Yusuf Dia Pasha al-Khalidi (1842–1906; , ) was a prominent Ottoman politician who served as mayor of Jerusalem during several non-consecutive terms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early life and education Al-Khalidi was born in Jerusalem in 1842. His father, al-Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Khalidi, served as deputy qadi and chief of the Jerusalem Sharia court secretariat in Jerusalem for about fifty years. Members of the Khalidi family, one of the two politically prominent, old families of the local nobility (the other being the al-Husayni family), continuously held the office through the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the Husayni family was larger and wealthier, the Khalidis were more united and noted for their intellect. As a teenager, al-Khalidi may have been influenced by the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856. At the age of 17, he wrote of his thoughts about the state of the world, personal dignity and the individual's quest to become free, in the context of meditations on why the Ottoman Empire was being increasingly surrounded by European powers pilfering the region of its wealth and identified the cause of the situation to be the disparity in knowledge between the region and Europe. The interests of the country could only be defended by dropping frivolous studies and acquiring scientific, historical and philosophical knowledge. Yousef's initial requests to receive an education in Egypt was turned down because he lacked an invitation from that country and his father rebuffed his proposal that he be educated in Europe. Afterward he and his cousin Husayn left Jerusalem without the family's permission and reached Malta where they were enrolled into the Protestant college through the mediation of the Anglican bishop Gobat of Jerusalem. There, he studied English and French, and then continued to study Semitic languages in the Oriental Academy of Vienna. Yousef's brother Yasin persuaded him after two years in the Protestant college to attend the Imperial Medical School in Constantinople, capital of the Empire. Yousef was dissatisfied with his time at the medical school after a year, finding no "salvation, he enrolled in an American Protestant missionary school outside of the capital, Robert College." He remained there for a year and a half before returning to Jerusalem because of the death of his father. Career Al-Khalidi played a key role in the opposing political factions established to prohibit the Ottoman Empire's attempts to violate the constitution. He also wrote the