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Hamza al-Aqrabawi was not merely a historian. He was a guardian of memory, a son of the mountains, and a keeper of Palestine’s soul.
Born in Aqraba, southeast of Nablus, Hamza grew up among olive groves and stone terraces that shaped both his curiosity and his calling. The mountains that overlook the Mediterranean to the west and the Jordan Valley to the east were not just landscapes to him, they were living witnesses.
From them, he learned that land holds stories, and that stories must be protected.
He walked valleys others overlooked. He climbed peaks others feared. He sat with elders until their memories became ink. He believed that when an elder dies, it is like a library burning, so he raced against time to save what he could.
Through his research, hikes, and storytelling initiatives, Hamza turned folklore into documented truth and memory into resistance. He preserved nearly two centuries of archives, including rare documents from the Ottoman era and the British Mandate, and curated more than 900 historical records of his hometown for the Palestinian Digital Museum.
Yet he never treated knowledge as something to hoard. His archive was open, generous, just like him.
He called on young Palestinians to walk their land.
“If you don’t know your country, how can you love it?” he would ask.
And if you don’t love it, how can you defend it?
Alongside activist Basil al-Araj, he helped shape a living tradition of oral archiving by reviving memory as an act of steadfastness.
Where others saw hills and ruins, Hamza saw chapters. Where others saw silence, he heard echoes.
He was Abu Osama , a father of four, husband, son, friend.
A man whose voice could quiet a crowd.
A storyteller who made stones speak.
When his life was suddenly taken by the waters of the Nile, it felt as though a great mountain had fallen. But mountains do not disappear. They remain steadfast, sheltering, enduring.
Hamza once said that a person is born a storyteller. What he may not have known is that some storytellers become stories themselves. These are stories that outlive time, borders, and erasure.
Hamza al-Aqrabawi walked the land so it would not forget its people.
Now it is our turn to carry his words forward.
Cite:
https://english.noonpost.com/p/palestine-bids-farewell-to-its-storyteller
