(; 1881Abū ʻAmr, 1994, p. 98. or 19 December 1882Krämer, 2011, p. 260Guidère, 2012, p. 173 – 20 November 1935) was a Syrian Muslim preacher, activist, and leader in the struggles against the French in Syria and the British in Palestine, as well as an opponent of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s.
Qassam was born in Jableh, Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire in 1882. He studied at Al-Azhar University in Egypt and afterward became an Islamic revivalist preacher in his hometown. Following his return, he became an active supporter of the Libyan resistance to the Italian occupation starting 1911, raising funds and fighters to aid the Libyans and penning an anthem for them. He would later lead his own group of rebels in alliance with Ibrahim Hananu to fight against the French Mandate in northern Syria ratified on 29 September 1923.
Following the rebels' defeat, he immigrated to Palestine,Bloomfield, 2010, p. 149.Fleischmann, 2003, p. 292.Kayyali, 1978, p. 180.Lozowick, 2004, p. 78. where he became a Muslim waqf (religious endowment) official and grew incensed at the plight of Palestinian Arab peasants. He advocated a moral, political and military jihad as the solution to end British rule and Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In the 1930s, he formed bands of local fighters, including the Black Hand, and launched attacks against British and Zionist targets. He was eventually killed in a manhunt by the British authorities in 1935, following his alleged role in the killing of a policeman. Israeli historian Tom Segev has called him "the Arab Joseph Trumpeldor".Segev, 2001, pp. 362–363. His campaign and death were factors that led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
Early life and Islamic scholarship
Al-Qassam was born in Jableh, near Latakia in northwestern Syria, to mother Ḥalīma Qaṣṣāb and father ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qassām, a sharia court official during Ottoman rule and a local leader of the Qadiriyya Sufi order. His grandfather had been a leading sheikh of the Qadiriyya order and moved to Jableh from Iraq. Al-Qassam also followed the Hanafi school of fiqh (jurisprudence) of Sunni Islam and studied at the local Istambuli Mosque under the teaching of well-known ′alim (scholar) Sheikh Salim Tayarah.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 166.
Sometime between 1902 and 1905, al-Qassam went to Cairo to study at al-Azhar University. The scholars with whom he studied are disputed by the sources; some accounts say he studied under the Muslim reformist scholar Muhammad Abduh and came into contact with the prominent proto-Salafist, Rashid Rida, who himself studied under Abduh, while others are skeptical of al-Qassam's relationships with either. However, the attitude al-Qassam later adopted toward the political issues in the Arab world suggests he was well acquainted with the ideas that Abduh and Rida espoused.Milton-Edwards, 1999, p. 14. At al-Azhar, al-Qassam developed the thinking that would guide his future activism. Critical of a stagnant Islam, he preached among the ranks of farmers and other locals about the necessity for a modern Islam, one capable of defending itself from Western colonialism through jihad (holy struggle).Milton-Edwards, 1999, p. 17. He returned to Jableh in 1909 as an Azharī ʿālim and worked as a teacher at a Qadiriyya madrasa (Islamic school) where he taught both the mystical practices of the Qadiriyya Sufi order and the jurisprudence and commentary of the Qur'an. In addition, he preached as the imam of the Ibrahim Ibn Adham Mosque.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 167.
Following his return to Jableh, al-Qassam commenced a program of Islamic revival based on moral reforms which included the encouragement of maintaining regular salaah (prayer) and the sawm (fasting) during Ramadan as well as advocating an end to gambling and alcohol consumption. Al-Qassam's campaign highly influenced Jableh's residents who increasingly adopted his reforms. He developed amiable relations with the local Ottoman police who he would call upon to enforce sharia on rare cases of major violations. In some occasions, he would send disciples as vigilantes to intercept caravans transporting alcohol which would then be disposed of. Despite the support for Arab nationalism from some of his fellow alumni at al-Azhar and among Syrian notables, al-Qassam's loyalties at the time most likely laid with the Ottoman Empire as his relationship with the authorities would indicate.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 168. He was well regarded among much of Jableh's population where he gained a reputation for piety, simple manners and good humor.
Support for Libyan resistance
Following Italy's September 1911 invasion of Libya, al-Qassam began collecting funds in Jableh for the joint Ottoman-Libyan resistance movement and composed a victory anthem. Jableh's district governor sought to gain control over the fundraiser, and when locals nevertheless continued to send their donations to al-Qassam, the governor attempted to have him jailed. The district governor alleged that al-Qassam was working against the Ottoman state, but an official investigation found him not guilty, and the governor was consequently dismissed.
In June 1912, during one of his Friday prayer sermons, he called for volunteers to engage in a jihad against the Italians. Accepting only volunteers with prior Ottoman military training, al-Qassam enlisted dozens of volunteers and set up a fund for the expedition to Libya as well as a small pension for the families of volunteers while they were abroad. Although accounts vary, al-Qassam was accompanied by 60 to 250 volunteers known as mujahideen (those who engage in jihad) when he arrived in Alexandretta in the latter part of that year. Intending to gain sea transportation from the Ottomans, al-Qassam's request was rejected by the authorities, who ordered him and his men back to Jableh. A new Ottoman government in Istanbul had gained power and shifted the state's focus to the Balkan front in October, abandoning the Libyan resistance. Part of the money that was raised was then used to establish a madrasa in Jableh while the remainder was saved for future efforts.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 169.
Anti-French resistance in Syria
He later enlisted in the Ottoman army when World War I broke out, where he received military training and was attached as a chaplain to a base near Damascus.Segev, 1999, pp.360–362 Returning to Jableh before the war's end, al-Qassam used funds from his planned expedition to Libya to organize a local defense force to fight the French occupation. His principal role in the local resistance was financing the acquisition of weapons for Jableh's militia. By 1919, French forces moved into the coastal area of northern Syria while Faisal I established the Kingdom of Syria in Damascus as an independent Arab state. During this period, al-Qassam's Jableh militia fought against local French-backed Alawite militiamen who occupied areas around the city. The Alawites were eventually repelled, but French forces moved in soon after to consolidate their control. Consequently, al-Qassam and many of his disciples left Jableh for Mount Sahyun where he established a base near the village of Zanqufeh to launch guerrilla raids against the French Army.
Al-Qassam's militia grew when it was joined by another militia based in the mountains following the death of its commander Umar al-Bitar. However, as the French tightened their control of the area, they were able to successfully pressure several of Jableh's major landowners to drop their financial support for al-Qassam and pay taxes to the French Mandate government. This further isolated al-Qassam, who decided to flee Mount Sahyun for Aleppo in May 1920. There he and his fighters joined ranks with Ibrahim Hananu, who was leading attacks against the French Army until the latter captured Jisr ash-Shugur in July. As a result of this French victory and the impending capitulation of Aleppo, al-Qassam and members of his unit fled past French Army lines with forged passports to Tartus.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 170.
Activism in Palestine
Establishment in Haifa From Tartus, al-Qassam travelled to Beirut by boat and then to Haifa, then under the British Mandate, where his wife and daughters later joined him. In 1921, al-Qassam was hired to teach at the Madrasa Islamiya, an Islamic educational institution with many schools in Haifa and its periphery. It was funded by the Jamiat Islamiya, a waqf (religious endowment) administered by prominent Muslims from the city. Unlike other Muslim scholars, al-Qassam made himself easily accessible to the public and often arrived late to teach his classes because he was frequently stopped by passersby for advice. He resigned from his teaching career due to the school's insistence that he maintain consistent hours.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 171. As part of his Islamic revivalist teaching, he denounced and discouraged some local Palestinian traditions, including unorthodox funeral rituals, mothers' visitation to the al-Khidr shrine on nearby Mount Carmel to give thanks for their children's well-being or achievements and tribal dances around religious sites, as superstitious innovations to Islam.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, pp. 170–171.
Al-Qassam first preached in the Jurayneh Mosque. In 1922, the Supreme Muslim Council appointed al-Qassam as a preacher at the newly established . According to Philip Mattar, al-Qassam "preached to young Muslims a puritanical way of life and Islamic precepts, including avoiding gaming clubs, taverns, and brothels. His teachings sufficiently alarmed some people that his dismissal was sought."
According to Abdallah Schleifer, Al-Qassam concentrated his activities on the lower classes, setting up a night school for casual labourers and preaching to them as an imam. According to Tom Segev, he would seek them out on the streets, in brothels and hashish dens. Al-Qassam's greatest following came from the landless ex-tenant farmers drifting into Haifa from the Upper Galilee where purchases of agricultural land by the Jewish National Fund and Hebrew labour policies excluding Arabs had dispossessed many of their traditional livelihoods.Rashid Khalidi, citing Abdullah Schleifer's essay "Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War I" in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds.) Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Verso, London 2001 ch. 11 pp. 207–234 p. 229.Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness,Columbia University Press, 2009 p.115. Al-Qassam grew increasingly popular with northern Palestine's poorer Muslims and was frequently sought out to preach at Mawlid celebrations.Schleifer, ed. Burke, 1993, p. 172.
In May 1928, he, Rashīd al-Hājj Ibrāhīm (1889–1953), and others established a branch in Haifa of the (the Young Men’s Muslim Association or YMMA, founded in Cairo in 1927 and modeled after the YMCA).