Palestine, Our Homeland: Volume Two: The Gaza Region

Mustapha Murad al-Dabbagh (1897-1989), was born in Jaffa. He completed his elementary education at the Amiriyya School in Jaffa and his secondary education at the Maktab Sultani in Beirut. In 1915 he was summoned for military service in the Ottoman army as a reserve officer. He underwent military training in the town of Baalbek (Lebanon) and then was sent to a military barracks in Istanbul. At the end of World War I, he joined the staff of Sharif Hussein and worked for more than a year in Hijaz. When Britain occupied Palestine, he returned to Jaffa in 1919 to work in education, first as a teacher and then as headmaster of the Government School in Hebron. He moved to Jerusalem in 1925 to teach social studies at the Teachers’ College and then became deputy inspector of education in Nablus and Gaza (1927–33) and finally inspector of education in Jaffa (1933–40), in Nablus (1940–45), and again in Jaffa (1945–48). He held several positions, few of which: Deputy to the director general of the Jordanian Education Ministry (1950); Director general of that ministry in 1954; Director of Education in Qatar (1959–61).