My Little Sanctuary: History

Dar Al Hayat newspaper is publishing episodes from The Ethic Cleansing of Palestine by the Israeli writer Ilan Pappé . They published four episodes so far, and another four are yet to come. Episode 1. Episode 2. Episode 3. Episode 4.

Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli revisionist historian and senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University, called by some as "the most hated Jew in Israel". He is the author of numerous books, including A History of Modern Palestine, The Modern Middle East, The Israel/Palestine Question and, most recently, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published in 2006.

Ilan Pappe, while studying history, digged deep in the archives in Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom, learned more about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and found out that what they taught him in Israel was not the only truth. Learning the other side of the story, he came up with a conclusion that this side is the one who's more likely to be stating "facts".

This interview tells more about Ilam Pappe. and so does this one:

I never was a coin collector, but my grandfather was . Throughout his life, he managed to get a valuable collection of more that 350 coins from different parts of the world some of which are very ancient and quite interesting.

Years ago, when granddaddy showed me the box of coins, I couldn't hide my amazement and excitement as we started digging into the box; for it was more like digging into history and geography.

The treasure box, as I used to call it, contains coins that are hundreds of years old, from almost every country on the planet: Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Libya, Tunis, Algeria, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, United States of America, United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Spain, Cyprus, Russia, Nigeria, Malta, even China and Japan, and many other countries whose language I couldn't understand, so I failed to figure out where do these coins come from.

I could spend hours exploring the box, and examining the coins that have many stories to tell. Each coin is a story by itself; it takes us back in history to different ages and eras, reminds us of remarkable historic figures, leaders and events, or even introduces us to new facts and information.

Realizing this great interest I had in it, my grandfather, God bless his soul, decided to offer me the box before he passed away. Yay! Now the treasure box is all mine!

Yesterday, I accidentally came across the box, so I decided to scan some of the coins and blog them. I hope you find this interesting as much as I do.

As I mentioned before, there are hundreds of years old coins that belong to various epochs. Some are too old that no date or any kind of writing can be shown on them. Others belong to 1770's, 1800's, 1910's, 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60', 70's, up to 80's and 90's. Click on the images to enlarge.

Apparently, these are the oldest. I wonder to what time do they belong.

The oldest one ,whose date is recognized, belongs to the year 1773.

1861. Napoleon III.

These three belong the Uthmany era, two of them dated 1223, and another dated 1255, Hijri of course. Now we are in the year 1427 Hijri, which makes the coins more than 200 years old.

This one also belongs to the Uthmani Khilafah, dated 1327, a hundred years old. With the words (liberty-equality-justice) emblazoned on it. Yeah right! :D

حريت- مساوات-عدالت بالتاء المفتوحة

و: دولة عثمانية، على الجهة الثانية من القطعة النقدية.

1917. Hussain Kamel, that's what's written in Arabic on one side of the coin, which makes this coin too belong to the Othmani era. Hussain Kamel is one of the Turkish Sultans, the son of Al khedewy Ismael, ruled Egypt from from 1914 till 1917.

Syrian coins. dated:1921, 1929 and 1935.

very old lebanese coins.

. لبنان الكبير

The State of Greater Lebanon that was proclaimed in 1920.

I tried hardly to photoshop this picture, to make it more clear, but with no success.

Anyway, this is the only coin that I found from Palestine. On one side of the coin the word Palestine is written in three languages, Arabic, English and Hebrew. On the other side, there's the date "1942".

The United Arab Republic which was announced on February 1st, 1958, after Egypt and Syria were united.These three coins belong to that period of time: 1958,1967 and 1970.

As you can notice, the one in the middle has the picture of Jamal Abdel Naser.

At another one there's the statement:

تذكار سوق الانتاج الصناعي والزراعي