Qaimaqam of Nazareth

Al-Asali’s career in government started with his appointment as the qaimaqam (district governor) of Nazareth in 1910.^[9] During his term, he attempted but failed to prevent the sale of the village lands of al-Fula and Afula, amounting to 2,500 acres, by Elias Sursuq to a Zionist activist (see Sursock Purchase).^[10] The large land sale raised ire not only in Palestine, but also in Damascus and Beirut, because of the high quality of the land and the Saladin-era fortress located within it.^[10]

Member of Parliament

Al-Asali resigned as qaimaqam to contest a seat in the Ottoman Parliament during a by-election precipitated by the death of Damascene parliamentarian Muhammad Ajlani.^[9][11] The constitution and parliament had been suspended by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1877 but was reinstated by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) which seized power in 1908; this permitted political activists such as al-Asali an opportunity to express their grievances and nationalist views.^[8] As a deputy in parliament al-Asali was “a forceful advocate of Arab rights and came to lead the Syrian ‘liberal opposition’ in Parliament”, according to historian Philip S. Khoury.^[12]

He condemned the alleged reticence of the CUP to appoint Arabs to high-ranking administrative posts;^[13] no government ministers or provincial governors were Arabs and one percent of high-ranking bureaucratic posts were filled by Arabs.^[14] He raised this matter backed by the aforementioned statistics in a parliamentary debate on 5 April 1911 and was lauded for it by activists in Damascus and Beirut and the Syrian community in Cairo.^[15] The Syrian intellectual Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar stated that al-Asali had done away with the image of meek Arab parliamentarians who simply stood by state policies without a voice of their own.^[15] The speech had no practical effect in changing policy.^[15] However, it was significant because it meant that Arab grievances could no longer be simply overlooked by the government.^[15] In contrast, the Turkish press condemned al-Asali for “perfidy” and “hypocrisy”, to which al-Asali responded by asserting his loyalty to the Ottoman state and sultan while reaffirming his position that Arabs were being underrepresented.^[15]

Al-Asali also used his platform to criticize the CUP’s perceived weakness in confronting Zionist expansion in Palestine.^[13] According to historian Louis Fishman, on the latter subject, al-Asali “was in some senses the most effective speaker, focusing concretely on how Zionists were able to achieve dominance”.^[16] Al-Asali asserted that Jews moving to Palestine were adopting Ottoman citizenship whilst maintaining the citizenship of their countries of origin which proved useful in case of legal troubles.^[16] Moreover, he stressed that the growing Jewish community in Palestine was totally autonomous of the Ottoman state, possessed a growing arsenal of firearms and were in the process of slowly gaining control of rural villages, particularly in the subdistricts of Safad, Tiberias, Jaffa and Jerusalem.^[16]

In August and December 1911, al-Asali renewed his criticism of the CUP, accusing it of wearing the foundations of the empire through its autocratic governance and dismissiveness towards non-Turks.^[17] He further accused the CUP of brutality in its suppression of popular disturbances in the Hauran and al-Karak and for failing to prevent the Italian invasion of Libya.^[17] He later called for some of its leaders and the pro-CUP ex-prime minister Hakki Pasha to face trial for allegedly neglecting their duties to protect Tripolitania province.^[18]

Al-Asali’s parliamentary activism effectively galvanized Syrian-Arab opposition to the CUP.^[13] Parliament was dissolved in early 1912.^[18] He subsequently lost in the parliamentary elections of April 1912.^[8] Al-Asali's defeat was attributed to his disloyalty to the CUP, which was accused of vote rigging.^[8]

Later political activism

In March 1913, al-Asali turned down an offer to serve as mutesarrif (district governor) of Latakia by Hazim Bey, the governor of Beirut Vilayet.^[18] According to historian Sami Moubayed, this was an attempt by the CUP to persuade al-Asali to tone down his criticism of the CUP’s policies.^[1] Al-Asali stated that he sought reform not a post given to him by a government that opposed such reform.^[19]

Al-Asali had become an early member of the secretive Arab Renaissance Society,^[8] founded prior to the CUP coup. Following the coup, it evolved into an open forum for political and cultural expression.^[20] Following his defeat, al-Asali founded and became the editor of the ardently Arabist Al Qabas newspaper which first appeared in 1913^[21] and called for greater autonomy for the Arabic-speaking provinces of the empire.^[5]

Though al-Asali supported the CUP’s secular and modernist reforms of Ottoman society, he opposed their vision of a Turkish-centric culture to be enforced upon the whole empire.^[22] Instead, al-Asali advocated that the citizens of the non-Turkish provinces, such as Syria, reserved the right to culturally express themselves on their own terms and in their native language.^[22]