FRENCH PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM OF MANDATORY PALESTINE.

Rare images of black flags flown by Arabs as a sign of mourning for the Balfour Declaration.

[Photograph album, Palestine, c. 1925.] 163 photographs (from 65 x 90 mm. to 90 x 137 mm.), many with French manuscript annotations, mounted on 24 leaves, oblong large 4to (246 x 303 mm.). (Three loose, a few with small creases). Original cloth, string tie (a few small stains, slightly worn).

A LARGE AND IMPRESSIVE COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS OF MANDATORY PALESTINE. Opening with a shot of Alexandria and two of Beirut, the main focus of this album is Palestine, in particular Jerusalem but also encompassing Nazareth, Galilee and other rural areas. The 5 photographs of Jerusalem on the second page give a sense of the album in its entirety. These include: one of a Jewish funeral, one showing ‘la maison du comité de defense de l’Islam’ (‘the house of the committee for the defence of Islam’, headed by Amin al-Husseini), one showing a group gathered at a fountain, and two of the opening of the Hebrew University in 1925. The latter event was attended by Lord Balfour, whose declaration in 1917 signalled the British intention to see a permanent Jewish national home established in Palestine. Other photographs in the album depict the continuing Arab grief surrounding the Balfour Declaration: 5 shots labelled ‘Le pèlerinage de Nebi Mousa’ (the pilgrimage of Nebi Musa), show a host of black flags being flown flown in mourning for the Declaration – an act of symbolic Arab defiance against increasing Jewish immigration and the Zionist agenda.