Sa'ad Khaldi
My Great, Great Grandfather Abdelkader: The Only Elected Emir in Recent History, My Hero
Sa'ad Khaldi | My Great, Great Grandfather Abdelkader: The Only Elected Emir in Recent History, My Hero
- And it’s my very, very great pleasure to introduce somebody who’s become a close friend, Sa'ad Khaldi. We met and we’ve had presentations together, we’ve socialized together. And I’m going to tell you just a little bit about him. He is a brilliant educator. He was a headmaster, and then he became a schools inspector. He has also a very interesting heritage. He is three quarters Palestinian and a quarter Jewish. And of the Jewish side of the family, that side of the family, they lost many people in the Shoah. And not only that, his family were very involved in the issue of Palestine and Israel. And in fact, he and I are going to do a session together in September when we’re going to talk about Holocaust education. He’s a very great educator. He decided to get involved in the field of Holocaust education. He studied at the Imperial War Museum, and then with the Yad Vashem, he was in seminars in Poland, in Lithuania, and he was involved in a very important education research project, the crossroads to Palestine at a Yad Vashem summer conference. He is the kind of person we really need because he is very rational, and he’s very, very clear about a future. And today he’s actually going to talk about a man in his family who was very important to him. And actually, I don’t think I’m going to talk about it. I think I’m going to leave it all to you, because this is one of your heroes, isn’t it, Sa'ad?
He is, yes.
So let’s turn over to you. And welcome, welcome, welcome.
Thank you, thank you. So first slide. He’s my great great grandfather. Emir Abdelkader, the only elected emir in recent history. So I’m descended from him through my paternal grandmother Venira, who was born in Damascus in Syria. She married a Palestinian, she was the Emir’s granddaughter through his eldest son, so technically a princess. And it was his eldest surviving son Abdullah. And you’ll learn more about Abdullah later on in this session, but I’m going to try and set the scene as to why he is such an important figure in history, and why he has inspired both my father and myself in many ways and inspired the public at large. So I’m going to start with the Battle of Lepanto. So could I have the next slide, please? The Battle of Lepanto happened 450 years ago. I remember actually lying in bed on the 7th of October and switching on the BBC and them announcing that it was the 450th anniversary in 2021 of the Battle of Lepanto. Now, why were they bothering even to remind people of this particular battle? Well, in many ways, it created the politics of East and West. It happened off the west coast of Greece. It was the very last battle involving a massive number of galleys. Galleys on both the Turkish side and the Catholic side. So you had two huge fleets, not in sailing ships, but in galleys actually clashing with each other. The Turkish fleet actually comprising of three smaller fleets. And the Catholic fleet being Spanish, partly Venice, Genoa, Naples, and all flying under the Catholic flag of Papacy. It involved the Knights of Malta as well. And it was a huge battle. Something like 50 or 60,000 people were killed in this battle.
And one very famous figure was injured on the Spanish side. And that is Cervantes. Cervantes had a deep wound on his left arm, and it actually possibly made him into a writer because he could no longer be a soldier, which was his original role. But his right arm was good. And he goes on to possibly write Don Quixote. But why is it that this battle is so important that an institution like the BBC draw drew our attention to it about three years ago? Well, it’s a similar battle to Battle of Quartier. It was a reversal to Muslim armies, or in this case a Muslim fleet that was going to attack the West. So it sort of echoes down the centuries, and I have a mental image, which I gained really from seeing the film Ben-Hur, because Ben-Hur is a galley slave in a Roman galley. That Roman galley goes down, and he manages to escape and even rescues the admiral, the gripper, who almost wants to commit suicide because he thinks he’s lost the battle, when in fact he’s won the battle. Well, the Catholic fleet actually defeated the Turks, or they defeated the main part of the Turkish fleet. But within a year, the Turks were able to capture Cyprus, and they created a policy of aggression against the west. And that policy of aggression went all the way along North Africa. Now North Africa was Muslim, but it was Arab. And what they did was that they captured different ports all the way along the North African coast and filled them with Turkish regents and put in Turkish soldiers who were janissaries, who were converts, seized as Christian children, but then educated as Muslims who were the soldiery of the Ottoman Empire.
So we have this unusual situation where North Africa is Arab, but the coast is ruled by Turks. So may I have the next slide, please? Now, this is a treaty. It is written in Arabic, but it is an unusual treaty that almost nobody knows about. It’s a treaty conducted with the United States of America just as they are creating the US Navy. And it was actually signed in 1786, and that treaty was a treaty of friendship between the US and the Sultan of Morocco. Now, how did this treaty come about? Well, it came about because America made representations to Morocco. And there was a listening on Morocco’s side because what actually was happening was all the way through as part of Ottoman foreign policy, these hostile cities were attacking shipping, and it was known as Barbary piracy. And this Barbary piracy actually over a century, possibly involved the capture of possibly one and a half million slaves through ships actually being captured and their cargoes taken. Or the actual captives being held to ransom as part of this aggressive Ottoman policy. Now, very gradually, the Ottoman became the weak man of Europe. So this policy began to wane. And Morocco was the most distant state away from Turkey. And the Sultan of Morocco had a degree of independence from the Ottoman Empire. But America was losing one in five of its tax dollars as a new country that had freed itself from the British. They’d thrown those tea chests into the harbor of Boston because of taxation. Yet they were subject to another form of taxation, this indirect taxation through ransoming, attacking of their shipping. And they wanted to be a thriving nation. Could I have the next slide, please?
So this is one of the original ships of the US Navy. It’s called the Alfred, it’s moored in Philadelphia. The actual picture was painted in 1775. It was actually Hamilton’s idea to create a US Navy, Hamilton of musical fame nowadays. But he writes an essay saying that the new state of America needs to create a Navy, and it’s John Adams, the second president, who creates and converts that original navy that they began to create. It was known as the continental Navy. And he creates the US Navy and he does other things. He purchases Louisiana and begins to form what we know as the United States. So you mustn’t think of these things in isolation. Could I have the next slide, please? Now, Morocco even had links with Tudor Britain, Tudor England. They even sent an ambassador to Queen Elizabeth. Now, why was Queen Elizabeth interested in having a Moroccan ambassador? Well, there was a sort of saying amongst Protestant countries, which was, better a Turk than a pope. Basically, they were trying to fight Spain. We know about the armada that tried to unsuccessfully attack England. So Henry VIII even corresponded with Suleiman the Magnificent. We have those letters in the British library. And Elizabeth had her Moroccan ambassador, and she even had a portrait of him made. So we have this wonderful portrait from Elizabethan times of the Moroccan ambassador in London. Abdul Wahad was his name, and he was an ally with Elizabeth against Spain. Next slide, please. Now, France was in a similar situation. It had colonies in America, and it did not want all the riches of those colonies falling into the hands of the Barbary pirates.
So Louis IV created something quite remarkable. We all know about the Suez Canal and De Lesseps but before the Suez Canal came, the Canal du Midi. And he realized with political advice that if he created a canal extending from Bordeaux down to the Mediterranean coast, by joining up through rivers and through sheer labor of creating this canal, that he could join up trade between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. So this unique canal was created across France. You basically came through the Gironde, you came through to Bordeaux, you could unload goods onto canal boats, and they could pass through to the Mediterranean. And in a way they could cock a snoot at the Barbary Pirates because as well as that, where the Canal du Midi came out, you had the famous Port of Toulon, which was the main base of the French Navy. So we’ve got in the Mediterranean, this constant movement, political movement between the Barbary pirates who are ruling to some extent an Arab population. The rulers of these city states were called deys. They were sort of mayors or regents, and they collected taxes. So they collected taxes from the hinterland. They looked after their population, but they were still answerable to the Ottoman Empire. Next slide, please. So we finally get to Algeria. We have the city of Algiers. And at the end, towards the end of the Napoleonic Walls, Algiers is quite peaceful. It actually has been supplying Napoleon with grain for his population. Because what Napoleon did was very, very radical. He created a citizen army.
Now in Europe, you’d never had citizen armies, you had professional armies. But when the Napoleonic era came along, Napoleon creates a citizen army of something like 600,000 men. We know that he marched towards Moscow with 600,000 men with the French armée as it was called grand armée, as it was called. But in order to create a citizen army, you actually denuded the population of farming and workers to actually work on the land. So though Napoleon was successful in possibly battle after battle and conquest and amassed huge riches, the actual land of France was not being worked particularly well because so much of the population had moved into the army itself, and as a result, he accumulated a huge debt. And that debt was owed to the city of Algiers. Within the city of Algiers were two leading corn merchants whose names were Bushraq and Bakri. They were Jewish corn merchants who had supplied Napoleon’s armies and the French cities with corn and grain. Now, of course, Napoleon is finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. And what happens is that he is replaced with a Bourbon ruler Louis has been executed, but in the Bourbon line, there was somebody who could succeed him, and they went back to Bourbon practices.
They went back to Versailles, the magnificent style of living, if you like, the corrupt style of living. And Algiers began to complain. 20 million gold francs was owed by the French government to the city state of Algiers, and particularly to these Jewish corn merchants. So the things come to a head, and there’s this argument between the mayor, the dey, Hussein Dey, and the French Council, and it gets to be so heated that he beats him with a sort of fly stick that he used to have in his hand, which had feathers on the end. Well, the console goes back to France, and he tells the French king, and he exaggerates exactly what has happened. And of course, the French don’t want to pay the debt, and things are going so badly for the French king that they decide that what they will do is actually attack the Algerians or the city of Algiers. Now, Algiers had been perfectly peaceable. It had foregone piracy. There are excellent reports from the American Council at the time, what a peaceful city it was after 1815. But all that was owed was this particular debt. So the French decide to create an attacking force because of the so-called insult to France, and they suddenly surprised the Algerians with this fleet of ships, which were equipped with mortars and a small army. And the hope of the French king was that this would restore his reputation with his people, with the French, we know it so often with politicians and leaders, have a war and everything will look good. So they attacked Algiers. Some of the Arab tribes decided to support the Turks because basically they were getting on fairly well. And there was a battle outside of Algiers, but it ended up with the French taking Algiers.
And when they took Algiers, not only did they not have to pay the debt of 20 million gold francs, but they took the Algiers Treasury, which was estimated to be 48 million gold francs. So all of a sudden they had this vast amount of booty, having taken the city of Algiers. Unfortunately, for Louis X, things got so bad at home, not even the war had distracted the French population. He is forced to abdicate, and his nephew, Louis Philippe, takes over as a constitutional monarch. So this has happened in 1830. In the Hinterland, the son of a chieftain, an Arab chieftain who actually had been descended from the prophet himself. He is the chief of the Banu Hashim tribe in the small city of Mascara, is born in 1808. His father was a well-educated man, he was a pious man, and he decided to take his 17-year-old son off to the Middle East to Syria to do a pilgrimage. But what was important to both father and son was Islamic religion, but a particular form of Islamic religion, which was Sufism, and he wanted his son to understand about Sufism. So he made his son study when he was in Syria, when they were on this pilgrimage. And of course when they arrived back, they hear that the city of Algiers has fallen and that the French have then got designs on the next city, on the coast, which is the city of Oran, the city that’s closest to Mascara, where my ancestor was born. What’s so remarkable about him? Well, I’m going to give you a glimpse. Next slide, please.
This is the Emir himself in Syria, by that time we’d moved into the age of photography. So I’m actually able to look at a photograph of what is my great great grandfather. He’s wearing the lesioned honor. He’s wearing all sorts of honors that European countries have bestowed on him, but he’s in exile in Syria because he was quite a remarkable man. At first, he decides that he’s going to fight the French, he’s going to resist this invasion because Algeria was comparatively peaceable, the French, if you like, had trampled on that peace. And it wasn’t a particular argument which he had generated, but nevertheless, it had had huge implications for the country at large, which was basically, the hinterland was a quite a tribal country. So something unique happens. His father being descended from the prophet calls all the other tribal leaders, and they literally sat under a tree, and they discussed what was happening. And the tribal leaders decided to elect the father who was Mohy al-Din, as an emir. But the father says, no, I’m too old. You’ve seen my son, you’ve seen he’s brave. And you’ve seen that I’ve taken great pains to educate him. If you want an emir, if you want a leader, he should be your leader, and he goes on to be this remarkable leader for 15 years. He fights battle after battle against the French, almost humiliating them at times. And as a result, because we are moving into the era of journalism, there are all sorts of reports about what is happening in Algeria. It becomes public knowledge. And what is it remarkable is that he actually has the country on his side, and that even includes the Jewish tribes.
So a lot of the Arab cities had a Jewish component who were extremely loyal to their Arab cohabitants. Some were extremely well-educated, and rather like the coin merchants, they had contacts all over Europe and throughout North Africa. It was part of their community. And he uses those contacts almost to know in advance what the French are up to. So he is, if you like, you could compare him with what is happening in the Ukraine. He’s a Zelenskyy-type figure. He molds the country together. And at one point, even the French agree to a treaty, they agree to hand over two thirds of Algeria and officially agree to him being the emir of Algiers. So in a strange way, he is somebody who has been, if you like, democratically elected, but he’s also the military leader against an invading force. So there are parallels with Ukraine and Russia. I won’t go into them too far, but he has this remarkable ability. He also has been brought up tribally. He’s a great lover of horses. He’s what they call a marabout. He is a part of that religious warrior class that existed in North Africa. And stories begin to communicate themselves around the world about his remarkable exploits. So let’s go to the next slide. I deliberately put my pencil on a map of America. It’s pointing to a tiny community that exists. It’s called Elkader. It originally existed in Illinois, but when the boundaries were redrawn, it was decided that it’s now technically in Iowa. So I do know that it’s in Iowa, but I put down in the rubric that it was originally considered to be in Illinois, but it was the decision of Timothy Davis, who was a lawyer who used to read the newspaper reports. He decides to create a community.
He’s a lawyer, but he’s investing his money. He creates a flower mill on the Turkey River just alongside the Mississippi, so west of the Mississippi. And he creates this community, and he calls it Elkader after the Algerian emir. He is such an admirer of the emir that it goes on to be the only community in America named after an Arab. And it is still named after an Arab, and it’s still has links with Algeria. When they had a very big flood on the Mississippi, Algeria sent them help. And they have links with Elkader High School. It’s a typical American community. And it’s existed since 1846 in America. Next slide, please. Now this is what a marabout looks like. The emir had a great knowledge of horses. Marabouts, they had a tremendous ability to survive within the desert. They basically ate the same grain that their horses ate, they made it into a sort of porridge, rather like the Scots used to make a porridge. They could survive in very difficult conditions. They create guerilla warfare. And many people who’ve studied guerilla warfare have said Abdelkader was this amazing guerilla leader who humiliated the French army time after time after time. Sometimes he would be a little bit unlucky if there was an officer who’d actually served with Napoleon, he would do a cavalry attack.
But you can resist the cavalry attack if you form squares, and some of the Napoleonic officers knew how to do that. But nevertheless, he wins battle after battle. He has his ups and downs, but eventually he gets the admiration of the French generals who feel that they are in such a position. So they feel that first of all got to learn the Quran and then teach themselves Arabic in order to communicate with this remarkable man who reciprocates by learning French So all of a sudden, he is at one point, he is the emir of Algiers, apart from a small portion, which is being held by France. But they renege on the treaty that they’ve negotiated. It’s known as the Treaty of Tafna. And as a result of that, the war continues. He decides eventually to surrender. His reasoning is logical, he only has, as you can see in that picture, men with muskets by 1845, we are talking bullets, we are talking modern warfare, we are talking cannons, we are talking civilian losses. And he decides as a leader, that he mustn’t allow his country to be decimated, that it is better and more honorable to surrender. So again, he calls the tribes, and he says to them, “Look, this has gone on for too long. Our civilian population is now being attacked. We are having to fight against modern warfare. I have decided to surrender.” He goes, first of all, into a slight exile, and he goes to the protection of the Sultan of Morocco. But the Sultan of Morocco is very hesitant. He is not going to play ball because he’s worried that they’re both descended from the prophet that he could take over Morocco, such as his following in North Africa. But he decides that the best thing to do is actually to surrender.
So he draws up a surrender document, he sends it to the French General. The French General agrees to it, and signs it. But part of that document is that he says he will go into exile in an Arab country, but he surrenders himself. It’s at this point that he has become particularly famous. He goes onto become even more famous. I like to follow a little bit of horse racing, just out of interest, not out of betting. A horse won the Grand National twice. Our most famous race, steeplechase race, it was named after him in 1850 and 1851, the British public had named a horse called Little Ab. It twice won the Grand National. And of course, British race horses are descended from Arab horses. He was an expert in Arab horses. But what makes him more remarkable is that during this war that is going on, he gets a visit from a Catholic bishop. Bishop Suchet visits him in 1841. And Bishop Suchet is a supplicant. He’s saying, will you release this one prisoner? This one prisoner is very important to a French family. And he turns to Bishop Suchet and he says, “Why one?” I would be happy to exchange all the prisoners that I have got. And he creates the idea of a prisoner of war exchange. And he goes ahead and does it. He even sees at one point in the war, his own small city for, Mascara where he was born. It falls to the French. The French realize that there’s nothing there, there isn’t a huge treasury there. He’s not been interested in gold or anything like that. He is a man of principle. They leave after three days. They’re so disgusted that he is just living a normal life in a normal city, he’s not a grand emperor surrounding himself with grand objects.
So what made him special was his own inner life, his ability to communicate with others, but also his own spirituality. He was Sufi. So when he surrendered, he’s taken back to France. The French don’t agree to the article that the General had agreed to. Instead, they imprisoned him in the Chateau of Pau. At first the local population is angry because they’ve just done out the chateau, but it’s famous. It’s the chateau of the first French king. But the French government decides to put bars on the windows as if he’s going to escape. Well, he’s surrendered, as he says. I’ve given up, for the benefit of my people. So he stays in Pau for about a year. His health begins to go down and the health of his retinue, so he had about 200 members of his larger family that were with him, which is why they were accommodated in a chateau. But their health suffers. And he also complains quite rightly that the French haven’t been honorable. So he’s moved to another chateau, the Chateau of Amboise on the Loire. There are better conditions. They haven’t got any bars on the windows. In Amboise it’s more of a fortress. He can walk around, but he decides, no, I’m not going to, this is still not what you said you would do. And sadly, in the winter, that follows at Amboise, illness, hits his family and his retinue, and he loses up to about half his family. And people begin to empathize with his condition. He has followers in the city of Bordeaux, and they have moved by this time, the end of the reign of Louis-Phillipe to wanting to have a French president. So the people at Bordeaux, even nominating him for president an Arab being nominated for the actual presidency of France. Of course he doesn’t actually run for it, but the fact that he is actually nominated by the people of Bordeaux strikes, the person who does become the president, it’s the nephew of Napoleon who becomes not only president, but Emperor Napoleon III, who finally agrees that he has been very badly treated.
But during that time, Abdelkader, has studied English, along with his French, He’s writing to Queen Victoria. He’s writing to Abram Lincoln. So let’s move to the next slide. This is a very colonialist slide. It comes from a magazine, but it’s showing his surrender. There is the image of Marianne of France, but that the Algerians are surrendering, and there is the image of Abdelkader. Next slide, please. Now this is a much better image of the Emir himself. He never wore any arms unless he was in battle. He always wore a simple cloak, a burnous, as we would say. And he was in many ways a simple man. He was both a hero and an anti-hero. But when he writes to Lincoln, Lincoln himself is so impressed he sends him something. Next slide, please. He sends him a wonderful pair of pistols with a message with an engraved box. Those pistols are in the Algerian Army Museum in Algiers now, donated by the family, but it has to show what standing he had internationally. And people in France begin to talk about him possibly becoming an emir in Syria. There is this idea, it’s not one that he particularly wished for, and it appears in a pamphlet that was circulated at the time But it’s not something that he particularly wanted. And he was loyal to his own people. Yes, he had, if you like, a connection with Syria, having visited there when he was 17 or 18 years old. Next slide, please. So Louis Napoleon finally honors the promise of France. He actually awards him the Legion of Honor. In effect, he’s saying sorry for what has happened. And he is allowed, first of all, to leave to Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, and exile in Bursa, a city in Turkey. But unfortunately, a year after he had moved to Bursa, there was a massive earthquake in Turkey.
So he was possibly at risk of his life staying in Turkey. And he moves to Damascus finally where he settles in Damascus. Now, my grandmother was born in Damascus as part of his family. Next slide, please. But part of when he’s in France is that he has this relationship with what were his enemies. One of the generals writes a book about Arabian horses. Arabian horses, of course, were admired because if you cross them with European horses, you’ve got these wonderful race horses that had beautiful stamina. And the modern racehorse, British racehorses are descendants of basically three horses that were bought over at the time of Queen Anne, the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, and the Byerley Turk, all British race horses racing at new markets and so on as as and purchasers bulletin are descendants of these Arabian horses. So he was a master rider of Arabian horses. He knew all about horses. And he actually writes a chapter for the French General. And the book is published with this chapter about horses and horse management and the sturdiness and capacity for endurance that Arabian horses have. So he had this wonderful capacity for relationships and people began to write about him. There’s one particular book that’s written about him that calls him the Desert Hawk, but in many ways he became a hawk in a cage for a while. Sadly, when things got very bad at Amboise, his eldest son got measles and descended from his eldest son So his eldest son became profoundly deaf because of measles. But nevertheless, my grandmother was born to his eldest son, and as I said, born in Damascus.
So even in Damascus, he’s not an idle person. He studies, he writes, he’s, if you like, eclectic, he’s part of the community. And then something happens. The Christian community in Syria is not very happy with Turkish rule. They’re saying that we’re paying all these very, very heavy taxes. We are not being treated properly. And there is a bit of a revolt. They refuse to pay their taxes, and their Turkish masters turn on them. And there is a massacre initially, which he intervenes in. He stops the massacre, he gives protection to the Christians, he invites the Christians in Damascus into his compound. And he lets it be known that it is not the Muslim thing to do, to attack Christians, and that they have genuine grievances. So he rescues the Maronites from a massacre in the period from 1856 to 1860 and really paves the way for the creation of the Lebanon as a state. I know that the Lebanon is something of a trouble state now, but that’s again due to the Shiite population. It’s not to do with the Maronites, particularly at this particular time. But he goes on to have these French contacts. Next slide, please. Well, if you want to know more about his life, there’s a very well written book. I quite admire this book. And as you can see it, it gives him the title Commander of the Faithful, and it uses an image of him as a very much younger man. The pictures I saw are when he becomes older, but you may see a family resemblance there. Next slide, please. With his French contacts, of course, he attends the opening of the Suez Canal. He’s invited, and the Suez Canal opened in 1860. And the British were a little bit cheeky. They were the first, they pushed a French boat out of the way, and they’re the first to send a boat down the Suez Canal, rather to the annoyance of the French. But they had these wonderful pavilions, they had 30,000 guests.
De Lesseps was extremely proud of what he achieved. And it’s the high point of French relations, particularly with the Middle East. Things get much more tricky after that for France. Napoleon III gets himself involved in a war with Germany. He loses the Battle of Sudan. He is effectively deposed. And so rather like Abdelkader, he becomes an exile. He ends up in Britain. He ends up, well, he’s buried at Windsor. He’s no longer is the emperor. He is the former emperor. And it’s strange how fate can turn on one. But as a result of that war with Prussians, the Germans seized back the Alsace and Lorraine. So the French population is being pushed out of Alsace and Lorraine and the French decide to send them to Algeria. So that’s really how Algeria becomes, if you like, a French mini-state. And the French decided to create French citizenship within Algeria. And we have people as famous as Yves Saint Laurent, who was born in Oran, in Algeria. He was basically what they call a colon, a French colonist. His family were French colonists of Algeria. But originally, if you go back in his family tree, would’ve come from Alsace and Lorraine, the majority of French colonialists came from there. So finally the emir dies at the age of about 75. He’s buried next to, and this was his dying wish, a Sufi philosopher who was known as Ibn Arabi. Ibn Arabi was born in Spain in 1165.
He died in Syria in 1240. He was very much admired by the emir, and who had studied many of his works. He believed in the unity of being. Wahdat ul-Wujud, that was the Sufi philosophy. And by unity, he didn’t exclude Christians or Jews. And I think that’s what is missing nowadays in many Muslim societies. We’ve allowed ourselves to, if you like, become divided, to be polarized. Nowadays, I’ve inspected many Muslim schools for alsted and the absence of what I would call rasala, the absence of the idea of messengers. Typically Muslims would study the Jewish prophets. 25 prophets are in the Quran, of which about over 20 are Jewish Old Testament prophets from the Torah. And many Islamic scholars knew their Torah just as well as they knew their Quran. So we’ve seen so many things happen, and I believe that he inspired my father in many of his actions, and he’s role model, but hero and also anti-hero, very modest in his ways. A visitor came to him in Damascus and expected a fabled hurrying. Well, he actually was allowed to see his wives, and they were just simple women. He loved his wives. Yes, he’d have more than one wife, but he loved his wives, and he had a great affection for his principal wife who was a distant cousin and who he was extremely loyal to. Hira. So it’s possible to romanticize, and the French did romanticize. There was a famous French naval lieutenant who was born in Rochefort that became the youngest member of the French Academy, but who wrote all these romantic novels about his voyages to the east and his so-called romances. These were very popular with French officers, and he was known as Pierre Loti. If you visit Pierre Loti’s house in Rochefort as I have, you enter through a house that then all of a sudden becomes part of a Syrian kalis house.
And he’d created this extension, and then also created this Norman Gallery. And he would entertain people like Sarah Bernhardt, and the French engaged in what is known as Lotism, is that romanticism of the orient. Well, he wasn’t prepared to put up with too much Lotism. Yes, if you like, searched within himself for the truth and always stuck to humanity and friendship. And I think from a personal point of view, that’s what he is to be admired. Our own daughter has a great love of horses, so perhaps there’s one or two bits of inheritance there. She’s a very good horse woman. And she possibly takes some of that inheritance with her and has been trained on Arab horses herself. So I hope that I’ve painted a picture and that will allow you to ask questions. So I’ll stop at that point and take any questions that you’ve got, thank you.
Q&A and Comments:
Hi, so first question
Yeah.
Q - [Host] Is, hold on. Well these are just lovely comments for you, “Fantastic lecture learned so much.” “Absolutely fantastic.” “Please, could you repeat the author of the book about your ancestor?”
A - Yes, John W. Kiser, K-I-S-E-R, and his book is called Commander of the Faithful, the Life and Times of Emir Abdelkader. It’s a very well-written book.
Q - [Host] Fabulous, so Karen says, “I think I learned the word corn in the time of Napoleon and before was the word used for what we call wheat, is that correct?”
A - Yes, yes, yes. They were corn merchants. They would’ve dealt in all sorts of grain and supplied that to France.
Q - [Host] Some more lovely comments. “So interesting, thank you, There was a reference to jihad on Kaiser’s book. Can you clarify its significance?”
A - Well, jihad actually, it has a very bad press. It means effort in Arabic, so it can mean personal effort. So yes, if you like, there was a war, he did inspire his followers, and he was a Muslim, but he was a Muslim who lived in the the small city of Mascara. Mascara would’ve had a population of two or 3,000 as a Jewish population. He’s also admired by the Catholic church. Even in his lifetime there were people in the Catholic church who were tremendous admirers of what he did and how he did it. And he goes on to inspire the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was drawn up in 1913 and in the Preambles to the Geneva Convention is the precedent of a prisoner of war exchange. And he was quoted in the preamble to the Geneva Convention, which fortunately was established before the first World War, but only just a year before the first World War. So yes, there is a lot of inspirational writing about him, but I was talking with Trudy, and I was saying that as a man, he was, well, I’d compare him with Nicholas Winter, he was extremely modest. And it’s that combination of modesty and achievement that is so remarkable, I think.
[Host] Brilliant. So next one is just a lovely comment I wanted to read to you So it’s from Rhonda, “You are an outstanding teacher, your delivery a perfect pace and content, absolutely superb, I learnt so much today. Thank you again and a great idea, Trudy, to have him join the lockdown team.”
Oh, thank you very much.
Q - You are welcome. And then David says, “How did you have Jewish ancestors?”
A - Well, on the Jewish side, my maternal grandmother was the daughter of the Belgian Console. He was posted, first of all, just when she was born in Paris. He then is posted in Madrid, but he finally gets posted to Casablanca. And in Casablanca in her teenage years, she learned Arabic. and she met this remarkable Arab who was educated Syria. He was educated at what later became the University of Beirut. In his time it would be the American College. He was a graduate in economics and commerce. And my grandfather went on to have a Jewish business partner and they owned six major cotton mills in Manchester. I was partly brought up in Manchester. So I lived within the Jewish community with an Arab name.
[Host] Fabulous, I’m also from Manchester, so Mavis says, “A remarkable man, and we need more like your great grandfather in today’s world.”
Thank you.
Another one, Dina, “Fantastic lecture, I learned so much, thank you very much.” And I’m pretty sure that they were all the questions, all the others were just lovely comments. Oh, we’ve got one more question, Trudy, you happy for me to?
Yes, please,
Yes.
Q - So Shelly says, “Was your ancestor an influence on Lawrence of Arabia and other British–
A - Well, that’s a very good question. Actually, Lawrence knew both his sons, and they did join the Arab Revolt, which happened in Arabia. Lawrence in his actual writing is a little bit annoyed because as I mentioned, his eldest son was profoundly deaf, so he could only communicate through lip reading and then replying back. But that was mainly with his brother. And sometimes they didn’t speak Arabic, they would speak in Berber and Lawrence would get annoyed because he couldn’t listen in. But they both wanted to create, if you like, for the Arabs to free themselves of the yoke of Turkish rule It never really happened, but part of, I suppose the emir’s inheritance was through the Sykes-Picot Agreement was the creation of the Lebanon, but the French took over Syria and Syria doesn’t become independent until after the second World War. And then Syria’s gone somewhat astray now. So I won’t talk too much about Syria.
Anyway, what can I tell you, Sa'ad? You are the ultimate storyteller, and thank you so much for telling us about this family member. I’m really looking forward to our joint conversation about the efficacy of Holocaust education and what can we ‘cause both Sa'ad and I have many conversations and do worry about what is happening in the world today. And we’re both in education, and share many of the same issues and the same problems. So Sa'ad, lots and lots of love. Take care of yourself.
Thank you.
And come back soon.