Arif al-Arif

Arif al-Arif was born in Jerusalem and studied law and political economy in Istanbul. Drafted into the Ottoman army in World War I, he was captured by Russian forces and spent three years as a prisoner of war in Siberia, escaping across Manchuria and returning to Palestine to edit the nationalist newspaper Suriyya al-Janubiyya.

Arif served as British Mandate district officer in Beersheba, where he authored foundational anthropological studies of Bedouin tribal law. He later served as Mayor of Jerusalem, directing the Rockefeller Museum, and compiled the definitive six-volume historical encyclopedia Al-Nakba: Nakbat Bayt al-Maqdis wa-al-Firdaws al-Mafqud (The Catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Lost Paradise).