Our Status in the Country, or the Question of Learning Arabic

Born in Safed to a rabbinical family of Tunisian heritage, Nissim Malul moved to Egypt in 1900. After pursuing his university education at the American College of Tanta and Egyptian University in philosophy and Arabic literature, Malul began his literary career by writing for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Muqaṭṭam. Around the age of eighteen, he was appointed to teach Hebrew at the Egyptian University (today Cairo University), becoming the first person in the country to teach Hebrew at the university level. After returning to Palestine in 1911, he accepted a post as a translator in the Zionist Office in Jaffa. Together with Esther Azhari Moyal and Simon Moyal, Malul helped found the short-lived pro-Ottoman Arabic periodical Sawt al-‘Uthmaniyya (1914) and the Ha-Magen association, both of which focused on promoting a shared Jewish-Arab culture and homeland in Palestine within a shared Ottoman civic identity. When he was expelled from Palestine during World War I, Malul returned to Egypt and joined the Jewish battalion of the British Army. He eventually returned to Palestine, after living for a time in Iraq. Malul translated Hebrew books and pamphlets into Arabic and wrote two plays in Arabic.