The Day · New London, Connecticut · 13 March 1891
CP-1891-001
The Fellaheen of Palestine
Reprinted from the Contemporary Review
A warning about this one
The passage is an 1891 racial characterization of the Palestinian peasantry, transcribed in full because the argument it makes about who is responsible for the condition of the land is what the record is for.
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.
For this long continued and still continuing decline of Palestine we must hold the natives of Palestine partly responsible. Their weakness may be to some extent the result of that enervating climate of theirs, where Baal, the mighty sun god, still shows himself as of old a terrible potentate, withering up the greenness of the earth and the vital forces of men.
But, whatever the cause, I think we must admit the fact that there is a grievous lack of energy and self reliance among the Syrian peasants.
Accustomed from childhood to stretch out the hand for backsheesh, and following in stolid ignorance the same round of agricultural labors which their forefathers have trodden for centuries, the very features in their character which make them so interesting a study to the student of Biblical archæology seem to make it almost a hopeless task to form them into an enterprising, progressive, self governing community.—Contemporary Review.”
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.
Cite this clipping
"The Fellaheen of Palestine," The Day, 13 March 1891, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1891-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1891-001
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More from the 1890s
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- THROUGH PALESTINE.Brooklyn Eagle · 21 February 1890
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- Orange Growing in PalestineAkron Beacon Journal · 13 December 1893
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In these collections
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
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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