Nuh Ibrahim
Nuh Ibrahim , sometimes referred to as "the popular poet of the 1936 revolution" and "student of Qassam", was a Palestinian folk poet, a singer, a composer, and a fighter. He was born in Haifa in British Mandate Palestine. He started writing poetry at an early age.
Nuh Ibrahim expressed the conscience of his people in a smooth tone, with an easy, lyrical, understandable language, approaching ordinary speech, showing his love of the nation, calling for its defense, and urging people to revolt. His poetry represented the beginning of the golden age of Palestinian folk poetry, and he carried with his contemporaries among the popular poets such as: Farhan Salam, Abu Saeed Al-Hattini and Saud Al-Asadi the concern of Palestinian society, and its revolutionary resistance against the British occupation and the Zionist settlement during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
Nuh Ibrahim composed a large number of popular songs and poems all around Palestinian and Arab national and political issues and events during that period. Until today people sing some of his songs.
Biography
His family
Nuh was born in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in the city of Haifa in House No. 30. His father was Palestinian, he worked in the municipality of Haifa. His mother was from Cretan her name is Zaida. She was a captivity woman who was brought from the island of Crete to the port of Haifa in the Ottoman era. Sheikh Abd al-Salam Ahmad Abu al-Hija who was from the village of Ein Hod gave her to a young relative named Hussein Abu al-Hija who lived in Haifa, so he married her. Then she gave birth to her first child, Mustafa, but her husband died shortly after his son's birth. Then Zaida married Nuh's father, who lived in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood of Haifa and owned a house with two floors. She gave birth to and his sister. Then his father was martyred after 4 years of marriage when Nuh was young. His family lived in poverty after him, their only income was from the rent of the first floor of the house, which was rented to Hajj Muhammad Abd al-Qadir Abu al-Hija.At a later stage, Badia, Nuh's sister, got married and gave birth to two daughters, while his mother, Zaida, emigrated to Beirut, Lebanon during the events of the Nakba in 1948, and died there in 1952.
Early life
As a result of his father's death in an early age and the lack of income, Nuh's family lived in poverty and need, so Nuh lived in an abbey under the care of the nun Root Sunbul for a few years. He used to visit his mother while she visited him sometimes too, until he returned home to live with his mother. At that time, Nuh joined the Islamic school that was later called the Independence School, which was the only school in Haifa at the time in 1929. The school was located in Wadi al-Salib area. Nuh studied in the school from the scholars and jihadists in the Islamic school, such as Sheikh Kamel Al-Qassab, the school director, Rashid Bey in Parson, the mathematician Darwish Al-Qassas, the English language teacher Hani, the Sheikh and the Mujahid Al-Imam Izz al-Din al-Qassam and Sheikh Reda. Then he dropped out of school and worked in one of the Haifa printing presses. After completing his sixth grade in the Islamic school, he was sent on a mission to the orphanage school in Jerusalem, where he learned book binding, building cardboard boxes, and printing.Youth
After his graduation, Nuh began his warfare and labor life. He worked in the smoke company in the city of Haifa, and he used to teach the workers about jihad and how to battle in the company, until he succeeded in making them follow the group of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam. Later, Nuh decided to leave the smoke company to get advanced in the field of journalism and media. He traveled to Jaffa. He worked as an editor for many newspapers that were published there. He also participated in establishing the private commercial printing press in the city of Haifa.Then, in 1934 Nuh moved to Iraq to work as a technical expert in one of the Baghdad printing presses. He was known to be the best technicians in Baghdad. During his work at this printing press, Mr. Rashid bin Sabah Al-Jalahmah, a resident of Bahrain, approached the director of the printing press in Baghdad and asked him to offer Nuh with an opportunity to work as a technical expert at the Bahrain printing press, which is preparing to publish the first Bahraini newspaper. The obsession with the creation of this Bahraini newspaper goes back to Abdullah Al-Zayed, a Bahraini pearl merchant whose work has been declining, so he thought of investing his intellectual and literary capabilities in bringing a printing press to Bahrain in the early 1930s. Therefore, he sent his friend Rashid Al-Jalahma to Baghdad for two reasons: The first is training in the printing business so he stayed for seven months to train in Baghdad printing presses. The second reason, was to bring a printing expert from Baghdad to train the Bahraini team that would work in the printing press, so Nuh Ibrahim was chosen one. Nuh was surprised by the offer and he asked for a chance to think, and after a week he agreed to the offer and traveled with Rashid Al-Jalahmah to the Pearl Country by a large sailboat coming from Basra to the port of Manama, wearing his white Arab dress that he always insisted on wearing.
After arriving at the printing press, Nuh knew that he was the only one who knew the operation of modern printing machines in the printing press. So he began to train Bahrainis on printing machines and how to work with them. During the first three months, Nuh was able to train many workers in Bahrain. There will be a full Bahraini team of typists and workers, such as: Abd al-Rahman al-Hasan, Abd al-Rahman Ashir, Muhammad al-Jowder, Ahmad Fleifel, Mustafa Buallai, Abdullah al-Mannai and others. Then he set up the work system in the printing press, and distributed the work among others. There was a typographer, Associate, Worker in the Binding Department, Worker in the Paper Department and Worker in the Lining Department. The workers loved him and they all wanted to host him in their homes.
Upon the success of the printing press and its progress, Nuh would remember his poems and rhymes. Despite the hard work in the printing press, his poetic spirit made him keen to attend all homes in Muharraq and Manama, he went to all the people who invited him because the attendees to hear his patriotic chants and chants about Palestine and the revolution against the British Mandate. the councils began competing for his presence for his distinctive songs and the cheerful spirit that he was known for. During this period Nuh also wrote poems and songs specific to Bahrain.
Nuh's life was comfortable in the Pearl Islands and he used to send letters to his friends and family in Baghdad and Haifa, describing his new work, comfortable life and picturesque country. At the night of the end of the first year of his work in Bahrain, the printing press began its commercial activities, to issue the first weekly newspaper in the Gulf by the owner of the printing press, Abdullah Al-Zayed.
But after the end of his first year of work, the news of the 1936 revolution began to reach Bahrain. Despite the stability of his life in the Pearl Islands and the renaissance of the printing press, Nuh decided to pack his belongings, join the revolutionaries and fight the British and the Jews in Palestine. He told his friend Rashid Al-Jalahmah, "Words are no longer useful with these executioners." All the requests of the owner of the printing press and its workers asking him to stay did not change his mind. He was waiting for the first ship carrying him to Basra, to return from there to Palestine after less than a year and a half he spent in Bahrain. His last request to the Bahrainis was: "If you do not go for jihad in Palestine, then help them with money". As for his return to Palestine and the life of jihad, the British forces deported him from northern Palestine for his participation in the struggle against the British mandate, so he stayed in the village of Ein Karem, where he was famous for staging plays in the village.
Struggle
During his work in Jaffa, Nuh joined Izz al-Din al-Qassam, and he used to accompany him on his trips to the villages of Haifa and Jenin. He was influenced by his teachings at the Al-Istiqlal Mosque in Haifa. In 1931, he and his companions founded a gang of scouts, whom Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam called “the League of Muhammad al-Aba's Boys.” Nuh trained and educated this group, teaching the cubs to use weapons, and preserving their national anthems.On his return from Bahrain, and a year after of al-Qassam's death, the "League of Muhammad the Father" participated in the revolution. It turned into a secret organization bearing the name "The Khaled Clan" organization, which collected donations and supplied the rebels with weapons. Nuh Ibrahim had an active and main role in the cooperation of the Qassam leaders to be under the command of one leader in the so-called jihadist group. The group adopted the armed struggle alongside the silent revolution, and three of them attacked a Jewish convoy near Anabta under the leadership of Sheikh Farhan Al-Saadi, the successor of the martyr Al-Qassam, who took revenge for him. The British authority then executed him while he was fasting in his eighties.
In February 1937, the British Mandate government placed Nuh Ibrahim in Mazraa Prison and then in Acre Prison, after the spread of his chant, "Plan it, Mr. Dill", where he addressed with sarcasm the General Dill when he was appointed by Britain as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in Palestine to suppress the revolt. Nuh Ibrahim described in his diary how he entered prison:
"We were imprisoned in the second month of 1937, and we spent 5 months in Acre Prison and the Mazraa Detention Center. Our numbers were increasing until it reached two hundred detainees. They were all considered from the best men in the country, who were working and well-known scholars. The charges against us were fabricated and very bizarre, it suffices to prove one of them to push us to the gallows, according to the new laws."
However, it seems that Commander Dill was impressed with Nuh's personality, as he was brought from the prison to meet the British official, General Dill, and he was released after five months in prison.
Nuh continued to fight and grapple with colonialism and the Zionist movement on the one hand, and producing songs and chanting popular poems and songs on the other hand. Until these popular poems became a source of anger for the British colonialist, so they insisted on banning it. On February 22, 1938, the British Observer of Publications in Palestine, "Owne Meridette Tweedy," who was known for his exhaustion of Palestinian newspapers at the time, issued a decision prohibiting the publication or printing of his poems, and this is the text of resolution:
"Based on the authority vested in me as an observer of publications... According to the emergency system, I prohibit printing or publishing the bulletin containing the collection of Nuh Ibrahim's poems printed outside Palestine known as the “Nuh Ibrahim Collection” in Palestine."