This annotated Dialogue provides a rare glimpse into political discourse during the reign of
Sultan Abdülhamid II and an introduction to the little-known genre of Arabic political fiction.
The anonymous political pamphlet was written by supporters of the Husayni family in Gaza in the
mid-1890s and sent to the imperial government in Istanbul. The bitter political struggle taking
place between the Husayni camp and its opponents reached Istanbul at a time when Gaza's
factionalist struggle and political unrest were coming to a head and coincided with
Ottoman-British tensions over neighboring Egypt. As a result high-ranking officials in
Jerusalem Cairo and Istanbul became enmeshed in Gaza's affairs. The text takes the form of a
fictional dialogue between three Muslims: Wäiz ibn Nasuh the narrator a respected scholar
from Gaza and two young men from Gaza and Egypt he meets by chance on the beach outside the
city. As shown in the analysis most of the arguments presented in the text had been formulated
in a petition sent earlier from Gaza to Istanbul. Through its fictional form and quotes from
Arabic poetry the anonymous Dialogue integrates individual complaints into an overarching
narrative that reframes the local political conflict as a threat to the Empire at large and
turns Gaza in many respects a peripheral city into a vital component of the Ottoman
commonwealth.
