The New York Times · 5 July 1971

CP-1971-014

Haj Amin el-Husseini Dies; Ex-Palestine Grand Mufti

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Transcribed from the clipping

BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 4—Haj Amin el-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a veteran Palestinian political leader, died here today at the age of 80. An announcement by his physicians gave the cause of death as heart failure. He was admitted to the American University Hospital two days ago suffering from cardiac trouble. He is to be buried here tomorrow.

The Grand Mufti, who was popularly known as Haj Amin, had been living at a villa in a Beirut suburb since he left his exile in Cairo in 1959. The Mufti was one of the most powerful Arab leaders for 30 years after World War I. His influence declined when such Moslem leaders as President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came into power.

President Nasser headed a populous nation in arms, whereas the Mufti had headed only dissident factions. Although the title Mufti designates an expounder of Islamic law and there were any number of muftis, Haj Amin el-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, became “The Mufti.” He was a figure of violent controversy.

When he was a power in the turbulent affairs of the Middle East, he was described as a handsome and soft-spoken Moslem gentleman. One journalist said his face was that of “a jolly elf.” He had keen and often smiling blue eyes. His close-clipped beard was reddish when he was a young man.

He usually wore the impressive black, gold-lined flowing robe of a Moslem religious leader.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 3x to 18x by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by OCR and not by a person. The folio at the top left prints the page number '24' with the edition mark 'L+', one of only two page numbers readable anywhere in this deck block; the folio line carries no date and there is no masthead. DATE UNRESOLVED: this is an obituary - 'died here today' - so the publication year is the year of death, and the page prints no year. The slide label says 1971; standard reference works place Haj Amin el-Husseini's death on 4 July 1974. The date has not been changed, because nothing printed on this scan contradicts the label and the age the paper gives, 80, does not match the usual birth years cleanly either. A re-scan showing the masthead, or a check of the paper's own index, would settle it; if the label is wrong the id should be reissued, since it encodes the date. The paper is named by the credit line 'Special to The New York Times'. Haj Amin el-Husseini is named, aged and described in physical detail; he was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and is not counted toward the archive's named-ordinary-Palestinians figure. The same paper spelled him 'Haj Amin el Husseini', without the hyphen, in its report of his Peel Commission testimony of 13 January 1937, which is also in this deck block - an alias candidate.

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