A mansion built by Jerusalem’s most notorious mufti slated to become a synagogue

The Mufti’s Palace in 1933. Creative Commons image.

JERUSALEM — Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the notorious mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s and 1930s who spent much of World War II in Berlin as a Nazi collaborator and war criminal, must be spinning in his grave. Religion Unplugged has learned that the landmark hilltop mansion he built 88 years ago in the affluent Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood between the Old City and Mount Scopus is slated to become a synagogue in a future 56-apartment Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem. 

Sheikh Jarrah remains a majority Palestinian neighborhood, but increasing numbers of Jewish Israeli settlers have moved in with Israeli courts ruling the land belonged to Jews before the state of Israel and an Arab takeover in 1948. It’s a quiet district with lush gardens, consulates and diplomats, upscale restaurants and religious archeological sites.

The 500-square-meter manor house, called Qasr al-Mufti (the Mufti's Palace) in Arabic, today stands deserted at the center of a largely completed 28-apartment complex that lacks the needed occupancy permit. The reason the new neighborhood is not being finished – and indeed has not been marketed in the 10 years since demolition and construction began – is that the developers have applied to rezone the site to double the number of units to 56, according to Daniel Luria, a spokesman for Ateret Cohanim, which backs the housing project and is an Israeli settler organization.

Luria does not know when the rezoning application, originally meant to build 70 apartments, would be approved. The historic house at the core of the site will be preserved and repurposed for communal needs including a synagogue and perhaps a day care center, he said.

“There is a beautiful poetic justice when you see the house of Hajj Amin al-Husseini crumbling down,” Luria said.

The housing complex under construction that surrounds the Mufti Palace. Photo courtesy of Daniel Luria.

Though al-Husseini built the mansion, he never lived in it. Following the outbreak in 1936 of the Arab Revolt against the British Mandate government, the mufti became a fugitive hiding in the Old City’s Haram ash-Sharif. When the British attempted to arrest him in 1937 he fled Palestine, and the British confiscated his property instead. The al-Husseini clan owned numerous properties in Jerusalem, among them the Palace Hotel (today the Waldorf Astoria), the Orient House, and the mansion, subsequently turned into the Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah on a plot of land known as Karam al-Mufti (the Mufti's Vineyard), named for al-Husseini. 

Among the occupants at the mansion were his secretary George Antonius (1891-1942), who wrote his seminal “The Arab Awakening” while living there in 1938. Antonius’s widow Katy continued living in the building, which functioned as a salon where wealthy Palestinian Arabs and British officials socialized. (The city’s British sports club had a "No Natives" policy.)

At one of her elegant soirees in 1946 she met Sir Evelyn Barker. The much-decorated general was General Officer Commanding of the British forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan from 1946 to 1947. The two carried on a torrid affair and exchanged Judeophobic love letters. In April 1947, he wrote her about the Jews: "Yes I loathe the lot – whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them. It’s time this damned race knew what we think of them – loathsome people".

On April 13, 1948, British troops posted at the mansion and the nearby Police Academy refused to intervene for eight hours as a convoy of doctors and nurses headed to Hadassah Hospital came under withering fire from Arab fighters. Seventy-eight Jews died in the massacre.

The Shepherd Hotel in 1948. Creative Commons image.

The Shepherd Hotel shortly before its demolition in 2011. Photo courtesy of Daniel Luria.

Following the War of Independence, the al-Husseini mansion became the Shepherd Hotel in the now-divided and impoverished city, though it was eclipsed by the Hotel Jerusalem Intercontinental, today called the Seven Arches, which opened on the Mount of Olives in 1964. After the 1967 Six Day War when Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem from Jordan, the hotel was taken over by the Custodian of Absentee Property.

In 1985, it was sold to C and M Properties Ltd. owned by Florida bingo hall billionaire Irving Moskowitz (1928-2016), the benefactor of right-wing Israeli settler groups intent on housing Jews in the eastern side of the now united city.

Following the zoning of Plan 2591, a request was made on Nov. 6, 2008 to permit the company to build two new residential blocks including 28 apartments on top of an underground parking lot. In January 2011, the derelict four-story Shepherd Hotel annex added on to the mufti’s original mansion was demolished to make way for the future housing.

Rather than begin the lengthy process of rezoning the site – which adjoins the British Consulate – for a higher density, it was decided to build what was legally permitted and later apply to amend the zoning, Luria explained. 

“Ateret Cohanim is not involved in the building project but we have an interest in strengthening Jewish roots in and around the Old City,” he said.

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto, Canada and moved to Jerusalem, Israel in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine, and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.