Hanna Abdallah Giacaman from Bethlehem, aged 82, discussing the Ottoman period and World War I

Item

Title
Hanna Abdallah Giacaman from Bethlehem, aged 82, discussing the Ottoman period and World War I
Description
Hanna Abdallah Giacaman (82 years old, born 1922 from Bethlehem) interviewed by Saba al-Khoury on 26 June 2004. He discusses the following: World War I and Ottoman rule in Bethlehem; Ottomans never opened schools, only churches provided schooling and the Ottomans would prohibit Muslims from joining them; the Ottomans levied taxes but did not use them to support local infrastructure – all the money went to Istanbul; Muslims were drafted into the army, Christians had to pay a tax for exemption but this changed in World War 1 when they started drafting everyone, even people above the age of 40; 95% of the men conscripted into the army were killed but some escaped or managed to survive; the removal of so many local men from the workforce was one of the factors behind the starvation of World War I; another factor was that the Ottomans took a lot of the local crops; people lived off foraging and picking barley out of horse manure; discusses the locust plague; during the cholera outbreak the Ottomans used to kill the sick; people fled conscription; different people were deployed in different ways for the war effort. Original audio recording: cassette tape. Transcript: summary. In the original collection at Bethlehem University this cassette tape was categorised as File 1 of Box 12.
Identifier
pb_bu_wwi_7271168
Subject
Bethlehem
Palestine
Palestinian Diaspora
Ottoman Empire and World War I collection
World War I in Bethlehem
Bethlehem oral history
Ottoman Empire in Bethlehem
Locust plague 1915
Bethlehem University
License
CC BY 4.0
Creator
Saba al-Khoury
Contributor
Adnan Musallam
Niveen Hazboun
Laila Ayyad
Yacoub Alatrash
Date
26/06/2004
Type
Digital reproduction of cassette tape and handwritten transcript
Source
Bethlehem University
Language
Arabic
Spatial Coverage
31.7053996/ 35.1936877
Rights Holder
Bethlehem University