Yussef Diya'uddin Al-Khalidi

(1829 - 1907)

Born in 1829 in Jerusalem; educated in the English missionary schools in Jerusalem, and continued his studies in France; speaker of the Ottoman Parliament and Jerusalem's representative to the parliament in 1876; various administrative and consular posts in the Ottoman Empire; lectured at the University of Vienna; governor of a Kurdish province; wrote the first Kurdish-Arabic dictionary; Ottoman vice consul at the Russian Black Sea port of Poti; elected representative of Jerusalem in the newly established Ottoman parliament in 1877 where he was an active member of the opposition; addressed a letter to Zadok Kahn (Chief Rabbi of France) in 1899 pointing out that Palestine could only be acquired by war; called on the Jews to leave Palestine alone; appointed mayor of Jerusalem in 1899; died in 1907.

Sources: PASSIA