Intro
A research study was conducted in terms of the early history of Kababir in 2017 by Na’ama Ben Ze’ev. Na‘ama Ben Ze’ev is a research fellow in the Department of Israel Studies at the University of Haifa. Her main interest is Palestinian social history in the twentieth century. The study was entitled, “The Local History of Kababir in Haifa: Constructing a Narrative of Uniqueness”. This was published in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 60 (2017), pages 175-201.
The article traces the history of Kababir since its establishment until 1964 and observes the accelerated transition from rural to urban life at the periphery of an expanding city. She uses an Ahmadiyya publication, ʿA. ʿOdeh, Al-Kabābīr Baladī (Shafaʿamr: Dar al-Mashriq, 1980).
She explains how the land of Kababir belonged to al-Tira, a large village south of Haifa. In the
late Ottoman period, Kababir and its land were classified under the category of mazraʿa, meaning that for the purpose of tax collection it belonged to a larger permanent village.
We have posted a timeline of events in the below.
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The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
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1850–1885
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
ʿAbdallah ʿOdeh recounts that the ancestors of the ʿOdeh family settled in Kababir around the time of the Crimean War, i.e. during the 1850s. The family consisted of the father ʿOdeh, his wife Safiyya, five sons and three daughters (another son died before the family arrived in Kababir). They came from the village of Niʿlin, near Ramallah. Their reason for leaving Niʿlin is unclear; one version maintains that the family had to leave due to blood feuds between clans affiliated with the Qays and Yaman factions.10 ʿOdeh was accused in four cases of murder and was forced to leave Niʿlin under a reconciliation agreement.
Several details in ʿOdeh’s biography support the plausibility of this version. It is said that ʿOdeh and his brother were orphaned and raised by a paternal aunt. The brother also died in childhood and young ʿOdeh remained as the only remnant of his nuclear family. This suggests that ʿOdeh did not have strong patrons to back him during times of conflict.11 If so, it is possible he was used as a scapegoat in the strife and received the punishment for others. Another possible explanation for the departure from Niʿlin is that the father wanted to save his sons from military service.
ʿOdeh belonged to al-Bash clan, affiliated with the lineage of a commander in the army of Salah al-Din who settled in Niʿlin. throughout Palestine, so when ʿOdeh and his family left Niʿlin they headed for relatives from al-Bash clan, first in the village of Farʿun (near Tulkarm) and a few months later in the village of al-Tira. In both places they received a warm welcome. However after having stayed for some time in al-Tira, ʿOdeh expressed his desire to leave the village, apparently to evade local family feuds. His relatives granted him the land of Kababir, chosen because it was suitable for grazing; it had available water sources, and nearby ancient ruins provided stones for houses to accommodate the extended family. Another advantage of Kababir was its proximity to the expanding town of Haifa, which meant access to markets for agricultural yields and to additional sources of income as day laborers. ʿOdeh settled there with his wife and children. Subsequent generations carried the name of their forefather. Some information found in archival documents and other written sources supports the version of internal migration to Kababir. However, travelers who visited the Carmel area before the 1880s do not mention a permanent settlement in Kababir.
The transformation of Kababir, from a mazraʿa to a permanent village around the 1880s, is also consistent with the implementation of the Ottoman land laws that were part of the tanzimat (reform) project. These laws, enacted in the second half of the 19th century, codified and arranged the registration of individual rights to land in order to maximize land resources and increase state revenues.
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1886–1906
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
The Swiss traveler and diplomat Eberhard von Mülinen described a village containing eight houses inhabited by peasants from Gaza, and claimed that it had been established about
30 years earlier (around 1878).
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1922
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
In 1922, an Indian woman was blamed for bigamy after marrying a second husband without divorcing the first one. The woman pleaded that she had converted to the Ahmadiyya and, since this conversion was considered an apostasy in Islam, her first marriage was nullified; therefore, her second marriage could not be regarded as bigamous. The court (operating under British colonial rule and supervision) had to decide whether the Ahmadiyya is apostate from Islam,
or a sect within Sunni Islam. In this case, the court decided that “Ahmadiyya is merely a sect within Sunni Islam.
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1923–1927
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
The land of Kababir belonged to al-Tira, a large village south of Haifa. In the late Ottoman period, Kababir and its land were classified under the category of mazraʿa, meaning that for the purpose of tax collection it belonged to a larger permanent village.
Beyond the factors that attracted villagers to work in Haifa, the people of Kababir were forced to seek wage labor also as a result of an ongoing process, whereby they were losing their rights to cultivable lands. Families sold a small number of land parcels in order to survive the hardships during the First World War. During the 1920s, members of the ʿOdeh family made an effort to register their land with the help of a mediator from among Haifa’s notables. They were asked to reward their benefactor by selling him some of the land for a nominal price. Some parcels were given up as a bribe to the registrar; others were sold in order to fund the registry fee. Within a short time it turned out that this corrupt official had listed some land in the name of one of his associates. Efforts to prove that the ʿOdeh family legally owned the land were to no avail. Agricultural land cultivated by the people of Kababir near the seashore was transferred to the Mandatory government, which used it to build military camps.
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1928
Jalal ud Din Suyuti comes to Kababir and the majority of the Odeh family unknowingly converts to Qadianim. They only knew that MGA claimed to be the Mahdi.
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1934
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
In 1934 the village was separated from al-Tira and became represented by its own mukhtar. Members of the ʿOdeh family married spouses from al-Tira and participated in celebrations there. Peddlers from al-Tira sold food in Kababir regularly. A few families from al-Tira moved to Kababir after joining the Ahmadiyya movement, probably due to harassment from the Sunni community in their village of origin. Fluctuations between rural and urban ways of life characterized the history of Kababir. Its people maintained connections with the village of al-Tira until the latter was depopulated in the 1948 War. In its first decades, Kababir belonged to the municipality of al-Tira and its residents participated in elections for the municipal mukhtar (mayor).
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1935-1946
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
Men from Kababir joined the expanding labor force in Haifa, apparently around the beginning of the Mandate period. They worked in construction projects such as the deep-water port, British military camps in the Haifa vicinity, water and sewage infrastructure, and the local oil refineries. Two of my informants recounted that their fathers worked as junior bureaucrats, one as a timekeeper and the other a clerk. This transition, from agriculture to wage labor, occurred in many Arab villages near Haifa as a result of increased demand for wage laborers in the expanding city, scarcity of cultivable land and a decline in prices of agricultural products.
Sunni Muslim officials in Haifa did not turn to physical violence in order to harass Ahmadis. They had other means. In 1936 the qadi in Haifa instructed Sunni registrars (Sg. in Arabic: ma ʾdhūn) not to process marriages of Ahmadiyya adherents. The head of the community met with the qadi and learned that he did not object to marriages when both spouses were members
of the Ahmadiyya, but would not agree to the marriage of an Ahmadi man and a non-Ahmadi Muslim woman. The head of the Ahmadiyya community begged the qadi to appoint a ma ʾdhūn from the community who would handle their marriages. However, no answer to this request was found in the archival files, and the problem was perhaps solved temporarily.
The transition to urban life was accelerated in the 1940s, although the neighborhood remained on the relatively isolated outskirts of the town. In 1940 it was annexed to the municipality of Haifa. In 1943 the municipality banned grazing and logging on Mount Carmel, with the stated aim of maintaining a green area and encouraging tourism. The ban negatively impacted those who made their living on grazing. A Palestinian Arab newspaper blamed the Zionist movement for trying to displace the residents of Kababir by destroying their livelihood. A road connecting the neighborhood to the city was constructed in 1946. Until then the paved road ended at the last house of the Jewish neighborhood. Electricity became available only in the 1960s, although power lines to the Jewish street leading to Kababir were already laid in 1946.
In 1943, the head of the community applied twice to the British District Commissioner
asking permission to have a ma ʾdhūn of their own. Again, the qadi of Haifa refused to handle marriages of Ahmadiyya members. The British authorities had to intervene in a delicate religious issue and demanded an explanation from the qadi. After consulting with the Supreme Muslim Council, the qadi withdrew his refusal to register Ahmadi marriages. It took two
written appeals and an eight-month wait until the problem of the Ahmadis was solved.
There were noticeable tensions between the community and Sunni Muslims in Palestine. Ahmadiyya members suffered alienation, threats, and harassment. In some cases they encountered violence, mainly while trying to propagate the Ahmadi creed. In April 1944, a group of seven members, who distributed pamphlets and sought to recruit people to the movement in Acre, were attacked and two of them were injured—lightly according to British officials, severely according to the Ahmadiyya missionary. A single person was arrested, tried and imprisoned
for seven days following this incident, although the attack was carried out by a group of people. ʿOdeh describes in his book two other cases of assaults against Ahmadis that he experienced personally as a child in Hebron and Nazareth. He also mentions a failed attempt to assassinate the Ahmadi missionary by people from Haifa.
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1947-1948
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
What was this group’s share of the neighborhood’s total population? According to ʿOdeh himself, the village had about 250 residents in 1947. Soon thereafter, many people moved to Palestine, Ahmadi’s stayed via the order of the 2nd Khalifa.
No fighting took place in Kababir from November 1947, until the Hagana (the major Zionist military organization that operated between 1920-1948) forces took over Haifa on April 22, 1948. ʿOdeh recounts how the people erected fortifications in the street alongside the Jewish houses near Kababir. The neighboring Jewish residents did the same in a nearby street, 200 meters separating between them. Following the surrender of the National Committee in Haifa, Hagana forces began to search the Arab neighborhoods and seized weapons. Interviewees recall how the people of Kababir were gathered in the mosque’s yard as soldiers searched the houses.
Kababir survived the Nakba, literally ‘catastrophe,’ referring to the Palestinian displacement and dispossession in 1948. Unlike most of the other Arab villages in the Carmel vicinity, it was not evacuated. Some families from al-Tira and from Haifa sought refuge in Kababir during the war. Most of these families had relatives there or belonged to the Ahmadiyya and previously resided in the city. The Arab residents of Haifa were ordered to concentrate in three streets in the downtown area, ostensibly for security reasons, although when this order was carried out (June 1948) its security justification was doubtful. However, Kababir’s residents remained untouched.
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1950
The_Local_History_of_Kababir_in_Haifa_Co
According to the official Ahmadiyya website, in 1950 the movement had 80 members in Kababir. However, it stands to reason that not all of the people in Kababir converted at
once.
In the municipal elections held in 1950, there were 170 eligible voters, i.e. men and women over the age of 18, listed at the polling station in the neighborhood. In any case, the number of Ahmadiyya adherents in Kababir around 1950 amounted to fewer than half of the inhabitants. Over the years additional members joined the religious community. It seems plausible that the people of Kababir tolerated and perhaps even welcomed the presence of the new movement; however they did not rush to join it.
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1960’s
Kababir enjoyed good relations with its Jewish neighbors. A dominant figure mentioned in this context was the mukhtar of the Jewish neighborhoods on Mount Carmel, Avraham Spektor, who was also a Hagana member. Spektor was personally acquainted with local residents in his capacity as the manager of the Mount Carmel Water Supply Committee that supplied water to the neighborhoods on Mount Carmel, including Kababir. In the words of A. H., Spektor “had looked out for the people of Kababir.”
Like F.’s father, many men from Kababir turned to various kinds of construction work in the 1960s, and gained a reputation as expert professional craftsmen that they hold until today.
I choose to end my account of the story of Kababir with a map from 1964 showing a strip development that connected Kababir to the continuum of neighborhoods on Mount Carmel.83 The neighborhood, once in the outskirts of Haifa, became an extension of the urban space. By that time most men and some of the women were integrated into the urban labor market; access to secondary and higher education expanded. Agricultural production was abandoned almost completely. However, (in some respects until today) Kababir remained a quiet residential area, far from the bustle of the city.
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Links and Related Essay’s
nbenzev@zahav.net.il
The neighborhood of Kababir in Haifa – ahmadiyyafactcheckblog
Who is Jalal-ud-Din Shams? 1901-1966 – ahmadiyyafactcheckblog
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#ahmadiyya #ahmadiyyafactcheckblog #messiahhascome #ahmadiyyat #trueislam #ahmadianswers #ahmadiyyamuslimcommunity #ahmadiyya_creatives #ahmadiyyatthetrueislam #ahmadiyyatzindabad #ahmadiyyatrueislam #ahmadiyyamuslim #mirzaghulamahmad #qadiani #qadianism
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