

Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 100.

22.

Dumenil’s book provides a good description of what she called the “new women.” The period of the 1920s was the era of an emerging mass culture that was seen as a symbol of modernity in which women played an important role mainly as consumers idealized through advertising images as “modern women.”

23.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006; Aida Audi Personal Interview, July 28, 2006. Most of the former students who were interviewed by the author stressed the fact that many of the FGS students came from the cities and were from well-to-do families. The number of female students coming from villages was small. This was due to the increase of Friends schools’ tuition and that typically city girls were in a better financial situation. Few village girls attended the FGS because of some scholarship money provided for them by the American Friends.

24.

Nagat el-Sanabary, “Women and the Nursing Profession in Saudi Arabia,” in Arab Women between Defiance and Restraint, ed. Suha Sabbagh (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1996), 74.

25.

Palestine Reports (1923), FGS Historical Collection, 5.

26.

For more information on the Palestinian women’s movement see Ellen Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

27.

Palestine Report (1923), FGS Historical Collection, 5; Okkenhaug, the Quality of Heroic, 66. Okkenhaug mentioned how these developments encouraged women to change their position especially from upper and middle classes. Okkenhaug quoted Ellen Fleishmann, who described this atmosphere in Jerusalem during the mandate period.

28.

One long-term Quaker missionary, Alice Jones, believed that girls were influenced by the English military presence in the country. She claimed that girls became “less modest and more independent” in their thinking. Alice Jones report of the Friends Girls School, January 31, 1920.

29.

The FGS, FGS Collection, Ramallah, Palestine, 1935.

30.

FGS, FGS Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine, 1935.

31.

FGS, Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine, 1935. This report was among the collection owned by the FGS. It was written by one of the Friends American teaching staff in the school, most likely by Mildred White.

32.

Fleischmann, “Our Moslem Sisters,” 314.

33.

Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions in Lebanon on the Construction of Female Identity, C. 1860–1950,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 13, no. 4 (2002), 417.

34.

The United Missionary Conference in Syria and Palestine (May 5–7, 1920), 4.

35.

Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (no date, most likely after 1935) in Minnick 1935–1935.

36.

Mary Minnick Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (no date, most likely after 1935), Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

37.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 1939, 33.

38.

Jawad Interview, 2006.

39.

Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 8.

40.

Friends Schools News 6 (Oct. 1935), 7.

41.

Mania David, “The Progress in Ram Allah in Fifty Years” (July 1925).

42.

Philip Snowden was a pacifist who opposed British entering in the World War I, a British politician who joined the Labor Party; after marrying Ethel Annakin, he became a speaker for women suffrage; he never consumed alcohol.

43.

FGS, FGS Collection (Ramallah, Palestine, 1931): 12.

44.

FGS, FGS Collection (Ramallah, Palestine, 1931): 12.

45.

Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission, A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996), 81–82. Women missionary teachers played important roles in “sex-segregated societies” as they had access to women and could provide them with education. The missionary concentration on women’s education was due to the assumption that women were seen as obstacles for spreading Western Christian values. Therefore, missionaries prioritized access to them. Missionaries believed that women held disproportionate influence on their household, especially as mothers.

46.

Nancy Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: the Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism (Cairo. New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 7.

47.

Ellen Fleischmann, “The Impact of American Protestant Missions in Lebanon on the Construction of Female Identity, 1860–1950,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 13, no. 4 (2002): 417.

48.

Annual Report of Ramallah Mission (Richmond, Indiana: The Friends United Meeting, 1929), 5.

49.

Ramallah Monthly Meeting (1934), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Friends United Meeting Collection; Friendly Flashes 14, no. 7 (August 1942) a monthly newsletter, American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana. This newsletter was edited by Christina Jones.

50.

Anesah Ma`luf, The Society of the American Friends in Palestine, 1867–1939, 113–14.

51.

Eva Rea Totah Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond Indiana, January 20, 1936.

52.

Eva Rae Totah Personal Report, February, 1937.

53.

“Extra-Curricula Activities at the FGS,” Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966.

54.

American Friends Mission yearly Report, Ramallah, 1944. (The report written by Alice Jones), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966; Jordan, 185.

55.

Annual Report of the Friends Mission, Ramallah, 1941.

56.

Ibid., 216.

57.

Report of the FGS, Ramallah, Palestine, January 1945 to December, 1945.

58.

Annual Report of the American Friends Mission, Ramallah (January 21, 1921), Palestine Reports, 1911–1938. Friends United Meeting, Wider Ministries Records, film 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. Kelsey also acknowledged the important post the graduates of the Friends Boys School occupied in different Palestinian cities as a result of this kind of education.

59.

Annual Report of the American Friends Mission, Ramallah (January 21, 1922).

60.

Palestine Report (1923), FGS Historical collection, Ramallah, Palestine, 4.

61.

The Meeting of Palestine Mission Minutes, written by Edward Kelsey, the Ramallah Mission Secretary, 1931, Palestine Reports, 1911–1938, Friends United Meeting, Wider Ministries Records, film 54, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

62.

Ramallah Monthly Meeting (1934), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Friends United Meeting Collection; Friendly Flashes, vol. 14, No. 7 (August, 1942) a monthly newsletter, American Friends Board of Missions, Richmond, Indiana.

63.

Ibid., 168.

64.

Report of the FGS, FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine (January 1945–December 1945).

65.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 174.

66.

Friend School News, FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine, no. 2 (November, 1930).

67.

Annual Report of the Friends Meeting, Ramallah, 1937. Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966.

68.

Issam Khalidi. 2014. “Sports and Aspirations: Football in Palestine, 1900–1948.” Jerusalem Quarterly 58, 74–88): 75. www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-arti
cles/Sports%20and%20Aspirations%20%20JQ-58-7.pdf.

69.

FGS, Historical Documents, Mission Booklet, 1914.

70.

The Annual Report of Palestine Mission, March, 20, 1925. Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

71.

New Light 1, no. 1 (March 1938) and (December 1938); FGS Report, 1937, Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966, Report of the FGS, Ramallah, Palestine (January 1945–December 1945); Friendly Flashes 17, no. 6 (July 1945).

72.

New Light (June 1938). The newspaper mentioned also that the school holds a health week where students engaged in a campaign of awareness of health and sanitation issue. For example the posters the students wrote indicated that healthy person should sit, walk, and stand straight; make regular visits to the doctor and visit the dentist once every six months, bathe regularly, wear loose clothes, eat a balanced diet, get enough air and sunshine, etc.; Khalil Totah, speech/letter addressed to the students of FGS and FBS, July 10, 1938. He informed the students of his achievements in his last visit to America in the summer of 1937. He attended the Friends Conference, which included one thousand representatives. He met the former teachers of the Friends schools in Ramallah, such as Alice Jones, Mrs. and Miss Kelsey, Dr. Bailey, Miss Haviland and others. He was able also to raise enough money to build an auditorium and four classes for the FBS. He also mentioned the increasing numbers of students in both schools as well as the graduates, of whom many made it to the American University at Beirut.

73.

Rebecca Stoneroad, “Physical Education of Girls,” The Journal of Education 72, no. 3 (1789; July 21, 1910): 67–69, 67.

74.

FGS Report, 1937, Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966

75.

Anisa Ma`luf, The Society of the American Friends in Palestine, 1867–1939, 115; New Light (June 1938).

76.

New Light (June 1938). In the October issue of the 1938, The New Light reported some political news as the news related to Mr. Wallace Murray, the “Chief of the Near Eastern Division of the Department of State, Washington, who is making official visits to a number of countries for reports to his department, has been in Palestine in the American Legation. Sunday the American Consul General, Mr. George Wadsworth and Mrs. Wadsworth visited at the FGS while Mr. Murray was in a conference with Dr. Totah.” The New Light 11, no. 1 (October 31, 1938) Ramallah, Palestine.

77.

Introducing Arabic language and literature came as a result of Khalil Totah’s personal efforts when he got the chance to supervise the Mission. His assignment as the FBS principal and the Secretary of the Mission were part of the new missionary strategy during this period as explained in chapter 3.

78.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 35.

79.

Marshal, Letter to her Friends (January 28, 1928).

80.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 90.

81.

Marshal autobiography, 44.

82.

Marshal Letter to her Family (December 16, 1928; November 22, 1927). Holidays that were perceived as purely American, such as Thanksgiving, were only celebrated by the American teachers. Students were given only half a day of school. Marshal reflected on this, saying that this was because Palestine was an “English colony and it is only the Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving.”

83.

Jordan, The Ramallah Teacher, 156.

84.

Marshal Letters to her Family (December 16, 1928; November 22, 1927).

85.

Victoria Hannush and Annice Carter (January 5, 1939), FGS, Ram Allah, Palestine.

86.

The FGS Report (December 31, 1945), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

87.

FGS, Historical Documents, Mission Booklet, 1914. The Friends Mission showed interest and confidence in their music department. In 1914, the girls who wished to play a musical instrument in the school had to pay an extra fee (for example, 3 French liras/francs).

88.

New Light, Commencement, December, 1938; “Information about Lily Shatara,” Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966; Letter from Anna Langston, the Principal of the FGS to the Board, May 21, 1960, FGS, Ramallah, Jordan; Mary R. G. Williams Scholarship Fund, Friends schools, Ramallah, Jordan, Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

89.

Alice Houssa, “What an Educated Lady Can Do for Palestine” (July 1922); FGS, Historical Documents, Mission Booklet, 1914. The school manual of 1914 stated that the girls who wished to play a musical instrument at the school had to pay extra (for example, 3 French liras/francs). The manual stated more rules the girls had to follow. They had to pay for anything they broke because of lack of attention, they had to pay extra every day if they choose to stay during winter break. Alice Jones was the principal during this period.

90.

“Information about Lily Shatara,” no date, Ramallah Reports, 1915–1966; Letter from Anna Langston, the Principal of the FGS to the Board (May 21, 1960), FGS, Ramallah, Jordan; Mary R. G. Williams Scholarship Fund, Friends Schools, Ramallah, Jordan, Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

91.

The Mary R. G. Williams Fund was established by the Friends of Philadelphia in 1930 who deposited one thousand dollars a year with the Service Committee of the American Friends Board of Missions to be spent as salary for a teacher to be sent for one year to Ramallah Friends Schools. For example, in 1930 Ruth Outland was the first to receive Williams’ scholarship fund to teach one year at the FGS. Victoria Hannush received Williams’ scholarship to study at the Teachers College Colombia in 1931 and in 1932 she studied at Earlham College and received her BA degree. In 1931 Raymond Maxwell also received Williams’ scholarship fund to teach at Ramallah Mission. After her training as a music teacher, Lily was offered a job as music teacher in the Sidon institution, where she taught for two years until she got married to Farid Shatara (distant cousin from the same clan), who was a Roman Catholic. Lily was raised as Quaker. Her grandfather, Mitri Shatara, was among the first Ramallah people to join and help construct the Ramallah Friends Meeting. After the death of Lily’s husband in 1955, she became a teacher at the FGS, teaching music and directing the chorus. She also gave private piano lessons, to support her five children. After some years, Lily went to advance her study in New York after she received Mary R. G. Williams’s scholarship. She left her children under the care of their grandmother. All her children were students at the Friends schools and were given scholarship aid.

92.

Friends School News 1934, 1.

93.

Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” 109.

94.

Greenberg, Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow, 2004, 36; Friends School News 1930, 1–3.

95.

FGS Collection, 1921.

96.

FGS Papers 1914–1927, Ramallah, Palestine; Sylvia Clark FGS Report, 1947, FGS Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine.

97.

FGSFGS, FGS Historical Documents, Mission Booklet, 1914; McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 35. Usually, Home Economics was also asserted at the government public schools run by the British, whose students were mainly Muslims. The FGS tried to coordinate visits to nearby public schools, including visiting their Home Economics departments. McDowell explained that when she visited one of these schools the girls were taught housework such as washing, ironing, cooking and sewing. She noted, “The girls all wore little blue dresses with caps and aprons. They did the most beautiful ironing I have ever seen.”

98.

Annual Report of Palestine Mission 1925.

99.

FGS Papers, 1914–1927, Ramallah, Palestine.

100.

FGS Papers, 1914–1927, Ramallah, Palestine.

101.

Annual Report of Ramallah Mission, Friends United Meeting collection, 1929, Lilly Library, Earlham College. Richmond, Indiana.

102.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006; Salwa Tabri, Personal Interview, July 18, 2006; Nazeha Abdul Jawad, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006.

103.

Jordan, 123.

104.

Annual Report of the FGS, Friends United Meeting Collection, Richmond, Indiana, 1927.

105.

Christina Jones, Friends In Palestine, 71; Aida Audi, Personal Interview, July 28, 2006. Audi indicated that during her time as a student at the FGS, two girls were picked to live in the cottage with their teacher.

106.

Kathryn Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 174.

107.

Annice Carter Report to the Board (January 25, 1936), Friends School Collection, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College.

108.

Annice Carter Report from Ramallah to the American Friends (January 25, 1936), Friends School Collection, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College.

109.

Carter report June 6, 1937.

110.

Annice Carter Personal report to the American Friends Board of Missions (June 6, 1937). Housekeeping was seen as a good training for the girls who come from poor village families who would not have the means for regular education. The Home Economics Department at the FGS was to train these girls as suitable maids. In 1937 Carter indicated her intention to help the poor girls to work in the homes of upper- and middle-class Palestinian families. She stated that “many people from Jerusalem ask us to recommend girls for maids, but it is difficult when we do not know girls who are wanting work or how much they know of that sort of work.”

111.

Friends in Palestine: The Story of Service in and About Ram Allah (American Friends Board of Foreign Missions: Richmond, Indiana, 1930), 11–12. The school’s girls came from different religions and areas in Palestine, as well from other Arab countries. Among them were Greek Orthodox (constituting the larger number), Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Friends, a few Jews, and Muslims. The students came from “Haifa and Acre, Nazareth and Cana of Galilee, East of Jordan, Jaffa, Haifa and Gaza, Nablus (ancient Schechem) Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beeroth. The girl who came the largest distance was from Cairo, a daughter of a colonel in the Egyptian army.” Friends Schools News, no. 3 (November 1932), Ramallah, Palestine, 4.

112.

Ellen Fleischmann, “Our Moslem Sisters,” 315. Ellen Fleischmann indicated that the purpose of missionary educational endeavors was to uplift Middle Eastern women’s home life through promoting “the moral tone of the woman/wife/mother’s mind, manners and, to a lesser degree, skills.” Fleischmann here was talking primarily about missionaries’ goals in elevating Muslim women.

113.

Mary Minnick, Personal Report to the American Friends Board, Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Friends United Meeting Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.

114.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006.

115.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 16. When the school was reopened after World War I, the ages of the students varied from nine to sixteen. But after a few years, younger girls became enrolled in a considerable number.

116.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 77.

117.

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press Incorporated, 1967), 142.

118.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 18.

119.

Ibid., 20–21.

120.

Ibid., 20–21.

121.

Mary Minnick, Personal Report to the American Friends Board of Missions (no date, most likely after the mid of 1930s). She was the music teacher while Dr. Totah and Miss Hannush were administering the schools and the Mission. Minnick seemed to serve only for one year due to her health.

122.

Mary Minnick Personal Report to the American Friends Board. Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

123.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 163. Official Minutes of Friends Palestine Mission (February 22, 1938), American Friends Boards of Missions Office Reports, 1937–1938, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

124.

Mildred White Personal Report to the Board (January 19, 1937).

125.

Marshal Autobiography, 39.

126.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 20–21. McDowell also explained the method the FGS students on Saturday took their showers. The FGS “hired man makes a fire in a little stove, which heats a boiler full of water. Then the student helper and teacher on duty carry buckets of water around and fill the pitchers in each ‘shower’ compartment. The girls go in one at a time, pull the curtain tight, sit on a little stool and, with a tin cup, proceed to pour water over themselves. We teachers have a tub bath once a week.” She also explained that “Arab girls are very modest and always dress under the covers.” McDowell judged from the way Ramallah people took their baths that “Arabs don’t like to use bathtubs; it is unsanitary. They have a little place like a shower, only with no running water.” Here McDowell did not know that Arabs preferred to shower with running water if the means were available.

127.

FGS Historical Documents, Mission Booklet, 1914. The manual stated more rules the girls had to follow. They had to pay for anything they broke because of lack of attention, they had to pay extra every day if they choose to stay during winter break. Alice Jones was the principal during this period.

128.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 78.

129.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 22.

130.

Jordan, 78. Two Sunday schools were opened, one for the FGS young girls and the village children, the other for the older girls.

131.

Ibid., 18.

132.

Report of the FGS (January, 1932), FGS Historical Document, Ramallah, Palestine, 2.

133.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006. Najla Cook was an FGS student during the 1930s and graduated in 1940. She indicated that the students took turns to waiter at their teachers’ table during supper. The teachers taught the students how to serve the food and set the table.

134.

Salwa Tabri, Personal Interview, July 7, 2006.

135.

Report of the FGS (January 1932), FGS Historical Documents, Ramallah, Palestine, 2. Edward Kelsey was the principal of the Friends Boys School.

136.

M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977), 197.

137.

M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 181.

138.

Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report (September–December 1936), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Microfilm 54.

139.

Elizabeth Haviland Personal Report, Sept.–Dec. 1936.

140.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 69.

141.

Alice Jones report of the FGS (January 31, 1920). Jones indicated that with the opening of the British normal school that would train teachers, it made it “impracticable for us (FGS) to try to train teachers.”

142.

Mona Hajjr Halaby, “Schools Days in Mandate Jerusalem at the Dames de Sion,” 46. The school opened from 1862 to 1948.

143.

Sara Hadley, Letter to the American Friends (January 19, 1946).

144.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 20–21.

145.

Salwa Tabri, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006.

146.

American Friends Mission Yearly Report, Ramallah, 1944 (written by Alice Jones), Palestine Reports, 1915–1966.

147.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 306.

148.

FGS former students emphasized how the number of students pursuing post-secondary education and careers increased.

149.

Na`mah Daoud (July 1922). She got good grades in community spirit by helping new younger students but got bad grades for not doing a good job in her housework. When she stressed her frustration through anger and crying, she would get a bad grade for self-control and then another bad grade when she did not answer the teacher’s question for the reason she was crying. She mocked the use of grade reduction as punishment even in her performance in the bedroom and dining room chores and conduct.

150.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006.

151.

New Light 1, no 1 (1938): 4.

152.

Aida Audi, Personal Interview, July 28, 2006.

153.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006.

Chapter 5

The Dogmas of Domesticity, Nationalism, and Feminism
among Palestinian Students

The intersection of the issues of domesticity, nationalism, and Quaker religious education centered on peace and pacifism played a major role in the formation of FGS students’ national and gender identities. This chapter will focus on how Quaker education affected the ways Palestinian women, coming primarily from Muslim and Christian upper and middle classes, negotiated between social liberation and entrenched patriarchal practices. While FGS students either appropriated or altered Quaker ideals, their choices contributed significantly to the formation of their personal and political identities. The Palestinian girls’ sense of identity was significantly influenced by their exposure to mid-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ideals of the “new woman.”[1] As discussed in the previous chapter, students’ exposure to Arabic and Western literature and history, the international, as well as the Arab and Palestinian presses fostered a range of views among the FGS students on women’s roles. Indisputably, they shared the beliefs of their Quaker teachers that a woman’s central role was that of wife and mother, and found value in jobs that were seen as appropriate for women such as teaching. Nonetheless, many students called for the expansion of a woman’s place in the public sphere, not only as social service and charity workers, but also as politicians and other positions traditionally reserved for men. As modern education in domesticity gave women managerial skills and authority over their households, it also brought a complicated discourse that allowed the FGS students to argue for and design their roles in British Mandatory Palestine.

The students’ essays in their newsletter the New Light and Donn Hutchison’s private collection of twenty-five essays provide telling insight into the girls’ thoughts and highlight the major societal issues that concerned them at the time. Fortunately, the students who attended the school during the Mandate years produced and published their own school newsletter, the New Light, which provides a substantial amount of information about their experiences, their manners of thinking, and their perceptions of their school and teachers. The material produced was most likely done under the supervision of American missionaries and therefore, FGS students were cautious of what they said and how to present their ideas, especially ones concerning their political and national aspirations.

During FGS graduation ceremonies, the graduating students were required to present an essay on a chosen topic of interest to them in either Arabic or English. The essays the students wrote in Hutchison’s private collection covered a number of issues, including women’s rights to education, participation in the workforce, the importance of home economics classes, the veil, nationalism, peace, the creation of a strong civic society grounded in individualism, and the importance of charitable and social advocacy organizations. The fact that the students chose these topics for their essays reflects their desire to create and to solidify a place for themselves in a rapidly changing society. Oral interviews with former students who attended the school between 1930 and 1950 also contribute to our understanding of the ways in which the school and the societal and cultural contexts shaped their values and beliefs.

Students’ Discourses of Emancipation

Domesticity and its two primary professions, motherhood and wifehood, the cornerstone of Quaker education, remained the focal point of the students’ conceptions of their basic role. Nonetheless, they also interpreted modern education, including the managerial skills they received in the home economics department, as resources for assuming a more prominent role at home and for expanding their newfound responsibilities to the public sphere. The students interpreted their modern secondary education at the FGS in multifaceted ways. For many students, it was a door to exert a larger emancipatory role as they reflected on their views of certain important issues concerning marriage, work, and the veil in order to take on political and other leadership roles to implement changes in their civic society.

Translating Modern Education and Domesticity

The education students received at FGS expanded their vision of women’s roles in society beyond what the school and nationalistic discourse prescribed for them. The students endorsed the Quakers’ central religious message that women were the guardians of household ethics, giving them authority as educated mothers at home and empowering them as reformers and teachers in society. This was a common religious message that American female missionaries enforced throughout the mission schools in different parts of the Middle East, which also coincided with the movement of feminist internationalism.[2] The lessons of modern science and the promotion of domesticity as a value, as well as a variety of extracurricular activities (leadership and participants of social, religious, academic-literary, and athletic societies and clubs), enabled these girls to envision their roles not only as “modern,” effective mothers with managerial authority in the home, but as voices of liberation and gender equality in education and the workplace. The “modern education” produced similar emancipatory results for Arab and Muslim women from the same social class who used education to advocate for more radical changes during this same time period.[3]

The FGS students’ views of the position of women in society and the nature of female gender roles took a noticeable turn between the early 1920s and late 1940s. During the early 1920s, the students initially understood the purpose of their education as supporting their male family members, ultimately reinforcing the existing patriarchal relations. As Dana Robert indicated, missionaries and “native converts” believed that “the goal of female education was not to challenge the role of women in society, but to make women more ‘useful’ in whatever social context she found herself, particularly in her role as a Christian wife and mother.”[4] Women in the 1920s saw themselves as subordinates and primarily domestics. Education was largely used for improving mothering, nurturing, and child rearing skills, and helping women to better support the men in their family.[5]

This view accorded with some Arab Muslim conservative feminists of the time, such as Nabawiya Musa, who in 1920 called for education and work for women, but then emphasized that the centrality of a woman’s role after marriage is to stay at home and raise the children of the nation. Nabawiya saw the educated women in the West follow similar values to those exhibited in Islam, and that in “England, Switzerland, Germany, and in other countries where the woman works until she marries, and then she stays at home becoming a disciplined and well-organized mother who takes care of her children and [is] a good companion to her husband.”

A 1924 FGS graduate, Hanna Khoury, highlighted in her graduation essay what she understood as the importance and influence of women as mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters. She believed that a woman’s role revolved around being part of a support system for the men in her life and without the support of women, she argued, society could not progress. She argued that a woman is defined as “the obedient daughter, the keen sister, the loving friend, the devoted wife, and the mother with affection and warmth (al-ra`um).” She emphasized traditional women’s roles and influences in society through good morals and virtues that would be transmitted to the children. These qualities would be reinforced and achieved only through providing women an education identical to the education that she received at the FGS.[6]

Khoury translated her Quaker teachers’ message about the central role of home economics training and religious education as a means by which to educate ideal mothers and wives and as a reinforcement of women’s secondary positions in the Palestinian patriarchal society. Khoury’s views were not representative of all FGS students; nonetheless, some students shared similar views that they expressed in their writings—primarily in the early 1920s.

The students’ writings on modernizing the private sphere for women indicated the internalization of the Quakers’ messages regarding the importance of simple, modest fashions, including home furnishings, which fit perfectly with their Palestinian middle-class ideals of skillful household managers avoiding unnecessary or excessive expenses. They would emphasize their central role in inserting hygienic and healthy living, as well as a virtuous and intellectually stimulating environment for their children at home. When the students wrote for the school newsletters and for their graduation essays, they endorsed al-tadbeer al-manzely (household management) and its importance in their training in their professions of motherhood and wifehood.

Tafida Tarazi’s essay titled “Hayaty wal-Far` al Manzeli” (“My Life and Home Economics”) was written in Arabic and highlighted the importance of home economics, particularly house management, child rearing, sewing, and nursing, in the students’ thinking.[7] In one section of the essay, a poem that depicts the students’ thoughts about their school and the education in home economics they received:

I swear my dear school

You awakened the best scent of my spirit

Taught me to manage my dwelling

And beautify myself with high qualities

The beating of my heart is from the tenderness of yours

Its softness like the elasticity of a breeze

As a youngster a seedling of virtue you planted

And today I am blossoming, and here are my flowers

Knowledge, virtues house keeping

All are the only lady’s life armament[8]

Not only did the home economics classes teach valuable skills, but they also revolved around gender identity–construction ideologies that the women carried with them throughout their adult lives. The poem reflects how a group of the students saw home economics as the most significant aspect in the FGs education because they envisioned themselves as primarily mothers and wives. Scientific education that pertained to students’ home life, such as botany, gardening, and identifying wildflowers and plant specimens, was employed to reinforce the girls’ gendered notions toward the domestic sphere. The flower gardens and appropriate interior décor represent the Quakers’ promotion of a modest aesthetic that the girls used in providing a pleasant environment within the home. The training in vegetable and flower gardening was also intended to foster a sense of attachment to the land and nature. The Friends teachers arranged frequent trips to the valleys surrounding Ramallah, usually accompanying their students to gather wildflowers with them during the spring months.

These trips put the students in contact with their natural surroundings, which enabled them to develop a sense of communion with the beauty of the wild land. These trips also served the social function of allowing the teachers and students to bond and develop close relationships unrestrained by the rules imposed by the boarding school.[9] The school’s emphasis on gardening, collecting wildflowers, planting trees, and taking trips to nature were not unusual practices for missionary schools.[10] Weekly trips, such as ones that encourage collecting wildflowers, were educational because they allowed the girls to study the land and the native plant specimens.

These activities contributed to the idea of the gendering of the land and attaching to it specific sentimental values of mothering and nurturing. In 1929, the school entered a wildflower collecting competition organized by the Jerusalem Horticultural Society and the government Department of Education. The Mandate encouraged the creation of gardens in public and private schools. The bond created with the land encouraged the Arab population to remain in agricultural communities, which served the best interest of the Empire in producing cash crops and creating markets for industrial produce.[11] Moreover, emphasis on agriculture among Palestinian students was a colonial aim to keep Palestinians mainly rural while encouraging industry and settlements to develop as mostly urban.[12]

In 1938, the FGS entered the collecting competition again, and the students collected 157 wildflower specimens, naming all except ten.[13] The female students became attached to nature and linked the natural beauty of the land with the beautification of their homes. The students seemed to understand the land as having feminine qualities or as being female, like a mother, encouraging feelings of love, care, and protection. Quaker teachers taught the girls the importance of having their own vegetable and flower gardens in the girls’ private spaces. The gardens became part of these girls’ imaginations and plans for their future households. The Arab nationalist movement and literature used these flower gardens as a metaphor to emphasize the sacredness and honor of the land that needs protection from colonization and foreign penetration. These forms of activities that connected individuals to the land enforced a link between the domestic sphere as an individual space and a national space as a society. Henriette Siksik commented on the impact of this flower garden phenomenon in her own education:

Both of these educational institutions, the Friends School and the Teacher Training College, were partly responsible for my interest in wildflowers. In Beirut we used to take the train up the hills, then after a few stops get down and gather flowers. In Ramallah we used to walk down the “wadies” (valleys) and pick flowers for the wildflower contests held at Jerusalem’s citadel in which we were winners for many a year. Until now the wild aroma of those flowers comes back to me, even though I am now 89 plus years of age.[14]

Zahia Durbas, class of 1927, described in detail three important components of household management: economics, art, and health as the responsibilities only of women. As income is an important factor in sustaining a stable, quality household, women with education and mathematical skills are best qualified for managing the household income. The largest percentage of a household budget was designated for the children’s education, followed by medical expenses, whereas both were seen as basic needs for Palestinian families.

In the area of health, mothers were expected to acquire simple nursing techniques to use when their children had minor injuries and illnesses. In order to create a healthy environment for their children, mothers had to be able to cook nutritious food and keep their houses clean with their knowledge of hygiene. Surprisingly, the third priority of the household income was dedicated to travel (safr). According to Durbas, seeing the world would provide children with important knowledge, and she used her authority as the household manager to create a new tradition in her household, where an annual vacation was unusual even for middle-class Palestinians.

Durbas ended her essay by saying that all schools in Palestine should assign a home management program because of its equal importance to other school subjects.[15] Nazeha Abdul Jawad, a Muslim student who attended the FGS between 1937 and 1945, emphasized that same point in her interview, indicating that she valued home management because it helped her budget her household income satisfactorily, especially since her husband was on a fixed income.[16]

The other components of the new middle-class household standards were having elegant homemaking techniques through decorative and artistic skills, and showing appreciation for music. The Quaker value of simplicity was a condition in creating this pleasant household environment, as Alice Houssa, class of 1922, vividly described:

If you visit once the home of an educated girl it will charm you by its tidiness, cleanliness, and good taste. She often decorates her home with sweet flowers from the garden which she has planted with her own sensible hands. You will involuntarily be helped to imitate her. An educated girl that is fond of music is always happy and jolly from her good and clean heart. With her talent in music she helps others to enjoy a high type of pleasures and by her refinement and good character she helps others by her life in the home.[17]

Here we see an FGS student adopting Quaker ideals of modern domesticity. Beautifying their middle-class homes with flowers they grew in their own gardens was a value these girls seemed to internalize as an important factor in keeping simple, comfortable homes. Typically, it was students who either married after graduation or left school in their secondary years to get married who appropriated these values.

Jawad, who was married one year before graduation, indicated that the training she received in home economics was helpful in maintaining her marriage. She made many things for her house, including curtains for the windows, and applied simple but elegant decorative items she had learned about in her classes. She described her house as “simple but neat.” The training girls received in home economics classes constructed and cultivated feminine identities for genteel, modest, nurturing, and family-focused mothers; simultaneously, it gave women a greater sense of purpose and empowerment in the household.[18]

In this way, as Najmabadi argues, these women were transforming the house into “a social space of citizenship.”[19] As Houssa’s essay illustrates, women were “casting themselves in the role of exemplary womanhood.”[20] Education made them transform their homes so other women would learn from their ideal home environment and feel inclined to imitate them. By transforming the traditional image of the household from a sacred and private space to an educational and social space for others to learn from, FGS graduates embraced a role in building their nation. Home economics departments became professionalized fields that required scientific methods to equip future mothers and housewives.

This confirms the centrality of domesticity in preparing these educated female students for their future roles as caregivers and mothers. It also reflects the assumption that girls who were well educated in how to perform their domestic roles would be models and representatives for how middle-class Palestinian women should carry out their public and private roles. It was believed that the knowledge they possessed would transfer to and help other women from humble classes, thus infiltrating and transforming the nation. The students were highly receptive to the domestic education emphasized by the FGS, and they applied their education in ways that reconstructed their societal gender norms.

Translating Gender Equality in Education and the Workplace

Another group of FGS students translated their home economics education as complementary to their public roles and as a fundamental component of their contributions in the building of their national society. The students’ personal experiences and writings show how their experiences at the school impacted the formation of their identities and instilled a belief that a career in teaching would allow them to take an active role in social causes. In this way, the Quaker missionaries, who encouraged students to become teachers, helped materialize some of their students’ highest ambitions by putting them on track to teach at their former school or other Friends day schools.

Former students of the FGS provided a reliable source of Arab teachers with a Quaker-influenced value system who were willing to teach at their schools. The shortage of American teachers was a serious issue that the Quakers dealt with throughout all their years of service at the Ramallah Mission, particularly for the primary classes. As early as the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century, significant numbers of FGS graduates were trained and hired as permanent or short-term teachers, depending on their marital status. Graduated students were often sent to teach at the Friends’ village schools, where the Quakers thought they were most needed. American missionaries created a pool of Arab staff members and graduated girls who would be loyal to the Friends’ mission through their education and training.

The Arab staff hired from the FGS graduates would transmit the Quakers’ educational and spiritual messages among Palestinian students. During 1921, four teachers in the FGS were former students and had been trained for this purpose. The missionaries also encouraged students to study at institutions in Beirut before returning to teach at Friends’ schools, as Hanna Jubran (1926) did. She returned from training in Beirut to take a teaching position at the Taiybeh Friends day school. Najla Shahla, who graduated in 1928, was assigned to the same school in 1929.[21] Edward Kelsey described them in his annual report to the Home Board as “very loyal to the ideal and spirit of the school.”[22]

Due to the missionaries’ strength in stressing the importance of domesticity and the limited opportunities for higher education, a majority of the girls chose to marry and raise children in the period before World War I. However, the considerable number of women who pursued work outside of their homes after graduation worked primarily as teachers, Bible women, and assistants at the Friends Schools and other non-Quaker schools. Teaching and writing were culturally acceptable occupations for women. The range of occupations held by FGS students can be illustrated by several notable examples. Anisa Ma’loof, who graduated in 1895, became an author. Wadia Shatara graduated in 1908 and became a well-known, highly regarded Arabic teacher who taught at the girls’ school for almost fifty years. Badeah Audi, who also graduated in 1908, took a more unconventional path; she immigrated to the United States and became a businesswoman.

One Palestinian woman became a popular worker at Ramallah Mission. Nahmeh Shahla (1908), who came from a humble background, achieved notoriety as the Bible woman who taught Bible stories in the villages for many years. She was dearly loved by the villagers and according to records, her presence changed the lives of many village women. After several years of work and continuous visits to Palestinian villages, Shahla earned the villagers’ trust and appreciation.[23] Even after the decision was made to close most Friends day schools due to a lack of funds in the 1930s, Bible women continued their work in the villages.[24] The education Shahla received from her missionary teachers, especially in housekeeping and child nurturing, allowed her to continue her work after the missionary presence in the villages was reduced. She helped the villagers in their daily affairs, addressing their “primitive ways” of doing things, such as “washing the clothes and cutting material for clothing.” She also supported women who had not heard from their husbands in America for a considerable length of time by writing letters to them. In addition to supporting the women in the villages, she provided assistance to children, working to find orphanages for motherless children. While she admitted that she was not a trained nurse, she helped treat children with eye infections by providing eye drops for them.[25] Shahla continued her work during the 1940s and 1950s, traveling between seventeen villages. Each year she held as many as four hundred meetings, typically with groups of women and children, whereas some men came to the meetings to receive medical attention for eye infections or injuries.[26] Shahla’s service to the Mission only ended at her death in 1962.[27]

Former students who were appointed as teachers were typically sent abroad—usually to the United States—to receive further training before being placed in positions of authority at the FGS. Victoria Hannush, class of 1912, is a student who made a lifelong career out of working at the FGS. Hannush’s own education and her exceptional devotion to Quaker educational principles made her missionary teachers see her as an ideal match for her leadership position at the Friends school. When the principal of the FGS, Alice White, left the Mission in 1933, she proposed that Hannush be appointed to take her place. Before becoming the principal of the FGS, Hannush attended Earlham College, where she was prepared to meet the demands of her new position. In 1935, Victoria Hannush became the acting principal of the FGS, a position she held until 1947, culminating a career that spanned over three decades.[28]

After World War I the teaching profession remained a popular occupation for women, but they also took on positions of leadership in social and charitable organizations. These women exemplify the ways in which FGS students enacted the values and skills that they acquired at the school; they placed a high value on traditional roles as wives and mothers, but also recognized their own capacity to have influence in the public sphere as teachers, leaders, and advocates. The unconventional educations and careers that some of the FGS graduates pursued reflected a newfound sense of independence and individuality, and exemplified their conviction that women were capable of occupying important public roles. Their educational experiences gave them the skills to be capable workers and leaders but perhaps more importantly, they instilled in them an understanding of new social formations that gave women greater possibilities within the public sphere.

In the Arab world, women in the interwar period were fighting for equality in education and the workplace, suffrage, and civil rights. However, they faced opposition from influential religious elites and abandonment from middle-class male nationalists, which made their efforts unsuccessful. Elizabeth Thompson makes a similar comment with respect to women’s activism in Syria and Lebanon during the same period.[29] The FGS staff and teachers were aware of the activities of Arab women’s movements, and surprisingly enough, there were indications that Quaker teachers at the Ramallah Mission were taking activist roles and attending Arab women’s conferences. One example was mentioned in Mildred White’s 1945 letter where she detailed a women’s conference that Laura Davis, a Quaker missionary at the Ramallah Mission, attended in Cairo, Egypt.

Female delegates who attended the conference (around 150) came from Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The conference focused on women’s issues such as marriage and divorce laws. The question of Palestine was discussed as well, and a cable was sent to the U.S. government “to keep in mind the rights of the Arabs. These women were all Arabs and keen anti-Zionists.”[30] Such information more than likely encouraged the FGS students to become more aware of local, regional, and international news, especially pertaining to women’s movements and accomplishments. Although the Quaker education they received did not intend to create radical feminists out of Palestinian girls, FGS students interpreted women’s issues and the importance of equality in education and work in ways that sometimes transcended (or confounded) their teachers’ expectations.

A number of FGS students undertook the issue of reforming the position of women as a necessary element and national obligation of social progress, especially on the issue of equal rights in the workplace. The writing of the FGS students on women’s rights to work and their abilities to compete with men echoed the Arab feminist call since the late nineteenth century. In 1891 Zaynab Fawaz, a Lebanese feminist, compared the status of women in the West to that of their sisters in the Arab world and made it clear that the progress of Western women was due to more freedom to “compete with the men and participate equally with them (men) in work.”[31]

Some of the girls were even more progressive, arguing that gender differences associated with the ability to perform traditionally masculine jobs were socially constructed rather than biologically determined. Katrina Hallaby’s graduation essay, “Wojubb musharakat al-mara` alrajul fi al-`amal” (“The Obligation of Women’s Participation in the Workforce with Men”), illustrates the intersection between beliefs about the nature of traditional womanhood and the ideals of feminist discourse at the time. Hallaby’s writing displays an awareness of women’s positions in various countries, which enables her to compare Palestine and other Arab and Muslim societies such as Turkey, Egypt, and Syria with America and the West.

At the time of Hallaby’s writing, opportunities for women in Palestine were very limited, and she wrote emphatically about the need to make education and job training available so women would be able to participate in the workplace outside of traditional gender restrictions that limited them to teaching, nursing, and secretarial work.[32] Likewise, Muhja Saba’s essay Luzum Ta`leem al-Fatah fi Falasteen (The Necessity of Educating the Girls in Palestine), and Najla Taqtaq’s essay `an al-`ulum al `aleah Muhemah llbint as llsabi (Higher Education is Important for Girl as for Boy), both dealt with women’s rights to education and equal opportunities to enter the public sphere. Their essays attributed Western superiority in the sciences and literature to women’s contributions to these fields and their active participation in public, scientific, and artistic discourses and projects.[33] Some Palestinian girls saw Western women as already having achieved gender equality during the 1920s, or at the very least that they were making more advances than Arab women. However, they understood gender equality to mean equal access to education and jobs; they did not associate the social and sexual freedoms demanded by Western women with the equal rights that they sought out.

Despite lingering resistance to the expansion of women’s liberties, student publications allowed the girls to act as advocates for higher education and to assert the necessity for women’s leadership in Palestinian society. The plans the girls had after graduation reflected their desire to attain higher education in order to be financially independent and enlarge their area of influence in the public sphere. Indeed, FGS graduates began to use their financial security to expand their independence, which included increasing their educational and career opportunities by attending institutions of higher learning outside of Palestine.

In the commencement edition of the 1938 New Light, the student writers dedicated the newspaper issue to the graduating class: Abla Nashef, Lamaat Buseiso, Margaret Jubrial, Badira Khatib, and Qismat Abu Laban. The pieces in the paper urged the girls to pursue higher education and to take a leadership role for the sake of their society’s progress. The way in which Nashef was portrayed in this issue illustrated what the girls admired in a model student. They praised her as a student during her years at the FGS for to her academic success and participation in sports. Due to the education she received and her strong-willed personality, she was empowered to pursue higher education and a career, indicating in an interview for this issue that she was planning to study Grecian art in France or Athens after receiving training at the American University of Beirut. Tellingly, she also believed that her education and experience would prepare her to be a moral mother and a fit wife.[34]

The New Light also interviewed other graduating students and asked them to describe their post-graduation plans. Margaret Jubrial reported that she was intending to enroll in the British Syrian Training College in Beirut and become a kindergarten teacher temporarily until saving some money to pursue higher education in England in order to gain the qualifications and skills needed to open and operate her own kindergarten school.[35] The American Junior College in Beirut and the American University of Beirut were attractive destinations for FGS girls who chose to continue their education. Similar to her classmate Abla Nashef, Badira Khatib planned to attend the College for two years before returning to Ramallah to teach at a newly opened vocational school for orphaned children.[36]

Khatib also planned to take a leadership role by opening “women’s clubs for the betterment of community life and national welfare.”[37] Another student, Qismat Abu Laban, planned to enter the Junior College for two years and then specialize in “children’s treatment and training” at the American University of Beirut. After returning to her hometown of Jaffa, she intended to open a clinic, and indicated that she would reserve time every week to travel to the surrounding villages to treat children and to instruct village mothers on how to “improve sanitation and child care.” Like most of the others, Lamaat Buseuso planned to go for two years of training at the Junior College, but her ultimate ambition was to earn her bachelor’s degree and become a medical doctor. Her alternate plan was, like many of her peers, to become a teacher and to write novels in both Arabic and English during her spare time. This sampling of FGS students elucidates the nature of the discourses at FGS regarding the changing status of women’s education and the opportunities that women had available to them. While many of the students from the class of 1938 indicated interests in teaching, writing, and nursing, they also showed a demonstrable desire to be highly capable community leaders in ways that would support the elevation of women, and thus, the progress of Palestinian society.[38]

The New Light traces the remarkable progress made by the FGS class of 1939 in the ten years after their graduation. Whereas the previous commencement issue had provided insight into the girls’ aspirations, this issue described the students’ actual outcomes. Among the eleven girls who graduated that year, Bahia Aq`il was the only one to complete an advanced degree. She became a well-known preacher and earned a doctorate of divinity. Similar to the class of 1938, many of the students—Violet Zarou, Maggie Kattan, Hilda Hadadd, and Alice Boursalian—
became teachers. Victoria Ackall became a small business owner; she opened a women’s clothing boutique and hired her fellow student Abla Eid as a clerk.

A study of New Light issues shows that most of the girls envisioned themselves as career women within the field of education because they believed that teaching best fit their goals, an indication that the girls internalized the Quaker educational ideals to prepare them as teachers. However, as Hallaby’s writing illustrates, some of the girls rejected these limitations and aimed for roles that extended much further.

The graduates of the FGS made a considerable impact when they assumed public roles as teachers, not only in Ramallah or Palestine, but also in other countries across the Arab world such as in Egypt, Iraq, and Transjordan. One of the FGS students who graduated from the American Junior College in Beirut in 1932 took a teaching job in Mosul, Iraq. Two other graduates taught in Jordan, one in the city of Amman and the other in Karak. Other FGS students worked in nursing, office settings, dressmaking, and in charitable and philanthropic institutions such as the YMCA.[39]

Henriette Siksik (1935) was a particularly accomplished activist who founded the Four Homes of Mercy in the Jerusalem area. She also taught for eleven years during British Mandate Government at Alawieh Girls School in Jerusalem; five years at the American School for Girls in Beirut; two and a half years in the Ministry of Education in Amman, Office of Educational Materials; two and a half years at the Ministry of Education, Tripoli—Libya—Office of Educational Materials. Henriette also worked on radio broadcasting under the supervision of Ibrahim Toucan, the well-known Palestinian poet, in 1939.[40]

Tracing graduate records indicated that more girls took jobs after graduation than those who chose to become mothers and housewives, contrary to the time before World War I. In the classes that graduated between the 1920s and 1930s, more than half of the students from each class either found employment immediately or pursued higher education. In 1946, two girls from among the fifteen FGS graduates went to the American Junior College for Women in Beirut, three found jobs as teachers, one took a government office job in Jerusalem, one emigrated to the United States with her family, and another awaited the opportunity to get a college education. Only two of the students from this class got married immediately after they graduated.[41] Leila Khoury (1947) became a professor at the American University of Beirut (her nephew, Spiro Khoury, is currently a prominent architect in Ramallah); Georgette Shihadeh (1948) was a well-known teacher in Ramallah/Bireh and, before retiring, she was an Inspector with the Office of Education; Salwa Tabri (1948) was a teacher of music with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and a director of the Jerusalem Choir for almost forty years.

These findings are similar to those of Fleischmann who indicated that from the American Girls School graduates in Lebanon, 20 percent were married while 70 percent worked as teachers, nurses, or in similar jobs.[42] This study of Palestinian women during the mandate period suggests that these students viewed access to education, at least among the middle and upper classes, not as a privilege or a gift, but as a right that must be guaranteed to them.[43] Moreover, women’s involvement in philanthropic and social organizations, as well their positions of leadership and entrance into the workforce, highlight the critical role they played as a force of reform and change in Palestinian society.

Overall, the FGS staff had a tremendous effect on their female Palestinian students. Most of the American missionary teachers in the FGS were women, which made Palestinian girls able to identify with them and receptive to their educational programs and social message. The discourses that they participated in and that influenced them fundamentally reflected some of the factors that shaped their identities during their years at the FGS. Nevertheless, the students’ pursuit of higher education and their career achievements were indications of their independent and critical thought processes, enabling them to have an agency in fashioning their own futures. Indeed, social and philanthropic responsibilities were integral parts of these students’ new identities, and fulfilling the ideals of womanhood, including marriage and motherhood, was less of a priority to the students in the cases mentioned above.

The FGS in the Context of the
Rise of Palestinian Arab Nationalism

FGS students’ national identity was reflective of the complex processes Palestinians underwent while forming their national character, especially during the early years of the twentieth century and during the British Mandate period. Palestinians mainly expressed their national identity in Ottoman Palestine in the late nineteenth century until World War I through “loyalty to Ottomanism, belonging to an Arab nation, and Palestinian patriotism.” After the war and with the expansion of the Arabic press and education, as well as the British rule and their policies in facilitating the Zionist colonial project in Palestine, people fostered a form of nationalism in which loyalty to Ottomanism disappeared.[44]

Missionary schools could not ignore the rising wave of Arab nationalism and responded by introducing more instruction in the Arabic language in order to avoid criticism from Arab nationalists and academics, many of which were former students of these schools, such as Khalil Totah, who was part of the first generation of boys to graduate from the FBS. Moreover, Arab private academic institutions as well as governmental public schools played a significant role in fostering the Palestinian national movements, such as those administered by the SMC. The SMC established seven boys’ schools before 1925 and the Islamic Girls School in Jerusalem in 1925. The Islamic Girls School became successful academically and emphasized an “Islamic and ultimately nationalistic character and curriculum.”[45]

A number of Arab-Palestinian newspapers were also established in the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as al-Karmel, established in 1880 by Nageeb Nasar and Falestin, founded in 1912 by Esa al-Essa. These newspaper,s along with other Arab national societies, in which Palestinian nationalists played important roles, were harbingers for Arab nationalism. Awny abd el-Hady from Jenin and Rafeq al-Tamemy from Nablus were among the founders of the Young Arab Society, Alarabia ll-fata, established in 1911 in Paris. These newspapers, were also associated with the rise of the Ottoman Administrative Decentralization Party in 1912, which was led along with others by Salim Abd al-Hady (Jenin), Hafth al-Said (Yafa), and Ali al Nashashebi (Jerusalem).

Western missionaries were seen by many of these Arab writers and young nationalists as an obstacle to the resurgence of Arab nationalism. They insisted that providing access to modern science was the only positive attribute of the missionary schools. Due to the fear of losing their Arab students, the schools started to include the Arabic language in their curricula.[46] Other writers, such as Adnan Abu-Ghazaleh, argued that the missionary schools in general played a minor role in fostering Arab nationalism among their students because the languages of instruction were either English, French, or German, and they emphasized European history and literature.[47] However, other writers such as Tibawi disagree, arguing that the role of the American missionaries in the region was influential to Arab nationalism due to their educational institutions and printing presses. These activities contributed significantly to the Arab intellectual awakening, the Nahda, and were instrumental in the creation of Arab nationalism.[48]

It is evident that during the interwar period the Arab newspapers played an immense role in fostering Arab and Palestinian nationalism. These newspapers made the Zionist colonial project in Palestine an Arab cause, which prolonged and affected the way Palestinian newspapers dealt with Palestinian identity as part of a larger Arab nationalist movement. Al-Karmel, Filastin, al-Difa, and al-Sabah were among the early Palestinian newspapers to advocate for Arab nationalism and anti-Zionist sentiments.

The press and a host of watershed events, such as the Balfour Declaration, created a distinction between “Arab/Ottoman [and] Palestinian/Arab identity.”[49] With the rise of Palestinian nationalism and the emergence of an urban, educated, upper- and middle-class, nationalist generation, it was no accident that the Ramallah Mission began to introduce more Arabic language and history to the curriculum during the early years of the 1920s. With the rising tide of Palestinian Arab nationalism, the Ramallah Mission attempted to nationalize the mission by transferring its management to a local Palestinian nationalist: Khalil Totah.[50]

The Palestinian struggle against the British Mandate and its colonial Zionist project reached its height and culminated in the General Strike and the Great Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939. During this time, Palestinian upper- and middle-class women began to organize themselves politically to actively challenge the policies of the British Mandate that promoted the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.[51]

The political unrest and activism by women did not go unnoticed by the FGS students. The students, some of whom were the daughters of well-known Palestinian nationalists, were aware of the county’s political situation—especially during times of intense upheaval—due to their exposure to the cause from their families and Palestinian newspapers. In one case, the FGS student Serene al-Husseini Shahid came from a very prominent and notable Palestinian family. Her father, Jamal al Husseini, an active nationalist, held the position of Secretary of the Executive Committee in the Palestine Arab Congress (1921–1934). He was responsible for the establishment of the al-Liwaa` newspaper and was the co-founder of the Palestine Arab Party.[52]

Shahid indicated that she received her father’s newspaper regularly at the FGS in the 1930s. She explained the interest of the FGS students in receiving updates about the news and “the newspaper became more popular by the day. It was delivered in the afternoon and after classes we [the students] would rush to the outside gate to collect it, pouring [sic] over it and passing it on from one group of ardent readers to another.” A few days after her father’s arrest by the British for his political activities, Serene and the FGS students “discovered that arrest was not only for criminals, and that Arab resistance in Palestine was being punished by the British.” She continued to say, “For us schoolgirls, this had been a political awakening. My newspaper had been our contact with the events going on outside our school life. Now, our childhood gave way to early maturity.”[53]

Missionary accounts and letters show that by the mid-1930s the American missionaries in the Ramallah Mission had already become concerned for the weakening of the Quaker message of peace among their students. Katharine Haviland, in her 1935 letter to the American Friends Board of Missions in Richmond, Indiana, expressed her worry: “Some of us Friends feel concerned that we are not expressing more effectively the Quaker message of international good-will.”[54] Her extracurricular activities, such as leading the Girls Reserve Organization and playing music, were ways for her to construct a spiritual relationship and attempt to decrease nationalist feelings among students, which were heightened during the Great Revolt.

Christina Jones, another Quaker teacher, viewed the situation as life altering for most students. She described the period as the most “difficult years for the schools as they ever experienced.” The day students were more exposed to the situation than the boarders, who were somewhat protected from political conversation and news from beyond the walls of the schools.

Boarders had “a scheduled life and away from the excitement of the outside world, could get on better with lessons, but there was for them the anxiety for their parents.” However, “the older boys and girls there were worried for their future.”[55] The FGS students seemed to be aware of the political situation occurring outside their schools’ walls, and knew much more about the goings-on than their missionary teachers initially thought they knew. It seemed that they used to discuss the situation among themselves, at least in groups of acquainted friends and class/dormitory mates.

Shahid noted, “The mid-1930s and the situation in Palestine was coming to a boil. Even in our protected school environment, we knew about the demonstrations and strikes and began to think about politics.”[56] There is no indication that FGS students took part in demonstrations against British pro-Zionist policies, even though, some sources showed that there were incidents where the boys at the FBS participated in protests.[57] The Quakers adopted a strict policy that prohibited students from participating in demonstrations, due to a potential fear of British retaliation in the form of shutting down the Friends schools.[58] Abu-Ghazaleh indicated that closing schools because of students’ participation in demonstrations was one of the British policies during the Great Revolt.

For example, he indicated that the British closed a secondary school in Nablus for a week as a result of students’ political activism.[59] Additionally, students’ participation in protests would undermine the Quakers’ principal of neutrality and peace and would jeopardize their good relations with the British. Quakers usually forged good relations with all parties in conflicts in order to carry out a peaceful solution.[60] Usually the Quakers expelled students who participated in protests for a week and asked these students to bring their parents for readmission hearings. In 1936, Superintendent Totah took a different approach in dealing with the FBS students who wished to participate in the demonstrations: he stressed that education was a nationalist obligation and his approach proved to be perceptive and well-received.[61]

By 1937, the American missionaries became more concerned about the political situations and its influence on their students. Their reports to the Friends United Meeting stressed the inherent challenge of transmitting their Christian message of peace amid political tension, especially since the number of Arab teachers with nationalist views was greater than the number of American teachers. They asserted, “In a school like this, with a small percentage of American teachers and a larger percentage of nationals, unconsciously, more is expected of the Americans who come.” The report continued, “It is becoming increasingly more important that we have really consecrated teachers to live the kind of Christian lives that we desire to build in our students. This need becomes greater with the increase of political unrest in this country.”[62]

The late 1930s were a turning point in the way many American Quakers at Ramallah Mission came to express their position concerning the developments of the political situation in Palestine. They became more conscious of the implications surrounding the British colonial project of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine and how these consequences would affect the Palestinians. The Friends in Ramallah emphasized the need to educate the “general public concerning the actual facts of the Arab-Jewish question in Palestine be continued, and increased, among Friends and other Christian people in America.” They wanted to be “impartial” but at the same time to learn and investigate the “situation where lie the roots of the situation that are causing the strife and the hatred.”

The American Friends in Ramallah Mission pointed out that “ill-feeling and bitterness has been stirred up among the Arabs in Palestine because the President of the United States and the Federal Council of Churches in America have gone on record as favoring and encouraging the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jews, without considering the unethical elements in the movement as now carried on.” These actions were “sowing the seeds of war” in the area.

Khalil Totah was asked by the Ramallah American Friends to contact the President of the Federal Council of Churches in America, Dewitt Jones, to explain to him the “real situation” and to “stress” that the “enduring peace is not built except through a way of life which removes the occasion for war.” While in America, Khalil Totah would “avoid creating the false impression” that the Ramallah Mission was “anti-Jewish, anti-British,” but rather that the American Friends in Ramallah attempted to raise their voice “against the idea that it is right for any large powerful nation to over-ride the rights of small nations, for the sake of imperialistic power or material gain.”[63] The students were forced to come to terms with the issue of their national identity in relation to the country’s national and cultural developments, but more importantly, they attempted to adjust these issues with the Quakers’ religious message of neutrality and peace.

The Students and Their National Identity

The girls at the FGS contributed to the changing attitudes about the status of women in particular, but they also had a far-reaching impact in the development of the Palestinian national society as a whole. These girls were primarily the daughters of the small, but growing, population of educated upper- and middle-class urban families from which Palestinian nationalism arose during the mandate period. As seen above, Quaker teachers enforced domestic values and encouraged students to have strong personalities, and develop ethical frameworks that would help them exert change as mothers, housewives, teachers, social workers, and reformers rather than encouraging them to assume roles in politics that would directly influence policy.[64] Nevertheless, the Quakers’ ideals of neutrality and peaceful resolution to conflicts and political tensions between groups and countries were political enough to influence the students’ national identity and their roles as mediatory voices for peaceful resolution.

The FGS students were taught to develop strong personalities and a passion for community service as a way to fulfill their civic duty in society. Their active roles in societies, clubs, and experiences and the education they received that promoted leadership made them envision their public roles as integral to their gender and national identities. The school societies such as the Girls Reserves and its outreach programs with institutions, such as the YMCA in Jerusalem, encouraged social and religious leadership roles among the girls. This experience left permanent effects on the students after graduation. Many girls became members of Palestinian charitable organizations, and some established their own philanthropic and charitable institutions. As mentioned above, Henriette Siksik, who graduated from the FGS in 1935, formed and headed the Four Homes of Mercy, an organization of nursing homes that cared for the elderly, the disabled, impoverished women, and orphaned children in the Jerusalem area. She also became a writer and wrote children books.[65] Aida Audi also emphasized in her interview that she volunteered for the Red Crescent (similar to the Red Cross) and always enjoyed her work helping the community. Najla Cook said, “I joined societies after graduation such as al-It`had al-Nesa`e (Women’s Union) and Jamheat al Tefel (the Children’s Society) and was an active participant.”

An FGS education produced what Elizabeth Thompson calls “patriotic motherhood,” describing the Arab women’s movement discourse in Syria during the interwar period. The domestic roles of women and their engagement in philanthropy would enable them to gain political rights while fulfilling their community service role. However, FGS graduates did not try to politicize the charitable societies they engaged in or formed in the way Syrian women did in Thompson’s study.[66] As in Siksik’s case, they formed organizations and kept them purely humanitarian, reflecting the influence of the Quaker value of neutrality in the midst of political conflicts. In this way, they demonstrated how they internalized their social and educational message that enforced their middle- and upper-class responsibilities toward their community and society.

Nevertheless, Palestinian women at missionary schools found ways to argue for gender equality and participate in politics. Despite the focus on training women to be good wives and mothers, a Quaker education carried with it an emancipatory impulse, which the students translated to their role in nation building. By preparing the girls to be global citizens and peacemakers, the FGS gave them access to worldwide information such as women’s struggles in the Arab world and the West, which in turn enabled them to envision their right to have a political role in the national movement.

The FGS students used the information they knew about women’s accomplishments as examples to suggest and call for the participation of women in the political sphere. For example, Katrina Hallaby, class of 1927, who believed that women were equal to men and thus capable of doing the same kinds of work. compared the positions of women in the Arab world to the West in her graduation essay, particularly emphasizing the political opportunities that were becoming available to women in the United States. She mentioned that some had even become governors, alluding to Nellie Taylor Ross, a Wyoming Democrat who was elected in 1924. Unlike many of her peers and teachers, Hallaby argued that women should have the same rights and opportunities in life as men, including access to political positions and actively working for family laws to benefit women and children.

The Palestinian students used their training in social services to call upon their municipalities for reforms regarding a healthy environment with better sanitation of their streets and public areas.[67] Hallaby’s view should be seen as part of the general atmosphere of the country in which an active women’s movement was able to hold its first Arab Women’s Congress in Jerusalem in 1929. Over two hundred delegates attended the congress from all parts of Palestine.[68] Because students had exposure to women’s activism through movies, women’s magazines, and newspapers such as al-Karmil, al-Defa`, and Falestine, they were able to sustain a discourse that engaged and helped them come to terms with challenging ideas like those espoused by Hallaby herself.[69]

Arab women began writing about rights for women, establishing their own magazines such as Hind Nawfal’s Al-Fatat in 1892, which was followed by a group of women’s journals. Two of these journals were established in Egypt before World War I: Alexandra Afernuh’s Anis al-Jalis (1898) and Saadiya Saad al-Din’s Shajarat al-Durr (1901), and one in Lebanon: Labiba Hashim’s Fatat al-Sharq (1906). During and after World War I, women’s papers and magazines increased, including Salima Abu Rashid’s Fatat Lubnan (1914), Afifa Saab’s Al-Khidr (1919) and Julia Tu‘ma Dimashqiya’s three papers, Samir al-Sighar (1920), Al-Mar’a al-Jadida (1921), and Al-Nadim (1926), and Marie Yani ‘Atallah’s Minerva (1923). These magazines touched on the accomplishments of Western women and disparaged the cultural values of Arabs at the same time, particularly those that pertained to the role of women as educated mothers for the benefit of their sons. Moreover, through their activism as reformers, they believed that their responsibilities included agitating the government and the municipality for legislations to increase the welfare of civic society through keeping the streets clean, and also through improvement in family laws that would improve the experiences of women and children.[70]

Arab consciousness was higher among students in public schools due to the fact that Arabic was the language of instruction and the form of education emphasized nationalist literature, Arab history, and Islamic history.[71] At the FGS, elements of Arab nationalism eventually entered the academic sphere. The Arab staff, especially Khalil Totah, Victoria Hannush, and Wadia Shatara, advocated for introducing more Arabic language and literature into the curriculum, which in turn sharpened their students’ sense of national and cultural identity.[72]

Totah served as a teacher, principal of the FBS, and secretary of the mission between 1927 and 1944, and he played an instrumental role in making Arabic language and literature an integral part of the school curriculum, especially in the 1930s. Women’s writings that were introduced were more than likely contemporary publications such as ones written by the Palestinian Lebanese writer Mayy Ziyada’ Al-Muqtataf, who published in 1924 to acknowledge the accomplishment of one of the women Nahda writers, the Syrian Warda al-Yaziji, “to uncover and register in existence the nature of the eastern woman, and to struggle thereafter to make sure that we help it to grow.”[73] Shahid mentioned the subjects she studied at the FGS that included English, Arabic, Arithmetic, History, and Geography” and that “ what I [she] enjoyed most was Literature, both Arabic and English.”[74] By advocating for a revival of the Arabic language, culture, and history, the Arab staff consolidated these elements that influenced the students’ sense of Arabism.

Many students emphasized the role played by their Arab teachers in agitating for Arab nationalism. Wadia Shatara, a long-time Arab staff member, taught Arabic for the secondary classes, knew English well and was loved by both American teachers and Palestinian students.[75] The American teachers described her as an invaluable source of information about Palestinian and Arab history and culture. McDowell described Shatara as a woman who liked to joke during tea or mealtimes, as she would share popular Arabic Joha folktales.[76] She also kept the American staff informed about the progress of the political situation in Palestine from an Arab point of view. While they were an important means of cultural contact for the missionary teachers, Arab teachers such as Miss Shatara, Miss Faris, Miss Zahran, and Miss Daud were described by their Palestinian students as “nationalists,” and their knowledge and influence helped shape the hybridized identities and ideologies of these students.

For example, Miss Faris, who taught history, affected how her students came to view and understand Arab history through her instruction and class discussion.[77] Aida Audi explained that most of the student’s information about the Palestinian national cause came from teachers such as Miss Shatara and Faris. She said, “We learn from our Arab teachers national songs such as ‘Mawteny,’ (‘My Country’).”[78] This song is a poem by the Palestinian poet Ibrahim Toqan.

Once introduced to Arab and Muslim history and literature, the girls recognized their own importance as contributors to the building of their nation-state. In their essays, they embraced social and cultural nationalism. In 1927 Hallaby acknowledged the emergence of female leaders during the modern Arab renaissance, Nahda. She asserted that Palestinian women were still behind in taking roles outside their homes, and stressed how education was imperative in instilling the ideals of citizenship in future mothers, who would transmit these principles to their children.[79] As an ideology that stressed cultural unity and good citizenship, nationalism was a crucial factor in the students’ intellectual lives, and it fundamentally shaped the ways in which they approached their educations and adulthood. The students read nationalist literature and some of them who received their elementary education in public and Muslim private schools, such as Serene Husseini, were heavily exposed to nationalism. She mentioned in her memoir that while she attended her first school, al-Islamiyya, opened by the Higher Islamic Council,[80] she “learned to read Arabic well, using the graded series of al-Jadid, the popular and extensively-used four reading books by the great Palestinian educator and author Khalil Sakakini (1878–1953). First published in Jerusalem in succession between 1924 and 1933, they were used in government schools all over Palestine as well as in some other Arab countries, and were often reprinted.”[81]

The question of how to consolidate Arab/Palestinian nationalism became increasingly pressing during the Mandate period, and the students’ ideas factored in significantly. The students emphasized the importance of rejuvenating the Arabic language as the uniting element of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Zahwa Kashu, class of 1925, demonstrated in her essay “Al-lugha al-arabia” (“The Arabic Language”) the important position Arabic should have in uniting her people and what role schools should have in propagating it as the official language of the country.[82] She calls for a movement of translating Western books and scholarship into Arabic. Kashu’s belief in nationalizing Arabic as the official language was also a form of resistance to the colonial impulses of missionary education that associated English with “civilizing” projects and progress. Likewise, Miriam Za`ror wrote a small soliloquy-style essay “Munajat lugha”/“Language Soliloquy,” about the declining status of the Arabic language. She mourned well-known Arab Nahda writers, such as Naseef al-Yazegy and Rifa’a Rafi’ El-Tahtawi of the late nineteenth century.[83] Notably, Butrus al-Bustani, who was an advocate of women’s rights, founded the progressive pro–women’s rights paper called Jinan in 1870.[84]

Luryce Kassab’s essay “Numw al-shu`ur al-Watany” (“The Growth of National Sentiments),” explains the importance of nationalism and the feelings attributed to nationalism as a unifying principle for people across religious and tribal lines. Like other students, Kassab praised nationalism in the Western world that was based on unity among its citizens regardless of their creeds and locales. She also warns about imitation of the “West in the good and the bad habit without thinking,” which would result in “the death of nationalist sentiment” and the “East” to become “dependent [on the West] with chains of humiliation and shame.”[85] Evidently, these examples show how the students stressed the importance of constructing Palestinian Arab nationalism that would emphasize broader cultural elements, like language and history, above other more localized or specific identifiers, like tribalism and religion, in a land where religious pluralism could pose a threat to unity and the central Quaker principle of peace. Students were also critical of imitating the West and called for a selective, critical process of implementing Western notions instead, echoing the voices of Arab and Muslim reformists, such as Jamal al-Din al Afghani and Muhammad Abdu. In addition to their criticisms, the position and intentions of students to nationalize the Arabic language indicated a form of contesting the missionary teachers’ linkage of English as the language of progress.

The students at the FGS interpreted Quakers’ education in various ways because they tended to contradict the ideals linked to nationalism. This reflects their desire to demonstrate their acceptance of the Quakers’ promotion of world peace, friendship, pacifism, and internationalism, as opposed to imperialism and nationalism, which they believed encourage violence, war, and disputes among nations. These ideas made some of the girls ambivalent when promoting Palestinian nationalism in its political manifestation as a struggle against the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Tellingly, the New Light delegated much space to promoting peace.

The writings expressed the belief that a majority of the world conflicts were the result of imperialistic ambitions for colonies and raw materials that created much human suffering.[86] The newsletter states that it was the students’ responsibility to promote peace regardless of their individual interests. Many undertakings and programs in the school dealt with the issue of world friendship through literature, drama, poetry, and music as well as charity service activities.[87] Because of their exposure to the ideology of transnationalism in their school activities, themes of peace and brotherhood became significant in the girls’ writings.

For example, one of the students, Lama Bssasio, wrote an illuminating fable-like story that promoted peace and transnationalism through the disappearance of nationalism. Her writing came at a time when she was witnessing intense political disputes among the Palestinian Arabs who rejected British policies that facilitated the establishment of a Jewish national home and permitted a growing number of European Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine. Along with this, she witnessed increased tensions between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish settlers in Palestine. Bssasio’s story, which was published in the New Light in 1938, was about a young “Jewish” shepherd meeting with an old Arab man who came down from the mountains to discover that things had changed since his departure. They communicated in their only shared language, English. The Arab elder informed the young shepherd that he was out of touch with the world and “ignorant” of the new global language that everyone now spoke. The Jewish shepherd told the old Arab man that “[I]in Palestine there are no Arabs or Jews anymore.” Rather, both people lived together as brothers. The young shepherd offered to accompany the old man to show him the city, but the old man refused. When the old man returned to the mountains, he was shocked to find that his people were no longer there. The Jew’s last thought about the old Arab man was that “he seems to belong to those Arabs of olden days which history tells us about.”[88]

While the story was not clear if English was the global language, it was the common language in which the young shepherd and the old man communicated. This displays the way in which Bssasio internalized the centrality of English due to her missionary education that corresponded to the colonial agenda. The story portrayed the Arabs as old, static, and trapped in time, while the Jews were viewed as young and modern—both stereotypical figures popularized by the missionaries. Additionally, the fact that Bssasio portrayed the Jew as a shepherd is perhaps an indication of his biblical connection to the land. This was the same notion that was popularized by most Protestant missionaries, in general, to justify the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In the story, England was now “just a country of human brothers who have the same rights.” England did not have imperial control over any other countries or colonies, an indication of Quakers’ wishful thinking that colonization of other nations should end, and that England would serve as an example and mediator for the world. The story held many contradictory ideas which reflected the girls’ uncertainty on how to reconcile the nationalist aspirations of Palestinians with the Quaker ideals of international citizenship and “reclaiming Christian Palestine.”

Citizenship and cultural unity through Arabic language and literature were also connected with another social value, individualism, which the girls believed was essential for the development of Palestinian society. Learning about the American ideal of individualism and how it could be applied to the nationalist struggle helped the FGS students negotiate for a more public role in Arab society. Maria Salah, who was part of the 1925 class, asserted that the central principle of individualism acknowledged that each person’s rights and independence were essential to creating an efficient society.[89] She contended that Western notions of individualism were transferable and vital to the success of Palestinian society. This notion contradicted Arab society’s long-standing reliance on communal structures such as extended family, clan, tribe, and religious sect with which a person identified. If necessary, individual personal freedom and welfare is sacrificed for the cause of the group. According to the girls’ beliefs, traditional social loyalties must yield in favor of the nation-state if society is to progress.[90] The value of American-style individualism became central to their personal convictions because they believed that individualism would set them free from the patriarchal values enforced by traditional social structures. In this manner, they underscored aspects of Western ideals as necessary for the formation of a Palestinian national identity.

The FGS girls interpreted the sometimes-contradictory ideas and messages to which they were exposed in various ways. In a complex way, the Quakers promoted world peace, friendship, pacifism, and internationalism. They were opposed to discourses of imperialism and nationalism, which they viewed as encouraging discord, violence, and war, but in some instances they were also influenced by the politics of imperialism and colonialism. School life and interaction among students and teachers from different national and religious backgrounds fostered a “cosmopolitan atmosphere” that made the students “naturally aware of the world outside without any sectarian feelings or culture shock.”[91] Alice Asa`d’s graduation essay insists on the importance of implementing peace and brotherhood among the different nations of the world. She explains that the ideal state of international affairs will come about when the world becomes one country, “watan wahid,” in which all of the existing political governing systems relax “economic restrictions and [cause] borders to be open for trade.”

Asa`d explains the injustice of declaring wars among nations; she believed that strong nations such as Britain should play a prominent role in mediating international disagreements that could possibly turn into war. She continued on to provide an example of England intervening and solving a conflict between Argentina and Chile over borders in the early twentieth century. It is evident that students internalized Quaker messages of peace and internationalism and combined them with their versions of Arab/Palestinian nationalism to define their personal roles in building civic society. The girls internalized the message of peace of the Quakers and believed in their own role as intermediaries in conflict resolution within their Palestinian community. Although this was part of the colonial agenda, which placed colonial powers in a superior position as intermediaries between nations, this, indeed, aided the girls’ nationalist aspirations during that period.

Moreover, the teachings of the Quaker missionaries, which established connections between the geographical area of contemporary Palestine and biblical tradition, were confirmed and co-opted by the Arab Christian students, perhaps in order to validate the Palestinian Christian connection to the land. When talking about these historical locations, the girls confirmed the fundamental connection between the three Abrahamic religions, hence advocating for a one nation-state where all Arab Palestinians—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—would coexist in peace. By advocating for a revival of the Arabic language, culture, and history as a component of the new national state, they acknowledged the right of the three religions to exist in Palestine in one civic society.

Part of the Quaker educational project was to teach the girls to associate geographical areas in contemporary Palestine with the names they were given in the Bible. The connection between Palestine and its Judeo-Christian roots that Quaker missionaries emphasized to their Palestinian students created ambivalent political messages. Palestinian students became uncertain about how to deal with or think about Jewish immigration and the Zionist project, which then tied into uncertainty surrounding Palestinian Arab Nationalism and its basic component of Islamic history.

One of the methods used to imbue awareness and interest among the FGS students about the relationship between Palestine and Christian readings of the Old Testament was to bring guest speakers, such as the biblical scholar Elihu Grant. An even more influential method was to invite American woman speakers, such as a young American student at the American School of Archeology in Jerusalem who was invited to spend the weekend with Willard and Christina Jones of the Ramallah Mission. The speaker, whose name is not mentioned, talked to the FGS students about her work and its significance, and explained her studies and trips to various places of “biblical interest.” She impacted the students, not only by elucidating the Biblical history of Palestine, but also by speaking about her professional career as an archaeologist, which was an uncommon occupation for a woman during this time. The students were taken on field trips to see biblical lands first hand, then asked to describe the locations and their experiences there.[92]

These expository exercises, of course, impacted the girls’ thought processes. In her 1924 essay, Argentine Mousa presented the history of Ramallah and the surrounding villages of al-Berieh, Ain Yabroud, Kufr Malik and described the significance of the village names to their biblical origins.[93] A graduate of 1927, Olga Zacharia, wrote about the “Sacred Spots in Palestine,” and connected almost all of the sites she mentioned to ancient times. Even when she mentioned Islamic sites, such as the Omar Mosque, she highlighted that the Mosque “belongs to the Moslems but it used to be for the Jews. The Jews are still hoping and expecting to have it back again. It was here that Solomon’s’ temple and the succeeding temples stood.”[94] These writings show the girls’ attempts to make sense of the complex relations between contemporary Palestine and its biblical past, as well as rights the Jews may have to settle in the country. The writings of the girls demonstrate the kind of education they received provided a rationale for the ambivalence they felt toward political Palestinian nationalism.

As Eastern Christians, the girls knew the history of Palestine as Jesus’ birthplace, but it was not until they were confronted with the Quaker educational program and the ideas about the rediscovery and “reclamation” of the land that they began to feel conflicted about how they should resolve the tension between their contemporary history and the Christian-Zionist ideology’s colonization project. All in all, a vast majority of the girls connected the holy sites and historical places to all of the three Abrahamic religions and insisted on the need for peaceful coexistence in society where the rights of all were guaranteed. Also, the exercise of contemplating and expressing the connections between contemporary Palestine and biblical history might reflect an indirect way of communicating to their missionary teachers that they, as Arab Christians, had a claim to the land of Palestine.

On the other hand, because of the influence of the Arab staff at the school and their own cultural context, the students agitated for Arabic language and cultural revivalism as a way to express the country’s pan-Arab national aspirations. However, these students’ writings were ambiguous in their manner of positioning ideologies and confronting conflicting forces. They were clearly receptive to the Quaker missionaries’ teachings of peaceful coexistence and fellowship, and they felt the need to avoid controversial political issues that might have pitted them against their teachers, and the British Mandate government’s colonial Zionist project in Palestine. Although they were wary of their conflicting viewpoints, their writings still revealed a definite commitment to Palestinian nationalism.

With this commitment in mind, the girls were forced to negotiate these apparently conflicting positions to try to articulate the best manner of pursuing Palestinian nationalism on their own terms. Abla Nashef, who believed in promoting Palestinian nationalism, wrote, “Our aim (Arab Palestinians) should be reached by peaceful means, non-violent means.” Another student emphasized, “The prophets defended one main idea, namely, ‘peace.’ Christianity is built on love, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Islam urges peace, ‘Peace be upon you’ is the only expression with which a Moslem greets another.”[95] In such examples, students were emphasizing the message of peace that unites the three Abrahamic religions and the importance of ending conflicts through peaceful resolution, which served as evidence of Quaker influence in viewing themselves as future peacemakers. The girls tailored their national identities and translated nationalism into devotion to public service and community building, rather than political activism against British policies and their Zionist project. This can be seen in to resonate with Sharkey’s remark that conversion produces feelings of uncertainty among converts in dealing with aspects of their culture and political realities.[96]

FGS Students’ Conceptualization of Social Norms

Even with the gendered education the students received at the FGS, this form of modern education gave women a chance to change their roles within the family and society. Education and participation in the workforce increased women’s independence and, thus, changed their social behaviors and perceptions about certain cultural standards. Undoubtedly, this was a sharp departure from the national expectation of women’s roles as mainly mothers and wives, carriers of moral values and nurturers of children, who needed to be protected from the male gaze. FGS students reflected on their roles, identities, and values as their education allowed them to negotiate their position in social and political spaces. They were able to postpone marriage, take more control in choosing their marriage partners, assume greater roles in their families after marriage, and hold emancipatory views regarding the veil.

Marriage

For the students at the FGS, education meant increased independence and effects that impacted girls from all class backgrounds. By late 1920s and into the 1930s, the students’ writings consistently showed an increased awareness of how education could be employed to challenge the entrenched values and practices of a well-established patriarchal system by showing targeted disobedience to male authority when feasible and justifiable. As girls graduated from the FGS and a considerable number moved on to college, they began to postpone marriage, therefore improving their marriage prospects.

In an interview conducted with Aida Audi, she explained how she remained single even after she graduated from the American University of Beirut because her expectations had changed drastically. Not only was she able to reject men who asked for her hand, but her education also allowed her to participate in society as an independent individual. However, her decision conflicted with the patriarchal values of some Arab men, who thought these college women were either too old or too independent and liberal. Audi emphasized, “Many of the FGS girls who went for higher education did not marry.” Another interviewee who was part of the 1948 class, Salwa Tabri, also stayed single—as did her sister. Tabri became an English and music teacher at the FGS before she went to Germany, where she specialized in teaching music. After her return to Palestine, she taught at the Women’s Teachers College in al-Tera, Ramallah, and was a director of the Jerusalem choir for almost forty years.[97]

Many other graduates remained unmarried, including Leila Khoury (class of 1947), who became a professor at the American University of Beirut, and Georgette Shihadeh (class of 1948), was a well-known teacher in Ramallah and al-Bireh before her retirement, and an inspector with the Office of Education. Yusra Salah (class of 1942), a daughter of a Muslim sheik, went to the Girls College in Beirut and then to the American University of Beirut, where she graduated in 1946. After working as an English teacher for a few years, she became the superintendent of the Women’s Teachers College in Nablus. Ambitious for more education, Yusra traveled to the United States, where she studied at Columbia University and received her master’s degree in English in 1953.

Yusra remained unmarried and contributed greatly to the educational and intellectual life of Palestine. She wrote English textbooks that were used in the public schools and translated many texts to and from English and Arabic.[98] Most of the girls who did marry were teachers at one point either before or directly after graduation from the FGS, even though this compromised their eligibility for marriage. The tension between their desire for careers and the engrained standards of their potential partners illustrates the challenges these women faced in subverting the mechanisms of patriarchal authority.

The increased marriage age for Arab women also resulted in a larger population of single women. Oftentimes their greater age compromised their marriageability, as girls past the age of eighteen or twenty years old were considered too old to be married. This attitude toward age and eligibility for marriage explain the demographics of married women in Palestinian Christian and Muslim communities. In 1931, Muslim women who married between the ages of fifteen and nineteen constituted approximately one-third of all married women, while one-fifth of Christians in the same age group were married. Moreover, 75 percent of the Muslim women between fifteen and forty-four years old were married, and 65 percent of the Christians from the same age-group were married.

An explanation of these numbers may be due to the fact that more Christian women pursued higher education and therefore, were more likely to remain single. Also, many of the interviewees who graduated in the 1950s and 1960s indicated that they knew many former FGS students from earlier classes (1940s) who remained single. They estimated that the percentage of single women among the school graduates increased over time and reached its height of 40 percent in the 1950s. They also indicated that, even among the girls who did get married during the ten- to fifteen- year period, the divorce rate was very high.

These numbers were provided by a long-term American teacher, Donn Hutchison, who has lived in Ramallah since the late 1960s and was still working at the Friends Schools during the time I interviewed him in 2006. Hutchison asked former students to identify fellow classmates who remained unmarried in the graduating classes of 1930s and 1940s. After going through the names of the students, he came to the conclusion that a considerable number of the girls who went to college remained unmarried.[99] This tension between the college-educated girls’ desire for careers and the entrenched marriage standards of their potential marriage partners illustrates the challenges that women faced in subverting the oppressive mechanisms of patriarchal authority. Women also challenged the roles of patriarchal authority in alternative ways in order to ensure their completion of an education.

In a letter written by an FGS student to the Friends in America (Friends Board of Missions), a girl requested scholarship money to allow her to finish her schooling. She and her brother lived with their father and an unkind stepmother while attending a Friends boarding school. Their father wanted to pull her out of school because he thought that his daughter’s education was a “waste” of money and an impediment to her marriageability to an older suitor whom he had lined up for her. She refused to comply with her father’s wishes, and asked her brother to help her return to the FGS. It was only after the principal of the school contacted her father that he agreed to send money for her tuition. The girl’s brother decided to help her complete her three remaining years of school and in return, at fifteen years old she planned to help her brother finish college in Beirut after graduation.[100]

As we can see from this case, the Palestinian girl not only challenged her father’s authority, but also established herself as an independent woman who would work after graduation to help her brother. This cooperation between sister and brother was remarkable; in Arab society, financial responsibility fell solely on the male members of the family. Even more incredibly, the boy did not support his father’s will to pull his sister out of school, as he would have traditionally been expected to do, thus destabilizing the ultimate authority of the male patriarch. While this story does illuminate the forces at work against patriarchal family hierarchies, neither the precise cause of the father’s decision nor the complete extent to which the older brother influenced him is known. The school’s respectable male principal also served as a mediator between the family and the school, which further complicated the power dynamics at work in this family. Indeed, the father’s decision to allow his daughter to attend the school could indicate that the community trusted the school. Nonetheless, the girl valued her education and appeared to have taken charge of her own individual life choices. She held a clear understanding of the resources available to her within the system, which she could use to challenge patriarchal relations in the family, and this might be credited to the fact that she was in the process of completing her program of education.

After graduation, these ideals stayed with the girls well into their careers and personal lives. While the FGS’s higher educational standards meant to prepare the girls to meet college entrance requirements, education of domesticity simultaneously enforced their central role in their families and society. Subhiya Makdadi, class of 1928, incorporated both of these messages into her life by establishing herself as an academic and career woman while balancing her roles as wife and mother. After she passed the London Matriculation Exam, Makdadi attended the American University of Beirut, married, and pursued a career in teaching while raising her children. She ambitiously took advantage of the education opportunities available to her by developing an accomplished private and professional life. When her children were older, she traveled to the United States for doctoral studies and eventually graduated with a terminal degree.[101] The accomplishments of Makdadi after graduation illustrate how Palestinian students at the FGS internalized both kinds of education, home economics and academic classes, as complementary to each other.

Aida Audi explained in an interview how the education she received completely transformed her life. She believed in her ability to make a difference through public service, and continued her education to a junior college and then to the American University of Beirut. She taught for one year at the FGS and then worked at the American consulate in Jerusalem for many years. After her brother fell ill, Audi took control of her family’s affairs, including the hotel business she inherited in Ramallah. Empowered by her education, she became a successful businesswoman, rejected the notion of marriage, paid off her brother’s large debts, traveled widely, and came to be a highly respected public figure in the Ramallah area.[102] Audi’s education and participation in work, as well as control of her family’s economic resources, not only changed her views about marriage being central to her life as a woman, but also influenced her perception of gender equality.

Remarkably, FGS graduates became prominent in the Arab world by either providing direct influence from their careers or through their marriages. Others tried to strike a balance between their domestic roles as wives and mothers and their positions in the public sphere while simultaneously seeking further education. These women exemplify the ways in which FGS students enacted the values and skills they acquired at the FGS; they placed a high value on traditional roles as wives and mothers, but also recognized their own capacity to have an influence in the public sphere as teachers, leaders, and advocates.

Sultania Abdo, a 1903 graduate of the FGS, taught for a period of time before marrying Khalil Sakakini, a political figure who grew into a well-known Palestinian nationalist, educator, and author. His textbooks were used to teach Arabic in government schools all across the Arab world. There were a significant number of the students who graduated in the 1920s who chose to stay home and get married. Many of the girls married educated men and a considerable number of girls married graduates from the FBS. Students from the first graduating class of the FGS in 1924 (after the school was renamed), such as Latifeh Nasir Mousa got married and started families of their own. Similar to many of her peers, Latifeh made valuable connections through her marriage. She married Munir Mousa, and became Edward Said’s aunt by marriage.

Remarkably, FGS students’ marriages and social ties established them as influential figures throughout the entire social strata of Palestinian society. Emily Iqal (class of 1926) married Sam’man Daoud, a prominent cabinet member in the Jordanian government. Alexandra Iqal Abu Rayyieh (class of 1941) married Khalil Abu Rayyieh, an important historian who authored a book about the early history of Ramallah, and for whom the Ramallah Library and the Abu Rayyieh Hospital in Ramallah are named.[103] These examples indicate that women who were educated at the FGS were not limited to teaching as a means of influencing the progress and well-being of their society, but their marriages to influential men also opened up gates to exert their influence. The teachings of the Quakers played an incredibly significant role in directing the lives of these women as mothers and wives. These women believed in their gendered social role and exerted influences in their families as educated mothers and wives and in their community as reformers and philanthropists.

As depicted above, FGS students construed their roles in different ways according to their individual situations and aspirations. They viewed their unmarried missionary teachers as prime examples of single working women, which gradually became a socially and culturally accepted norm. The girls knew if they made the conscious decision not to get married, their professional lives (especially as teachers) would supplement and fulfill their impulses to be mothers, as it did for their missionary teachers. However, this stand was a challenge to the gendered notions within their patriarchal society and rejection of their traditional domestic roles. Some students combined the two roles as educated, married women with a larger role in education and employment. For FGS students, education meant increased independence, although it created a tension between their traditional, domestic roles and their modern roles as educated women.

The Issue of the Veil

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Ramallah Mission was in its early years, the garments that made up the dress code such as head covers were seen as social markers among the students. The missionaries, as has been discussed earlier, saw the traditional Palestinian dress, especially the thob, the shawl or head cover, and the kherqa, as primitive and backward. These perceptions began to change after the 1920s, as cultural clothing was romanticized for its aesthetic beauty and connection to Jesus, as explained in chapter 3.

The intersecting colonial forces of the missionaries, orientalists, and Western travelers perceived the veil as a symbol of the oppression and backwardness of Arab and Muslim women. Thus “lifting the veil” came to be a requirement for progress in women’s rights and a prerequisite for “uplifting” the position of Arab women.[104] Al-Taimuriya (1840–1902) an Egyptian feminist from an aristocratic family, opposed the veil and its application as a hindrance to women’s education. In her article published in Al-Adab newspaper in 1889, she made it clear that women had been “secluded by the tent of an enveloping wrap (veil).”[105] The Lebanese literary writer Zainab Fawwaz (1860–1910) shared a similar view and rejected the veil in her poetry and advocated for gender equality.[106] This discourse gained momentum among Arab nationalists, especially those who were educated in Western institutions. These often became advocates for removing the veil. Intellectuals such as Qasim Amin, a well-known Egyptian scholar in the late nineteenth century, called for the removal of the veil and access to education for women.[107]

In the 1920s unveiling became an increasingly touchy debate undertaken mainly by elite women. Renowned Egyptian feminist Huda Sharawi challenged what she believed was an oppressive social practice and boldly took off her veil with her colleague, Saiza Nabarawi, after returning from the Women’s Suffrage Alliance in 1923. They publicly removed their veils in a railway station, an action that signified a challenge to the custom of veiling by upper- and middle-class women.[108] In 1928 a controversial text on the veiling of Muslim women, Unveiling and Veiling: The Liberation of Women and Social Renewal in the Islamic World, used Quranic and other Islamic sources to argue that the veil was not required by Islam. The book was written by the Lebanese Druze Nazira Zeineddine, who came from a wealthy family.[109] Discourse surrounding the issue of unveiling influenced the FGS students as they grappled with what action, if any, should be taken by modest, respectable upper- and middle-class women as tensions grew between social liberation and long-standing Arab cultural practices.

The FGS students showed independent thinking and sensibility concerning the extent to which precepts of Western-style feminism could be applied to the social conditions of Palestinian society. Their interpretations suggested that Western feminism had to be modified to accord with Palestinian religious and cultural norms, particularly concerning women’s dress. The FGS students’ interpretations of their rights and the manner in which they should be accorded to them follow the advice of early Arab women feminists not to follow uncritical imitations of the West.

An Egyptian writer, Bahithat al-Badiya, said, “I am the first to respect among them those who deserve respect, but respect for others should not make us overlook the good of the nation”[110] For students, the Palestinian cultural value of female modesty corresponded with the values of their Quaker teachers. For example, Sameha al-Faruqy’s graduation essay dealt with the conflict between Western feminism and the practice of veiling. She found the sexual liberation advocated by Western feminism to be excessive; she argued that these ideals did not comply with modesty of dress or with sexual restraint. However, she did not reject progressive modification to women’s dress standards. While she argued that veiling was unnecessarily restrictive, she contended that al-hijab “does not contradict women’s educational duties or women’s social obligations.”[111] Here, al-Faruqy rejected the notion that connected the progress of women and their education with the lifting of the hijab and translated the values she was taking from her missionary teachers to best align with her values and her situation. For her, wearing the hijab was not only a religious requirement, but also a sign of modesty, a principle encouraged by the American Quakers, as well as Palestinian tradition.

This nuanced interpretation of women’s rights within their traditional context meant that there was no contradiction between wearing the hijab head cover and doing so while receiving an education. Students viewed the veil, which covers the face except for the eyes, as oppressive, and thus unacceptable; however, the hijab was seen as an acceptable means of adhering to social and religious tradition while maintaining the individual identity that was expressed through the visibility of their faces.[112] Hallaby reasoned that women were kept undereducated and socially restricted because conformity with tradition assured male domination through the oppression and mandatory seclusion of women behind “the jail of the veil (that covers the face)” and the walls of their homes.[113]

Faruqy and Hallaby, a Muslim and a Christian, respectively, wrote about the issue of women’s seclusion and the veil in 1927, one year before the Lebanese feminist Nazira Zeineddine published her book on the same issue. This was an indication that some Arab women, Muslim and Christian alike, were occupied with and advocating publicly for the removal of the veil in accordance with education for women.

As Fleischmann pointed out, Arab women accepted the missionary message “in many respects, but they also ultimately subverted it, suiting it to their own needs and subjecting it to their own interpretation.”[114] FGS students translated the Quakers and nationalists’ message of the centrality of education to their domestic role with their aspirations of gaining independence and more active public roles after graduation. As FGS students shared and internalized the importance of domesticity and its extended component of public service (i.e. teaching and philanthropy), they acquired other “unconventional” possibilities with some modification to best fit their situations.[115]

They integrated aspects of the Western feminist notions that would assert their individuality and forward women’s claims to an expanded public sphere that extended beyond charitable social service. Individualism, rather than collectivism—in which the needs of the family or tribe, including patriarchal social standards that restricted women’s rights, were prioritized over those of the individual—became central to the girls’ sense of identity. Individualism was a value central to claiming their independence and gaining more active roles in their society. Additionally, these girls thought ambivalently, and in many instances, as some of the cases show above, critically and independently about the Arab nationalist Palestinian movement. They strove to understand and apply the Quakers’ ethic of pacifism and neutrality, while at the same time agitating for Arab/Palestinian nationalism when advocating for a cultural revival through the use of peaceful means to reach their national aims.[116]

By promoting the cultural aspects of Arab nationalism and not political nationalism, they were trying to reconcile the missionary teachers’ claims of neutrality toward the Arab-Zionist conflict with their own beliefs about the value of Arab/Palestinian culture and the rights of Palestinian citizens in the face of colonial aggression.[117] Some of the girls called for the use of non-violent activism as a means to achieve their “national” rights, while others viewed tribalism as the primary obstacle to the development of a Palestinian nation-state and called for its abolition.[118]

Their writings also argued for the cultivation of responsible citizenship, wherein citizens knew their civic duties and performed them for the betterment of society. These hybridized and adapted views reflected the girls’ attempts to adjust their ideas to be consistent with both their Quaker education and the rapidly changing cultural and social milieu in their country. Moreover, these students were ahead of their time in their conviction that women had a place in civic society beyond the role of preparing the nation’s future generation. The girls’ writings during the 1920s, and especially during the 1930s, did not make significant mention of the Palestinian national struggle against the policies of the British Mandate that sought to establish a Jewish nation-state by facilitating the migration of European Jews to Palestine and transferring Palestinian land to Jewish settlers (even though these issues were at the forefront of Palestinian media at the time), Rather, their writings showed their uncertainty about the political struggle, in that they were either unwilling or unable to articulate a clear and unified message about the political struggles of their people. Nevertheless, they do clearly portray a deep understanding of the significance of key religious sites to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. This might be seen as a way of acknowledging the presence of the three religions in Palestine, in which equal citizenship and the Arabic language were the main constituents of building Palestinian society.

Notes

1.

For more information on the “new woman,” see: Caroline Ticknor, "The Steel-Engraving Lady and the Gibson Girl," Atlantic Monthly 88 (July 1901): 105–8; Fairfax Downey, Portrait of an Era As Drawn by C. D. Gibson (New York: Scribner, 1936); Estelle B. Freedman, "The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s," Journal of American History 61 (September 1974): 372–93; Robert Koch, "Gibson Girl Revisited," Art in America 1 (1965): 70–73; Glenna Matthews, "Just a Housewife": The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present, 3d Edition (New York: F. Watts, 1983).

2.

For more information on American missionaries and education of domesticity in the Ottoman Balkans and the Near East see: Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Domestic Frontiers: Gender, Reform, and American Interventions in the Ottoman Balkans and the Near East (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013).

3.

For more information on this subject see: Lila Abu-Lughod, Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

4.

Robert, The Holy Land in the American Protestant Life, 123.

5.

This notion of womanhood was similar to that of the American idea of “republican motherhood” that emerged in the early years of the new republic after the American Revolution. It was believed that “republican mothers” should be models of civic virtue for their children and families, and competent, dutiful keepers of the domestic sphere. While this ideology imbued women with newfound value, it also reinforced patriarchal relations by defining women’s role in terms of the domestic.

6.

Hanna Khoury, “al- Mar`ah wa Ta`theraha / Woman and her Influence” (July 1924).

7.

Tafida Tarazi, “Hayaty wal-Far` al Manzeli” / “My Life and Home Economics” (1931).

8.

Tarazi, “Hayaty wal-Far` al Manzeli” / “My life and Home Economics.” Translated by the author.

9.

Najla Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006.

10.

This also came in accordance with the British mandate government’s aim of keeping the population focused on agriculture as their main occupation. Further, to encourage agricultural development the mandate sponsored agricultural courses, especially in rural schools. The school that was used exclusively for this purpose was the Kadoorie Agricultural School at Tul-Karm. It was a two-year boarding institution that admitted students who finished their secondary education. The school was established in 1931 and was under the dual control of the Government Departments of Education and Agriculture. The school also operated 150 acres of experimental agricultural land. A. L. Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandtory Palestine: A Study of Three Decades of British Administration (London: Luzac & Company, 1956), 35, 51.

11.

For more information about the British agricultural policies in Palestine see: Roza El-Eini, Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine 1929–1948 (London; New York: Routledge, 2006).

12.

Elizabeth Brownson, “Nationalism, and the Politics of Teaching History in Mandate Palestine,” The Journal of Palestine Studies 43, no. 3 (Spring 2014): 11.

13.

Mildred White, “Ram Allah Girls Win Loving Cup,” Quarterly News Sheet, FGS Collection, Ramallah, Palestine; Anesah Ma`luf, Mu`asasat Jam`yat al-`Asdeqa` al-`Amrekyah fi Falestine, 117; Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 125.

14.

Henriette Siksik account on Four Homes of Mercy website www.fourhomes
ofmercy.com/henrietta-cont.html, accessed on July 22, 2014.

15.

Zahia Durbas, “Al-Tadbeer al-Manzely” / “Home Management,” (July 1927).

16.

Nazeha Abdul Jawad, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006. Her husband would later (after their marriage) become the mayor of al-Bireh and a well-known Palestinian nationalist. Nazeha was sent to the FGS after she finished sixth grade at al-Bireh public school.

17.

Alice Houssa, “What an Educated Girl can do for Palestine” (July 1922).

18.

Nazeh Abdul Jawad, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006.

19.

Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” 114.

20.

Fleischmann, “Our Muslim Sisters,” 308.

21.

Annual Report of the American Friends Mission, Ramallah (January 21, 1922; Annual Report of Ramallah Mission,( 1929), Friends United Meeting Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 8. The work of these day schools expanded to provide a wider range of services, especially to Muslim students who were unable to go to school due to lack of government funds for public schools. For example, in 1922, there were eight day schools run by the Friends’ Mission with a total enrollment of 223 students. However, the Mission was eventually forced to close the two smallest schools for economic reasons. By October of 1922, only six schools remained open. These were in Beir Zeit, Ain Senia, Taiyibeh, Attara, Beitunia and al-Bireh and had a total of 241 children. Seventy-nine of these students were Christians and the rest were Muslims. The report of 1929 also mentioned that there was some Muslim opposition to the Mission schools. Deir Ghasanni was among these Muslim villages that opposed the establishment of Christian schools. Parents were suspicious of the schools’ intentions, and rumors spread that the missionary teachers intended to steal the girls and take them to America. As a result, teachers had to take action to mitigate the panic that threatened to erupt. Eventually, residents of the villages came to appreciate the work done by the schools and provided free housing for the teachers and paid partial tuition to cover school expenses.

22.

The Annual Report of the American Friends Mission in Ramallah (January 21, 1921). The report was written by Edward Kelsey, the superintendent of Ramallah Mission during this time period.

23.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 95.

24.

Ramallah Mission Minutes (July, 1, 1930; July 19, 1929; July, 25, 1930). When the Ramallah Friends missionaries decided to close the village day schools in 1930, they paid the teachers an extra month’s salary. This was as an acknowledgment that the teachers would have a difficult time finding another job. Parents of children from the village of al-Bireh who sent their children to the day school urged the teachers to keep the school open, even offering to provide a sum of one hundred dollars and furnishings for the school. These parents were Christians, and they wanted to keep the Friends day school in al-Bireh open because they did not want their children to make the daily trip to Ramallah Friends schools. They were also unwilling to send their children to the al-Bireh school, where their children had to learn the Quran. As a last resort, these parents offered to pay the same tuition that the students of the Friends day schools in Ramallah paid. The Ramallah Mission requested fifty dollars in tuition as well as furnishings and a room in which the school could operate. Letter from al-Bireh day school students’ parents to the Principal of the Friends Boys Sschool (July 23, 1930). The letter was signed by Musa Radifi, Jiryis Salti, Ilyas Kattua, Ibrahim Sakakini, Mariam Rafidi, and Makhleh Sahu. The Deir-Ghasana girls’ school was also kept open for a year after the missionaries had decided to shut down the village schools. However, because the Ministry of Education was unwilling to take administrative and financial responsibility for the school, it ultimately closed, leaving the village without a girls’ school. As a result, the American Friends secured the salary of the teacher for one more year.

25.

Ramallah Mission Report to the Board (1936), FGS Collection, Ramallah,
Palestine; American Friends Mission Minutes (October 21, 1923) Palestine Reports, 1915–1966, Microfilm, 53. Conjunctivitis was one of the most common eye infections during the summer. The American Friends Mission in Ramallah acknowledged Shahla’s work and by 1923 decided to increase her yearly salary from $315 to $400. Her salary was paid by the Ramallah Meeting. Winslow commented on Na`meh Shahla’s character and devoted work. She explained how Na`mah grew up, was educated in the FGS, and worked for three years as teacher there before she answered the “call to carry the gospel message to the women whose lives were so hard and narrow and without even a strong hope of the future.” Winslow, “Palestine as I Saw It,” 10.

26.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 217.

27.

Ibid., 226.

28.

Ramallah Mission Minutes (February 18, 1934); Thomas W. Y. Clark Letter (American Friends of Baltimore, Maryland) (January 17, 1934), Friends United Meeting Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana; Report of Ramallah Friends Meeting, 1947; Jones, Friends in Palestine, 72.

29.

Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 126.

30.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 174.

31.

Badran and Cooke, Opening the Gates, 223; Marilyn Booth, Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces: Writing Feminist History Through Biography in fin-de-siècle Egypt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).

32.

Katrina Hallaby, “Wojubb Musharakat al-Mara` al-Rajul fi al-`amal” / “The Obligation of Women’s Participation in the Workforce with Men,” July 1927.

33.

Muhja Saba, Luzum Ta`leem al-Fatah fi Falasteen / The Necessity of Educating the Girls in Palestine (July 1926); Katrina Hallaby, “Wojubb Musharakat al-Mara` al-Rajul fi al-`amal / The Obligation of Women Participation in the Workforce with Men” (July 1927).

34.

New Light (June 1938). The issue highlighted Abla Nashef as an example of a good student who took “the most advantage of what the school has to offer.” She spent her time reading in the school’s library, playing school sports such as tennis and netball, serving as the Secretary of the Student Council, and acting as a model student who followed school rules and kept order among her peers.

35.

New Light, commencement edition, 1938. Margaret Jubrials had wanted to become a dentist, but due to financial limitations, she turned to her second choice.

36.

This school for orphans taught mainly agriculture and home economics.

37.

New Light, commencement edition, 1938.

38.

Ibid.

39.

Friends Schools News, no. 3 (November 1932), FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine, 4; Eva Rae Marshal Letter to her Family (September 30, 1928).

40.

Siksik account on Four Homes of Mercy.

41.

Report of the FGS, Ramallah, Palestine, 1946; Najla Cook Interview, July 20, 2006; Aida Audi Interview, July 27, 2006 . Both Cook and Audi affirmed that a good number of their graduating class went to college either in the Junior College or the American University at Beirut.

42.

Fleishmann, “The Impact of Protestant Education,” 420.

43.

The definition of middle class here refers mainly to newly emerging urban middle class. It was composed largely of well-educated Palestinian Christians and Muslims. Those belonging to this class were engaged in professional jobs such as teachers, minor government posts, and shopkeepers, wholesale merchants, and artisans. Manuel Hussassian, Palestine: Factionalism in the National Movement ( Jerusalem: The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, 1990), 36. A clear indication of Palestinian middle-class lifestyle was described in two autobiographies, one written by a middle-class Muslim and the other one by a Christian middle-class author. Both women writers lived during the Mandate in Jerusalem. Ghada Karmi, In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story (London: Verso, 2002); Hala Sakakini, Jerusalem and I (Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1987). Sakakini’s mother, Sultana Abdo, was a graduate of the FGS during the early twentieth century. Sakakini’s account mentioned that she and her sister were members of the YMCA, and that her family possessed a piano and a private library in which English literature constituted many of the books.

44.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 156.

45.

See for more information Greenburg, “Educating Muslim Girls in Mandatory Jerusalem,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2004): 1–39. Khairieh Kasmieh, “Ruhi al-Khalidi 1864–1913: A Symbol of the Cultural Movement in Palestine Toward the End of the Ottoman Rule,” in The Syria Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical Experience, ed. Thomas Philipp (Stuttgrat: Steiner, 1992).

46.

Tuma, Filastin fi al- ahad al-Uthmani, 122–54.

47.

Abu-Ghazaleh, “Arab Cultural Nationalism in Palestine,” 42–43. The well-known Arab-Christian Palestinian historian Emil Tuma explained that the success of these mission schools’ graduates came as a result of their own efforts and abilities to escape the influence of the imperial culture the missionaries tried to implant. He uses Naseef al-Yazegy (1800–1871) and Butrus Al-Bustany (1819–1883) as examples of Arab nationalists and writers who contributed greatly to the Arab cultural renaissance, Nahda, during the nineteenth century. He states that Arab nationalists during these years criticized the Ottoman rule. They were influenced by the French Revolution’s principles that reached the Arab world through Napoleon’s invasion to Egypt and Syria in the late eighteenth century. For more information see Emil Tuma, Filastin fi al- ahad al-Uthmani (Amman: al-dar al-Aarabia l`nashr, 1983).

48.

A. L. Tibawi, American Interest in Syria 1800–1901 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

49.

Khalidi 1997, 162–72.

50.

For more details on this experiment, see Othman 2009, 2013.

51.

For more information see Ellen Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

52.

Serene Husseini Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, ed. Jean Said Makdisi (Beirut, Lebanon: Naufa, 2000), 76.

53.

Ibid., 76, 79.

54.

American Friends Missionaries Reports, January 20, 1935.

55.

Jones, Friends in Palestine, 85.

56.

Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 76.

57.

Ramallah Mission Reports 1915–1966.

58.

Ramallah Mission Minutes 1946.

59.

Abu-Ghazaleh, Adnan, “Arab Cultural Nationalism in Palestine during the British Mandate,” Journal of Palestine Studies 1, no. 3 (1972): 40.

60.

Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, 8.

61.

Keith Widder illuminated similar findings in his study of the encounters between Métis children and Ferrys’ missionaries. He explained that the missionary school’s educational program “functioned best when Métis children met their teachers on the middle ground where they held similar values. Even though the Ferrys seemed to be unaware that their culture overlapped with their students, the children responded most favorably to their mentors’ instructions when skills and concepts appeared to fit into their value system.” Keith Widder, Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823–1837 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999), 112.

62.

FGS Report 1937.

63.

Minutes of Ramallah Mission, July 14, 1937.

64.

One long-term Quaker missionary named Alice Jones believed that the identities of girls were influenced by the English military presence in the country. She claimed that girls became “less modest and more independent” in their thinking. Alice Jones report of the FGS (January 31, 1920).

65.

Hutchison interview, 2006; Siksik: account on Four Homes of Mercy. Siksik published The Gallant Five, the story of the beginnings of the Arabian horses, for teenagers. Library of Congress; Libyan Folk Tales (“Ya Hazarkcom,” meaning “get ready to hear”; Twelve Palestinian Stories—presented to UNRWA schools as guidelines on which to build student discussions; Short Tales: Published in Beirut by Manara Library; a number of English stories about children in Palestine. Published in Red Cross American magazine; a number of stories and educational articles published by Beirut El Masa, and in Jerusalem’s Al Kuds.

66.

Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 95, 142.

67.

Katrina Hallaby, “Wojubb Musharakat al-Mara` al-Rajul fi al-`amal” / “The Obligation of Women’s Participation in the Workforce with Men,” July 1927.

68.

Nancy M. Forestell and Maureen Anne Moynagh, Documenting First Wave Feminisms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 209.

69.

Fleischman, The Nation and Its “New” Women, 86

70.

Alice Houssa, “What an Educated Girl can do for Palestine” (July 1922).

71.

Abu-Ghazaleh 1972, 39.

72.

One important and influential Arab staff member who joined the Ramallah Mission was Farid Tabari (1919–1945). He was an important national figure who promoted Arabic literary programs in the Mission’s schools such as Suq-`Ukath, which encouraged students’ recitations of Arabic poetry. It was a very important literary tradition in the Friends Schools.

73.

Badran and Cooke, Opening the Gates, 240, 243.

74.

Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 76.

75.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 78. Mildred White showed her delight and satisfaction in working with Palestinian teachers. She explained that she “love(d) being on duty with Wadia,” White also described Wadia Shatara’s personality as “dear, faithful, jolly, and capable girl—witty and resourceful.”

76.

McDowell, Notes from Ramallah, 62.

77.

Cook, Personal Interview, July 27, 2006; Aida Audi, Personal Interview, July 28, 2006; Jawad, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006.

78.

Aida Audi, Personal Interview, July 28, 2006. “Mawteny” is now the Syrian national anthem.

79.

Katrina Hallaby, “Wojubb Musharakat al-Mara` al-Rajul fi al-`amal / The Obligation of Women Participation in the Workforce with Men” (July 1927). During these years the Arab women’s movement was established. Huda Sha`rawi and Saiza Nabarawi were Egyptian women who began to agitate for women’s rights in the late nineteenth century. Sha`rawi established the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923 and coordinated its work with other women in different Arab countries such as Syria and Palestine. Their advocacy for education was successful and by 1925, the government made education mandatory for girls and boys.

80.

Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 13; Serene Husseini Shahid, “A Jerusalem Childhood: The Early Life of Serene Husseini,” Jerusalem Quarterly 37 (2009): 1–14.

81.

Issa Boullata, “My First School & Childhood Home,” Jerusalem Quarterly 37, p. 30.

82.

Zahwa Kashu`, “ Ma, al-Lugha al-Arabia / The Arabic Language” (July 1925).

83.

Miriam Za`ror, “Munajat Lugha/Language Soliloquy,” in FGS booklet 1931–1933, FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine, 18.

84.

For more information about women’s rights during the Nahda period (1850–1900) see Fruma Zachs and Sharon Halevi, Gendering Culture in Greater Syria: Intellectuals and Ideology in the Late Ottoman Period (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

85.

Luryce Kassab, “Num`w al-shu`ur al-Watany, / The Growth of National Sentiments” (July 1925).

86.

Some of the graduates, such as Alice Asa`d, insisted on the importance of implementing strategies of international peace and brotherhood among different nations as she explained in her essay al-Sallaam / Peace” (July 1923). Nabiha Sallah also wrote about a peace contest held in the school among the secondary school girls in 1933. The girls were given novels, poems and stories that promoted peace and appreciation and respect for all races. On the day of the contest they were asked to recite them, and a committee of judges selected a winner. In 1933 Aplirodite Karaviote received a gold medal sent from the American Friends Service Committee in America. Nabiha Sallah, “The Peace Contest,” in FGS booklet, 1931–1933 (Ramallah: FGS, 1933), 28.

87.

New Light 11, no. 1 (October 31, 1938), Ramallah, Palestine; New Light’s Commencement issue of 1938.

88.

Lama Bissaiso, New Light (March 12, 1938).

89.

Maria Salah, “al-`Stiqlal al- Fardy / The Personal Independence” (July 1925).

90.

For more information see Abdelaziz Ayyad, Arab Nationalism and the Palestinians, 1850–1939 (The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, Jerusalem, 1999). The hamulla/clan, the social unit to which a person gives his or her loyalty, is usually comprised of many families who are related through kinship. Any individual family member is usually expected to sacrifice his or her interests if they conflict with those of the family or the hamulla.

91.

Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 76.

92.

Marshal to her Family (November 6, 1927). These trips worked as a way to develop a close relationship between the teachers and their students, where both sides usually had a “lovely walk” and “sang along the way.” Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 118. The teachers described these trips as enjoyable experiences for both students and teachers. Marshal indicated that after these trips she would sing “all the crazy songs they asked for and said all the funny pieces, then we sang a quiet worship hymn and had prayer.” Marshal to her Family (February 24, 1928).

93.

Argentine Moursa, “The Story of Ramallah” (July 1924). This was an article the graduating students wrote and presented on their day of graduation.

94.

Olga Zakaria, “Sacred Spots in Palestine” (July 1927). It seems that the writers of these essays presented them at the Friends School graduation ceremonies for both schools during the 1920s. These papers written by FGS graduates were owned by Donn Hutchison, who was married to a Palestinian from Ramallah. His collection belonged to his mother-in-law, who was a teacher at the FGS and a former student.

95.

The New Light, Commencement Edition, 1938, Ramallah Palestine.

96.

Sharkey, Cultural Conversions, 2.

97.

Salwa Tabri Interview, July 18, 2006; Aida Audi Interview, July 28, 2006. These graduates tried to avoid talking about their reasons for not getting married. This might be related to the societal perceptions about the ideal age for women to marry (not more than eighteen or nineteen years old), the educated girls’ expectations of their future husbands, and as Aida Audi expressed, that some men thought that educated girls were too independent to become their wives.

98.

Ghayda Salah. N.d. Yusra Salah. 1923–1993. Darat al-maarif al-filistiniyh (Palestinian Encyclopedia), ency.najah.edu/node/17; Ela Greenberg, Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2009), 23, 185–86.

99.

Nazeha Abdul Jawad, Personal Interview, July 17, 2006; Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 144–45. Donn Hutchison interview, July 2, 2006; Hutchison email to the author, February 4, 2009.

100.

The FGS, 1930, FGS Historical Collection, Ramallah, Palestine.

101.

Eva Rae Marshal Unpublished Autobiography, 41.

102.

Aida Audi Interview, July 28, 2006.

103.

Donn Hutchison interview, July 2, 2006; Hutchison email to the author, February 4, 2009.

104.

Local newspapers in Palestine such as Filistin advocate for the removal of the veil. See “The Veil and the Necessity to Lift It,” Filistin (April 19, 1927); `Abd al-Ghani al-Karami, “The Veiling and the Unveiling,” May 19, 1927.

105.

Badran and Cook, Opening the Gates, 127, 129.

106.

Tiffany K. Wayne, Feminist Writings from Ancient Times to the Modern World: A Global Sourcebook and History (Santa Barbra, California: Greenwood, 2011), 310–13.

107.

Amin Qasim, The Liberation of Women: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).

108.

For more information see Huda Shaarawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879–1924), edited, translated, and introduced by Margot Badran (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987).

109.

For more information on Nazira Zeineddine and the issue of the veil see Miriam Cooke, Nazira Zeineddine: A Pioneer of Islamic Feminism (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2012. In the same year Nazira Zeineddine also published another book The Young Woman and the Shaikhs (Al-Fatah wa al-Shuyukh).

110.

Badran and Cooke 1990, 236.

111.

Sameha al-Faruqy, “al-Hijab / The Veil” (July 1927). Al-Faruqy argued that the ideal education for women would be one wherein “her brain and the rest of her senses that would enable her to see, hear, and talk and all these are in the face which is not included in the Hijab realm.” She concluded saying that there is “no contradiction between the Hijab and education as well as the household duties.” Al-Faruqy contended that the veil that covers women’s faces place restraints and limitations on women’s progress. She used religious precedent to argue that the veil is not recommended or required by Islam, but that the al-hijab, the head cover, is.

112.

Hijab is a garment that covers the head and hair while the veil usually refers to a garment that covers a woman’s head to toes including the head, face, and shoulders. Other names for garments only cover the fact are: burqu, niqab, quina, and litham. For more information see Fadwa El Guindi, The Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance (New York: Berg, 1999), 7.

113.

Katrina Hallaby, “Wojubb Musharakat al-Mara` al-Rajul fi al-`amal”/ “The Obligation of Women’s Participation in the Workforce with Men,” July 1927.

114.

Ellen Fleischmann, “‘Our Moslem Sisters’: Women of Greater Syria In the eye of American Protestant Missionary Women,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 9, no. 3 (October 1998): 308; see also, Mervat Hatem, “Egyptian Upper- and Middle-Class Women’s Early Nationalist Discourses on National Liberation and Peace in Palestine (1922–1944),” Women and Politics 9, no. 3 (1989): 49–69.

115.

The students’ graduation speeches/essays from the 1920s to the 1930s are good sources of information about the students’ activities at FGS, their educational programs, and the ideologies they were exposed to and adopted. This considerable body of materials is held at the FGS archive.

116.

This cultural renaissance also aimed to create citizens who believed in world peace, friendship, and coexistence. Other students, such as Lama Bissaiso, used the New Light to proliferate a different ideology that rejected nationalism as a solution for political conflict, but at the same time believed that Arabism and civic citizenship could contribute to Palestinian progress. Students held this view as they recognized that Arab Jews had lived peacefully in Palestine for centuries and believed that coexistence was still possible. For more information about Palestinian women’s engagement in the nationalist movement, see Ellen L. Fleischmann, The Nation and its "New" Women: The Palestinian Women's Movement 1920–1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Fleishmann’s book traces the Palestinian women’s movement to the first Palestinian Women’s Congress in 1929.

117.

Keith Widder illuminated similar findings in his study of the encounters between Métis children and Ferrys’ missionaries. He explained that the missionary school’s educational program “functioned best when Métis children met their teachers on the middle ground where they held similar values. Even though the Ferrys seemed to be unaware that their culture overlapped with their students, the children responded most favorably to their mentors’ instructions when skills and concepts appeared to fit into their value system.” Keith Widder, Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823–1837 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999), 112.

118.

Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 39. Tribalism remained a widespread social system against which Arab nationalism had to compete. FGS students critiqued older systems of tribalism that function on loyalty to kin and collective responsibility where the welfare of an individual family member would be sacrificed to preserve the welfare of the family, clan (hamula), or tribe as a whole. This system was in opposition to ideologies of individualism and state citizenship which relied on loyalty to the nation-state. These students advocated for the abolition of tribalism and thus the triumph of Arab nationalism.

Conclusion

Studying the FGS School at Ramallah provides an opportunity to understand cross-cultural interaction in a complex multicolonial setting between two groups of women who represent cultures which stand in opposing power relations. Examinations of the interactions between Palestinian girls and Quaker teachers at missionary schools in Ramallah provide insight into the ways in which they influenced both American and Palestinian women’s attitudes and identities.

Palestinian women benefited from modern education, including the skills of domesticity, while American women missionaries found social and spiritual fulfillment working among Palestinian women in the Holy Land. They used the school as an important space where they controlled, regulated, and disciplined its occupants. They implemented instructions and utilized education to mold and create young, skillful mothers, wives, and social servants. For the most part, they and their Board in Richmond, Indiana, dictated school policies, mission, and curriculum. They introduced their religious beliefs, middle-class ideals of womanhood and domesticity, and American culture to their Palestinian students. Training Palestinian girls in social and philanthropic reform was an integral part of their educational objectives.

The social reform impulses the missionary teachers imparted to their students echoed those American middle- and upper-class women strived to attain in their society. Working among Palestinians, Quaker women kept their social and educational reform movement and their engagement in public places within the already established gender relations in which patriarchal hierarchy was still in place. They utilized the languages of domesticity and Christian piety to propagate their version of feminism and legitimized their work beyond the home by increasing their responsibilities as reformers and teachers. These ideals fundamentally informed and restructured the gendering and division of the domestic and public spheres.

Palestinian girls responded to Quaker education in complex ways. They were selective in choosing those elements which they deemed to be appropriate. They became accustomed to Western cultural infusions—even adopting Western dress and home furnishings. They were also eager to get involved in social and philanthropic organizations where they actively took on leadership roles. They agreed with their American teachers on the importance of modern education and household skills; skills needed to become household managers, which included the budgeting of the household income. This was a transformation of their traditional domestic role and therefore an empowerment in itself.

During this process of cultural encounter, the students were able to find a third flexible space where they maneuvered between modern education and Quaker religious ideals on one hand, and current nationalist discourses, social transformation, and traditional gender norms on the other. This third space was plastic—constantly reinterpreted and reconstructed—as each of these Palestinian students interpreted American Quaker education and their teachers’ message in different ways that accommodated their individual needs. For example, some students interpreted the purpose of their education as supporting their male family members and becoming skilled mothers and wives. For others, it was a door to a larger emancipatory role that lead either to postpone marriage age or stay single, pursue careers, and call for leadership roles in implementing changes in their civic society.

The education students received at FGS expanded their vision of their roles in society beyond what the school and nationalistic discourse ascribed to them. The students endorsed the Quakers’ central religious message that females were the guardians of the household and of morality, giving them authority at home and empowering them as reformers in society. Thus, they negotiated for extension of their role beyond the borders of their homes. They envisioned their future domestic roles as mothers and housewives and interpreted them as complementary to and compatible with their extended role in the public sphere, as teachers, businesswomen, and social and civic reformers. Some students called for women to go beyond society’s expectations and claim their equality with men by assuming political offices.

Palestinian students’ strategies were aligned with the national discourses that praised education for girls—the future mothers of the young nation’s next generation. However, as active players in shaping their own lives, they evaluated their situation and negotiated the type and level of education they wanted to receive—an education fit to enlarge their role outside their homes. In the process, they created a middle ground between the ideologies of their teachers, the national discourse, and the larger social contexts in which they were living.

The opening of the FGS as the first female boarding school in Ramallah offered Palestinian and American women an arena where their unacknowledged shared values could provide the basis for a middle ground, as well as a permanent and successful educational enterprise. During their second stage of interaction, between 1920 and 1948, many of the American missionaries expressed appreciation for the authenticity of Palestinians and their culture, while describing the “Holy Land” as a remnant of ancient biblical times. Here we see ambivalence in the Quakers’ treatment of Palestine. On one hand, they revered the connection of the land and its people to the biblical tradition and, on the other hand, they confined the Palestinians and their culture to ancient times in order to emphasize the need for civilizing and modernizing efforts which, ultimately, legitimated colonization.

Nonetheless, missionaries wanted to develop successful missions that would address the shortcomings (especially regarding failure to convert natives) they experience during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This lead to the birth of the cooperation policy among the different Protestant missions after World War I that established language programs to train missionaries to better communicate with the local population and contributed to missionaries’ sense of understanding and sensitivity to local cultures. This linguistic and cultural training, as well as the long period of interaction with Palestinians, made Quaker women such as Mildred White, who served in the Mission for over three decades, advocate the “devolution” policy. Devolution called for a gradual transference of the Ramallah Mission to Palestinian nationalists, who White perceived as equal to American missionaries.

For the American missionaries, the Quaker beliefs of fraternity and human equality were in tension with their perception of their own superiority when they encountered Palestinians. However, this tension gradually allowed for the formation of a middle ground that encompassed contradictory views and nonconformity in dealing with and speaking on certain issues—including opinions about Palestinians and their fitness to assume leadership of the mission. As explained in chapter 3, missionaries such as White and Katharine Haviland had different attitudes toward the “devolution” policy efforts. Haviland was opposed, while White supported the effort. Like their students, some missionaries’ identities went through transformation—such as White’s own. White arrived in Palestine with preconceived notions of the people and the culture. Her long career as a teacher and principal at the FGS, and learning the Arabic language and culture transformed her attitudes to such a degree that she championed for Palestinian leadership of the Ramallah Mission. In doing this, White challenged the status quo power relation that many of her fellow missionaries wanted to keep.

Even though the FGS operated as an American space, it was populated with and surrounded by Palestinians. Arab/Palestinian national forces among students (i.e., national education introduced and taught by Arab teachers, national and international press, political and armed resistance against colonial policies) increasingly were increasingly growing in momentum that posed a challenge to Quaker religious education—especially the ideals that opposed nationalism and promoted peace and nonviolence.

Quakers’ ideals of peace and internationalism ideals exposed Palestinian students to international education and news. Nonetheless, the Friends schools were part of the national discourse and were constantly immersed in the news of the Palestinian resistance against the British and their Zionist colonial project. Some students were affected directly by the national politics of the time as their parents and relatives were active in the nationalist discourse, as in the case of Serene al-Husseini Shahid, who regularly read and circulated her father’s newspaper, al-Liwaa`. Her father Jamal al Husseini, was an active nationalist who held the position of Secretary of the Executive Committee in the Palestine Arab Congress (1921–1934) and the co-founder of the Palestine Arab Party.[1]

These nationalist forces challenged the Quakers’ close relation to the American Consulate in Jerusalem and the British Mandate. The American consulate, in particular, played a significant role in encouraging and praising the Quakers’ Mission in Ramallah. The consuls and British officials frequently visited and accepted invitations to the annual Friends School graduation celebration. For the Quakers, the maintenance of relationships was, in part, connected to their perceived role as peace mediators during times of conflict and violence.

With the intense political situation and strong Arab and Palestinian national sentiments, the FGS students were also compelled to come to terms with a range of contradictory ideas to which they were exposed at the school. They internalized the Quakers’ message of peace and brotherhood, and advocated for civic duty and citizenship, individualism, and the expansion of women’s public roles as basic social and political ideals for their country. However, the political tensions that they encountered resulted in ambivalence concerning Palestinian/Arab nationalism. The education that they received and their awareness of the accomplishments of women’s movements in the Arab and Western worlds allowed them to call for gender equality in education and work.

The Quaker message of peace in the midst of political upheaval and the formation of Palestinian nationalism allowed them to negotiate the political tensions in the surrounding society. They negotiated these by advocating for a cultural revival and the creation of good Palestinian citizens—and by avoiding the political issues they saw as contradictory to the Quaker’s message of pacifism and coexistence.

The political developments after 1948 affected the Ramallah Mission and the Friends schools in different ways. The 1948 war was a result of the United Nations’ Partition Plan of 1947. The 1948 war led to what Palestinians called Nakba, or “catastrophe” where over 700,000 Palestinians—80 percent of Palestinian Arabs living in what became known as Israel—became refugees. Ramallah received about 8,500 refugees, a number that exceeded the local population, which was then around 5,000.[2] This influx changed the demographics of the town and engaged the American Quakers in humanitarian relief in different parts of Palestine including Ramallah.[3] Ramallah became part of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas controlled by the Jordanian Monarchy.

Further research is needed to trace how students negotiated their gender and national identities during the Jordanian rule from 1948–1967, and the Israeli occupation since 1967. It is clear that political, social, economic, and educational developments affected the Ramallah Quaker schools (as well as other missionary institutions). My preliminary research on these periods is not complete but indicates that substantial changes affected the Friends schools religious education, leadership, administration, curriculum, and the makeup of the student body.

For example, there was a steady increase in the number of Muslim students during these periods. This increase was a reflection of the changes that happened in Ramallah as Palestinian Christians began to migrate in larger numbers in the aftermath of the 1948 war. By 1951, half of the students in the Friends schools were refugees who could not pay tuition. The Friends Mission received many scholarships from the Grant foundation (after Elihu Grant—first principal of FBS) and the Ford Foundation.[4] The Girls Reserves set up literacy programs for women and girls. Teachers for this program were trained from refugee students who were provided scholarships, or other poor girls with some education who needed the small salary they got from teaching.[5] Also, in the 1950s, the Women’s Club in Ramallah became “entirely under the leadership of Ramallah women” and “many were former students of the Friends Girls School.”[6] This club offered charitable services and usually was funded by Arab Americans.[7]

In 1990, all of the grade levels were made coeducational, and the FGS became the kindergarten and elementary school while the FBS was converted into the secondary school. In 2001, the position of School Director was created to oversee management of both schools. This position is the same that was suggested by Khalil Totah in the late 1930s and was then seen by the Board and some missionary teachers as a threat to their control over the Mission. Meeting continues every week in the same Meeting House that was dedicated in 1910, though attendance is sparse and foreign visitors often make up the bulk of the participants. Most Palestinian Quakers now live in the United States. They are taking an active part in movements against the occupation of the West Bank, such as the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel which requests the presence of international human rights activists to come to the Palestinian occupied territories to document violations against Palestinians.[8]

Today, the Friends Schools at Ramallah are secularized Palestinian national institutions. Arabic is the language of instruction, although English proficiency is still emphasized. Both boys and girls schools are now coeducational day schools. The FGS is unofficially called the Lower School and continues to offer education for preschool and elementary level students, and the Friends Boys School is called the Upper School and is still providing education for high school students.[9]

While Palestinian nationals run the Friends Schools today, the Friends Board of Missions in Richmond, Indiana, is still the responsible body for the appointment of the Director of the Friends Schools. Colin South, an American Friend, occupied this role until 2004. Currently, Joyce Ajlony, a Palestinian Quaker and a former student of the FGS, is the director of the schools. These transformations at the administrative level are an indication that the “devolution” policy, which was tried and failed during the British Mandate, was eventually implemented, became the norm, and led to new and complex transformations of identities for all persons associated with the Friends Schools at Ramallah.

Notes

1.

Shahid, Jerusalem Memories, 76, 79.

2.

Ramallah Past and Present, The American foundation of Ramallah, Palestine Website, www.afrp.org/about-us/ramallah-past-and-present (accessed in November 11, 2015).

3.

For more information on Quakers humanitarian relief after 1948 among Palestinian refugees see Nancy Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: the Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism.

4.

Paul G. Hoffman letter (Deputy Director of the Division of Overseas Activities of the Ford Foundation), August, 8, 1952, Friends United Meeting Collection, Richmond, Indian. The letter was sent to the American Friends Board of Missions stating the amount of money that was granted to Ramallah Mission which was 20,000 for the FGS and 13,000 for the FBS; Jordan, 216.

5.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 216.

6.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 213.

7.

Jordan, Ramallah Teacher, 213.

8.

See Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, www.eappi.org/en/home.html.

9.

The American Quakers wanted to change the names of the schools after they became coeducational, but ran into a licensing problem and were advised to keep the names the same so they would not have to perhaps lose their license.

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Index

A

ABCFM See American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

abd el-Hady, Awny, 1

Abdo, Sultania, 1

Abdul Jawad, Nazeha, 1 , 2 , 3

Abd-ul-Hamid, Sultan, 1

Abu Shahla, Easa, 1

Adams, George, 1 , 2

AFBFM See American Friends Board of Foreign Missions

Ain Arik, 1

al Bustani, Butrus, 1 , 2

al-Badiya, Bahithat, 1

al-Bireh, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

al-Difa, 1 , 2

Alexandra Iqal Abu Rayyieh, 1

al-hijab, 1 , 2

al-Karmel, 1 , 2

al-Liwaa’, 1 , 2

al-Rusafi, Maruf, 1 , 2 , 3

al-Sabah, 1

al-Taimuriya, 1

American archeological and biblical scholars, 1

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3

American Colony, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

American consuls, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

American culture, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

American Friends

Bible women and, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Brummana missions and, 1

conversion and, 1

missionaries and, 1 , 2

Palestinians and, 1

Ramallah and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Ramallah mission and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2

schools and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

See also conversion

American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

American missionaries

attitude, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10

conversion, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

dress, 1.1-1.2 , 2

education, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

encounters of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

food, 1 , 2 , 3

perception of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

students of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

understanding of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

marriage customs, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

American movies, 1 , 2 , 3

American Palestine Exploration Society, 1

American Quakers

domestic science and, 1

education and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

peace and internationalism, and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Ramallah Mission, and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

teachers, 1 , 2 , 3

women, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

perceptions of, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

American University of Beirut, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Amin, Qasim, 1 , 2

Antonius, George, 1 , 2

Arab customs, 1

Arab literature, 1 , 2 , 3

Arab Muslim conservative feminists, 1

Arab nahda writers, 1 , 2 , 3

Arab nationalism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18

Arab press, 1 , 2 , 3

Arab staff, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

Arab teachers, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12

Arabic language

Arab Nationalist, nationalism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Arab society and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

culture and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

history and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

identity and, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

See also devolution See also Nahda

arranged marriage, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Asad, Awjny, 1

Audi, Aida, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

Audi, Anisa, 1 , 2 , 3

Audi, Elias, 1 , 2 , 3

Audi, Emily, 1 , 2

Audi, Emily Aramouni, 1

Audi, Zareefie, 1

B

baseball, 1

Beitin, 1

Bible classes, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Bible woman, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14

biblical archeology, 1

biblical authority, 1

biblical geography, 1

biblical history, 1 , 2 , 3

biblical Holy land, 1

biblical images, 1 , 2 , 3

biblical interest, 1

biblical land, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

biblical landscape, 1 , 2 , 3

biblical legacy, 1

biblical life, 1

biblical lifestyle, 1

biblical names, 1

biblical origins, 1

biblical Palestine, 1 , 2 , 3

biblical past, 1

biblical prophecy, 1

biblical scholar, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

biblical simplicity, 1

biblical stories, 1 , 2

biblical time, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

biblical tradition, 1 , 2 , 3

biblical translations, 1

Bir Zeit, 1 , 2

British Mandate, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23

British Matriculation Exam, 1 , 2

British Quakers, 1 , 2

British Royal Commission, 1 , 2

Brothers of Christian Schools, 1

Brummana, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Bssasio, Lama, 1

C

Carey, William, 1

Carter, Annice, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Catholic schools, 1.1-1.2 , 2

charitable institutions, 1 , 2

child rearing, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Christian communities, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Christian ideals of domesticity, 1

Christian missionaries, 1 , 2

Christmas, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2

Christmas tree, 1 , 2

Church Missionary Society, 1 , 2

citizenship, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

civic society, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

civilizing mission, 1 , 2 , 3

Clay, Linda, 1

colonial

British colonial project, 1 , 2

colonial site, 1 , 2

education, 1 , 2

missionary education, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

space, 1

Western education, 1

Zionist project, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2

colonization, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Columbia College of Expression, 1

Conversion, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21

Cook, Najla, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

cooperation, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18

Cox, Eliza Armstrong, 1

Cresson, Wader, 1

cultural clothing, 1 , 2

cultural conversion, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

cultural norms, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

cultural unity, 1 , 2

curriculum, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22

D

Damisnkey, Lydia, 1

Daoud, Na`mah, 1 , 2

Dar al-I’bteda`, 1

dark-light binary, 1

De La Salle, Jean Baptiste, 1

DeHass, Frank S., 1

devolution, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6

Dodge, Asa, 1

domestic roles, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

domestic science, 1 , 2 , 3

domestic skills, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

domestic sphere, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

domesticity, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13.1-13.2 , 14

drama, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

dress, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18.1-18.2 , 19

Durbas, Zahia, 1

E

Eastern Christians, 1 , 2 , 3

eating habits of Palestinians, 1

Eid, Asma, 1

embroidery, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

English language, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4

Enlightenment, 1 , 2

enrollment, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

Episcopalians, 1

European literature, 1

F

Fawwaz, Zainab, 1

FBS See Friends Boys School

Friends Boys School,

feminization, 1

feminists, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Filastin, 1 , 2 , 3

First Wave feminists, 1

Fisk, Pliny, 1 , 2

flower gardens, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Friends Boys School, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12.1-12.2 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18.1-18.2 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24

Friends Missionary Advocate, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

G

Gabriel, Katie, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4

gardening, 1.1-1.2

gender equality, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

gender identities, 1 , 2 , 3

gender issues, 1

gender relations, 1 , 2 , 3

gender roles, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

gendering, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Girls Reserves, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3

Girls Training Home, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

before WWI, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

boarding school, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14

girls education, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

graduates, 1

Ramallah, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11.1-11.2

Glazebrook, Otis A., 1

Goodell, William, 1 , 2

Grant, Almy, 1 , 2

Grant, Elihu, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Great Depression, 1

Great Revolt, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

GTH See Girls Training Home

Guerneyites, 1

Gurney, Joseph John, 1 , 2

H

Haddad tribe, 1 , 2

Haddad, Rose, 1

Hadley, Sara, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

Hallaby, Katrina, 1 , 2 , 3

Hannush, Victoria, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Harami, Lily, 1 , 2

Hashim, Labeba, 1

Haviland, Katharine, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

health, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

Hicksites, 1 , 2

Holy Land, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12

home economics, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13.1-13.2 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17

Hope School, 1 , 2

hospitality, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

household skills, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

humanitarian organizations, 1

Hutchison, Donn, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

hygiene, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13

I

identity construction, 1 , 2

Indiana Yearly Meeting, 1

individualism, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6

inner light, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

internationalism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

IYM See Indiana Yearly Meeting

J

Jerusalem Horticultural Society, 1

Jewish schools, 1

Jifneh, 1

Johnson, Etta, 1 , 2

Jones, Alice, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

Jones, Christina, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20

Jones, Eli, 1 , 2

Jones, Sybil, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

K

Karam, Mariam, 1 , 2 , 3

Kashu, Zahwa, 1

Kassab, Luryce, 1

Kelsey, Edward, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

Khatib, Badira, 1

kherqa, 1

Khoury, Hanna, 1

Khoury, Leila, 1 , 2

King, Jonas, 1 , 2

Kuttabs, 1

L

languages

Arabic, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18.1-18.2 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23

English, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

French, 1

Lee, Rosa, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15

Leighton, Huldah, 1 , 2

linguistic and cultural training, 1 , 2 , 3

literary program, 1

literatures

Arabic, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

domestic, 1

Western, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

London Jews’ Society, 1

M

Makdadi, Subhiya, 1

Manichean binaries, 1

Manifest Destiny, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

marriage, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21

Marshal, Eva, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

Mary Williams Scholarship Fund, 1

Maryland Women’s Yearly Meeting, 1

McDowell, Nancy Parker, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Merrill, Selah, 1 , 2

Methodists, 1

middle class

activism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

college graduates, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

domestic ideals, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7

feminism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

social norms, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

womanhood, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

middle ground, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

migration, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Millenarian, 1 , 2

Miller, Ellen Clare, 1.1-1.2 , 2

Miller, William, 1

Millerites, 1

millet system, 1.1-1.2

mind-body dualism, 1

Minnick, Mary E., 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Missionary Herald, 1 , 2

Missionary schools, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19

modern education, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2

modernity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

modernization, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

Mousa, Latifeh Nasir, 1

MSC See Muslim Supreme Council

Murray, Ruth, 1

Musa, Nabawiya, 1

music, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2

Music Settlement Movement, 1

Muslim marriage ceremony, 1

Muslim students, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12

Muslim Supreme Council, 1 , 2 , 3

N

Nabarawi, Saiza, 1 , 2

Nahda, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

Najla Taqtaq, 1

Nasar, Nageeb, 1

Nashef, Abla, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

national ideals, 1

national identity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

nationalism, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6.1-6.2 , 7 , 8 , 9

nationalists, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15

Nazareth Nuns, 1

New England Quakers, 1

New England Yearly Meeting, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

New Light, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11.1-11.2 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

new patriarchy, 1 , 2 , 3

new woman, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

News Bulletin, 1

newspapers, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

NEYM See New England Yearly Meeting

Nusr, Hannah, 1

O

orientalism, 1

orientalist, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

orientalization, 1

orientalizing, 1 , 2

orphanage, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Ottoman, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25

Ottomanism, 1

P

Palestinian customs, 1 , 2

Palestinian folk dance, 1

Palestinian middle class ideals, 1

Palestinian national identity, 1

Palestinian national movement, 1

Palestinian press, 1

Parsons, Levi, 1 , 2

Passivism, 1

paternalistic attitudes, 1

patriarchal authority, 1 , 2

patriarchal hierarchy, 1 , 2 , 3

patriarchal relations, 1 , 2 , 3

patriarchal society, 1 , 2 , 3

peace

American Quakers, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14.1-14.2 , 15 , 16.1-16.2

Internationalism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 , 10 , 11

religious ideal, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

philanthropic, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13

philanthropists, 1 , 2

philanthropy, 1 , 2

Presbyterians, 1 , 2 , 3

private sphere, 1 , 2

Protestants, 1 , 2

public schools, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15

public sphere, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18

Q

QMH See Quaker Meeting House

Quaker abolitionist women, 1

Quaker biblical scholar, 1 , 2

Quaker Meeting House, 1

Quaker religious beliefs, 1

Quaker religious education, 1 , 2 , 3

Quakerism, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6

Quran, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

R

race hierarchy, 1

Ramallah Friends Mission, 1 , 2

Ramallah Messenger, 1

reformers, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

religious conversion, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

religious revivals, 1 , 2 , 3

revivalist movements, 1

RFM See Ramallah Friends Mission

Robinson, Edward, 1 , 2 , 3

Roman Catholics, 1 , 2 , 3

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1

S

Saba, Muhja, 1

Sahtara, Lily, 1

Sakakini, Khalil, 1 , 2

Salah, Maria, 1 , 2

school days, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

second coming of Jesus, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2

Second Great Awakening, 1

secular curriculum, 1

Seneca Falls Convention, 1

Serene al-Husseini Shahid, 1 , 2

Serene Husseini, 1

Seward, William Henry, 1

Shahla, Najla, 1

Sharawi, Huda, 1 , 2

Shatara, Wadia, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

Shihadeh, Georgette, 1 , 2

Shtatra, Wadia, 1

Siksik, Henriette, 1 , 2 , 3

simplicity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15

Sisterhood Club, 1

soap, 1 , 2

space

public/private, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Holy Land, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Paslestinian society, 1

social, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

cultural, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

colonial, 1 , 2

sports, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5

student clubs, 1

student publications, 1

students’ societies and clubs, 1

supremacy, 1 , 2 , 3

Sutton, Phyllis, 1

Syrian Protestant College, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

T

Tanzimat, 1

Tarazi’, Tafida, 1

Tayyibeh, 1 , 2 , 3

Teacher’s Training Center, 1

temperance, 1.1-1.2 , 2

The Age of Quietism, 1

The Colon Society, 1

The Cult of True Womanhood, 1

The International Mission Conference, 1

The Islamic Girls School, 1 , 2

thob, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Totah, Abdullah, 1

Totah, Helanie, 1 , 2

Totah, Khalil, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20

traditional dress, 1 , 2

Turks, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Twain, Mark, 1 , 2

U

Ulysses S. Grant, 1

UMCSP See United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine

United Missionary Council conference, 1

United Missionary Council of Syria and Palestine, 1 , 2 , 3

unveiling, 1 , 2 , 3

upper class, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11

V

Vacation Bible School, 1

veil, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.1-9.2 , 10

veiling, 1 , 2

Victorian, 1 , 2

W

Wallace, Edwin S., 1 , 2

Western feminist movement, 1

Western literature, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Western schools, 1

Western travelers, 1

White Gifts, 1 , 2 , 3

White, Mildred, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16

whiteness, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Whiting, George B., 1

Wilbur, John, 1

wildflowers, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

womanhood

domesticity, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5

ideals, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

middle class, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

nationalist agenda, 1 , 2 , 3

Palestinian women, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

reform movement, 1 , 2 , 3

Women Friendly Club, 1

Women’s Club, 1 , 2

Women’s Foreign Mission Society, 1

Women’s Foreign Missionary Union of Friends, 1

women’s movements, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Women’s Suffrage Alliance, 1

Women’s Suffrage League, 1

Women’s Teachers College, 1

Women’s Training College, 1

workplace, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

world peace, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Y

YMCA See Young Men’s Christian Association

Young Girls Christian Society, 1

Young Men’s Christian Association, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Yusra, Salah, 1

YWCA, 1

Z

Za`ror, Miriam, 1

Za`ror, Salim, 1

Zacharia, Olga, 1

Zaynab Fawaz, 1

Zaynab Fawwaz, 1

Zeineddine, Nazira, 1 , 2 , 3

Zionist colonial project, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

Ziyada, Mayy, 1

About the Author

Dr. Enaya Hammad Othman is assistant professor at Marquette University. She teaches classes in Arab and Muslim history in addition to Arabic language, literature, and culture. She is the Director of the Arabic language and Cultural Studies program at Marquette University and the founder of Arab and Muslim Women’s Research and Resource Institute (AMWRRI) in which she currently serves as the Director of the organization’s oral history project. Her research focuses are Arab and Muslim feminism, immigration, and cultural encounter in colonial and diaspora contexts. She developed and acted as the principle organizer of the Milwaukee Public Museum exhibit: “Beyond the Veil: Dress, Identity and Tradition Through the Eyes of the Muslim and Arab Women of Greater Milwaukee.”