Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Kamil Jamil Al-Asali was born in the Al-Thawri neighborhood in the occupied city of Jerusalem on November 29, 1925. He studied the basic stage at the Beisan School in the occupied city of Beisan in the Jordan Valley, and at the Acre School in the occupied city of Acre. He then moved to study at the Rashidiya School in Jerusalem, from which he obtained his high school diploma in 1943. He obtained the intermediate university certificate from the Arab College in Jerusalem in 1945, and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of London in 1950. He studied at the Institute of Law in Jerusalem in 1951, and obtained a doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University in Berlin in 1967.
He worked as a teacher in Kuwaiti schools for a year, as an editor and broadcaster at Jordanian Radio, as a history teacher at Al-Rashidiyah School, as an education inspector at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in 1952, as a teacher at Khadouri Agricultural School in Tulkarm, as an editor and producer at Voice of the Arabs Radio in Cairo, and also worked at German Radio until 1968. He was then appointed as the director of the University of Jordan Library, where he worked between 1968 and 1983. He was the first general manager of the Abdul Hamid Shoman Library in Amman, and joined the Deanship of Scientific Research at the University of Jordan in 1982.
Al-Asali participated in the defense of Jerusalem during the 1948 war and was harassed by the Jordanian authorities in the 1950s, which prompted him to leave Jordan and settle in Egypt. When he was allowed to return to Jordan in the late 1960s, he devoted himself to writing history, with Jerusalem at the heart of his research interests. He spent a long time collecting Mamluk and Ottoman records of Jerusalem. He participated in more than thirty scientific conferences in more than one country around the world and gave a number of specialized lectures on the history of Jerusalem.
He produced a number of historical studies and research papers, publishing them in several specialized Jordanian journals, including Risalat al-Maktaba, Al-Quds al-Sharif, and Dirasat (Humanities). He contributed to the first edition of the Palestinian Encyclopedia in both its sections and participated in the Turkish Islamic Encyclopedia. He also worked on translating the Holy Quran into English. His publications include: Excerpts on Books, Reading, and Libraries (1977), Institutes of Knowledge in Jerusalem (1981), Manuscripts on the Virtues of Jerusalem (1981), Our Ancestors in the Soil of Jerusalem (1981), From Our Antiquities in Jerusalem (1983), Historical Documents of Jerusalem (3 volumes, 1983, 1985, 1989), The Heritage of Palestine in the Writings of Abdullah Mukhlis (1986), The Status of Jerusalem in the History of Arabs and Muslims (1988), Jerusalem in Travelogues of Arabs and Muslims (1992), The Role of Libraries in Jerusalem (1980), The Antiquities and Manuscripts of Jerusalem (1982), and The Scholar Khalil Al-Khalidi: 1863 – 1941: His Life and Scientific Career from His Papers and Private Letters (1988), The Season of the Prophet Moses in Palestine: The History of the Season and the Shrine (1990), and An Introduction to the History of Medicine in Jerusalem from the Earliest Times until 1988 (1994).
Al-Asali translated a number of books and research papers, including: Islamic Weights and Measures (from German, 1970), Radical Transformations in Palestine (from German, 1988), and Jerusalem in History (translation and editing, 1992). A book about his life and scholarly efforts was published: “Kamil al-Asali, the Jerusalemite Scholar and the Jerusalem Issue: Research Papers from a Special Study Symposium in Jerusalem” (1996), the book “Jerusalem in the Heritage of Kamil al-Asali” (1998), and the study “Researchers’ Efforts and Interest in Institutes of Science in Jerusalem: Kamil al-Asali as a Model” (2013). His memory was also commemorated in more than one symposium, including the symposium organized by the University of Jordan under the title “Kamil al-Asali: The Academic, Administrator, and Human Being” (2008). His family established the “Kamil al-Asali Prize for Jerusalem Studies” to be awarded to the best distinguished scientific research on Jerusalem.
Al-Asali received a number of awards and honorary medals, including: the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Award (1982), and the Jerusalem Medal for Culture, Literature and Arts (1990).
He died in Amman on October 27, 1995, and was buried there.
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