On Translating a History of Ramallah

By Samira Meghdessian

The importance of historiography lies in ensuring a continuity between past and present, even as bombs erase everything that has been built, as we have witnessed recently in Gaza, or as homes are destroyed and families evicted, as in cities and villages across historic Palestine.

Ramallah is not the oldest of Palestinian cities. In her introduction to The Book of Ramallah, author Maya Abu al-Hayyat describes it as “a seemingly modest city with a short and relatively peaceful history, it is a city of ordinary stories, rather than heroic myths” that has remained “stoical and quiet in its resistance as well as a welcoming place to live.” And yet, as she adds, Ramallah has also taken its place as a pivotal city in modern Palestinian life.

I worked on translating Joseph Cadora’s Remembering Ramallah: A Preservation of History (2023) during the Covid years. It was my first attempt at translation, which I had been wanting to do it, to leave a kind of legacy for my children and grandchildren. The book had been on the shelf at my parents’ house for many years and no one in the family had worked on it before.

There were several reasons why I decided on this book. On a trip I made to Ramallah, I hired a guide to show me sites and buildings of the old city, and he was quoting most of his facts from this book. He said there was a need for it to be in English, because many visitors to Ramallah today are second and third generation Palestinians who do not read Arabic. Then, in two books I was reading about the city, and particularly the one written by Samih Hammoudeh, I found that he quoted Cadora’s continuously, and giving him credit for information. This told me that it was worth translating it.

On the Origins of ‘Remembering Ramallah’

Joseph Jiryes Cadora was the mayor of Ramallah from 1943-1947, then from 1948-1952. He encouraged the development of Ramallah both under British Mandate rule and when it was joined to Jordan, and oversaw the city at a time when many Palestinians sought refuge in Ramallah after fleeing Lydd and Ramleh in 1948. His family gave up a tract of land to accommodate the refugees, and today this area is still known as the Qaddoura, or Cadora, Camp.

His book was published privately, first in Arabic at the Al-Hoda Printing Press in New York in 1954 and later in 2023, also privately, by the Cadora family living in the US, as a commemoration of his work in Ramallah, as its mayor, and as someone who actively encouraged and worked for the development of the city.

The book delves into both the ancient and modern history of the town, which became—and is still known today—as a center of education, because the Quakers built schools there in the nineteenth century. This created an opportunity for Palestinians from all over Palestine to attend the Quaker Friends Schools and put Ramallah on the map as a center of education.

Cadora and those who worked alongside him were instrumental in developing the town into a center of tourism and business, especially under the rule of the Hashemite Kingdom. That’s when it became known as the “Bride of the Kingdom.” Tourists from all over Palestine spent summers in Ramallah, because of its welcoming spirit and balmy weather.

The book describes the importance of Ramallah’s clans,  and how the “grandfather” of them, Rashid Al Haddadin, emigrated from the Shobak and Karak regions in today’s Jordan and settled in what was then a small village, where he saw his family could farm and tend their flocks. Indeed, the book notes, every Palestinian with origins in today’s Ramallah, all over the world, can trace their origins to one of the five main clans, which were formed by the five sons of Rashid Al Haddadin.

These clans are today represented by the statues of lions that stand in the middle of Ramallah in the square known as Al Manara, which is called “Lighthouse Square” because this is where the electrification of the towns of Ramallah and El-Bireh began.

This migration story is followed by chapters describing daily life, traditions, sects, schools, and the city’s social organizations, many of which were started by women to care for the welfare of other women and children. Some are credited with encouraging refugee women to keep alive traditions of embroidery that today appear on the thoubs worn by women and the pillowcases that adorn every Palestinian home. The book also contains descriptions of traditional foods, wedding habits, social customs, and festivals.

At the end of the book, the appendices have charts describing the main clans and their descendants. But these by no means represent a full description of Ramallah’s families. More detailed genealogies are available in a book published in 1982 by Aziz Shaheen, titled Ramallah: Its History and Genealogies.

Another appendix in Cadora’s book—which presented some of the biggest challenges and delights in its translation—contains a selection of folksongs, translated into English from the local dialect that the peasantry and Ramallah residents used to sing for occasions such as weddings, religious festivals, funerals, and immigration. It is important to keep these alive, as they demonstrate daily folk-life as well as history. The author’s son, the linguistics scholar Prof. Frederic Cadora, explains in his foreword the origin of the folk language as well as the difference between the madani and fellahi accents.

While translating the lyrics of these songs, I liberally consulted with friends and family to check the meaning of words that have fallen out of use. Cadora includes a few of them, but many more appear in Bahia Khalil’ Ramallah Folklore, Songs and Traditions, published by the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine in 2002. Many of the songs are still sung today, at occasions where members of the Ramallah diaspora meet for special occasions, such as family picnics, weddings, funerals, and other gatherings. But only older members of this community remember them. Such communities exist today in the United States, in Detroit and Jacksonville, Florida.

I found that this was most delightful part of the process of translation, as I remembered some of them that my mother used to sing in the Ramallah dialect. They describe the harvest, celebrations during religious occasions, chants of engagements, weddings, separation, loss, and mourning of loved ones.

Another translation challenge came with the names of the kitchen and cooking utensils used by the village women. Some of them have disappeared from usage, and I had to consult with older members of the family to jog their memories about what their mothers used in the kitchen. And while Cadora’s chapter on immigration provides a good historical listing of the persons and families that migrated to the US and elsewhere to seek their fortunes, tracing the names of the immigrant families was a challenge, as many of the commercial establishments they founded have disappeared. These were mainly men who left at the beginning of the twentieth century and later, either to seek their fortunes, to escape political turmoil, famine and failed crops, or to send back money to the families they left behind. I also consulted with family members to verify the names of the first immigrants from Ramallah to the US and elsewhere.

Other histories of Ramallah

There are two other books I’d like to mention, which chart Ramallah’s history and build on Cadora’s book, quoting him liberally.

The first is Ottoman Ramallah: A Study of its Social History, 1517-1918, by Samih Hammoudeh, published in Arabic by the Institute for Palestine Studies in 2017. This is by far one of the best books on the history of Ramallah. The author has meticulously accessed government documents, archives in many libraries, and family sources. It has in-depth information about the Ottoman history of the town, its inhabitants, its clans, and its relationship with other Palestinian towns.

The second book is Ramallah, Ancient and Modern by Khalil Ayyub Abu Rayya. It was translated by J. Conrad Willmon and published by the American Federation of Ramallah in Detroit, Michigan in 1980.

The above titles are important resources for any researcher wishing to study the history of the town.

Today, Ramallah has become the de facto capital of whatever is left of historical Palestine as a country. It is the civil, political, and administrative center, and Palestinians look to it as perhaps a second capital (after Jerusalem) of a Palestine that will one day become a reality.

Samira Meghdessian was born in the forties in Jerusalem to parents who were closely connected with Ramallah and El-Bireh; they both studied and taught at the Quaker Friends Schools for several years Joseph Cadora is the husband of her maternal aunt.

She worked as a librarian for many years in the US and in Beirut, including at the Lebanese American University (1968-1978) and the American University of Beirut (2001-2009), and she has published academic work in the fields of library science and in conflict resolution.