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Al Owais Cultural Foundation Releases the Book "Palestinian Folklore"

Al Owais Cultural Foundation has releases the book "Palestinian Folklore – a fingerprint to root the identity" by Dr. Ramadhan Abdul Hadi within Al Quds Arab Culture Capital 2009 celebration; the author approaches in his book the invasions that Palestine has faced, especially the Crusades and their intellectual and cultural effects on the national and public People heritage, resulting in various types of folklore and creating popular resistance literature.
Through an abundant introduction, the author describes the history of Palestine, the land, the roots, the culture and the Islamic conquest during the key stages Palestine went through from the Umayyad and Abbasid rules to the present. A major chapter of the book is devoted to the crusades and the impact of the two poles of Christianity in each of Constantinople and the Vatican on the events in Palestine.
The book elaborately explains the conditions of Christians in Jerusalem before the crusader invasion, where Palestine lived through different eras and paid a heavy price because of its strategic geography as being in the very center of the ancient world. The writer consider the era of the European Frankish danger, known as Crusades, as the most difficult period in the history of Palestine, with its colonial visions that later led to the birth of the Balfour Declaration which gave the Jews the "right" to establish a Jewish state on the Palestinian land, the thing that increased the suffering of its people from the killing, displacement and catastrophe.
The second half of the book, the author has devoted to the meaning of folklore and what it is, through examining the origin of folklore as a European term, whose meaning was defined by the English researcher William John Toffer, then the decision of the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo to use the term "Public heritage" as an alternative for the European word "folklore". The author discusses the emergence of folklore and the use of this term by Western scientists, including the German Jacob and Wilhalm Graeme between 1807 and 1814. The author provides many documented examples on the authenticity of the Palestinian folklore and how it cannot be fabricated, especially public folklore, as do the Jews now when stealing Palestinian folklore and attributing popular Palestinian dishes, some fashion, folk dance and others to themselves. The author also points to the role of Salah Eddin Al Ayyoubi and his most outstanding deeds after the liberation of Jerusalem, namely, the housing of the Arab tribes and inventing the idea of seasons to stabilize the Palestinian identity; and among the most important season were: season of the Prophet Musa, season of the Prophet Rubin, and the season of the Prophet Saleh.
The author confirms that the revolutions have affected the Palestinian folklore, including the Al Buraq revolution, the revolution of 1936 and then came The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948. He picks up some poems that strengthen the national identity by prominent poets like: Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al Qasim, Moen Bseiso, Haroun Hashim Rashid and others. The author devotes an entire chapter to the different types of expression and folklore in Palestine, such as music, popular songs and dancing since the beginning of the twentieth century, specifically in the thirties and forties decades, just before the Catastrophe and the mingling of this professional musical type with the Bedouin, eastern and Egyptian color due to the common geographical nature. Among the popular songs, he mentions: Al Tarweedah, Al Haddadi, Al Dalona, Reedaha and Al Samir. The popular song has many functions in Palestine, including ideological and social functions. There is also the Palestinian dress: Majdalawi, Shroogi, Sabawi Marqoum, Dajani and Jalabiyah. The author includes, at the end of his book, a colection of pictures, including uniforms, maps and models of money, pottery among other things.