Birth: NULL/NULL/1888 Death:NULL/NULL/1949
Born in Hebron to a Sephardic mother and a Damascene silk merchant, Eliahu Sarwi (known as Ash-Shami); was educated in local schools in Hebron and at the Ezra Teacher Training College in Hebron; taught Arabic and Hebrew in government and religious schools in Hebron, Jerusalem, Damascus and Haifa; early in his career rebelled against the Orthodox Jewish community in Hebron and moved to Jerusalem; started publishing his literary work in 1903, with investigative reports on Bir Saba and Transjordan; was opposed by the Hebrew writers movement for being a “nativist”; wrote essays in Hebrew and Arabic on Palestinian theater, Islamic history and pedagogy; his most important work is a novel, “Vengeance of the Fathers”, set in the Nebi Musa pilgrimage in Nablus and Hebron; his works of fiction include “The Barren Wife”, “Jum’a al Ahbal”, and “Yamama”; his collected short stories appeared in Hebrew and English after his death under the title “Hebron Stories” (published by Labyrinthos, 2000); died in Haifa in 1949.
