Suleiman Mousa

Suleiman Mousa (سليمان الموسى) (11 June 1919 – 9 June 2008) was a Jordanian author and historian born in Al-Rafeed, a small village north of the city of Irbid.

Suleiman Mousa was born to a Christian family in the village of Al Rafeed, in 1919; the village overlooks the Yarmouk River and is located 20 km north of Irbid.

The early death of his father, an unwealthy man with a passion for reading and writing, came as a shock to him, his mother and sister while Mousa was just six years old.

Leaving them little but a cane basket containing several books, his mother took up the task of securing the family's needs.

They lived a simple and spontaneous life as part of the village that depended mainly on agriculture for its survival.

After receiving his elementary education from religious scholars, Mousa moved to a small school known as Al Ta'ifa for three years.

As were his mother's ambitions, he was then sent to a governmental school in Al Husn (الحصن), where he resided at his relatives' until May 1934, when he was unable to continue into high school due to the family's limited income.

A few months later, at the age of sixteen, he took up the profession of teaching at the School of Irbid.

In 1936 he traveled to the city of Haifa in Palestine where he first began working.

After returning to Irbid and resuming his profession as a teacher for a brief period, he decided to make the journey to Jaffa (يافا) by train, which interconnected it with Damascus and was part of the Hejaz Railway built by the Ottoman Empire.

This journey had a significant impact on his cultural life as it was then that he started borrowing and purchasing books and novels from neighbouring libraries and fulfilling his passion of reading.

While the author was resident of Jaffa in 1937, his activities were expanded to English as well as Arabic history books and he purchased several books in English of which most important were The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Lawrence and The Arab Awakening, by George Antonius, which emerged in its first edition in 1938.

Mousa wrote in regard to his interest in English:

An Arab writer must, with no doubt, know a language – in addition to his mother tongue – if he wishes to keep up with the course of world cultures and interact with them.

He gradually learnt English using dictionaries, and published many articles in Palestinian newspapers as well as several short stories in 1938.

As time progressed, he found himself leaning closer towards books of literature and poetry and his fascination in history developed.

He returned in 1939 to Al Rafeed where he continued working in the field of education before becoming an employee in the Iraq Petroleum Company in Mafraq.

In 1943 he fulfilled a substantial commitment and married Georgette Nuseir whom he had met on a visit to Nazareth.

Mousa spent fifteen years in Mafraq and his publications were put close to a halt due to the inappropriate and illiterate environment he went through although he managed to publish a few short stories, articles and translations.

He wrote up to fifty books of which most prominent are Biography of Sharif Hussein Bin Ali, Jordan in the 1948 War, Great Arab Revolt, History of Jordan in the 20th century, and was the first and only Arab author to write about Lawrence of Arabia and show the Arab perspective.

Of the articles written by Suleiman Mousa in Jaffa that sparked widespread attention was an article published by the name "Lawrence on the balance" (لورنس في الميزان) in Al Adab (الآداب) magazine (November 1955) which discussed the book written by Richard Aldington called Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry, which had appeared in Britain earlier that year.

The idea of writing a book discussing the matter in an integrated manner from an Arab's perspective was based on the success the eight-page article received.

A major transformation in his life occurred when Mousa moved to Amman, the Jordanian capital, and began working in the Jordanian Broadcasting Company in 1957, turning to the work of the publications service and the Ministry of Information and Culture until 1984.

Mousa's first book Al Hussein Bin Ali and the Great Arab Revolt was published in 1957 where it was written when the author had been resident of Jaffa, Palestine in early 1939, when he was a mere nineteen years of age.

The printing of this book occurred after nearly seventeen years of its writing.

One of the most prominent works of Suleiman Mousa is T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View, which has been translated into English, French and Japanese.

This was a turning point for the author Mousa that has taken him to world fame.

He showed the Arab's point of view about battles and events of The Great Arab Revolt, and also came in response to the British book written by Lawrence himself, who did not give the Arabs their right to the full extent.

The author shows that Arabs fought in large numbers in the combat revolt against the Turkish rule for independence and freedom, and that they are the ones who fought and struggled, while Lawrence was merely an officer like any other in the British Army.

His book T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View was published in 1966 and translated into English, French and Japanese.

It was written after a study that had convinced him that although there were many books written to praise Lawrence and others written to discredit him, all of them exaggerated his part in the Arab Revolt and failed to do justice to the Arabs themselves.

During that period, he was the editor of the Jordanian magazine ‘Resalat Al Ordon’ (1966 to 1967).

Five years later, the first Arabic edition of the book was published by the name T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View (لورنس والعرب: وجهة نظر عربية) followed by the translations into English in 1966, French in 1973 and Japanese in 1988.

The book was translated into English by Dr. Albert Boutros, a professor of English at the University of Jordan.

Many Arab and Western references were used for its writing.

Mousa was visited by senior Western writers, including professors Colin Wilson and Jeremy Wilson.

To this day, his book remains the only one that shows the Arab viewpoint.

It has left a deep impact on all researchers interested in Lawrence.

Hence, the book has won global reputation, and became a reference to researchers about the subject of Lawrence and the Great Arab Revolt.

Later on, Suleiman Mousa spent more than four years as a cultural adviser in the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), from 1984 to 1988.