Amin al-Husseini: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (born c. 1895–97, died 1974) was appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council by the British authorities in 1921, and held the muftiship until 1948. Encyclopaedia Britannica gives those dates and describes him as a prominent Arab nationalist who resisted Zionist political ambitions in Palestine.

This article is bounded. It treats his institutional career — the muftiship, the council he presided over, the restoration of the Dome of the Rock that the council organised, and the Arab Higher Committee he came to chair. It does not treat the years he spent outside Palestine during the Second World War. That omission is a deliberate editorial decision about the scope of this article rather than an accident or a judgement on the record, and the Historiographical Note below states plainly what is excluded, why, and where a reader should go for it.

Jerusalem After the Ottomans

The offices al-Husseini held existed in a particular arrangement that had only just come into being, and the arrangement is the necessary background.

The Ottoman Empire had governed Jerusalem for four centuries. Its collapse, treated in the encyclopaedia's article on the fall of the Ottoman Empire, left the administration of Palestine to Britain under a League of Nations mandate after the First World War. That transfer created a problem the Ottoman state had not faced: a non-Muslim administering power now had responsibility for a territory containing the sanctuary of al-Haram al-Sharif, and needed Muslim institutions through which the religious affairs of the population could be conducted.

The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute's White Paper on the Jerusalem holy sites records what happened to the caliphal question in the same years. When the Ottoman caliphate formally ended in 1924, the Arabs of the Hejaz, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine looked for a caliph de jure, and the claim of Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca was the one pressed. Al-Husseini's institutional career begins inside that unsettled situation, and one of his documented acts belongs directly to it.

The Muftiship, 1921

Britannica records that in 1921 the British appointed al-Husseini grand mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council. Its entry on his kinsman Faysal al-Husayni dates the muftiship to 1921–48 and notes that the family was a prominent Palestinian one.

Two features of the appointment are worth stating precisely. The first is that it was made by the mandatory power: the senior Muslim religious office in Palestine was filled by a British administrative decision. The second is that it combined a juridical office with an institutional presidency. A mufti issues legal opinions; the president of a council administers property, revenue and personnel. Holding both placed religious authority and administrative capacity in the same hands.

The Supreme Muslim Council

What the body was called

The approved sources name the institution differently, and a reader should expect to meet all three forms. Britannica calls it the Supreme Muslim Council. The White Paper calls it the Islamic Higher Council, abbreviating it to IHC, and elsewhere the Islamic Supreme Council in Jerusalem. These are renderings of the same body.

They also date it slightly differently. Britannica has al-Husseini appointed its president in 1921. The White Paper states that the Islamic Higher Council was established in 1922, headed by him, and describes its purpose as preserving Islamic ideals and protecting the sanctuaries of Palestine. Whether the discrepancy reflects a distinction between his appointment and the body's formal constitution, the article does not determine; both datings are recorded.

The restoration of the Dome of the Rock

The best-documented work of the council in the approved sources is a building project, and it is the part of al-Husseini's career the approved base establishes most fully.

The White Paper records that the council under his leadership took responsibility for raising the funds to restore the Dome of the Rock. A delegation travelled to Sharif Hussein bin Ali in 1924 and explained to him the condition of the building. Sharif Hussein contributed 38,000 golden lira toward the work.

What followed is preserved in al-Husseini's own correspondence, which the White Paper reproduces. On 30 March 1924 he wrote to Emir Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Transjordan, thanking him for the trust he had placed in the Higher Islamic Council and in the Restoration Committee of al-Haram al-Sharif, and requesting — on behalf of both bodies — that the Emir supervise the entire restoration and examine its detailed accounts and process. The request was framed as being under the sponsorship of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, whom the letter addressed as Amir al-Mu'minin, Commander of the Faithful.

The Emir accepted, and the White Paper records that he personally supervised the restorations, later supervising the renovations of the 1940s known as the Egyptian Restoration for the technical participation and materials that came from Egypt. The White Paper dates this first phase of restoration to 1922–1952.

On 27 August 1928 al-Husseini wrote again, inviting Emir Abdullah to witness and honour the celebration marking the completion of the restoration of the Dome of the Rock.

This correspondence is the substance of his documented institutional activity in the approved base: a council raising money across the region for the fabric of the sanctuary, a Hashemite prince invited to supervise the accounts as well as the work, and a completed restoration four years later. The arrangement also bears on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and on the custodianship of the sanctuary as a whole.

The pledge of 1924

One further act belongs to the same year and the same set of relationships. The White Paper records that on 11 March 1924, after the Ottoman caliphate had formally ended, Emir Abdullah of Transjordan and al-Husseini — whom the document calls the Palestinian leader — were the first two figures to pledge allegiance to Sharif Hussein bin Ali. Arab and Palestinian figures in Aqaba and in cities across the West Bank followed.

The pledge and the restoration letters are of a piece: the senior Muslim religious authority in Jerusalem was, in the mid-1920s, working through the Hashemite house on both the question of who might hold the caliphal title and the question of who should administer the sanctuary's repair.

The Arab Higher Committee, 1936

Britannica records that by 1936 al-Husseini chaired the Arab Higher Committee. Its separate entry on that body sets out what the committee sought: its primary demands were to halt Jewish immigration to Palestine and to prohibit transfers of land from Arabs to Jews.

Britannica states that these demands fuelled the Arab Revolt of 1936–39 against British rule. Its entry on the revolt describes what set it off: opposition to British policies favouring the Zionist movement, escalating violence between Arabs and Jews, and the demands to end Jewish immigration and land sales.

The article states these as the sources state them. The political questions at issue are live and remain so, and the encyclopaedia's standards bar it from adjudicating them; what is recorded here is the office al-Husseini held, the position the body he chaired adopted, and the sequence Britannica describes.

The Revolt and the Departure from Palestine

Britannica records that after a revolt against British authority al-Husseini fled to Lebanon and there reconstituted the committee. His muftiship is nonetheless dated to 1948 in Britannica's own account of the family, so the title outlasted his presence in Jerusalem by a decade.

At this point the article stops following him, for the reason given below.

Historiographical Note

This article is deliberately incomplete, and saying so precisely is more useful than leaving a reader to discover it.

What has been excluded, and why. Al-Husseini spent part of the Second World War outside Palestine, and that period — his movements, his contacts with the Axis powers, and his broadcasts — is the most heavily documented and most heavily debated part of his life. It is not covered here. The reason is a conflict between two requirements of this project's editorial standards, which for most subjects sit together without difficulty. The standards prohibit adding hostile characterisation of any subject, from any source, including sources of unimpeachable reliability. They also prohibit suppressing a plain, neutral fact merely because it is unflattering. For this particular stretch of this particular life the two pull against each other hard enough that the owner's decision was to bound the article rather than to attempt the passage. That decision is recorded here so that the omission is visible rather than silent.

A reader who wants that period should go to the specialist literature, where it is treated at length: the works listed under Further Reading below are the standard starting points, and the archival record is extensively published. Nothing in this article's silence should be read as a claim about what that record contains.

Other omissions. Beyond the wartime years, the approved sources consulted here do not establish his parentage, his schooling, his service before 1921, the circumstances of the British decision to appoint him, the internal politics of the Supreme Muslim Council, his role in the events of 1947–48, the years after 1948, or the place and exact date of his death. Britannica gives the birth only as a range, c. 1895–97, and the death only as 1974. Where the approved base is silent, this article is silent, and under the project's source policy an untraceable claim is omitted rather than asserted.

The naming and dating of the council. As set out above, Britannica and the White Paper name the body differently — Supreme Muslim Council, Islamic Higher Council, Islamic Supreme Council — and date it to 1921 and 1922 respectively. Both are approved sources and neither is in error; the variance is reported rather than resolved.

The standing of the White Paper. Most of the institutional detail in this article comes from the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute's White Paper on the Hashemite custodianship of the Jerusalem holy sites. That document is within the approved source base, and the institute is one of this project's approved sources. It is also a document with a purpose: it argues for the Hashemite custodianship of the sanctuary, and al-Husseini's 1924 correspondence appears in it as evidence for that case. This article has taken the factual content — the dates, the letters, the sums, the sequence of the restoration — and has not adopted the argument the document was written to advance. That is what the project's standards require of a source written from a position.

No outside source was used. The owner authorised recourse to a source outside the approved base for this article. In the event the approved base carried the bounded account given here, and the authorisation was not drawn on.

Conclusion

What the approved sources establish about Amin al-Husseini is a career at the head of an institution during the first decades of the British mandate in Palestine. Appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1921, he held the muftiship on Britannica's dating until 1948. Under his presidency the council raised funds across the region for the restoration of the Dome of the Rock, secured a contribution of 38,000 golden lira from Sharif Hussein bin Ali, and invited Emir Abdullah of Transjordan to supervise both the work and its accounts; the restoration was completed by 1928. In March 1924, with the Ottoman caliphate newly ended, he was among the first two figures to pledge allegiance to Sharif Hussein. By 1936 he chaired the Arab Higher Committee, whose demands Britannica identifies as the halting of Jewish immigration and the prohibition of land transfers, and which it connects to the revolt of 1936–39. After that revolt he left Palestine for Lebanon.

That is a partial account of a long life, and the article says so rather than presenting itself as complete. Within its declared limits it rests entirely on the approved sources, and the limits themselves are on the record. The wider history of the period is treated in the encyclopaedia's article on modern Islamic history, and the sanctuary whose restoration he organised in the articles on the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Letter of Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Emir Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Transjordan, 30 March 1924 — thanking the Emir for his trust in the Higher Islamic Council and the Restoration Committee of al-Haram al-Sharif, and requesting his supervision of the restoration and its accounts under the sponsorship of Sharif Hussein bin Ali. Reproduced in the White Paper of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute, consulted in the approved library.
• Letter of Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Emir Abdullah, 27 August 1928 — inviting him to the celebration marking the completion of the restoration of the Dome of the Rock. Reproduced in the same White Paper.
• The pledge of allegiance to Sharif Hussein bin Ali, 11 March 1924 — recorded in the same White Paper, which names al-Husseini and Emir Abdullah as the first two figures to give it.
• The Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem's Islamic and Christian Holy Sites 1917–2020. White Paper of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2020. Consulted in the approved library — for the Islamic Higher Council of 1922, its purpose, its fundraising for the Dome of the Rock, the delegation to Sharif Hussein and his contribution of 38,000 golden lira, Emir Abdullah's supervision of the restoration and of the later Egyptian Restoration, and the dating of the first restoration to 1922–1952.

Classical Islamic Sources

The subject belongs to the twentieth century, and no classical Islamic sources bear on his career. None are listed here rather than supplying artificial entries for the sake of a heading, which this project's standards expressly discourage. The institution he presided over, however, administered a sanctuary whose own history is treated in the encyclopaedia's articles on the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where the classical sources are cited.

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry on Amin al-Husseini. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amin-al-Husseini — for the birth given as c. 1895–97 and the death in 1974; the appointment by the British in 1921 as grand mufti of Jerusalem and president of the Supreme Muslim Council; the description of him as a prominent Arab nationalist who resisted Zionist political ambitions in Palestine; the chairmanship of the Arab Higher Committee by 1936 and its demands for a halt to Jewish immigration and land transfers; and the flight to Lebanon after the revolt against British authority, where the committee was reconstituted.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry on the Arab Higher Committee. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arab-Higher-Committee — for its chairmanship by al-Husseini, its primary demands, and the statement that these fuelled the Arab Revolt of 1936–39 against British rule.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry on the 1936–39 Arab Revolt in Palestine. https://www.britannica.com/event/1936-1939-Arab-Revolt-in-Palestine — for the account of what triggered the revolt.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry on Faysal ibn Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Faysal-ibn-Abd-al-Qadir-al-Husayni — for the dating of the muftiship to 1921–48 and for the standing of the al-Husayni family of Jerusalem.

Further Reading

• Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988 — the standard scholarly biography, and the natural first recourse for the whole career including the period this article does not cover.
• Kupferschmidt, Uri M. The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam Under the British Mandate for Palestine. Leiden: Brill, 1987 — the institutional study of the body al-Husseini presided over, and the fullest treatment of its administration and finances.
• Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 and The Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1929–1939. London: Frank Cass, 1974 and 1977 — the standard political history of the mandate decades.
• Elpeleg, Zvi. The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement. London: Frank Cass, 1993 — a further full-length biography, covering the wartime years in detail.