Amin al-Husseini

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (c. 1897–1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937, president of the Supreme Muslim Council, and the leading figure of the Arab Higher Committee during the 1936–1939 revolt. The English article describes him as a highly controversial figure and records that historians dispute whether his fierce opposition to Zionism was grounded in nationalism or antisemitism, or a combination of both ^{1 2}.

He was born in Jerusalem, son of Tahir al-Husayni, the city's mufti; his half-brother Kamil also held that office. His birth year is uncertain — the English article, citing Mattar, notes that he himself wrote both 1895 and 1896 on official documents, that proposed dates range from 1893 to 1897, and adopts circa 1897; the Arabic article and Wikidata give 1895. Educated at a Qur'an school, an Ottoman secondary school and a Catholic school in Jerusalem, he went to Cairo in 1912 and studied sharia briefly at al-Azhar and at Dar al-Da'wa wa-l-Irshad under Rashid Rida, whom the English article describes as his mentor until 1935. He served in the Ottoman army in the First World War and, after a period in Damascus supporting the Arab Kingdom of Syria, returned to Jerusalem ^{1 2}.

Sentenced for his role in the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and then pardoned, he was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by High Commissioner Herbert Samuel in 1921, a position he held until 1937, and presided over the Supreme Muslim Council. In 1937, evading a British arrest warrant for his part in leading the 1936–1939 revolt as head of the Arab Higher Committee, he fled to Lebanon and then to Iraq, where he supported the Rashid Ali coup of 1941 ¹.

From Iraq he moved to Fascist Italy and then to Nazi Germany, where, the English article records, he collaborated with the German government during the Second World War against Britain, met Adolf Hitler to request backing for Arab independence and opposition to a Jewish national home in Palestine, and took part in propaganda broadcasts and in recruiting for German-sponsored units; the article treats his knowledge of and role in the Holocaust, and the historiographical dispute over his motives, at length and with attribution. After the war he was held in France, escaped to Cairo, opposed the 1947 UN Partition Plan and Jordan's annexation plans, raised the Holy War Army for the 1948 war, and took part in the All-Palestine Government proclaimed in Gaza in September 1948. Sidelined after 1948 and further after the PLO's founding in 1964, he died in Beirut on 4 July 1974 and was buried there after Israel refused permission to bury him on the Haram ash-Sharif ¹.

No two independent texts name a school for him personally: the English article's infobox gives Sunni and Hanafi, the Arabic article files him under a Hanafi category, and Wikidata gives Islam. The Grand Mufti office is a role, and his teacher's school is not his attestation. His affiliation is therefore recorded as unknown ^{1 2 3}.