The Fellaheen of Palestine

Reprinted from the Contemporary Review

Transcribed from the clipping

“The whole impression left in my mind by what I saw of the fellaheen in Palestine was that here was an ancient and historic people—perhaps I should rather say the descendants of three such peoples, the sons of Canaan, of Aram and of Ishmael—sinking down into a state of mere savagery, such as that of the least civilized of the tribes whom Stanley encountered in his march across Africa.” And: “For this long continued and still continuing decline of Palestine we must hold the natives of Palestine partly responsible.”

Context added by this archive

Both halves of the argument in one paragraph. There are people there, they are ancient, they are the natives of the place — and they are savages who are to blame for the state of it. The country is never empty in this piece. It is occupied by the wrong people.

Cite this item

"The Fellaheen of Palestine," The Day, 13 March 1891. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1891-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1891-001

Elsewhere in the archive

Palestinians mourn Israel’s anniversary as the ‘Nakba’The Day · 16 May 2008 · the same newspaper

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1891-001.

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