THE INVENTION OF PALESTINE Zachary J. Foster A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCEBY THE DEPARTMENT OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES [Adviser: Cyrus Schayegh] November 2017 © Copyright by Zachary J. Foster, 2017. All rights reserved.! ABSTRACTPalestine exists in our minds, not in nature. If Palestine doesn’t exist, why do we identifywith it? We identify with Palestine, first, because it has a name. In fact, we only identifywith places we’ve named. Unnamed places, such as 22°29′05″N 22.48 to 53°46′19″E53.77, have no identities based on them. But we don’t identify with every place we’venamed. We need to hear stories about a place if we are going to identify with it, storiesabout famines and wars, conquests and tribes, history, geography, economy, archeologyand millions more topics. The more engaging the stories, the more likely we are toidentify with places like Palestine. We also make maps of places like Palestine. The moremaps we make, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine as well.Finally, we distinguish Palestine from other places. We exaggerate its glory and beautyand claim we have a special relationship to it. This dissertation explains when, how andwhy it all happened. iii TABLE OF CONTENTSAbstract…………………………………………………………………...iiiTable of Contents……......….……….………......…………………….….ivAcknowledgments……......….……….………......…………………….…vTables and Figures....……………………………………………………xviIntroduction......……………………………………………………………1Chapter 1: Who Cares about Palestine?……………………….…………..8Chapter 2: The Origins of Palestine…………………………...………….49Chapter 3: The Pre-Modern World……………………………………….94Chapter 4: The Modern World………………………………………......152Conclusion…………………………………………………….................220Bibliography……………………………………………………..............226Appendix 1…………………………………………………….................275 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI owe the most thanks to my advisor, Cyrus Schayegh. He always advised me to thinkbigger. Based on the scope of this dissertation, he might now be regretting that advice. Iwould also like to thank my committee members, Michael Cook, Johnathan Gribetz andZayde Antrim. This dissertation would not have been awarded had you not willinglysubjected yourselves to a summer of tortuous misery. Bill Petrich provided wonderfuleditorial guidance and Christine Lindner saved me from many embarrassing errors. Nextin line to thank is the true inspiration behind the dissertation: Lady Gaga. Without havinglistened to Just Dance on repeat for 10,000 hours, this dissertation would have nevercome to completion. [To diversify my neurological stimulations, I also listed to PokerFace and Bad Romance.]Acknowledgements are usually the most interesting parts of dissertations. They are wellsof information about advisors, friendship circles, networks of patronage and bodily fluidsthat have circulated around the field. An old college friend happened to peak over myshoulder one Saturday afternoon while I was drafting these words. “You are alreadywriting your acknowledgements months before your dissertation is due?” he asked indisbelief. I said: “I’m an idiot for starting this late. This is the only part of the dissertationanyone’s going to read.”My dissertation did not begin in the Pleistocene millions of years ago. It began in a smallcorner of the Ottoman Empire and was intended to span only a few years of history. vSensibly, my advisor rejected the proposal on the grounds that it was too obscure.Apparently—and this came as quite a shock to me—not enough people cared about pricefluctuations, disease rates and death counts in the Levant from 1914-1918. I confessed tohim that, as an academic, my assumed place in the universe was extreme irrelevance, buthe pushed me to ask questions that other people cared about too. I insisted that, as anacademic, my main interest in life was myself, not anything external to me.In 2015, I was supposed to present a paper on the 1915 locust attack in Syria andPalestine in Hebrew, a language I spoke with great impoverishment at the time. So Istarted to binge watch lectures of an obscure historian of medieval Europe, Yuval Harari.The lectures were part of a course Harari taught at Hebrew University that covered allhuman history since Homo Sapiens departed Africa ~100,000 years ago. The book basedon the lecture series, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, is fascinating, and hascollected endorsements from Richard Price, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and BarackObama. His lectures have shaped my thinking about how history can and should bewritten. Much like Schayegh, Harari clearly thought historians should consider the biggerpicture. I’d like to acknowledge him for those lectures—and for reading an earlier draftof my introduction. This is important to acknowledge, not because he offered muchfeedback—but because it means Yuval Harari read an earlier version of my introduction.11 For his most popular youtube lecture, see “Historiya ‘Olamit – Shi‘ur 1” uploaded 14 February 2011,goo.gl/7nzl9B; on the Gates endorsement, see Bill Gates, “How Did Humans Get Smart?” GatesNotes 17May, 2016 (goo.gl/uUUKDb); on the Zuckerberg endorsement, see Richard Feloni, “Why MarkZuckerberg wants everyone to read an Israeli historian's book about the human race,” Business Insider 16June 2015 (goo.gl/tiZeqE); on Barack Obama’s endorsement, see (goo.gl/5krqie) viI’d also like to emphasize my great indebtedness to all the archivists and librarians I’vemet over the past six years who are important to acknowledge to show I in fact visitedarchives and libraries—even though I can’t remember any of their names and they playedno role in the dissertation at all. At least one of them deserves special thanks: the guy atthe Lebanese National Archives who offered me three coffees and a free copy of a bookabout the Tripoli Islamic court records, but not access to the court records themselves.How could I have forgotten the extreme political sensitivity of 18th century marriagerecords and waqf property repairs. Later, I discovered the entire collection digitized andbrowsable at the ISAM library in Istanbul. Lol.I would also like to acknowledge the guy I met on a fall 2014 afternoon circulating thecavernous alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City on a hunt for the Khalidi Library. The guymistakenly thought I was part of the Khalidi family, a mistake I neglected to correct. Itgot me access to browse the library’s uncatalogued shelves. The Khalidis assumed myArabic was “heritage” Arabic (it is not), although they seemed shocked to discover howquickly their language deteriorated in the diaspora. The whole experience wasexhilarating, not because of anything I found in the library, but because I got to pretend tobe a member of the Khalidi family.Being a member of the family got me in the door, but it didn’t get me access toeverything. I asked multiple times to see the personal papers of Yusuf Diya Pasha al-Khalidi and Ruhi al-Khalidi, two late 19th century intellectuals whose papers werehoused in the library. Strangely, the library staff insisted no such papers existed. So I viipulled out my copy Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity and flipped to page 267, whichread: “Unpublished sources: In the Khalidiyya Library, Jerusalem.” Several of Yusuf andRuhi’s letters were on the list. At that point, things got awkward. I was told the files werein the Beirut branch of the library. I politely told the librarian on staff that there was nobranch of the Khalidiyya library in Beirut. Incidentally, he knew that. I haven’t beenallowed back since.Most historians of the Middle East have similar stories. It’s a hostile place to do research.Decades of civil war in Lebanon, a legacy of massacres, forced displacement, expulsionand discrimination in Israel, controversy in the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem,political and religious violence in Egypt, autocracy in Syria, Jordan and Egypt and alegacy of genocide in Turkey have made authorities in the Middle East suspicious ofhistorians.Arabic was useful in the Khalidiyya Library but less so at the library of the ArmenianPatriarchate in Jerusalem, and my Armenian was abysmal at the time. I knew three-quarters of the alphabet, and the word Tagavor, which means king, I think. My plan togain access to the library’s rich collection was to spot the word Tagavor someplace onthe wall and let the librarians marvel in my profound mastery of Armenian. The planfailed: when the time came, I forgot the word, Tagavor.These experiences were par for the course among historians of the Middle East. BesharaDoumani described his door to door campaign in Nablus in the 1980s tracking downfamily papers and property deeds in a 2014 episode of the popular radio show, The viiiOttoman History Podcast. Hanna Abu Hanna traveled to Buqei’a, Beit Jala, Haifa, Jaffa,Rameh and Egypt looking for the descendants of the graduates of the Russian Teacher’sSeminary who studied there from 1886-1914, collecting papers in their possession.Jonathan Gribetz dedicated a chapter of his delightful book Defining Neighbors to Ruhial-Khalidi’s 1913 manuscript on Zionism, also not open to the public. Salim Tamari hasfound and published a small library of diaries and memoirs from the late Ottoman andMandate periods written by ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Ihsan Turjaman, Khalil Sakakini and WasifJawhariyya. His resourcefulness should itself be the subject of research. Stamina andcreativity have proven essential to writing Middle East history.2It’s also worth acknowledging that history has not always been so unkind to privilegedhistorians. Zionist librarians went door to door during and after the 1948 War to collectbooks left behind by Palestinian Arabs expelled from their homes by Zionists or who leftout of fear of being expelled by them, or who left because a war was engulfing the entirecountry. The collection, known as the Abandoned Books, includes tens of thousands ofpublished volumes and hundreds of manuscripts from all periods of Ottoman rule. It isthe closest thing that exists to the collected literary heritage of the Palestinians, inpossession of the State of Israel. This dissertation would have been much differentwithout the Abandoned Books; it would have been much worse. Some of the discoveriesin chapters three and four—such as Ramla’s underappreciated importance in the historyof Palestine—and the importance of the Russian Teacher’s Seminary in Nazareth in2 On Doumani, see “Writing the History of Palestine and the Palestinians,” Beshara Doumani and ChrisGratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 170 (15 August 2014); Gribetz, Defining Neighbors; then seeHanna Abu Hanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin: Khirruju al-Madaris al-Rusiyya, 1862-1914 (Beirut:Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2005), 3-6. ixunderstanding the origins of a modern Palestinian identity—probably would not havebeen made otherwise. Ironically, the theft of Palestine’s books preserved some of itshistory.Naturally, the collection also inspires anger and calls to return the books to their rightfulowners. Sympathizers with Israel would claim in response that their value to the public isfar greater as a collection than it would be returned to the descendants of their owners. Iagree. But if the value of the collection is greater when the public can access it—thenIsrael should let the public access it, especially the part of the public that own the booksthemselves. Today, many of the Palestinian descendents of the owners themselves arelegally barred from viewing the collection, since they are barred from entering thecountry in the first place. And so the material consequence of the existence of the bookshas been that foreigners and Israelis have better access to research materials to studyPalestinian history, and Palestinians have worse access to materials to study Palestinianhistory. Here is yet another irony: Palestinian-owned books now enrich Israel andimpoverish Palestinians.3Let’s also acknowledge Ottoman bureaucrats who left behind a paper trail of millions ofdocuments. Their abysmal handwriting seems to have had only one obvious purpose: tomake the lives of future historians a nightmare. Once properly deciphered, Ottoman3 Those quick to judge the Zionists for stealing the books might take interest in the fate of Muhammed Is‘afNashashibi’s (1882–1948) extremely rich personal library, located in Shaykh Jarrah and therefore caught inthe fighting in early April 1948. The neighborhood passed back and forth between Jewish and Arab hands,but was taken by the Arabs. Is‘af’s nephew, Nasser Eddin Nashashibi (b. 1923) claimed that “robbers haveno nationalities” and the books were stolen by Palestinians and Jews alike. See Gish Amit, “Salvage orPlunder? Israel's "Collection" of Private Palestinian Libraries in West Jerusalem,” Journal of PalestineStudies, 40(4) (2011): 16-7. On the Abu-Manneh quote, see ibid, 19. xdocuments exhibit a second quality of great bureaucratic writing: their ability to inducesleep quickly.Muslim court scribes also deserve our acknowledgement. They had even worsehandwriting than the Ottoman bureaucrats and used almost as obscure language. Duringmy period of dissertation research, I sat down for an afternoon of reading a 16th centuryJerusalem court record with one the world’s foremost experts, ‘Abla Sa‘id Muhtadi.Three hours passed, and we had partially deciphered six lines of text. By we, I mean‘Abla. I looked over her shoulder nodding approvingly the same way an improv artist istrained to respond with, “yes, and…”.4Special thanks must also go to the Managing Editor of a journal who desk-rejected a(much earlier) draft of chapter four. Although my “research in Arabic-language texts andperiodicals of the early twentieth century was interesting and unique,” and although I“submitted a very well-written paper,” the “question of the origins of Palestinian identityis a rich one, and the paper did not capture all of that richness.” First lesson to learn hereis that anytime someone tells you your ideas are “interesting” you should immediately beinsulted. Apparently, for papers to get passed along for peer review, they had to capture“all of the richness” of the topic under discussion. I am left to presume that, if any paperspublished in this journal did not capture “all of the richness” of the topic, then therichness must have been lost during the peer review process. Based on the journal’s4 On the court records, see Beshara Doumani, “Palestinian Islamic Court Records: A Source forSocioeconomic History,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 19(2) (1985): 163. xiearth-shattering Impact Factor of .244, one would be forgiven if one concluded that thejournal’s peer reviewers were usurping a whole lot of richness.Then there is the long tail of people without whom this dissertation would have beenimpossible to write: Ze’ev Maghen, who first introduced me to pre-modern Middle Easthistory and who also taught me to never let history get in the way of a great joke; BigBird, for teaching me the importance of sharing; Nicole Fruth, for nominating me to be apart of the extremely elite “community of entrepreneurs, artists and innovativeprofessionals like myself” called Ivy. I doubt this dissertation would have ever come tocompletion without the boost I received to my self-worth from her automated messagethat appeared personalized. I would also like to thank the twitter handlerrealjamesbowker. Without having followed me, I would have never been able to reachthis important milestone in my life: 289 twitter followers (note: by the time you arereading this, that number will have probably since decreased).This dissertation would also have been impossible to write without the scientists,mathematicians and engineers who made the digital and information revolutions possible.The digital catalogue enabled ambitious scholars to search a few dozen library cataloguesfar faster than they could have with card catalogues. Then Worldcat.org made searchablewith the click of a single button 72,000 library catalogues in 170 countries and territories.Shamela.ws digitized and made keyword searchable tens of thousands of books writtenby Muslims from all periods of history. Millions of contributors to Wikipedia made themost comprehensive encyclopedia we have ever known, as well as the most xiicomprehensive timeline of the history of the name Palestine. Special thanks go to theWikipedia alias oncenawhile, who created and maintains that page with painstakingdiligence and resourcefulness. Whoever you are—and I know you do prefer to remainanonymous—shukran alf marra.Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the financial support I received from PrincetonUniversity. Ph.D. students at Princeton are among the most privileged in the world. Wemake more money than professors do in countries like Russia and Greece. We canrequest an unlimited number of books free of charge from any library in the world.According to Princeton’s records, I’ve requested 292 books in total, and have receivedmost of them. When the inter-library loan staff see my name, I imagine they think,“someone break Foster’s kneecaps.” I also diligently attended Princeton’s foreignlanguage tables, where students enjoy free dinner at a campus dining hall but mustcommit to speaking a foreign language for the whole dinner conversation—althoughadmittedly my diligence may have come at the ruinous pain of the other attendees. I alsoenjoyed free lunch around campus often—at least until my immunity wore off to crueland unusual punishment—the brown bag lunch talk. My department offered free coffee,tea and filtered water. I nearly considered sleeping in the student lounge and showering atPrinceton’s Dylan Gym to save money on rent. The plan ran into an unforeseen hurdle:my girlfriend was living with me at the time. Princeton also requires us to submit ourdissertations at 1-1.5inch margins rather something like 2.5inch that would make readinga PDF on mobile perfectly fine. If traffic to papers on Academia.edu, where I will postthis, is about 25% mobile and 75% desktop, then one wonders why Princeton University xiiiwishes so much ill-will on 25% of people who will read my dissertation. Although,admittedly, 25% of readers to any dissertation is usually less than a whole person, soprobably not the end of the world.I should also acknowledge all American voters who contribute significantly to tax breaksfor wealthy Americans who donate money to Princeton University. Without the taxbreaks they received, they probably would have donated less, and Princeton Universitymight not have the $18 billion endowment that it has, and it might not have been able tosupport graduate students like me.Acknowledgments usually conclude with bodily fluid exchanges, also known assignificant others. In my case, the critical person to acknowledge here is Jennifer Garner,the lead covert agent on the late 1990s and early 2000s hit action series, Alias.Regrettably, no bodily fluids were exchanged between us, but it must have been mysubconscious that led me to seek out a partner who appears to lead life as a double-agentfor a shadowy underground organization, speaks more languages than knows what to dowith them and makes a killer Bolognese.Alas, it hasn’t killed me yet! xivxv TABLES AND FIGURESTable 1. Contents of the 13th centuryAshrafiya Library in Damascus………………………………………………………...143Figure 1. Palestine Coin, minted in 1927………………………………………………...15Figure 2. Palestine Stamps, 1920s-1940s. ………………………………………...…….16Figure 3. United Airlines Security Question:“What is your favorite sea animal?” ………………………………………...….….........52Figure 4. Neanderthal Geometric Pattern….……………………………...………….….62Figure 5. Map of “Southern Syria,or Palestine and the Arab East”…………………………………...………..…………....88Figure 6. Padiiset’s Statue………………………………………………………………..98Figure 7. Section of Byzantine floor mosaic map atSt. George Church Madaba depicting “οροι Αιγυπτουκαι Παλαιστινης” (the border of Egypt and Palestine)…………………………...........113Figure 8. A 7th Century coin minted in Jerusalemby the Caliph with the word Filastin…………………………………………………...140Figure 9. A map of Palestine, or Filastin, used inAmerican missionary schools in the mid-19th century………………………………....168Figure 10. “A Natural Map of Modern Palestine,”in an atlas likely used in missionary schools…………………………………………...176Figure 11. The first Ottoman printed map of Palestine (1804)………………………....181Figure 12. Ottoman map of “AnatoliaAdministrative Divisions”……….……………………………………………………..182Figure 13. Published in The Palestine Handbook, 1915………………………………..183Figure 14. Photo from inside the Jaffa Gate inJerusalem’s old city with Duetchse Palastina Banksign visible (circa early 1900s)…………………………………………………………197Figure 15. “A Map of Palestine for Cars”………………………………………………208 xviFigure 16. “Map of Palestine”……….…………………………………………………210Figure 17. Map of “Palestine”……….…………………………………………………211 xvii INTRODUCTIONPalestine exists in our minds, not in nature. If Palestine doesn’t exist, why do we identifywith it? We identify with Palestine, first, because it has a name. In fact, we only identifywith places we’ve named. Unnamed places, such as 22°29′05″N 22.48 to 53°46′19″E53.77, have no identities based on them. But we don’t identify with every place we’venamed. We need to hear stories about a place if we are going to identify with it, storiesabout famines and wars, conquests and tribes, history, geography, economy, archeologyand millions more topics. The more engaging the stories, the more likely we are toidentify with places like Palestine. We also make maps of places like Palestine. The moremaps we make, the more likely we are to identify with places like Palestine as well.Finally, we distinguish Palestine from other places. We exaggerate its glory and beautyand claim we have a special relationship to it. This dissertation explains when, how andwhy it all happened. * * *Style. Some writers pay rent by selling what they write. They appeal to emotion, insightand humor. They paint colorful characters, describe exotic scenes and tell great jokes.They strike at our nerves, hearts and minds to boost their email subscriber counts. Theyearn a living as writers for late night television shows, multinational corporations, mediaconglomerates and youtube channels. More people earn money as writers today than atany previous time in history. 1Other writers, however, do not pay rent by selling what they write. They are calledacademics, and do not need clicks, sales or reads. Instead, publishers sell what they writeto libraries, and academics pay their bills with grants, fellowships and jobs. They are paidto write with rigor, truth and novelty in mind rather than emotion, contagion orpunchlines. Much like writers, more of them exist today than at any other time in history.History lies at the meeting point of the writer’s craft—art, and the academic’s craft—science. Writers set scenes, embellish characters and exaggerate sexual tension whileacademics are loyal to facts, evidence and nuance. Writers arrange data points foremotion, suspense and laughter, while academics arrange facts to absolve themselves ofaccusations of naiveté.Historians are uniquely well-suited to do both. We take the dyes, clothes and metals ofthe past and paint pictures, weave quilts and construct edifices. We cannot invent rawmaterials ex nihilo, but we can turn raw materials into very different histories. We canamuse and entertain but also explain and edify. “History is the only science enjoying theambiguous fortune of being required to be at the same time an art,” said the 19th centuryPrussian, Johann Gustav Droysen. But its appeal “is in the last analysis poetic.” Few havesaid it better than the 20th century historian Garrett Mattingly. “History is the mostdifficult of the belles-lettres, for it must be true.”11 These quotes can be found in James Axtell, “History as Imagination,” The Historian 49(4) (1987): 453. 2 * * *My Argument. My aim is to understand when, how and why people identified asPalestinian in history. The identity is based on a few critical biological abilities that weprobably developed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Standing on one foot, weinvented infinitely complex language, grasped abstract thought, learned to describe spacewith complexity, make maps and distinguish things. That led us to name places likePalestine, map them on walls and floors, tell stories about them with language anddistinguish those places with words and images, all of which led us to identify with them.Identities like “Palestinian” are not modern, pre-modern or early modern, nor do theydate to antiquity or the ancient Near East. They’ve probably been around for tens ofthousands of years, and evolutionary psychologists, biologists, anthropologists,primatologists, linguists and archeologists are better equipped than historians tounderstand their origins. This helps explain some of the scholarly disagreement over theorigins of nations, to the extent that nations tend to identify with places.But what led identities like Palestinian to proliferate? The first major factor wassedentary life, which long pre-dated history as it’s commonly understood. We becamesettled when we learned to fish, hunt migratory birds and subsist in wetlandenvironments. As a result, we developed identities based around our places of settlement.This probably happened first many tens of thousands of years ago. But permanentsettlement did not become the principle lifestyle choice of our species until after the 3Agricultural Revolution about 10,000 years ago when farming replaced hunting andgathering as the dominant human form of subsistence. As farmers, the places weinhabited became even more important to us, which made us more likely to developidentities around on them, identities such as Palestinian.Second, identities like Palestinian also came about as a result of states. States, polities,republics, chiefdoms, regimes, countries or governments refer to groups of people whomonopolize the use of force in a given area. To do that effectively, they have to develop achain of command. In order to facilitate communication between members within thechain of command, place names were essential. They were essential to ensure commandand control, tax collection, conscription and loyalty in their subjects. It would have beentoo wordy for states to record on slabs of stone or papyrus that the people of “thefourteen-mile expanse of land due east from the southern-most hilltop of the ruggedterrain south of Hebron to the land extending north for eighteen miles until the narrowvalley past the third river” had paid their taxes. It was much more concise to say that thepeople of Palestine had paid their taxes. So names were very useful. Names madegovernance easier. Nameless places were a mess to govern. This had a trickle-downeffect. That’s why identities based on Palestine were strongest (holding all else equal)when Palestine was either a state or an administrative unit within one—i.e. during the8th, 9th, 10th and 20th centuries. As states came to control more and more of the world inthe past couple of thousand years, and as they became more powerful, identities basedaround places proliferated. 4Third, identities like Palestinian also proliferated as a result of agricultural surplus.People could earn a living as bureaucrats, teachers, historians, geographers, cartographersand journalists. The agricultural surplus enabled more people to manage the affairs of thestate, write eloquent stories, make beautiful maps, conduct geographical surveys andorganize scholarly associations. These folks gave places like Palestine purpose,coherence and beauty, a distinct geography and marvelous history, and made it morelikely people would identify as Palestinian.Fourth, a Palestinian identity came into existence for incidental reasons that are notgeneralizable to other parts of the world. In the case of Palestine, followers of manysuccessful religions believed the Bible was sacred. This had a ripple effect on the survivalof its geographical lexicon, including Pleshet (Philistine) and Plishtim (the Philistines).Muslims believed their earliest traditions were sacred as well, and they were written inthe 8th, 9th and 10th centuries when Palestine was an administrative district. Thosetraditions also survived long after Palestine fell from administrative use, keepingPalestine alive. Another incidental factor was that Renaissance Europeans grewfascinated by classical Greek and Latin texts and adopted their geographicalnomenclature—including Palestine. This led to its gradual re-popularization in Europe inthe 16th and 17th centuries, and thus its re-popularization in the 19th century Middle Eastwhen Europeans and Americans descended on it as consular officials, missionaries andtourists. Those folks taught the geography and history of Palestine in missionary schools,conducted archeological surveys of Palestine and toured it with their Palestineguidebooks. By the late 19th century, Zionists were moving to Palestine and speaking 5openly of Jewish independence in it, making Palestine even more important than it hadbeen. These were all incidental events, not part of predictable patterns, that led people toidentify as Palestinian. * * *History. But why read a book of history in the first place when you can read AdamGrant’s Originals and become an original thinker or Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance andboost your reply rates on Tinder? You probably shouldn’t. But once you finish thosebooks—consider reading some history, because knowing history is really empowering.Take a banal example of the history of lawns. They first became popular in medievalEurope because they produced nothing of value despite requiring lots of maintenance.They represented a class of society whose excess, wealth and privilege was madepossible only by the suffering of others. Knowing that, you might feel empowered to talksmack about lawns. Or look at the rise in popularity of engagement rings in the mid-20thcentury United States, a result of De Beers marketing campaigns linking diamonds toeternal love: “a diamond is forever.” Knowing that engagement rings became popular toenrich American corporate executives at the cost of great human suffering, you mightalso choose not to spend three months of salary and plunge your household into decadesof debt on a shiny symbolic pebble. So, if knowing the history of lawns affects yourdecision to maintain a lawn, or if knowing the history of diamond engagement rings 6affects your desire to buy one, knowing the history of “Palestine” might affect how youchose to identify with it. It might even affect what you are willing to die for.22 On lawns, see Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (New York: Harper, 2017),59-65. 7 CHAPTER ONE Who Cares about Palestine?Palestine is a figment of our imagination, but so is every other place and country in theworld. Why write a whole book just about Palestine? I don’t have a good answer, otherthan so many people are obsessed with it. Judaism, Christianity and Islam each claim ahistory in the land, and so Palestine has been at the center of the Jewish, Christian andMuslim world’s attention for millennia. Dozens of public figures, including Americanpresidential candidates like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, have claimedto know something about the historical usage of the words “Palestine” and the“Palestinians.” So have media companies like Arutz Sheva, Haaretz, Fox News, AJ+, theGuardian and the Washington Post. Regrettably, historians have often served as warriorsin the propaganda battles, and so myths continue to persist about the history of these twowords. This chapter explains what those myths are, how they have evolved over the pastcentury and why they persist today. * * *“Welcome to Israel-Palestine.” So said an AirFrance pilot upon landing in Tel Aviv’sBen Gurion airport in 2002. The state-run Israeli telephone company, Bezeq IsraelTelecom, went berserk, mandating its employees to boycott Air France unless the pilot 8was fired. A year later, an Alitalia pilot touched down in TLV airport and welcomedpassengers to “Palestine.” Israeli passengers were furious, as was Alitalia. “One thing iscertain,” declared a spokesperson for the company. “This captain will not fly to Israelagain.” The Spaniards were never too far behind the French and Italians. Twelve years,in this case, when in 2015 a Spanish pilot also announced to his Tel Aviv bound travelersthey had touched down in Palestine. That was his last trip to Tel Aviv too. What was soinfuriating about the word Palestine?3 * * *On 9 August 2016, the media company AJ+ posted a video called “Some people areslamming Google for removing Palestine from its maps.” Of all the videos I had watchedon mute in my Facebook News Feed, this was the first that dealt directly with mydissertation. Naturally, I clicked the volume icon to listen, which did exactly whatFacebook wanted it to do: expand the video to full screen.Watching the video, I remembered I had written about a change.org petition to addPalestine to Google Maps for an article earlier that year. It didn’t make sense that “somepeople” would be slamming Google for removing Palestine from its maps. Palestine wasnot on Google Maps. Realizing the AJ+ story was false, I started getting the goosebumps.3 BBC, “Palestine Destination Angers Jewish Passengers,” BBC.co.uk 5 July 2002 (https://goo.gl/4ChQz4);Zohar Blumenkrantz, “Alitalia Pilot Stuns Passengers landing in Tel Aviv,” Haaretz.com 6 May 2003(https://goo.gl/ET71oc); Cynthia Blank, “Iberia Pilot Welcomes Passengers to 'Palestine'” Arutz Sheva 28October 2015 (https://goo.gl/aY18fj) 9I would finally get retweeted more than 3 times and my twitter follower count wouldalmost certainly soar into the high-290s. It was going to be glorious.As I sat down to craft 140 characters of glory, I quickly checked how many change.orgusers signed the older petition. My heart sank before Google had even finished findingme results. It was the same feeling of irreversible loss felt by a child who learned thatmom bought mint instead of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream for dessert. Someoneelse had already written a story and exposed AJ+’s fabrication.4The whole affair must have felt like déjà vu for Google. In May 2013, they changed the‘.ps’ homepage tagline from the Palestinian Territories to Palestine. This made nodifference to most people, but Israeli authorities were furious. “Google is in essencerecognizing the existence of a Palestinian state,” wrote Deputy Foreign Minister of Israelto Google CEO Larry Page. “Any formal use of the word Palestine” was “pre-judging theoutcome of currently stalled peace talks.” Little did they know, but, by using the word“Palestine” on landing pages, Google was recklessly shattering the imminent prospects ofa historic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recall that this was 2013—and acoalition had recently formed that had finally promised hope for peace in the MiddleEast: a union of Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu.4 AJ+’s decision to publish before fact checking was not all in vein, though. A new petition to add Palestineto Google Maps soon gained traction, and now has hundreds of thousands of supporters. Nada Elsayed,“Add Palestine to Google Maps,” change.org 2013 (goo.gl/I99ZcK); on my reference to it, see Zachary J.Foster, “What's a Palestinian?” Foreign Affairs 12 March 2015 (https://goo.gl/f5dlnV); then see AJ+,“Some People are Slamming Google for Removing Palestine from its Maps,” twitter.com 9 August 2016(goo.gl/kaMw3x). 10Google saw things differently. “We’re changing the name Palestinian Territories toPalestine across our products.” In its defense, Google confessed it was following the leadof obscure organizations like the so-called “United Nations” and what they ambiguouslyreferred to “other international organizations.” As of 17 August 2017, Google continuesto bear the brunt of the responsibility for the continuation of occupation and conflict.5 * * *What was wrong with calling it Palestine? Donald Trump probably would have liked toknow before he uttered that word three times during his March 2016 AIPAC PolicyConference speech. (As far as I know, he hasn’t said it since). “Let me say at the outset,”pronounced his gleeful opponent Ted Cruz in his opening remarks shortly after Trump infront of a stadium full of AIPAC supporters. “Perhaps to the surprise of a previousspeaker, Palestine has not existed since 1948.” The audience roared with applause. Theyagreed that Palestine hadn’t existed for more than half a century. Cruz chuckled andnodded to a campaign advisor, winning that battle (even though he lost the war). Cruzknew what to say to the one of largest annual gatherings of Israel enthusiasts. It wasn’tPalestine.6 * * *5 Tovah Lazaroff, “Elkin Asks Google to Rethink ‘Palestine,’” Jerusalem Post 6 May 2013(goo.gl/FwL0mK)6 For Trump’s speech, see “Donald Trump AIPAC Full Speech,” youtube.com, Published on Mar 21, 2016(goo.gl/t7NQQI); for Ted Cruz’s speech, see “Ted Cruz AIPAC Full Speech, Washington DC March 21,2016 [HD],” youtube.com, streamed live on Mar 21, 2016 (goo.gl/V2wBpf); for a nice review of Cruz’sspeech, see Jennifer Rubin “Ted Cruz at AIPAC: Eight Takeaways,” The Washington Post 22 Mach 2016(goo.gl/IqQkne). 11The controversy over Palestine has played out in politics, on planes and on the internet,as we’ve just seen. People also talk about it at Shabbat lunch and dinners tables. Here, Ihave to get anthropological. In January 2014, a hospitable American-born Jewish womaninvited me to her Old City Jerusalem loft for Shabbat lunch. At the time, I was renting anapartment in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The fastest route to reachher house that Shabbat afternoon was a walk from Bab al-Zahra Street, turning right atVia Dolorosa, then left onto Al Wad Street, the same path Jesus took to his crucifixion. Iwas hoping my afternoon would end differently.Five minutes separated my flat from her loft, but life proceeds at different intervals in theMuslim and Jewish Quarters. They speak Arabic in the Muslim quarter, not Hebrew.Most residents carry Jordanian passports, not Israeli ones. The lights go up on Ramadan,not Hanukah. The street kids support Hamas, not Likud. In the Jewish quarter, the touristsare religious Jews, not Christian Zionists. The beggars wear kippot, not head scarfs.There are also probably fewer Hamas aficionados.We blessed wine and broke bread. I explained that dissertation research brought me to thecity. “Your dissertation is about Palestine?” the hostess retorted in disbelief. “That mustbe a very short dissertation.” Palestine had not existed since Roman times, she thought.How could I possibly be writing an entire dissertation about it? 12A few months later in June 2014, a Turkish friend of mine visited Jerusalem onpilgrimage. She was one of many thousands of Muslim Turks who travel to the HolyLand every year. Groups of them passed by my front door every week on their way to theal-Aqsa Mosque. As the third holiest site in Islam, Jerusalem has attracted visitors fromaround the Muslim world for more than a millennium, many Turks among them.I tagged along with her to a Shabbat dinner invitation in Ma’alei Adumim, a settlementbuilt on land occupied by Israel after the 1967 War. It’s the largest of Jerusalem’ssatellite neighborhoods, considered an inseparable part of the city by Israelis and anillegal settlement by the rest of the world, including Israel’s three strongest allies—theUnited States, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. “You saidyour dissertation was about the history of the word Palestine?” the host asked, somewhatperplexed. This is usually where I’m given a brief history lesson on the topic I’ve spentthe better part of a decade researching. “You know that the Arabs used to call the placeSouthern Syria, not Palestine, right?”The conversation went from cordial to heated. As I was about to dive into some details ofmy dissertation, a freshly baked platter of shnitzel glided onto the table, landing in frontof me. My mouth began to water, and it seemed like the right moment to change topics tosomething we could all agree on: the cultural degeneration brought to the country byFrench Jewish immigrants. 13After dinner, we gazed onto the naked hilltops in the heart of the occupied PalestinianTerritories—what our hosts called the Judean desert, of course, in one of the mostcontested cities in the world in the place the Arabs apparently used to call Southern Syria,debating the history of the land and its peoples in the languages of every group to haveruled it over the past five centuries. * * *These are only the most recent manifestations of a controversy that dates to at least the1920s. After the First World War, the British Empire gained approval from the League ofNations to administer what became known as a Mandate for Palestine, which the Britishdecided to call the Government of Palestine. From the 1920s onwards, Zionist leadersprotested the Government of Palestine’s decision to print the word Palestine in Hebrewas Palestina on coins, bills and stamps. Zionists preferred the Land of Israel, or EretsYisrael in Hebrew. 14 Figure 1. Palestine Coin, minted in 1927.The British struck a compromise, printing the word Palestina in Hebrew, but also theHebrew initials aleph yud for the Land of Israel (see figure 1), which could be presentedas Erets Ishmael, or the land of Ishmael, to the Arabs. It was just enough to placate theZionists but not enough to anger the Palestinian Arabs, at least not too many of them. Itwas classically British.77 I was not able to track down the original statement, but it is mentioned by Habib Ibrahim Katbah, “al-Haraka al-Sahyuniyya: Ma-la-ha wa-ma-‘alayha,” cited in John S. Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid Hayatuhu(New York: The Syrian American Press, 1919), 157; on the stamp controversy, see Meir Persoff, TheRunning Stag: The Stamps and Postal History of Israel (London: R. Lowe, 1973), 16-17; on Erets Ishmael,see Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO,” Commentary Magazine 1 January 1975; on the Arabresponse, see Katbah, “al-Haraka al-Sahyuniyya,” 152; ‘Umar Abu al-Nasr, Ibrahim Najm and Amin ‘Aql,Jihad Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1936), 83; Yurghaki Bishara Mansur, al-Dima’ al-Zakiyya awArwah al-Shuhada’ (Jerusalem?: Dar al-Tiba‘a al-Ittihad al-Sharqi, 1929?), 8; Aziz Shihadeh, A.B.C. of theArab Case in Palestine (Jaffa: The Modern Library, 1936), 7; al-Nafir, Majmu‘a Shahadat ‘Arab Filastinamam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya al-Britaniyya (Haifa: al-Nafir, 1937?), 16-17; Wadi‘ Talhuq, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya: Fi Madiha wa-Hadiruha wa-Mustaqbaluha (Beirut: Majallat al-‘Alman, 1945), 46. Arabstudents also protested when British authorities included the phrase Erets Yisrael (the Land of Israel)instead of Palestina (Palestine) on Hebrew diplomas given to Jewish law school graduates. See AssafLikhovski, Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006),112. 15 Figure 2. Palestine Stamps, 1920s-1940s. * * *Occupation (Egypt). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israeli delegations traveled toAlexandria to negotiate the 1979 peace accord between Israel and Egypt. The IsraeliInterior Minister Yosef Burg, refused to stay at the best hotel in the city—The PalestineHotel, opting instead for the San Stefano Hotel, named after Saint Stephen. San Stephen(d.34) is often venerated as the first martyr of Christianity. He proclaimed that Jesusstood side by side God in heaven, considered at the time an act of heresy by the Jews ofJerusalem. According to the New Testament, the Jews of the city orchestrated hisgruesome execution by stoning. Since then, many thousands of Jews have beenslaughtered in Saint Stephen’s name, an irony presumably lost on the Israelis officials,although not the journalist Danny Rubenstein, who pointed this out at the time.8(Jordan). The conflict over the name Palestine spilled over into Jordan when hundreds ofthousands of Palestinian refugees fled there after the 1948 War. After King Abdullah I of8 Danny Rubenstein first pointed this out in Davar, cited in William Claiborne, “Israel Loses New Round inEffort to Prohibit the Use of 'Palestine,'” The Washington Post, 11 March 1981. 16Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948, he issued a decree prohibiting the use of theterm. As a young child of Palestinian refugees, Dina Matar spent her early childhood inthe Jalazone Refugee Camp near Ramallah, annexed by Jordan in 1948. “One incidentremains vivid in my mind,” Matar wrote in her recently published memoir, What itMeans to be Palestinian. In the 5th grade, her teacher asked where she was from. Matarresponded innocently, “Palestine.” Then Matar described the incident in detail: “He beatme with a cane and asked me to stand facing the wall. Then he asked me the questionagain and, each time I answered that I was from Palestine, he beat me ever harder.”Matar, today a professor in Arab Media and Political Communication at SOAS, inLondon, was too young to know that Abdullah I had issued a decree prohibiting the useof the term, Palestine, out of fear that Palestinians would overthrow his government. Isuspect she was also too young to realize the insurrection would be led by law-abiding11-year old school girls.9(Gaza). A few decades later when Israel captured the Gaza Strip in 1967, they froze theassets of the Bank of Palestine, Gaza. In 1980, the bank was permitted to reopen, but onlyif it removed the word Palestine from its name. “It was felt that the term would incitenationalistic feelings among Arabs in the occupied territories and endanger Israel'ssecurity,” claimed an Israeli military spokesperson at the time.The bank petitioned Israel’s Highest Court, arguing that use of the word Palestine wasnot itself an incitement to violence. “Our bank has always been called the Bank of9 Dina Matar, What It Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood (London: I.B. Tauris,2011), 81-2. 17Palestine,” said Hatem Abu Ghazaleh, one of the bank’s directors. “What is going to beachieved by erasing the name Palestine from a few signs and letterheads? The problemhere is larger than just a name,” he told the Washington Post in 1981. Abu Ghazaleh hada good point: Palestine. Palestine. Palestine. Not much harm done. The court forced themilitary to demonstrate how the word Palestine would endanger Israelis. The bankprevailed, since the word Palestine is obviously not dangerous. But the victory was onlypartial. The Bank could keep its name since it was “grandfathered in,” so to speak. ButGabriel Levi, Israeli Justice Ministry spokesman, claimed new Arab businesses could notbe named Palestine.(Jerusalem). Israeli military censors also tried to shut down the Jerusalem-based Arabiclanguage daily newspaper, al-Fair, in the 1980s over its subtitle, “Palestinian Weekly.”But the military soon realized that Jewish-owned businesses might then be forced tochange their names as well. The Jerusalem Post, for instance, at that time listed on itsmaster head, “owned by the Palestine Post Ltd.” Since Palestine was the name of thecountry only a few decades earlier between 1920 and 1948—Jewish and Palestinian Arabowned businesses both used the word Palestine. In the end, the military censors gave up,and al-Fair prevailed. The Israeli government’s attempts to forbid use of the wordPalestine had the exact opposite effect as intended. It brought international attention toPalestine at a time when that was not the term of choice used outside the Arab or Muslimworlds to describe it. * * * 18Southern Syria. We’ve already mentioned Southern Syria above twice. Both my Shabbathosts in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and Ma‘alei Adumim thought the Arabscalled the place Southern Syria. Why did they think that? Perhaps the first Zionist scholarto popularize this theory was Mikhaʼel Asaf. He argued in the 1930s in his widelytranslated The Arab Movement in Palestine that Palestine had never existed in Arabhistory as a unit in and of itself, whatever he meant by “unit.” Instead, the Arabsapparently considered it part of the land of Sham. He claimed that they emphasized thename Southern Syria, rather than Palestine, to show that the land was indistinguishablefrom Syria.10The idea that the Arabs called the place Southern Syria surfaced again in 1973 when anAmerican journalist asked the then-Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, if there was“any legitimacy in talking about an Arab Palestinian Homeland?” “No, I think not,” Meirreplied sedately, as if she was giving a eulogy. Then Meir went straight to history. “Therewere no independent Arab countries before World War I. This area, Israel today, and upto the Jordan, was considered the southern part of Syria,” Meir said with a glimmer in hereyes. This was a mirror image of what Asaf said decades earlier and what my Shabbathosts in Jerusalem and Ma‘alei Adumim claimed four decades later.10 Mikhaʼel Asaf, The Arab Movement in Palestine (Masada, Youth Zionist Organization of America,1937); Mikhaʼel Asaf, Ha-Tenu’ah ha-‘Aravit be-Erets Yisrael u-Mekoroteha (Tel Aviv: Hotsaʼat ha-Mishmeret ha-Tseʻirah le-Mifleget Poʻalei Erets Yisrael, 1947), 32-3. 19So what’s the deal with Southern Syria, and why do Zionists and Israelis seem to bring itup all the time? Was is true that Arabs considered what is today Israel “the southern partof Syria”? I’d like to briefly address the history of this phrase, before continuing on withthe history of the controversy over Palestine, since it’s so widely known by Israel’spropagandists and yet so poorly understood. The Arabs described “the area that becameIsrael,” as Meir put it, in at least ten different ways in the decades prior to World War I,roughly in this order of frequency: Palestine; Syria; Sham; the Holy Land; the Land ofJerusalem; the District of Jerusalem + the District of Balqa + the District of Acre;southern Sham; the southern part of Sham; the Land of Jerusalem + the land of Gaza +the land of Ramla + the land of Nablus + the land of Haifa + the land of Hebron (i.e.cities were used, not regions); “the southern part of Syria, Palestine”; and southern Syria.The Arabic term “southern Syria” so rarely appeared in Arabic sources before 1918 thatI’ve included every reference to the phrase I’ve ever come across in the footnote at theend of this paragraph (it did appear more often in Western languages). Golda Meir,Mikhaʼel Asaf and my Shabbat hosts were right about Southern Syria, but by focusingonly on the facts that supported their arguments and ignoring all the others, they got thestory completely wrong. They used facts to obscure the history.1111 On “the southern part of Syria, Palestine,” see Yusuf Dibs, Kitab Tarikh Suriya (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-‘Umumiyya, 1893), 6; on “southern Syria”, see Salim Jibra’il al-Khuri and Salim Mikha’il Shihada, KitabAthar al-Adhar: al-Qism al-Jughrafi (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Suriyya, 1875), 500; “Naql al-‘Ayn,” al-Muqtataf 11 (1887): 704; on northern Syria and southern Syria, see Filastin 30 November 1912; on “thesouthern part of Sham” see “Suriya,” al-Mashriq (1903): 127; Asʻad Yaʻqub Khayyat, A Voice fromLebanon: With the Life and Travels of Assaad Y. Kayat (London: Madden & Co., 1847), 160; on Europeansources, see Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1992), 14. 20If the term rarely appeared in Arabic before World War I, how do propagandists evenknow it existed? Before World War I, they don’t. It took me nearly a decade to find ahandful of references, and I can assure you few if any propagandists are familiar with itsArabic usage before 1918. But that changed dramatically in 1918, when the term gainedtraction for a couple of years until 1920. That’s because the Hijazi nobleman Faysalrevolted against the Ottoman Empire in 1916 during the First World War (alongside“Lawrence of Arabia”), and established an Arab Kingdom in Damascus in 1918 which heruled until the French violently overthrew him in 1920. During his period of rule, manyArabs in Palestine thought naively that if they could convince Palestine’s Britishconquerors the land had always been part of Syria—indeed, that it was even called“southern Syria”—then Britain might withdraw its troops from the region and handPalestine over to Faysal. This led some folks to start calling the place southern Syria. Thedecision was born out of the preference of some of Palestine’s Arabs to live under Arabrule from Damascus rather than under British rule from Jerusalem—the same Britishwho, only a few months earlier, in 1917, had declared in the Balfour Declaration theirintention to make a national home for the Jews in Palestine.1212 On this point, see Foster, “What's a Palestinian?”; Most famously, in January 1919, shortly after KingFaysal took power, urban notables from Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Jenin, Acre, Gaza and elsewheremet at a series of meetings dubbed “the First Palestinian National Congress.” The delegates supported astatement of principles that described Palestine as ‘Southern Syria’ and declared that we “should not beseparated from the Independent Arab Syrian Government.” See Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of thePalestinian National Movement 1918-1929 (London: Cass, 1974), I, 82. Around the same time ‘Arif al-‘Arif and Muhammad Hassan al-Budayri founded a newspaper called Southern Syria, which was soon shutdown by the British for its harsh anti-Zionist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Jamal Husayni requested that the initials“S.J.,” for Suriya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), be added after the word Filastin on stamps. See Persoff,The Running Stag, 16. During the Nebi Musa riots of 1920, protestors filled the streets of Jerusalemchanting slogans such as, “you, Syria, are my country!” Interview with Khader Salameh in Jerusalem (17May 2014). Salameh explained that his father told him this story, and recalled from memory the chant:“Anta Suriya Biladi; Anta ‘Unwan al-Fakhkhama; Kul Man Ya‘tika Yawm’an Tami‘a Yalqa Hamama.”The exact same song appeared in n.a., Anashid al-‘Arabiyya (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-‘Arab, 1933), 3. 21But even during its period of ascendency, southern Syria was an aspiration, not the termpeople unconsciously used to describe the land. During the heyday of southern Syria in1919, John Salah published a wonderful collection of essays in Arabic titled Palestine:The Renewal of its Life. The Jaffan doctor Fu’ad Shattarah contributed an essay to thevolume titled “Health Reform in Palestine.” “I will use the word ‘Syria’ in this study,” heclaimed, “to refer to the piece of land stretching from the Taurus Mountains to al-‘Arish,Egypt, because I believe Palestine is ‘southern Syria.’” He admitted candidly that theterm southern Syria was an aspiration, not a description. No one today says, “I believethis country is called Germany or France.” It’s not a belief, it’s a fact. And, indeed,Shattarah unconsciously called the place Palestine, rather southern Syria, throughout theremainder of his essay. Najib Ibrahim Katbah also contributed an essay to the volume andsimilarly paid lip service to “southern Syria.” Yet whenever he used the phrase, he nearlyalways added “i.e., Palestine.” Why, again, the need to specify what southern Syria was ifit was so self-evident? Of course, it was not evident, something we already knew from itsinfrequent usage in Arabic before 1918. A third contributor, Rashid Taqi al-Din, alsoinsisted on calling Palestine southern Syria. “Palestine is a part of Syria, and Syria is apart of Palestine,” he wrote. “Palestine is the southern part of Syria, and therefore it isnecessary to call it southern Syria.” Here, again, Taqi al-Din is making the case it shouldbe called southern Syria rather than unconsciously describing it as southern Syria.“Palestine or Southern Syria was never independent at any period in history, and like itssister, Syria, but the two countries are one, geographically and historically, intellectually 22and politically.” No surprise that he, as well, usually included Palestine in parenthesisafter mentioning southern Syria, or wrote “also known as Palestine,” or “i.e., Palestine.”13Since 1920, Southern Syria was remembered sporadically for political purposes, as wehave seen. The term was embraced by Arabs who believed that an Arab state in greaterSyria was the best way to stem Zionist immigration and land purchases, while Zionistssuch as Asaf, Meir and my Shabbat hosts revived it to show that the Arabs never caredmuch for Palestine. Of course, it was concern for Palestine that gave prominence to theidea of southern Syria in the first place.14That’s why many Arabs proclaimed there was no Palestine, only Syria, well into the1930s and 1940s. They continued to believe the best chance of stopping Zionistimmigration was to insist that the object of Zionist desire—Palestine—didn’t even exist.13 See Fu’ad Shattarah, “al-Islah al-Sihhi fi Filastin,” cited in John S. Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid Hayatuhu(New York: The Syrian American Press, 1919), 117; Najib Ibrahim Katbah, “al-Mawqif al-Siyyasi: Nahnuwa-l-Sahyuniyyun,” cited in John S. Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid Hayatuhu (New York: The Syrian AmericanPress, 1919), 140; Rashid Taqi al-Din, “Bayn Suriya wa-Filastin,” cited in John S. Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid Hayatuhu (New York: The Syrian American Press, 1919), 167-8.14 For a sampling of folks who used the term southern Syria after 1920, see Mahmud al-Charkis, al-Dalilal-Musawwar lil-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya (Damascus: Matba‘at Babil Ikhwan, 1930), 11; Ihsan al-Nimr, TarikhJabal Nablus wa-l-Balqa (Damascus: Matba‘at Zaydun, 1938), I, 34, 67; n.a., Rihla Bayn al-Jibal fiMa‘aqil al-Tha’irin (Jafa: al-Matba‘a al-Jami‘a al-Islamiyya, 1936), 13, 17; Sahil al-Sayyid, Al-Murshidal-‘Arabi, Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1936), 11; George Haddad, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya(Damascus: Matba‘at al-Mufid, 1954), 15; Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, Tarikh Filastin min Aqdam al-Azmana ila Ayyamina hadhihi (Jerusalem: Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, 1934), 7; Muhammad Libada al-Nabulusi, Thawrat Filastin al-Kubra (Damascus: Matba‘at al-Fayha’, 1936), 9, 39, 77, 79, 83, 87; Nuri al-Sa‘id, Istiqlal al-‘Arab wa-Wihdatuhum: Mudhakkira fi al-Qadiyya al-‘Arabiyya (Baghdad: Matba‘at al-Hukuma, 1943), 9; Ghayrath Pitrus, Suriya al-Jadida (trans.), Filastin, Shahidat al-Isti‘mar al-Sahyuni (SanPaolo: Dar al-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr al-‘Arabiyya, 1940), 7; for further examples, see Zachary Foster,“Arabness, Turkey and the Palestinian National Imagination in the Eyes of Mir’at al-Sharq (1919-1926),”Jerusalem Quarterly 42 (2010): 69; Weldon C. Matthews, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists andPopular Politics in Mandate Palestine (I. B. Tauris, 2006), 138; Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria. 23Consider what the central political institution of the Arabs of Palestine—The ArabHigher Committee—wrote as late as 1948: Palestine never had a special status [during the Ottoman period]. Some of it was a part of the District of Beirut and some of it was known as the District of Jerusalem. Its name [i.e. Palestine] was not in widespread circulation at that time, neither was it known to people. Instead, it was considered a part the Shami Land or Syria. There is no natural border between it and Syria, nor between it and Lebanon. The Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians are one people in terms of the property, genealogy, trade, agriculture and industry, not to mention their close linguistic ties, shared customs, traditions, religion, blood and interests.15To emphasize the ironies of history, some Zionists and Arabs agreed in the 1930s and1940s that there was no Palestine. To some Zionists, no Palestine meant the Arabs livingin it would apparently be happy moving to Lebanon or Syria. To some Arabs, noPalestine meant the British might hand over the country to Arabs in Damascus, Amman,Beirut or Cairo rather than Zionists in Jerusalem. Few people used the phrase tounconsciously describe any place at all. To this day, the phrase southern Syria continuesto be used to score political victories, and not much else. * * *Scholars. Now let’s return to the history of the controversy over Palestine. In the early1970s, the Egyptian diplomat Tahseen Bashir persuaded his friend, Bernard Lewis, thatthe Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was ready for an interim peace settlement withIsrael, a message Lewis was asked to convey to the then Prime Minister of Israel, Golda15 al-Hay’a al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Ulya, Qadiyyat Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Sa‘ada, 1948?), 4. 24Meir. The British Jewish historian apparently had a direct line of communication with thesitting Israeli head of state. Lewis complied, convinced that Sadat wanted peace.16Reportedly, Lewis and Meir met in the early 1970s. Meir seems to have rebuffed Lewis.In response, Lewis published a magnum opus on the history of the conflict forCommentary Magazine in 1975. 15,000 words, 33 footnotes and two appendices later,Lewis aimed to reassure Meir that his sympathies lied with Israel, not the Arabs. This ishow he began his essay: The name “Palestine” is first attested in the history of Herodotus, and appears in the works of later Greek and Latin writers […] From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity.17Strangely enough, despite his expertise in Islamic rather than Greek and Roman history,Lewis had virtually nothing to say about the history of “Palestine” during the earlyCaliphate, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Crusader, Mamluk or Ottoman periods. [Theabove ellipses included a few more sentences about the ancient Greek and Roman world.]Lewis continued: With the British conquest in 1917-18 and the subsequent establishment of a mandated territory in the conquered areas, Palestine became the official name of a definite territory for the first time since the Middle Ages…From the outset, Jews living under the Mandate refused to use this name in Hebrew but instead used what had become the common Jewish designation of the county—Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel… For Arabs, too, the term Palestine was unacceptable, though for other reasons. For Muslims, it was alien and irrelevant but not abhorrent in the same way as it was to Jews. The main objection for them was that it seemed to assert a separate entity which politically conscious Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere denied. For them there was no such thing as a country called Palestine. The region which the British called Palestine was merely a separated part of a larger whole. For a long time organized and articulate Arab political opinion was virtually unanimous on this point.16 On the meeting between Lewis and Bashir, see Itamar Rabinovich, “Can One be Simultaneously aZionist and a Great Historian of Islam?” Mosaic 14 June 2016 (goo.gl/hmZxVp).17 Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO.” 25Jews did indeed use the term Erets Yisrael in Hebrew rather than Palestina, as Lewisclaimed. Zionist officials even lobbied the British to exchange the Hebrew term Palestinafor Erets Yisrael (the Land of Israel) on stamps, bills and coins. But such efforts were notbased on an “abhorrence” of the word Palestine, as Lewis claimed. In fact, by the lastdecades of the 19th century, Palestine was the word of choice for most Zionists in theirown native languages—e.g. Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Ladino, French,German, Hungarian, English, Arabic and Italian. That’s why Zionists established thePalestine Post, the Palestine Office, the Palestine Zionist Executive, later renamed TheJewish Agency for Palestine and the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the financial front of theZionist enterprise. Zionists didn’t have problems with the word Palestine. Quite thecontrary, using a word other than Palestine in English, German or Russian would havesounded odd.So why was the word Palestine never embraced in Hebrew? Did Jews “abhor” the word,as Lewis suggested? No. For more than two millennia, Hebrew survived as a written, nota spoken language. It was therefore not subject to the same influences as its livingcounterparts and was thus slow to embrace the word Palestine when it rose dramaticallyin popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and in the 19th century MiddleEast. Instead, the Zionist objection to the word Palestine on coins and stamps was apolitical act. The enemies of the Zionists decided their homeland was called Palestine,and so a few Zionists thought it politically useful to declare war on the word itself.Mikhaʼel Asaf, discussed above, may have been the first historian-casualty of that war.Lewis might have been the second. 26Lewis also suggested that from the rise of Islam in the 7th century up until World War I,Arabs considered the word Palestine “alien and irrelevant.” It’s strange that Lewis wrotethat, since his dissertation covered a period of history when Palestine was anadministrative district, which we’ll discuss in greater depth in chapter 3. (Perhaps theproblem was that Lewis had written his dissertation 40 years earlier and had completelyforgotten about it!). Lewis repeated his misunderstanding of this history, if watered downslightly, in his memoir of a lifetime, published at 96 years young, claiming not that theArabs and Muslims abhorred the word Palestine, but that they simply forgot about it. I’lldeal with this question directly in chapters three and four.18Edward Said is a household name to anyone who has pursued a degree in the humanities.The book that made him famous was Orientalism, followed by The Question of Palestinein 1979. In the later, Said wrote that Zionists [read: Bernard Lewis] asserted dubiouslythat “Palestine was used only as an administrative designation in the Roman Empire, andnever since—except […] during the British Mandate period after 1922.” But the truth,Said insisted, was that “if one were to read geographers, historians, philosophers and18 Lewis wrote that “the name Palestina was retained for the remaining centuries of Roman and thenByzantine rule, and, for a while, by the Arab conquerors. Before long however it was forgotten, and thecountry had no separate name, being seen simply as part of some larger entity. In Christian Europe, wherethe country was usually known by the name of “The Holy Land,” the Roman name Palestina reappearedwith the classical Renaissance, and became a common term to designate the country. From Europe it wasbrought again to the Middle East, but was used almost exclusively by Europeans and other Westerners, andnot by Jews or Arabs. The former preferred to use the biblical names; the latter had no need for a specialname for what was simply part of a larger whole of the Arab world, or at least of Syria. With one briefinterlude, that of the Crusader states in the Middle Ages, this remained the situation of the country foralmost two millennia, from the triumph of Rome to the fall of the Ottomans.” Bernard Lewis with BuntzieEllis Churchill, Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian (New York: Viking, 2012),213; see also Bernard Lewis, “Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name,” The InternationalHistory Review 2(1) (1980): 6. 27poets who wrote in Arabic from the eighth century on, one would find references toPalestine.” Said was correct, as we shall discover in chapter three, although he failed toitalicize the word if, since it seems he did not read many geographers, historians,philosophers or poets who wrote in Arabic from the 8th century onwards. Instead, hecited a single passage about Palestine from the 10th century Arab geographer al-Maqdisi(a.k.a. al-Muqaddasi) (d.991) which mentioned the term Palestine. Ironically, the passagewas translated by Guy Le Strange—the same Guy Le Strange Said had accused only ayear earlier in Orientalism of being an Orientalist—one who also apparently offered arebuke to Zionist mythology. Anyways, the point is that Said didn’t bother to cite anyother Arabs who apparently wrote so much about Palestine. The mystery over Palestinepersisted.19The prominent historian Rashid Khalid rejected the Lewis thesis outright in his 1997Palestinian Identity. The book won the Albert Hourani book award, the closest thingMiddle East scholars have to a Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Khalidi land the poignantlynamed Edward Said Chair of Arab Studies at Columbia University, arguably the mostcoveted job in Middle East Studies today. The book’s contribution to the history of thename Palestine was based significantly on a 1701 petition of Jerusalemite notables and a1726 document also from Jerusalem, both found in the Khalidiyya Library. (Khalidi didnot provide the full text of the two sources, and neither are accessible to the public).19 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Times Books, 1979), 10-11; for Said on Guy LeStrange, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 15, 224. The historian BesharaDoumani [Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1995), ch. 1, note 1] added that “it is doubtful whether the name Palestinewas commonly used by the native population to refer to a specific territory or nation before the latenineteenth century,” although he acknowledged that the issue still awaited a more systematic investigation. 28Khalidi argued that both documents showed that Palestine was thought of as a special andsacred place, with Jerusalem as its focus. According to Khalidi, a group of Jerusalemitenotables signed the 1701 petition demanding that the Ottoman governor revokepermission for a visit to Jerusalem of a French consul based in Sidon. In Khalidi’s words,the petition showed “Palestine as a special and sacred space” and recapitulated “the ideaof Palestine as a special and sacred land with Jerusalem as its focus.” As for the 1726document, Khalidi quoted one line from it: “The transfer of waqf [religious endowment]property to foreigners in Jerusalem constituted a threat to the future of the city, whichmust be built up and populated if Jerusalem were to be defended against the covetousnessof these external enemies.” The document, for Khalidi, showed that “modern nationalismwas rooted in long-standing attitudes of concern for the city of Jerusalem and forPalestine as a sacred entity.”20But neither the 1701 petition nor the 1726 document, nor any other documents Khalidicited before 1899, mentioned the word Palestine. A careful reader of Khalidi’s bookmight conclude (incorrectly, as we shall discover in chapters three and four) that the wordPalestine was not known to anyone in the Arab world before 1899. And yet Khalidi’sPalestinian Identity remains the book on the origins of a Palestinian identity even thoughit had preciously little to say about Palestine before the 20th century. The mystery overthe history of the name Palestine continued.2120 On the lack of public accessibility to the documents in the library, see my acknowledgments section.21 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York:Columbia University Press, 1997), 29-30. Khalidi repeated his own misinterpretation of these documentsthroughout the text (ibid, 29, 32, 46, 232 and 254). [Note that Jerusalemite notables had on several otheroccasions presented similar petitions to the Ottoman authorities. See K. J. Asali (ed.) Jerusalem in History(New York: Olive Branch Press, 2000), 209; Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem atEaster, A.D. 1697 (London: C.V. Rivington, 1823), 39]. The 1899 reference to Palestine, the first reference 29A year later, in 1998, the historian Haim Gerber broke new ground. He argued that theinhabitants of the region had known about Palestine from the 16th century onwards insenses that went “far beyond mere objective geography” and they had a “socialawareness” of living in it. “There are sufficient indications,” he wrote, “that on the eve ofthe Great War [1914] the concept and idea of Palestine was well entrenched in the mindsof the Arabs of Palestine.” Gerber dispelled the myth that Palestine had been completelyforgotten in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. But he based this claim on seven sources,even though Arabs and Ottomans left behind many hundreds during that period. What dideveryone else have to say about Palestine?22In the past few years, the English professor Nabil Matar has also joined the front lines inthe battle over Palestine. “The view of the land by the peoples from the Ottoman Empireand beyond (from Morocco to India),” he claimed, was that “ard Filastin [the Land ofto that word cited in the book, appeared in Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi’s letter to Theodor Herzl, in which hetells Herzl to “leave Palestine in peace.” See Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 75.22 He included anecdotes from Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi’s (d.1522) al-Uns al-Jalil, al-Tamartashi’s (d.1644-5) al-Khabar al-Tamm, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli’s (d.1671) al-Fatawa al-Khayriyya, EbussuudEfendi’s (d.1574) fatwa, Evliya Çelebi’s (d.1682) Seyahatname, and a few other sources which mention theword Palestine during the Ottoman period. See Haim Gerber, “‘Palestine’ and Other Territorial Concepts inthe 17th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (1998): 567. He argued elsewhere that“two very important legal scholars of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Damascus refer to Khayr al-Din al-Ramli as the ‘great scholar of Palestine.’ Haim Gerber, “Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians”Journal of Palestine Studies 33(1) (2003): 27. His source is his very own “Palestine and Other TerritorialConcepts,” in which he found one (not two) scholars who described Khayr al-Din al-Ramli as a scholar ofPalestine (the other described him as from al-Diyar al-Qudsiyya, or the Jerusalem region). See ibid, 569.Gerber also used the words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” uncritically in his studies on the history of the useof those words: “in the seventeenth century all of Palestine was divided into three such autonomousdistricts (sanjaqs), which developed symbiotic, even friendly, relations with each other, together resistingLebanese forces that tried to encroach on Palestinian territory from the North […] Amazingly, a recentstudy found that by the end of the century the three dynasties had intermarried, so here in effect was arudimentary Palestinian state, in territory more or less coterminous with the area of western Palestine.” SeeHaim Gerber, Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to thePresent (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 45. 30Palestine] was part of their traveling and living experience.” For the Muslim, Christianand Jewish populations of the Ottoman Empire, “ard Filastin [the Land of Palestine] waspart of the lebensraum [habitat] in which their personal history took shape.” Matar foundtwo sources to support the claim—the same 17th century Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebithat Gerber had found two decades earlier, and a 17th century Aleppan Orthodox Priest,Makariyus III ibn Za‘im. But, much like Lewis, Said, Khalidi and Gerber, Matar drewsweeping conclusions over the course of four centuries and among three religioustraditions spanning three continents based on only a handful of sources.23The UK-based scholar Nur Masalha recently published a lengthy study of “The Conceptof Palestine” from its origins in the late Bronze Age to the modern period. His argumentwas that “the concept of Palestine is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of theindigenous people of Palestine.” He wrote that “Palestine is the collective watan(homeland) of the Palestinian people—the indigenous people of historic Palestine,” asentence that feels more fitting for a political rally than a peer-reviewed paper. He alsomade sweeping conclusions based on a small number of sources, especially from the 13ththrough early 19th centuries.24 * * *23 Nabil Matar, Through the Eyes of the Beholder: The Holy Land, 1517-1713 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 226.24 Nur Masalha, “The Concept of Palestine: The Conception Of Palestine from the Late Bronze Age to theModern Period,” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 15(2) (2016): 143-202. He also used theadjective Palestinian to describe people without any apparent recourse to a source when it is precisely theirPalestinian-ness he is trying to explain. 31The Palestinians. We’ve discussed the history of the controversy over Palestine. Nowlet’s move to the second part of this chapter, the history of the controversy over thePalestinians. When did people first start to deny their existence? In this section, I’minterested not in the actual origins and development of a Palestinian identity—dealt within chapter three and four—but rather the controversies that have surrounded it over thepast century.In 2019, we will reach the centennial of the first American news correspondent in historyto have reportedly declared the Palestinian race “a creature of allusion.” The point wasreported second hand by Habib Ibrahim Katbah, and little else is known about theidentity of the American journalist who penned to paper the claim. But, if true, it wouldplace the slogan that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian” nearly as old as the firstpeople in modern history to use that term to describe themselves. The Palestinians wereburdened by controversy almost from the time they first came into the existence.25We take for granted that the term Palestinian means something to us, but that was notalways the case. In 1922, U.S. lawmakers discussed a resolution to support “the re-creation of Palestine as the national home of the Jewish Race” in what appears to be theoldest recorded debate over the meaning of the term, Palestinians, in English. This wasonly a few years after the 1917 Balfour Declaration, when Britain declared its intention toturn Palestine into the National Home of the Jews, and around the same time the League25 See Katbah, “al-Haraka al-Sahyuniyya” in Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid, 157. 32of Nations ratified the British Mandate of Palestine, giving the British internationallegitimacy to rule over people it denied the right to self-determination.In one session, Congressman James Reed and Congressman Bourke Cockran quarreledover the idea of establishing a Jewish legion in Palestine (Ze’ev Jabotinsky tried toestablish an organized Jewish defense force in the country after World War I). Mr. Reedrealized this would not go over well and that “people,” as he called them, would beunhappy and discontented.“Which people?” asked Congressman Cockran.“The Palestinians,” said Mr. Reed.“[Did you mean] the Syrians?” Mr. Cockran retorted.“I mean the non-Zionist population of Palestine.”Was Congressman Cockran a troll, or did he think the people who would have opposed aJewish legion in Palestine called themselves Syrians? It seems he was neither a troll nor aZionist propagandist. As an Irish immigrant, he opposed British imperialism in Irelandand apartheid in South Africa. He also lobbied against the American conquest of thePhilippines in 1899 and supported organized labor and immigrants. Although he wasracist and supported the disenfranchisement of black voters in the United States, he wasprogressive on foreign policy. It appears he thought these people who opposed a Jewishlegion in Palestine called themselves Syrians, and he was not entirely wrong for thinkingthat: self-identified Syrians outnumbered self-identified Palestinians in the United Statesby an order of magnitude in the years leading up to 1922.2626 Most Ottoman immigrants to the New World at the time came from Mount Lebanon, smaller numberscame from Homs, Bethlehem, Ramallah and elsewhere. Most of them called themselves Syrian in the New 33Still, by 1922, very few of the people Mr. Cockran thought were Syrians calledthemselves Syrian. (Most would have called themselves Arabs, the Arabs of Palestine,the Muslims and Christians of Palestine, the Palestinians or the people of Jaffa, thepeople of Jerusalem and the people of Nablus, etc.). Two exceptions were folks from thenorthern areas of the British Mandate for Palestine—i.e. Haifa or Acre—some of whommay have thought they were from Syria, not Palestine (in the early 1920s), and otherswho used the term out of aspiration to be Syrian rather than a self-evident appellation.27Confusion over the term persisted later in the hearing. “I know the Palestinians, I havetalked with them. They are sensible,” insisted Mr. Reed. “How would you feel if theGerman troops were holding you down until enough Frenchmen came in to takepossession of the State?” Mr. Reed understood that whatever these people were called,World—and would have been annoyed had you called them something else, such as Turks, a term thatsounded more like a curse word in English than a self-appellation. Khalil Totah—from Ramallah—spenttime in the US in the early 20th century and described himself as from Syria in his diary. (See ThomasRicks, Turbulent Times in Palestine: The Diaries of Khalil Totah (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies,2009), 194). The strongest evidence for the preference of Syrian comes from U.S. immigration records.Until 1899, all immigrants from the Ottoman Empire were called Turks. The first year the immigrants weregiven the option Syrian or Turk, 99.3% of them chose Syrian. See Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia:The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 100-101, note 65. Most Ottomanimmigrants in Brazil also preferred the term Sirios to Turcos so as not to be mistakenly confused forMuslims. See Akram Fouad Khater, “Becoming “Syrian” in America: A Global Geography of Ethnicityand Nation” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 14(2/3) (2005): 304. The American traveler,Adela E. Orpen [The Chronicles of the Sid: Or, the Life and Travels of Adelia Gates (New York: FlemingH. Revell Co, 1897), 301-2] also conflated the terms Palestinian and Syrian in her 1897 travelogue, writingthat “I like the name Shechem best, though Palestinians, whether Christian, Jew, Syrian or Arab, now sayNablus.” For a similar example, see “Durr al-Malh ‘ala al-Jarh,” Filastin 25 October 1911; the term“Syrian” was occasionally used instead of Palestinian well into the Mandate period (1920-1948). Sa‘id al-Sabbagh [al-Madaniyyat al-Qadima wa-Tarikh Suriya wa-Filastin (2nd ed.) (Jaffa and Haifa: al-Maktabaal-‘Asriyya, 1944), 187-8], for instance, described Yusuf Diya Pasha al-Khalidi (from Jerusalem) as Syrian.27 Some people might have thought places like Haifa or the Galilee were part of Syria, not Palestine. Thenewspaper al-Nafir (28 July 1909 and 10 May 1910) described Haifa as a city in Syria and in Palestine (10May 1910). In 1923, the geographer ‘Abd al-Hadi may have thought Nazareth, Haifa and the Galilee werepart of Syria, not Palestine. See Zachary J. Foster, “Arab Historiography in Mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948” (MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2011), 39-40. 34they were not happy about Zionist immigration. They would “make a ban to immigrationfor 10 years,” Mr. Reed added.“Who would?” Mr. Cockran responded, now appearing to troll Mr. Reed.“The Palestinians,” shouted another Congressman in defense of Mr. Reed.Mr. Reed jumped in to correct Mr. Cooper. “No, the non-Zionists,” he said. They out tobe called “non-Jewish Palestinians.” In the end, he decided that Palestinian ought to bequalified as not Jewish by definition to avoid confusion.28 * * *Palestinian Civic Identity. Congressman Reed was not the only one to insist Jews werenot Palestinians. “The Palestinian people consisted of two races, the Christians andMuslims,” claimed one Palestinian Arab writer in 1929, Bishara Mansur. “ThePalestinian Arabs are no doubt made up of two races, not three,” he added for emphasis.Other Palestinian Arab writers like Grigorios al-Hajjar and Rashid Ibrahim agreed withMansur that Jews were not Palestinians.29Some writers insisted Jews were not Palestinians, in part, because legally they werePalestinians. The British specified in a 1920 interim report that all Christian, Muslim andJewish government officials were Palestinians. The interim decision was expanded in28 United States Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Establishment of a National Home inPalestine, H. Con. Res. 52 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922), 31, 35.29 Mansur, al-Dima’ al-Zakiyya, 16; Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya Amam al-Wafd al-Parlamani al-‘Iraqi (Haifa: Matba‘at al-Nafir, 1936), 5; Grigorios al-Hajjar (a.k.a Garigoriyus al-Hajjar),Britanya al-‘Udhma: al-Shahadat al-Siyasiyya amam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya al-Britaniyya (Damascus:Matba‘at al-Sha‘b, 1937), 53; for a similar point, see al-Nafir, Majmu‘a Shahadat ‘Arab Filastin, 31. 351925 with the Palestinian Law of Nationality, which granted “Palestinian nationality” toall subjects of the Government of Palestine. The British High Commissioner, HerbertSamuel emphasized that “Palestinian citizenship is enjoyed by all the residents ofPalestine, whether Jewish or not Jewish.” This is why you’ll often hear propagandistsclaim that Jews, not Arabs, called themselves Palestinians from the 1920s-1940s. Suchpropagandists are absolutely correct: legally, Jews were as Palestinian as Arabs werePalestinian.30In fact, the British legal system in Palestine was designed to give Jewish Palestiniansadvantages over non-Jewish Palestinians in matters of travel, immigration, diplomaticprotection, repatriation, and the regulation of the franchise. That’s why many Muslim andChristian Palestinian students, migrants, merchants or travelers who had traveled abroadPalestine prior to the codification of the nationality laws in the early 1920s had troublereturning. After all, the purpose of the Mandate was to facilitate the establishment of a30 For the most comprehensive treatment of this subject, see Lauren Banko, The Invention of PalestinianCitizenship, 1918–47 (Edinburgh University Press, 2016); on the interim report, see Likhovski, Law andIdentity in Mandate Palestine, 25; for the order itself, see Government of Palestine, Palestinian CitizenshipOrder (n.p: n.p., 1925); the order was translated immediately into Arabic, as Government of Palestine,Filastin: Taqrir al-Mandub al-Sami,1920-1925 (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Dar al-Rum al-Urthudhuks,1925?), 14; on Samuel’s definition of a Palestinians citizen, see ibid, 26-27; see also Najib Sadaqa,Qadiyyat Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub, 1946), 70; this usage made its way into Arabic. See, for instance,Muhammad Rif‘at, Qadiyyat Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1947), 59; Lester Hopkins, “al-Sukkan,” inSa‘id Himadeh (ed.), al-Nizam al-Iqtisadi fi Filastin (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Amrikiyya fi Beirut, 1939), 48-9. Strictly speaking, Jews rarely if ever called themselves the Palestinians, but rather “Palestinian subjects”or “Palestinian Jews.” Shimria Yellin, for instance, defined herself as a “Palestinian subject” in an inquiryto British officials. See Tel Aviv School of English, Central Zionist Archive (CZA) A580/22. I would liketo thank Liora Halperin for this reference. Hannah Arendt [Jerome Kohn; Ron H Feldman (eds.) TheJewish Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 397] wrote in 1944 that, if current trends were tocontinue, “the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whosepossibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta.” For further referencesto Palestinian Jews, see “Palestinian Jews in England,” The Zionist Review 1(10) (1918): 185; forPalestinian Jewry, see, for instance, “The Zionist Commission and Palestine,” The Zionist Review 1(11)(1918): 203; see also R. Gottheil, “The History of Zionism,” pp. 117-137 in Zionism and the Jewish FutureH. Sacher (ed.) (London: John Murray, 1917), 130. 36national home for the Jews in Palestine. Arabs were hostile to the idea that Jews could bePalestinians as a way of registering their disapproval with the Law of PalestinianNationality, which they saw discriminating against the very people it was named after.31Having said that, Arabs still used the term “Palestinian” in the British sense of the wordeven if they rejected the moral foundations of the Mandate. Since the government definedcitizenship as “Palestinian citizenship,” Arabs also referred to it as “Palestiniancitizenship.” As we shall discover in the next few chapters, states often played animportant role how we refer to places, peoples and even how we describe ourselves.32A small number of optimists hoped that the label Palestinian could include everyone wholived in Palestine. The Polish Jewish American Orientalist Morris Jastrow wrote in 1919that there were too many “nationalities in Palestine” for the state to serve the interests ofjust one nationality. What followed in his prescient comments was a fascinatingdiscussion of the difference between a civic and ethnic state. “A Jewish State, wroteJastrow, “necessarily involves of the older conception of a nation based on a singlenationality. In Palestine, the conditions preclude a State of a single nationality, except bythe forcible submission of other nationalities already represented, it is an injustice to givepreference to any single group.” He proposed a simple solution: “anyone can become a31 Banko, Palestinian Citizenship, 24-5.32 The newspaper Filastin (6 July 1921) described two Jews in 1921 as “Palestinian Jews”; the PalestineWorkers Union [Ittihad ‘Ummal Filastin, Kashf al-Qina‘: Majmu‘a Mushahadat wa-Haqa‘iq ‘an Ahwal al-Idhtirabat al-Akhira fi Filastin (Haifa: Matba‘at Zaytuni, 1937), 25] claimed the Histadrut called all Jewishand Arab workers “Palestinian workers” without distinguishing between them; Rashid al-Barrawi [Mashru‘Suriyya al-Kubra (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya, 1947), 48] added a state called “United Syria”would facilitate economic cooperation with the “Palestinian citizens of Jewish decent.” For similar usage,see Jabir Shibli, Asra‘ am Ta‘awwun fi Filastin? (Jerusalem: Sharika Matba‘at al-Umma, 1940), 52. 37Palestinian, as any person can become an American or an Englishman, by obtainingnationalization papers and swearing allegiance to the principles of the country.”33Jastrow was not the only one who believed that the term Palestinian ought to be inclusive.The prominent activist Najib Sadaqa wrote in 1936 that the Mandate should haveestablished neither a Jewish nor Arab state in Palestine, but rather a “Palestinian state.” In1946, Muhammad Bayhum described a long tradition of Arab tolerance towards Jews,including after the Spanish expulsion. Arabs sought cooperation with Zionists frombeginning, he claimed, on condition that they become Palestinian citizens. But Bayhumbelieved the Jews had no interest in becoming Palestinian citizens. “Their only aim wasto establish a state of Israel.” Hasan Siddiqi al-Dajjani argued similarly that the Jews haddesired to live in the country as Jews rather than as Palestinians living in an Arabcountry, alongside the Arabs. Likewise, Kunstantin Thuyuduri hoped that the Muslims,Christians and Jews would abandon the terms Muslim, Christian and Jews and replacethem with “brothers” or “Palestinians.” A small minority of optimistic thinkers, Jewishand Arab alike, thought that the term Palestinian could or should have been embraced byall people who lived in Palestine.3433 Morris Jastrow, Zionism and the Future of Palestine: The Fallacies (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 108-110.34 First see Najib Sadaqa, Qadiyyat Filastin, 245; then see Muhammad Bayhum, Filastin: Andalus al-Sharq(Beirut: Matabi‘ Sadir, 1946), 39; then see Hasan Siddiqi al-Dajjani, cited in al-Nafir, Majmu‘a Shahadat‘Arab Filastin amam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya al-Britaniyya (Haifa: al-Nafir, 1937?), 35; then see Kunstantin(a.k.a. Constantine) Thuyuduri, Filastin wa-Mustaqbaluha (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-Tijariyya, 1930), 12.On Thuyuduri’s background, see Ya‘qub al-‘Awdat, Min A‘lam al-Fikr wa-l-Adab fi Filastin (3rd ed.)(Jerusalem: Dar al-Isra’, 1992), 82. 38In short, the word Palestinian from 1920 to 1948 meant all subjects of the government, nomatter their ethnic or religious background. It also meant only Muslim and ChristianArabs, not Jews. It also meant Muslims, Christians and some Jews. It was also used anappellation of aspiration rather than description. Today, many propagandists recall withgreat ignorance only part of the history of the term.Golda Meir. The controversy over the Palestinians picked up again in the late 60s whenthe newly elected Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, famously explained that “therewere no such thing as Palestinians”: When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.35So adamant about the point, Meir once displayed her British-issued Government ofPalestine identity card during a media appearance and pointed to the word Palestinian inEnglish. As we just saw, Meir was correct, emphasizing the usage of term according toPalestine’s British colonizers, the usage that guaranteed Jews legal privileges overMuslims, Christians and others.Former Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, followed in her footsteps. He insistedthat the Hebrew translation of the 1978 Camp David Accords—the Israeli-Egyptianpeace treaty—use the term the “Arabs of the Land of Israel” instead of “Palestinian35 The interview with Meir first appeared in The Sunday Times (London) 15 June 1969 and was re-printedin the “Golda Meir Scorns Soviets: Israeli Premier Explains Stand On Big-4,” The Washington Post 16June 1969. 39Arabs.” The same thing happened during the Oslo process in 1993, when the Israelidelegation insisted that the unofficial Hebrew translation of the agreement use the phrase“the Arabs of the land of Israel” rather than the Palestinians. The very existence of peoplecalled the Palestinians was a problem for Israel.36The belief that there are no Palestinians is still quite popular today. Yehezkel bin Nun’s2001 article, “The Myth of the Palestinian People,” still performs well in Google searchesmore than 15 years later. “Who are the Palestinians?” he asked. “Who are these peoplewho claim the Holy Land as their own? What is their history? Where did they comefrom? How did they arrive in the country they call Palestine?” Bin Nun narrated textbookZionist mythology about the land on the eve of the Zionist movement. It was “practicallyempty,” he wrote, populated by Arab “immigrants” from the surrounding countriesinterested in work opportunities created by Zionists. “If the Palestinians are indeed amyth,” bin Nun concluded, “why invent a fictitious people?” His answer was the myth ofthe Palestinian people justified “the Arab occupation of the Land of Israel.”37 * * *36 On Begin, see Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 36-7; on the Oslo process, see Kenneth Levin, “WhatGold Meir Said About the Palestinians,” New York Times, 12 October 1993 (https://goo.gl/oQ2my8).37 Yehezkel Bin-Nun, “The Myth of The Palestinian People,” Arutz Sheva, 26 December 2001(https://goo.gl/0Isbbl). His belief that the very existence of the Palestinians was itself an act of violencepersists today. The billionaire casino mogul and chief financial supporter of the Israeli settler movement,Sheldon Adelson thought the Palestinians were “southern Syrians” or Egyptians until Yasir Arafat, thenleader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “came along with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and gave it toeverybody to drink and sold them the idea of Palestinians.” See Jodi Rudoren, “A Mogul Comes to Lunch,and He Doesn’t Hold His Tongue,” New York Times 28 May 2013 (https://goo.gl/rDpxRW). 40Scholars. From the 1970s onwards, scholars joined the race to determine whenPalestinians first started to call themselves Palestinians. Expectedly, Bernard Lewisplayed a key role in propagating myths about their origins: In Ottoman times, that is, immediately before the coming of the British, Palestine had indeed been a part of a larger Syrian whole from which it was in no way distinguished whether by language, culture, education, administration, political allegiance, or any other significant respect […] For the rest of the period of the British Mandate, and for many years after that, their organizations described themselves as Arab and expressed their national identity in Arab rather than in Palestinian or even in Syrian terms. The emergence of a distinctive Palestinian entity is thus a product of the last decades and may be seen as the joint creation of Israel and the Arab states.38Bernard Lewis believed a Palestinian “entity” —whatever that is supposed to mean—emerged only in the 1950s and 1960s. This should immediately seem odd to readers,since we just explained that the controversy in and of itself over the Palestinians dates tosome 40 years earlier.The historian Meir Litvak told me in 2009 that Muslims did not identify as Palestinian inthe late Ottoman period. He has argued in print that Arabic sources from the inter-warperiod used phrases such as “the Arabs of Palestine,” “the Arab nation in Palestine” and“the Arab youth of Palestine” rather than the terms “Palestinians” or “Palestinianpeople.”39In response, historians sympathetic to the Palestinians pushed back. Haim Gerber,discussed above, argued in a classic essay on the subject that a “local Palestinian identityexisted in the country before both the British [1917] and Zionist presence [1882],” even38 Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO.”39 Meir Litvak, “Constructing A National Past: The Palestinian Case,” in Meir Litvak (ed.) PalestinianCollective Memory and National Identity (New York: Palgrave, 2009), 125, n. 7. 41though he did not find any sources mentioning Palestinians before the Zionist movementin the 1880s. Gerber insisted, nevertheless, that “their most basic identity was simplyPalestinian, with which they identified with all their soul.” Even if we excuse themomentary lapse in scholarly pedigree (“with all their soul”), Gerber didn’t find anyonewho called him or herself Palestinian before the 20th century, let alone before the Zionistpresence, and he never explained what it was that existed before Zionism.40Other experts on Palestinian history have chimed in as well. “What can be seen in thepress, as in few other sources,” wrote Rashid Khalidi, “is the increasing use of the terms‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinians’ [from 1908-1914].’” Khalidi was certainly right about that,as we shall discover in chapter four, but he found only a handful of references to the termPalestinian before 1914. How widespread was the identity before 1914? I will try toanswer that question in chapter four.The director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University,professor Rochelle Davis, went even further. She argued that a “large portion” of Arabs,Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Ethiopians from Jerusalem “would have called themselvesPalestinians” in late Ottoman Jerusalem, even though she did not make mention of anyJerusalemite Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Greeks or Ethiopians who used the termPalestinian. Discerning readers should wonder why the world’s leading experts of the40 See Gerber, “Zionism, Orientalism and the Palestinians,” 28 and Gerber, Remembering and ImaginingPalestine, 75-6, respectively. 42history of the Palestinians have made such sweeping statements based on little or in somecases no evidence at all.41This has generally been the tenor of the public debate surrounding the origins of thePalestinians: sweeping conclusions with little to no evidence. The same can be said forthe prominent journalist, David Remnick, who wrote in the New Yorker that “in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Palestinian Arabs identified themselves notas a unified people but as subjects of the Ottoman Empire and of the greater communityof Islam; their local identities were tied to their villages, clans, and families.” First of all,it’s notable that David Remnick had something to say about the topic. But he, too, didn’tcite any sources to support his claim. The origins of the Palestinians remained elusive.42 * * *U.S. Presidential Candidates. During the 2012 U.S. Republican primary campaign, NewtGingrich reminded the Jewish Channel that “there was no Palestine as a state. It was partof the Ottoman Empire. I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are infact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chanceto go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this waragainst Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic.” To paraphrase, the identity41 See Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 58-9, 155; then see Rochelle Davis, “Ottoman Jerusalem,” pp. 10-29 inSalim Tamari (ed.) Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War (2nd ed.)(Jerusalem: The Institute for Jerusalem Studies, 2002), 10-11.42 David Remnick, “Blood and Sand: A Revisionist Israeli Historian Revisits his Country’s Origins,” TheNew Yorker 5 May 2008 (https://goo.gl/d4GrgQ) 43Palestinian is not genetically determined. And Palestinians should have left Palestinewhen the Zionists decided it belonged to them.43Gingrich’s remarks seemed mildly insensitive to the mainstream media. The WashingtonPost, the Guardian, Fox News and the AP all went looking for clues to the mysteriousorigins of the Palestinians. The Guardian claimed, “most historians mark the start ofPalestinian Arab nationalist sentiment as 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinianregion revolted against Ottoman rule.” The revolt was of course not against Ottoman rule.It was against Muhammad Ali’s Egyptian occupation. The Guardian did not cite anysources, but as far as I can tell, only two scholars have ever claimed the 1834 revoltmarked the beginning of a Palestinian national identity: the late Israeli sociologist BaruchKimmerling and the American political scientist Joel Migdal. Neither were historians andneither cited any sources from the 1830s in the book where they claim 1834 was soimportant.44The Washington Post turned to a darling of the Zionist right, Dr. Daniel Pipes. “Everyonefrom the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but hehappens to be absolutely correct,” Pipes reportedly said. The term Palestine before 1920“embodied a purely Jewish and Christian concept, one utterly foreign to Moslems, even43 For the full transcript, see The Washington Post, “Newt Gingrich Interview with Jewish Channel(Transcript),” The Washington Post 9 December 2011(https://goo.gl/xAcGNt)44 The revolt stemmed from the conscription policies of the region’s new Egyptian occupiers, who naivelythought they could conscript the boys of Nablus, Hebron and Jerusalem without raising the ire of localleaders. The countryside peasants revolted against military service and high taxes, not identity crises. ForGingrich’s statements, see The Associated Press, “Palestinians are an invented people, says NewtGingrich,” Associated Press, 9 December 2011 (https://goo.gl/oFHVbQ); then see Baruch Kimmerling andJoel Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 6-13. 44repugnant to them.” He added “no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as‘Palestinian’ until 1920, when, in rapid order, this appellation and identity was adoptedby the Muslim Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine.” To paraphrase Dr.Pipes: Palestine was repugnant to hundreds of thousands of people in 1919 and embracedby them in 1920.45Fox News was the least inaccurate, ironically. “Palestinians never had their own state,”they wrote correctly. The Palestinians were instead “ruled by the Ottoman Empire forhundreds of years, like most of the Arab world.” This was also accurate. “When theOttoman Empire collapsed in the aftermath of World War I,” Fox News added, “theBritish, then a global colonial power, took control of the area, then known as BritishMandate Palestine [sic]. During that time [1920-1948], Jews, Muslims and Christiansliving on the land were identified as ‘Palestinian.’” This was also correct, if missing somecritical information. Fox News, much like Golda Meir, only recalled the colonial usage ofthe term Palestinian, forgetting that many Arabs rejected the colonial definition ofPalestinian since it was designed to discriminate against them.46On his return from a tour of the Holy Land in early 2015, former Governor of Arkansasand then Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee borrowed from NewtGingrich’s playbook four years earlier. He told the Washington Post “there’s really nosuch thing as the Palestinians.” “The idea that they have a long history, dating back45 See Daniel Pipes, “The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine,” The Jerusalem Post 13 September 2000(https://goo.gl/eQZjA6).46 Fox News, “Gingrich Describes Palestinian People as Invented,” Fox News, 10 December 2011(goo.gl/WLwgC8). 45hundreds or thousands of years, is not true,” Huckabee continued, citing one of the tour’sspeakers, Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein.There’s hardly a news cycle that passes without “Palestine” or the “Palestinians” makingheadlines. In February 2016, An Israeli lawmaker claimed there was no such thing as thePalestinian people because the Arabic language lacks the consonant “P.” After thePresident of Uganda kept calling Israel ‘Palestine’ during Netanyahu’s visit to thecountry in July 2016, some Israeli radio stations reportedly cut off broadcast of theUgandan President’s speech. In March 2017, Likud MK Oren Hazan repeated that “thereis no Palestinian people. And there has never been a Palestinian people.” However, “thereis a Palestinian moron.”47 * * *Conclusion. What connected the Jewish and Israeli passengers on European airlines inthe 2000s to the Israeli military authorities in the 1980s? And what did my JewishAmerican-Israeli Sabbath hosts in Jerusalem in 2014 have to do with Ted Cruz’s AIPACsupporters in 2016? Ever since states came into existence, our species has struggled withthe question: who has the legitimate right to rule? This question plagues the people ofIsrael and Palestine today. Many of the propagandists of our story—Israelis, Jews, Ted47 Siobhán O'Grady, “The President of Uganda Kept Calling Israel ‘Palestine’ During Netanyahu’s Visit,”Foreign Policy 5 July 2016 (goo.gl/aVxceX); Jonathan Lis, “Israeli Lawmaker Says Palestinian NationDoesn’t Exist, Because Arabic Doesn’t Have ‘P’ read more,” Haaretz 10 February 2016 (goo.gl/MjNGnt);on Oren Hazan, see Bradley Burston, “Five ways Israel Will Make you Hate Israel this Week,” Haaretz 7March 2017 (goo.gl/kO0jje). 46Cruz and AIPAC enthusiasts—believe that Jews should have the right to independence inIsrael for the Jewish people. Many others, including most Palestinians, believe that thePalestinians should have such rights in Palestine for the Palestinians. These claims rest onthe belief that peoples or nations have collective rights as peoples or nations. “Two statesfor two peoples.” We’ve all heard that before.48The problem is that although Israel and Palestine occupy the same piece of real estate, theJews and the Palestinians are not the same people. This has led many propagandistsaround the world to seek to erase traces of Palestine and the Palestinians in history tobolster Israel’s claims to self-determination for Jews in Israel and underminePalestinian’s claims of self-determination in Palestine. (Of course, Palestinians did thesame thing to Israel and Jews, seeking to delegitimize their claims as well). That is whythe history of “Palestine” and “the Palestinians” has been so toxic.Historians were not exempt from the madness, as we saw. They joined the frontlines assoldiers in the propaganda war, eager to prove or disprove the people did or did not usethe words “Palestine” and “Palestinians.” Those sympathetic to the Palestinians tracedtheir history as far back as possible—the 1880s, 1830s or 1701—while those hostile tothe Palestinians claimed the Palestinians were a recent and artificial invention whose veryraison d'être was to undermine the millennia long struggle for Jewish freedom fromtyranny.48 There is a lovely Wikipedia article called, “Lists of active separatist movements,” that surveys dozens ofsuch movements around the globe. 47Today, most leaders around the world still think nations or peoples should have collectiverights. The controversy over “Palestine” and the “Palestinians” seems likely to continueso long as both groups continue to believe that peoples or nations should have collectiverights. But what will happen once people stop believing that nations or peoples shouldhave collective rights to statehood? 48 CHAPTER TWO The Origins of PalestineNow that we’ve covered the controversy over Palestine and the Palestinians, let’s go backin time to when these ideas came into existence. It is critical to go back to their originssince, had we began our story in the modern world, pre-modern world, the iron age, theNeolithic or even the Late Upper Pleistocene, we might have come away with the falseimpression that identities like “Palestinian” came into existence only when we startedlooking for them. I think a sounder approach to understanding the origins of identitieslike “Palestinian” requires leaving history altogether to a time before we had any sociallyconstructed identities at all.This approach will no doubt make most historians uncomfortable—myself included—because it means leaving behind the primary source of history: texts. But it was duringthe formative period of our evolutionary history, long before any texts existed, when wedeveloped identities like “Palestinian.” It was during this era of pre-history when welearned to name things, describe space with complexity, tell stories, make maps andbelieve in beauty. These are things that enabled us to identify with places like Palestine, 49call ourselves “Palestinian,” and care deeply about it. The first part of this chapterexplains when, why and how each of these things happened.49The second part of this chapter looks at how identities like “Palestinian” evolved sincewe started to domesticate plants and animals, build cities, states and civilizations.Domesticating plants and animals forced us into permanent settlements. Places likePalestine scored big victories as result, since settled peoples often identify themselvesand others with their respective places of settlement. Settled peoples also producedagricultural surpluses, incentivizing conquest. Conquers and governors found places likePalestine useful for conquest and governance because named places were a lot easier toconquer and govern than unnamed places. States thus played an important role in the riseand fall of places like Palestine and the identities that sprung forth from them. States alsobrought cities into the world, which we associated with bigger places that surroundedthem. This made identities based on lands and cities very fluid, one often bleeding intothe other.The main argument of this chapter is that identities based on places—includingPalestinian—have been around for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Once westrip the idea of a nation down to its bare bones—an identity based on a place—itbecomes clear that nations are just as old. No surprise that scholars are now findingevidence of nations whenever and wherever we became sedentary, adopted agriculture,49 Yuval N Harari [Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker, 2014), 61] agreed thatthe danger of dismissing 70,000 or 80,000 years of human history is that we might come to the falseconclusion that our ancestors did nothing of importance. 50built states and left behind records. In short, nations have been around long before wehave any records attesting to their existence. * * *Names. Palestine is a name, and names have a long evolutionary history. If we define aname as something that enables us to distinguish between and among other members ofour own species, then dogs, birds and fish can do that through facial or odor recognition.A prurient male Herring Gull, for instance, can identify a specific female he wants tomate with from 30 yards away. Although the skill probably evolved after we divergedfrom the Herring Gull tens of millions of years ago, it nevertheless suggests we’ve beenfine-tuning our mastery of facial recognition for millions of years. No wonder we canremember thousands of faces over the course of a lifetime.50Symbols. We may remember faces, but we forget names in an instant. That’s becausenames are not merely about facial recognition. We only developed a talent for names inthe last few million years at most, probably more like a couple hundred thousand years oreven less. Names are a lot more difficult to remember than faces because they arearbitrary. We invent them out of nothing, and they rarely have anything to do with whatthey represent. This was very difficult to do, but it gave us tremendous flexibility withnaming. (The only two other species that use names in the wild are bottlenose dolphinsand spectacled parrotlets, and they do it with one another only, not other things like50 On herrings, see Niko Tinbergen, The Herring Gull's World: A Study of the Social Behavior of Birds(New York: Basic Books, 1960), 80-81, 99-100. 51patches of seaweed, bays of water, or forests). Names forced us to make a leap of faith inour minds, associating arbitrary sounds with individuals, things or places. Since namesare arbitrary, they are easy to forget, just like lock combinations, phone numbers andsecurity questions. In 2016, United Airlines found the perfect solution to this conundrum:don’t ask something arbitrary, ask something deep and immutable, like your favorite seaanimal (see figure 3). Figure 3. United Airlines Security Question: “What is your favorite sea animal?”I am only joking, of course. I forgot what I selected as my favorite Sea Animal because itwas an arbitrary choice, and arbitrary things are very difficult to remember. That’s whymost species, including the great apes, struggle with remembering arbitrary things.Gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos recognize each other not by somethingarbitrary like a name but by voice, size, facial features, habits and behavior. In the wild, 52they gesture in pairs, and respond to one another’s gestures, but they don’t commit tocompletely arbitrary symbols to refer to one another—much less places in the world. Wemastered the ability to name things, and went about naming everything.51Our talent for associating arbitrary sound with meaning turned out to be an evolutionarymiracle. Once we learned to associate arbitrary symbols and ideas, we could apply thelogic to all kinds of things—including places like Palestine. The symbol “Palestine”differs from dolphin and parrot naming practices and vervet monkey warning calls forpredators in that “Palestine” lacks cells, membranes, proteins or ligaments. It doesn’teven have a nervous system or spinal cord! Actually, Palestine has no physicalmanifestation of any kind. Palestine exists only in our minds, not in nature.Some might struggle with this idea, because Palestine seems very real. But even if weignore epistemological problems associated with its varying spellings, pronunciations,and connotations in different languages—Prst, Filastin, Pasita, PeLeSeT, Plst, Paelestina,Pleshet, Philistine, Palestine, etc.—the term has meant many things in history. To theancient Hebrews, it referred to five cities and perhaps the areas connecting them—Gaza,Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath. To the ancient Greeks, it referred to an area “from51 Bottlenose dolphins address their relatives with unique whistles that function as names. In one case, twodolphins had been separated for 20 years and still remembered their unique whistles for each other. SeeStephanie L. King and Vincent M. Janik, “Bottlenose Dolphins can use Learned Vocal Labels to AddressEach Other,” Prec Nat Acad Sci 110 (32) (2013): 13216-13221; spectacled parrotlets also make uniquecalls to their siblings, mating partners and others. If two parrotlets separate in what scientists have dubbed“a divorce,” the parrotlets often try to re-establish relationships with their siblings to compensate for thesocial loss. They do that with names. See Ralf Wanker, Jasmin Apcin, Bert Jennerjahn, Birte Waibel,“Discrimination of Different Social Companions in Spectacled Parrotlets (Forpus Conspicillatus): Evidencefor Individual Vocal Recognition,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 43(3)(1998): 197-202; on theimportance of symbols in language evolution, see Terrence W Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) 53Egypt to Phoenicia”—for Herodotus, or from “Syria to Arabian Petraea”—for Ptolemyand other ill-defined areas as well. Many Muslims thought it was an area bound by Rafahand Lajjun in the north and south, and by Jaffa and Jericho in the east and west. Othersthought it was merely the town of Ramla and its surroundings. Some early modernEuropeans thought it referred to the coastal plain until the mountainous interior. Othersthought it was defined as the whole of the Holy Land, i.e., “Jerusalem and itsMountains.” From the 1870s-1910s, lots of people thought Palestine extended as far northas the northern boundary of the District of Jerusalem, between Ramallah and Nablus. Bythe 1920s-1940s, Palestine was now believed to have extremely precise bordersextending as far north as Ras al-Naqura. Today, as we learned in the previous chapter,there are small armies of people claiming it doesn’t even exist. Palestine has referred tolots of different places in history—as well as nothing at all. It’s a concept we completelymade up.5252 I’ll deal with most of these definitions in greater depth in the next two chapters, save for the very detaileddefinitions we find in the 1920s-1940s. One such definition had it that Palestine was “located on theEastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea between 30/29 width and 15/33 north, and the length is 15/34 and40/35...Palestine is divided from the Lebanese Republic by a line extending from Ras al-Naqura to thePalestinian village of Qadas, continuing along close to the village of Labuna and Ayta al-Sha‘b and Yarun(Lebanese) and Malikiya (Palestinian). Then the border continues north at al-Mutilla (Palestinian), thenpasses along Hunin (Palestinian) and ‘Adayssa (Lebanese), then the border veers east and south until itreaches Baniyas at the border with Syria. It continues south to the Banat Ya‘qub Bridge located on theJordan river, and further south, it aligns with the Jordan River and shores of Lake Tiberias, until it turnssouth east until the al-Hamma station, located on the Hijazi railway line between Samakh and Dar‘ by theYarmuk River. The Hula and Tiberias lakes are therefore within Palestine’s borders, including the easterncoast of the Hula lake. The Yarmouk River flows into the Jordan river, which divides Palestine fromTransjordan, until it reaches the Dead Sea, where upon the Dead Sea itself constitutes the border directlydown the middle from north to south, and the line continues in the Araba Valley until the Gulf of Aqaba.Palestine is divided from Egypt in the south by a line extending from Rafah (Palestinian) to the Gulf ofAqaba.” See Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Filastin wa-al-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya wa-Sa’ir al-Buldanal-Sharq al-Adna wa-Hawd al-Bahr al-Mutawassit (Jaffa: Maktabat al-Tahir Ikhwan, 1946), 9-10; for asimilar although less elaborate description, see Rafiq al-Tamimi, Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh,Hawd al-Bahr al-Mutawassat wa-Gharbi Uruba (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1945), 10. 54All humans name places. The Yaghan people, for instance, hunter-gatherers whoinhabited the channels and islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego(Argentina-Chile), name bays or beaches stretching several kilometers in length,including Canagush Yamana, Putroaya Yamana, Wullaia Yamana and Lashuf Yamana.The Solega people of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, who subsisted as hunter-gatherers until the 1970s, “can name with ease every single mountain peak, hill,watercourse, patch of flat land, and rocky area that is visible from that settlement, as wellas much smaller landscape features, such as large boulders, waterholes, cataracts, andeven individual trees.” The desert nomads and the camel-breeders of the eastern GreatIndian Desert name individual rock outcrops that project above the sand at 20-mileintervals and vague undefined areas of the desert, “which seem to move as the sandhillsmove,” as one observer recalled. Americans named fifty states, thousands of counties,and hundreds of thousands of cities. Our species named places wherever we went.53But for how long have we been naming places like Palestine? We already said above thatother species can name predators with generic symbols and can name one another withspecific symbols for specific members of their species. We combined those two abilities.We don’t know of any species that can do this in the wild, but Kanzi the bonobo, trainedby primatologists, learned symbols to refer to 17 specific locations in the forest, each onehome to a different food. Washoe the chimpanzee, also taught American Sign Language,53 On the Yaghan, see José Ignacio Santos, María Pereda, Débora Zurro, Myrian Álvarez , Jorge Caro, JoséManuel Galán, Ivan Briz i Godino, “Effect of Resource Spatial Correlation and Hunter-Fisher-GathererMobility on Social Cooperation in Tierra del Fuego,” PLoS ONE 10(4) (2015): 3; on the Solega, see AungSi and Samira Agnihotri, “Solega Place Names and their Ecological Significance,” AnthropologicalLinguistics 56(3-4) (2014): 389-414. For the quote, see ibid, 391; on the desert nomads and camel breeders,see Sidney Burrard, “Geographical Names in Uninhabited Regions and the Controversy over the MountEverest Map,” Empire Survey Review 3(16)(1935): 66-71. 55learned to say and understand “where shoe?” and “where we go?” and could respond with“there” and “out.” Apes harness a limited ability to name space. Over the course of thepast few million years, we improved our ability to name spaces by many orders ofmagnitude. Exactly when that happened remains a mystery.54 * * *Stories. Palestine is not just any random space that we named. It’s orders of magnitudemore complex than a location in the forest with berries. That’s because we tell complexstories about it. Try explaining the following story to Koko—the most gifted gorilla everto learn American Sign Language—about one of the 17 locations she likes going to in theforest: Wondrous, you are, oh location in the forest. Your history dazzles with marvel. What land has played the role you have played? What land has attained what you have? You are small in size, rich in chronicles, great in transformations, and numerous in innovations. Your pride is overwhelming. Your history is recorded in the holy books, location in the forest, your geographical position is wondrous, you have a keen mind like Asia and intellect of Africa, and your children have gone to Europe. Oh, location in the forest—you are the heart of the world. Location in the forest, you are also distinguished by your varied climate. Bananas and dates are cultivated in the Jordan Valley. The world’s best oranges are cultivated in Jaffa, a pleasant summer night’s breeze reaches its mountaintops, while its highest peak, Mount Hermon, sparkles year-round with snow. Oh, location in the forest, your lowest point, the Dead Sea, is the deepest place on planet earth. It is without parallel. Location in the forest, you are the site of revelation, the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity and a Holy Land for Muslims, your54 On the 17 locations in the forest, see Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin, Kanzi: The Ape at theBrink of the Human Mind (New York: John Wily & Sons, Inc, 1994), 140-2; see also Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Jeannine Murphy, Rose A. Sevcik, Karen E. Brakke, Shelly L. Williams, Duane M.Rumbaugh, Elizabeth Bates, “Language Comprehension in Ape and Child,” Monographs of the Society forResearch in Child Development 58(3/4) (1993): 87; R. Allen Gardner, Thomas E. Van Cantfort and BeatrixT. Gardner, “Categorical Replies to Categorical Questions by Cross-Fostered Chimpanzees,” The AmericanJournal of Psychology 105(1) (1992): 27-57. Having said that, when observed in the wild, vervet monkeyscannot signal which direction a predator is coming from even though that would greatly improve theirchances of survival. 56 land brings forth milk and honey. Your ancient inhabitants—the Hittites, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Philistines, and Israelites left behind so much celebrated history.55Of course, this story was not told about one of Koko’s locations in the forest. It was toldabout Palestine, and illustrated its greatness, beauty and wonder. It was written by JubranMatar, an Arabic speaker from Beit Jalla in the summer of 1912. To understand how wetold stories like that about Palestine, how we poured our hopes and prayers into ourstories, we first need to explain how language got so complex.Universal Grammar. If identities based on Palestine came into existence only after wecould tell complex stories about the places we inhabited, when did we start telling suchcomplicated stories? Let’s have a brief look at the most complex form of animal languageknown to primatologists—vervet monkey warning calls—to see how far we’ve come. Wealready mentioned two vervet warning calls above—leopard and hawk. In fact, vervetmonkeys have ten expressions: snakes, hawks, eagles, leopards, baboons, as well asother predatory mammal, unfamiliar human, dominant monkey, subordinate monkey,watch other monkey, and see rival troop. These calls include adjectives like other, rivaland dominant, and assume a basic understanding of semantics: other predatory mammalexcludes hawks, eagles, leopards and baboons. The rudiments of language are evident intheir warning calls. Basic grammar and semantics helped monkeys deal with a minornuisance in their lives: 75% of them get eaten by predators.5655 Jubran Matar was an Arabic speaking Christian Orthodox writer from Beit Jala. I’ve condensed andsmoothened the prose of the original article. See Jubran Matar, “Filastin,” Filastin 31 August 1912. On hisplace of origin, see Filastin 22 May 1912.56 Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney, “The Assessment by Vervet Monkeys of their own and AnotherSpecies' Alarm Calls,” Animal Behavior 40 (1990): 754-764; on the 75% figure, see Jared Diamond, TheThird Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006),143-7. 57Listening. In order to tell such complex stories about Palestine, we had to listen. Thestakes were life and death, and so a knack for listening would have proven very useful.Perhaps leopard evolved into leopard there, leopard right or leopard behind, and thensomething slightly more complex like leopard behind Veronica or leopard left Veronica.Those who thought leopard right meant leopard left got eaten. Those who understoodsurvived. Early hominids who learned to communicate locations in addition to predatorswould have had any enormous advantage in the African Savanna food chain. That’s asingle example of how natural selection might have led our species to go from warningcalls to basic language to complex stories about Palestine. Alternatively, complex storiesabout Palestine might have evolved not as a result of natural selection but rather sexualselection. Females and males looked for partners who excelled at remembering,communicating, speaking, listening and related traits—social maturity, emotionalintelligence and savanna smarts. We wanted to listen to each other before sex, and solearned to remember, listen, speak, and hold in our farts. Those who couldn’t figure outhow to communicate got diluted from the gene pool.57The idea that someone who excels at memory, communication, speech or language wouldhave a reproductive advantage is evident everywhere around us. Consider how impressedwe are when a long-lost crush remembers our name, or when a musician sings a beautifulsong, or a politician delivers a riveting speech or an activist ignites a roaring crowd.Think about human sexual fantasies for a moment. Language is usually involved one way57 On the importance of listening, see Michael A. Arbib and James Bonaiuto, “From Grasping to ComplexImitation: Mirror Systems on the Path to Language,” Mind & Society 7 (2008): 43–64. 58or another. Even the most open-minded people today wouldn’t consider marryingsomeone with Downs Syndrome. We crave language competence in our sexualpartners.58 * * *To better understand how and when we learned to tell complex stories about Palestine,and therefore identify as Palestinian, I set out to observe a group of people who mirroredthe Pleistocene environment (starting about 2.5 million ears ago) in which language firstevolved: ideally, a group of 15-25 individuals who greedily enjoy lots of casual andintimate interaction. The San Francisco-based offices of the tech-company,Academia.edu, seemed like a good fit. Incidentally, I was also employed at the companyduring the entire period of fieldwork.At Academia.edu, language evolved fastest in the foosball room. It therefore becamenecessary to play as much foosball as possible, something I swear I did not know before Ibegan my fieldwork. But the laborious anthropological fieldwork paid off, sinceAcademia.edu foosball players invented language ex nihilo in the foosball room. Theyaccepted, rejected, accumulated and liberally used the arbitrary inputs of other players,58 Incidentally, the sexual scenario is more common among species with nervous systems, ears and eyesthan among species without those things, and among those species that engage in courtship behavior. Basedon the great lengths we go to curate our online imagine—it’s fair to say humans excel in matters ofcourtship. Moreover, the sexual selection theory does a better job of explaining radical adaptations (i.e.language) in one species, Homo Sapiens, but simple warning calls in closely related species sharing similarenvironments. Whatever the case may be, evolution by either natural or sexual selection gave us a geneticor biological predisposition for language. See Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual ChoiceShaped the Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Anchor Books, 2011), 8. 59including new verbs, nouns, phrases and adjectives, often co-opting pre-existing wordswhen creating new ones. Phrases included goal seekers, roonies, blood diamonds, fulldiamonds, back row billies, raptors, we got goosed, midflips, high quality games, blackadvantage, and it’s tough at the top. The dialect got so complex that a Github wiki pagewas compiled to acclimate new players to their adopted company’s dialect (a smallsampling): Dreamliner Hitting the ball directly into the opposing team's goal form the defensive handles at slow speed and a slight angle […] Great-Grandma An extra slow push shot with the inner-most man of the 3 man handle Goal-seeker A serve involving a gratuitous amount of back- and side-spin, deflected by the serving team's middle men in an attempt to spin directly into the goal […] Goose A loss of a point, game or match due to high-quality circumstances. If you lose, you can log your loss with raibo, we got goosed.Having discovered the wiki, I realized I was an impoverished speaker of the language,being unfamiliar with honk honks [not mentioned above]. Had honk honks meantleopard—and had the 15 Academia.edu foosball players been a pack of Pleistocene homohabilis creatures a million years ago, I would have probably made for a tasty leoparddinner.Aside from language, foosball players also proved adept at related behaviors likebelieving in fiction and developing arbitrary conventions, things that accompanied theinvention of language during the Pleistocene (2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago). Playerscame to conclusions about who was the best player (a consensus was often notforthcoming), which pairs played best together, and which side of the table had an unfairadvantage. They accepted arbitrary conventions as dogma, such as position switches each 60point in game two and high fives after matches regardless of who won—immutable holygrails of sorts. Academia foosball players invented language ex nihilo, believed infictions and developed arbitrary conventions. To do this, they relied on creativity,proximity, memory, repeated interactions and cooperation—and they did it all totallyinstinctively. No one told them to make up words or stories about the greatest foosballshot in Academia history. They did it because of human nature. If language comes to ourspecies instinctively, then it is almost certainly as old as the first modern humans whodeparted Africa about 100,000 years ago. * * *Neanderthals. So language is probably at least 100,000 years old, but it might be mucholder. A brief glance at the evolutionary history of our Neanderthal cousins may offersome preliminary clues as to just how old language might be. Neanderthals diverged fromHomo Sapiens about a half million years ago when they departed Africa and settled insouthern Europe. Then, about 40 thousand years ago when Homo Sapiens reachedEurope, something awkward happened to the Neanderthal layers in the archeologicalrecord. They disappeared. Despite their hundreds of thousands of years head startadapting to Europe’s harsh climate and conditions, Homo Sapiens prevailed, andNeanderthals went extinct.The traditional explanation was that humans had already developed complex languageand outsmarted the Neanderthals to extinction—hence language must be no older than 61our split from them some five hundred thousand years ago. To support this hypothesis,archeologists pointed to the abundance of sophisticated symbolic objects dating to theperiod only after Neanderthals were gone—musical instruments, cave paintings and shellnecklaces, things that were traditionally much harder to find at Neanderthal sites. Thetraditional view was that art, face paint and music suggested we had language—and thattheir absence in the Neanderthal archeological layers suggested they lacked it.Two things have happened in parallel that have changed this view. First, newarcheological discoveries are suggesting Neanderthals were more sophisticated thanpreviously thought. A recent find, for instance, shows they pierced holes in sea shellspresumably to wear as ornaments. They engraved geometric patterns on rocks that couldbe construed to mean just about anything symbolic (see figure 4). Figure 4. Neanderthal Geometric Pattern.They may have used manganese dioxide, a black mineral, as crayons. They may havealso cut wing bones off birds, potentially to use their feathers for decoration. They mayhave put iron ore, a red mineral often used as pigment, on sea shells. Neanderthals also 62cared for their sick and wounded, which is rare in the animal kingdom. Evidence ismounting that Neanderthals probably engaged in symbolic and emotionally complexbehavior.59Neanderthals also made complex tools, suggesting they could transmit information. Inother words, they could communicate. They domesticated fire, made razor sharp flinttools and knives, butchered meat, scraped and stretched hide, and made leather andclothes. Neanderthals also made an adhesive from birch bark, the earliest knownsynthetic chemical in homo history. They used it to glue stone blades to wooden shafts.Scientists tried to reproduce it only using tools available to Neanderthals, and failed.After repeated lab experiments, scientists today (circa the 21st century) figured out thatthe bark needs to be heated to 750 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed chamber, such as agoose egg, to prevent the bark from igniting. So the Neanderthals must have placed thebark in something like a goose egg, then placed another closed chamber below it to catchthe adhesive when it melts. Then, they sealed the two containers with mud to prevent thebark from igniting. They surrounded the sealed goose ends with hot coals, waited for thetemperature to reach 750 degrees, and awaited their adhesive in the goose egg catch. It’sdifficult to imagine that Neanderthals learned these skills in isolation over the course oftheir own lifetime, and died without passing any information along to their offspring. Iftrue that a single Neanderthal developed these sophisticated technologies in completeisolation, then he or she must have been on some seriously dank ganja, which is unlikely59 Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidala, Francesco d’Erricob and Francisco Giles Pacheco, et. al., “A Rock EngravingMade by Neanderthals in Gibraltar,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(37) (2014):13301-13306. 63because Europe was experiencing an ice age at that time and marijuana thrives in tropicaland temperate climates.60The second development challenging the traditional view of Neanderthals is geneticevidence. In the past couple of decades, scientists have mapped out the entire human andNeanderthal genome, and determined that modern humans have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA!That means Homo Sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and produced fertile offspring. Itseems plausible, therefore, that Neanderthals were capable of learning language, if indeedthey lacked it. And if they were capable of learning language, Homo Sapiens may nothave evolved all that much cognitively or anatomically during those 500,000 years ofseparation. If so, that would place the origins of language, and therefore stories aboutplaces like Palestine and identities like the Palestinians, more than a half million yearsago!6160 On caring for their young, see Thomas Wynn and Frederick L Coolidge, How to Think like a Neandertal(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16-17; PBS, “Decoding Neanderthals,” youtube.com(goo.gl/DFLn4x), 2013; on the adhesive, see “Neanderthal Apocalypse Did Campi Flegrei kill them off2015” youtube.com, 22 May 2017 (https://goo.gl/UjbTyc) (~33:00 minutes); on the evidence linking use ofcannabis with creativity, see Gráinne Schafera, Amanda Feildingb, Celia J.A. Morgana, et. al., “CannabisIncreased Verbal Fluency in Low Creatives to the Same Level as that of High Creatives,” Consciousnessand Cognition 21(1) (2012): 292–298.61 Wynn and Coolidge, How to Think like a Neandertal, 8. Another important genetic finding was thatNeanderthals have the main human variant of the FOXP2 gene rather than one of the less common variantsthat can causes speech impediment and learning disabilities; Of course, most of our DNA does not comefrom Neanderthals, though. It comes from a few thousand Homo Sapiens who lived in Africa about a100,000 years ago. The discovery that all modern humans descended from a small number of individuals inAfrica has implications for anyone trying to understand the origins of language and complex stories aboutPalestine. It forces us to ask how we overwhelmed and out populated Denisovans in Asia, Neanderthals inEurope and Homo Heidelbergensis in Afro Euroasia? Judging by chimpanzee behavior as well as knowncases of human population encounters, “overwhelm” and “out populate” may be euphemistic descriptionsof what happened. (See, for instance, John C. Mitani, David P. Watts and Sylvia J. Amsler, “LethalIntergroup Aggression Leads to Territorial Expansion in Wild Chimpanzees,” Current Biology 20(12)(2010): 507-8). Some evidence suggests that early hominids frequently died violent deaths also. We don’tknow what gave us an evolutionary advantage that drove our hominid competitors to extinction. 64 * * *Maps. Palestine is not just a place we named and told stories about. We also have animage of Palestine in our minds. This is because we made maps of it to help us visualizewhat our eyes cannot see. Maps make Palestine seem very real to us, which is importantif we are going to identify with it. If we define maps broadly to include mental maps,then the ability evolved tens of millions of years ago. Consider that rats, slightly removedfrom us in evolutionary time, spent a lot of their history burrowing and navigatingunderground tunnels, and so scientists suspected they might help us understand theorigins of mental maps. Their suspicions proved accurate. In a classic experiment, ratsplayed around in Y-shaped mazes with food at one end and water the other. The rats wereseparated from the mazes, half made thirsty, the other half hungry. They were placedback in the mazes, and the thirsty rats went straight for the water, the hungry rats thefood. This led more scientists to do more experiments, and it turns out that rats cannavigate highly complex mazes and find the fastest way out without trial and error.62Mental maps were an evolutionary adaptation among land mammals who hunted orborrowed. According to the natural selection scenario, the ability to make mental mapsproved useful for finding water, food, shelter, prey and avoiding predators or rivals.According to the sexual selection scenario, the ability to make mental maps improved our62 The classical study on the topic is Edward C. Tolman, “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men,” ThePsychological Review 55(4) (1948): 189-208; there is no scientific consensus on the topic, though. AndrewBennet [“Do Animals Have Cognitive Maps,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 199 (1996): 219–224]has argued no animal has been conclusively shown to develop a powerful memory of landmarks whichallows novel short-cutting to occur, although concedes that animals can hold representations of space intheir minds. 65chances of reproductive success. After all, what’s sexier than roaming through theAfrican Savannah with Tarzan two million years ago, who peers into the abyss of grassshrubs and says: turn left!We were making mental maps for tens of millions of years. At some point, we learned toetch them as lines in the sand or commit them to fibrous materials. In the early 1900s, theTuareg of the Sahara Desert constructed elaborate relief models in the sand of sifs, dunes,gravel flats and plateaus along the caravan routes in the desert. Potentially, their ancestorshad been doing that for tens of thousands of years. Similarly, in the 1920s, MarshallIslanders made maps of their archipelago with shells bound to palm leaf midribs. Theirancestors might have doing that for tens of thousands of years as well.63Maps first appeared in the fossil record about 20,000 years ago. Archeologists found aslab with seven semicircular motifs in Basque country Spain. They claimed hunter-gathers made huts in similar shapes and metrics, with “semicircular motifs,” including theKalahari Bushmen and Australian aborigines. It may have been a stretch to conclude thatthe semicircles etched into stone rock constituted a map, but claiming something is theworld’s oldest known map is how you get famous in the booming field of late Pleistocenerock art. For now, it’s the oldest thing anyone has ever claimed was a map.6463 On the Tuareg, see W. Dröber, “Kartographie Bei den Naturvölkern,” Deutsche Geographische BlatterXXVII (1904): 29-46; on the Marshall Islanders, see H. Lyons, “The Sailing Charts of Marshall Islanders,”Geographical Review LXXII (1928): 325-328.64 Marcos García-Diez and Manuel Vaquero, “Looking at the Camp: Paleolithic Depiction of a Hunter-Gatherer Campsite,” PLoS One (2 December 2015). 66 * * *Beauty. Beauty plays such a critical role in the stories we tell about Palestine and themaps we make of it that it’s worth trying to understand how it came into existence also.Why have people distinguished Palestine by its virtuous wonders and proclaimed itsgrandeur and fertility? Why do we tantalize, paint, celebrate, design, fine-tune,commemorate and beautify? Scholars disagree over whether beauty is culturally relativeor whether some things are universally beautiful. The traditional view had long been that“beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” that it cannot be found in nature. It exists becausewe imagine it into existence. We imagine it because we can arbitrarily transformsomething ordinary into something special. This view has come under fire in recentdecades as evidence mounts that all humans are born with beauty detectors. In one study,adults were asked to rate the beauty of hundreds of faces. 3-6-month-old babies wereshown the same faces, and stared much longer at the faces adults found beautiful. Babiesprefer looking at symmetry to asymmetry, touching soft to rough surfaces and listening toharmonious rather than dissonant music. These findings suggest beauty is not entirely afigment of our imagination.65Archeologists have found thousands of thin, teardrop-shaped symmetrical stone blades orhand-ax tools across Asia, Europe and Africa from the Pleistocene (2,588,000 to 11,700years ago). Why was everyone around the world making similarly symmetrical blades?65 For a defense of the beauty is culturally relative position, see Leon Botstein, “Art Now (AestheticsAcross Music, Painting, Architecture, Movies, and More.” Youtube.com 10 October 2012(https://goo.gl/jqbFqm); then see Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (NewYork: Anchor Books, 1999), 31-2. 67There might have been something attractive about that shape, and perhaps also the handax artists who could make them. Beautiful blades might have marked their creators as fit,crafty and intelligent. Given their abundance in the archeological record, we might havecompeted over who made the best ones. As the old pick up line goes, “Would you like toswing by my cave so I can show you my collection of hand axes?” 1.4-million-year-oldhand axes might have been the earliest form of art. That’s a fancy theory, admittedly, butsuch is how you get famous as an archeologist, apart from telling fantastic cavemenjokes—and calling semicircles “maps.” These points suggest that we’ve been beautifyingand adorning for millions of years.66There are other reasons to believe our sense for beauty is very old. We tend to describelandscapes as beautiful that include open spaces, low grasslands, animal and bird life,water, a path, riverbanks, shorelines or diverse greenery interspersed with copses of treesthat fork near the ground—i.e. the African savannah landscape we roamed for millions ofyears before leaving that continent to conquer the globe about 100,000 years ago.67 * * *Identity. Palestine is a name, a symbol, and a place we tell stories about, make maps ofand mark as special. But we also identify with Palestine, or develop an identity based onit. The underlying question of this dissertation is, why do we do that?66 Denis Dutton, “A Darwinian Theory of Beauty,” TED, youtube.com, 16 November 2010 (goo.gl/5bCocf)67 ibid. 68Family and Pack. Let’s take a brief tour of the evolutionary history of our identities tounderstand why people did that. Our earliest social identities as a species revolved aroundfamily and pack. Chimps know their brothers from their cousins, and their cousins frommembers of other packs, and behave accordingly. Within their packs, vervet monkeysknow who is related to whom, and treat their mothers, siblings and maternalgrandmothers differently. When a vervet monkey infant calls for help, other mothers inthe pack turn to that vervet’s mother to see how she reacts. Our family, extended familyand pack identities have a long evolutionary history.68Status. Status was one of our earliest identities as well. Vervet monkeys responddifferently to dominant and subordinate members of their pack, as noted above. Theyeven have symbols, or words, for dominant and subordinate in the wild. Similarly, malechimps zealously compete over status, and are even willing to kill their rivals ifnecessary. Status also has a long evolutionary history.Culture. Culture, or arbitrary convention, or symbolic behavior, or what archeologiststend to call “behavioral modernity,” by contrast, has a relatively short history. Culturemight be 100,000 years old, or perhaps a few hundred thousand years old. Archeologistsbelieve that artifacts such as art, jewelry, paint, sculptures and engravings suggest ourspecies was anatomically modern, that we were cognitively the same as we are today.The earliest evidence for behavioral modernity, arbitrary convention or culture came inlarge quantities of ochre found about 100,000 years ago in caves known to have been68 Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee, 144. 69inhabited by Homo Sapiens in South Africa. (Ochre has no demonstrated purpose otherthan as a decorative red dye). The first irrefutable evidence of culture, though, dates toabout 82,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens made a shell necklace in Morocco. About70,000 years ago, decorative beads were found at a range of sites in Israel, Algeria andSouth Africa. We sculpted a lion’s head onto a human body on an ivory mammoth tusk inGermany about 40,000 years ago—an even clearer indication that its creators wereanatomically the same as we are today. We made an ivory flute, the world’s oldest knownmusical instrument, also about 40,000 years ago. The cavemen who crafted it knew howfar apart to carve the holes, how wide to make their circumferences and how narrow tomake the pipe. It probably took about 100 hours to make, not including the time it took tofigure out how to make it or play it. About 30,000 years ago, we placed 5,000 preciousivory beads along with 250 fox teeth in graves we dug for a twelve-year-old boy and ten-year-old girl. About 15,000-20,000 years ago, we painted murals of bird heads on humanbodies in caves.69Arbitrary behavior or culture depended on our belief in symbols. Just like we used words,grammar, morphology and syntax as symbols to communicate, we used body paint,necklaces and art as symbols too. With these symbols, we invented a wide range of69 On the shell necklace, see Abdeljalil Bouzouggar et al., “82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africaand Implications for the Origins of Modern Human Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences 104(24)(2007): 9964-9969; on the beads, see Marian Vanhaeren, Francesco d’Errico, Karen L.van Niekerk, et. al., “Thinking Strings: Additional Evidence for Personal Ornament use in the Middle StoneAge at Blombos Cave, South Africa,” Journal of Human Evolution 64 (2013): 500-517; see also SishAdvexon, “Great Human Odyssey - Documentary 2016,” youtube.com 3 November 2016 (25:37)(goo.gl/W1YWYN); on the lionman and ivory flute, see ibid (57:12); on human birds, fox teeth and ivorybeads see Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker, 2014), 56-8. 70beliefs, identities, ideologies, cultures and religions. Culture is one of our greatest assetsas species, and one our most destructive ones too.70Culture evolved out of the same process that all our other functions and faculties evolvedout of: natural and sexual selection. Song, a classic example of an arbitrary humanbehavior or form of culture, has been found to increase the rate at which we form bondsof solidarity with strangers. Anyone who has ever listened to Lady Gaga’s Just Dance onrepeat, for instance, knows the importance of vocal talent to reproductive success.Religion, another example of culture or arbitrary behavior, has well-documented healthbenefits. Culture binds us closer together, and strong social bonds are one of the keyfactors keeping us alive and healthy, as the Harvard Adult Development Study hasproven quite conclusively. Culture improved our chances of survival. No wonder it’suniversal.71Tribes and Peoples. We roamed planet earth in packs of 15-20 at first, then as large as150 as we improved our ability to cooperate in larger numbers. But eventually, owing to70 Stewart Guthrie, Joseph Agassi, Karin R Andriolo, et. al., “A Cognitive Theory of Religion” [andComments and Reply], Current Anthropology 21(2) (1980): 181-203.71 See the Harvard Second Generation Study https://goo.gl/Uz3CEC. Researchers surveyed 148 studies onthe topic and concluded that participants with stronger social relationships had an increased likelihood ofsurvival. See Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, J. Bradley Layton, “Social Relationships andMortality Risk: A Meta-analytic,” PLOS Medicine 27 July 2010; the most authoritative source on theresearch findings that link longevity and healthy living with religion is Harold G. Koenig, Dana E. King,and Verna Benner Carson (eds.), Handbook of Religion and Health, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2012); see also Harold G. Koenig and Saad Al Shohaib, Health and Well-being in Islamic Societies:Background, Research, and Applications (Cham Switzerland: Springer, 2014); Jeff Levin and MichellePrince, Judaism and Health (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2013); Jeff Levin and Michele F. Prince,“Judaism and Health: Reflections on an Emerging,” Journal of Religious Health 50 (2011): 765–777; formore on religion’s evolutionary advantages, see David Sloan Wilson, Does Altruism Exist?: Culture,Genes, and the Welfare of Others (New Haven: Yale University Press; West Conshohocken, PA:Templeton Press, 2014); on song, see Eiluned Pearce, Jacques Launay, Robin I. M. Dunbar, “The Ice-Breaker Effect: Singing Mediates Fast Social Bonding,” Royal Society Open Science 2(2015): 1-9. 71our ability to cooperate with people we do not know personally, we formed groups ofmany thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands. Exactly when we stop calling suchgroups tribes and start calling them clans, ethnicities, peoples or nations seems somewhatarbitrary to me, but these variously small-ish to large-ish groups dominated planet earthfor tens of thousands of years from the time we spread out of Africa into Europe, Asiaand Australia and then North and South America.72These groups thrived nearly everywhere until recently. The Amorite pastoralists of 18-19th century BC, for instance, consisted of 3 major tribal conferences in Mari, 10 inHanean, 5 Benjaminites and 3 Suteas; Caesar mentioned some 100 Celtic tribes in Gaulwhen he conquered it; there were at least 40 tribes in Britain before it was conquered byRome in the first century AD; Tacitus mentioned some 50 tribes in his Germania;Ptolemy identified 69 tribes; Herodotus and other Greek writers mentioned between 50-100 Thracian tribes in today’s Bulgaria; European settlers encountered some 27 tribalconfederations on the Great Plains of North America; they found some 40 tribes in NewZealand when they conquered it. Some 25 tribes made up the Dinka in South Sudan, 20tribes the Logoli and Vugusu Bantu of western Kenya. Tribes were everywhere. Whenthey got too large, or when someone got power hungry, or when war broke out, or whenresources grew scarce, they divided, subdivided, relocated or were slaughtered enmasse.7372 Most languages have a range of terms to describe these kinds of groups. Arabic, for example, uses theterms milla, umma, ta’ifa, qabila, sha‘b, qawm, ‘irq. For a nice survey of their usage in Arabic, see AmiAyalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Political Discourse(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).73 Azar Gat, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 45-7; Kristian Kristiansen, Europe Before History(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 193-195. 72Tribes and their larger outgrowths varied in size, nature, composition and cohesion. Theycould combine arbitrary behaviors such as dietary restrictions, musical tastes, dancestyles and body mutilation with a perception of shared lineage, heritage or origin. Theycould be based on language, race, religion, leader or place of birth. These groups wereoften as much obsessed with how they differed from other groups as they were aboutwhat made them unique.74They defined themselves inconsistently over time depending on who was doing thedefining. The Arabs, for example, evolved to mean dozens of different things in the pastmillennium: a group of people sharing a language, history, common origin, or parent whocould speak the language. Arab could refer to a descendant of an Arab tribesman on thefather’s side only, a Muslim, an Arabic speaker, an Arabic speaker loyal to Caliph, or anomadic or semi-nomadic Arabic speaker generally known today as Bedouin. This is oneof the most defining characteristics of tribes, clans, peoples, ethnicities and nations inhistory. They are defined arbitrarily and change a great deal over time.7574 On their obsession with boundaries, see Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The SocialOrganization of Cultural Differences (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).75 In the 7th-8th centuries, the term Arab most commonly referred to a descendant of an Arab tribesman onthe father’s side. Some of those who opposed Arab rule in Khurasan, though, used in to mean “a bigotedmember of the Umayyad establishment who ascribed religious and political significance to his descent.” Bythe Abbasid period, Arab could mean anyone “who professed Islam, spoke Arabic (well or badly) and sawhimself as a member of the polity ruled by the caliph.” See Michael Cooperson, ““Arabs” and “Iranians”:The Uses of Ethnicity in the Early Abbasid Period,” pp.364-387 in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts:Essays in Honor of Professor Patricia Crone Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, Robert G. Hoyland, AdamSilverstein (eds.) (Leiden, Brill: 2015), 365; see also Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of early IslamicIran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 273;Haim Gerber [“The Limits of Constructedness: Memory and Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,”Nations and Nationalism 10(3) (2004): 259] suggested that Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) used the term Arab “inthe proto-national sense, in addition to using it to refer to Arabs of the desert”; Steve Tamari [“ArabNational Consciousness in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Syria,” pp. 309-321 in Syria and Bilad al-Sham under Ottoman Rule: Essays in honour of Abdul-Karim Rafeq, Peter Sluglett; Stefan Weber (eds). 73This is why so many writers have gotten famous insisting our identities were imagined,invented and constructed. W.E.B. Du Bois famously argued that the constructeddifferences between races “infinitely transcended” the physical differences between them.Frederik Barth explained that ethnicity is primarily about differences “believed” to existbetween groups. Benedict Anderson famously claimed nations were “imaginedcommunities”; Shlomo Sand argued the Jewish people were an invention; WilfredCantwell Smith suggested religion was also a modern human invention. Yuval Harariclaimed our ability to imagine in the first place is what led to all our other imaginedidentities. You don’t need to be an academic to know that race is a social construct,nations are imagined communities or religion was a human invention.76(Leiden: Brill, 2010), 312] claimed that “members of the Arab ‘ulama of the Empire were conscious andproud of their identity as Arabs.” He further specifies that this Arab identity included a “presumption ofspiritual chosen-ness; myth of common origin; and an innate capacity to understand Arabic, the language ofGod.”; Abdul-Karim Rafeq [“Social Groups, Identity and Loyalty and Historical Writing in Ottoman andpost-Ottoman Syria,” pp. 79-93 in Mondes Contemporains: Les Arabes Et L’Histoire Créatrice DominiqueChevallier (ed.) et al (Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), 80] argued that people whowrote in Arabic from the 16th through the 19th century “identified their own people as Awlad al-‘Arab orAbna’ al-‘Arab [children of the Arabs], a term which the Ottoman state also used in the official documentsfor its urban Arab subjects.” He also wrote that “Egyptian chroniclers referred to urban Egyptians as Awladal-‘Arab while what we called Bedouin today were referred to by local and Ottoman sources alike as ‘Arab,A‘rab and ‘Urban”; Hananiyya al-Munayyir (d.1823) [al-Durr al-Marsuf fi Tarikh al-Shuf (n.p.: Dar al-Ra’id al-Lubnani, 1984), 23] believed that the term Arab referred to only nomadic Arabic speakers of thedesert; Rifa‘a Rafi‘ Tahtawi (d.1873) [Kitab al-Ta‘ribat al-Shafiyya li-Murid al-Jughrafiya (Bulaq: Dar al-Tiba‘a al-Khidyawiyya, 1838), 150] differentiated between nomadic Arabs of the wilderness and Arabswho tilled the soil; By the early 20th century, as race science grew in popularity, some folks like NegibAzoury explicitly excluded Egyptians from “the Arab race” because they were apparently of AfricanBerber origin. See Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 25; As late as 1935, folks known as Bedouins todayreportedly still used the term Arab to denote only themselves. See Mikhaʼel Asaf, Toldot Ha-Shilton Ha-‘Aravi Be-Erets Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Dvar, 1934/5), 279, note 24; The Greek Orthodox Patriarch ofJerusalem liked to call its Arab laity Arabic speakers rather than Arabs to emphasize that they wereethnically or originally Greek. See Jacob William Albert Young, The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem(London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926), 25.76 See W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Races” (American Negro Academy, 1897); Barth, EthnicGroups and Boundaries; Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (London: Verso, 2010); WilfredCantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions ofMankind (New York: New American Library, 1965); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: 74The genre of “invention” literature is almost becoming a caricature of itself. Walk into abookstore in San Francisco and you’ll find books like David Wootton’s The Invention ofScience, Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, Jessica Helfand’s The Invention ofDesire and Glenn Adamson’s The Invention of Craft. These books were written forbroader audiences. Academics go much further: there is Anis Bawarshi’s The Inventionof the Writer, Judith Veronica Field’s The Invention of Infinity, James Dougal Fleming’sThe Invention of Discovery, Simon Goldhill’s The Invention of Prose and, to be sure,Thomas Römer’s The Invention of God. I got lucky that no one had already claimedPalestine was an invention. Pro-tip: if someone has already snatched up your invention,re-invent it, as in, Timothy Mitchell’s “The Invention and Reinvention of the EgyptianPeasant,” or Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar’s “the Invention and Reinvention ofNordic Walking,” or Matti Goksøyr’s “The Invention and Reinvention of NorwegianPolar Skiing.”77In short, we first evolved to identify with our families, packs, and statuses, and we didthat long before we were humans. Later, we developed identities dependent on learnedReflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); Harari, Sapiens: A BriefHistory of Humankind.77 Anis S Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention inComposition (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003); Judith Veronica Field, The Invention of Infinity:Mathematics and Art in the Renaissance (Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford University Press, 1997); James DougalFleming (ed.) The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016); Simon Goldhill,The Invention of Prose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Anthony M Platt and Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press,2009); Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015);Glenn Adamson, The Invention of Craft (Oxford: Berg, 2013); on the essay, see Timothy Mitchell, Rule ofExperts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2002). 75symbols, complex language, sophisticated social relations, abstract thought and arbitraryconvention—i.e. things like religions, tribes, peoples, clans, ethnicities or nations. * * *Places. Now let’s zoom in on identities based not on family, status, tribe or culture, buton places such as Palestine. You might believe that a Palestinian identity isn’t just aboutPalestine—since it implies something about a person’s religion (i.e. Christian or Muslim),ethnicity (i.e. Arab) and culture (hummus and tahini). Those things might be true today,but a Palestinian identity has not always implied Arab, Christian or Muslim in the past, aswe discovered in the previous chapter, and might not in the future. What makes aPalestinian identity different than some of the other identities discussed above is that“Palestinian” is an identity based on Palestine, a place, rather than an arbitrary culture,religion, behavior, song or dance.Identities of this sort are very old, probably tens of thousands of years. Before wedomesticated crops, we settled down along the seasonal migration routes of fish, birdsand large animals, as well as in wetlands. The sources of food came to us, not the otherway around. These settled peoples probably had identities similar enough to“Palestinian.” The Yaghan people, hunter-gatherers who inhabited the channels andislands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile), called themselvesYahgashagalumoala, meaning “people from mountain valley channel.” The Awabakal,similarly a hunter-gatherer people who eat lots of fish and who inhabit the Mid North 76Coast region of New South Wales, Australia, use the same word to describe themselvesand Lake Macquarie, meaning flat or plain surface. Since both groups fished, they builtmore permanent dwelling places, and thus were greatly invested in their places ofsubsistence, even deriving their own self-appellations from it. I’d bet similar groups ofhunter gatherers tens of thousands of years earlier also had identities similar to “thePalestinians.”78Since Palestine exists in our minds, not in reality, the identities that developed around itwere also subject to arbitrary definition and evolution over time. In the 10th century, atleast one Arabic speaker from Jerusalem used the term Palestinian to refer to himself, aswe shall discover in the next chapter. Other Muslims described hadith transmitters as“Palestinian,” although they never used the term in its collective (i.e. “the Palestinians.”)In 19th century Europe, Palestinian usually referred to someone who lived during thetimes of Jesus. But by the 1870s, some Americans, British and Germans started using itin new ways: to refer to the land’s modern Arabic speakers, or to mean a “Jew, Syrian orArab” from Palestine, in one case. Then, beginning in roughly 1898, Arabic speakingMuslims and Christians used it to refer only to themselves, although some thought itcould include Jews. From the 1920s onwards, British, Zionists and even Arabs used it torefer to all subjects of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine. In the 1930s, theGreek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Fraternity of monks who controlled it (all78 E. Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth: A History of Tierra del Fuego and the Fuegians (London:Hodder & Stoughton, 1949), 62; for more on the Awabakal, see Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, An AustralianGrammar: Comprehending the Principles and Natural Rules of the Language as Spoken by the Aboriginesin the Vicinity of Hunter's River, Lake MacQuarie, &c. New South Wales (Sydney: Printed by Stephens andStokes, 1834). On sedentary life before agriculture, see James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep Historyof the Earliest Sates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 10, 47-57. 77Greek speakers) were embroiled in a struggle over the Church with their own Arabcongregants—and to assert their legitimacy, the Greek speaking Orthodox clergy alsoinsisted they were Palestinian. The term also retained its meaning to refer to people wholived in Palestine during the times of Jesus. At least one Muslim Arab writer during the1940s also used the term to refer to any Muslim in any period of history. The termPalestinian meant a range of different things over the years.79Today, a Palestinian can mean an American kid who proclaims him or herself an atheistand does not speak a single word of Arabic—so long as a parent or even grandparentdefined him or herself a Palestinian. In practice, if you say you are Palestinian, mosteveryone will accept it at face value, no background check necessary. I, for example,79 James Finn, the 19th century British consul in Jerusalem, used the word Palestinian to refer to the land’smodern inhabitants in his 1870 memoir, complaining that the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem during theCrimean War (1853-1856), Muhammad Hafiz, was too old and ill prepared to govern and was“unaccustomed to the rough manners of the Palestinians.” See James Finn, Stirring times, or, Records fromJerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856 (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1878), 248. Finn (ibid, 414) alsoadded that a certain ‘Akeeli Aga from the Galilee, who had accompanied the 1848 American ScientificExpedition to the Dead Sea, was “originally an Arab of Algiers, or some adjacent country, who hadgathered to himself a band of rievers of African origin whom the Palestinians declared to be Indians.”Ludwig Schneller [Kennst du das Land?: Bilder aus dem Gelobten Lande zur Erklärung der HeiligenSchrift (Leipzig: 1899 [1889]) wrote a book about Palestine’s people, customs, food, clothes, weddings,music, holidays, tribes and gender roles, frequently compared the modern inhabitants of Palestine to theirBiblical predecessors. “The olive tree plays a major role in the lives of the Palestinians,” he noted in oneinstance, using the German word, Palästinenser. While the main meal of the day in the West was lunch,“the Palestinians” preferred to feast in the evening, owning to the heat of the midday (Ibid, 107); for furtherexamples, see ibid, 127, 156; James Wells [Travel-pictures from Palestine (New York: Dodd, 1896), 148]was told on his travels to Palestine that the striped cloaks worn by the local peasants could be seamless,much as they were during Biblical times. “If such a coat fell into the hands of a company of modernPalestinians,” Wells noted, “they would probably ‘cast lots for it’; for as you may see in every market-place, they are inveterate gamblers.”; Adela E. Orpen [The Chronicles of the Sid: Or, the Life and Travelsof Adelia Gates (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co, 1897), 301-2] traveled from New York to Nablus in1897, writing that “I was too much interested in the things that marked the approach to Sychem, Shechem,Naplous, or Nablus, whatever it may best suit one to call it.” She added that “I like the name Shechem best,though Palestinians, whether Christian, Jew, Syrian or Arab, now say Nablus;” on the Greek OrthodoxPatriarch and Fraternity in the 1930s, see Merav Mack, “Orthodox and Communist: A History of aChristian Community in Mandate Palestine and Israel,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42(4)(2015): 392. 78have pretended to be Palestinian a lot, and no one in Damascus, Ramallah, Cairo, Irbil,Tunis or Beirut knew I was full of myself. To the contrary, they greeted me a hero’swelcome out of solidary. I am living and breathing evidence the identity is a total fiction.I invented it out of thin air, and no one had any way of proving me wrong.All identities based on places like Palestine are determined arbitrarily. The 8th centurychronicler Isidor Pacensis used the term Europeans in Latin to refer to the Romani-Gallicand barbarian forces who fought together against Muslims in the battle of Tours in 732—but not Sarmatians, Lombards and Vikings, even though they also lived in what we thinkof as Europe today. Membership in an Aztec city-state, or altepetl, was defined by thepersonal relationship between the ruler and subject, not by location, such that subjects ofvarious and even rival altepetls lived interspersed. German speaking Jews born and raisedin Germany struggled to become Germans in the 19th century. The Matawila of Jabal‘Amal, or Shi‘a in today’s parlance, were at first not considered Lebanese when that termgained popularity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some Arabic speakers in the mid-19th century did not consider Muslims or Kurds Syrians, a term they reserved forChristians. An Austrian statesman once asked a Hungarian nobleman in 1829, “what dowe mean by the Greeks? Do we mean a people, a country, or a religion?” Not everyoneliving in the United States of America is considered an American, just as not everyoneliving in Israel is considered Israeli, just as not everyone living in Palestine is consideredPalestinian. The point was better made by the comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, “I’m halfItalian, half Sicilian.” His dad apparently disagreed: “you are Sicilian!” In short, we 79arbitrarily define our relationships to places like Europe, altepetls, Germany, Lebanon,Syria, Greece, America, Israel, Palestine, Italy, Sicily and millions of other places.80 * * *Agriculture. Now on to the history of identities like “Palestinian” after the AgriculturalRevolution. The Agricultural Revolution marked an important milestone in this history.Although permanent settlement existed before the Agricultural Revolution amongpeoples who subsisted off fish, migratory birds and lived in wetlands, as noted above,sedentary life expanded rapidly after the spread of agriculture as a means of subsistence.Beginning around 10,000 years ago, groups of humans in at least four separate times andplaces gradually started to farm and domesticate animals in addition to hunt and gather.This new way of life spread and made sedentism the dominant human lifestyleeverywhere. Instead of moving around every few weeks or season to follow the hunt andwild vegetation, we toiled small plots of land our entire lives.Sedentary lifestyle had many tantalizing effects on our identities. As settled peoples, wecame to identify with our places of settlement, and identified others with their places ofsettlement—and also figured out ways of recording how we identified. The Akkadianslived in the region of Akkad, Amorites the land of the Amorites, Aramaeans Aram,80 On the Europeans, see Denys Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1957), 25; on use of the term Palestinian in the early Islamic period, see chapter 3; on the Aztec city-states, see Michael E. Smith, “Aztec Urbanism: Cities and Towns,” pp. 201-217 In Oxford Handbook of theAztecs, (eds.) Deborah L. Nichols and Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría (New York: Oxford University Press,2016), 211-212; on the Greek anecdote, see Dimitris Livanios, “The Quest for Hellenism: Religion,Nationalism and Collective Identities in Greece (1453-1913),” The Historical Review / La RevueHistorique 3(2006): 33; then see Sebastian Maniscalco, “Aren't You Embarrassed?” Netflix 28 July 2015. 80Assyrians Assyria, Chaldaeans Mat Kaldi, or the land of Chaldeans, and Persians Persia.The ancient Israelites conflated the land of the Philistines [Plishtim] and Philistine[Pleshet], as well as “all Edom” and “all the Edomites.” The Vietnamese called ChinaCh’ing Country (Thanh-quoc) because Ch’ing people (Thanh-nhan) lived there. TheArabs called southern Lebanon the Land of the Matawila (known as Shi‘a today) becauseMatawila lived there. They called northern Iraq “the Land of the Kurds,” because Kurdslived there. They called Arabia or the Land of Sham “the Land of the Arabs,” becauseArabs lived there. They called the Hawran “the Land of the Druze” because Druze livedthere and they called parts of Lebanon “the Land of the Maronites” because Maroniteslived there. We became much more important parts of the places we lived in when welived in them all year round, from generation to generation.81This is part of the reason why there is so much confusion over the terms nations andnationalism among academics. The conventional wisdom a few decades ago was that theFrench Revolution inspired an era of nationalism in Europe and then the rest of the world.81 On the ancient Israelites, see Steven Elliott Grosby, Biblical Ideas of Nationality: Ancient and Modern(Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 124; on the “land of the Arabs,” al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Burini (d. 1615), Tarajim al-A‘yan min Abna al-Zaman (Damascus: al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi, 1959-62), 214; Makariyus the Antiochean (d.1672), cited in see Radu, “Voyage Du Patriarche,” 57; Abu Salim‘Abd Allah bin Muhammad al-‘Ayyashi (d.1679), al-Rihla al-‘Ayyashiyya lil-Baqa’ al-Hijaziyya: al-Musamma Ma’ al-Mawa’id (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2011), II, 400; Istifan al-Duwayhi (d.1704),Tarikh al-Ta’ifa al-Maruniyya (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Kathulikiyya lil-Aba’ al-Yasu’iyyin, 1890), 71;Mikha’il Burayk (d. after 1782), Tarikh al-Sham, 1720-1782 (Beirut: Dar al-Qutaybah, 1982), 58, 68-69;‘Abd al-Qadir Abi al-Sa‘ud, Min Misr ila Islambul (written around 1840-1) (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts,Bab al-Khalq, Cairo, Egypt, #755), folio 49; Jurji Yanni, Tarikh Suriya (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya,1881), 175; for more on this term, see Rafeq, “Social Groups, Identity and Loyalty;” on ‘the land of theMatawila,’ see Burayk (d. after 1782), Tarikh al-Sham, 23; on the land of the Maronites, see Rifa‘a Rafi‘al-Tahtawi, Jughrafiyat Bilad al-Sham (date unknown) (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts, Bab al-Khalq, Cairo,Egypt, MS#42), folio 34; on the Vietnamese, see Alexander Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Mode: AComparative Study of Nguyen and Ch’ing Civil Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 19; for further examples of this, see also D. Roden,“Some Geographical Implications from the Study of Ugandan place-names.” EastAfrican GeographicalReview 12 (1974): 79-80. 81Classicists and medievalists left this idea alone for a while, focusing on more pressingissues like paleographic manuscript marginalia. But then modernists read history and pre-modernists read about nations. A fascinating cross-fertilization ensued. Nations werefound in 16th century France, 14th century North Africa, 13th century Greece, medievalNetherlands and among the Anglo-Saxons and Irish in the 11th and 8th centuries. Strandsof nationalism were found among the Arabs in the 13th and 16th centuries, among theByzantines (Romaioi) from the 5th through 16th centuries; in 7th century Tang DynastyChina, and among the ancient Athenians, Hebrews, Moabites, Edomites, Assyrians andEgyptian Pharoaic states more than two millennia ago. To one prominent archeologist,the Iron Age, which began some 3,200 years ago, initiated the “era of nation-states.”Nations and nationalism existed everywhere. No wonder one of world’s most famousscholars in the field, Eric J. Hobsbawm, wrote some three decades ago in a line thatshould be more famous than it is that “I adopt no a priori definition of what constitutes anation.” The word nation, he claimed, was “used so widely and imprecisely that the useof the vocabulary of nationalism today may mean very little indeed.” Essentially, scholarsfound nations wherever we have records that speak to how people identified. Whereverwe settled, we developed ties to our places of settlement. Those ties appear universalamong our species.8282 On the Iron Age, see Assaf Yasur-Landau, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the LateBronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1; on the ancient Egyptians, see Gat, Nations:The Long History, 85-89; on the Hebrews, Moabites and Assyrians, see Steven Grosby, “Borders, Territoryand Nationality in the Ancient Near East and Armenia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of theOrient 40(1) (1997): 1–29; on the Athenians, see Aviel Roshwald, The Endurance of Nationalism: AncientRoots and Modern Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); on the Anglo-Saxons, seeAdrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1997); on the Greeks, see Stephen G. Xydis, “Mediaeval Origins of ModernGreek Nationalism,” Balkan Studies 9 (1968): 1-20; on the Byzantines, see Anthony Kaldellēs, Hellenismin Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ch. 2; on the Tang Dynasty, see Gat, Nations: The Long 82Settled peoples invested more resources in material possessions than hunter-gatherers.We built complex structures, places of worship and seats of government. With wallseverywhere, we started drawing maps on them. In the 1960s, archeologists discoveredone of the earliest known sites of wheat cultivation in Çatalhöyük, Central Anatolia,Turkey, dating to 8,500 years ago. These ancient settled peoples drew a map on theinterior side of a wall in a dwelling place. The map depicted an explosive summiteruption of the Hasan Dağı twin-peaks volcano located about 130 km northeast ofÇatalhöyük with a bird’s eye view of a town plan in the foreground. Permanentsettlement led us to project our maps onto walls, floors and movable objects. Permanentsettlement was probably the greatest victory for maps in human history. And maps madethe places of our lives feel real and important.83States. We produced a lot more food by domesticating plants and animals than bygathering or catching them. This led to large permanent settlements, population growthand surpluses. That incentivized conquest, and conquest gave rise to states. States weregroups of people who agreed amongst themselves on a chain of command, claiming thatHistory, 93-103; on medieval Netherlands, see Philip Gorski, “The Mosaic Moment: An Early ModernistCritique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism,” American Journal of Sociology 105 (2000): 1428-1468; onreligious nationalism during the Reformation period, see Philip Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution(University of Chicago Press, 2003); on the 13th century Arabs, see Zayde Antrim, “Waṭan beforeWaṭaniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria,” Al-Masaq: Journal of the MedievalMediterranean 22(2) (2010): 174; on 14th century North Africa, see Haim Gerber (“The Limits ofConstructedness,” 259; on 16th century France, see Anthony Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Originsof Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); on the 16th century Arabs, see Haim Gerber, “TheLimits of Constructedness,” 252; for a further critique of modernist interpretations of nationalism, seeSteve Tamari, “Arab National Consciousness,” 309-321; then see Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations andNationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 8-9.83 AK Schmitt, M Danišík, E Aydar, E Şen, İ Ulusoy, OM Lovera, “Identifying the Volcanic EruptionDepicted in a Neolithic Painting at Çatalhöyük, Central Anatolia, Turkey.” PLoS ONE 9(1) (2014): e84711 83chain of command had a monopoly on the use of force in a certain area. Chains ofcommand did not usually farm or hunt and so they needed to collect taxes to feedthemselves. In order to collect taxes, places like Palestine flourished. You couldn’t askyour subjects to pay taxes to the governor of “the fourteen-mile expanse of land due eastfrom the southern-most hilltop of the rugged terrain south of Hebron to the landextending north for eighteen miles until the narrow valley past the third river.” Youcouldn’t maintain tax collection records if you had to describe the physical attributes ofthe district, rather than using its name. You couldn’t distribute salaries, conscript soldiersor instill loyalty in subjects. The same went for everyone else: scholars, priests,merchants and hair dressers needed to use the names the state chose to make themselvesunderstood and to describe events accurately. “Khalid bin Walid controlled Qanasrin,Yazid governed Damascus, Mu‘awiya governed Jordan, Amlaqa bin Mujazzin governedPalestine and the coast was ruled by ‘Abd Allah ibn Qays.” That’s how the greathistorian, Ibn a-Athir (d.1233) described it. Places like Palestine facilitated governance.They made it easier for states to conscript soldiers, commanders to give orders tosubordinates, bureaucrats to convey information to governors and scholars to relayscholarly information to readers. States needed to divide the world into places likePalestine, and that gave rise to identities having to do with those places.84To fully understand the lure of conquest or governance as a means of subsistence, andthus the proliferation of states around the globe, and thus the proliferation of places likePalestine, and thus the popularity of identities like the Palestinians, consider Stephen84 See ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1983), II, 375. 84Colbert’s 2011 address before the United States Congress, where he shared his vastexperience spending one day as a migrant farm worker. “I certainly hope my star powercan bump this hearing all the way up to CSPAN1,” Colbert explained. This was part ofColbert’s ongoing series, Stephen tries other things and realizes, my job is much better.The comedian participated in the United Food Workers Take Our Jobs Campaign,claiming to have been 1 of 16 people in the United States that year to take up thechallenge. “After working with these men and women—picking beans, packing corn, forhours on end, side by side, in the unforgiving sun,” Colbert proclaimed in a tender voiceas if his shift had just ended, “please don’t make me do this again. It is really, really,hard.” Colbert started to cry. “For one thing, when you are picking beans, you have tospend all day bending over. It turns out, and I did not know this, most soil is at groundlevel. If we could put a man on the moon,” Colbert said in total exasperation, “why can’twe make the earth waste high? This helped me understand why so few Americans areclamoring to begin an exciting career as a seasonal migrant fieldworker.” Places likePalestine facilitated conquest, defense and governance, and governance meant you couldspend the day sitting rather than bending over.Some states tried to enforce these places as canonical. An example of this, as we learnedin the previous chapter, was when the Israeli military sought to ban use of the wordPalestine in company or newspaper names in the occupied territories in the 1980s. Thegroup variously known as I.S.I.S. or I.S.I.L. or I.S. was probably annoyed that everyonewas using different names for the group. Americans chose I.S.I.L or I.S.I.S., the Turks 85İşit, Arabs and Israelis Da‘sh, so the group changed its name in July 2014 to “the IslamicState,” now often called just “I.S.,” even though the earlier names still persist.85States thus played a critical role in the rise and fall of places like Palestine and theidentities that sprung forth from them. Few Arabs before the 1850s had heard of theArabic word Suriya (Syria). As Assad Kayat explained in his 1847 memoir, “first webegin with the general name of the country. It is called ‘Bar Alsham,’ or the country ofShem [sic].” But, in the 1860s, the Ottoman state introduced a new district called Syria.From that point onwards, the term Syria gained in popularity. By the late 19th century,the term Suriya appeared as frequently in Arabic as the term Sham. (Syria arose inpopularity for other reasons, as well, such as its usage by foreign missionaries, travelersand diplomats. In fact, this was part of the reason why the government changed it to Syriato begin with).86The French conquered the place in 1920, making Syria even more important than it everhad been—at the expense of Sham. “What we mean by Land of Sham,” explained theactivist Muhammad ‘Izzat al-Darwaza in 1924 in a lengthy footnote to the word Sham,“were the countries of Syria and Palestine, and the wilderness that connects it to Najd andIraq, known as the wilderness of Sham.” Arab geographers in the 1940s explicitly85 Patrick J. Lyons and Mona al-Naggar, “What to Call Iraq Fighters? Experts Vary of the S’s and L’s,”New York Times 18 June 2014 (https://goo.gl/6BSTQp)86 See Assad Y. Kayat, A Voice from Lebanon (London: Madden and Co., Leadenhall-Street, 1847), 325-6;having said that, it was not so easy to completely displace Sham. Shahin Makariyus [Hasr al-Litham fiNakbat al-Sham (Cairo: n.p., 1895), 4] noted that “the land is still called by its Roman name [i.e. Syria]among the Europeans and it is still called by its Arab name [al-Sham] among the Arabs.” On the rise inpopularity of the term Syria, see Fruma Zachs, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals andMerchants in Nineteenth Century Beirut (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 86claimed that the phrase “the Land of Sham” sounded outdated. One of the most populargeographical terms in Arabic for more than a millennium needed clarification, seeminglyin large part because it fell from administrative use.87Name changes could be slow to settle in where states invented places ex nihilo. Prior tothe 1920s, Jordan was variously known as Eastern Palestine, that which is across theJordan, the eastern bank of the Jordan, the wilderness of Sham, that which is behind theJordan, the southern part of the Vilayet of Syria, behind Palestine and the Arab East. Itwasn’t a coherent place in people’s minds, but rather a geographical area appended to ordefined by some other place—Sham, Syria, Palestine or the Jordan River. The Britishdebated calling the place “Belka” or Trans Jordania, but decided on Transjordan in theend. King ‘Abdullah himself debated between calling it Sharq al-Urdunn (East of theJordan) or al-Sharq al-‘Arabi (the Arab East)—a name that was in fact used during the1920s (see figure 5). No wonder people called it different things during the 1920s, 1930sand 1940s despite British political fiat. Transjordan eventually won out in English, andother terms like Eastern Palestine fell out of use. Soon enough, though, the state changedits name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Just as quickly, Transjordan sounded as87 See Muhammad ‘Izzat Darwazah, Mukhtasar Tarikh al-‘Arab wa-al-Islam (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Salafiyya, 1924), I, 81; S. Hadhwah [Tarikh al-Umma al-‘Arabiyya: Qadiman wa-Hadithan (Jerusalem:Matba‘at al-Ard al-Muqaddasa, 1945), 41, 115] added the word “Syria” in parenthesis when writing aboutSham, presumably for clarification, and added the words “Syria, Palestine and Transjordan” in parenthesiswhen writing about Bilad al-Sham; Wadi‘a Talhuq [al-Salibiyya al-Jadida fi Filastin (Damascus: Matba‘atal-Nidal, 1948), 55] also added the word “Syria” in parenthesis when writing about Sham during theFatimids and Abbasid periods. Wadi‘a Talhuq [Filastin al-‘Arabiyya: Fi Madiha wa Hadiruhu wa-Mustaqbaluhu (Beirut: Majallat al-‘Alman, 1945), 77] explained elsewhere that “Palestine was considereda part of Greater Syria – of the Shami Country (al-qutr al-Shami), to use the old term (‘ala hadd al-istilahal-qadim).” For further examples, see al-Sabbagh, Filastin wa-al-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya, 2. 87outdated as Eastern Palestine. The state decided it was Jordan, and the rest of us wentalong with it.8888 On “Eastern Palestine” and “that which is across the Jordan” (fi ‘abr al-Urdunn), see “Takhtit SharqiFilastin,” al-Muqtataf 6 (1881): 272; on “the Arab East” (al-Sharq al-‘Arabi), see “Southern Syria, orPalestine and the Arab East,” in Sa‘id Sabbagh, Jughrafiyat Suriya al-‘Umumiyya al-Mufassala (Saidon:Matba‘at al-‘Irfan, 1924), 128; on “Jordan” and “Eastern Palestine,” see Shukri Khalil Suwaydan, Tarikhal-Jam‘iyya al-Imbaraturiyya al-Urthudkuksiyya al-Filastiniyya (Boston: Matba‘a Suriya al-Jadida, 1912),120, 123; on Eastern Palestine, see Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid, 13, 18; on the “eastern bank of the Jordan”(daffat al-Urdunn al-sharqiyya), see Filasitn 24 January 1912; on “the wilderness of Sham,” see As‘adMansur, Murshid al-Tullab ila Jughrafiyat al-Kitab (n.p., 1905), 1-2; on “behind Palestine” (wara’Filastin), see al-Hilal 10(6) (1901): 184; on “that which is behind the Jordan,” see ‘Isa Iskandar al-Ma‘luf,“Haywanat Ghariba fi ma wara’ al-Urdunn,” al-Athar 1(5) (1911): 155; on the confusion, see MaktabatBayt al-Maqdis, al-Mukhtasar al-Jughrafi (Jerusalem: al-Tiba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1945), 97; Yusuf Sufayr,Jughrafiyat Lubnan al-Kabir wa-Hukumat Suriya wa-Filastin (Beirut: Matabi‘ Kuzma, 1924), 84;Interestingly, Sahil al-Sayyid [al-Murshid al-‘Arabi, Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1936),10] claimed Transjordan was part of Palestine based on his view that the British colonial division ofPalestine and Transjordan was illegitimate; on the British debates, see Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects:The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 23-4. 88 Figure 5. Map of “Southern Syria, or Palestine and the Arab East.”89Some places, admittedly, survived the test of time without any state guarantors. Palestinesurvived for centuries without one, as we shall discover in the next chapter. Notsurprisingly, though, it lived in a state of neglect for much of that period and could haveremained an antiquated place of the past like Mesopotamia or Transjordan. Palestine didhave some things going for it, though. Prior to its disappearance from administrativeparlance in the 11th century, Palestine had political status in Roman, Byzantine and Arabcivilizations, and a variation of the term (Pleshet) appeared in the most the popular seriesof books in European and Middle Eastern history: the Bible. Those laurels helpedPalestine survive when it fell from political use. Palestine’s rise, fall and rise again is thesubject of the next chapter.Cities. The Agricultural Revolution had another important effect on identities likePalestinian. It brought cities into the world. We associated cities with the larger areas inwhich they were situated, in part, because it made it easier to communicate information.“Sus is an area at the edge of the Maghreb. Tripoli is on the coast of Damascus, Beirut isa city in Damascus, Ashkelon is a city on the coast of Palestine, Manbar is in Balkh, andRumayda is a city in the Maghreb.” These were the words of the famous Arabgeographer, al-Muqaddasi (d. 991), who continued like this for pages on end. It was89 Cited in Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Jughrafiyat Suriya al-‘Umumiyya al-Mufassala (Saidon: Matba‘at al-‘Irfan,1924), 128 89much easier to keep track of cities when each one is situated within its own parentregion.90We also combined cities and lands into phrases. Arabs called Tripoli “the Tripoli ofSham,” Caesarea “the Caesarea of Palestine,” Sabastia “the Sabastia of Palestine,” Ramla“the Ramla of Palestine,” Damascus the “Damascus of Sham,” Baghdad “the Baghdad ofIraq” and Cairo “the Cairo of Egypt.” We did this when cities became prominent parts ofthe larger areas in which they were located. Damascus was the political center of Sham;Cairo was Egypt’s hub; Baghdad dominated Iraq; and Ramla ruled Palestine.91We also conflated cities and regions. The 7th century Muslim conquerors initially calledJordan Tiberias. Some Muslims thought Palestine referred to the city of Ramla. The townof Sabastia (near Nablus) was also known as Palestine. To this day, Egyptians use theword Misr for both Cairo and Egypt. Syrians use the term Sham for Syria and Damascus.Arabic and English speakers use the word “Gaza” or “Ghazza” for the city and the strip.Lots of people also conflated Jerusalem and Palestine, or described Palestine as “the Landof Jerusalem” or used the two terms interchangeably, especially in the late 19th and early20th centuries.9290 Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Muqaddasi (M.J. De Goeje ed.), Kitab Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma‘rifat al-Aqalim (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1906), 24.91 The Arabic terms used were: Tarabulus al-Sham, Kaysariyyat Filastin, Sabastiyat Filastin, RamlatFilastin, Dimashq al-Sham, Baghdad al-‘Iraq and Kahirat Misr.92 On Sabastia’s conflation with Palestine, see ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1731) Rihla ila al-Quds(Cairo, 1902), 6-7; Muhammad bin Ja‘far bin Idris al-Kitani (d.1903) al-Rihla al-Samiyya ila Iskandariyyawa-Misr wa-l-Hijaz wa-Bilad al-Sham (al-Dar al-Bayda, Morocco: Markaz al-Turath al-Thaqafi al-Maghribi, 2005), 307; on the conflation of Palestine and Ramla, see Zachary Foster, “Was Jerusalem Partof Palestine? The Forgotten City of Ramla, 900–1900,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies43(4)(2016): 575-589; on the conflation of Palestine and Jerusalem, see Da’irat al-Ma‘arif 10 (1898), 196;Filastin 13 April 1912; Filastin 27 June 1912; Filastin 30 September 1911; Abi al-Sa‘ud Affandi, Kitab al- 90In the Middle East, as in other parts of the world, the conflation is obvious from a look atthe language itself. The Arabic words balad, ard, and watan denoted cities and regions,or cities plus the towns, villages, agricultural lands surrounding them. Ard referred toregions such as the Holy Land as well as cities like Damascus or Gaza. Balad and itsplural, bilad, referred to Palestine and Syria as well as Jaffa and Nablus. Watan, orhomeland, referred to villages, cities and lands as well.93The Arabs were not exceptional. In ancient Egypt, the rulers of the New Kingdomoccasionally called Gaza the City of Canaan or even simply Canaan, even thoughCanaan also referred to a much larger region from Nahr al-Kabir to Gaza. The AkkadianEmpire was based in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region, also known as Akkad,Dars al-Tamm fi al-Tarikh al-‘Amm (Cairo: Matba‘at Wadi al-Nil, 1872/3), 66); Rashid Khalidi,Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1997), 59, n. 84; “Anadolu Taksimat-i Idariye” and “Suriye ve Beyrut Vilayetleri” inMekatib-i Ibtida'iye, Juğrafiya-i Osmani (Matbaa-i 'Amire, 1913/1914), 98, 193, respectively; MichelleCampos, “Making Citizens, Contesting Citizenship in Late Ottoman Palestine,” pp.17-33 in Late OttomanPalestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (eds.) (London: I.B. Tauris,2011), 24, 27; Johann Büsso, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872-1908 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 479.93 On the Land of Jerusalem (Ard al-Quds), see, for instance, n.a., Nisba Sharifa Muttasila bi-Tamim al-Dari [Manuscript Section of the National Library of Israel, JER NLI AP Ar. 593, 1860), 20, 23, 24; onDamascus, see Ibn al-Wardi (d.1348), Kharidat al-‘Aja’ib wa-Faridat al-Ghara’ib (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babial-Halabi wa-Awladihi, 1923), 29; on Ashdod, see Khalil Sarkis, Kitab Urshalim, ayy al-Quds al-Sharif(Beirut: Matba‘at al-Ma‘arif, 1874), 17; on Gaza, see Niqula ibn Yusuf al-Turki (d. 1828), Dhikr TamallukJumhur al-Faransawiyya: al-Aqtar al-Misriyya wa-l-Bilad al-Shamiyya (Histoire de l'Expedition desFrançais en Égypte) (Paris: Royale, 1839; Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1990), 136; on Sidon, see Haydar Rida al-Rukayni (d.1783), Jabal ‘Amil fi al-Qarn, 1163-1247H/1749-1832M (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani,1997), 69; see also n.a., Salname-yi Vilâyet-i Suriye (Suriye [Syria]: Suriye Vilâyet Matbaasında tabʻOlunmuştur, 1887-8), 239; on the conflation of Tiberias and Jordan, see Abu ‘Ubayd al-Bakri (d.1094), al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik (Qartaj: al-Mu’assasa al-Wataniyya lil-Tarjama wa-l-Tahqiq wa-l-Dirasat, 1992), I,498; Amikam Elad, “Two Identical Inscriptions from Jund Filasṭīn from the Reign of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph,Al-Muqtadir,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 35(4) (1992): 334-5; on watan,see, for instance, the 18th century Sufi traveler Taha al-Kurdi (a.k.a. Muhammad Taha ibn Yahya Sahih al-Din al-‘Iraqi) (d.1800) [al-Rihla (Yale University, Manuscript Division, Landberg #220), folio 2a] whowrote in his travelogue that “I left my homeland (watan),” which was in the “village of Balisan, in the Landof the Kurds, within the city of Baghdad.” His homeland was the village of Balisan, the city of Baghdadand the land of the Kurds – i.e. a land inside of a city inside of a homeland! 91or the land of Akkad (Mat Akkadi). Asssyria was named after its capital city, Aššur. Thephrase King of Aram, a region, referred to the rulers of kingdoms like Damascus.94No surprise that historians love the phrase “city-state.” Scholars of ancient Mesopotamiaoften describe the smaller kingdoms that thrived in the region in the 3rd century BC ascity-states, since they often included one or two major urban centers as well as thesurrounding rural areas. The Aztecs had the altepetl, the ancient Greeks had polis,Renaissance Europeans had Venice, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Siena, Lucca,Cremona. All are called city-states in modern English.95In 21st century North America, cities usually subsume their outlying areas: the DetroitArea, the Bay Area, the Tri-State Area, the Greater Toronto Area and Chicagoland. Inmany cases, we even add the word area to the name of the city itself to imply it is morethan just the city. People from Pontiac, Waterford or West Bloomfield, Michigan will saythey are from the Detroit Area, for example, when talking to San Franciscans. It makesourselves and our places of origin intelligible to other people. It facilitates basiccommunication. That’s why cities and regions have long formed a spectrum in thoughtand language.94 On the phrase, King of Aram, see Bruce Routledge, “The Antiquity of the Nation? Critical Reflectionsfrom the Ancient Near East,” Nations and Nationalism 9(2) (2003): 226-7; on Canaan, see Robert Drews,“Canaanites and Philistines,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 23(81) (1998): 47-8.95 On ancient Mesopotamia, see Piotr Michalowski, “The Presence of the Past in Early MesopotamianWritings” pp. 144-168 in Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World Kurt A. Raaflaub(ed.) (Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 150; on the prevalence ofcity-states in global history, see Gat, The Long History, 67-83. 92How did cities—and their conflation with regions—affect identities like “Palestinian”?Since there was never a clean break between regions and cities, identities related toregions and cities have also been fluid: city dwellers, townspeople, villagers and countryfolks alike all see the areas around them as natural extensions of their places of origin.Our ties to cities have often been closely linked to our ties to regions. Today, think of theimportance that Jerusalem plays for Palestinians, Damascus to Syrians, Cairo toEgyptians and Baghdad to Iraqis. Our identities based on cities and regions have evolvedto become quite similar in nature, content and form. Most everything that has been said inthis chapter about Palestine could have been said about cities, towns and villages. * * *Conclusion. We identify with Palestine because it seems real to us. It seems real to usbecause we named it, told stories about it and made maps of it. We also made Palestinebeautiful owing to our aesthetic tastes. We painted colorful maps of its peaks and valleys,wrote eloquent poems commemorating its martyrs and threw extravagant partiescelebrating its independence. The rest of this dissertation will pick up when Palestine firstentered the historical record, moving from the ancient to the modern world. Why didPalestine become so important that people came to identify with it and even sacrificetheir life for it? 93 CHAPTER THREE The Pre-Modern WorldMost people writing about Palestine don’t obsess over its name, even if I implied thatpreviously. As an academic, I’ve been trained to inflate the importance of my topic.Instead, most people writing about Palestine assume it’s real, which is okay. It’s difficultto write history without assuming places like Palestine are real.But as far as name controversies go, as we discussed in chapter one, Palestine handilydefeats its competitors. To quantify the obsession with Palestine, consider that theWikipedia page, Timeline of the History of the Name Palestine, has accumulated some30,000 words and 401 footnotes as of August 2017. These figures eclipse even otherhighly controversial name disputes like Macedonia, and they dwarf others like Denali–Mount McKinley, the Persian/Arab Gulf, Kosovo/a, the Sea of Japan, Khuzestan andAnatolia by an order of magnitude.96Palestine entered the historical record about 3,000 years ago. In the ancient Near East, theterm was closely associated with the land settled by the Philistines, the peoplesmentioned by the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians and Hebrews. The land they inhabited96 On Macedonia, see the Wikipedia page titled, “Macedonia naming dispute.” For a survey of other namedisputes, see the Wikipedia page titled, “Geographical renaming.” For a survey of references to the termKhuzestan, see the Wikipedia page, “Origin of the name Khuzestan.” On the Anatolia debate, seeChristopher Markiewicz, “The Crisis of Rule in Late Medieval Islam: A Study of Idrīs Bidlīsī (861-926/1457-1520) and Kingship at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University ofChicago, 2015), xvi-xvii. 94long survived the Philistines themselves, as the term entered Greek and Latin, probablythrough Aramaic, and came to denote a larger region, including both the mountainousinterior and coastal plain of the surrounding area. After the Arab conquest, it also came tomean the city of Ramla, the city of Sabastia, the city of Ramla and its surroundings, thecity of Gaza, the city of Gaza and its surroundings, the coastal plains up until themountainous interior, the area around Jerusalem, the District of Jerusalem, a landstretching from Rafah to Lajjun and Jaffa to Jericho, a land equivalent to the Holy Land,and many other areas. In this sense, Palestine was a typical place. It has come in and outof fashion and has meant different things to different people in different time periods.97Some of this history is not without controversy. The most infamous incident was thealleged name change from Judaea to Palestine in 135 CE. Most scholars believe theRoman Emperor Hadrian changed the provincial administrative name of Judaea toPalestine to erase the Jewish presence in the land, a point often seized by Israel apologistsbecause it squares nicely with the theory that Jews have faced millennia of uninterruptedpersecution. What Israel apologists don’t know is that it’s equally likely the name changehad little to do with Jew hatred and more to do with Hadrian’s romance with ancientGreece. It’s also possible Judaea gradually fell from use out of derelict rather than spite.These theories are little known even among scholars because they serve no politicalagenda. Regrettably, it seems too many historians of Hadrian and the Jews of the RomanEmpire have fallen victim to the propaganda.97 In the 19th and 20th centuries, Palestine went global, referring to Palestina, Alagoas (Brazil), Palestina,São Paulo (Brazil), Palestina de Goias (Brazil), Palestina, Caldas (Colombia), Palestina, Huila (Columbia),Palestina de Los Altos (Guatemala), Palestina (Ecuador) and Palestine, Texas (United States). 95From the 2nd to the 7th centuries, the Romans and Byzantines used the word Palestine inadministrative parlance. Thereafter, Palestine experienced a period of retreat in themedieval Latin west, but was revived when Renaissance Europeans re-discovered theancient Greek and Latin texts, most of which called the place Palestine. They broughtthese texts out of manuscript, translated them into European vernaculars and publishedthem repeatedly with the aid of the printing press. They also illustrated Palestine on mapsand told stories about its history and geography. The classical texts became popular inEurope because they offered independent accounts of the events described in the HolyBooks, almost as if God had left behind clues to understanding the scriptures.The Arabs conquered Palestine from the Byzantines in the 7th century, and preserved theword Palestine—Filastin in Arabic—in administrative nomenclature for three centuries.The Crusaders, who conquered parts of the region from the 11th through 13th centuries,preferred other terms to Palestine. Meanwhile, though, the Arabs continued to tell storiesabout Palestine for the same reason people today tell stories about Mesopotamia,Transjordan and Cilicia. They preserved place names of the past, even if those words fellfrom everyday usage. There were exceptions, though, such as the people of Ramla and itssurroundings, who remembered and used the term Palestine in their day-day lives.The final section of this chapter looks at whether a Palestinian identity existed before themodern period, as some have claimed. I stated that permanent settlement, the rise ofstates and agricultural surplus led people to identify with places like Palestine. Most 96Arabic speakers who inhabited the region were sedentary, so this held promise that someof its inhabitants might identify with it—and, indeed, at least one did. But the state was acomparatively small institution until quite recently, and Palestine was only incorporatedin it from the 7th through the 11th century, not after. As far as the surplus goes, mostArabs in history were farmers, not geographers, journalists or educators. This made itharder for identities like the Palestinians to flourish, since they were greatly dependent onpeople telling stories about it, writing its history and making maps of it. Thus, although atleast one Muslim did identity as Palestinain in the 10th century, ties to Palestine wereweak before the 19th century. * * *The Egyptians (1150 BC - 900 BC). Palestine first appeared in the historical record asPeleshet in the Papyrus Harris hieroglyphics, a text totaling some 1,500 lines dating to3,100 years ago. “I extended the boundaries of Egypt. I overthrow those who invadedEgypt from their lands.” So said an Egyptian Pharaoh, who was not humble about hismilitary prowess. “The Peleshet were made into ashes.” The Egyptians also left behindthree inscriptions in the Medinet Habu reliefs located at the Mortuary Temple ofRamesses III in Luxor that bear the name Prst. (Egyptologists disagree over how totranscribe the word, since we do not know how Egyptian sounded). The Prst aredescribed as peoples of the sea who invaded Egypt by land and sea. An inscription fromroughly the same time was also found on the famous Padiiset’s Statue (figure 6) statingthat an envoy named Pa-di-Eset came from Canaan and PeLeSeT. Finally, the 97Onomosticon of Amenope, a hieroglyphics catalogue of objects, towns, offices,buildings, types of land, produce, beverages and also peoples, mentioned the Pelesti citiesof Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gaza. In short, at least five separate Egyptian hieroglyphicsources mention these people, variously known among as Peleshet, Prst or PeLeSeT.98 Figure 6. Padiiset’s Statue.98 Egyptologists variously transliterate the group as pw-r-s-ty, PuReST, PuLeST, PeLeSHeT, Prst or Plst,depending on the source text and language. See Nissim R. Gangor, Who Were the Phoenicians? (KIP:Katarim International Publishing, 2009), 110; Nur Masalha, “The Concept of Palestine: The Concept ofPalestine from the Late Bronze Age to the Modern Period,” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies15(2) (2016): 144-5; for an authoritative survey of the sources on the Philistines, see Trude Dothan, ThePhilistines and their Material Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 1-24; on the PapyrusHarris, see ibid, 3; on the Medinet Habu reliefs, Padiiset's Statue and the Onomosticon of Amenope, seeCarl S. Ehrlich, The Philistines in Transition: A History from ca. 1000-730 BC (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 65;Dothan, The Philistines and their Material Culture, 3-5; James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 24; Georg Steindorff, “The Statuette of an EgyptianCommissioner in Syria,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 25(1) (1939): 30-33; Niels Peter Lemche,The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites, (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield AcademicPress, 1999), 54. 98The Assyrians (800 BC-600 BC). The Assyrians were the second oldest peoples tomention the Philistines. A slab of rock was found buried amidst the ruins of theprosperous Assyrian city, Nimrud, 30 kilometers south of Mosul, dating to about the 9thcentury BC. “I ruled from the beginning of my reign, from Dur-Kurigalzi, Sippar ofShamash, Pasitu of the Dunanu.” Seemingly, the Pasita were the same people as thePeleseti or Prst in the Egyptian sources.99Another Assyrian King, Sennacherib, had stories of his campaign against the Kingdom ofIsrael and the Kingdom of Judah etched into multiple clay prisms, each with this samemodest inscription: “I, King of the Universe, King of Assyria [Assur], gave my thoughtand brought my mind to accomplish this work according to the command and will of theGods.” King Sennacherib reportedly snatched away “from their lands people who had notsubmitted to my yoke, including the people of Kaldu (Chaldea), the Aramaeans, theMannai, (the people of) Kue and Hilakku, (of) Philistia [Pi-LiS-Ti u] and Tyre. I madethem carry the basket and mold bricks.” Molding bricks doesn’t sound pleasant.100Hundreds of 8th century BC neo-Assyrian clay tablets were also discovered in the wastedeposits of the Assyrian foreign ministry offices. The tablets described the affairs of theAssyrian state in cuneiform script. On one tablet, a servant told the King he had collected99 Hayim Tadmor, “An Ancient Scribal Error and Its Modern Consequences: The Date of the Nimrud SlabInscription,” Anatolian Studies 33 (1983): 199-203. According to a much earlier translation, the text wasrendered: “From over the river Euphrates, Syria, and Phoenicia, the whole of it, Tyre, Zidon, Omri Edomand Philistia…I have subjugated” (edited for clarity). See George Smith, The Assyrian Eponym Canon(London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1875), 115.100 Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924),104. 99taxes in Tyre, Lebanon and Sidon and forced the people there to submit to the rule of theKingdom. “Bring your lumber, do your work on it,” wrote the local governor to thepeople of the Lebanon, but “do not deliver it to the Egyptians or Palestinians [pa-la-as-ta-a-a],” the same Philistines mentioned in the Egyptian sources.101The Israelites (1000BC-130 AD). The Egyptian and Assyrian statues, inscriptions, slabsand papyri were only recently rediscovered and deciphered in the 19th and 20th centuries.The Hebrew texts, by contrast, have been known for millennia. They mention thePhilistines or Philistia, known in Hebrew as Plishtim, Eretz Plishtim or Pleshet, some 280times and have more to say about the Philistines than all the Egyptian and Assyrian textscombined.The Bible described the Philistines as the most wretched of all the enemies of theChildren of Israel. They lived in Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath—i.e. thesouthwest flank of the Israelites—and reportedly fought the Israelites in the Battle ofShephelah, the Battle of Aphek, the Battle of Eben-Ezer, the skirmish at Michmash, thefight near the Valley of Elah, the battle at Mount Gilboa and more. They even occupiedHebrew cities and garrisoned Bethlehem. The Hebrews described them as pagan idolworshipers who did not circumcise their young and consumed unclean animals. Delilahthe Philistine woman infamously cut Sampson’s hair, usurping his supernatural strength.The Philistine giant Goliath even more infamously caused King Saul’s troops to tremble101 For background on the tables, see the many articles published in the 1950s by M. E. L. Mallowan in thejournal, Iraq. For a transcription and translation of the tablet, see Henry W.F. Saggs, The Nimrud Letters,1952 (London: The British School of Archeology in Iraq, 2001), 156-7. 100until David killed him with a single slingshot. Without corroborating evidence, of course,we don’t have any way of verifying or refuting these stories. What’s fair to assume is thatthe stories would have been very different had Philistine texts survived instead ofEgyptian, Assyrian and Israelite ones.102Philistine Identity. Scholars today use the term Philistine as an archeological rather thanethnic label to refer to the period of permanent settlement in the Gaza region that beganaround 1200 BC. The artifacts found at Philistine sites resemble a mix of Aegean andother cultures. Philistine clay pots, pans, wine juglets, red and black cups, and figurinesof goddesses, resemble Greek, Aegean and Minoan culture as well. Moreover, Egyptianreliefs of Philistine ships, shields, and body armor look like Aegean ones. Philistineculture also supported a wealth of professions and trades much as Aegean culture had,including warriors, farmers, sailors, musicians, dancers, merchants, shamans, priests,artisans, and architects. Textual evidence supports this as well: Biblical descriptions ofPhilistine pillared temples also match Aegean Megaron architecture.103The Aegean origins theory is now being subjected to genetic testing. In July 2016,archeologists uncovered a large cemetery just outside the walls of Ashkelon in thePhilistine heartland, a site that was in use in the late 11th century BC and early 8thcentury BC according to radiocarbon dating of other objects found there. The site was102 See 13 Joshua; 1 Chronicles; 2 Samuel.103 On the amorphous Philistine identity, see S Maeir, A. M., Hitchcock, L. A., and Horwitz, L. K. “On theConstitution and Transformation of Philistine Identity.” Oxford Journal of Archeology 32(1) (2013): 1–38;Jeff Emanuel, “‘Dagon Our God’: Iron I Philistine Cult in Text and Archaeology,” Journal of Ancient NearEastern Religions 16(1) (2016): 24-5; on the archeological similarities to Aegean peoples, see ibid, 29;Dothan, The Philistines and their Material Culture, 7-11; David Ben-Shlomo, Philistine Iconography: AWealth of Style and Symbolism (Göttingen: Academic Press Fribourg, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 16. 101thus in use during a time when Philistines are believed to have inhabited that area.Forensic specialists are now extracting DNA samples from the bones in the cemetery tounderstand their degree of genetic similarity to Aegean bones from the same period.104But without written records from the Philistines themselves, it’s difficult to know howthey self-identified. As for the word Philistine itself, DNA evidence cannot answer thisquestion, and so etymological gymnastics reign supreme. Before the archeological recordstarted pointing to the Aegean, scholars related the word Philistine to the Sanskritvalaksa, meaning white; the Ethiopian verb falasa, meaning to wander. Some saidPhilistia morphed out of the nearby Biblical region known as Shephelah in the Judeanfoothills. Archeologists also found a Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription in an Aleppocitadel by a ruler, “Taita, the Hero of Palistin-ean”—certainly an interesting find,although it’s unclear if or how the ruler had any relation to the Philistines.105Today, the most popular etymological theories trace the term to the Aegean. ThePhilistines could be related to the Pelasgians—the Greek term to refer to the inhabitantsof the Aegean Sea region before the Greeks. It might also come from the river Strymon inMacedonia, which had previously been called Palaistinos. Perhaps it came from thePylian Kingdom [known as Pylos, originally Pylosten, or Pu.le.se.te in Egyptian], an104 See Kristin Romey, “Discovery of Philistine Cemetery May Solve Biblical Mystery,” NationalGeographic 10 July 2016 (goo.gl/7Lhkq3).105 On the Shephelah theory, see Gustav Moritz Redslob, Die Alttestamentlichen Namen der Bevölkerungdes Israelitenstaates (Hamburg: Meissner, 1846), 4-5; on the other theories, see A.S. Macalister, ThePhilistines: Their History and Civilization (S.l: Oxford University Press, 1914), 3-4; Guy D. Middleton,“Telling Stories: The Mycenaean Origins of the Philistines,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 34(1) (2015):45–65; on the Aleppo citadel finding, see J.D. Hawkins, “The Inscriptions of the Aleppo Temple,”Anatolian Studies 61 (2011): 35-54. 102ancient state in what is now southern Greece whose people also specialized in metalworkand armoire, boasted similar social organization and were conquered, destroyed anddispersed by invaders. Perhaps they were the Philistines. Now let’s move from theancient Near East to antiquity.106 * * *Judaea or Palestine? (500BC-4th century AD). The nice thing about the Philistines isthat propagandists haven’t been interested in them. That is not the case once we reachantiquity. From the 2nd century AD onwards, propagandists have hijacked the history ofPalestine. The Roman Emperor Hadrian is claimed to have replaced the district of Judaeawith Palestine to erase the land’s Jewish identity after crushing the Bar-Kokhba revolt in135 AD, what we might call the erasure hypothesis. Many Israel apologists know this factbecause it fits into their narrative of world history, which is that Jews have facedmillennia of uninterrupted persecution.107106 On the Pylian Kingdom theory, see Othniel Margalith, “Where Did the Philistines Come From?,”Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 107(1) (1995): 104, 109.107 Bernard Lewis was an early and prominent advocate of the erasure hypothesis, popularizing it for wideraudiences. He wrote in Commentary Magazine in 1975 that “the name “Palestine” is first attested in thehistory of Herodotus, and appears in the works of later Greek and Latin writers.…in normal classical usagePalestine Syria (Syria Palaistinê) seems to have meant the coastline formerly inhabited by the Philistines….[it] did not, however, include the land of Judea, which was usually and officially known in Roman times bythat name. The official adoption of the name Palestine in Roman usage to designate the territories of theformer Jewish principality of Judea seems to date from after the suppression of the great Jewish revolt ofBar-Kokhba in the year 135 C.E. After this revolt, which caused great trouble to the Roman Empire, theEmperor Hadrian made a determined attempt to stamp out the embers not only of the revolt but of Jewishnationhood and statehood. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed and then rebuilt with a new name, as AeliaCapitolina; it would seem that the name Judea was abolished at the same time as Jerusalem and the countryrenamed Palestina or Syria Palestina, with the same intention—of obliterating its historic Jewish identity.The earlier name did not entirely disappear, and as late as the 4th century C.E. we still find a Christianauthor, Epiphanius, referring to ‘Palestina, that is, Judea.’ It had, however, ceased to be the officialdesignation of the country.” See Bernard Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO,” Commentary Magazine, 1January 1975; Lewis repeated this idea as late as 2010 when he was asked about the “Palestinian issue.”See Jerusalem Conference, “Bernard Lewis Speaks at the Jerusalem Conference 2010 Part 2,” youtube.com, 103Recently, it was Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-president of the Conference ofPresidents, who told a meeting of Israel lobby operatives in New York that the Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement had its roots in the ancient world. “We letthis cancer metastasize until now on campuses across the United States,” Hoenlein said.“This started when the Romans changed the name of Judaea to Philistia. That was thebeginning of BDS.” As the Roman Emperor Hadrian famously said, “we must quellJewish rebellion by means of peaceful, nonviolent resistance: boycott, divestment andslaughter of Jews by sword and fire.”108A Jerusalem Post blogger echoed these statements after having visited the Hadrianexhibition at the Israel Museum in January 2016. The most important little tidbit I gleaned from that movie [about Hadrian] was that in his efforts to defeat the Jewish People and Nation, he changed the name of the Land from Judea to “Palestine,” sic. The invention was an ancient one, and the aim was the same as the more modern use of the word. It's a simple tool to deny Jewish History and Jewish rights to our Land. That is why the word “Palestine” appears on all sorts of maps over the ages...1091 February 2011 (goo.gl/sZHzoL); The first problem with Lewis’s remarks is that his chronology of eventsis awkwardly out of order. Lewis claimed the name changes of Jerusalem and Judaea took place “at thesame time,” both putatively in response to the revolt. But Hadrian visited Jerusalem in the early spring of130, and scholars agree he changed the name of Jerusalem during this trip. The Jewish revolt happenedafterwards, in 132. How could Hadrian have changed the name of Jerusalem in 130 in response to a revoltthat happened in 132? On the 130 date of name change of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, see William F.Stinespring, “Hadrian in Palestine, 129/130 A. D.,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 59(3)(1939):361; David Golan, “Hadrian's Decision to supplant “Jerusalem” by “Aelia Capitolina” Historia: Zeitschriftfür Alte Geschichte 35(2) (1986): 226-239; Hannah M. Cotton, “The Impact of the Roman Army in theProvince of Judaea/Syria Palaestina,” pp.393-408 in The Impact of the Roman Army (200 BC-AD 476),Lukas de Blois, Elio Lo Cascio and Olivier Hekster (eds), (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 399-400.108 Ali Abunimah, “Israel Lawfare Group Plans ‘Massive Punishments’ for Activists,” The ElectronicIntifada 25 June 2016 (goo.gl/9hpAgW).109 Batya Medad, “Who Invented "Palestine?" HADRIAN!” Jerusalem Post 16 January 2016(goo.gl/vta4br); for further examples, see, for instance, David Bukay, “The Origin and Essence of“Palestine” and “Palestinians” as Political Entities,” Modern Diplomacy 12 August 2016(goo.gl/D8NJDA); Uri Dromi, “Hadrian’s Lessons for Modern-Day Israel,” Miami Herald 25 February2016 (goo.gl/0HJR86); Simcha Jacobovici, “Palestine: History of a Name,” Times of Israel Blogs 8 August2013 (goo.gl/ijS1zV); Matthew M. Hausman, “The UN Fails History 101,” Arutz Sheva 6 June 2016(goo.gl/egVs5z). 104Some of the most respected proponents of the erasure hypothesis, though, are openlybiased about their approach to the question. The historian Louis Feldman, for instance,explicitly described evidence that refuted the erasure hypothesis as a “problem” requiringthought experiments to resolve. At one point, he even wrote that “the name Palestine, aswe can see from the Bible is correctly used only when applied to the land of the ancientPhilistines along the coast of the Mediterranean […] were it not for Hadrian’s deliberateattempt to eliminate all traces of Jewish sovereignty, the name would have remainedJudea.” First, the Bible’s geographical lexicon is no more correct or incorrect than Greekor Latin lexicons. Geographical lexicons can be intelligible or unintelligible, but notcorrect or incorrect, at least from a historian’s point of view. Second, Feldman’scounterfactual claim that Judaea would have remained (had it not been erased) says a lotmore about Feldman than his sources—which, perhaps to Feldman’s surprise, cannotpredict the future. Regrettably, this has generally been the tone of scholarship on theissue: assume the erasure hypothesis is fact, and look for evidence to support it.110Before we get into the evidence for and against the erasure hypothesis, let’s clear up onecommon misconception about the alleged name change. Historians do not believe that110 Feldman worked hard to ram his thesis into his sources. He claimed that Pomponius Mela “clearlydifferentiates Judaea from Palestine,” since Pomponius Mela wrote: “here is situated Palestine [presumablyonly a minor part of Syria], where Syria touches the Arabs…” Louis H. Feldman, Studies in HellenisticJudaism (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 560. Feldman seems to force his thesis onto the evidence with Philo as well.“The one passage that is difficult to explain is the one (Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit 12.75) in which he[Philo] declares that Palestinian-Syria has not failed to produce high moral excellence. He states that aconsiderable part of the Jews live there, and cites as an example the Essences.” (ibid, 563-4). It is only“difficult to explain” if one presupposes the erasure hypothesis from the outset. Feldman describesevidence that undermines his argument as a “problem” in another instance as well: “the one passage inJosephus which seems to present a problem is the one at the very end of the Antiquities (20.259), where hesays that his work contains a record of the events “that befell us Jews, Egypt, Syria and in Palestine” (ibid,564-5). On his point about the “correct” use of the word Palestine, see ibid, 576. 105Hadrian preserved the administrative boundaries of Judaea and simply rename theprovince Palestine. Instead, the consensus is that the district was abolished altogether andreplaced not with Palaestina, but with Syria-Palaestina. Palaestina, to repeat, was not thename of a Roman administrative province beginning in 135.111Now let’s discuss the evidence in support of the erasure hypothesis. Recall that theRomans banned circumcision, hellenized Jerusalem and levied a half-shekel tax on theJews to pay for it. This inspired rebellion. The leader of the rebellion, Bar Kokhba, tookcomplete control of Judaea (although not Jerusalem) in 132, annihilating Roman troopsstationed in Judaea and even a unit sent from Egypt. Bar Kokhba ruled Judaea for morethan two years. He inaugurated a new calendar, “the First Year of the Redemption ofIsrael” and issued leases of parcels of land. He probably inspired Jewish insurrectionelsewhere in the Empire too.In response, Emperor Hadrian summoned his best generals to quell the revolt. Thisincluded Julius Severus from Britain and other units from Syria and the Danube. In total,some 12 or 13 legions participated, an enormous troop deployment for a territory the sizeof Judaea. Hadrian even made two visits to the front lines himself. His units incurredheavy losses, but managed to crush the rebellion, obliterating 50 major outposts, 1,000villages and killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Romans dispossessedJews of their land in Jerusalem after their re-conquest in 135 AD. They destroyed aSamaritan (Hebrew offshoot) sanctuary at Mount Gerizim (near Nablus) and sold Jewish111 For evidence of the change, see, for instance, D. Barag, “The Borders of Syria-Palaestina on AnInscription from the Raphia Area,” Israel Exploration Journal 23(1) (1973): 50-52. 106slaves in Gaza and Hebron for the price of a horse. The Romans outlawed anyone frompracticing Mosaic law or owning scrolls. Pagan shrines were built over Jewish ones. Therabbis were traumatized by the gruesome violence, even claiming that “the gentilesfertilized their vineyards for seven years with the blood of Israel without using manure.”Hadrian had ample reason to change the name and “to stamp out the embers” of “Jewishnationhood and statehood,” as Bernard Lewis put it.112But there are also some major problems with the erasure hypothesis. It assumes thatPalestine was not already the name of a region that included Judaea. If it was, then howcould Hadrian have changed the name to Palestine? If you go to a protest against theseparation barrier in Bil‘in, and get sprayed with chemically manufactured horse manure,you can’t say you’ll change clothes and come back smelling like chemicallymanufactured horse manure. You have to change out of that, just like Palestine had toemerge forth from Judaea.But Palestine did not emerge forth from Judaea, it had coexisted with it long before it wasputatively changed to it. Herodotus (d.425 BC) was the first on record in the Greek worldto use the term Palestine. The prevailing theory is that he adopted the term fromAramaic—both because Aramaic was the closest thing the Near East had at that time to alingua franca and because Middle Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew, had aform of that word—Pi-li-s-ta'in—closest to Herodotus’s Greek usage. Herodotus used112 Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 446,448, 450, 463; Elizabeth Speller, Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey through the RomanEmpire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 201; Anthony Everitt, Hadrian and the Triumph ofRome (New York: Random House, 2009), 296-305. On the vineyards quote, see ibid, 304. 107the term multiple times to refer to the entire coast from Egypt to Phoenicia, andpotentially the interior as well. In addition to Herodotus, Aristotle claimed the Dead Seawas in Palestine; Philo of Alexandria indicated Palestine bordered Arabia, and was partof Syria; Josephus said his work recorded what “befell us Jews, Egypt, Syria and inPalestine.” Pomponius Mela explained that “here is situated Palestine, where Syriatouches the Arabs, then Phoenicia, and Antiochia, where Syria borders Cilicia.” Otherswriters including Xenophilus, Polemon of Athens, Agatharchides, Vitruvius, Ovid,Statius and Dio Chrysostom also used the term before 135 CE, and they included Judaeain it. So, Palestine included Judaea a long time before Hadrian said it included Judaea.We have a plausible motive for the change without knowing anything else about Hadrian:he called the place what it was called.113Interestingly, Hadrian also had a soft spot for Greece and tried to revive Greek customs,traditions and names. He was chosen as a full Archonship in Athens and he was mostwelcome and respected in Greece. He admired Greek aesthetics, art and philosophy andeven changed provincial names to Greek ones elsewhere in the Empire as symbolic actsof restoration. This included the city of Antigonea, called that by the Macedonian kingAntigonus Doson, which he changed to Mantinea—its Greek name during the time of113 On Herodotus’s borrowing of Aramaic, see Martin Noth, “Zur Geschichte des Namens Palastina,”Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palastina Vereins 62 (1939): 125; Noth summarized these conclusions in hisidem, The Old Testament World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962), 7-9; on Herodotus, Aristotle, Philo ofAlexandria and Josephus, see Francis Schmidt, How the Temple Thinks: Identity and Social Cohesion inAncient Judaism (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 29, and Feldman, Studies inHellenistic Judaism, 564-5. Then see Pomponius Mela (c. 43), Frank E. Romer (ed.), Pomponius Mela'sDescription of the World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 52; see also De Chorographia1.11.62-63, cited in Feldman, Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, 560. Note that even people who didn’t thinkPalestine included Judaea, such as Pliny the Elder, still thought Palestine extended as far north as Phoeniciaand bordered Arabia. A similar point is made by Douglas A. Howard, “It Was Called “Palestine”: TheLand, History and Palestinian Identity,” Fides et Historia 35(2) (2003): 61-78. 108Sparta’s prominence; the city of Sepphoris, which was renamed Diocaesarea in Hadrian’shonor in 130; he renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina—to remind Christian Romandissenters that it was Aelius Hadrianus—i.e. himself—who held power in Jerusalem. It’splausible he renamed Judaea not because he wanted to give BDS a head start, as MalcolmHoenlein believed, but rather because he loved the Greeks—and he thought the Greekscalled the place Palestine.114Also, Roman rulers frequently renamed cities and districts for banal reasons, usually tohonor emperors. The first century ruler of the Galilee and Perea, Herod Antipater, renamethe city of Sepphoris to Autocratoris in the Roman emperor’s honor, but it didn’t stick.The Hellenistic city of Samaria was renamed Sebaste—the Greek equivalent of the firstRoman emperor Augustus (which did stick); Philip the Tetrarch (d.34) renamed thevillage of Bethsaida (near the Sea of Galilee) to Julias in honor of the Emperor’sdaughter; Herod Agrippa II (d.92 or 100) (briefly) renamed the city Caesarea Philippi toNeronias in honor of the Roman emperor Nero (d.68). Official name changes werecommon in the Roman Empire, and most of them had nothing to do with the Jews. Thedecision to change the name to Palestine may have been a banal bureaucratic choice. Thewhole affair might have passed without anyone thinking there was anything vengeful114 On the Mantinea name change, see K. W. Arafat, Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 185; on Doson, see William Hazlitt, The ClassicalGazetteer: A Dictionary of Ancient Geography, Sacred and Profane (London: Whittaker, 1851), 215; onthe Sepphoris name change, see Smallwood, The Jews under Roman rule, 432-3; for more on his efforts torestore earlier Greek icons, such as statues of Zeus, see Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 410; onhis successes in and liking of Greece, and his reception there, see Speller, Hadrian: A Second-CenturyJourney, 202; on the Jerusalem name change, see Golan, “Hadrian's Decision,” 228-9, 238. 109about the change. This seems plausible, especially given the paucity of direct evidencearound who made the change, when and under what circumstances.115If the administrative reorganization was indeed banal, then we might have expected bothnames to have persisted after the change, which is exactly what happened. An inscriptionin modern Austria from after the reported change described someone as the procurator ofJudaea; another from Ephesus, Turkey, identified Sextus Erucius Clarus as governor ofJudaea —and those were official inscriptions. Other Greek and Roman unofficial sources,including Galen, Celsus, Dio Cassius, Festus, Eutropius, Martianus Capella, Orosius andthe anonymous author of Epitome de Caesaribus used the term Judaea, often side by sidePalestine, as if they were synonyms—centuries after it had putatively been erased. The4th century writer Epiphanius, for instance, explicitly claimed “Palaestina” is “Judaea.”Could all those writers have been so blasphemous against Rome—reviving the name thatHadrian vengefully erased? 135 AD might not have been as important a moment aseveryone seems to think.116So why is the erasure hypothesis widely known among Israel’s apologists and evenreferred to as the beginning of BDS? It supported the theory of an everlasting conspiracyagainst the Jews. Among Israel’s less nuanced propagandists, it was also evidence thatthe Palestinians were a modern reincarnation of timeless Jew hatred, a useful retort115 On Sebaste see Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 77; on, Sepphoris see ibid, 118; on Bethsaida,see ibid, 118; on Caesarea Philippi, see ibid, 273.116 On Epiphanius, see Lewis, “The Palestinians and the PLO”;See also Feldman, Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, 560-576; Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, 552;on Orosius, see Paulus Orosius (d. 420), Alfred, King of England, Joseph Bosworth, E FitzGerald, V BRedstone, A Literal English Translation of King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendious Historyof the World by Orosius (London: n.p., 1855), 32-33. 110wherever anyone criticizes Israel or Jews. Regrettably, modern political agendas drovethe research agenda of even the most serious scholars of the ancient world. Now let’s turnfrom Roman to Byzantine Palestine. * * *Byzantine Palestine (4th-7th centuries). To recap, by the first few centuries before thebirth of Christ, as we saw, Greek speakers across the Mediterranean were using the termPalestine. By the time of Hadrian, a century after Christ, both Judaea and Palestine werepopular designations, living in harmony for many centuries to come.But, as all governments do, the Romans and Byzantines chose names for the places theygoverned. The accepted view, as noted above, is that the Romans created the province ofSyria-Palaestina in 135, which lasted until 390. Although the Roman Empire divided inthe mid-4th century, the Byzantine successors to Rome preserved the erstwhile Romandistricts. (Note that the Byzantine Empire was actually known as the Roman Empireduring its time, but historians today use the term Byzantine to differentiate it from theother Roman Empire in the Latin west). In 390, the Byzantines divided the provinceSyria-Palaestina, creating an administrative district called Palaestina Prima and PalaestinaSecunda. In the 6th century, they added a 3rd Palestine, Palaestina Salutaris. Aside fromthe brief Persian conquest of Jerusalem in the early 7th century—these districts remaineduntil the eve of the Arab conquest in the mid-7th century. 111Byzantine Christians called the place Palestine and wrote many works about it. Some ofthem dealt with Palestine’s urban geography, military organization and politicalconfiguration. Eusebius of Caesarea (d.339), for instance, mentioned Palestine at least 35times in his Church History. Eusebius Pamphili also used the word Palestine dozens oftimes in his classic On the Place-Names in the Holy Scripture to describe the locations ofBiblical cities, mountains and tribes. Dozens of other Byzantine writers between the 4thand 7th centuries wrote about Palestine because that was the name of the provinceaccording to the people that ruled it. The Byzantines made Palestine great by politicalfiat.117We stated in the previous chapter that maps made Palestine seem real to people, and thatthe first victory for maps came with permanent dwelling places, owing to the walls.Incidentally—and I did not realize this—those dwelling places also had floors. People putmaps on those also. The Madaba map, dating from the 6th century, is the earliest knownfloor map, the earliest Christian map and the earliest map of the Holy Land. It’s the kindof map you read about in coffee table atlases—the kind of books used to write thissection.It was also the earliest map of Palestine—that word appearing in the original map. Themap depicts an area from Byblos and Damascus in the north to Alexandria and the Red117 On Eusebius, see his Eusebius, of Caesarea (d. 339), (translated by S.E. Parker) An EcclesiasticalHistory to the Twentieth Year of the Reign of Constantine: Being the 394th of the Christian Area (London:S. Bagster and Sons, 1842). He mentioned Palestine in entries for Azotus (Asdod), Arbela, Askalon,Arkem, Gaza, Emmaous. He also claimed Ailam and Bethphou were located at the borders of Palestine; seealso F. M. Abel, Geographie de la Palestine (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, J. Gabalda et Cie, 1938), II, 171-187. 112Sea in the south, measuring 7 by 22 meters, one quarter of which you can still see todayin Madaba (Jordan). It illustrates contemporary (i.e. 6th century) roads, buildings,bridges, towns and ports, scenes of gazelles, palm trees and fish—and Biblical sites suchas Jacob’s well and the Israelite tribal territories. It also included the Greek phrase “οροιΑιγυπτου και Παλαιστινης”—on the “border of Egypt and Palestine,” probably takenfrom Eusebius of Caesarea’s On the Place-Names in the Holy Scripture (see figure 7).118 Figure 7. Section of Byzantine floor mosaic map at St. George Church Madaba depicting “οροι Αιγυπτου και Παλαιστινης” (the border of Egypt and Palestine). * * *The Latin west. The term Palestine survived from the 3rd-9th centuries in the Latin west,but on the margins. Adomnán (d.704), for instance, used the term Palestine once in its118 See Kenneth Nebenzahl, Maps of the Holy Land: Images of Terra Sancta through Two Millennia (NewYork: Abbeville Press, 1986), 24-25; Jerry Brotton, Great Maps (New York, New York: DK Publishing,2014), 32-35. Eusebius of Caesarea stated that Bethaffu is “on the way to Egypt, which is the boundary ofPalestine.” See Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339), Joan E. Taylor (ed.), G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville (trans.) TheOnomasticon by Eusebius of Caesarea (Jerusalem: Carta, 2003), 34. 113broader sense. It more often appeared as a descriptor of Caesarea, as in “the Caesarea ofPalestine”—its capital during the Byzantine period. An anonymous cleric in Ravennacompiled a list of known place in about 700, in which he listed the following citieslocated in the “Hebrew Jewish homeland in Palestine:” Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Rama,Hebron, Emmaus-Nicopolis, Lod, Nazareth Antipatrion and Bethsaida.119Three versions of Palestine persisted in the Latin west from the Middle Ages until theearly modern period. First, many associated Palestine with Gaza, mirroring the Bible’susage of Peleshet, or its Latin equivalent, Philistia. Writers had poor access to Greek andLatin encyclopedias, chronicles and church histories—and so were unaware ofPalestine’s enlarged image in the Greek, Roman and Byzantine worlds. Instead, peoplehad access to the Bible, and so the Bible’s version of Palestine was quite popular. JohnMandeville (fl. 14th century), for instance, claimed that Palestine was the city of Gaza,owing to the Philistines having lived there. The Dominican theologian Felix Fabri (d.1502) similarly associated Palestine with Gaza in the early 1480s. “I will describe Gazatogether with its province of Palestine,” he wrote, adding that the term was mostcommonly used in his era to refer to “the country by the sea.” He claimed that theMountains of Israel bound Palestine on the east, the Mediterranean Sea in the west, themountains of Ephraim in the north and Gaza in the south. In other words, Palestine’s119 Adamnan (d.704), “Arculf’s Narrative about the Holy Places, written by Adamnan,” in The Library ofthe Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, Vol. III (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund,1897), II, 33; n.a., M Pinder and G Parthey (eds.), Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographica et GuidonisGeographica (Berolini: Nicolai, 1860), 82. 114chief city was Gaza, it included the coastal strip and excluded the mountainousinterior.120Other writers seem to have forgotten Palestine altogether. In England, Germany, Belgiumand the Netherlands, the terms the Holy Land or the Holy Places were much morepopular than Palestine. The former emphasized the Holy Scriptures, the latter that Rome,too, was holy. Both phrases were accepted and used. Cartographers writing in Latin,Czech, English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Slovenian and Swedishoften called the place with the names of the Biblical tribes, such as Gad, Naftali and Dan,or used other geographical terms from the Bible, such as the Galilee, Samaria and Judaea.(In some cases, Philistin or Palestina was used to denote the area of settlement of theBiblical Philistines).121120 John Mandeville’s 14th century Anglo-Norman French travelogue was extremely popular, but it wasalmost certainly a forgery based on copied material, not actual travel. The text also claimed Palestine was aland between Jerusalem and Ashkelon, part of Syria (as was the Kingdom of Judaea, the Galilee, LittleCilicia); and that Jerusalem was in the land of Judaea]. See John Mandeville (c. 1350s-60s), Alfred W.Pollard (ed.), The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (London, Macmillan, 1900), 79, 197; on his identificationof Jerusalem as “in the land of Judaea” and also in “the Kingdom of Syria,” which “was beside the land ofPalestine, beside Ascalon [sic], beside the land of Maritaine [Maronites?],” see ibid, 49; for otherambiguous reference to Palestine, see ibid, 39, 48, 97; then see Felix Fabri (c. 1480-1483), Library of thePalestine Pilgrims' Text Society 9/10 The Wanderings of Felix Fabri (New York: AMS Press, 1971 [1887-1897]), II, 449-450. He preferred the term the Holy Land to Palestine. Fabri also mentioned otherdefinitions of Palestine, including the “whole of the Holy Land, so that Jerusalem and its Mountains arecalled Palestine,” as well as “a certain part of the province of Galilee, near the Mountains of Gilboa.” Healso cited Isidorus (b. 139) of Roman Egypt, who reportedly described Palestine as a wide region, boundedby the Red Sea on the east, Judaea in the south, the land of Tyre in the north, and by the Sea and Egypt inthe West, known as Philistia in ancient times. He also noted that the “entire Holy Land is sometimes calledSyria, because both Judaea and Palestine are large parts of Syria.”121 A late 11th/early 12th century Norman crusader, who saw combat in the Near East, did not mention theword Palestine in his account of the first Crusader in 1099. See Rosalind Hill (ed.), The Deeds of theFranks and other Pilgrims to Jerusalem (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962), ix-xvi; the 14th century EnglishPilgrim William Wey (d.1476) does not use the term Palestine either. See William Wey (d.1476); GeorgeWilliams; Bulkeley Bandinel; Roxburghe Club, The Itineraries of William Wey, Fellow of Eton College ToJerusalem, A.D. 1458 and A.D. 1462; and to Saint James of Compostella, A.D. 1456 (London, J.B. Nicholsand Sons, 1857); Johannes Witte de Hese (fl. 14th-15th century) refers to the Holy Places, not Palestine inhis Itinerarius. See Scott Douglas Westrem, “A Critical Edition of Johannes Witte de Hese’s “Itinerarius,”The Middle Dutch Text, An English Translation and Commentary, Together with an Introduction toEuropean Accounts of Travel to the East,” (Ph.D Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1985), 568-593; 115Third, a much larger version of Palestine persisted as well. The 13th century EnglishFranciscan, Bartholomeus of Paris, explained that Palestine was a province of Syria, thatJudaea was a country in Palestine and at the center of Judaea was Jerusalem—the centerof the world. Sounds a lot like the Palestine we know today. His Latin encyclopedia wastranslated into French, Spanish, Dutch and English within a century and a half. Thewealthy mid-14th century Venetian merchant, Marino Sanudo Torsello (c.1300-1321),also used the term Palestine as the standard name of the region in his treatise written inthe aftermath of the Muslim conquest of Acre from the Crusaders in 1291. Having saidthat, the book came to be known as A Treatise on Expeditions to the Holy Land.122Others in the Latin west used the term Palestine in both its limited and broad senses. TheEnglish chronicler Ranulf Higden (d.1364)’s Polychronicon —the “standard work ofgeneral history for its time”—surviving in more than 100 manuscripts today claimedSyria included the provinces of Commagena, Palestina, Phonecia, Canaan, Idom andJudaea, but then added on the next page that Palestine included Judaea and it was calledthe Canaan of Shem, the son of Noah. Many travelers also used the term Palestineambiguously, but probably in the larger sense, such as the late 13th century Veronesemost Belgium, German and Dutch pilgrims fail to mention Palestine as well: see Kathryn M. Rudy, VirtualPilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols,2011), 49, 61, 93, 95, 147, 263, 272, 275; on the cartographers, see Catherine Delano-Smith and ElizabethMorley Ingram, Maps in Bibles: An Illustrated Catalogue (Geneve: Librairie Droz, 1991), 63-67, 90-95.122 On Bartholomeus, see Robert Steele (ed.) Medieval Lore: An Epitome of the Science, Geography,Animal and Plant Folk-lore and Myth of the Middle Age (London: Elliot Stock, 1893), 1; then see MarinoSanudo; Peter Lock (trans.), The Book of Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross = Liber Secretorum FideliumCrucis (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2011), 247, 262, 266, 277, 378, 388,415. 116poet, Giacomino da Verona. Still, even he preferred the term the Holy Land toPalestine.123A few things can be said about Palestine in the Latin West from the 8th through 16thcenturies: most people preferred to call it the Holy Land, not Palestine; many did not usethe term Palestine at all; some believed Palestine referred to Gaza alone, the coastal areaor the land inhabited by the Philistines; others thought Palestine referred to a larger areaincluding Judaea. Why did the latter win out?It was Europe’s fascination with Greek and Latin texts in the early modern period. Asmore people could earn a living as scholars, teachers, publishers, mapmakers and writers,more Greek and Latin manuscripts got published in European vernaculars. Herodotus’s(d. 425 BC) The Histories appeared in 55 editions in European vernaculars (plus 13 Latinor Greek editions), making it the 6th most popular text in Europe for three centuries.Josephus’s (d. 100 AD) History of the Antiquities of the Jews appeared in 14 differenteditions in either Latin or Greek from 1450-1700. His History of the Wars of the Jewsappeared 59 times in various European vernaculars, making it the 5th most popular textin Europe for over three centuries. Claudius Ptolemy’s (d. 168 AD) Geography wasreissued a whopping 61 times between 1475 and 1730, most of which were translations toEuropean vernaculars. In Italy, the Latin poet Tibullus’s (c. 30 BC) works were published123 See, for example, Great Britain. Public Record Office, Rerum Britannicarum Medii aevi Scriptores: Or,Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1858),101-3; Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient,1100-1450 (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2009), 116; for Middle Age writers who used the termPalestine, see Giacoma da Verona (c. late 13th cent.) [Nicole Chareyron, Pilgrims to Jerusalem in theMiddle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 121], who mentioned Palestine along withAssyria and the Land of the Philistines. 117more than a dozen times over roughly the same period. Herodotus, Josephus, Ptolemyand Tibullus had something else in common, besides getting published repeatedly. Theyused the word Palestine in the Greek or Roman sense, a land “from Egypt toPhoenicia”—for Herodotus, or from “Syria to Arabian Petraea”—for Ptolemy. They alsothought Palestine included Judaea, as noted above.124Renaissance Europeans brought many other popular works out of manuscript and intoprint, including many who called the place Palestine. Constantine VII (d.959)’s DeAdministrando Imperio was published a half-dozen times from the 16th century to the18th centuries. Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon—which described the region as Palestineas well—was also translated and published a half-dozen times in the late 15th and 16thcenturies, primarily in England.125Renaissance Europeans removed the dust from the manuscripts that had given Palestinerefuge for centuries, popularizing classical nomenclature. They did it because they couldearn a living as scholars, editors, teachers, professors, cartographers, map artists andtranslators. The boom was also made possible by the printing press, which enabled eventhe poor to gain access to the printed word. Education expanded and the cost of booksdecreased. Reading, writing and scholarship proliferated. Europe’s emerging middleclasses started to read about Greek, Roman and Byzantine Palestine in Cologne, Venice,124 See Henry N. Stevens, Ptolemy’s Geography: A Brief Account of all the Printed Editions Down to 1730(2nd ed.) (London: Stevens, Son and Stiles, 1908), 37-62; Peter Burke, “A Survey of the Popularity ofAncient Historians, 1450-1700,” History and Theory 5(2) (1966): 135-152; see also David M. Jacobson,“Palestine and Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 313 (1999): 65-74; onTibullus, see worldcat.org.125 See worldcat.org. 118Florence, Ulm, Bologna, Rome, Amsterdam, Leiden, Arnhem and London with Josephus,Herodotus, Ptolemy, Tibullus, Higden and Constantine VII as their guides.But what was so special about the ancients? They presented independent accounts of theBiblical era. Herodotus’s The Histories, often considered the founding work of history inthe Greek tradition, narrated the rise of the Persian Empire and the Greco-Persian Wars inthe 5th century BC—filling in critical gaps between the Old and the New Testaments.Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews included two references to Jesus himself and areference to John the Baptist, while it narrated the history of the Jews who played such acritical role in scripture. Ptolemy’s Geography provided detailed descriptions and everylongitudinal and latitudinal coordinate of every place name in the Bible (and many not inthe Bible). These texts became required reading for Renaissance Bible reformists,enthusiasts, critics and nihilists. Increasingly, Christians started putting other texts inconversation with the Bible, scripture and doctrine. The religious climate of the age gavethe ancient Greek and Latin texts newfound purpose.Some observers explicitly pointed out the discrepancy between how modern Europeanscalled the place—the Holy Land—and how the ancients did—Palestine. In 1570, TheFlemish cartographer, geographer, and map colorist Abraham Ortelius explained thediscrepancy: “That which the ancients called Palestine and Phonecia, all the Europeansgenerally now call the HOLY LAND, under which name they comprehend that wholecountry which God gaue [sic] unto the Israelites by the name of the Land of Promise.” He 119was almost saying that the HOLY LAND was a mistake, that the more accurate name ofthe place was Palestine.126In 1587, Jean Zuallart also claimed people preferred to call it the Holy Land rather thanPalestine, all the while reviving it. “The land between Dan and Beersheba included theprovinces of Syria-Phonecia, and had different names, such as Canaan, Palestine, Judaea,and by us Christians, the Holy Land.” But he also delineated the entire coastal area asPalestine, and used the word on occasion. The realization among some EuropeanRenaissance writers that Palestine used to be the term of choice partially led to itsrevival.127Palestine was making a comeback by the late 16th century. The English wanderlust FynesMoryson (d.1630), the Franciscan Johannes Dubliulius and the German nobleman andtraveler, Martinus à Baumgarten, picked up the term as well. They, in turn, publishedtheir travelogues, many of which were issued multiple times in the late 16th and early17th centuries. Palestine’s stock was rising.128126 Nabil Matar, “Protestant Restorationism and the Ortelian Mapping of Palestine (with an Afterward onIslam),” 59-82 in The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical-HistoricalPresent Mark Vessey (ed.) (Toronto; New York: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 59-60.127 Jean Zuallart (Giovanni Zuallardo) (d.1634), Il Devotissimo Viaggio di Gervsalemme (Rome: Per F.Zanetti, & Gia. Ruffinelli, 1587), 291-293, 305. Zuallart was a judge, mayor, chronicler and traveler fromHainaut in Belgium.128 For other 16th century cartographers of “Palestine,” see, for instance, Jakob Ziegler (d. 1549),Palaestina Emendata ad Observationem Ziegleri, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département Cartes etplans, CPL GE DD-2987 (10122 B); Kristian Nissen, “Jacob Ziegler's Palestine Schondia ManuscriptUniversity Library, Oslo, MS. 917-4°” Imago Mundi 13 (1956): 47. Other maps, supposedly based oncalculations first made by Claudius Ptolemy (d.168) also included the name Palestine. See GiorgioGalignani, et. al., Palaestina vel Terra Sancta. Descrittione della Palestina o della Terra Sancta (Venezia:Giovanni Battista & Giorgio Galignani, 1598); Johannes Dubliulius, Hierosolymitanae PeregrinationisHodoeporicvm (Coloniae: Grevenbruch, 1590), l; Martinus à Baumgarten, Christoph Donauer; Kauffmann,Paul (Nürnberg), Peregrinatio in Aegyptum, Arabiam, Palaestinam et Syriam (Noribergae: Pau.Kauffmann, 1594); Salomon Gesner; Elias Thanneberger, Disp. de Turca altera ex cap. XXXVIII. et XXXIX 120By the 17th and 18th centuries, the word appeared in hundreds if not thousands of printedbooks in at least a dozen European languages. The Catholic Scottish General PatrickGordon summarized this point nicely in 1704. Palestine or Judaea. This country, most memorable in Holy Scripture, and sometimes called Canaan from Canaan, the Son of Cham, sometimes the land of promise, because promis’d to Abraham and his seed, and sometimes Judaea, from the Nation of the Jews, or People of the Tribe of Juda, and now bounded on the East and North by part Syria Propria; on the West by part of the Mediterranean Sea, and on the South by Arabia Petrea is termed by the Italians and the Spaniards, Palestina; by the French, Palestine, by the Germans, Palestinen or das 129 Gelobte land; by the English, Palestine, or the Holy Land.By the 18th century, Christians in Europe adopted the term Palestine, alongside the HolyLand, displacing other terms like The Holy Places and Judaea and Samaria. Thetransition was subtle and gradual. By the 19th century, few realized its astoundingpopularity was relatively recent. * * *The East. Let’s turn to the situation in the Middle East. Christians remained in regionsconquered by Muslims and continued to write Church history. While the classical Greektradition was in some cases lost among monks and priests in the Latin west, it wasremembered in the Byzantine and Arab East. Folks like Herodotus and, especially,Thucydides, served as important models of how to write chronicles in the Byzantine East(Witteberga: Lehman, 1595); David Chytraeus, Epistola Continens Hodoeporicon Navigationis exConstantinopoli in Syriam, Palaestinam et Aegyptum et Montem Sinai, Necnon de bello Persico, etCircumcisione Mahometis filii Imperatoris Turcici (n.p., 1597); Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Written byFynes Moryson (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1611), I, 224, 462.129 Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomiz'd: Or, the Geographical Grammar. Being a Short and ExactAnalysis of the Whole Body of Modern Geography, after a New and Curious Method (London: R. Morden,T. Cockerill, and R. Smith, 1704), 290. 121for centuries to come, and this meant that they were familiar with Greek history long afterthe decline of the Byzantines and the rise of the Muslims. The Christian chroniclers of theEast, such the Chronicle of Theophanes (d. 818), Abraham of Tiberias (9th century)Fettelus (c. 1130) and Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286) all wrote about Palestine’s history,especially during periods of Greek and Byzantine ascendance.130Within a few centuries after the Arab conquest, though, the formerly Byzantine Greekswere now writing in Arabic. Many knew both languages, though, writing in Arabic usingGreek sources. The Aleppan born Makariyus III ibn Za‘im (d. 1672), Patriarch ofAntakya, for instance, wrote a book called A History of the Lives of the Saints relyingsignificantly on earlier Greek writers. He claimed the See of Jerusalem had authority overthe land of Palestine, that Beisan and Tiberias constituted the second See of Palestine,and that Petra was the Third See of Palestine. These were the political divisions of theland during the Byzantine period.131130 Harry Turtledove (ed. and trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes: An English Translation of Anni Mundi6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), x-xi; on Theophanes’sdiscussions of Palestine, see ibid, 6, 11, 34, 37, 39; then see Rorgo Fretellus (c. 1130), James RoseMacpherson (ed.), n.t., (London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1896), 25; then see Bar Hebraeus (d.1286), Antun Salihani (ed.), Tarikh Mukhtasar al-Duwal (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Kathulikiyya lil-Aba’ al-Yasu’iyyin, 1890), 67, 81, 110, 208.131 On his description of the jurisdictional boundaries of the five Ecumenical Sees and Three Sees ofPalestine, see Makariyus III ibn Za‘im, Majmu‘a Mubarak (British Library, OC ADD 9965), folios 76a,122b, 123a; 133b and 142b; ibn Za‘im also told stories about Jesus’s life in Palestine and the Persianinvasion of Palestine (ibid, folio 50b). He described Palestine as the scene for great wonders, splendidmarvels and the well of prophets—cited from Damianos. See ibid, folio 142a. for further mention ofPalestine, see ibid, 122a-122b; on his knowledge of Greek, see Habib al-Zayyat, “Rihlat al-BatriyarkMakariyus,” al-Mashriq (1902): 1016; for more on his background, see Georg Graf, Geschichte DerChristlichen Arabischen Literatur (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1949), III, 94-110;Nikolaj Serikoff, “Patriarch Macarius Ibn al-Za‘im,” pp. 236-251in Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger(eds.), The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources (Dekalb, IL: NorthernIllinois University Press, 2014); Nabil Matar, “An Arabic Orthodox Account of the Holy Land, C.1590s,”pp.28-51 in Through the Eyes of the Beholder: The Holy Land, 1517-1713, July A. Hayden and Nabil I.Matar (eds.), (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 32. For a brief biography and a list of his edited and published works,see Makariyus III ibn Za‘im (d. 1672) al-Siniksar al-Antaki: 1647-1672 lil-Makariyus al-Thalith Ibn Za‘im(Juniyah, Lebanon: al-Maktaba al-Bulisiyya, 2010), 7-13; on his Greek borrowings from Symeon the 122Muslims. The Muslims created the most powerful empire in the world in the 7th century.They preserved the Byzantine administrative boundaries but changed some of the names.They kept Palaestina Prima as Palestine, or Filastin in Arabic, but renamed the others.Then the Crusaders brought an end to Palestine’s political status in the late 11th century.They called their state the Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Holy Land. When Salah al-Dinrecaptured the area from the Crusaders, he did not revive the name Palestine, insteadpreferring to name districts after the cities in which they were based: Gaza, Lod, Qaqun,Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus. The Ayyubids followed this pattern of administration.The 14th century Mamluks divided the region into smaller administrative units as well,and they too corresponded to cities: Sham, Aleppo, Tripoli, Hama, Safad, al-Karak andGaza. The Ottomans also governed from cities. The centers of power during the first fewcenturies of Ottoman rule were Tiberias, Safed, Gaza, Acre, Nablus, Marj ibn ‘Amar,Hawran or Tripoli. In the mid-late 19th century, Jerusalem and Beirut also becameadministrative centers. Although there were discussions at the Ottoman Palace in Istanbulin the 1880s to consider making Palestine a district within the Empire, the idea wasabandoned out of fear it would encourage foreign interference in Ottoman affairs. Fromthe time of the Crusades until the end of World War I, Palestine served no administrativeMetaphrast (fl. late 10th cent.), Agapius Landus (fl. 17th cent.) and Damianos, see ibid, 12. Ibn Za‘im’sson, the Paul of Aleppo (d.1669), also mentioned Palestine in a book about his father’s travels, noting thatthe saints Anthonius the Great (d.356) and Theodosius the Great (d.395) were “the one light of the desertsof Askit, the other wilderness of Palestine.” See Paul of Aleppo Archdeacon (d.1669), F C Belfour (ed.),The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch (London: Printed for the Oriental translation committee,sold by J. Murray, 1836), 213-4. 123purpose. That’s why Palestine is an anomaly. It survived for nearly a millennium withouta state guarantor.132But Palestine did find a home in the Arab literary tradition. The Arabs, much like theByzantines, preserved the stories of their tradition. They often considered earlier sourcesmore authoritative than later ones, collating them in word for word copies. This ensuredthe long-term survival of geographical terms like Palestine that were popular during theearly days of Islam. The great historian Shelomo Dov Goiten summarized the point well:once a description or genealogy was embraced as part of the historical tradition,“everyone versed in the technique of Arabic historiography knows that it appears againand again in later compilations.”133132 On the 14th century Mamluks, see Jo Van Steenbergen, Order out of Chaos: Patronage, Conflict andMamluk Socio-political Culture (1341-1382) (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 38-9; on discussions to make Palestinean administrative district in the Empire, see Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society inthe District of Jerusalem 1872-1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 54; the term Palestine was not used in Ottomanadministrative parlance, and scarcely appeared in Ottoman court or state records until the 1830s. ‘AblaSa‘id Muhtadi and Muhammad ‘Adnan Bakhit [Sijill Mahkamat al-Quds al-Shar‘iyya: Fahrasa Tahliliyya(‘Amman: Markaz al-Watha’iq wa-l-Makhtutat al-Jami‘a al-Urduniyya, 2007-), I-IX] found the wordPalestine zero times in the Jerusalem Shari‘a court records in their 9-volume index covering the 1550s,1880s and early 20th century. For each entry, they provided a summary of the case and persons and placesmentioned in it; Judith Mendelsohn Rood [Sacred Law in the Holy City: The Khedival Challenge to theOttomans as Seen from Jerusalem, 1829-1841 (Boston: Brill, 2004), 44-5] found the term once in her studyof the Jerusalem court records in the 1830s in an order issued by Ibrahim Pasha to permit repairs toOrthodox monasteries in Bethlehem in the “Land of Palestine” that resulted from earthquake damage. Seethe Jerusalem Shari‘a Court records, vol. 319, p.74 [29 November 1834]. Iris Agmon explained to me viapersonal correspondence that “I never came across the term Filastin in the court records of late OttomanJaffa or Haifa;” Beshara Doumani [Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus,1700-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), ch.1, note 1] wrote that “in officialcorrespondence and court cases registered in the Nablus Islamic court up to 1865 the word [Palestine]appeared only once, and the context precluded a nationalist meaning;” Felicita Tramontana never cameacross the term in her work on the 17th century Jerusalem court records. I did not come across the wordeither in scanning the Gaza (held at the ISAM library in Istanbul) or Nazareth court records (held at theIsraeli State Archives) from the 1870s either. Likewise, the word Palestine does not appear in Ottomanstate records according to the electronic catalogue of the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi in Istanbul before the1830s, although it does start to appear by mid-century, discussed in the next chapter.133 Shelomo Dov Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 137. 124We do the same thing today, actually. Christopher Markiewicz, an Oxford-basedhistorian, explicitly noted he would use the geographical nomenclature of the subjects ofhis study—15th century Muslims from Bitlis. Presumably he did this because he thoughtmodern place names would have obfuscated the reality he was describing. Muslims mighthave felt similarly, preserving the language of their sources. Palestine survived as aresult.134Stories. Before jumping into the stories, let’s briefly look at the genres they could beclassified into. Muhammad claimed God revealed the Qur’an to him. It’s the holiest bookto Muslims. Many thought it was also important to remember everything Muhammadsaid and did. These “sayings and doings” became known as hadith. They were latercompiled into biographies of the prophet, known as sira. These biographies snowballedinto history—tarikh, its own genre by the mid-late 8th century. Biography and historyspanned into a new field called merits literature, or fada’il. Books of merit identified themerits of places, quoting the Qur’an, hadith, sira, and tarikh. Many Muslims wrote booksof merit about Sham, the Holy Land and Jerusalem. Meanwhile, geography emerged asits own genre, known in Arabic as surat al-ard, al-masalik wa-l-mamalik, or kitab al-buldan, the “science of countries” or the “atlas of Islam.” (The word geography, orjughrafiya, also entered Arabic from Greek in transliteration, but was scarcely used untilthe 19th century). Muslims also wrote encyclopedias, travelogues, books of rhetoric,grammar, and much more. Stories about Palestine appeared in all of them.135134 Markiewicz, “The Crisis of Rule in Late Medieval Islam,” xvii.135 On 8th century hadith compilers in the lands of Sham, see Fred Donner, “The Problem of EarlyHistoriography in Syria,” Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Bilād al-Shām duringthe Early Islamic Period up to 40 A.H./640 A.D.: The Fourth International Conference on the History of 125Let’s take a closer look at some of the earliest. One of the earliest works of history in theMuslim tradition, The Conquest of Sham, details the conquest of “the land of Palestine.”The famous biographer Ibn Hisham (d.833) wrote that the prophet instructed Usama ibnZayd ibn Harithah to conquer al-Balqa and other places in Palestine. al-Ya‘qubi (d.897/8)surveyed Palestine’s borders, urban landscapes and the origins of its name. Ibn al-Faqih(d.902) claimed Palestine’s soil was fertile and its landscapes were beautiful. Abu al-Ma‘ali (ca.1030s) described Muslim exploits on the battlefield against Palestine’sindigenous inhabitants—the Nabataeans. Shihab al-Din Yaqut (d.1229) wrote anencyclopedia of every geographical term known to him and included a section onPalestine. Ibn Khallikan (d.1282) traced the lineages of Muslim names, such as al-Uqhuwani, which originated in a village in Sham in the land of Palestine close toTiberias. Within a few centuries after the conquest, many stories relating to Palestinecirculated around the Muslims world, spanning the entire breadth of the tradition.136Bilad al-Shām (eds.) Muhammad ʻAdnan Bakhit (Amman: University of Jordan, 1987), 2; on the origins ofhistory writing in Arabic, see Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press 2004), ch. 1.136 The Conquest of Sham is often credited to Muhammad bin ‘Umar al-Waqidi (d.822) [Futuh al-Sham(s.n.: Mu’assasat Himada lil-Dirasat al-Jam‘iyya wa-l-Nashr wa-l- Tawzi‘, 2011), 42, 44, 45]; then see IbnHisham (d.833), Abdus-Salam M. Harun ed., Sirat Ibn Hisham: Biography of the Prophet (Cairo: al-FalahFoundation, 2000), 242, 244; then see Ahmad ibn Abi Ya‘qub al-Ya‘qubi (d.897/8), Kitab al-Buldan(Leiden: Brill, 1891), 328; then see Ibn al-Faqih (d.902) Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan (Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1988), 153; then see Abu al-Ma‘ali (ca.1030s), Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis wa-l-Khalil wa-Fada’il al-Sham (Shafa’ ‘Amr, Israel: Dar al-Mashriq li-l-Tarjama wa-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1995), 52; formore on the Nabateans of Palestine, see Muhammad bin ‘Abd Allah al-Himyari (d.1495), Kitab al-Rawdal-Mi‘tar (Beirut: s.i., 1975), 355; Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Din al-Suyuti (d.1505) Ithaf al-Akhissa’, bi-Fada'il al-Masjid al-Aqsa (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma lil-Kitab, 1982-4), I, 238, 240; Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522), al-Uns al-Jalil bi-Tarikh al-Quds wa-l-Khalil (Amman: Maktabat al-Muhtasab,1973), I, 202; ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1731), al-Hadra al-Unsiyya fi al-Rihla al-Qudsiyya(Saalfeld/Saale: 1918), 25; then see Shihab al-Din Yaqut (d.1229), Mu‘jam al-Buldan (Beirut: Dar Sadir li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1955-58), III, 913; then see Ibn Khallikan (d.1282), Wafayat al-A‘yan wa-Anba’Abna’ al-Zaman (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1968-1972), II, 488; Ibn al-‘Imad (d.1679) Shadharat al-Dhahabfi Akhbar man Dhahab (Damascus: Dar al-Tabba‘, 1991) III, 215; Ahmad ibn Ahmad al-‘Ajami (d.1675)Dhayl Lubb al Lubab (Manuscript of the Royal Library: National Library of Denmark and CopenhagenUniversity Library, Cod. Arab. 167), folio 10. 126Many Muslims also tried to define what Palestine was—as I did in the previous chapter.They did not define it as an idea invented by humans, as I did, but instead as a piece ofreal estate defined by its borders or major cities. Some said it was bound by Rafah andLajjun in the north and south, and by Jaffa and Jericho in the east and west. Othersclaimed it stretched from al-‘Arish to Lajjun or from Jaffa to al-Zu‘r or the Balqa, orfrom the Mediterranean Sea to the cities of Lot. Some preferred merely to list the citieswithin it—such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Ashkelon, al-‘Arish, the Ramla of Palestine andHebron. Some thought Palestine referred to merely the city of Ramla. Others believed itmeant the city of Ramla and its surroundings.137137 For those who defined Palestine as a list of cities, see Ahmad ibn Yusuf al-Qaramani (d.1611) andMuhammad Amin al-Fattal (fl. 18th century)—the former included Jerusalem, Gaza and Ashkelon, thelatter added al-‘Arish, Gaza, “the Ramla of Palestine,” and Hebron. See Ahmad ibn Yusuf al-Qaramani(d.1611), Kitab Akhbar al-Duwal wa-Athar al-Uwal fi-l-Tarikh (Baghdad: Matba‘at ‘Abbas al-Tabrizi,1865), 368 and Muhammad Amin al-Fattal (fl. 18th century), Awraq min Rihlat al-Shaykh MuhammadAmin al-Fattal (Amman: Dar al-Yara’ li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 2006), 65-6; for the four-point formula, seeal-Ya‘qubi (d.897/8) Kitab al-Buldan, 328; Ibn al-Faqih (d.902), Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan, 153;Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Muqaddasi (a.k.a. al-Maqdisi) (d. 991), Ahsan al-Taqasim (Leiden: Brill, 1904),37, 136; Abu ‘Ubayd al-Bakri (d.1094), al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik (Qartaj: al-Mu’assasa al-Wataniyya li-l-Tarjama wa-l-Tahqiq wa-l-Dirasat, 1992), I, 464; Yaqut, Mu‘jam al-Buldan, III, 914; Ibn ‘Abd al-Haqq(d.1338), Marasid al-Ittila‘ ‘ala Asma’ al-Amkina wa-l-Biqa‘ (Lugduni Batavorum: Brill, 1852–64), III,1042; Ibn al-Wardi (d.1348), Kharidat al-‘Aja’ib wa-Faridat al-Ghara’ib (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi wa-Awladuhu, 1923), 30; al-Himyari (d.1495), Kitab al-Rawd al-Mi‘tar, 268; al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522),al-Uns al-Jalil, II, 67; Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Diyarbakri (d. 1558), Al-Juz’ al-Awwal min Tarikh al-Khamis fi Ahwal Anfas Nafis (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Wahbiyya, 1866), I, 87; Sadiq Ahmad IbrahimMuhammad al-Turk (ed.), Salih bin Muhammad al-Tamartashi (d. 1644-5), “al-Khabar al-Tamm fi Dhikral-Ard al-Muqaddasa wa-Hududuha wa-Dhikr Ard Filastin wa-Hududuha wa Aradi al-Sham” (M.A.Thesis, Jami‘at Najah al-Wataniyya, 1998), 63, 81-2; Muhammad bin Habib (f. 1649), Durr al-Nizam, folio5B, cited in Yosef Sadan, “Shlosha Mekorot Khadashim mi-Sifrut Shivkhay Erets ha-Kodesh be-‘Aravitba-Meot ha-16-17,” Catheda 11 (1979): 200; ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1731) Rihla ila al-Quds (Cairo,1902), 7; for more on its meaning as Ramla, see Zachary Foster, “Was Jerusalem Part of Palestine? TheForgotten City of Ramla, 900–1900,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43(4) (2016): 575-589; an1849 Ottoman map identified a small region to the north west of Ramla as “the land of Palestine,” or“Filastin Ülkesi.” See Yuval Ben-Bassat and Yossi Ben-Artzi, “Gvul Erets Yisrael-Mitsrayim be-Re’i ha-Mipu’i ha-‘Otomani be-Shilhey ha-Me’a ha-19,” Cathedra, forthcoming. 127Lots of Muslims also claimed to know the origins of the name Palestine. They did nottrace it to the Aegean, but rather to a descendent of Noah named Filastin, based on theBiblical theory that an offspring of Noah named Filastin settled down in that area afterthe flood and the name Filastin took hold as a result. No corroborating evidence outsideof the Bible attests to a historical figure named Noah, let alone that he had a grandchildbearing a name similar to Palestine. Instead, the evidence points to an Aegean origin, asdiscussed above.138Muslims also told stories about people who lived in, traveled to or died in Palestine.Recall that since hadith formed part of the basis of Islamic Law (alongside the Qur’anand the Sunnah, or Muhammad’s life’s saying and doings), Muslim activists wereincentivized to invent hadiths ex nihilo. Believers needed to find a way to distinguishtrustworthy hadiths from untrustworthy ones. Muslims starting writing not just what theprophet said or did, but also the chain of people who transmitted the information goingback to the prophet himself. It became necessary to know where the transmitters resided,traveled to and died so that commentators could assess the likelihood that theytransmitted the hadith they claimed to transmit. Thus, Shaddad ibn Aws, ‘Ubadah ibn al-138 For variations on the Noah origins of Palestine, see Ibn al-Faqih (d. 902) Kitab al-Buldan, 153; Yaqut(d.1229), Mu‘jam al-Buldan, III, 913-4; al-Bakri (d.1094), al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik, I, 464; Ibn al-Dawadari (d.1335), Kanz al-Durar wa Jami‘ al-Ghurar (Cairo: al-Ma‘had al-Almani li-l-Athar, 1960), II,80; al-Suyuti (d.1505), Ithaf al-Akhissa’, II, 133; al-‘Ulaymi (d. 1522), al-Uns al-Jalil, II, 67; al-Nabulusi(d.1731), Rihla ila al-Quds, 7. The story of Noah may date to one of the cataclysmic floods that coveredhuge swaths of the earth 14,000, 11,500 and 8,000 years ago. See Peter Watson, The Great Divide: Natureand Human Nature in the Old World and the New (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 38-39; ErikVelasquez Garcia, “The Maya Flood Myth and the Decapitation of the Cosmic,” The PARI Journal 7(1)(2006): 1-10; on the Biblical theory, see Genesis 10:14 and Chronicles 1:12. 128Samit, Tamim al-Dari and Raja’ ibn Haywah, for instance, each reportedly lived inPalestine (ibn Haywah was actually identified as Palestinian).139Muslims wrote biographies not just of the transmitters, but of all prophets in Islamichistory. Some thought the prophet Luqman, for instance, was buried in the Land ofPalestine in a village called Sarafand, close to Ramla. Abraham, who is mentioned 69times in the Quran, was claimed to have traveled westward with Lot and Sara from Kuthain Iraq to Harran, Egypt, Sham and then to Sabu‘ in the land of Palestine. The Berber orAmalekite giant, Goliath, lived on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between Egypt andPalestine and ruled in the region of Palestine. I don’t think there was any special legalreason to discuss the whereabouts of Luqman, Abraham or Goliath as was the case withthe hadith transmitters. It was just part of how you told stories—you talked aboutwhereabouts.140139 on Tamim al-Dari, see Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub Fasawi (d.890/1), Kitab al-Ma‘rifa wa-l-Tarikh (Medina:Maktabat al-Dar, 1989), e.g., I, 393, 434; II, 373, III, 168; ‘Ali ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Samhudi (d. 1506), Wafa’al-Wafa bi-Akhbar Dar al-Mustafa (London: Mu’assasat al-Furqan li-l-Turath al-Islami, 2001), II, 112 andIV, 225; Muhammad al-Minawi (d.1621) al-Kawakib al-Durriyya fi Tarajim al-Sufiyya (al-Aqsa MosqueLibrary Collection of Historical Manuscripts, EAP521/1), folio 87; Mustafa As‘ad al-Luqaymi (d.1764),‘Mawanih al-Uns bi-Rihlati ila Wadi al-Quds’, in Taysir Khalaf (ed.), Mawsu‘at Rihlat al-‘Arab wa-l-Muslimin ila Filastin (Damascus: Dar al-Kan‘an, 2010), 101; for more on Tamim al-Dari, see YehoshuaFrenkel, “Tamim al-Dari and Hebron during the Mamluk Period,” pp. 435-446 in Egypt and Syria in theFatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras, U. Vermeulen, K. D’Hulster and J. Van Steenbergen (eds.), (Leuven,Paris, Walpole, Mass.: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2013); on Shaddad ibn Aws,see, for instance, al-Fattal (fl. 18th cent.), Awraq min Rihlat al-Shaykh, 63; Ibn al-‘Imad (d.1679),Shadharat al-Dhahab fi Akhbar man al-Dhahab (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijari li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1966), III, 208; Rija’ bin Haywa was also defined as Palestinian (Filastini). See ibn Hilal al-Muqaddasi (d. 1364) Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi (ed.), Muthir al-Gharam bi-Fada’il al-Quds wa-l-Sham(Jaffa: Maktaba al-Tahir Ikhwan, 1946), 216, 343.140 Commentators reported that thirty prophets were buried in Homs, five hundred in Damascus, and onethousand in Jordan, Palestine and Jerusalem. See, for instance, Abu al-Ma‘ali (ca.1030s), Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, 206; Musa bin Sahal al-Nisaburi al-Ramli (c. 1250-1517?), Kitab fi Fada‘il Bayt al-Maqdis wa-fihiKitab fi Fada’il al-Sham, cited in Ghalib Anabsa, Min Adab Fada’il al-Sham: Nusus Mukhtara minMakhtutat Mamlukiyya wa-‘Uthmaniyya (Kafr Qariʻ: Dar al-Huda ʻAmman; Dar al-Fikr; Bayt Birl: MarkazDirasat al-Adab al-ʻArabi, 2007), 33; see also Ibn ‘Abd al-Razzaq (d.1721), Hada’iq al-An‘am fi Fada’ilal-Sham (Beirut: Dar al-Diya’ li-l-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 1989), 126; Abu al-Qasim ibn Ahmadal-Zayyani (d.1809), al-Tarjumana al-Kubra fi Akhbar al-Ma‘mur Barran wa-Bahran (Rabat: Dar Nash al- 129The Qur’an mentions the term “the Holy Land” and so it naturally became the subject ofcommentary. Some thought the Holy Land referred to the land of Palestine. Othersdefined it as the Land of Sham, the Land of Palestine and Jordan, Damascus, Palestineand some of Jordan, the Damascus of Sham, Jordan and Palestine, and the Land ofJerusalem, Mount Tur and it surroundings. Others said it was surrounded by the land ofthe Hijaz and that it stretched from the Shura Mountains to Dumat al-Jandal, and from theEuphrates in the east to the Sea in the west and the sands of Egypt and al-‘Arish, whichled to the Sinai Peninsula.141Ma‘rifa, 1991), 276; On Luqman, see Mustafa Bakri al-Siddiqi (d.1749), “Nufhat al-Isda’ wa-l-Akram fiMidha al-Anbiya al-Kiram,” folios 63-85, in Majmu‘a (Manuscript Section of the National Library ofIsrael, JER NLI AP Ar. 572), folio 85a; on Abraham, see Abu al-Ma‘ali (ca.1030s), Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, 332; al-Suyuti (d.1505), Ithaf al-Akhissa’, II, 97, 105; ‘Abd al-Razzaq (d.1721), Hada’iq al-In‘am,41-2; Ahmad Ibn ‘Ajiba (d.1809), al-Bahr al-Madid fi Tafsir al-Qur’an al-Majid (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1999), III, 478; IV, 297; Muhammad al-Mazhari (d.1810/11), al-Tafsir al-Mazhari (Beirut: Daral-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2007), IV, 485; Burhan al-Din (d. unknown), Kitab Jalil fi Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdiswa-l-Masjid al-Khalil (02854 Atif Efendi Collection, Sulaymaniye Manuscript Library, Istanbul), folio70a; on Goliath, see al-Diyarbakri (d.1558), Tarikh al-Khamis, I, 87; al-Luqaymi (d. 1764), Mawanih al-Uns, 146-7; al-Mazhari (d.1810/11), al-Tafsir al-Mazhari, I, 338. For slightly different renditions, see al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522), al-Uns al-Jalil, I, 104; Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Maqqari (d.1631), Azhar al-Riyad fiAkhbar al-Qadi ‘Iyad (Rabat: Sanduq Ihya’ al-Turath al-Islami, 1978), 30; al-Himyari (d.1495), Kitab al-Rawd al-Mi‘tar, 441; al-Qaramani (d.1611), Kitab Akhbar al-Duwal, 58; al-‘Ajami (d.1675), Dayl Lubb alLubab, folio 17-18; for other prophets, see, for instance, Abu al-Fida’ (d.1331), Tarikh Abi al-Fida’: al-Musamma al-Mukhtasar fi Akhbar al-Bashar (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1997), I, 43.141 See Yaqut (d.1229), Mu‘jam al-Buldan, III, 914-5; Ibn Hisham (d.1359), Tahsil al-Uns li-Za’ir al-Quds,105; Ibn Rajab (d.1392), ‘Adil Ibn Sa‘d (ed.), Fada’il al-Sham (Majmu‘a) (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 207; al-Diyarbakri (d. 1558), al-Juz’ al-Awwal min Tarikh al-Khamis, 63; N.a. (fl. 18thcentury), n.t. (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts, Bab al-Khalq, Cairo, Egypt, 4628, film #7528], 60; Khalil al-Zahiri (d.1468), Zubdat Kashf al-Mamalik wa-Bayan al-Turuq wa-l-Masalik (Paris: al-Matba‘a al-Jumhuriyya, 1894), 17; Muhammad bin ‘Isa bin Kannan (d. 1740), al-Mawakib al-Islamiyya fi al-Mamlikal-Shamiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif al-‘Ilmiyya, 2001), 223; al-Diyarbakri (d. 1558), al-Juz’ al-Awwal minTarikh al-Khamis, 63; ‘Abd al-Razzaq (d.1721) Hada’iq al-In‘am, 42; Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Mamimi(d.1758), al-I‘lam bi-Fada’il al-Sham (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-‘Asriyya, 19??), 50; see also Haim Gerber,“‘Palestine’ and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century.” International Journal of Middle EastStudies 30 (1998): 563-572; Douglas Howard, “It Was Called “Palestine”: The Land, History andPalestinian Identity,” Fides et Historia 35(2) (2003), 67. 130Palestine came up in passing in stories told about other places too. Muslims wrote storiesabout Sham, where Palestine often surfaced. They also identified ambiguous Qur’anicplaces as located in Palestine: a river, the land delivered to Abraham and Lot, thesurroundings of Masjid al-Aqsa and “the Eastern and Western regions.” There were othersomewhat arbitrary designations in which Palestine came up as well, such as indescriptions of “the lands of Islam” or the Eastern Mediterranean. Muslims alsodescribed cities, such as Nablus, as the most beautiful city in Palestine. Chroniclers wrotestories about battles, including when governors were forced to flee to various places, suchas the Qalansuwa forest in Palestine. They wrote stories about the construction ofmosques, such as the Mosque of David in Jerusalem, which was built it in the land ofPalestine. Naturally, travelers wrote about the places they passed through on their traveljourneys, such as the village of Karak Nuh or Sabastia, both apparently located inPalestine. Palestine was a useful point of reference for chroniclers, travelers,jurisprudents, genealogists and encyclopedists. To tell stories, you usually need to usenouns of place. The Muslims were no exception.142142 On the Eastern Mediterranean, see al-Idrisi (d. 1161), Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-Afaq (Cairo:Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniyya, 2002), I, 11; al-Maqrizi (d.1442), al-Mawa‘iz wa-al-I‘tibar, I, 44; al-Himyari (d.1495), Kitab al-Rawd al-Mi‘tar, 163; Mubarik bin ‘Umar (fl. 1707), Wasf Rihla fi Shamal al-Jazira (al-Hijaz), wa-Misr wa-l-Sham (Columbia University, film #414), 153; Ibn Nasir al-Dar‘i (d.1823),al-Rihla al-Nasriyya (The University of Jordan Manuscript Library, 387935), 152; on the ambiguous placesmentioned in the Qu’ran, such as the river (Qur’an 2:249), see al-Mazhari (d.1810), al-Tafsir al-Mazhari, I,340; on the Eastern and Western regions (Qur’an 7:137), see al-Muqaddasi (d. 991), Ahsan al-Taqasim187; al-Muqaddasi (d. 1364), Muthir al-Gharam, 68; al-Suyuti (d.1505), Ithaf al-Akhissa’, II, 132; on theland delivered to Abraham and Lot (Qur’an 21:71), see Ibn Faqih (d.902), Kitab al-Buldan, 153; Yaqut(d.1220), Mu‘jam al-Buldan, III, 914-5; on the surroundings of the al-Aqsa Mosque (Qur’an 17:1), seeAbu al-Ma‘ali (w. 1030s.), Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, 316; Ibn Hisham (d.1360), Tahsil al-Uns li-Za’ir al-Quds, 113; al-Muqaddasi (d. 1364), Muthir al-Gharam, 71; al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522), al-Uns al-Jalil, II, 66;Isma‘il Haqqi (d.1724), Tanwir al-Adhhan min Tafsir Ruh al-Bayan (Damascus and Beirut: Dar al-Qalam,1989), II, 329; III, 265; al-Luqaymi (d.1764), Mawanih al-Uns, 54; Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Mamimi (d.1758),al-I‘lam bi-Fada’il al-Sham (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-‘Asriyya, 19??), 52; on the Qalansuwa forest, IbnJum‘a (fl. 18th century) wrote that the appointed governor of Damascus in 1710 was surrounded and nearlykilled by forces loyal to the Ottoman Sultan, and was forced to flee to Hish and Ghaylan, which wasreportedly located in the Qalansuwa forest in Palestine.” My guess is that Ibn Jum‘a must have heard orread about the Qalansuwa forest, looked it up in popular geographical dictionary like Yaqut—as I did— 131In short, Palestine was a popular geographical designation in the early Islamic period.Because Muslims continued to copy and collate the texts of the tradition for centuries tocome, Palestine continued to appear in writing in all genres of literature during everyperiod of Islamic history. Just as historians today write about Syria-Palaestina,Transjordan, Phoenicia, Galatia and Mesopotamia even though we don’t use these termsin our day-to-day speech, biographers, historians, geographers, travelers, grammarians,genealogists, hadith compilers and merits writers all wrote stories about Palestine fromthe 9th-18th centuries. * * *Retreat. Palestine was preserved in writing even though it retreated in speech, especiallyfrom the 15th century onwards. Most chroniclers, biographers, and travelers writing inArabic from the 15th to the mid-19th century never mention the word Palestine in theirwhere he would have discovered that it was located in Palestine—as I did. See Muhammad bin Jum‘a,“Pashat wa-al-Qada’ 1516-1744,” pp.1-70 in Salah al-Din Munajjid, Wulat Dimashq fi al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani(Damascus: n.p., 1949), 54-5, presumably citing Yaqut, Mu‘jam al-Buldan, IV, 392; on the Mosque ofDavid in Jerusalem, see Evliya Çelebi (d.1682), Evliya Tshelebi's Travels in Palestine: 1648-1650(Jerusalem: Ariel Pub., 1980), 67-8; on the travelers, see ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731) [cited in‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi and Ramadan ibn Musa ‘Utayfi, Rihlatan ila Lubnan (Beirut: Dar al-NashrFrants Shtaynar, 1979), 73], who passed through the village of Karak Nuh on his way from Damascus toBa‘albek and cited earlier commentators who mentioned Karak could refer to al-Shawbak in the land ofPalestine. He also cited Ibn Maktum al-Nahwi and Yaqut (d. 1229) in his discussion of Karak. al-Nabulusi(d.1731) [Rihla ila al-Quds, 6-7] cited al-Harawi (d.1089) in his claim that Sibastia, near Nablus was alsocalled Filastin. Elsewhere, ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1731) [al-Haqiqa wa-al-Majaz fi Rihlat Bilad al-Sham wa Misr wa-l-Hijaz (Damascus: Dar al-Ma‘arifa, 1998), 305] also cited Yaqut (d. 1229), claimingthat Sabastia was a city in Palestine close to Nablus, between it and Jerusalem. 132chronicles, biographies and travelogues even though they deal extensively with that pieceof real estate. This suggests they were probably not terribly familiar with the term.143143 On chroniclers, see Jibra’il ibn al-Qila‘i (d.1516), Zajaliyyat Jibra’il ibn al-Qila‘i (Beirut: Dar al-LahdKhatir lil-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1982); Hamza bin Ahmad ibn Asbat (d.1520), Sidq al-Akhbar: Tarikh ibnSabat (Tripoli, Lebanon: Jarrus Bris, 1993); Ahmad al-Khalidi al-Safadi (d. 1624), As‘ad Rastum andFu’ad Afram al-Bustani (eds.) Lubnan fi ‘Ahd Fakhr al-Din al-Ma‘ni al-Thani (Beirut: UniversitéLibanaise 1969); Jirjis Zughayb (d.1729), Bulus Qara’li (ed.) ‘Awdat al-Nasara ila Jurud Kasrawan(Beirut: Jarrus Bars, 1963), 11-30; Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Sharf al-Din al-Khalili (d. 1734),“Kitab Tarikh al-Quds wa-l-Khalil ‘Alayhi al-Salam,” pp. 129-165 in Anabsi (ed.), Min Adab Fada’il al-Sham (‘Amman: Dar al-Fikr, 2007); Muhammad al-Makki ibn al-Sayyid ibn al-Khanqah, (fl. 1722) TarikhHims: Yawmiyyat Dimashq (Damascus: al-Ma‘had al-‘Ilmi al-Faransi li-l-Dirasat al-‘Arabiyya bi-Dimashq,1987); al-Ab Agustin Zunda (w.1728), al-Tarikh al-Lubnani, 1714-1728 (Kaslik, Lebanon: Jami‘at al-Ruhal-Quds, 1988); Muhammad bin ‘Isa bin Kannan (d.1740), Hada’iq al-Asmi fi Dhikr Qawanin al-Khulafa’wa-l-Salatin (Beirut: Dar al-Nafa’is, 1991); Mikha’il Burayk (fl. 1782), Tarikh al-Sham (Damascus: Dar al-Qutayba, 1982); Muhammad Murtada al-Husayni al-Zabidi (d. 1791), Alfiyat al-Sanad (Beirut: Dar IbnHazm, 2006); ‘Abbud al-Sabbagh (fl. 18th century), al-Rawd al-Zahir fi Tarikh al-Zahir (Irbid: Mu’assasatHamada lil-Khadamat wa-l-Dirasat al-Jami‘iyya, 1999); Ibrahim al-Danafi al-Samiri (fl. 1783), Zahir al-‘Umar wa Hukkam Jabal Nablus, 1185-1187/1771-1773 (Nablus: Jami‘at al-Najah al-Wataniyya, 1986);Ahmad al-Budayri al-Hallaq, Hawadith Dimashq al-Yawmiyya, 1154-1175H, 1741-1762 (Cairo: al-Jam‘iyya al-Misriyya lil-Dirasat al-Tarikhiyya, 1959); Hasan Ibn al-Siddiq (fl. 1771), Ghara’ib al-Bada’i‘wa ‘Aja’ib al-Waqa’i‘ (Damascus: Dar al-Ma‘rifa, 1988); Rufa’il ibn Yusuf Karamah (d. 1800), HawadithLubnan wa-Suriya min Sanat 1745-Sanat 1800 (Beirut: Jarrus Bars, 1980); Haydar Rida al-Rukayni(d.1783), Jabal ‘Amil fi al-Qarn, 1163-1247H/1749-1832M (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1997); Niqulaibn Yusuf al-Turki (d.1828), Dhikr Tamalluk Jumhur al-Faransawiyya: al-Aqtar al-Misriyya wa-l-Bilad al-Shamiyya (Histoire de l'Expedition des Français en Égypte) (Paris: Royale, 1839; Beirut: Dar al-Farabi,1990); Hananiyya al-Munayyir (d.1823), al-Durr al-Marsuf fi Tarikh al-Shuf (n.p.: Dar al-Ra’id al-Lubnani, 1984); N.a. (fl. 1858), Asad Rustum (ed.), Hurub Ibrahim Basha fi Suriya wa-Anadul (NewCairo: al-Matba‘a al-Suriyya, 1927); Mikha’il al-Dimashqi (c.1843), Tarikh Hawadith al-Sham, 1782-1841(Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Khathulikiyya lil-Aba’ al-Yasu‘iyyin, 1912); See also n.a., Ahmad Ghassan Sabanu(ed.), Tarikh Hawadith al-Sham wa-l-Lubnan, 1782-1841 (Beirut: Dar Qutayba, 1981); Khalil ibn Ahmadal-Rajabi (d.1827), Tarikh al-Wazir Muhammad ‘Ali Basha (Cairo: Dar al-Afaq al-‘Arabiyya, 1997); HasanAgha al-‘Abd, Hawadith Bilad al-Sham wa-l-Imbaraturiyya al-‘Uthmaniyya 1186-1241/1771-1826(Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1986); Ibrahim ibn Hanna al-Awra (written in 1853), Tarikh Wilayat SulaymanBasha al-‘Adil (Sidon: Matba‘at Dayr al-Mukhlis, 1936); for travelers, see Mustafa bin Kamal al-Din al-Bakri al-Siddiqi al-Dimashqi (d.1748/9), al-Khamra al-Mahisiyya fi al-Rihla al-Qudsiyya, pp. 71-90 inGhalib Anabsi, Min Adab Fada’il al-Sham (Amman: Dar al-Fikr, 2007); Ilyas Ghasban (fl. 1755), RihlatIlyas Ghasban al-Halabi Ila Ziyarat al-Amakin al-Muqaddasa (Bibliotheque Orientale Universite St.Joseph Beyrouth Liban, 34/754); ‘Abd al-Qadir Abi al-Sa‘ud (c. 1840s), Min Misr ila Islambul (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts, Bab al-Khalq, Cairo, #755); ‘Awn Kamil Najib, Antonius Shibli (ed.), “Nubdha minTarikh Lubnan,” al-Mashriq (1927): 810-820; for biographers, see Najm al-Din Ghazzi (fl. 16th century),al-Kawakib al-Sa’ira (Beirut: American University Press, 1945-58), I-III; Muhammad Amin b. Fadl Allahal-Muhibbi (d.1699), Khulasa al-Athar fi A‘yan al-Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashar (Matba‘a al-Wahiba, 1867); ‘Abdal-Latif al-Husayni (d. 1811), Tarajim Ahl al-Quds fi al-Qarn al-Thani ‘Ashar al-Hijri (Amman: al-Jami‘aal-Urduniyya, 1985); Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi (d.1792) [Kitab Silk al-Durar fi A‘yan al-Qarn al-Thani ‘Ashar (Bulaq: al-Matba‘a al-Amiriyya, 1874-83), III, 141] does not use the word Palestine todescribe people who lived, worked or died in Jerusalem, Gaza and Nablus either, although he did mentionthe word Palestine in an ode written by the poet ‘Abd al-Nabi al-Nabulusi (d. 1741) for Salih Pasha al-Nabulusi ibn Tuqan. 133Ramla and its Surroundings. There was one major exception: Ramla and itssurroundings. Lots of people from Ramla called their place of origin Palestine for muchof Islamic history. This is because the 7th-century Umayyad Caliph, Sulayman ‘Abd al-Malik (d.717) ruled the District of Palestine—and the rest of the Empire—from Ramla.Ramla then serve as the capital of the District of Palestine during the Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750-878), Tulunid (878-970), Fatimid (970-1071) and Seljuk (1071-1099)periods. It was also the economic center of the region, lying at the crossroads of keytrading routes within the District of Palestine and the route connecting Damascus andCairo. Although a massive earthquake in 1068 left some 15,000-people dead and the cityin total ruins, Ramla recovered during the Crusader (1095–1291) and Ayyubid periods(1187–1260) and remained the most important regional trading hub well into the Mamlukperiod (1250–1517). The town grew in population even after the 16th century Ottomanconquest.144This helps explain why many inhabitants of Ramla from the 11th century onwards usedthe term Palestine as the standard name of region. Solomon b. Semah, for instance, an11th century Jewish merchant of Ramla, wrote to Ephrayim b. Shemarya, of the Jewishcommunity of Fustat in December 1033 after having seen the earthquake damage in theregion, that The sun had not yet risen, and all of a sudden, in Ramla, and all of the Land of Palestim, it aroused the fortress until the Parzi village, and in all of the fortresses of the coast, until the fortress of Haifa, and in all of the towns of the Negev and hills until Jerusalem, and in all of its cities until Nablus and all of its villages until Tiberias, and all of its daughters of the Galilee144 See Foster, “Was Jerusalem Part of Palestine.” 134 hills and in all the Land of Tzvi, where people were walking along the roads, the elders will 145 tell you that we saw the hills roaring like dancing rams.From the 15th century onwards, the evidence begins to mount that Palestine wasremembered in Ramla. The scholar Abu al-‘Awn Muhammad al-Ghazzi al-Shafi‘i al-Faruqi (d.1504) is identified on his tombstone in the city of Ramla as a scholar from the“Palestinian frontiers.” This could have been a coincidence, or people in Ramla knewabout Palestine and used that term to describe their region. A number of Ramlan Arabsused the word Palestine in their writings from the 17th century onwards—not in citationsor collations of early sources, but to describe the people and places of their lives. The17th century jurist from Ramla, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (d. 1671), used the word Palestineat least three times in his two-volume fatwa collection in very unconscious ways. Hementioned, in one case, that Palestine’s northern border was either “‘Uyun al-Tujjar orAcre,” a definition of Palestine I’ve not seen elsewhere, suggesting it was an originalthought rather than something he copied. His son, Najm al-Din (fl. 1718), lived his entirelife in Ramla and also used the word Palestine very casually multiple times in a collectionof religious certificates he wrote for his father. The Arab Orthodox priest, Yusuf Jahshan,born and raised in Ramla, wrote a diary covering politics, agriculture and climate in whathe called Palestine. Jahshan mentioned the word Palestine more than a dozen times in 90small folios, font size 36ish. In the early 20th century, the only poet known as “a poet ofPalestine,” to the best of my knowledge, was Sulayman al-Taji al-Faruqi (1882–1958)—also from Ramla. Keep in mind that Ramla was an intellectual backwater, and any of145 The term Palestim rarely appeared in Cairo Geniza documents. Perhaps it’s rare appearance here hadsomething to do with the fact that Solomon b. Semah was not like most other Jews. He was from Ramla.The terms in the document were Kofer ha-Parzi and Eretz ha-Tzvi. See TS 18 J 3, f. 9, ed. Gil, Palestine,Pt. 2, pp.382-384 (Doc. #209), C.B. 01-26-88 (p). 135these mentions of Palestine are noteworthy in and of themselves even had none of thembeen from Ramla. It turns out that Solomon b. Semah, Abu al-‘Awn, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, Najm al-Din, Yusuf Jahshan and Sulayman al-Taji al-Faruqi were all from Ramla.People in Ramla remembered Palestine, while most others forgot it.146146 On Abu al-‘Awn Muhammad al-Ghazzi al-Shafi‘i al-Faruqi (d.1504), see Foster, “Was Jerusalem Partof Palestine;” Khayr al-Din was well known and respected across the region and wrote a legal opiniondealing with a man from “a village of Palestine” who had a dispute with his wife, where the man reportedlyclaimed that if he was in the same land a year from that point, his wife would be divorced three times(Islamic law forbids a person from being divorced more than three times). So Khayr al-Din was asked if thevillager would be exempt from his marriage obligation if he traveled outside of what was known asPalestine (musamma Filastin), such as in ‘Uyun al-Tujjar or in Acre? Khayr al-Din said he would beexempt so long as he was in a region that could not be pointed at from his own village or town, i.e., that itwas not within eyesight. In the end, Khayr al-Din concluded it was immaterial whether he was in or out ofPalestine. Khayr al-Din mentioned the word Palestine unconsciously in at least three other instances. Khayral-Din al-Ramli, al-Fatawa al-Khayriyya li-Naf‘ al-Bariyya (Istanbul: Matba‘a-i ‘Uthmaniyya, 1893), I, 86.For two further references to Palestine, see ibid, I, 190 and II, 233, 240; for more details, see Gerber,“Palestine and other Territorial Concepts,” 566. (Benjamin of Tudela (d.1173) [(A. Asher, trans. and ed.),The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (New York: “Hakesheth” Publishing Co., 19??), 64] alsoidentified Acre as the northern border town of Palestine); Najm al-Din wrote a book of religious certificates(ijazat) that detailed to whom his father issued ijazat and from whom he received them, using the wordPalestine frequently. He wrote the following benediction to judges, for instance: “King of the universe, whohas shown [good graces] to the poor and weak of the people of White Ramla, who have increased theirdevotion to the high heavens...and foamed their freewill offerings to the Sultan with the blessing of thedominion of shari‘a in the Jerusalem region and the Palestinian land” (al-diyar al-Qudsiyya wa-l-bilad al-Filastiniyya). In another instance, he explained that a certain Husayn Pasha was imprisoned in a castle inDamascus even though he was a brave and loyal servant of the Ottoman state as well as a man ofoutstanding moral character. He implored all those who utter god’s name among the ranks of power in thePalestinian land to pray to god for his speedily release from prison. Najm al-Din also described Khayr al-Din as a transmitter of knowledge in Sham and Palestine in a certificate he issued to one of his Damascenestudents, ‘Abd al-Rahman Kamal al-Din. See Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (d.1671), Diwan Makatabat Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (1708-1718) (Manuscript Section of the National Library of Israel, JER NLI AP Ar. 344). Forthe benediction for judges, see ibid, folio 42a; on Husayn Pasha, see ibid, folio 25a; for Kamal al-Din’sijaza, see ibid, folio 46a-b.; Yusuf Jahshan, Waqa’i‘ Filastin: al-Ramla wa Ghazza (1765-1769)(Manuscript Section of the National Library of Israel, JER NLI AP Ar. 121) claimed in an untitled diary isuntitled that appears in a collection of seven essays that the following things happened in “Palestine:”prices increased (folios 42, 63); Arabs fought battles and wars (folio 77); disquieting rumors spread (folio66, 77 and 83); livestock and cattle perished (folio 78); a plague befell elders and wicked diseases spread(folio 85); the ruler of Sham died, and it occurred in a city in the land of Palestine (folio 79); the ruler ofPersia died (folio 82), and disputes between rulers increased, and great harm was caused to people, an oldcity was destroyed, and a man was killed in the land of Palestine (folio 64); No good came from that year inthe land of Palestine (folio 44); it is colder than it has even been, and some of the crops spoiled, and the fireincreased (folio 60). For more on the famines of the 1760s, see Yaron Ayalon, “Famines, Earthquakes,Plagues: Natural Disasters in Ottoman Syria in the Writings of Visitors,” The Journal of Ottoman Studies32 (2008): 242-3; on Sulayman al-Taji al-Faruqi, see Foster, “Was Jerusalem Part of Palestine?” 136Ramla was not isolated from its surroundings. It was subject to rule from Gaza during the16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Some families, the Jahshans included, held political swayin both cities. Others from Ramla, such as Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, spent time in Gaza.Merchants moved between the two cities a great deal as well. The road connectingJerusalem and Gaza (and onwards to Egypt) went through Ramla and Gaza. This mightexplain why a chief Ottoman religious authority, Minkarizade Yahya Efendi (d.1678),once asked Khayr al-Din al-Ramli for his opinion on a legal issue, calling him Khayr al-Din al-Ghazzi, “the Gazan.”147No surprise that Salih bin Muhammad al-Tamartashi (d.1644-5), born and raised in Gaza,is the only Muslim before the 19th century to include the word Palestine in the title of hiswork—The Merits of the Holy Land and its Borders, the Land of Palestine and itsBorders and the Lands of Sham. The treatise focused on three geographical concepts:Sham, the Holy Land and Palestine, and dealt with the origins of the name Palestine—much as I did—as well as its borders and cities, especially Ramla, Ashkelon and Gaza—much as I am doing here.148147 Jahshan came from a prominent Orthodox Christian family in Ramla whose members also held positionsas clerks in Ramla, Lod and Gaza, including Qustandi Jahshan in Ramla, Ishaq Jahshan in Lod. SeeIbrahim al-‘Awra, Tarikh Wilayat Sulayman Basha al-‘Adil (Sidon: Matba‘at Dayr al-Mukhlis, 1936), 167;on Khayr al-Din’s time spent in Ramla, see Mary Ann Fay, “Biography as History: The Exemplary Life ofKhayr al-Din al-Ramli,” In Mary Ann Fay (ed.), Autobiography and the Construction of Identity andCommunity in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 9–18; on Minkarizade Yayha Efendi, see GuyBurak, The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Ḥanafī School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 153.148 The work is essentially a compilation of hadith reports and descriptions culled from earlier texts—suchas Suyuti’s Ithaf al-Akhissa’, as the author himself noted. Still, the work suggests both al-Tamartashi’sfamiliarity with and interest in Palestine. The full Arabic title is Al-Khabar al-Tamm fi Dhikr al-Ard al-Muqaddasa wa-Hududuha, wa-Dhikr Ard Filastin, wa-Hudududa wa-Aradi al-Sham. The manuscript wasfirst published and translated into Hebrew in Sadan, “Shelosha Mekorot Khadashim,” 186-206; a secondedition appeared in Ghalib Anabsi’s 1993 Master’s Thesis at Tel Aviv University; a third edition appearedin Sadiq Ahmad Ibrahim Muhammad al-Turk’s Master’s Thesis at the University of Najah in Nablus. Seeidem, “al-Khabar al-Tamm fi Dhikr al-Ard al-Muqaddasa wa-Hududuha wa-Dhikr Ard Filastin wa- 137The question, then, is not was the place called Palestine but who called it Palestine when,for what purposes and in which contexts? In the transmitted sciences, such as hadith andmerits literature, Palestine appeared often enough since it was collated from earliersources. But most people didn’t use the word Palestine in their day to day speech, savefor folks from Ramla and its surroundings. In Damascus and Cairo, the term Palestinemay have meant very little to the overwhelming majority of Arabic speakers from the12th through the 18th centuries.There shouldn’t be anything surprising here. People from San Francisco do not call theplace SanFran, even if people from Michigan might. They might say “the city” or SF.The UP is intelligible to people from Michigan but New Yorkers may wonder why Icapitalized the word “up,” and why Michiganders think a direction refers to a place. “TheLand” refers to Cleveland in Cleveland. “el D.F” is meaningful to Mexicans but fewAmericans. NOLA is meaningful to people in New Orleans, but was not meaningful tome when I first heard it. The Toronto Star wrote in May 2016 that “you’ve probablyreferred to yourself as living in “The Six,”” a term I’m assuming is as meaningless tomost people as it was to me. We’ll never agree on the same nicknames for the places weinhabit. That’s part of what makes us human, our incredible ability to invent places,nicknames and define them arbitrarily. In a world with rapid mass communication, weHududuha wa Aradi al-Sham” (M.A. Thesis, Jami‘at Najah al-Wataniyya, 1998); see also Gerber,““Palestine” and Other Territorial Concepts,” 567. 138still have a great deal of regional variation in place names. Until recently it must havebeen a lot worse.149 * * *Identities. We stated in the previous chapter that we identify with Palestine because itseems real to us, and it seems real to us because we have named it, told stories about itand made maps of it. We’ve already noted above that hadith commentators did describesome Muslims as Palestinian for the purposes of hadith verification. But did peoplethemselves identify as Palestinian? Did they care deeply about Palestine so much so thatthey were willing to die for it?The Muslim conquerors called the place the District of Palestine from the 7th-11thcenturies. They even minted coins with the word Palestine on them in the 7th and 8thcenturies (see figure 8). This meant that merchants and even illiterate farmers may havebeen somewhat familiar with the term. Although, I wonder how much an average personknew what places are written on which coins, let alone think those places are important totheir identities because they appear on coins. I think we need more than coins to get us toidentify with places.149 Mark Daniell, “Drake Finally Explains 'The Six' Rapper reveals he rejected 'The Four' as Toronto'snickname,” The Toronto Sun 20 August 2016 (https://goo.gl/FFdz3f). 139 Figure 8. A 7th century coin minted in Jerusalem by the Caliph with the word Filastin.150Before the late 19th century, most people in the world spent most of their lives close totheir hometown. Travel was slow, dangerous, expensive and arduous. In the 18th century,it took a group of pilgrims nearly a year to get from Uzbekistan to Damascus, and anothermonth to get from Damascus to Mecca. A journey from Damascus to Tripoli took sixdays in the 18th century; Damascus to Aleppo took nearly two weeks; Jaffa to Jerusalemtook a day and a half in the mid-1850s; Alexandretta to Aleppo took three days by mule;a good rider could make it from Lajjun to Rafah in two days, but the trip lasted four daysor more with a heavy load; from Jenin to Nazareth took six hours in the 1850s – whichincreased to twelve hours in 2003 thanks to modern technology: Israeli militarycheckpoints. Even one of the most well-traveled Muslims in history, ibn Hawqal (d. 988),never left the Islamic world. This meant that there were fewer encounters between people150 Tony Goodwin, “The Arab-Byzantine Coinage of Jund Filastin - A Potential Historical Source,”Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 28 (2004): 5. 140from distant lands and fewer opportunities for people to say they were from Palestinerather than from Jaffa or Jerusalem.151Palestine didn’t manifest itself in customs, traditions or institutions either. People did notcommemorate battles won or lost in Palestine through annual ceremonies, marches orkeynote addresses. Famous songs and poems rarely dealt with Palestine. Village eldersprobably did not share stories with their grandchildren about Palestinian cuisine,Palestinian Arabic or Palestinian customs. They did not take their grandchildren toPalestine coffee shops, Palestine post offices, or Palestine mosques, as far as I know.Palestine was not studied in school: the merchant al-Muqaddasi (d.991), for instance,who had more to say about Palestine’s geography and economy than virtually anyoneelse during his era, studied fiqh, grammar, literature, philology, theology, hadith andhistory, but no geography or economics, and nothing specifically about Palestine. Thereis not much evidence to believe Palestine was talked about at dinner conversations, Sufilodges, wedding ceremonies or mosque sermons. Palestine was not the word used to151 On Damascus to Tripoli and Damascus to Aleppo, see James Grehan, Everyday Life and ConsumerCulture in Eighteenth-Century Damascus (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) 45; then seeAbraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York:Columbia University Press, 1989), 248; on Jaffa to Jerusalem, see Glenda Abramson, “Two Nineteenth-century Travelers to the Holy Land,” Israel Affairs 8(3) (2002): 71, 78; on Alexandretta to Aleppo, seeGregory M. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians; or, Turkey in the Dependencies (London, J. Madden, 1856),20; on Lajjun to Rafah, see the sources discussed above on Palestine’s four-point borders; on Jenin toNazareth, see Josias Leslie Porter, A Handbook for Travelers in Syria and Palestine (London: J. Murray,1858), I, 353; on ibn Hawqal (d. 988), see Dharif Ramadan Murad, Dirasa fi al-Turath al-Jughrafi al-‘Arabi, Ibn Hawqal wa-Manhajuhu al-Jughrafi (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlu al-Misriyya, 2004), 29-32. TheMiddle East was not unique in this respect. A trip from Florence to Rome would take about four days bycarriage and cost 350 dinarii, about an entire year’s wages for a laborer. “Today it takes about three hoursby car or three and a half if you want to avoid the tolls.” The hardships, expenses and risks of robbery,disease and loneliness discouraged most people from traveling far before the mid-late 19th century. SeeVlogbrothers, “How Young Is History? youtube.com 17 January 20017 (goo.gl/RZxFbr). 141describe much of anything in day-to-day speech, let alone be the basis for stories, myths,legends or a dissertation about the history of the usage of the word Palestine itself.152But what about all the stories about Palestine we discussed above? Although the peoplethat wrote them must have known a bit about Palestine, most of them would not haveeven been from Palestine, so it’s unlikely they identified as Palestinian. In any case, theirworks had a limited circulation. Books were expensive to own. You had to buy theleather-bound manuscript itself and pay a copyist to copy the entire thing word for word.In fact, people even invested their savings in ornate copies of Qur’an and othermanuscripts as commodities and symbols of prestige. Peopled dumped savings into booksthe same way people today dump savings into gold, in part because books wereexpensive.153But even if people had money and access, what kinds of books were available to buy orread? One of the only surviving pre-modern library catalogues is the 13th centuryAshrafiya Library in Damascus, whose contents reflected the “wider literary interests asthey existed in a city such as Damascus.” Here are the contents divided by genre:154152 A. Miquel, “al- Muḳaddasī,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed.153 Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press,2008), 30-33; R. Aslıhan Aksoy-Sheridan, “Forms of Literacy: Notes on the Life and Cultural Backgroundof a 16th-century Ottoman Sanjak Governor,” New Trends in Ottoman Studies (2014): 728-740. SeeAksoy-Sheridan’s footnote 21 for a nice list of studies on book ownership in Ottoman history.154 See Konrad Hirschler, Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 106, 117. Within “transmitted sciences,” Hirschler includes prayerbooks, hadith, fiqh, Koran, Sufism, sermons, biography, history, poetry, oneiromancy, rituals, sayingsattributed to ‘Ali, ethics (Islamic), eschatology and afterlife, stories of the prophets, the ProphetMuhammad, biographical dictionaries, principles of religion (usul al-Din), jihad, and pre-Islamicrevelation. 142 Theme Percentage Poetry 32% Transmitted Sciences 20% Adab [Refinement] 16.5% Philological Sciences 9.5% Medicine 5% History 4% Political Thought 3.5% Philosophy & Theology 2.5% Other 6% Table 1. Contents of the 13th century Ashrafiya Library in DamascusAnother way to slice the same data is to look at the most popular titles. Of the 23 mostpopular titles, 14 were poetry, 3 adab, 2 lexicography, 1 medicine, 1 hadith, 1pharmacology, and 1 sayings of ‘Ali. Most striking about this distribution is the salienceof poetry and adab, or refinement, especially pre-Islamic poetry. Muslims were interestedin the linguistic context in which the Qur’an emerged, as well as their own Arab origins.Moreover, poetry and adab often bled into “transmitted sciences,” such as hadith.Whatever the precise distribution, history and especially geography were noticeablylacking.Most libraries around the Middle East had specialized collections. One historian wrote,describing the contents of the 18th century libraries of Aleppo, that they were“specialized in nature and directed at narrow readerships.” Similarly, the contents oflibraries in Cairo, Jerusalem or Istanbul as late as the mid-19th or early 20th centuries,were filled with manuscripts on the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic law, grammar, poetry,rhetoric and philology, and even medicine and astronomy, but less on geography. Legaltopics were especially popular, and ranged from the foods forbidden to women during 143pregnancy, appropriate beard length guidelines, prayer attendance requirements andmillions of other topics where Palestine didn’t matter much. It would have been verydifficult to find a travelogue on Palestine or a manuscript about Palestine’s art, socialclasses, architecture or history.155No one was paid to write or think about Palestine, so it was neglected. In fact, few peoplewere paid to write history or geography, and none were paid to write about the historyand geography of Palestine. Ibn Hawqal (d.988), who carefully described each provinceof the Muslim Empire in 978, including Palestine, earned a living as a merchant. Al-Muqaddasi (d.991) wrote one of the most impressive Arabic works of geography in thepre-modern Muslim world, which included lengthy discussions of Palestine, and he camefrom a family of architects and seems to have earned a living as a merchant as well. Ibn‘Asakir (d.1176), whose History of Damascus is one of the longest books ever written inIslamic history (mentioning Palestine hundreds of times), was a deputy judge, preacher155 See Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity, 238; Hirschler, Medieval Damascus, ch.3;Edward Lane, The Manners & Customs of the Modern Egyptians (New York: J.M. Dent, Dutton, 1908[1836]), 214-5; on the private collections, see Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 30-33; the library of Ibrahim Pasha, for instance, the 19th century Egyptian governor of Sham, includedsections on the Qu’ran, Qur’anic commentary, the oral tradition, jurisprudence, Algebra and Mathematics,the Arabic language, semantics and rhetoric belles-lettres, logic, science of discourse, Sufism, medicine,astronomy the science of war, and the history and biography of the prophet. See n.a., Catalogue of IbrahimPasha’s Collection of Manuscripts (British Library, OR15382), 1-112. When the Khalidiyya Library inJerusalem first opened in 1900, less than 10% of its published contents dealt with geography or history, therest dealt primarily with Islamic religious sciences. See n.a., Barnamij al-Maktaba al-Khalidiyya al-‘Umumiyya (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Jurji Habib Hananiyya, 1900), 1-78; on its catalogue, see Nazir Ju‘ba,Walid Khalidi, Khadir Ibrahim Salama, Fihris Makhtutuat al-Maktaba al-Khalidiyya, al-Quds (London:Mu’assasat al-Furqan lil-Turath al-Islami, 2006). The situation was similar in Istanbul. George Zaydansurveyed the contents of twenty-five libraries in Istanbul in 1909, reporting that of the 44,930 classifiedvolumes, 13% were Qur’anic Commentary, 15% the prophetic tradition, 21% jurisprudence, 10% Sufism,13% belles-lettres, 16% grammar and about 13% history (Geography was not even listed as a genre). See“Istana al-‘Ulya: Makatib,” al-Hilal 18(2) (1909): 105-6; on the concern with women eating the properfoods, see Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190-1350(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 125; on a beard length, see for instance Grehan, EverydayLife and Consumer, 197; on prayer attendance, see ibid, 145. 144and mufti, i.e. he wrote legal opinions. Ibn Kathir (d.1373) wrote a lot about Palestine’shistory as well, but he was better known as a scholar of hadith, Islamic law, Qur’anicinterpretation and biographies of Muslim legal authorities, earning a living as a khatib,hadith teacher and ad-hoc jurisprudent for the state, not as a Palestine expert. Al-Din al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522) wrote extensively about the geography of Palestine too, but he was ajudge and teacher of Islamic law. Al-Tamartashi (d. 1644-5) published the only pre-modern Arabic work that included the word Palestine in the title, as noted above, but alsosome 80-other works on Islamic jurisprudence, Qur’anic interpretation, belief, Sufism,nikah, agriculture, churches, elocution, grammar and more. Istifan al-Duwayhi (d.1704)wrote about Palestine’s history also, but he was a priest and most of his two-dozen workswere theological or liturgical commentaries. The Sufi Damascene ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d.1731) wrote a few travelogues discussing Palestine but most of his threehundred some works had to do with theology and Sufism. Yusuf Jahshan wrote a diary inthe 1760s largely about Palestine, but he made a living as a priest, not a climatologist ofPalestine. These were some of the most prolific writers on Palestine, and none were paidwrite about it.156156 On how historians made their living, see Robinson, Islamic Historiography, chapter 1; on Ibn Hawqal,see Murad, Dirasa fi al-Turath al-Jughrafi al-‘Arabi, 29-32; Guy Le Strange, Palestine Under theMuslims: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500 (London: Alexander P. Watt,1890), 5; on al-Muqaddasi, see Miquel, “al- Muḳaddasī,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed.; on Ibn ‘Asakir’scoverage of Palestine, see Ali ibn al-Hasan Ibn ‘Asakir, Tarikh Madinat Dimashq Li-Ibn ‘Asakir (Beirut:Dar al-Fikr, 1995-1998), VXXX, 63; on Ibn ‘Asakir’s biography, see James Lindsay (ed.), Ibn ‘Asakir andEarly Islamic History (Princeton, New Jersey: The Darwin Press, 2001), 6; on Ibn Kathir, see H. Laoust,“Ibn Kathir”, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed.; Younus Y. Mirza, “Ibn Kathir,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rded.; on al-Nabulusi, see Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: The Sufism of Abd al-Ghanial-Nabulusi (1641-1731) (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); on al-Tamartashi’s life works, seeMuhammad al-Tamartashi, Turjamat Musannaf al-Matn al-Mubarak Tanwir al-Absar (SüleymaniyeManuscript Library, Esad Efendi Collection, 02212-01), folios 2-4; (al-Muhibbi mentions he wrote fewerworks, most of which are fiqh commentaries, cited in al-Tamartashi (d. 1644-5), al-Turk (ed.), “al-Khabaral-Tamm,” 55); Istifan al-Duwayhi (d.1704) wrote about Abu Bakr’s battles against the Saracens inPalestine, ‘Umar ibn al-‘As campaign in Palestine, the Crusader King Fulk reign in Palestine and Salah al- 145It is not a coincidence that Haim Gerber’s 1997 study on the concept of “Palestine”during the Ottoman period relied primarily on a 17th century collection of legal opinionswritten by a Muslim jurisprudent. Gerber also consulted a work of merits literature,which was primarily a compilation of quotes from the transmitted sciences, another legalopinion by the chief Ottoman legal authority, yet another collection of legal opinions byan early 19th century jurisprudent, and some remarks about Palestine in a travelogue. Theemphasis on legal or transmitted texts rather than geographical or historical ones isreflective of what was written in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in the Arab MiddleEast. There wasn’t much on Palestine.157Muslims could find salaried jobs as judges, imams, prayer leaders, scribes, sermonists,Qur’an and hadith teachers, jurisprudents, copyists, bookbinders, notaries, waqfadministrators and petition writers. 8th and 9th century mosques served as colleges andacted as charitable foundations, with money from the endowments usually paying thesalary of the Imam, or prayer leader. When the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim founded theHouse of Knowledge in the 11th century, those invited to lecture were Qur’an readers,jurists, hadith experts, astronomers, mathematicians, grammarians, philologists andphysicians, not geographers or historians. The 13th century Ashrafiya Library inDamascus, for instance, employed a single professor who taught Qur’an recitation, hisassistants and an administer who managed finances. These kinds of jobs required anDin’s re-conquest of Palestine. See Istifan al-Duwayhi (d.1704) Tarikh al-Azmina (Beirut: Dar LahdKhatir, 198?), 12, 13, 115, 133, 165, 224.157 Gerber, “Palestine and Other Territorial Concepts.” 146expertise in literacy, the Qu’ran, prayer, Islamic law or religious practice, not knowledgeof Palestine’s economy or history. People concentrated their scholarly energies on whatmattered for the job market. The prestige, social rewards and financial compensationassociated with these positions created a feedback loop, further popularizing them at theexpense of scholarship on Palestine.158I think people would have been more interested in Palestine—perhaps even identifyingwith it—had there been more people paid to write about it, tell stories about it, makemaps of it and deliver conferences papers about Biblical Researches or intertextualsubjectivities in it, as was the case in the 19th and 20th centuries—respectively, ofcourse. Tabari (d.923), for instance, who wrote about Palestine, was quickly translatedinto Persian, and later Turkish. More than a thousand copies of his universal chroniclewere said to have been held in the 12th century Fatimid library of Cairo. Al-‘Ulaymi’s(d.1522) History of Jerusalem and Hebron dealt extensively with Palestine as well and ittoo was a best-seller during its age, surviving in some three-dozen manuscripts today. Al-Qaramani’s (d.1611) geographical dictionary—which included a section on Palestine—can be found in a dozen some copies today. Al-Tamartashi’s (d.1644-5) treatise on158 On 8th-9th century endowments, see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning inIslam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 28-9; on the establishment of the 11thcentury House of Knowledge, see Heinz Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning (New York:I.B. Tauris and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001), 73-74; on the Ashrafiya Library employees, seeKonrad Hirschler, Medieval Damascus, 23; the Ghaznavids and Saljuks (10th-14th centuries) employedscribes to record revenue sources, oversee income and expenditures and codify tribal custom into imperiallaw. See Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 33, 35; on salaried positions as clerks and judges,see Abdurrahman Atçtıl, Scholars and Sultans in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2017), 76-8, 99; during the late Ottoman period, professional petition writers,or arzuhalciler, set up shops in markets, cafés and other public spaces and wrote petitions to the Ottomanauthorities in Istanbul for a fee. See Yuval Ben-Bassat, “The Ottoman Institution of Petitioning when theSultan No Longer Reigned: A View from Post-1908 Ottoman Palestine,” New Perspectives on Turkey 56(2017): 87–103. 147Palestine has survived in four manuscript copies. This may not seem significant, butrecall that the overwhelming majority of his works were never copied at all and arepresumed lost today, even the titles unknown. Al-Duwayhi’s (d.1704) History of theTimes, which also covers Palestine’s history, has survived in a whopping twelvemanuscripts. What was written about Palestine did circulate, there just wasn’t that muchof it.159This is not an indictment of theology or law. Both are fascinating topics, and I do notthink of myself as any less sensible because I once wanted to be a lawyer and a rabbi.The search for truth, the justice system and the origins of life are noble intellectualpursuits, potentially as noble as Roman administrative nomenclature or the history of thehistoriography of the historiography of Palestine.Some Muslim traditions did nevertheless indicate Palestine was an important or specialplace. One tradition claimed god blessed the area between al-‘Arish and the Euphrates,and “Palestine in particular.” Whoever first invented this tradition probably worked for159 On Tabari, see Hirschler, Medieval Damascus, 107; Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions, 91; on al-‘Ulaymi, see Carol Brockelmann, Geschichte Der Arabischen Litteratur (a.k.a. GAL) (Leiden: Brill, 1949),II, 53-4; H. Busse, “Mud̲ j̲ īr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī.” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed.; additional extantmanuscripts not mentioned by either can be found in the Süleymaniye Manuscript library (Esad Efendi2977; Hamidiye Collection, 888 and 889; Karacelebizade, 02257; Kiliç Ali Paşa, 729; Laleli, 1998 and1999; Musalla Medrese 132; Yeni Cami 820; Hudai Effendi, 1047; Feyzullah Efendi 1384; FeyzullahEfendi 1384; Selimiye 2/1642; two additional copies are held at the Israeli National Library; six at theBritish Library; and one at the Center For Islamic Research, Abu Dis; on al-Qaramani, five copies arelocated in the British Library (see Peter Stocks, Colin F Baker, Subject-guide to the Arabic Manuscripts inthe British Library (London: The British Library, 2001), 249) and six at the Süleymaniye Manuscriptlibrary (Aşir Efendi 00230, Hamidiye 00885, Serez, 01845, Nuruosmaniye, 03042, Nuruosmaniye, 04961,Nuruosmaniye 03155; on the al-Tamartashi manuscripts, see Khidr Ibrahim Salama (ed.), Fihris Makhtutatal-Maktaba al-Budayriyya (Jerusalem: Idarat al-Awqaf al-‘Amma, Maktabat al-Masjid al-Aqsa, 1987) andGhalib Anabsi, Ab‘ad fi Adab Fada’il al-Ard al-Muqaddasa (Huda, Kufr Qar‘, Israel: Markaz Dirasat al-Adab al-‘Arabi, 2006), 368; on Duwayhi, see Roland E. Murphy, “Al-Batriyark Istifanus ad-DuwayhiTa’rikh al-Azminat,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 72(4) (1952): 176-177. 148the governor of the District of Palestine, or served as a scribe of a court in Palestine, orsomething that would have given him or her reason to single out Palestine for its sanctity.But traditions like this are hard to find. It’s much easier to find Muslim traditions thatheap lavish praise onto other places like Jerusalem, the Holy Land or the Land of Sham,or other things altogether like prophets, tribes, rulers, rules or principles.160Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Muqaddasi (d. 991) was one of the few Muslims or Arabsbefore 1898 to have identified as Palestinian himself. Al-Muqaddasi wrote a work calledThe Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions, a detailed, original study of thegeography and economy of the Middle East, much of it based on his own observationsduring his travels. He passed through the city of Shiraz, Iran and exchanged friendlybanter with some builders chiseling into a thick, clay stone. al-Muqaddasi told them theywould have an easier time making a hole in the stone if they used a wedge. “I told themof the construction in Palestine,” and was asked by one the Shirazi stonecutters:“Are you Egyptian?”“No, I am Palestinian,” al-Muqaddasi responded.In a second instance, he wrote that during his sojourns abroad he had been called 36different names, one of which was Palestinian.161160 al-Himyari (d.1495), Kitab al-Rawd al-Mi‘tar, 410; an unknown manuscript from the Mamluk period(13th century), cited in Fada’il al-Sham wa-Fada’il Mudunuha, in Anabsi, Min Adab Fada’il al-Sham, 61;Ibn ‘Abd al-Razzaq (d.1721) Hada’iq al-In‘am, 60.161 See Muhammad bin Ahmad al- Muqaddasi (d. 991), Shakir Lu‘aybi (ed.), Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma‘rifatal-Aqalim (Beirut: Dar al-Suwaydi li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 2003). On Shiraz, see ibid, 362; on the 36names, see ibid, 68; Other Muslims rarely if ever defined themselves or others as Palestinian before the late19th century. Al-Ya‘qubi (d.897/8) [Kitab al-Buldan, 329] for instance, described people with their ethnic,linguistic or tribal affiliations to refer to them, such as “the people of the District of Palestine are a mix ofArabs and non-Arabs, as well as from the tribe of Lakhm, Judham, ‘Amila, Kinda, Qays and Kinana.” Thebiographer al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Burini (d. 1615) [Tarajim al-A‘yan min Abna’ al-Zaman(Damascus: al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi, 1959-62), 11] explained a guest of his father asked his father 149What was so special about al-Muqaddasi, and why was he the only Muslim in history todefine himself as Palestinian? During al-Muqaddasi’s era, Palestine was anadministrative district in the most powerful Empire in the world. Moreover, geographicalliterature had reached a zenith of popularity in the Muslim world around the same time.al-Muqaddasi was also one of the most well-traveled Muslims for his time. As notedabove, travelers often identified not with the smaller towns and villages they were from,since such places are often not known abroad, but rather the larger regions they are from.This combination of circumstances was rare before the 19th century. * * *Conclusion. The first records attesting to the word Palestine in history come from theancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. Later, the word wasadopted in Arabic, modern European languages, Ottoman Turkish and dozens of otherlanguages. States played a critical role in the rise of Palestine in the Greek, Roman,Byzantine and Arab worlds. Palestine flourished during its period of ascendency in theMuslim world from the 7th-11th centuries, so much so that one well-traveled and well-read merchant, al-Muqaddasi (d. 991), even identified himself as Palestinian and claimedothers referred to him as Palestinian as well. But the name Palestine fell out of use inabout his origins, and Burini’s father answered that he was from the “village of Burin, which adjoins thelands of the city of Nablus.” In the 1840s, al-Sa‘ud (c. 1840-1) [Min Misr ila Islambul, folio 25b] traveledto Istanbul and relayed an encounter he had along the way in Anatolia. “The two of them asked us in theTurkish language: where are you from? We informed them that we are from the people of Jerusalem.” Heidentified others by city also—such as Ramla (folio 19, 49), Jaffa (ibid, folio 15, 49) and Jerusalem (18b,38). 150most places in the Middle East after it lost political purpose in the 11th century. Still, itpersisted in the city of Ramla and its surroundings owing to its erstwhile political andeconomic prominence within the District of Palestine.Still, Palestine didn’t figure prominently in most people’s lives. Although some Caliphsminted coins bearing the name Palestine, and some Muslims etched the word ontotombstones and many others told stories about it, no one could earn a living doing thingsrelated to Palestine. No one was paid to write books, tell stories, recite poems about ormake maps of Palestine. No one was paid to teach about Palestine’s history or geography.No one could earn a living as an investigator of human rights abuses in Palestine, asurveyor of Palestine’s topography or economist of Palestine’s economy. No surprise fewpeople cared much about Palestine before the 19th century or identified as Palestinian.From the 16th century onwards, though, the word Palestine gained in popularity in theLatin west. Scholars published ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts, translated them intomodern European vernaculars and circulated them around Europe. RenaissanceEuropeans discovered that the ancients called the place Palestine, and started calling itPalestine too, alongside the Holy Land. Slowly, Palestine supplanted the Holy Land asthe standard name of the region in Europe. By the 19th century, Palestine had become avery popular designation in the West, but not in the Arab world, save for Ramla and itssurroundings. This would change in the 19th century. How and why is the subject of thenext chapter. 151 CHAPTER FOUR The Modern WorldThis chapter is about the modern history of Palestine and the Palestinians. When, howand why did a group of people now known as the Palestinians come into existence? In the19th century, more people in the Middle East started to earn a living as bureacrats,teachers, journalists, publishers, missionaries, economists, lawyers, geographers andmapmakers. These people played a critical role in making Palestine important to people,since they taught about its history, wrote reports about its economy, surveyed itsgeography and made maps of its topography.The modern world also became flat. What got popular in one part of the globe caught onin other places. Names got standardized. Books about history and geography and mapsincreasingly resembled one another. School curricula included the same familiar subjectseverywhere. And so when Palestine became popular in the West in the 19th century, itspopularity rose in the East as well. Muslim and Christian Arabs increasingly used thename Palestine, wrote lots of stories about it and mapped it. By the end of the 19thcentury, they even started to identify with it.162Third, states penetrated the lives of their subjects in the modern world. State-fundedinstitutions such as schools, missionary enterprises, universities, consular offices and the162 On the phrase, “the world is flat,” see Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (New York: Penguin Books,2005). 152bureaucracy flourished. States published annual yearbooks and military handbooks,provided ariel tours to people so they could write geography books and tested students onthe history and geography of the state. States played a critical role in bringing places likePalestine into people’s lives.The exact sequence of events that led people to care about Palestine and identify asPalestinian were mostly happenstance. The governor of Egypt invaded the land of Shamin the 1830s and pemitted foreigners to establish consular offices, travel freely and openschools and missionary stations. This led Europeans and Americans to travel to theMiddle East as diplomats, tourists and missionaries. The expansion of commercialsteamship travel provided a huge boost to migration, tourism, diplomacy, scholarship andmissionary activity. People in Europe, the United States and the Middle East learned oneanother’s languages. Americans published in Arabic and Arabs published in French andEnglish. Missionaries taught about Palestine’s history and geography in class. Arabspublished books, magazines and newspapers about Palestine and distributed them totowns and villages across the Middle East. By 1898, some people started to identify asPalestinian.The British conquered the land of Sham in 1917 and 1918 during World War I andestablished the Government of Palestine in 1920, ratified by the League of Nations asThe Mandate for Palestine in 1922. This contributed significantly to the rapid spread of aPalestinian identity: the workforce became more diversified, the world became evenflatter, and the state played an even more critical role in people’s lives. More people 153could pursue careers in education, journalism and civil service. The British employedteachers, inspectors, bureaucrats and mapmakers. Thousands of Arabs worked for agovernment whose name included the word Palestine. More kids got an education andlearned to read and write from the 1920s and 1930s onwards, and Palestine continued toblossom as a result. More people animated Palestine on maps, eulogized Palestine inpoems and taught their kids the importance of Palestine’s history and geography.Eventually, by the 1920s and 1930s, some thought Palestine was worth dying for. Thischapter explains how all of that happened. * * *The First Palestinian. The first Arab to use the term Palestinian in modern history wasKhalil Baydas. He always seemed to have a cigarette dangling from an ivory holder.Sporting a dark suit and fez, he would cough through clouds of smoke that encircled him.Somehow, it feels about right that the first Arab to use the term Palestinian in modernhistory loved to smoke tobacco.163In 1898, he translated A Description of the Holy Land from Russian to Arabic because“the Arabic geography books on the topic were insufficient” and “the people of Palestine163 Palestinians smoke as much tobacco as almost any other group of people in the world. Some 38-39% ofadults in the West Bank smoke tobacco, or about 8th in the world. In Gaza, some 26.3% of adults aged 15or older smoke cigarettes, 36th in the world. Large numbers of Palestinians reside in Lebanon, which ranks7th in the world and Jordan, which ranks 5th in the world. See Mohammed Jawad, Ali Khader andChristopher Millett, “Differences in Tobacco Smoking Prevalence and Frequency between AdolescentPalestine Refugee and Non-refugee Populations in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank: Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey,” Conflict and Health 10:20(2016)(https://goo.gl/tWsaFu); see also see also World Health Organization, “World Health Statistics DataVisualizations dashboard: Tobacco Smoking,” WHO, accessed 8 June 2017 (https://goo.gl/rNONYv). 154needed a geography book about their country.” The book, Baydas claimed, was “adescription of the land of Palestine” and it referred to the people of Palestine asPalestinians in multiple places. “The ancient inhabitants of Palestine used limestone towhitewash the walls of their buildings,” Baydas wrote, “while the modern Palestiniansalso whitewash the inside, and occasionally the outside, of their homes with it as well.”Presumably it got annoying to repeat the word modern, and so modern Palestiniansbecame simply Palestinians. “The Palestinian peasant,” Baydas noted elsewhere in thebook, “waits impatiently for winter to come, for the season’s rain to moisten hisfossilized fields” after many rainless months following the May summer wheat andbarley harvest. The first modern Arab Palestinian peasant was born.164165Who was Khalil Baydas and how did he learn Russian? In the late 1880s and early 1890s,Baydas studied in one of the best high schools in the region, the Teacher’s TrainingSeminary in Nazareth. It was established by Russian missionaries in the mid-1880s, oneof hundreds of foreign schools built in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Theschool was funded by Russian tax payers and staffed by Russians, Arabs and even aZionist. The Seminary invited the best graduates of its preparatory schools to attend it. By1914, more than ten thousand Arab kids had completed their primary education at aRussian primary school, and hundreds had attended high school at the Seminary.166164 Akim Aleksyeevich Olesnitskii, Khalil Baydas (trans.), Kitab al-Rawda al-Mu’nisa fi wasf al-Ard al-Muqaddasa (Ba‘bda, Lebanon: al-Matba‘a al-‘Uthmaniyya, 1898), 2.165 The Arabic for the modern Palestinians was Filastiniyyun al-haliyyun. See Baydas, Kitab al-Rawda al-Mu’nisa, 33-5 and 67, respectively.166 Previously, I claimed (incorrectly) that the Beiruti Farid Georges Kassab [Palestine, Hellénisme etCléricalisme (Constantinople: Impr. de La Patrie, 1909), 5, 8, 22, 26, 31] was the first Arabic speaker touse the term to explain that “Palestinians” preferred to call themselves Arabs, incidentally enough; on thesmoking anecdote, see Gish Amit, “Salvage or Plunder? Israel's “Collection” of Private PalestinianLibraries in West Jerusalem,” Journal of Palestine Studies 40(4) (2011): 15; on the figures for the Russian 155At the Seminary, Baydas was encouraged to take pride in his Arab identity. In class, hewore Arab rather than European dress; he studied Arabic grammar with Ibn al-Muqaffa‘,Ibn Malik and Ibn ‘Aqil; he read Arabic books by Ibrahim al-Hawrani, George Zaydan,Iskandar Shahin, Shakir Shuqayr and George Post—yes, George Post wrote in Arabic.Baydas studied the geography of Palestine and the history of Palestine in class; and yes,his teachers called the place Palestine.167The Seminary emphasized the Russian language and the Bible as well. Baydas woke upat 6:00 a.m. for prayer and 6:30 a.m. for the gospels, then studied Bible, catechism,Greek, Turkish, mathematics, geometry, and song. The school also focused on theRussian language, Russian geography, Russian history and Russian culture, as well asGreek independence from the Ottoman Empire, interestingly enough. Russian maps wereposted on the walls of his classrooms; Russian books filled its library; Russian literatureschools and graduates, see Şamil Mutlu, Osmanlı Devleti’nde Misyoner Okulları (İstanbul: Gökkubbe,2005), 84-7; Hanna Abu Hanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin: Khirruju al-Madaris al-Rusiyya, 1862-1914(Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2005), 21-2; Lucien J. Frary, “Russian Missions to theOrthodox East: Antonin Kapustin (1817-1894) and his World,” Russian History (2013): 149; DerekHopwood, The Russian Presence in Syria and Palestine 1843-1914: Church and Politics in the Near East(Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 150-3; Theofanis George Stavrou, Russian Interests in Palestine, 1882-1914(Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963), 164; Julius Richter, A History of the Protestant Missionsin the Near East (New York: F.H. Revell, 1910), 57.167 On the study of “Palestine,” see Stavrou, Russian Interests, 114; on the contents of the library, see AbuHanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin, 31-44, 172-3. The headmaster of the school called the place Palestine,such as when he addressed a crowded audience on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the ImperialOrthodox Palestine Society to celebrate its achievements in “our country Palestine and in Syria.” SeeShukri Khalil Suwaydan, Tarikh al-Jam‘iyya al-Imbaraturiyya al-Urthudhuksiyya al-Filastiniyya (Boston:Matba‘a Suriya al-Jadida, 1912), 71-2; the school’s Arabic teacher, Bandali al-Juzi [Mabadi’ al-Lugha al-Rusiyya li-Abna’ al-‘Arab (Kazan: Jam‘iyyat al-Tabshir al-Urthudhuksiyya, 1898), III] also called the placePalestine. 156was read in the classroom; Russian songs were song; and Russian plays were performedfor public viewings.168Incidentally, Khalil Baydas got good at Russian. “I began to devour the Russian books inthe school library,” Baydas divulged of his early years. “Something which had been onlya word, became first a country, then an idea and finally a world—the only world in whichI live and breathe.” He grew into one of the most impressive intellectuals of his age,translating Dostoyevsky into Arabic and publishing multiple novels and his ownmagazine.169After graduation at age 16, Baydas was hired to teach in and administer the primaryschools he had just graduated from in the 1890s. That made him one of the first Arabs inhistory to get paid to teach the history and geography of Palestine. Teachers like goodteaching materials, which is probably why Baydas chose to translate A Description of theHoly Land from Russian to Arabic, as we discussed above. To repeat, Baydas taught “adescription of the land of Palestine,” to generation of Arab youth from the 1890sonwards.168 On Russian maps, see Frary, “Russian Missions,” 149; on the curriculum, see Hopwood, The RussianPresence, 144; Mikha’il Nu‘ayma, Sab‘un: Hikaya ‘Umr: 1889:1959 (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1959-1960), 122-3, 142; al-Juzi [Mabadi’ al-Lugha al-Rusiyya, III] toured its feeder schools around the region, claimingRussian has spread extremely rapidly, “especially in Palestine;” on Bible study, see Iskandar Kazma, al-Tarikh al-Muqaddas Lil-‘Ahad al-Qadim (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1888); for more on thecurriculum, see Hopwood, The Russian Presence, 144; Nu‘ayma, Sab‘un, 122-123, 142.169 On the Russian books anecdote, see Hopwood, The Russian Presence, 157-8; on his biography, see‘Ajaj Nuwayhid, Rijal min Filastin (Beirut: Manshurat Filastin al-Muhtalla, 1981), 22-3; Roger Allen,Essays in Arabic Literary Biography: 1850-1950 (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2010), 72-79. 157To recap, a Russian archeologist named Akim Aleksyeevich Olesnitskii wrote a bookabout the Holy Land or Palestine; The Russian Empire paid Arab and Russian teachers torun a high school in Nazareth; Khalil Baydas received a subvention to study in it;Russians hired Baydas to teach in Russian-funded schools, translate Olesnitskii’s bookfrom Russian to Arabic, and teach it to hundreds of Arab kids in the classroom. No onecould have earned a living doing any of those things before the 19th century. Hadscholars not been able to find funding to pursue their scholarship in late 19th centuryimperial Russia; had the Russian government not expanded its bureaucracy withinvestments in overseas education and soft diplomacy; and had they not been able to printhundreds of books for the classroom, Baydas wouldn’t have been reading, translating orteaching about Palestine. And without those things he might not have thought of himselfas a Palestinian.The book also juxtaposed modern events with their Biblical equivalents. In one 1893incident, 37 Russian pilgrims were reportedly killed on the Nazareth-Jerusalem road dueto harsh blizzard conditions. After describing the tragic event, the book then quoted apassage from the Book of Job about harsh weather and frost—evidence that harsh winterswere nothing knew to Palestine, and that the land’s conditions had changed little sinceBiblical times. Occasionally, Olesnitskii quoted the Bible directly as if he was describingPalestine’s modern customs and conditions. Apparently, nothing had changed sinceBiblical times.170170 Baydas (trans.), Kitab al-Rawda al-Mu’nisa, 22; on Biblical quotations, see for instance, ibid, 60.Baydas might have inspired another graduate of the Russian seminary, Hanna ‘Isa Samara, to translateNiqula Tripolski, A New Guide to the Holy Land [Kalam fi Wasf al-Ard al-Muqaddasa: al-Jiz’a al-Awwal,Madinat Bayt Lahm wa-Jiwaruha (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1902)] from Russian to Arabic only a 158This approach might seem Orientalist in the pejorative or Edward Saidian sense of theword. To be an Orientalist, in the Saidian sense, meant to believe the land had undergonelittle change for thousands of years and that it remained untainted by modern or foreigninfluences. (Said accused Orientalists of a lot more than that, but this simplification issufficient for our purposes). The problem with this point of view, as Said knew, was thatit assumed the answer to the question from the outset. Scholars could learn about thepeople of the Bible simply by observing its modern inhabitants, so the logic went.(Although few if any scholars today believe this particular conclusion, the approach thatunderlines it is still very popular: start with a conclusion, and look for evidence to supportit.)But why did Khalil Baydas translate an Orientalist rather than a progressive? In the late19th century, no one thought that making this assumption was all that bad—not evenArabs themselves. A hundred years ago the average scholar knew a lot less about theintervening two millennia. Few scholarly studies had been written about the Byzantine,Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk or early Ottoman Middle East. Libraries and primary sourceswere difficult to access. Books could not be shipped by airplane from Haifa University toFirestone Library in Princeton, New Jersey, and arrive a few days later—at no cost to theresearcher. There was no Google Search, Google Scholar, Wikipedia or Worldcat. Mostresearchers could not obtain grants to fund international travel to access sources. It wasuncommon for students to obtain five year fellowships to fund their research. Peoplefew years later, the book explicitly published under the auspices of the Imperial Orthodox PalestineSociety. 159knew less about history, so they made naïve assumptions and came to the falseconclusions.171 * * *The second Arab in modern history to use the term Palestinian was Salim Qub‘ayn.Qub‘ayn also studied at the Russian Seminary in Nazareth, interestingly enough, and hepublished an article titled “A Palestinian Describes Palestinian Towns” in Arabic in 1902.In the article, Qub‘ayn compared his observations of Kafr Kanna and Tiberias to those ofthe famous French scholar Ernest Renan three decades earlier. Qub‘ayn agreed withRenan that Tiberias was a thriving city during Biblical times but was as pitiful (circa1902) as it was a few decades earlier when Renan observed it. “Today, nothing remainsof its past greatness,” Qub‘ayn wrote, noting one exception: Tiberias’s new Jewishsettlements. They were teeming with vineyards, parks and trees. “It’s as if they inheritedthe productivity of the Israelites who first came to this land.” Qub‘ayn added thatTiberias’s “non-Jewish residents” continued to fish, just as Renan described it.Incredibly, Qub‘ayn was in complete agreement with Renan. The second Palestinian in171 For similarly Orientalist views, see the book Khalil Totah was writing at the time of his death calledPalestine Illustrates the Bible, which was to provide “rich information on how the Palestine of hischildhood in many ways mirrored aspects of the Bible.” On the book, see Joy Totah Hilden, A Passion forLearning: The Life Journey of Khalil Totah, a Palestinian (Xlibris, 2016), ch.2; for other Orientalist views,see ‘Isa Iskandar Ma‘luf, Dawani al-Qutuf fi Tarikh Bani al-Ma‘luf (Ba‘bada, Lebanon: al-Matba‘a al-‘Uthamniyya, 1907-8), 125; Shahin Makariyus, Hasr al-Litham ‘an Nakbat al-Sham (Misr: n.p., 1890), 4;Fadlallah Faris Abu Halqa, Mukhtasar fi al-Jughrafiya (Beirut: Matba‘at Jarida, 1890), 25; Afram Dayrani(a.k.a. Dirani), al-Nahj al-Qawim fi Tarikh Shu‘ub al-Sharq al-Qadim (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya,1903), 30, 37, 42, 60; Negib Azoury, Le Réveil de la Nation Arabe dans l'Asie Turque: Partie Asiatique dela Question d'Orient et Programme de la Ligue de la Patrie Arabe (Paris, Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1905), 17-22;Husayn Ruhi, Mukhtasar Jughrafiyat Filastin (Jerusalem: L.J.S. Printing Press, 1923), 7, 46-112; TawfiqCanaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (London: Luzac & Co., 1927); on OttomanOrientalist writing on Palestine, see, for instance, See Şirvanlı Ahmet Hamdi Efendi, Usûl-i Coğrafya-yıKebir (Istanbul: Şeyh Yahyanın Matbaası, 1876), 401-2, 410-417. 160modern history described Tiberias’s Arab or Palestinian residents as simply “non-Jews,”and seemed to think their lifestyle choices remained unchanged for centuries. Nothingabout them was even worthy of specification, aside from the fact that they were notJewish.172Was it possible that the second Arab to use the term Palestinian was an Orientalist and aZionist? We already noted that Orientalist views of Palestine were common in the MiddleEast. It’s not well known, but sympathy for Zionism existed on the margins. SomeChristians and Muslims thought it was sensible that Jews might want to establish apresence in Palestine for historical reasons. Yusuf Diya Pasha al-Khalidi, for instance,wrote in an 1898 letter to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France, “who can challenge therights of the Jews on Palestine? Good lord, historically it really is your country.” Al-Khalidi connected the Biblical Israelites to the modern Zionists, thinking it reasonablethat Jews would desire to return, even if he opposed Jewish immigration on the groundsthat the land was already inhabited. Other Arabs made peace with the Zionists based oneither their shared belief in scientific progress or their shared support for decentralizationof the Ottoman Empire, including the prominent political activist Rafiq al-‘Azm. In short,Salim Quba‘yn was an Orientalist, in the Saidian sense, and he probably did harborsympathies for Zionism, at least in 1902.173172 Salim Afandi Qub‘ayn, “Buldan Filastiniyya Yusiffuha Filastini,” al-Jami‘a 3:6 (1902): 404-6. Forbiographical information on Qub‘ayn, see Abu Hanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin, 147-8; then see EdwardSaid, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 8. This was the same Renan attacked by Edward Saidas an “Orthodox Orientalist authority.” Said would have presumably accused Qub‘ayn for believing in anOrient based “more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness,” whatever that issupposed to mean.173 On Yusuf al-Khalidi’s letter, which has been re-quoted by the historian Benny Morris, political scientistAlan Dowty, radio personality Chuck Morse and others. See Neville J. Mandel, The Arabs and ZionismBefore World War I (Berkeley University of California Press 1980), 47-8; for further evidence that Arabs, 161But how did the term spread? The popularity of the magazine al-Jami‘a—where Qub‘aynpublished the piece—can offer a preliminary point of departure. Although exactcirculation figures are not available, similar publications in the land of Sham boastedbetween 1,000-1,500 subscribers. The magazine, based in Alexandria, Egypt, reportedlydoubled sales by 1902 but still could not keep up with demand. “We were forced to rejectmany subscription requests,” its editor, Farah Antun, lamented. Scalability was a problemthen as it is now. “Had we tried to publish responses to all of the questions and letters wereceived, it would have filled the pages of this entire issue.” Antun was probablyexaggerating his success, but the publishing industry was growing at that time in Egypt.It’s possible that hundreds or even thousands of Arabic speakers in Egypt, and smallernumbers in the lands of Sham, read that Qub‘ayn was a Palestinian. It’s also possible theyskipped that article. Perhaps it sparked dinner table conversations, or perhaps not. Wedon’t really know.174such as ‘Isa al-‘Isa, were not initially hostile to Zionism, see Emanuel Beška, From Ambivalence toHostility: The Arabic Newspaper Filasṭīn and Zionism, 1911–1914 (Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press,2016); Samuel Dolbee and Shay Hazkani, ““Impossible is not Ottoman”: Menashe Meirovitch, 'Isa al-'Isa,and Imperial Citizenship in Palestine,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 47 (2015): 241–262; the prominent political activist Rafiq al-‘Azm also published a statement supporting Zionism in 1913in his capacity as head of the Decentralization party in the Ottoman Empire. See Abigail Jacobson, “JewsWriting in Arabic Chapter in Late Ottoman Palestine The Period of Young Turk Rule,” pp.165-182 in LateOttoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (eds.) (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011), 176; Ilyas Zakka, another prominent Arab publisher, accepted subventions from the Zionists.on Ilyas Zakka’s biography, see Ya‘qub Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-‘Arabiyya fi Filastin fil-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani, 1908-1918 (Jerusalem: Matba’at al-Ma’arif, 1974), 51-4.174 al-Jinan (Beirut, 1870-1879) boasted 1,500 subscribers. See Fruma Zachs and Sharon Halevi, “FromDifa‘ al-Nisa’ to Mas’alat al-Nisa’ in Greater Syria: Readers and Writers Debate Women and their Rights,1858-1900,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41(4) (2009), 619); Yusuf al-Dibs’s bi-weeklypaper, al-Najah, printed some 1,000 copies; See Fouad Zouki-Haklany, “Yusuf al-Dibs (1833-1907):Archeveque De Beyrouth, Historien at Homme de Culture,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 61(3-4)(2009): 251; on the letters to al-Jami‘a, see “Ra’a ‘Alim Misr wa-‘Alim Suri,” al-Jami‘a 3: 7(1902): 477;on high demand, see “Musa‘adat al-Qira’ li-Jami‘atihim,” al-Jami‘a 3:9(1902): 648. 162What we can be more certain about is that the Russian seminary acted as a breedingground for a modern Palestinian identity. Iliya Zakka, a third graduate of the Russianseminary, once praised an Egyptian journalist in 1911 for acknowledging thatPalestinians had made important literary contributions but criticized the Egyptianjournalist for failing to mention the Palestinians by name. (Interestingly, Zakka was alsosympathetic to Zionism). Shukri Khalil Suwaydan, a forth graduate of the seminary, usedthe term Palestinian in 1912 in his own book about the history of the Imperial OrthodoxPalestine Society. The Russian Seminary produced almost as many people callingthemselves Palestinian before World War I than most other schools combined.175The Palestinian identity that had formed at the Seminary snowballed as the Qub‘aynarticle inspired a copycat. A few months later, Najib Nassar published an article in thesame magazine with the exact same title: “A Palestinian Describes Palestinian Towns.”Nassar similarly compared his own observations to Ernest Renan’s, reviewing thegeographical positions, ancient inhabitants and modern conditions of Wadi Musa. At onetime, he claimed the town boasted palaces, temples, stone sculpers and a stadium thatcould comfortably seat 4,000 people. But “today, nothing remains save for Bedouin tribeswho have set up permanent camps in the area.” Much like Renan and Qub‘ayn, Nassar175 On Ilya Zakka, see al-Nafir, 14 June 1910. I found this article in the personal files of David Yellin,located at the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Jerusalem. I would like to thank Haim Gerber for pointingthat out to me. For more on him, see Salim Tamari, “Issa al Issa’s Unorthodox Orthodoxy: Banned inJerusalem, Permitted in Jaffa,” Jerusalem Quarterly 59 (2014): 27. Shukri Khalil Suwaydan worked in theoffices of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society in Damascus as a secretary after he graduated, and thenwrote a history of the Society for the benefit of “Syrians and Palestinians,” in his words. See idem, Tarikhal-Jam‘iyya al-Imbaraturiyya al-Urthudhuksiyya al-Filastiniyya, 33; on Suwaydan’s biography, see AbuHanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin, 144. 163believed in the land’s ancient grandeur and modern desolation—a similarly Orientalistview (in the Saidian sense) that nomads are uncivilized.176In short, the Seminary was special because students were instructed to take pride in theirArab heritage, they learned about the history and geography of the land of Palestine andstudied the Biblical scriptures themselves, which took place in the land the teachers werecalling Palestine. They were also separated from their families at a young age and placedside by side other Jaffans, Jerusalemites and Nazarenes in dormitories. This is how Iwould have imagined a Palestinian identity would have come into existence. It was aperfect sandstorm and after the dust had settled the Palestinian people were born. * * *The Americans. It seemed odd that so many of the earliest people to use the termPalestinian studied in Russian schools. What was so special about the Russians? I thinkthe reason is that the Russian Seminary was located in Nazareth, and thus attractedstudents from the area called Palestine, which is why they started calling themselvesPalestinians. Graduates of similar schools like ‘Ayn al-Waraqa, al-Ghazir or the Syrian176 Najib Nassar, “Buldan Filastiniyya Yusifuha Filastini,” al-Jami‘a 3(9) (1902): 612-5. Interestingly,Najib Nassar was described as Lebanese in a later issue. See Najib Nassar, “Bayt al-Maqdis,” al-Jami‘a 4(1903): 160. When Nassar founded his own newspaper al-Karmil a few years later in 1908—he took aliking to the term. He wrote in 1911, for instance, that “we, your Palestinian brothers, share with you allyour difficulties, so why don’t you, at least, feel with us a little the disasters raining on us and on ourcountry,” cited in Issam Nassar, “Reflections on Writing the History of Palestinian Identity,” Palestine-Israel Journal 8(4)/9(1) (2001-2002). In a separate article, he explained that “young Palestinians” inIstanbul supported holding an anti-Zionist congress. See Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism, 173. He alsopublished a “General Summons to Palestinians” on 7 July 1914 al-Karmil. See ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Kayyali,Palestine: A Modern History (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 35. 164Protestant College came from other parts of Syria, and tended to embrace the termSyrian. The Russian school was not all that special, and graduates from many othermissionary and state schools were introduced to Palestine the same way.Many of those other schools were founded by Americans. Although Americanmissionaries first reached Ottoman Beirut and Lebanon in the 1820s, their activities werelimited to distributing Bibles, preaching in private and paying recruits handsome salariesto teach them local languages and translate Protestant polemics into Arabic. At first, theywere not influential and their followers were deemed heretics. Some of them were evenexcommunicated, such as As‘ad Shidyaq, who was subjected to what the MaronitePatriarch called “torture commensurate with the totality of his ruinous evil.” He wasbrutally murdered, described by an American sympathizer as “the first martyr of theProtestant Mission in Syria.”177From the 1830s onwards, the American Protestant mission in Syria expanded. Theyrecruited more native helpers and built more schools, growing from 40 students in the1830s to 240 by the early 1840s. They went from heretics to industry leaders in a fewdecades. They did it by teaching not just catechism, theology and prayer—but alsoforeign languages, mathematics, geography and history. By the 1870s, American177 On As‘ad Shidyaq’s handsome salary of hundred piastes per month, see Ussama Makdisi, Artillery ofHeaven American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 2008), 105; on the torture, see ibid, 127; on his martyrdom, see Richter, A History ofProtestant Missions, 189; for more on the American mission, see Abdul Latif Tibawi, American Interests inSyria: 1800-1901: A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966);Adnan Abu Ghazaleh, American Missions in Syria: A Study of American Missionary Contribution to ArabNationalism in 19th Century Syria (Brattleboro: Amana Books, 1990); Christine Beth Lindner,“Negotiating the Field: American Protestant Missionaries in Ottoman Syria, 1823 to 1860,” (Ph.DDissertation, University of Edenborough, 2009). 165missionaries had published a small library of textbooks and operated dozens of schools,including the SPC, the most prestigious school in the region, today known as theAmerican University of Beirut (AUB).178Let’s zoom in on how the American missionaries popularized the name Palestine andmade the place seem real to people. They taught extensively about the history andgeography of the Bible in class, including the history and geography of Palestine. In1833, they introduced their first lesson on the “History of the Land of Palestine” into theclassroom:1) When did the Jews come to and conquer the Land of Palestine?2) How would you characterize Israelite rule?3) When was David appointed king?4) Who succeeded him after his death?5) Who ruled the kingdom after that?6) What is known about the history of the land of Palestine regarding the destruction ofJerusalem?179To summarize the situation with an emphasis on its peculiarities: the first modern Arabiclesson about the land of Palestine dealt primarily with the ancient Israelites; it wasprobably written by a Maronite convert to Protestantism from Mount Lebanon—AhmadFaris al-Shidyaq; it was printed in Malta under American patronage and imported into a178 On the American commission report, see Harvey Newcomb, Cyclopedia of Missions (New York: C.Scribner, 1854), 737; on the expansion of the mission, see Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 156; Butrus Labki,“Tatawwar Mu’assasat al-Ta‘lim fi Lubnan khilal al-Qarn al-Akhir min al-Hukm al-‘Uthmani,” pp. 463-492 in al-Haya al-Fikriyya fi al-Wilayat al-‘Arabiyya ithna al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani, ‘Abd al-Jalil al-Tamami(ed.) (Zaghwa, Tunisia: Markaz al-Dirasat wa-l-Buhuth al-‘Uthmaniyya wa-l-Muriskiyya wa-l-Tawthiqwa-l-Ma‘lumat, 1990).179 On the history lesson, see n.a., Kitab Tawarikh al-Mukhtasar Yunbi ‘an Mamlik wa Bilad ‘Adida (Malta:n.p., 1833), 19-22. Palestine is the standard name of the region in the book, and is used in other lessons onthe Arabs and Phoenicia (ibid, 16, 38). The Americans published other textbooks dealing with Palestine aswell, including n.a., Kitab al-Khulasa al-Safiyya fi Usul al-Jughrafiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1883[1858]), 69-85. 166land controlled by the Albanian ruler of Egypt who had wrest the country away from itserstwhile Ottoman Turkish heirs in Istanbul.The Americans also used maps of Palestine to teach its history and geography. First, theyhung maps of Palestine in their offices where their native tutors taught them Arabic.Their first world atlas, published in the 1830s, included a dozen some maps of Europeand the Middle East. They printed another atlas probably in the 1850s that included oneof the most beautiful 19th century maps of Palestine (see figure 9). Americanmissionaries like Simeon Calhoun and George E. Post also published maps of the regionin their textbooks as well. For the first time, an entire generation of Arab youth saw theexact same map of Palestine. The era of standardization had begun.180180 On the map of Palestine hung in the offices, see Isaac Bird, “Missionary Journal from January 1824Comprehending a tour to Jerusalem etc.,” Folder 23, Box 2: Journal 1824 Jan-May, MS 82, pg. 74, IsaacBird Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University New Haven, CT; I am indebted to Christine B. Lindner forsharing this reference with me; for the first printing, see F. de Brocktorff, Atlas, Ay Majmu‘ Kharitat Rasmal-Ard (Malta: American Press, 1835); on the later edition, see Edward Aiken, Atlas, Ay Majmu‘ Kharitat(New York: Appleton, 1850s?); the atlas is mentioned by Tibawi [American Interests, 65] as well.Christine B. Lindner suspects that Edward Aiken died in 1858 or at least left the mission field, and thus themap probably dates to sometime before then. 167 Figure 9. A map of Palestine, or Filastin, used in American missionary schools in the mid-19th century.181Palestine was no longer just another fly on the lexical wall of geography; it was a big flyon the wall which circulated beyond the confines of school classrooms. In one case, themissionary Jonas King distributed pamphlets to parents, friends and community membersin what he called “Syria and Palestine” explaining why he could not be Catholic. Theletter was widely read and elicited responses from concerned priests and local notables.182181 I zoomed in on the Palestine section of the map. For the original, see Zachary J. Foster, “The MostBeautiful 19th Century Arabic Maps of Syria and Palestine,” midafternoonmap.com, 29 August 2015(goo.gl/Nv4R9S).182 Jonas King asked As‘ad Shidyaq to translate his farewell pamphlet to his friends “in Palestine andSyria,” or Filastin wa Suriya, in Shidyaq’s translation. The letter was also translated into Armenian byanother early convert, the Armenian Bishop, Dionysius Carabet (ak.a. Garabed Dionysius). Both theArmenian Patriarch Church in Istanbul and the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Butrus Abu Kara,Shidyaq’s erstwhile ecclesiastic patron responded. On the original translation delivered to the Maronites,see Wada’ Yunus Kin ila Ahbabihi fi Filastin wa Suriya (April 1825), Archives of the Maronite Patriarchate(Bkirki, Lebanon) Drawer Yusuf Hbeich, 24/15(2) (Bkerké Archives); Christine B. Lindner pointed outthat another copy can be found in the library of the Near East Theological Seminary (NEST); for anEnglish translation, see Jonas King, The Oriental Church and the Latin (New York: John A. Gray & Green,1865); see also Tibawi, American Interests, 33, 35-6; Gregory M. Wortabet, Syria and the Syrians; or,Turkey in the Dependencies (London, J. Madden, 1856), 53; Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 103-5; on theArmenian response, see Harrison Gray Otis Dwight, Christianity Revived in the East; or, A Narrative of theWork of God among the Armenians of Turkey (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1850), 11-12. 168Let’s get to know a couple of missionaries who introduced Palestine’s history andgeography to a generation of Arab youth. Cornelius Van Dyck (d.1895) fascinated peoplewith his ability to recite from memory Arabic poetry, proverbs, history and science. Hewrote and taught in Arabic, even translating parts of the Bible into Arabic with the helpof Butrus al-Bustani, his erstwhile roommate and lifelong friend and mentor. Once, agroup of armed Druze abruptly approached Van Dyck on a sojourn around Lebanon andmistook him for a native Christian, Dyck’s protests notwithstanding. “A pretty story,” but“we know that no foreigner ever spoke Arabic as you do.” Van Dyck may have been“American by birth, but he was Syrian by his own merit,” as his student biographerexplained.183Van Dyck used his own geography textbook to teach about Palestine. Students studiedfrom that book for decades—it was reprinted in 1860, 1870 and 1886. The bookdiscussed the mountains, rivers, lakes and ancient history of Palestine, focused on the183 When he first reached the Middle East, Van Dyck spent his first forty days in Beirut in quarantinememorizing Arabic words. A learned Muslim Shaykh of Al Azhar University reportedly told Van Dyck’sdaughter that “your father taught me, by his published writings, that it is possible to write good Arabic,correct in grammar and in idiom, in a style so simple and so clear as to be easily understood by anintelligent reader, whether learned or unlearned.” See Stephen B. Penrose, That They May Have Life: TheStory of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941 (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1941), 36–7. In addition to Arabic, Van Dyck also knew Latin, Greek, Syriac and was even offered a professorship toteach Hebrew in New York, which he declined. Van Dyck also defended the native teachers of the SyrianProtestant College when they faced discrimination by its white American leadership. See “al-Duktur VanDyck,” al-Hilal 4(1895-6): 3-8; Iskandar Niqula al-Barudi, Hayat Kurniliyus Van Dayk (Ba‘abda, Lebanon:al-Matba‘a al-‘Uthmaniyya, 1900), jim-8; Jurji Zaydan, Kitab Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya (Cairo:Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1911), IV, 218-9; Lutfi M. Sa‘di, George Sarton and W. T. Van Dyck, “Al-HakîmCornelius Van Alen Van Dyck (1818-1895),” ISIS 27(1) (1937): 24-45; Tibawi, American Interests, 115. 169Bible, the children of Israel, and its ancient past. Interestingly, we find many similardescriptions of Palestine’s geography published in Arabic in the subsequent decades.184George E. Post, another American educator, wrote multiple books in Arabic dealing withPalestine, including his Botanical Geography of Syria and Palestine and A Dictionary ofthe Bible in which he surveyed the Biblical history, topography, geology, botany anddemography of Palestine. Post’s work was read at the Russian Seminary in Nazareth, asnoted above, discussed in the most popular Arabic magazines of the era, including al-Muqtataf and al-Hilal, and was cited extensively by the earliest Arabic book published onthe politics of the Palestine issue in 1919—John S. Salah’s Palestine and its Renewal.Another American missionary, Simeon Calhoun, wrote and taught about Palestine andthe Bible in Arabic in the 1860s and 1870s. The American Harvey Porter also publishedin Arabic on the civilizations of the ancient Near East, covering Palestine too. Americanmissionaries learned Arabic, taught and published in Arabic and offered a premier184 Van Dyck wrote that the Land of Sham “used to be divided into two parts, Syria and Palestine, but thename Syria was applied to both after they were incorporated into the Roman Empire.” Cornelius Van Dyck,Kitab al-Mir’a al-Wadiyya fi al-Kura al-Ardiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1852), 96, 105. Nu‘man Qasatli [al-Rawdaal-Ghanna’ fi Dimashq al-Fahya’ (Beirut, 1879; rpt., Dar al-Ra’id al-‘Arabi, 1980), 3-4] wrote similarly inhis history of Damascus that “the earliest people called it Syria and divided it into two parts, Syria andPalestine.” Shahin Makariyus [Hasr al-Litham ‘an Nakbat al-Sham (Misr: n.p., 1890), 4] noted in 1890 thatancient scholars divided this land into two parts: Syria and Palestine. Palestine was “the part where theIsraelites settled and ruled over most of it during the times of Moses and his successor, Yehoshua Bin Nun.The land was known by these two names, i.e. Suriya and Filastin, until the Romans controlled it.” FadlAllah Abu Halqa [Mukhtasar fi al-Jughrafiya (Beirut: Matba‘at Jarida, 1890), 25] likewise explained in hisgeography book that “today, the northern part of Bar al-Sham is called Syria and its southern part,Palestine.” For biographical details on Abu Halqa, see Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, A Taste for Home: TheModern Middle Class in Ottoman Beirut (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), chapter 3. ChristineB. Lindner believes this book might have been co-written with Butrus al-Bustani (recall that Van Dycklived in the same bedroom with al-Bustani—his lifelong friend and mentor). For more on the book, seeTibawi, American Interests, 56-7; on his relationship with students, see “The Dawn in Syria,” TheChristian Register 98(9) (1919): 205. 170education, bringing the name Palestine, maps of it and stories about its history andgeography to a generation of Arab youth.185The results were predictable enough. Students read about Palestine’s history, studied withmaps of its sacred geography and heard it mentioned at lunch. Graduates of Americanschools became prominent writers, publishers and intellectuals. Many used the word intheir day to day speech and described the land as Palestine in their works. Many wrote185 George E. Post mastered Arabic by attaching Arabic words to his office walls so he would see them“whichever way he turned.” He impressed folks with his signature Tripoli dialect and mastery of classicalArabic. He launched the Syrian Protestant Medical College in 1867 which he led for 41 years, earning areputation for resilience in the classroom. One of his favorite expressions was istasfaret (“You are zero”)an Arabic term he invented and shouted out whenever his students answer questions incorrectly in class. Onhis office decorations, see Jurji Zaydan, “Duktur Jurj Bust [George Post]” al-Hilal 18:4(1910): 223; on hisbiography, see Ya‘qub Sarruf, “al-Duktur Jurj Bust,” pp.77-80 and “The Bust of Dr. George Edward Post,”pp. 146-150 in al-Mu’assisun al-Ruwwad Lil-Jam‘ia al-Amirkiyya fi Bayrut – The Founding Fathers of theAmerican University of Beirut, Ghada Yusuf Khoury (ed.) (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1992);Jurji Zaydan, Mashahir al-Sharq fi al-Qarn al-Tasi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1911), II, 271-2;Lutfi M Sa‘di, “The Life and Works of George Edward Post,” ISIS 28 (1938): 385-417; on istasfaret, seeSarruf, “al-Duktur Jurj Bust,” 78; For his survey of the Bible, see George E. Post, Qamus al-Kitab al-Muqaddas (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Amrikiyya, 1901), 170-184. For its reviews, see Jurji Zaydan, Mashahiral-Sharq fi al-Qarn al-Tasi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1911), II, 271-2; “Qamus Kitab al-Muqaddas,” al-Hilal 4 (1895-6): 758-9; George E. Post also published his Nabat Suriya wa-Filastin wa-al-Qatr al-Misri wa-Bawadiha (Beirut, n.p., 1884)], also publicized in the local press and used at the SyrianProtestant College. See George E. Post, “al-Mujallad al-Awwal min Kitab Nabat Suriya wa-Filastin wa-al-Qatr al-Misri wa-Bawadiha,” al-Muqtataf 8(1883): 565; “Aqalim Suriya wa-Filastin al-Nabatiyya,” al-Muqtataf 8(1883): 417; Salah [Filastin wa-Tajdid, 15, 29-30, 118] also cites him; Simeon Calhoun [KitabIttifaq al-Bashirin wa-l-Dalil al-Mustarshidin (Beirut: n.p., 1876), 5, 8, 21, 98; and idem, Kitab Murshidal-Talibin ila al-Kitab al-Muqaddas al-Thamin, (Beirut: n.p., 1869), 16, 19, 46-7, 217, 565] wrote at leastthree textbooks for use in the classroom: an 1869 history book about the New and Old Testaments, an 1876book on the Gospels, and a geography book on “Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine full of apt quotesin poetry and prose from the old Arab geographers and travelers” that “the people delight in it and quote itwith admiration ” (the latter is now lost). For details, see Henry Harris Jessup, Fifty-three Years in Syria(New York, Chicago, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1910), 107; on Calhoun’s biography, see Peter J.Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1994), 164-74; John Haskell Hewitt, Williams College and Foreign Missions: Biographical Sketchesof Williams College Men (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1914), 167-9; Jessup, Fifty-three years in Syria, 23, 97-114; Harvey Porter [al-Nahj al-Qawim fi al-Tarikh al-Qadim (Beirut: n.p., 1884)] mentions Palestinedozens of times. On his biography, see “The Classes,” Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly 12(1922): 183-6;“Literature: They Know Turkey,” The Cristian Register 14 (30 January 1919): 110. 171extensively about Palestine’s history and geography in the last few decades of the 19thcentury.186Ya‘qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, both graduates of and later teachers in the Americanschools, bear special mention. They founded and edited the most popular Arabicmagazine of its era, al-Muqtataf, distributed it widely around the Arab world andpublished dozens of articles about Palestine in it from the 1870s onwards. Theyfrequently review of British, French, German and American activities in Palestine, asthey called it, and books, maps, reports, surveys, findings and archeological researchesabout Palestine. Although it’s difficult to know how many people read these articles onPalestine, at least one reader sent a letter to the magazine requesting the completereference to a book on Palestine mentioned in passing but not properly cited. If you wereone of the many thousands of al-Muqtataf readers, and if you actually read the magazine,you knew a lot about Palestine’s ancient and modern history, its prospects for economicdevelopment as well as its geology and topography.187186 On graduates who wrote about Palestine, see, for instance, Khalil Sarkis, Kitab Urshalim, ayy al-Qudsal-Sharif (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Ma‘arif, 1874), 2, 24, 39, 167-8, 173, 176, 185; on his background, see AmiAyalon, “Private Publishing in the Nahda” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40(4) (2008): 564-6; See also George Zaydan’s popular magazine, al-Hilal: “al-Athar al-Misriyya wa-Isti‘bad al-Isra’iliyyin,”al-Hilal 4 (1895-6): 637-9; “al-Hilal fi Suriya wa Filastin wa-l-‘Iraq,” al-Hilal 6(1898): 784; “Filastin:Tarikhuha, wa-Atharuha,” al-Hilal 22 (1913): 43-48; on Zaydan’s biography, see Thomas Philipp, “TheRole of Jurjī Zaidān in the Intellectual Development of the Arab Nahda from the Beginning of the BritishOccupation of Egypt to the Outbreak of World War I,” (Ph.D Dissertation, UCLA, 1971), 13-76; See alsoAmin Shumayyil’s study of the Eastern Question. Idem, Kitab al-Wafi fi al-Mas’ala al-Sharqiyya wa-Muta'alliqatuha (Alexandria: Maba‘at al-Ahram, 1879), 518, 526-7, 69, 71-2, 21, 23, 25, 51; onShumayyil’s biography, see Yusuf Assaf, Dalil Misr (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-‘Umumiyya, 1890), 340-3.187 On its popularity, see Ami Ayalon, “Modern Texts and Their Readers in Late Ottoman Palestine,”Middle Eastern Studies 38(2002): 17-40; on the letter from the reader, see (“al-Jawab Unwanuhu: BiblicalResearches in Palestine, John Murry,” al-Muqtataf (16)(1892): 640; they reported about the British interestin building a Palestine Channel from the Dead Sea to Red Sea [“Tar‘at Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 8(1883): 165]and about a Germans survey of East Jordan in Palestine [“al-Alman fi Filastin” al-Muqtataf 26 (1901):186]; they quoted from the reports of British Console in Jerusalem, Mr. Dickson, on Commerce in Palestine[“Tijarat Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 16(1892): 787; “Tijarat Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 27 (1902): 510-11]; theyreviewed a Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) map [al-Muqtataf, “Kharitat Filastin,” 1878 (3): 154], 172French. French missionaries also made Palestine seem real to people. Although Frenchmissionaries had reached the lands of Sham as early as the 17th century, they did notexpand rapidly until the mid-late 19th century. By World War I, French Jesuits hadenrolled some 100,000 students in total and established 300-500 schools around theregion—mostly in what is today Syria and Lebanon. At their flagship institution, theGhazir Seminary, which later became the University of Saint-Joseph, they taughtmanners, theology, arithmetic, Latin, Greek, Italian, Arabic, French and Turkish, as wellas history, literature and geography. Although it’s unclear if Palestine was ever a focus,French missionaries clearly called the place Palestine, based on its popularity in theFrancophone world, and they did teach Biblical history and geography, which dealt withPalestine as well.188Edward Hull’s Survey of Western Palestine [“Julujiyyat Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 8(1883): 446]; MousierBirluti’s In the Wilderness and Palestine [“La Taghayyur fi Filastin,” Al-Muqtataf 19(1895): 236]; theytranslated selections from Cook’s Tourist's Handbook for Palestine and Syria [“Jun Kuk,” al-Muqtataf 23(1899): 244-7] and Baedeker’s Handbook for Travelers to Syria and Palestine [“Isti‘mar al-Suriyyin baynal-‘Ahdayn,” al-Muqtataf 50(6)(1917): 542]; they reviewed Salvatori Mitutshi’s work on the geology ofPalestine [“Filastin Qabl ‘Asar al-Tarikh,” al-Muqtataf 1911(38): 127-131]; Flinders Petrie’s findings onPalestine [“Khuruj Bnay Isra’il wa-‘Addaduhum,” al-Muqtataf 31(1906): 537-41]; Conder’s Survey ofEastern Palestine [“Takhtit Sharqi Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 6(1881): 272] and Stuart McAlister excavationsin Palestine [“athar Filastin” al-Muqtataf 33(1908): 678-680; “Madafin Murisha,” al-Muqtataf 35(1909):767-770; “Rujma fi Filastin” al-Muqtataf 25(1900): 274-5); “al-Naqb ‘an Athar Filastin al-Muqtataf 31(1906): 614]; for further discussions on Palestine, see “Khara’ib al-Sham,” al-Muqtataf (1899):893-7; al-Asrab fi Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 30 (1905): 1035-6; “Musa wa-Far‘un wa-bnu Isra’il,” al-Muqtataf11 (1886-7): 709; “Athar Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 42 (1913): 282-87; “al-Jins al-Shami al-Abyad,” al-Muqtataf 13 (1888): 269-70.188 On the French school estimates, see Mutlu, Osmanlı Devleti’nde Misyoner Okulları, 155-163, 170-192,n.a., Les Jesuites en Syrie, 1831-1931:Université Saint-Joseph (Paris: Éditions Dillen 1931), V, 11; RafaelHerzstein, “Les Phases de l’Évolution de l’Université Saint-Joseph à Beyrouth: Les Premières Décennies(1875–1914),” Historical Studies in Education 24(1) (2012): 22; Mathew Burrows, “Mission Civilisatrice’:French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914,” The Historical Journal 29:1(1986): 109-135;Rafael Herzstein, “Saint-Joseph University of Beirut: An Enclave of the French-Speaking Communities inthe Levant, 1875–1914,” Itinerario 32(2) (2008): 70; al-Muqtabas estimated some 90,000 students werestudying French in the Ottoman Empire in 1908. See “Madaris Ajnabiyya,” al-Muqtabas 2 (1908): 672. 173Having learned about Palestine in class as kids, many graduates of French missionaryschools published about Palestine. Rashid al-Shartuni translated Pierre Martin’s work onSyria from French to Arabic in 1899. Afram al-Dirani included a chapter on thegeography of Palestine in a book he translated in 1903. And Louis Cheikho wroteextensively about Palestine as well in his renowned scholarly journal, al-Mashriq fromthe late 19th century onwards.189Germans. German missionaries also made Palestine seem real to people. Although muchsmaller than the French enterprise, it may have been more important for Palestine’s sakesince its centerpiece was the Syrian Orphanage in Jerusalem. Its school opened in 1860with only 9 students, but managed to expand to 40 students by the end of the year. Theirenrollment figures continued to grow with 70 by 1876 and 200 by 1898. By the early20th century, 1200 students had studied Biblical and Church history, German, Arabic,math, song, Biblical geography, biology, and art at the Orphanage. Students also went ontours to holy places in and around Jerusalem and hailed from around the Land of Sham,as well as Anatolia and Armenia. Tawfiq Canaan and Stephan Hanna Stephan bothgraduated from the Syrian Orphanage and both matured into fine Orientalists, in the189 See Pierre Martin, Rashid al-Khuri al-Shartuni (trans.), Tarikh Lubnan (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Aba’ al-Yisu‘iyyin, 1889), 10, 20, 137, 162, 177, 194, 286, 297, 306-7, 339, 402, 410, 415, 420, 447, 487, 499,500; chapter 8: 13, 20, 33, 50, 53, 73, 117; on Shartuni’s biography, see Robert Bell Campbell, “TheArabic Journal, al-Mashriq: Its Beginnings and First Twenty-five Years under the Editorship of Père LouisCheikho, S.J.” (Ph.D Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1978), 107; Abdulrazzak Patel, The ArabNahḍah: The Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,2013), 114-7, 209; then see Afram Dirani (a.k.a Dayrani) al-Nahj al-Qawim fi Tarikh Shu‘ub al-Sharq al-Qadim (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1903), 61-83; For Cheikho reviewed Arcangelo Ghisleri’s TestoAtlante di Geografia Sacra, for instance, an atlas of sacred geography; he reported about Dr. FrederickJones Bliss’s various archeological discoveries in Palestine (“‘Adiyyat Suriyya,” al-Mashriq 4 (1904): 180;he also reviewed l’Abbe Th. Vazeuz’s Abrege de Geographie: De la Palestine et de la Syrie (“Matbu‘atSharqiyya Jadida,” al-Mashriq (Beirut: 1899): 140-1) and Adriaan Reelant’s Palestine Illustrated(Palaestina Illustrata) (“Shahadat ‘Arabiyya fi Mazarat al-Filastiniyya,” al-Mashriq 5(11)(1902): 487). 174Saidian sense of the word, much like Qub‘ayn and Nassar had. Much like them, Canaanand Stephan were also early adopters of the term Palestinian and outspoken activists forthe Palestine cause in the 1920s and 1930s.190British. British missionaries brought Palestine to Arab youth as well. They foundeddozens of schools in Jerusalem, Haifa, Nablus, Nazareth and elsewhere in the 19th andearly 20th centuries. Under the auspices of the Christian Missionary Society (CMS), theycounted some 45 schools by the mid-1880s. One of them, the St. George’s School inJerusalem, grew rapidly from 15 in 1899 to 43 in 1900 and 72 in 1902. The schoolbranded itself as modern and secular, teaching history, math, science, English andFrench. They also taught geography with maps like this one:190 See Roland Löffler, “The Metamorphosis of a Pietistic Missionary and Educational Institution into aSocial Services Enterprise: The Case of the Syrian Orphanage (1860–1945)” pp. 151-174 in New Faith inAncient Lands Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentienth Centuries,Heleen Murre-van den Berg (ed.) (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006), 157; on discussions of Palestine and thePalestinians in their works, see Stephan Hanna Stephan, Modern Palestinian Parallels to the Song of Songs(Jerusalem: Palestine Oriental Society, 1923); Tawfiq Canaan, The Palestinian Arab House: ItsArchitecture and Folklore (Jerusalem: Syrian Orphanage Press, 1933), 23, 44, 75, 82, 90; Tawfiq Canaan,Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (London: Luzac & Co., 1927), v, vi, 4, 93, 152, 165,171, 173, 186, 226. 175 Figure 10. “A Natural Map of Modern Palestine,” in an atlas likely used in missionary schools.191Incidentally, many of the earliest self-described Palestinians and its most prominentprotagonists in the 1920s and 1930s graduated from St. George or other CMS schoolsaround the region, including Wasif Jawhariyya, Saliba Juzi, Sharif Nashashibi, Fu’adNashashibi, Najib Bawarshi, Khalil al-Sakakini, Imil Ghuri, Wasfi ‘Anabtawi, NabihAmin Faris, ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghouthi, Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, Bulus Shihada, and191 “Kharita Tabi‘iyya li-Filastin al-Haditha,” in n.a., Atlas al-Kitab al-Muqaddas (Edinburgh and London-W. & A.K. Johnston, n.d.), 12. 176Ibrahim Tuqan, while Izzat Tannous and Musa Nasir graduated from the CMS school inNablus.192Maronites. Why did so many Christian Arabs send their kids to foreign schools ratherthan their own Maronite or Orthodox Churches? The Maronite churches of the east hadbeen drawn closer to their European (Catholic) co-religionists as early as the 16thcentury, when the Pope established the Maronite College in Rome in 1584. Over the nexttwo centuries, some 280 Maronites from Aleppo, Hasroun, ‘Aqura, Basloukit, Ehden andelsewhere traveled to Rome to study at the College. Most left home as small children andspent the better part of a decade in Europe. They learned Latin, Syriac, Italian, Arabic,philosophy, and theology. Yusuf Istifan (d. 1793), who graduated from the MaroniteCollege in Rome, started his own college—‘Ayn Waraqa in 1789 in Lebanon which heintended to replace the college in Rome as the training ground for Maronite clergy. Theschool taught religion, logic, philosophy, theology, Biblical exegesis, rhetoric, preaching,Arabic, Syriac, Italian, Latin and Greek.193192 On the expansion of the British schools, see Inger Marie Okkenhaug, The Quality of Heroic living, ofHigh Endeavour and Adventure: Anglican Mission, Women, and Education in Palestine, 1888-1948(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 3; on the enrollment numbers, see Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Ingvild Flaskerud(eds.), Gender, Religion and Change in the Middle East: Two Hundred Years of History (Oxford, England;New York, N.Y.: Berg, 2005), 48-9; on the curriculum, see ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barguthi, al-Marahil (Beirut:al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiyya lil-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2001), 103-105; on the map, see n.a. Atlas al-Kitab al-Muqaddas; for the list of students, see Abu Hanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin, 17; Izzat Tannous, ThePalestinians: A Detailed Documented Eyewitness History of Palestine Under the Mandate (New York :I.G.T. Co., 1988), 8-13; on Khalil al-Sakakini’s early usage of the term, see his 1918-1921 diary: Khalil al-Sakakini, Akram Musallam (ed.), Yawmiyyat Khalil al-Sakakini: Yawmiyyat, Rasa'il, Ta’amalat, 1919-1922 (Ramallah: Markaz Khalil al-Sakakini al-Thaqafi: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Muqaddasiyya, 2010), 41)and his 1925 collection of his essays about Palestinian politics, Zionism and the British Mandate (Khalil al-Sakakini, Filastin Ba‘d al-Harb al-Kubra (Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1925), 16, 34, 35, 38); onBarghouthi’s early usage of the term in 1923 see, ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghuthi and Khalil Totah, TarikhFilastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1923), 36, 230.193 On the Maronite College in Rome, see Gemayel Nasser, Les Échanges Culturels entre les Maronites etl'Europe (Beirut: Impr. Gemayel, 1984), 95-137; Khater Akram Fouad, Embracing the Divine: Passion andPolitics in the Christian Middle East (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 184-5; Istifandeclared in a letter from Bkirki sent on 29 June 1772 that every village, land and town “in Phonecia, 177Many of ‘Ayn Waraqa’s graduates later became prominent intellectuals, includingNicholas Murad, Yusuf Dibs and Butrus al-Bustani. They also called the place Palestineand wrote about its people, history and geography. Bustani, for instance, wrote aboutPalestine frequently in his own journal, al-Jinan, during the 1870s, in one case citingAdriaan Reelant’s classic The Land of Palestine Illustrated (in Latin). Dibs wrote a bookcalled A History of Syria in the 1890s which included extensive discussions of Palestineas well. From Murad’s writing, it seems he called the place Palestine too.194Greek Orthodox. Most Christian Arabs in the lands of Sham were Orthodox, though, notMaronites. By the early 20th century, the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem operatedsome 65 boy schools and 13 girl schools in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Salt, Haifa, Karak,Palestine or Syria,” the home of the Maronites, had a devoted member of the confraternity. This descriptionsounded more Italian or Latin than Arab, at least for the 1770s, as few Arabs called Lebanon Phoenicia orPalestine Filastin in the 1770s. But Istifan spent many years in Italy, where the terms Phoenicia andPalestine were more popular. Having said this, Istifan rarely mentions Palestine in his correspondenceswith other Maronite priests and his counterparts in Rome. Istifan knew about Palestine even though heusually called the region the East (al-Mashraq, al-Sharq or the Land of Sham); for his biography, which isequally a compendium of documents and letters found in the Bkirke archives that he himself wrote, seeBulus ‘Abbud al-Ghustawi (Paul Abboud Gostaoui), Basa’ir al-Zaman fi Tarikh al-‘Allama al-BatriyarkYusuf Istifan (Beirut: Matba‘at Sabra, 1911); for a shorter biography, see Yusuf Dibs, Tarikh al-Mawarina:al-Jami‘ al-Mufassal fi Tarikh al-Mawarina (Beirut: n.p., 1979 [Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-‘Umumiyya al-Kathulikiyya, 1905], 446-58; on the letter mentioning Palestine, see Bernard Heyberger, Hindiyya, Mysticand Criminal, 1720-1798: A Political and Religious Crisis (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2013), 125,footnote 28; on ‘Ayn al-Waraqa, see al-Ghustawi, Basa’ir al-Zaman, 219-233; Dibs, Tarikh al-Mawarina,516-7; Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 66; Maqdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 77-9; Jurji Zaydan, TarajimMashahir al-Sharq (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, 1969), II, 303-4.194 On Murad’s usage of the term Palestine, see Nicolas Murad, Notice Historique sur l’Origine de laNation Maronite; Nabdha Tarikhiya fi Asl al-Umma al-Maruniyya. (Paris- Librairie d’Adrien Le Clere,1844), 16; on Murad’s biography, see Yusuf Hamid Mu’awwad and Antuwan al-Qawwal (eds.), NiqulaMurad, Nubdha Tarikhiyya fi Asl al-Umma al-Maruniyya (Beiut: n.p., 2007), 19-47; on Yusuf Dibs’sstories about Palestine, see Kitab Tarikh Suriya (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-‘Umumiyya, 1893) e.g., I, 3, 97,151-8, 170, 203, 257, 264-6, 284, 301, 311]; for his biography, see Zouki-Haklany, “Yusuf al-Dibs (1833-1907)”; on al-Bustani’s discussion of Reelant, see Butrus al-Bustani, A‘mal al-Jam‘iyya al-Suriyya (Beirit:n.p., 1852), 65; for further stories about Palestine, see “al-Isra’iliyyun,” al-Jinan 3 (1872): 328; “QanatFilastinal-Bahriyya” al-Jinan 14(1888): 493; “Finiqiyya,” al-Jinan (1) 1870: 373-6; “Khitab fi Tarikh wa-l-Jughrafiya” al-Jinan (4) (1873): 10; “al-Huyam fi Futuh al-Sham,” al-Jinan (5) (1874): 173-9; 606. 178Ramallah, Jifna, Birzeit, Tayibe, Fuheis, Ajlun, Beit Jala Irbid, Nablus, Beit Sahur, KafrKanna and elsewhere. But their Arab Orthodox congregants flocked to the foreignschools, in part, because the church’s Greek clergy did not allow Arabs to enter the ranksof priesthood—or the classes that prepared students for it. Even the lower classes weredominated by Greeks: an Orthodox classroom in 1912 might have 4 times as many Greekstudents as Arab students. So Arab Christians went elsewhere for an education and foundit at the French, American, Russian, British and German missionary schools. The Greeksalso administred all Church affairs, including its extensive land holdings. This pushedmany late 19th and early 20th century Arabs to abandon the Orthodox churchaltogether.195As early as the 1850s, the Church tried to improve education for its Arab congregants.The Greek Patriarch Cyril commissioned the Damascene priest Jurji al-Khuri SbiridunSarruf in 1855 to translate two elementary school textbooks from Greek to Arabic on theOld and New Testaments. In 1860, Mikha’il bin Mitraki wrote a teaching manual inArabic, an Ancient and Modern History, which dealt extensively with Palestine as well.Tawfiq Farah wrote a geography book in 1913 for use in the Orthodox schools that195 On the locations of the Orthodox schools, see Filastin 12 June 1912. For a detailed treatment of thedisputes between the Greek clergy and the Arab laity, see Khalil Ibrahim Qazaqiya, Tarikh al-Kanisa al-Rasuliyya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Muqtataf wa-l-Muqattam, 1924), 175-252; Bracy, Building Palestine, 30-45;Konstantinos Papastathis and Ruth Kark, “Orthodox Communal Politics in Palestine after the Young TurkRevolution (1908-1910),” Jerusalem Quarterly 56/57 (2013/2014): 118-139; Salim Tamari, “Issa al Issa’sUnorthodox Orthodoxy: Banned in Jerusalem, Permitted in Jaffa,” Jerusalem Quarterly 59 (2014): 20, 26;Laura Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine (Austin: University of Texas Press,2011), ch. 3; on the enrollment figures for the main Arabic school in Jerusalem, see Filastin 2 October1912; see also Theodore Edward Dowling, The Orthodox Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem (London: 1913),86; on the Greek Orthodox Russian rivalry, see Hopwood, The Russian Presence, 37-40, 51-2, 101, 113. 179surveyed Ottoman political geography, as it was necessary for students to gain a betterunderstanding of “Palestine and Syria.”196In 1904, Sbiridun Sarruf published The Geography of Palestine bilingually in Greek andArabic. It was geared towards third-grade students of the Greek Orthodox schools andexplained that Palestine was the land settled by the twelve tribes of Israel; it was home toprophets like Joshua and Saul who spoke before it’s mountains; to Jacob’s well andSolomon’s pools; and to the Phoenicians, ancient Assyrians and Israelites. Palestinestretched from the Galilee in the north to the southern Judaean mountains in the south,and to the mountains on the Eastern side of the Jordan River on the East. To emphasizethe oddities of history once again, the first Arabic geography book of Palestine wastranslated from Greek, focused on the Israelites and was indirectly boycotted by many ofthe earliest people to call themselves Palestinians.197196 The first textbook surveyed the Old and New Testaments in question and answer format. see Jurji al-Khuri Sbiridun Sarruf (trans.), Mukhtasar Tarikh Kanayisi Sharif Ta‘limi (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqaddas al-Batrikiyya, 1855); the second textbook covered the exact same material in greater detail withcitations to scripture, aimed at teaching older students the nuances of the Biblical narrative. See Jurji al-Khuri Sbiridun Sarruf (trans.), Kitab Tarikh Kanayisi Sharif Mukhtasar (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqaddas al-Batrikiyya, 1855). The original Greek title, ΙΕΡΑ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ (the History of the Bible) appearsat the bottom of the text along with corresponding page numbers. For a rich biographical portrait ofSbiridun, see “Wahbat Allah Isbiridun Sarrruf,” al-Athar 2 (1912/3): 420-431; Mikha’il bin Mitraki[Majmu‘a Ta‘limiyya Masihiyya [1860] (Manuscript Section of the National Library of Israel, JER NLI APAr. 113)] dealt with Palestine in his chapters on the Philistines, Romans, Byzantines and the Crusaders. [Onthe Philistines, see ibid, folios 31-8; on Roman and Byzantine Palestine, see ibid, folios 64, 87, 92-3, 198];then see Tawfiq Farah, Kitab al-Jughrafiya (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqqadas, al-Mutakhassa bi-Dayr al-Rum al-‘Amir, 1913), 3.197 See “Wahbat Allah Isbiridun Sarrruf,” al-Athar 2 (1912/3): 430, where al-Athar’s editor ‘Isa IskandarMa‘luf noted that Sbiridun Sarruf translated the text from Greek to Arabic; on the translation, see Jurji al-Khuri Sbiridun Sarruf (trans.), Jughrafiyat Filastin: Li-Isti‘mal Madaris al-Qabr al-Muqaddas al-‘Amma(Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqqadas, al-Mutakhassa bi-dayr al-Run al-‘Amir, 1904); on mountains,see ibid, 9; on water, see ibid, 22; on history, see ibid, 22-52, 58-60; on borders, see ibid, 4, 8-9, 25, 43; onthe Biblical and Greek names, see ibid 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 48, 49. 180The Ottomans. The Ottomans also expanded public education—and also taught aboutPalestine in class. They published a map of the Ottoman Empire in 1804 that was used inOttoman classrooms in Istanbul and elsewhere for decades. Figure 11. The first Ottoman printed map of Palestine (1804).198They continued to make maps of Palestine throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.The Ottomans opened rüşdiye preparatory schools in Jerusalem, Hebron and Gaza whichtogether educated about 223 students a year in the late 19th century. The schools taughtFrench, geography, history, hand crafts and more. In geography class, pupils learned toread maps—including maps of Palestine. They also learned to identify the borders of theOttoman state and its natural and political units. History class covered Adam, Eve,creation and proceeded with the Israelite prophets and every Muslim state to have everexisted in Ottoman lands: the four righteous caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Aghlabids,198 See Mahmud Raif Efendi, William Faden, Cedid Atlas Tercemesi (Istanbul: Tabʻhane-i Humayun, 1803-1804). For an analysis of the maps, see Zachary Foster, “The First Printed Ottoman Map of Palestine,1804,” midafternoonmap.com, 9 June 2015 (https://goo.gl/TLujdD). 181Fatimids, Ayyubids, Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmians, Genghis Khan, Timurs andmost importantly—the Ottomans, which were studied in great depth Sultan by Sultan.199 Figure 12. Ottoman map of “Anatolia-Administrative Divisions.”200Ottoman efforts to expand education had less to do with saving souls, as was the caseamong missionaries, and more with training pupils to become loyal bureaucrats. TheOttomans hired thousands of civil servants to work in the ministries of education,finance, war, interior and foreign ministry. By the 1880s, Ottoman bureaucrats hadwritten hundreds of documents dealing with Palestine, mostly about foreigners orZionists. By the empire’s collapse in 1918, tens of thousands of documents had been199 On the first Ottoman map of Palestine, see Mahmud Raif Efendi; Iákōvos Argyrópoulos Ucaletü'l-coğrafiyye (Istanbul: Darü't-tıbaat'il-Âmire, 1804); on its use in Ottoman classrooms, see Johann Strauss,“Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Americana,” pp. 259-281 in Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination: Studiesin Honour of Rhoads Murphey, Marios Hadjianastasis (ed.) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 261-3; George Larpent(ed.), Turkey; Its History and Progress from the Journals and Correspondences of Sir James Porter(London: Hurst & Blackett, 1854), II, 162; on Palestine in Ottoman literature, see Şırvanlı Ahmet HamdiEfendi, Usul-i coğrafya-yı Kebir (Şeyh Yahya Efendi’nin Matbaası, 1875), 356; Rafet Mehmet, SeyahetName-i Arz-i Filistin: Prins Viktur Napuli Imanu’il ve ile maalumat-i Tarihiye ve Cuğrafiye, huruf-i hicaTertibi üzere, (n.p.: Suriye Vilayeti Matbae?, 1887?), 10-11; on the enrollment figures and schoolcurriculum, see Uğur Ünal, II. Meşrutiyet öncesi Osmanlı Rüşdiyeleri: (1897-1907) (Ankara: Türk TarihKurumu, 2015), 82-87, 208-209; on maps of Palestine in Ottoman schools, see Mekatib-i Ibtida’iye,Juğrafiya-i Osmani (Matbaa-i 'Amire, 1913/1914), 58; for further discussions of Palestine in Ottomaneducation and military literature, see, for instance, the work of the geographer and teacher Ali Cevad,Memâlik-i Osmaniyenin Tarih ve Coğrafya Lûgati (Istanbul: Mahmud Bey Matbaasi, 1897-1898), 569-572.200 Cited in Mekatib-i Ibtida'iye, Juğrafiya-i Osmani (Matbaa-i 'Amire, 1913/1914), 98. 182written on Palestine. The state also published annual years discussing Palestine’s historyand geography, and even published a book called The Palestine Handbook, which was ageographical, historical and demographic survey of Palestine. It contained some of themost beautiful maps of Palestine printed during its age. The Ottoman state made Palestineseem real to lots of people.201 Figure 13. Published in The Palestine Handbook, 1915.202201 On the Ottomans commissioning maps of Palestine, see BOA HR TO 446/62 (1864.10.24); on thehandbook of the land of Palestine, see Filastin Risalesi, discussed by Salim Tamari, “Shifting OttomanConceptions of Palestine Part 1: Filistin Risalesi and the two Jamals,” Jerusalem Quarterly 47(29): 28-38;on Palestine in Ottoman yearbooks, see for instance, n.a., Bayrut Vilayeti Salnamesi (Vilayet Matbaası,1915), 17, 20, 24.202 n.a., Filistin Risalesi (n.p., 1915/1916), after text. 183Graduates of Ottoman schools also published about Palestine as well. Ruhi al-Khalidi, forinstance, who graduated from ruşdiye schools in Jerusalem and Tripoli and later theMektebe-i Mülkiye school in Istanbul, discussed Palestine in his 1897 An Introduction tothe Eastern Question, and his still unpublished manuscript, Zionism, the first book lengthtreatment of Zionism in Arabic, as well in op-eds he wrote as a correspondent of thenewspaper Filastin. He was also an early adopter of the term, Palestinian.203Egypt. Educational opportunities also expanded in Egypt during the same time period.Egypt’s Mehmet Ali sent hundreds of Egyptian students to France to learn militaryscience, industrial engineering, medicine, law, politics, agriculture, and geography. Oneof those students, Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi, returned to Egypt perplexed that there was “not asingle book of geography in the Arabic language,” in his words. Tahtawi was beinghyperbolic, but he was right that the genre geography didn’t really exist: plenty oftravelogues had been written, as well as encyclopedias of places and peoples, atlases ofIslam and biographical dictionaries, but no Arabic works with the word jughrafiya intheir titles. So, in 1838, he translated Malte Brun’s best-seller, the Summary of UniversalGeography from French into Arabic and he wrote another text, The Geography of Shamin Arabic, which surprisingly still languishes in microfilm in the Dar al-Kutub manuscript203 Ruhi al-Khalidi, al-Muqaddima fi al-Mas’ala al-Sharqiyya (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Madrasat al-Aytam al-Islamiyya, n.d.), page after kaf in the preface; for detailed treatment of his unpublished manuscript, seeJonathan Marc Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), ch.2; Beŝka, From Ambivalence to Hostility, 41, 47, 71, 77,92, 113, 126, 137; Ruhi al-Khalidi also wrote an article titled “The Palestinian Race” for the paper Filastin,arguing that Zionists were attempting to create an exclusionary society in Palestine. See Filastin 4 June1913, cited in Michael Bracy, “Building Palestine: 'Isa al-'Isa, Filastin, and the Textual Construction ofNational Identity, 1911–1931” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2005), 94. 184collection in Cairo. For specialists of 18th century Western thought, imagine if a one ofImmanuel Kant’s works only existed in manuscript form in its original German, and wasonly available in one library in the world.204Both works were primarily about things other than Palestine, but Tahtawi neverthelessdefined Palestine in both. He listed the following places as part of Palestine in his MalteBrun translation: the Hawran, Golan, Jarash, Ajloun, al-Balqa, Karak, Safed, LakeTiberias, Samaria, Caesarea, Haifa, Acre, Judaea, Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem, Jaffa,Bethlehem and Jericho. In his own original work, though, he claimed Palestine wasbordered “in the south by the Land of the Arabs, to the north by the District of Acre, towest by the Mediterranean Sea and to the east by the Mountains behind the JordanRiver,” and included Gaza, Hebron, Jerusalem and Jaffa. Tahtawi’s definition ofPalestine has its roots as much in the Arab tradition as the European.205Tahtawi absorbed European material and infused it with the Muslim tradition. Hisperiods of focus, range of sources, literary techniques and geographical lexicon in The204 On Tahtawi’s translation, see Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi, al-Jughrafiya al-‘Umumiyya (Bulaq: Dar al-Tiba‘a al-Khidyawiyya, 1838); on his own work, see Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi, Jughrafiyat Bilad al-Sham(date unknown) (Dar al-Kutub Manuscripts, Bab al-Khalq, Cairo, MS#42); on Tahtawi’s quote, see Rifa‘aRafi‘ al-Tahtawi, Kitab al-Ta‘ribat al-Shafiyya li-Murid al-Jughrafiya (Bulaq: Dar al-Tiba‘a al-Khidyawiyya, 1838), 148-152. The classic work on the Egyptian missions to Europe is ‘Umar Tusun, Al-Ba‘atat al-‘Ilmiyya: Fi ‘Ahd Muhammad ‘Ali Tumma fi ‘Ahday ‘Abbas al-Awwal wa-Sa‘id (Alexandria:Matba‘at Salah al-Din, 1934). See also Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study inCultural Encounters (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 35.205 In both his Malte-Brun translation and his own work, he didn’t list these places in a single sentence, as Idid, but discussed their population sizes, exact locations, attractions, industries, characteristics andhistories. On his own work, see Tahtawi, Kitab al-Ta‘ribat al-Shafiyya, 148; On his own definition ofPalestine, see al-Tahtawi, Jughrafiyat Bilad al-Sham, folio 34. In his own work, he cited from histranslation of Maltre Brun, as well another French geographer, J. G. Masselin, throughout the text. See J. G.Masselin, Dictionnaire Universel des Géographies Physique, Historique et Politique, du Monde Ancien, duMoyen âge et des Temps Modernes, Comparées (Paris: Impr. de A. Delalain, 1827). 185Geography of Sham were eclectic. He devoted a chapter to Palestine, even though hisbook was about Sham. He covered Jesus and ancient Greek history but also the conquestof Salah al-Din and Ottoman politics. He dealt with geography, demography, agricultureand economy (very European), but he didn’t bother with footnotes or references (veryArab). He mentioned some of his sources briefly in the text, including Josephus (d.c.100), the Muslim historian Abu al-Fida’ (d.1331), the English traveler Henry Maundrell(d.1696) and the French geographers, Conrad Malte Brun and J. G. Masselin. Tahtawimarked a moment of transition.206 * * *Egypt Again Let’s take a step back. How did Russians, Americans and Germans all getrights to build schools in the Ottoman Empire? Traditionally, the Ottomans had mostlyforbid foreigners from establishing permanent residence in the Empire. But this changeddramatically when an earstwhile local governor decided to carve out his own fiefdomfrom imperial lands. He was Albanian, and he conquered Egypt in the early 19th centuryfrom the Empire. His name was Mehmet Ali Pasha, as noted above. In addition tosending students to study in France, he also sent his son to conquer the lands of Sham in1830.Mehmet Ali Pasha did not share the same Ottoman hostility to a foreign presence.Americans were permitted to move to Beirut, Tripoli and Mount Lebanon, and they206 On Islamic history and Salah al-Din, see Tahtawi, Jughrafiyat Bilad al-Sham, folio 8-9; on Greekhistory and Jesus, see ibid, folios 2-7, 28; on demography, agriculture and economy, see ibid, folio 35-6. 186started importing books from Malta, where they had founded a printing press, somethingthe Ottomans had also forbidden. Mehmet Ali also allowed the British Empire toestablish a consular office in Jerusalem in 1838, which opened the floodgates. Soonenough, even once the Ottomans retook the land of Sham in 1840, they were sooncompelled to allow every major Western power to open a consular office in the city:Prussia in 1843, Sardinia in 1843, France in 1843, Austria in 1847, Spain in 1854, theUnited States in 1856 and Russia in 1857. The consular offices used the word Palestine incorrespondences with Ottoman officials, and so Palestine started to appear more andmore often in internal Ottoman government documents from the 1850s onwards.207Travel. The growth of the commercial steamship industry made possible the massmovement of peoples across seas and oceans beginning in the mid-19th century. French,Russian and Austrian companies began to offer regular steamship travel from Europeanports to Jaffa by the mid-late 19th century. As a result, the number of tourists to the HolyLand increased from a few thousand annually in the 1840s to as many as 40,000 a year byWorld War I. Tourists and pilgrims sang Psalms by ruins in the Galilee, prayed by sacredshrines in Nazareth, and wept were Jesus rose to heaven in Jerusalem. Palestine wasaccessible yet exotic, comfortable enough yet still pristinely Oriental, it was the land ofthe Israelites and the home of the Bible. My Italian grandmother in-law has left Europe207 The Ottomans loathed his betrayal of the Empire; Europeans praised his reforms; while the people ofSham revolted against his policies of mass conscription. On missionaries having free reign, one Americancommission wrote in 1836 that “Lebanon is completely open. Missionaries can go where they please.”; oneOttoman document summarized and translated a note sent to them by the British Console in Jerusalem. SeeBaşbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA) H.R.TO. 231.38.2.3 (9 October 1858). See also BOA H.R.TO220.47.5.8 (23 September 1854). 187twice in her life, both times to the Holy Land. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Ormaybe it is, actually, not entirely sure.208The travelers wrote a lot about their travels. Some 5,000 volumes on Palestine hadappeared in Western languages and another 1,000 in Russian by the mid-19th century.The Russian Andrej Murav’ëv’s 1836 travelogue to the Holy Land was so popular thatthe book even earned a nickname, the “Murav’ëv phenomenon.” William Thomson’s1859 travelogue in “Southern Palestine and Jerusalem” sold more copies than any bookin the United States with the sole exception of the Bible. Gregory Wortabet summarizedthe situation nicely in 1856. “More has been written about the history of Syria (includingPalestine) than any country in the world.” This was an era of Biblemania. You couldactually go and visit the land of the Bible!209208 On the Russian company, see W. E. Mosse, “Russia and the Levant 1856-1862; Grand DukeConstantine Nikolaevich and the Russian Steam Navigation Company,” Journal of Modern History 26(1954): 39-48; Abdul Latif Tibawi, “Russian Cultural Penetration of Syria—Palestine in the Nineteenthcentury (Part I)” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society (1966): 175-6; Frary, “Russian Missions to theOrthodox East,” 139; Philip R. Davies, The Palestine Exploration Fund Annual XI: Tourists, Travelers andHotels in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2013), 21, n.51.; on French ships, seeKhalil Sarkis, Rihlat Mudir al-Lisan (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-Adabiyya, [1893] 1911), II, 5-9; Wortabet,Syria and the Syrians, 7; on the Austrian company, see Filastin 8 November 1911; Rudolf Agstner, “TheAustrian Lloyd Steam Navigation Company,” pp. 136-157 in Austrian Presence in the Holy Land in the19th and Early 20th Century, Marian Wrba (ed.) (Tel Aviv: Austrian Embassy, 1996), 148; For tourismestimates in Palestine see Zachary Foster, “Why are Modern Famines so Deadly? The First World War inSyria and Palestine,” forthcoming.209 On Palestine literature, see Peter Thomsen, Die Palästina-Literatur 1895-1904 (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrich,1911); Reinhold Röhricht, Bibliotheca Geographica Palaestinae. Chronologisches Verzeichnis der von 333bis 1878 verfassten Literatur über das Heilige Land mit dem Versuch einer Kartographie (Berlin: H.Reuther, 1890); Titus Tobler, Bibliographica geographica Palaestinae Zunächst kritische uebersichtgedruckter und ungedruckter beschreibungen der reisen ins Heilige Land (Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1867). Forthe 5,000 figure, see Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, “Nineteenth century Historical Geographies of the Holy Land,”Journal of Historical Geography 15(1) (1989): 70; on Russian travel literature, see Thefanis Stavrou andPeter R. Weisensel, Russian Travelers to the Christian East from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century(Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1986); on the Murav’ëv phenomenon, see Simona Merlo, “Travels ofRussians to the Holy Land in the 19th Century,” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Judaism, Journal ofFondazione CDEC", n.6 (December 2013), text between note 30 and 31, and note 44; on Thomson’s book,see Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on North AmericanPolicy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 38–39; Richter, A History of theProtestant Missions, 198; Heleen Murre-van den Berg, “William Mcclure Thompson’s The Land and the 188The Biblical archeologists played a key role in this story, because they claimed to be ableto prove or disprove Biblical history. In 1838, the American Edward Robinson wanderedthe lands of Sham for two months, “Bible in hand,” of course, “following out all thetopographical hints which its record supplied.” His magnum opus—Biblical Researchesin Palestine—was an instant success. The book quickly earned universal praise. As onemodern scholar described it, “any study of the field” of Biblical archeology “must beginwith Robinson, for all later archeological research in Palestine is in some way indebted tohim”— discoveries and errors alike. Another Biblical archeologist, Claude Conder,completed a comprehensive survey of what he called Eastern and Western Palestinebetween 1881-1889. The book was an etymological dictionary of every place name in theregion and it too became a required reference work for all Bible enthusiasts. Conderidentified many erstwhile unknown Biblical sites through their modern Arabicreincarnations. The book even led Arabs to start calling the place Eastern and WesternPalestine, terms totally unknown in Arabic before the 1880s. The Bible dominated howeveryone talked, wrote or thought about Palestine—East and West. I cannot emphasizethat point enough.210Book (1859): Pilgrimage and Mission in Palestine,” in New Faiths in Ancient Lands: Western Missions inthe Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Murre-van den Berg (ed.) (Leiden;Boston: Brill, 2006), 43; [Najib Nassar, for instance, cited Thomson’s The Land and the Book. See NajibNassar, “Buldan Filastiniyya Yusiffuha Filastini,” al-Jami‘a 3(9) (1902): 612-615]; on Wortabet, seeWortabet, Syria and the Syrians, xiv.210 On Robinson’s journey, see Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, A Century of Excavation in Palestine(London: Religious Tract Society, 1925), 22; Robinson published an early edition of his work in 1842, andthen another in 1856. On the latter, Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, andin the Adjacent Regions. A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838 (Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1856); forthose who cited or were influenced by Robinson, see Antun Bulad, Rashid Suriyya (Beirut, 1868), 133;Henry Lammens, Tasrih al-Absar fi ma yahtawi Lubnan min al- ’Athar (Beirut: Matba‘a al-Kathulikiyyalil-Aba’ al-Yisu‘iyyin, 1902), II, 117, 136, 180, 202, 203, 230; As‘ad Mansur, Murshid al-Tullab ilaJughrafiyat al-Kitab (n.p., 1905), dal; ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Tarikh al-Haram al-Qudsi (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Daral-Aytam al-Islamiyya al-Sana‘iyya, 1947), 114; on his importance for later Biblical archeologists, see 189Pilgrims wandered the streets of Nazareth and Jerusalem carrying their Beadeker, Murrayor Cook Palestine guide books “in one hand and a Bible in the other.” But that gotannoying, so Cook printed direct quotations of the Bible alongside their moderndescriptions. His Handbook for Palestine and Syria, published in 1876, was re-issued adozen times in the following decades and could probably still sell copies today, althoughI would recommend removing some of the more ambitious proposed day trips—Palestineto Beirut, Palestine to Baghdad, and Palestine to Damascus. Nazareth to Damascus is amere 4 hours drive, but, as Google Maps warns, the route has “restricted usage or privateroads.” People wanted to see the land of the Bible itself—and they wanted to know it hadremained unchanged (if not deteriorated) since the times of Jesus—and that’s what theylearned in their guidebooks.211Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (Oxford; New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2004), 4; then see Claude Reignier Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine (London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1881-1888); The Survey of Eastern Palestine; Memoirs ofthe Topography, Orography, Hydrography, Archaeology (London: The Committee of the PalestineExploration Fund, 1889). For Arabs who cited Condor, see “Takhtit Sharqi Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 6(1881):272; “al-Lurd Kitshnir ‘Alim Arshiyuluji,” al-Jami‘a 5 (1901): 423-4; John S. Salah, Filastin wa-TajdidHayatuhu (New York: The Syrian American Press, 1919), 13; As‘ad Mansur [Tarikh al-Nasira (Cairo:Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1924), before page 1] explained that one of his most important source for his History ofNazareth was Conder’s Survey of Western Palestine. Mansur (ibid, 33) also cited Claude R Conder’s TentWork in Palestine (London: Bentley, 1878). For those who described Palestine as divided into two parts(usually East and West), see “Aqalim Suriya wa-Filastin al-Nabatiyya,” al-Muqtataf 8 (1883): 417; LouisCheikho, “Khara’ib al-Sham,” al-Mashriq (1899): 894; Dayrani, al-Nahj al-Qawim, 63; Azoury, Le Réveilde la Nation Arabe, 8, 11; “Hawa’ Filastin,” al-Muqtataf 53 (1918): 244; “A Map of Palestine,” in KhalilTotah and Habib Khuri, Jughrafiyat Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1923), before page 1;Yusuf Sufayr, Jughrafiyat Lubnan al-Kabir wa-Hukumat Suriya wa-Filastin (Beirut: Mataba‘ Kuzma,1924), 84; Sahil al-Sayyid, Al-Murshid al-‘Arabi, Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1936), 10;Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, al-Mukhtasar al-Jughrafi (Jerusalem: al-Taba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1945), 97.211 On tourists carrying their Beadeker or Murray guidebooks in hand, see John Fulton, The Beautiful Land,Palestine: Historical Geographical and Pictorial (Chicago, IL: John W. Iliff & Co, 1893), v; then see n.a.,Cook’s Tourists’ Handbook for Palestine and Syria (London: Thomas Cook & Son, 1876), preface. It wasreprinted in 1876, 1888-1889, 1907 and 1921-2. The day trips were included in the 1888 edition. 190Admittedly, the side by side comparisons must have seemed odd to some readers whoprobably wondered why the two texts differed at all. “The most reliable guide to the HolyLand” was the Bible itself, as Avraam SergeeviÄ Norov explained. “I consider myselflucky,” he wrote, “that I had only the Bible with me for the greater part of my travel.” Asone journalist reported, “it was possible to buy Russian guide-books to Jerusalem in theshops, but very few pilgrims brought them. They used their Bibles.”212The pilgrims had a mostly unknown influence on the locals. It’s extremely difficult tofind anecdotes from coversations had between guides and pilgrims, hotel owners andpatrons, shop owners and tourists. But if “the principle source of the wealth of Joppa[Jaffa] is derived from the annual passage of pilgrims through the town to visit the holyplaces,” as one traveler pointed out, there must have been a huge amout of street chatter.“Welcome to my shob! Because you are a very good friend, I will make you specialoffer!” These conversations must have taken place, we just don’t know anything aboutthem.213Migration. Beginning in the late 19th century, the opposite thing happened. Notforeigners coming into the Ottoman Empire, but locals leaving it. Some 300,000 Ottomansubjects left the Empire for the New World—primarily the United States, Argentina andBrazil. The migrants found themselves in more heterogeneous communities in their212 On Norov, see Svetlana Kirillina, “Imagining the Arab-Ottoman World in Modern Russia- Narratives ofRussian Pilgrims to the Holy Land of Christianity (16th-18th Centuries),” Oriental Archive 80(2) (2012):138; then see Stephen Graham, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem (London: Macmillan & Co.:London, 1913), 16.213 On the quote, see Fulton, The Beautiful Land, Palestine, 50; see also Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid, 96-7;Davies, The Palestine Exploration, 247-8. 191adopted countries. In Chile, for instance, migrants established Ottoman and SyrianOttoman associations, and in one case wanted to present a joint gift to the Republic ofChile in honor of its 100-year anniversary in the early 20th century. Reportedly, theydisagreed over who the gift was from: the Palestinians? Ottomans? Turks? or OttomanSyrians? Filastin’s editors said they should go with “Ottomans” since it united “Turks,Palestinians and Syrians.” Something similar happened in São Paulo, Brazil in 1910,when Ottoman emigres thought their community was weakened because it was internallyindecisive about its identity—split between self-identified “Turks,” “Arabs” and“Syrians.” International migration had an underappreciated effect on people’sidentities.214 * * *Technology. I haven’t emphasized technology much but it started to play a moresignificant role on identities like Palestinian from the early modern period onwards.That’s when printed texts became affordable to regular people. Periodicals andnewspapers were first introduced in Strasbourg in the 1600s, Amsterdam in the 1620s,Cairo in the 1830s and Beirut in the late 1850s. But Arabic newspapers started toregularly appear in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa only in 1908, after the constitutionalrevolution in Istanbul eased press censorship. Newspapers were a much more cost-214 On the 300,000 figure, see Akram Fouad Khater, “Becoming “Syrian” in America: A Global Geographyof Ethnicity and Nation,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 14(2/3) (2005): 302; on the gift toChile, see “Man Nahnu wa ma Nusammi?” (Who Are We and How Should We be Called?), Filastin 12October 1912. The article reportedly first appeared in the Argentinian newspaper, al-Zaman and wasreprinted in Filastin. On Brazil, see María del Mar Logroño Narbona, “The Development of NationalistIdentities in French Syria and Lebanon: A Transnational Dialogue with Arab Immigrants to Argentina andBrazil, 1915—1929” (Ph.D Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007), 151. 192effective form of publishing and conveyed information ill-suited to other genres ofliterature like travelogues, textbooks, theological treatises and chronicles. They couldannounce time-sensitive information like train schedules, parliamentary candidateplatforms and public performances. The speed of publication changed the nature of whatwas published. Newspapers acquired subscribers—and the subscription business modelexploded. (Previously, you could not “subscribe” to authors). Newspapers could engagein conversation with their readers—accepting questions and publishing responses tothem. They made readers feel like part of the conversation. They made it possible for tensof thousands of people who had never met one another to participate in the sameconversation. The internet revolution is doing something similar today, at an order ofmagnitude larger. Newspapers hastened the spread of new identities, includingPalestinian.215After the Ottomans eased press censorship in 1908, entrepreneurs flocked to theauthorities to exercise their constitutional rights. Ilyas Bawwad in Safed tried to establisha newspaper called Filastin in December 1908, but was told he had to choose a differentname because Filastin was already taken by the Hebronite Yusuf Siddiqi, granted alicense to publish his newspaper, Filastin, in Jerusalem four months earlier. Little isknown about either Bawwad and Siddiqi, and neither seem to have ever published anewspaper called Filastin.216215 Even once newspapers were founded in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, many people still preferred to importjournals and newspapers from abroad, such as al-Ahram, al-Muqattam, al-Muqtataf, al-Muqtabas, Lisan al-Hal, al-Bashir, al-Mashriq, al-Hilal. See Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-‘Arabiyya, 100; Khalil Baydasnoted that “there was no literary movement in Palestine during those days [late Ottoman period]. It wasdwarfed by Beirut.” See ibid, 95.216 On Yusuf Siddiqi, see BOA D.H. MKT 1280/23 (8 August 1908); on Ilyas Bawwab, see BOA DH.ID124-1/31 (10 December 1908). 193“Look at a classic study of over 50 product categories,” explained Adam Grant in hisTED talk on the surprising habits of original thinkers. “Comparing the first movers, whocreated the market, with the improvers, who introduced something different and better.”The first movers had a failure rate of 47%, compared with only 8% for the improvers.217As first movers, Bawwad and Siddiqi failed. It was the ‘Isa cousins of Jaffa who madeFilastin famous. They founded a newspaper by that name in 1911 and it became the mostpopular newspaper in District of Jerusalem, and later the Mandate for Palestine fordecades. Dozens of other publications appeared in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa between1908 and 1914. Only a handful printed more than a few issues and even the mostsuccessful accumulated less than 1,600 subscribers. (These figures might seem modest,but consider that some 2% of the population was literate in 1914, or about 12,000 people.I think any newspaper today would be thrilled if more than 10% of the literate populationsubscribed to it). The paper circulated once or twice a week and was sent to small townsand villages around Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Haifa, Jaffa, Gaza, Nablus, Safedand Tiberias.218217 Adam Grant, “The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers,” TED Talk, youtube.com 26 April 2016(https://goo.gl/Mcmii1)218 al-Quds (Jerusalem, 1908-1914) had 300 subscribers and printed around 1,500 copies; al-Karmil (Haifa,1911-1914) claimed 1,000 subscribers; al-Akhbar circulated 600 copies; the Jewish paper Ha-Herut(Jerusalem) reported 1,500-2,000 subscribers. The ‘Isa cousins’ Filastin (Jaffa, 1911-1914) captured thelargest Arabic market share, boasting 1,100-1,600 subscribers. See Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-‘Arabiyya, 44; Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 282; Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine:Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 170, n.69; Beška, FromAmbivalence to Hostility, 18-23; on al-Karmil, see al-Karmil 20 February 1914, cited in Emanuel Beška,“Political Opposition to Zionism in Palestine and Greater Syria: 1910-1911 as a Turning Point,” JerusalemQuarterly 59 (2014): 55; on the 2% literacy figure, see Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa, 24 and Ayalon,“Modern Texts and their Readers,” 17. This was modest even compared to neighboring countries like 194The words Palestine and the Palestinians now appeared printed on paper on coffee tablesin the homes of hundreds or even thousands of Arabic speakers on a weekly basis. Thatwas something new in 1911 and 1912. The al-‘Isa cousins used the term “Palestinian” adozen some times from 1911-1914; Najib Nassar, as we discussed above, frequentlywrote about Palestinians in his Haifa-based paper, al-Karmil; as did Farah Antun in hisAlexandria-based al-Jami‘a, as did Ilya Zakka in his Haifa and Jerusalem-based paper,al-Nafir. Newspaper editors gave the term Palestinian the impetus it needed to gain wideracceptance.219Demand for newspapers was high, even if people weren’t ready to pay them. A readersent an op-ed to Filastin in 1912 describing his love for the paper, but complained hecould not afford the subscription fee. The editor of al-Quds Jurji Hanania lamented in1913 that readers tend to share their copy of the paper with fifty others. Najib Nassar,who published al-Karmil in Haifa, was surprised when he was received with honor in aEgypt, which had 4-6% literacy rate at that time. See Donald M. Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun: ASyrian Christian’s Quest for Secularism (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1975), 45.219 Filastin (27 November 1912) called on its Palestinian compatriots (muwatininna al-filastiniyyin) inArgentina to buy productive land in Argentina; Filastin (7 February 1912) also republished a glowingreview of itself originally printed in the Homs based newspaper al-Ikha’ which read as follows: “Its editoris Yusuf Affandi al-‘Isa from Jaffa. He is the most capable writer we know of in Palestine. Filastin is theonly newspaper that Palestinians should subscribe to and be proud of.” Filastin (2 November 1912) alsopublished a letter from a writer who signed his name “A Palestinian” in 1912, criticizing the Ottomangovernment for their failure to enforce the three-month limit placed on residency permits granted to Zionistnewcomers in Palestine; Filastin (9 September 1911) distinguished between “Syrians and Palestinians” in a1911 review of Bulus Afandi Karulidus’s book on the origins of the Orthodox in Palestine and Syria; forfurther mentions of the term the Palestinian people (al-umma al-Filastiniyya), see “Rasa’il lil-Mushtarik,”Filastin 7 May 1914, cited in Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern NationalConsciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 155; Bracy, “Building Palestine,” 98. 195small “Palestinian” town—his words—since it had only one subscriber. Apparently, morethan fifty people from the town had read the paper at the subscriber’s house.220Newspapers reached smaller towns and villages also. A Filastin subscriber from al-Birehcomplained in 1911 “we were hoping to receive the paper every week but instead wereceived three or four issues at the beginning of the month.” Villagers closer to Jaffa wereeven luckier. Filastin distributed a free copy in 1914 to every village elder in the area.Mufti Husayni, from a village in the Gaza district, sent a petition to the Ottoman Sultan inJuly 1911, complaining of drought, high prices and economic destitution in Gaza. Hisproof to the Sultan was an investigative report published in Filastin itself on destitution inGaza. Lots of people were reading Filastin and learning they were Palestinian.221 * * *Institutionalization. It was not just newspapers that made Palestine seem real. Palestinealso began to appear in brick and mortar, public lecture, marble placard and in public220 On Hanania, see Yehoshua. Tarikh al-Sihafa, 20-1; on Najib Nassar, see al-Karmil 20 February 1914,cited in Beška, “Political Opposition,” 55; Aida al-Najjar, The Arabic Press and Nationalism in Palestine,1920-1948, (Ph.D. Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1975), ch. 2; on public readings, see HilmaGranqvist, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Villages (Helsingfores: Societas Scientarium Fennica,1931), 99; Ayalon, Reading Palestine, 3–4, 159; Campos, Ottoman Brothers, ch. 4; on the anonymousletter to Filastin, see Filastin 7 February 1912; on coffee house recitations, see Jessup, Fifty-three Years,119.221 On the al-Bireh complaint, see Filastin 10 November 1911. On Filastin’s distribution for free, see Yusufal-‘Isa, al-Akthariyya wa-l-Aqaliyya Filastin, 30 January 1914, cited in Bracy, “Building Palestine,” 7;Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa, 18-9; Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York:Oxford University Press, 1995), 157-8; on mufti Husayn, see BOA DH.MTV 52-1/49 (17 July 1911). Heincluded a copy of Filastin from 11 March 1911. It’s important not to exaggerate the point, though. Theterm Palestinian appeared infrequently in Arabic sources from the late 19th and early 20th century. It’smuch easier to find related adjectives like Ottoman, Muslim, Christian, Arab or Syrian. It was a newidentity in the early 20th century, and took many years before it was widely used. 196initiatives. People shopped at Yusuf Sa‘id’s the Palestinian Educational Bookshop inJerusalem. Public lectures were delivered about Palestine. The Deutchse Palastina Bankopened in 1899, the Anglo-Palestine Company in 1902 and the Bank Commerciale dePalestine in 1911. Albert Antebi propose the establishment of the Palestinian PatrioticCompany in 1913 whose delegates would purchase imperial lands before Zionists could.Najib Nassar proposed the establishment of a Palestine Congress in 1914 to counter the11th World Zionist Congress and to coordinate anti-Zionist efforts. Palestine was alreadystarted to get institutionalized in the Middle East in the 1900s and 1910s.222 Figure 14. Photo from inside the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s old city with Deutsche Palästina Bank sign visible (circa early 1900s).222 On the Palestine bookshop, see Filastin 12 October 1912; on public lectures, Kazma celebrated the 25thanniversary of the establishment of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society “in our country Palestine andin Syria” in 1907. See Suwaydan, Tarikh al-Jam‘iyya, 71-2; for more on the festivities, see Mansur, TarikhNasra, 103; on Palestine banks, see Gad G. Gilbar, “The Growing Economic Involvement of Palestine withthe West,” in Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period: Political, Social, and Economic Transformation,David Kushner (ed.) (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1986), 206; Antebi proposed establishing the al-Sharika al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya. See his “Nad‘a lil-Fi‘al,” Filastin 12 July 1913 and 2 August 1913,cited in Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism, 173-4; Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the PalestinianNational Movement 1918-1929 (London: Cass, 1974), 28; Bracy, ‘Building Palestine,’ 91; on Nassar’sproposal, see Ilan Pappé, “The ‘Politics of Notables’ to the ‘Politics of Nationalism’: The Husayni Family,1840-1922,” pp. 163-207 in Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within M. Maoz and I.Pappé (eds.) (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 200, 206, n. 100. 197Arab writers used the term Palestine in print because you had to use the term to discusscurrent events. The Palestine Imperial Orthodox Society was called the Palestine ImperialOrthodox Society, and to write about it, you had to use the word Palestine. Committees,commissions and journals came into existence in the United States, United Kingdom,Russia, France and Germany all bearing the name Palestine. Condor conducted a surveyof what he called East and West Palestine, not East and West Sham or East and WestJerusalem; Zionists moved to what they called Palestine, not Sham or Jerusalem; Britishconsular officials wrote reports of the economy in Palestine, not Jerusalem or Sham;Arthur Ruppin gave speeches about the activities of the Palestine Office, and so that’show Arabs wrote about Condor’s surveys, Zionist immigration, and the economy. Peopleused the term Palestine to avoid confusion.223 * * *Muslims and Christians. When I set out to study the origins of the Palestinians, I askedMeir Litvak, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University, if he thought I’dfind very many references to the Palestinians before 1914. He said whatever you’d find, it223 On a “Palestine Committee in Paris” (al-lajna al-Filastiniyya al-Parisiyya), see “al-Yahud fi Filastinwa-musta‘maratuhum,” al-Mashriq 1899(2): 1093-4; on a Palestine Commission (al-Kumisyun al-Filastini)established by the Russian Czar to protect the interests of Russian pilgrims in Palestine, see Suwaydan,Tarikh al-Jam‘iyya, 75; on the German Palestine Journal (al-Majalla al-Filastiniyya al-Almaniyya) and thePalestine Journal (al-Majalla al-Filasitniyya), see Lammens, Tasrih al-Absar, I, 119, 135, 143; II, 102;235, 240; “Shadharat,” al-Mashriq 6 (1903): 863; on Zionist immigration to Palestine, see, for instance,“Hayat Umma Ba‘d Mawtuhu,” al-Manar 4 (1902): 802-4; al-Nafir 15 July 1909; Filastin 20 November1912; Filastin 22 July 1912; Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, ch. 6; on Ruppin’s 1913 speech, and its receptionin the Arabic press, see Beŝka, From Ambivalence to Hostility, 126. 198would all be from Christians. Daniel Pipes agreed. “No Muslim of Palestine calledhimself a Palestinian before 1920,” Pipes claimed.They were onto something, even if their biases precluded them from understanding why.I was only able to find a handful of Muslims who used the term Palestinian before 1914.In an op-ed, the Muslim Raghib al-Khalidi commended Filastin’s editors for havingcriticized village elders for accepting bribes during the 1912 Ottoman parliamentaryelections. He described it as an “insult to the Palestinian people.” The MuslimMuhammad Musa al-Maghribi reportedly wrote that his paper al-Munadi would onlycover news relevant to “the Palestinians.” In a 1914 article by the editor of al-Iqdam, theMuslim Muhammad al-Shanti warned “Palestinian youth” of the dangers of Zionism.That’s at least three Muslims I am aware of who reportedly used the term before 1914,compared to more than a dozen Christians.224So how could it be that Christians accounted for a mere 10% of the population of the areathat would be incorporated into the Government of Palestine in 1920, but most of theknown references to the word “Palestinian” in the early 1900s? The simple, if falseanswer, espoused by Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, is that Palestine was irrelevant if224 On Raghib al-Khalidi, see Filastin 8 May 1912; al-Maghribi wrote in a 14 March 1913 issue of al-Munadi that “we have limited the scope of Munadi to the affairs of this liwa’, in particular; you will notfind any news that is not of concern to the Palestinians (al-Filastiniyyin), or news which is not relevant totheir country (biladihim).” The paper was reportedly written entirely by Muhammad Musa al-Maghribi,while the concessionaire was Sa‘id Jar Allah. See Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa, 54-6. For more on the paper,see Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 56; on Muhammad al-Shanti, see ibid, 58-9. 199not “abhorrent” or “repugnant” to Muslims. This was a point of propaganda, inventedbecause it strengthened Zionism’s claim to the land.225But there is no evidence to support the point. Muslims were underrepresented amongjournalists because they could get more stable and higher paying jobs as bureaucrats. Thepublishing industy was still high risk, and civil service paid better—potentially even 1200Ottoman lira a month, a small fortune in those days. Also, why would you ever become ajournalist if you could become a spy?226Meanwhile, Christians had long been sidelined from politics, a practice the Ottomansinherited from their Mamluk, Ayyubid, Fatimid and Abbasid predecessors. The Ottomanstolerated religious minorities but did not incorporate them in large numbers into thepolitical or military leadership of the state, at least until quite late in the 19th centurywhence many had already pursued careers outside the bureaucracy. The result was thatwhile Muslims found jobs in the civil service, diplomacy, judiciary and military,Christians pursued commerce, education, translation, journalism and publishing. As aresult, most of the Arab translators, journalists and publishers in the Ottoman Empirewere Christian, not Muslim.225 Pipes claimed that Palestine “embodied a purely Jewish and Christian concept, one utterly foreign toMoslems, even repugnant to them.” See Daniel Pipes, “The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine,” TheJerusalem Post 13 September 2000.226 See Zachary J. Foster, “The 1915 Locust Attack in Syria and Palestine and its Role in the FamineDuring the First World War,” Middle Eastern Studies 51(3) (2015): 380. 200There was another reason Christians were more likely to publish in the popular press andMuslims were more likely to write government memos and legal opinions in court.Ottoman losses on the battlefield in the 18th and 19th centuries meant capitulations toEuropean powers, who established hundreds of missionary schools in the Empire,discussed above. The state forbid missionaries from teaching Muslims. Most Muslimparents preferred not to send their kids to Christian schools anyways. The result was thatChristians in the Ottoman Empire had better and earlier access to higher education thanMuslims. Orthodox and Maronite Christians were, on average, earlier to study science,math, foreign languages and geography than were Muslims. Christians in the lands ofSham were therefore earlier to publish newspapers and books.People will only identify with a place if it plays an important role in their life. And aplace will only play an important role in people’s lives if they name it, make maps of it,tell stories about it, or establish institutions and associations in it or for it. That’s whathappened to Palestine in the mid-late 19th century, and that’s why people began to callthemselves Palestinians in the early 20th century. * * *Independence In 1648, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the DutchRepublic signed the Peace of Westphalia in which each state agreed to respect oneanother’s sovereignty. That was the birth of the system of states we all know and hate 201today. The Ottoman Empire joined that system. Palestine was not part of that systembecause it was part of the Ottoman Empire.Nevertheless, Europeans wrote and spoke of Palestine a lot, and the Ottomans paidattention attention to some of it. A pamphlet from the mid-19th century titled “Circular ofa Project for the Erection of Palestine into an Independent state,” which can be found inthe Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, stated that “we Christians” of all sects propose that“the Sublime Porte would grant the Cessation of Palestine, or that Portion of Syriacommonly denominated “The Holy Land,” to all Christians.” The independentgovernment would be erected under the “auspices of the Christian Princes of Europe andAsia, into an independent Territory.” Meanwhile, an entire movement of Christians inEurope known as Restorationists supported moving Jews to Palestine because of theireschatological belief that the return of Jesus on earth would only come about after theJews had all returned to Palestine. Presumably, the Ottomans had other ideas for what todo with Palestine—including not turn it into a Christian Principality.227The Westphalian system expanded and the Ottoman Empire shrunk. The Italian city-states unified in the 1850s, Otto von Bismarck centralized the German confederates in the1870s and Muhammad Ali brought Egypt into that system in 1805. Independencemovements in Greece (1820s-1830s), Russian occupation in the Caucuses (1810s-1860s)and the Balkans Wars (1910s) inspired ambitious upstarts around the Ottoman Empire.227 On the pamphlet, see BOA H.R. SYS 1778/1 (01/31/1841). For a brief history of Christians whosupported the movement of Jews to Palestine, see Donald M. Lewis, “A Very Short History of ChristianZionism,” pp. 108-122 in A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land Mae Elise Cannon(ed.) (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2017). 202The later events were collectively known as part of “the Eastern Question,” or the beliefthat Ottoman Empire was inevitably going to collapse and European governments had toprevent a single power (other than themselves) from annexing the spoils (such asPalestine), to maintain the balance of power.As time passed, though, activists around the world no longer saw themselves as joiningthe Westphalia system, they saw themselves as gaining independence. Talk ofindependence, not surprisingly, reached every corner of the Ottoman Empire. Thisincluded the Ottoman province of Syria. It was a fringe idea that very few people evenknew existed let alone embraced. At first, the part of the Empire that some Arabs thoughtought to be independent was ambiguously refered to as the land of the Arabs or Syria, notPalestine.228The fringe talks of independence eventually included Palestine as well. In 1912, theOttomans investigated claims that a resident of Gaza snuck into Egypt as a spy to help theBritish wrest Palestine and Syria away from the Ottomans. The ‘Abd al-Hadi family inNablus was rumored to have approached British officials in Egypt to push for the Britishoccupation of Palestine. (The newspaper Filastin claimed it was a lie that an associationin Nablus was negotiating with the British about annexing Palestine to Egypt). Filastinreported further rumors in December 1912 that Muslim notables from Nablus had gone toEgypt at the request of the British to discuss a plan that would have annexed Palestine to228 On attaching “Syria” to “Egpyt,” see Haqqi al-‘Azm, Haqa’iq ‘an al-Intikhabat al-Niyabiyya fi al-‘Iraqwa-Filastin wa-Suriya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Akhbar, 1912), 87; see also Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and YoungTurks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1997), 68-70. 203Egypt. Reportedly, the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem also accused some Arableaders of aiming to establish “the independence of Palestine.” The Jerusalemite IhsanTurjaman confided on the first page of his 1915 wartime diary that, after the war,Palestine would either be attached to Egypt or gain independence. Rumors had alsospread around the Arab world that the Zionists wanted an independent kingdom inPalestine.229The State. The British resolved the question during the Great War with the capture ofJerusalem in December 1917 and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean in the followingyear. In April 1918, the who’s who of Jerusalem organized a banquet at an orphanageschool, inviting prominent community members and British military officials. Speakerspresented in front of a This is Arab Palestine map engraved into marble stone. Theorganizers sung a song, with audience participation, about what they described as theirbeloved homeland, Palestine. They repeated the word Palestine in each verse and stanzaof the song. ‘Abd al-Latif al-Husayni spoke about the connection of the Arab nation to229 On the Gazan Arabs, see a report of the special Egypt commission, BOA A.}MTZ.(05) 9-C/300-1 (3April 1912); on the ‘Abd al-Hadi rumors, see Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 237; on Filastin’s claim it was alie, see Filastin 16 October 1912; on the Nablus notables, see Filastin 25 December 1912, citing the journalThe Near East; on the accusations of the Orthodox Church, see Khalil al-Sakakini, al-Nahda al-Urthudhuksiyya fi Filastin (n.p.: n.p., 1913), 12; on Ihsan Turjaman, see Salim Tamari (ed.), ‘Am al-Jarad,al-Harb al-Udhma ma-Mahu al-Madi al-‘Uthmani min Filastin (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2008), 75-6; on this possibility in 1923, see ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghuthi and Khalil Totah,Tarikh Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis,1923), 13; on the Zionist rumors, Rashid Rida, forinstance, wrote that “the Jews are returning in great numbers to their ancient Kingdom, Palestine…the goalis raise enough money to buy Palestine from the Sultan.” See Hayat Umma Ba‘d Mawtuhu,” al-Manar 4(1902): 802-4; Farid Georges Kassab [Le Nouvel Empire Arabe (Paris: V. Giard & E. Brière, 1906), 10-11]and Negib Azoury [Le Réveil de la Nation Arabe dans l'Asie Turque: Partie Asiatique de la Questiond'Orient et Programme de la Ligue de la Patrie Arabe (Paris, Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1905), ch. 1] debatedwhether the Jews wanted restore a Jewish monarchy in Palestine in 1905 and 1906. (Azoury believed theJews desired such a restoration, Kassab thought they didn’t); Mustafa Affandi Tamar (Filastin 22 July1912) argued that the British were interested in strengthening the Jewish presence in “Palestine and theSyrian country” as well as establishing an independent state there in order to safeguard their position inEgypt, but he thought the formation of a new government in Palestine would only lead to bloodshed. 204Palestine. Hassan Abu al-Sa‘ud declared that the Zionists “want to deprive us of ourrights that we have in our precious Palestine,” encouraging the audience to hold steadfast.“The sweat and blood of our forefathers established the Arab nation in Palestine...Longlive our nation and Arab Palestine! Love live the Arab nation! Love live Arab Palestine!”As soon as people start talking about blood and sweat you know that things are gettingserious. The April 1918 banquet might have been the first instance in which Arabsgathered publicly to declare their shared love and devotion to their homeland ofPalestine.230In the same year, 1918, Woodrow Wilson made his 14 Points Speech and the British andFrench issued an Anglo-French Declaration. Wilson declared that non-Turkishnationalities now under Turkish rule should be “assured an undoubted security of life andan absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.” The Anglo-FrenchDeclaration claimed that Britain and France would assist in the “establishment ofgovernment and administration deriving their authority from the initiative and free desireof the native population.” The former was widely reported in the Arabic press and bothwere widely cited by Arabs in Palestine, Syria and Egypt as support for their claims ofindependence in the coming years.231230 This information is based on an intelligence report of a Zionist spy who attended the ceremony. SeeCZA C4/L4/768.231 On the French-Anglo Declaration, see Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian National Movement1918-1929, 42; on Wilson’s warm reception in Egypt, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2007), ch.3; on Aleppo, see Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution,Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 149-50; on Arab Palestinian protest notes submitted to the British authorities referencing these declarations, seeAkram Zu‘aytir, Watha’iq al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al- Filastiniyya, 1918-1939: Min Awraq AkramZu’aytir (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979), 7, 11, 15-16, 67, 118, 144, 201, 226; for mention ofthese declarations in the press, see al-Karmil 21 December 1920, Zionist report on the Arabic Press, CZA 205The British ignored both statements. Instead, they obtained approval to rule Palestine notfrom the people living in it but by the recently founded League of Nations in 1922. Infact, the people of the country were consulted by the American King-Crane Commissionin 1919 and rejected a British Mandate, but the British ignored its findings. Instead, theyhonored their commitment to the 1917 Belfour Declaration to facilitate the establishmentof a national home for the Jews in Palestine. The conflict over Palestine intensified. Itwas the conflict—and the bloodshed—that ironically sealed Palestine’s fate in the bookof life. Over the coming decades, from the 1920s-1940s, many thousands of people diedfighting for Palestine. That gauarnteed Palestine’s survival.Palestine’s newfound political status meant that organized political activity was directedtowards it. Arabs formed a slew of associations and political parties the late 1910s, 1920sand 1930s to fight the anti-democratic terms of the British Government of Palestine: atfirst, the Literary Club, the Arab Club and the Muslim-Christian Associations, which methalf a dozen times in the 1920s in annual congress called the Palestinian NationalCongresses. During the third National Congress, for instance, one resolution passed in1920 calling on the British to establish “a native Government, to be responsible towards aLegislative Assembly representative of, and elected by, the Arabic speaking populationliving in Palestine up to the beginning of the war.” The 1930s saw the rise of the politicalpartiies—the Istiqlal Party, founded in 1932, the National Defense Party in 1934, thePalestine Arab Party in 1935 and smaller parties including the Youth Congress Party, theS22/389; Bayt al-Muqqadis 16 November 1920 and 9 March 1921, Zionist reports on the Arabic Press,CZA S22/389; Mir’at al-Sharq, 22 October 1919. 206Reform Party and the National Bloc. Then, the Arab Higher Committee was formed in1936 which united rival political factions. The associations and parties all opposedJewish immigration, but differed in their willingness to accommodate or even assist theBritish. All of this is to say that Palestine was now the focus of attention, which led moreand more people to see themselves as Palestinians.232The British called its own regime, the Government of Palestine. Initially, it printed amonthly newspaper titled The Official Gazette of the Government of Palestine. Itdistributed millions of identity cards, passports, pamphlets, stamps, bills, coins,certificates of education and other documents bearing the word Palestine. The Britishestablished the Museum of Palestinian Antiquities, the Palestine Education Department,the Palestine Law Institute, the Palestine Broadcasting Service, the Palestine ForestService, the Palestine Railways, and the Palestine Surveys Department, whose directorpublished a beautiful road map of Palestine (see figure 15). The British brought Palestineinto the lives of everyone, by political fiat, public airways, minted coins, printed texts andbrink and mortar. States in the modern world have had this incredible ability to controlhow we think about spaces, places and regions. The British were no exception withPalestine.233232 for the best treatment of Arab politics in Palestine from the 1920s-1940s, see Porath, The Emergence ofthe Palestinian National Movement 1918-1929 and Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab NationalMovement, from Riots to Rebellion, 1929-1939 (London: Cass, 1977); see also Muhammad Y. Muslih, TheOrigins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Ann Mosely Lesch,Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939: The Frustration of a Nationalist Movement (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1979); on the Istiqlal Party, see Weldon C. Matthews, Confronting an Empire,Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine (I. B. Tauris, 2006);on the 1920 protest note, see Robert L Jarman (ed.), Political Diaries of the Arab World (Slough: ArchiveEditions, 1990), 38.233 For more details about the museum and its holdings, see n.a., Dalil Mathaf al-Athar al-Qadima al-Filastini (Da’irat al-Athar al-Qadima bi-l-Quds, 1924); the law school was called al-Ma‘had al-Huquq al- 207 Figure 15. “A Map of Palestine for Cars.”234All kinds of new associations, companies and commissions came into existence as aresult, making Palestine seem so natural a place. The Palestine Boy Scouts AssociationFilastini. For a selection of the Palestinian radio broadcasts, see, for instance, al-Qism al-‘Arabi fi Dar al-Idha‘a al-Filastiniyya, Hadith al-Idha‘a (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-Tijariyya, 1942); for a book lengthtreatment on the subject, see Andrea L Stanton, This is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in MandatePalestine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014); on the Palestine Forest Services, see Roza El-Eini,Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine 1929-1948 (Routledge, 2015); for more on Arabgovernment employees, see Bernard Wasserstein, “'Clipping the Claws of the Colonisers': Arab Officials inthe Government of Palestine, 1917-48,” Middle Eastern Studies 13(2) (1977): 171-194234 Published by Da’irat al-Masaha in 1934. The map is held at the Israeli National Library. 208formed in the early 1920s, the Arab Palestine Sport Federation in 1931 and the PalestineArab Medical Association in 1944. Companies embraced the name too, such as thePalestine Electric Corporation and the Palestine Salt Company. Zionists founded thePalestine Land Development Company, the Palestine Foundation Fund and the PalestineZionist Executive. International commissions formed reinforcing the idea, such as the1937 Palestine Royal Commission. People institutionalized Palestine.235Meanwhile, more people started to make a living writing about Palestine. The Britishpaid Arabs to translate The Official Gazette of the Government of Palestine into Arabicevery month. They paid other Arab officials to write reports on the state of education inPalestine. The Anglophone Arabic speaking Persian of the Bahai faith, Husayn Ruhi, wasemployed as general inspector at the Ministry of Education in the Government ofPalestine. The British treated him to land, air and sea tours so he could write his 1923textbook, The Geography of Palestine. The British hired Sabri Sharif ‘Abd al-Hadi toteach natural sciences at a secondary school in Nablus. He published A NaturalGeography of Syria and Palestine in Arabic in the same year. They commissioned KhalilTotah and ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghuthi to write a History of Palestine in 1923. Theycommissioned Khalil Totah and Habib Khuri to write A Geography of Palestine in 1923as well. Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh also wrote a number of textbooks for the235 See Arnon Degani, “They Were Prepared: The Palestinian Arab Scout Movement 1920 – 1948,” BritishJournal of Middle Eastern Studies (41)(2) (2014): 200-218; Issam Khalidi, “Body and Ideology EarlyAthletics in Palestine (1900 - 1948),” Jerusalem Quarterly 27 (2006): 44-58; see also El-Eini, MandatedLandscape. 209primary and secondary schools, including such books as the Ancient History of Syria andPalestine.236236 On Ruhi’s aerial tour of the southern desert, see Husayn Ruhi, al-Mukhtasar fi Jughrafiyat Filastin(Jerusalem: L.J.S. Printing Press, 1923), 13. Ruhi’s British sponsorship shines in his book, for example, inthat he included Jewish and Arab narratives. See Hilary Falb Kalisman, “The Little Persian Agent inPalestine: Husayn Ruhi, British Intelligence, and World War I,” Jerusalem Quaretly (66) (2016): 65-74;then see Sabri Sharif ‘Abd al-Hadi, Jughrafiyat Suriya wa-Filastin al-Tab‘iyya (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Ahliyya, 1923), title page; then see al-Barghuthi and Totah, Tarikh Filastin; on its use in British schools,see Abdul Latif Tibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine: A Study of Three Decades of BritishAdministration (London: Luzac & Co., 1956), 198; Khalil Totah and Habib Khuri, Jughrafiyat Filastin(Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1923); for its use in the schools, see ibid, “Muqaddima,” before page1; then see Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, al-Madaniyyat al-Qadima wa Tarikh Suriya wa Filastin (2nd edition) (Jaffaand Haifa: al-Maktaba al-‘Asriyya, 1944); see also Rafiq Tamimi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Hawd al-Bahr al-Mutawassit: Wa Fihi Fusul Matula ‘an Filastin wa Sharqi al-Urdun wa-Sa’ir al-Bilad Suriya (Beirut:Maktaba al-Kashshaf, n.d.). 210 Figure 16. “Map of Palestine.”237Kids also studied history and geography with similar maps of Palestine. Some of thesemaps appeared on the back pages of textbooks, such as in figure 16 and 17. Figure 17. Map of “Palestine.”238The British wanted their subjects to believe that Palestine was a natural part of the worldorder. In 1925, they created the Committee for Palestinian Higher Education which237 Cited in Khalil Totah and Habib Khuri, Jughrafiyat Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis,1923), before page 1.238 Cited in Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id Sabbagh, Filastin wa-l-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya wa-Sa’ir al-Buldan al-Sharq al-‘Adna wa-Hawd al-Bahr al-Mutawassit (Jaffa: Maktabat al-Tahir Ikhwan, 1946), back cover. 211established rules and regulations for students in the British school system. The committeewrote exams on topics such as “the history of Palestine,” “the geography of Palestine”and “the archeology of Palestine.” No government in the Middle East had ever paidmultiple people to write books of history and geography exclusively about Palestine,much less mandated exams on Palestine’s archeology, geography and history. Tens ofthousands of kids had to prove they knew about Palestine.239Meanwhile, the number of Arabs enrolled in school increased from 20% in 1922 to 50%in 1947. Among boys, the figure swelled from 17% in 1911 to 85% percent in the late1940s. The number of public secondary schools expanded from 6 in the mid-1930s to 20in the late 1940s, and from 2 to 8 institutions of advanced learning. More students readabout the history and geography of Palestine and more saw maps of Palestine. Palestineseemed like a normal and natural part of the world to large segments of the teenagepopulation by the 1930s and 1940s.240Stories. Meanwhile, stories about Palestine proliferated. Newspaper publishers inJerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa expanded their circulation figures from 1-2 thousand in the1930s to 5-10 thousand by the 1940s. Authors wrote more and more books aboutPalestine as well: 23 in the 1920s, 45 in the 1930s, and 49 in the 1940s (see appendix 1).239 The one exception was the military handbook, Filistin Risalesi, commissioned by the Ottomans in1915. On the matriculation exams, see n.a. Shahadat al-Madrasa al-Thanawiyya al-Filastiniyya(Jerusalem: Majlis al-Ta‘lim al-‘Ali al-Filastini, 1925-1941); for more on the school curriculum, seeTibawi, Arab Education in Mandatory Palestine, 77-101240 On school enrollment, see Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 173-4; on the expansion of the schools, seeAdnan Abu-Ghazaleh “Arab Cultural Nationalism in Palestine during the British Mandate,” Journal ofPalestine Studies 1(3) (1972): 37-63; Roderic D. Matthews and Matta Akrwai, Education in ArabCountries of the Near East (Washington D.C.: American Council on Education, 1949), 236. 212Newspapers covered politics, society and economics in Palestine while books dealt withPalestine’s geography, history, anthropology and archeology. The proliferation of printedtexts dealing with Palestine was made possible by the rapid expansion of new careerpaths: medicine, journalism, civil service, law, entrepreneurship, finance, politics andpublishing.241Some stories dealt with the ethnic origins of the people of Palestine. John S. Salah, aHarvard-educated New York based writer claimed in 1919 that Palestine’s inhabitantswere a mix of Canaanite, Aramite, Hebrew, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Crusaderand Arab races. This theory bothered some because it implied Jewish blood wascirculating among the Palestinians. Najib Sadaqa had an explanation for this, claimingthat the Arab Palestinians formed out of the Philistines and others to populate the areaonly after its Jewish presence in antiquity. He believed in a perfect separation of bodilyfluids between the ancient Jews and other ancient peoples. Palestinian blood wastherefore untainted by Jewish blood, in his mind.242This idea didn’t sit well with others, though, because it meant that Jews settled the landfirst, not something to brag about in the heyday of fascism. The Catholic bishop of Haifa,241 In 1933, al-‘Arab (Jerusalem) printed 1,500 copies daily. In 1935, al-Jami‘a al-Islamiyya (Jaffa) printed1,200 copies daily while Filastin printed 2,000 copies daily. One source claimed that in 1936, al-Difa‘printed 10,000 copies daily. Circulation expanded even further in the 1940s, where the most popularpapers, Filastin and al-Difa‘, printed some 6-7 thousand copies daily. See Ayalon, Reading Palestine, 62-5;on the 1930s, see Matthews, Confronting an Empire, 143; Sarah Ozacky-Lazar and Mustafa Kabha, “TheHaganah by Arab and Palestinian Historiography and Media” Israel Studies 7(3)(2002): 58, n.17; on the1940s, see Avraham Sela’, “Khevra ve-Mosadot be-Kraz ‘Aravay Filastin be-Tkufat Ha-Mandat,” pp.291-347 in Kalkala ve-Khevra be-Yemay Ha-Mandat, 1918-1948 (Beersheba: Hotsaʼat ha-sefarim shelUniversitat Ben-Guryon ba-Negev, 2003), 304.242 First, see Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid, 19; then see Najib Sadaqa, Qadiyyat Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub,1946), 6. 213Grigorios al-Hajjar, had a solution to this problem. “The Palestinian Arabs were thedescendants of the original residents of Palestine who settled the land thousands of yearsago before the Jews,” he suggested. He insisted that Palestinians were both Arab and thefirst settlers of the land.243But this theory must have seemed shallow to Wadi‘ Talhuq, who realized that the Arabconquerors in the 7th century were obviously not the first people to settle the land. In1945, he asked “who were the original inhabitants of Palestine?” All the ancientcivilizations to thrive in the Fertile Crescent were conquerors, not natives, and most ofthem came from the desert, he claimed. This meant, in his mind, that the Fertile Crescenthad no original inhabitants, only foreign invaders. And if the foreigners usually invadedfrom the desert, then they were usually Arabs, and so the original inhabitants of the landwere Arabs, and therefore the Palestinians. He saw human populations like branches ontrees, the Palestinian branch older than all other branches. Talhuq was a magician ofideas. The Palestinians, like most peoples, developed compelling stories about their ownorigins.244Stories also dealt with the political conflict over Palestine, at that time called the“Palestine Issue.” Writers covered the Arab political movements of the late Ottomanperiod, the diplomatic politics of World War I, i.e. the Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot243 On Grigorios (Gariguriyus) al-Hajjar, see Britanya al-Udhma, al-Shahadat al-Siyasiyya amam al-Lajnaal-Milkiyya al-Britaniyya (Damascus: Matba‘at al-Sha‘b, 1937), 53 and al-Nafir, Majmu‘a Shahadat ‘ArabFilastin amam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya al-Britaniyya (Haifa: al-Nafir, 1936?), 31.244 Wadi‘ Talhuq, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya: Fi Madiha wa Hadiruha wa-Mustaqbaluha (Beirut: Majallat al-‘Alman, 1945), 64-5. Weldon Matthews [Confronting an Empire, 54] traced similar ideas in the 1920s and1930s in the writings of al-Khatib to the American scholar Henry Breasted’s Ancient Times, where hetraced the sources of the civilizations of antiquity to migration out of Arabia. 214Agreement, Hussayn-McMahorn Correspondence, King-Crane Commission andPalestinian and Syrian National Congresses. Stories about Palestine dealt with the termsof the Mandate itself, which, as so many writers reminded us, violated the democraticwill of its Arab Palestinian Christian and Muslim majority. These stories covered thepolitical history of the Government of Palestine, jumping from flash point to flash point:the 1920 disturbances, the 1929 Western Wall riots and, of course, the Great Revolt from1936-1939.245Writers exaggerated Palestine’s glory. They claimed that cities such as Jaffa and Nabluswere the bride of Palestine; that Ramallah and Safed were two of Palestine’s mostbeautiful resort towns, with their high elevation, excellent climate, clean air and freshwater; that Palestine’s lands were rich and fertile; that Palestine’s hot springs were someof the best in the world; that Palestine was the stage of the prophets and heroes, the sisterof the gardens of paradise; the bedrock of hope and fulfillment; that Palestine was245 See, for instance, Muhammad al-Tawil, Kitab al-Haqa’iq al-Majhula: Idhtirabat Filastin al-Akhira(Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Mulul, 1930); n.a., Rihla Bayn al-Jibal fi Ma‘aqil al-Tha’irin (Jafa: al-Matba‘a al-Jami‘a al-Islamiyya, 1936); Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya Amam al-Wafd al-Britanial-‘Iraqi (Haifa: Matba‘a al-Nafir, 1936); Hasan Siddiqi al-Dajjani, Tafsil Dhulamat Filastin: Haqa’iq,Arqam, Watha’iq Hamma (n.p.: al-Matba‘a al-Tijariyya, 1936); Ghayrath Pitrus, Suriya al-Jadida, Filastin,Shahadat al-Isti‘mar al-Sahyuni (San Paulo: Dar al-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr al-‘Arabiyya, 1940); MuhammadRif‘at, Qadiyyat Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1947); Nuri al-Sa‘id, Istiqlal al-‘Arab wa-WihdatuhumMudhakkira fi al-Qadiyya al-‘Arabiyya (Baghdad: Matba‘at al-Hukuma, 1943); Sadaqa, Qadiyyat Filastin;Muhammad Jamil Bayhum, Filastin: Andalus al-Sharq (Beirut: Matabi‘ Sadir, 1946); Muhammad ‘AliTahir, Awraq Majmu‘a: Kitab Ahmar ‘an Fadha’i‘ al-Ingiliz fi Filastin wa Ghadr al-Yahud wa-Sabr al-‘Arab (Cairo: Maktabat al-Isti‘lamat al-Filastini al-‘Arabi, 1948); al-Hay’a al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Ulya, QadiyyatFilastin al-‘Arabiyya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Sa‘ada, 1948?); Wadi‘ Talhuq, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya: Fi Madihawa Hadiruha wa-Mustaqbaluha (Beirut: Majallat al-‘Alman, 1945); ‘Asabat al-Taharrur al-Watani bi-Filastin, Tariq Filastin ila al-Huriyya (Jerusalem: ‘Asabat al-Taharrur al-Watani, 1947); Jabir Shibli, Asra‘am Ta‘awwun fi Filastin? (Jerusalem: Sharikat Matba‘a al-Umma, 1940). 215beloved by millions of people; that it was the lord of lands and the pride ofworshippers.246Arabs were also romanticizing Palestine’s history. “No country in the world has a historyas important as our country, Palestine,” read a 1934 History of Palestine. “ManyWesterners have taken interest in studying its history and have become more intimatewith Palestine their own countries.” They study its history, archeology, topography andgeography, but, “it is us, the Palestinians, who should love Palestine,” the text continued.“This land is our land, the cradle of our ancestors, and it is our people who should studyits history.”247The growing importance of the state in people’s lives from the 1920s onwards meant thatthe term Palestinian became more and more useful. Dozens of writers used the termPalestinian to discuss regional politics, especially similarities and differences betweenand among Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians. People formerly part of a single centralgovernment in Istanbul now found themselves scattered across a half dozen some states.Arabic speakers in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan were now subject to246 On Nablus’s beauty, see As‘ad Mansur, Tarikh al-Nasira (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Hilal, 1924), 191; onRamallah, see Filastin 14 August 1912; Rafiq al-Tamimi, Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Hawdal-Bahr al-Mutawassit wa-Gharbi Uruba (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1945), 27; on Safed, seeWasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Jughrafiyat al-Sharq al-Adna, wa-Sa’ir al-Buldan Hawd al-Bahral-Mutawassit wa-Gharbi Uruba (Jaffa: Sharikat al-Tiba‘a al-Yaffiyya, 1942), 52-53; on Palestine’s fertilelands, see Bashir Filastin 22 November 1908, cited in Yehoshua, Tarikh al-Sihafa, 64-5; on its hot springs,see Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid, 98; from the stage of prophets to the pride of worshippers, see a 1920anonymous op-ed (perhaps written by ‘Arif al-‘Arif) in the newspaper Suriya al-Janubiyya, cited inKhalidi, Palestinian Identity, 169.247 The book was dedicated to the “Palestinian student so he could study the history of his own land.” Theintroduction is initialed by a certain ‘aleph,’ ‘sin,’ ‘lam.’ See Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, Tarikh Filastin minAqdam al-Azmana ila Ayyamina hadhihi (Jerusalem: Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, 1934), 5-6. 216different laws, they carried different passports and faced different political challenges:Zionism, sectarianism, imperialism, “divide and conquer” and more. As a result, the termPalestinian became a much more useful descriptor from the 1920s onwards than it hadbeen during the Ottoman period.248As the Mandate progressed, the conflict between Jews and Arabs descended into riots,violence, bloodshed and war. Violence usually has an affect on our identities. And therewas plenty of violence over Palestine. Blood had already been spilled between Jews andArabs over the fate of Palestine as early as the 1890s, but the first large scale outbreak ofviolence was in 1920. Things got even worse in 1929 during the Western Wall riots, andthen even worse from 1936-1939, when Arabs engaged in open revolt, and then evenworse during the 1948 War—known as the War of Independence by Jews and theCatastrophe by the Arabs. By that war’s end, some two-thirds of the country’s Arabinhabitants fled their homes or were expelled by gunpoint. For those who became248 n.a., Jihad Filastin: al-Thawra al-Filastiniyya fi Mukhtalif Marahiluha (Damascus: n.p., 1936), 16, 21,24, 34, 57, 61; Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, Ahl al-‘Ilm bayn Misr wa Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1946), 4, 7, 17, 19-26, 29-30, 32-4, 36, 39-40; Mir’at al-Sharq 9 June 1920; Filastin 3 September1921; Filastin 2 May 1922; al-Karmil 11 October 1922, cited in Hammad Husayn (ed.), Majmu‘atWatha’iq hawl Tarikh Filastin (Jenin: al-Markaz al-Filastini lil-Thaqafa wa-l-I‘lam, 2003), 35; Mahmud al-Charkis, al-Dalil al-Musawwar lil-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya (Damascus: Matba‘at Babil Ikhwan, 1930), 7; AminRihani, Muluk al-‘Arab: Rihla Bayn Bilad al-‘Arab (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al-‘Ilmiyya li-Yusif Sadir, 1924),II, 294; al-Sa‘id, Istiqlal al-‘Arab, 73; al-Hay’a al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Ulya li-Filastin, Qadiyyat Filastin al-‘Arabiyya, 7; Kunstantin (a.k.a. Constantine) Thuyudri, Bayn Misr wa-Filastin (Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis,1928), before page 1; Mamlakat Misr, al-‘Alaqat al-Tijariyya bayn Misr wa-Filastin (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Amiriyya, 1936), 30; Tahir, Awraq Majmu‘a, 271; Jamal Husayni, cited in Sadaqa, Qadiyyat Filastin(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub, 1946), nun; Fayiz Sayigh, Mashru‘ Suriya al-Kubra (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Nijma,1946), 23; ‘Irfat Mahmud Hijazi, Suriya al-Kubra (Dayr Mar Marqus lil-Siryan, 1947/8?), 27; YusufMajalli, Filastin wa-l-Mazhar al-Jughrafi li-Mushkilatuha (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjilu al-Misriyya, 1948?),84; Musa al-‘Alami, ‘Ibrat Filastin (Beirut: n.p., 1949), 5; ‘Arif al-‘Arif, Tarikh al-Quds (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1951), 128; Imil Ghuri, al-Mu’amara al-Kubra: Ightilal Filastin wa-Mahq al-‘Arab (Cairo: Daral-Nil al-Tiba‘a, 1955), 157. 217refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Syria or Lebanon, Palestine had become more important thanit ever had it. * * *Conclusion. Europeans and Americans entered the lands of Sham from the mid-19thcentury onwards as consular agents, missionaries, archeologists and travelers, andpopularized the term Palestine as well as stories about it and maps of it. Tourists andpilgrims wandered around with their Palestine guidebooks, archeologists conductedsurveys of Palestine’s topography and Russians hosted public lectures celebrating theirpresence in Syria and Palestine. American, French, German, British and Russianmissionary schools taught tens of thousands of kids about Palestine in class too.Increasingly, it became impossible to talk about politics or current events withoutreference to Palestine—the archeologists uncovering its ancient past, the consular agentspublishing reports about its economy, tourists flocking to its holy sites or the Zionistshoping to transform it into a national home for the Jews. To use a word other thanPalestine to describe things would have obfuscated the reality being discussed. Palestinewas a fiction, but it became impossible to live without it.More and more people in the modern world could pursue activities other than farm workthanks to agriculutural surpluses. This included bureaucrats, lawyers, educators,diplomats, archeologists, writers, journalists, publishers and mapmakers. Publishers couldprint thousands of newspapers and magazines cheaply. More people could read, which 218drove up demand, increased supply and decreased the price of printed texts. Newspaperswere distributed to villages, towns and cities thanks to new technologies. All of thesethings happened everywhere in the world—Europe before the Middle East—but theeffects were similar in both places: the growth in the number of people whose effect onthe world was to make places like Palestine seem real.In 1898, Palestine’s Arabic speakers started using the term Palestinian. The term gainedpopularity first among graduates of Russian Seminary in Nazareth, then a wider circle ofjournalists in the 1900s and early 1910s. During these two decades, even people insmaller towns read or heard about Palestinians, but the term was still new and still not inwidespread use. By the 1920s and 1930s, though, once the Government of Palestine hadlaid its foundation, once the effects of Zionism were widely understood and literacy ratesand school attendance rose, Palestine rose dramatically in importance for everyone. APalestinian identity was embraced. Some people picked up arms and died for Palestine.Many have since and still do today. 219 CONCLUSIONToo many close encounters with death have made Jews anxious of being wiped off themap. Some Jews might be surprised to learn that Palestinians have the same fear of beingwiped off the map. They have faced too many close encounters with humiliation,discrimination, war, occupation and siege—a siege that starts with their very identities asPalestinians.Such fears are reinforced when the Israeli military tries to ban people from using theword Palestine, or when Israeli heads of state declare there is no such thing as aPalestinian, or when pilots are fired for announcing touchdown in Palestine, or when aroom full of powerful American lobbyists roar with applause upon hearing that “Palestinehas not existed since 1948.” Imagine if a room full of Washington insiders roared withapplause at the thought that Europe was emptied of its Jews after World War II.If Palestine is a fiction in our mind, not in reality, why do we believe in it? That questionled us to the Pleistocene, in chapter two, because that’s when we first came to believe inwords, ideas or concepts like Palestine. We mastered the concept of a symbol. Welearned to name objects in the world, including abstract objects like places. Natural andsexual selection led us to communicate with infinite complexity by relating symbols toone another with grammar, morphology and syntax. We made maps of Palestine and toldstories about it. We also made Palestine beautiful, giving it meaning and purpose. This 220led us to identify with it, and even believe it was worth dying for. This was the first partof the story we told in chapter two.Although identities based on places like Palestine have been around for tens of thousandsof years, they came to dominate once sedentary life spread after the AgriculturalRevolution. Agriculture led to surpluses, which inspired conquest and the rise of states.States were groups of people who agreed internally on a chain of command, and claimeda monopoly on the use of force within an area. States conquered and controlledterritories, and needed to name the territories they conquered and controlled to effectivelyconquer and control them. Places like Palestine flourished as a result. Places likePalestine also proved useful for defense, tax collection, conscription and more conquest.Usually, place names chosen by the state became canonical without resistance.Occasionally, states used coercion to enforce them. States also built cities, which fusedinto regions in our minds. This is the second part of the story we told in chapter two.In chapter three, we picked up where Palestine first entered the historical record a littlemore than three thousand years ago. The Philstines were settled peoples whodomesticated plants and animals. The surrounding societies were also agriculturalpeoples. It was common around the world for settled peoples to see themselves asconnected to the places they inhabited, and their neighbors as connected to their places ofinhabitance. That’s the setting for the first instance of the term Palestine and thePhilistines in history. The Egyptians, Assyrians and Hebrews all figured out ways ofrecording information, and all wrote about Palestine and the Philistines. The term was 221adopted in the lingua franca of the time—Aramaic—and entered Greek, Latin, Arabicand English and most other modern languages. Why that term survived, while Edom,Moab and Ammon did not, seems random. But the general trend of history is not random:people settled down. States named places. We inherited them.The agricultural surplus meant that we could collectively feed more people, leading tohuman population growth, cities and the diversification of life pursuits, today known asthe workforce. This allowed some people to do things other than farm labor. But, as weshowed in chapter three, the number of people who could pursue such activities waslimited until recently. Sure, some Arabs could find work as imams, copyists or Qur’anteachers, some of whom wrote an occasional ode or poem about Palestine’s sanctity.Other folks put the word Palestine on parchment, stone, coin or paper. But for most ofhistory, there were no lawyers, mapmakers, artists, writers, historians or geographers whospecialized on Palestine. Few libraries had any books on Palestine in the Middle East.There were no institutions, corporations and organizations dealing with Palestine either.Coffee shops, banks, scouting troops, law institutes, medical associations andnewspapers—didn’t exist for most of history. There was no money involved in doingthings that made Palestine seem real or important. The result was that few people thoughtPalestine was important. Since it was not that important, few people identified with it.In chapter four, we explained that all of this changed in the past century. The number ofpeople in the Middle East who could earn a living because of their Palestine expertiserose dramatically. New classes of people, especially teachers, bureaucrats, mapmakers, 222inspectors and journalists, came into existence. They taught history and geography. Theysent written notes home to parents about the school’s activities “in Syria and Palestine.”Tourists wondered the streets, meadows and mountains of the Middle East with their“Palestine” guidebooks because travel became cheaper, faster and more comfortable.People started to write odes, poems and balads about Palestine. They started to call oneanother Palestinian. Pretty soon, they were willing to give their life defending it as well.I am a historian, not a futurist. But if the theory proposed is correct, it should have somepredictive power. If sedentary life led us to identify with regions, then it should continueto do so in the future. Although sedentary life dominates today, a new trend is takinghold—increasing mobility. The global refugee count is quickly rising. Airfare and travelare becoming more affordable, making many populations more mobile. And while thefuture of borders, walls and barriers between states is hard to predict, within states it’seasy to predict: we are more mobile today than ever before. What can be said is that ifborders open up in the future, identities like “the Palestinians” will weaken.States are pushing things in the other direction. Palestine is nominally a state according tohow I’ve been using the term state. It does have a chain of command, and orders arepassed through that chain of command, I presume. The state does control a certain area,even though it’s ultimately subject to Israel’s control. The state itself uses the termPalestine to refer to the area under its control. It also uses the term to refer to more thanjust the area under its chastised and subordinated rule. So it’s hard to imagine a worldwhere people stop calling it Palestine. Who is going to convince politicians in Ramallah, 223as well as activists in Bil‘in, hipsters in Jaffa and American college students in Berkeleyto abandon the word Palestine, and start calling it something else? Precisely because ithas so much political significance—Palestine seems unlikely to go away anytime soon.That means that identities based on it are also unlikely to disappear.The third factor that contributed to the rise of a Palestinian identity—and which makesPalestine seem very real today—is the diversification of the workforce. Initially, teachers,bureaucrats, inspectors and journalists enjoyed careers making Palestine seem real topeople. But the breadth and depth of career options having to do with Palestine expandedrapidly after World War II. People could make a living as graduate students, post-docs,lecturers and university professors because of their expertise on Palestine’s economy,demography, history, sociology, ecology, political stability and many more on itspolitical instability. People could find jobs at think tanks and NGOs as investigators,reporting officers, project managers, program associates and consultants, with anexpertise on Palestine. A dissertation was even allowed that focused merely on the word,Palestine. This also means a “Palestinian” identity is here to stay.So, in sum, where is a Palestinian identity headed in the future? The decline of sedentarylife and the rise of mobile populations could eventually deal a major blow to identitieslike the Palestinians. But since Palestine has so much political vertigo, it’s hard to see itbecoming less important to people. There are just too many ways Palestine has becomeinstitutionalized. There are millions of people around the globe who call themselvesPalestinians. These things seem difficult to undo, certainly not without political will. At 224the very last, there is so much “Palestine” content online and in print—it will impossibleto erase Palestine from history. No surprise a Palestinian identity has never been strongerthan it is today. And that means more people are prepared to die for Palestine today thanat any previous time in human history. 225 BIBLIOGRAPHYArchivesCentral Zionist Archive (CZA) (Jerusalem)Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA) (İstanbul, Turkey)Isaac Bird Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University (New Haven, United States)Archives of the Maronite Patriarchate (Bkirki, Lebanon)Geniza DocumentsTS 18 J 3, f. 9, ed. 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Zanetti, & Gia. Ruffinelli, 1587)Akram Zu‘aytir, Watha’iq al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al- Filastiniyya, 1918-1939: MinAwraq Akram Zu’aytir (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979)Jirjis Zughayb (d.1729), Bulus Qara’li (ed.) ‘Awdat al-Nasara ila Jurud Kasrawan(Beirut: Jarrus Bars, 1963)al-Ab Agustin Zunda (w.1728), al-Tarikh al-Lubnani, 1714-1728 (Kaslik, Lebanon:Jami‘at al-Ruh al-Quds, 1988) 274 APPENDIX ONE Filastin in TitlesNote: This list includes titles with the word Filastin either written by native Arabicspeakers or written in Arabic (by non-native speakers) from the rise of Islam until 1948.Before 1880 1.! Salih bin Muhammad al-Tamartashi (d.1644-5), al-Khabar al-Tamm fi Dhikr al- Ard al-Muqaddasa wa-Hududuha wa-Dhikr Ard Filastin wa-Hududuha wa Aradi al-Sham.2491880-1917 1.! George E. Post, Nabat Suriya wa-Filastin wa-l-Qatr al-Misri wa-Bawadiha (Beirut, n.p., 1884) 2.! Khalil Sarkis, Rihlat al-Imbaratur Ghilyawn al-Thani Malik Bursya wa- Imbaratur Almaniya wa-l-Imbaratura Fikturiyya fi Filastin wa-Suriya Sanat 1898 (Beirut: Imp. Des Belles Lettres, 1898) 3.! Bashir Filastin (Jerusalem, Greek Orthodox Church, 1908)250 4.! Filastin (‘Issa al-‘Issa, Jaffa) (1911) 5.! Jurji al-Khuri Sbiridun (trans.), Jughrafiyat Filastin: Li-Isti‘mal Madaris al-Qabr al-Muqaddas al-‘Amma (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Qabr al-Muqqadas, al- Mutakhassa bi-Dayr al-Rum al-‘Amir, 1904) 6.! Georges Kassab, Palestine, Hellénisme et Cléricalisme (Istanbul: Impr. de La Patrie, 1909) 7.! Haqqi al-‘Azm, Haqa’iq ‘an al-Intikhabat al-Niyabiyya fi Iraq wa Filastin wa Suriya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Akhbar, 1912) 8.! Shukri Khalil Suwaydan, Tarikh al-Jam‘iyya al-Imbaraturiyya al-Urthudhuksiyya al-Filastiniyya (Boston: Matba‘a Suriya al-Jadida, 1912) 9.! Khalil al-Sakakini, al-Nahda al-Urthudhuksiyya fi Filastin (n.p., n.p.: 1913) 10.!Filastin (Yusuf Siddiqi, Jerusalem, 1908)251 11.!Filastin (Ilyas Bawwad, Safed, 1908)2521918-1929 1.! Jaridat Filastin (1918)253249 For more details on the manuscript, see chapter 3.250 The Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem published this magazine with the putative aim to defend theholy places, resist the propaganda of other Christian sects, assist peasants, and enlighten the minds ofOrthodox Christians regarding the so-called truth about their racial origins. See Ya‘qub Yehoshua, Tarikhal-Sihafa al-‘Arabiyya fi Filastin fi al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani, 1908-1918 (Jerusalem: Matba’at al-Ma’arif,1974), 37, 63-4.251 For more details, see chapter 4.252 For more details, see chapter 4.253 This was an Arabic edition of the official newspaper issued the British Army in Occupied EnemyTerritory. See Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian National Movement 1918-1929 275 2.! John S. Salah, Filastin wa-Tajdid Hayatuhu (New York: The Syrian American Press, 1919) 3.! The Official Gazette of the Government of Palestine (Jaridat Hukumat Filastin al- Rasmiyya) (1921)254 4.! Tawfiq Canaan, Haunted Springs and Water Demons in Palestine (Jerusalem: Palestine Oriental Society, 1922) 5.! Tawfiq Canaan and Omar Effendi el-Barghuthi, Studies in Palestinian Customs and Folklore (Jerusalem: Palestine Oriental Society, 1922) 6.! Omar Effendi el-Barghuthi, Judicial Courts Among the Bedouin of Palestine (Jerusalem: Palestine Oriental Society, 1922) 7.! Husayn Ruhi, Mukhtasar Jughrafiyat Filastin (Jerusalem: L.J.S. Printing Press, 1923) 8.! Sabri Sharif ‘Abd al-Hadi, Jughrafiyat Suriya wa-Filastin al-Tab‘iyya (Cairo: al- Maktaba al-Ahliyya, 1923) 9.! Khalil Totah and Habib Khuri, Jughrafiyat Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al- Maqdis, 1923) 10.!‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghuthi, and Khalil Totah, Tarikh Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1923) 11.!n.a., Matami‘a al-Sahyuniyya fi Filastin: al-Ams, al-Yawm wa Ghadan (Cairo: Jaridat al-Mahrusa, 1923) 12.!Stephan Hanna Stephan, Modern Palestinian Parallels to the Song of Songs (Jerusalem: Palestine Oriental Society, 1923) 13.!Yusuf Sufayr, Jughrafiyat Lubnan al-Kabir wa-Hukumat Suriya wa-Filastin (Beirut: Matabi‘ Kuzma, 1924) 14.!Khalil Sakakini, Filastin Ba‘d al-Harb al-Kubra (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al- Maqdis, 1925) 15.!N.a. Shahadat al-Madrasa al-Thanawiyya al-Filastiniyya (Jerusalem: Majlis al- Ta‘lim al-‘Ali al-Filastini, 1925-41) 16.!‘Abd al-Ghani al-Karmi, Nida’ ila Shabab Filastin wa-Talabat al-Madaris fi-ha (Jaffa: Matba‘at al-Huquq, 1927) 17.!Tawfiq Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (London: Luzac & Co., 1927) 18.!Constantine Thuyudri, Bayn Misr wa-Filastin (Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1928) 19.!Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, al-Jughrafiya al-Ibtida’iyya: Li-Ahdath Suriya wa-Lubnan wa- Filastin wa-l-Sharq al-‘Arabi (Sidon: Matba‘at al-‘Irfan, 1927)255 20.!Muhammad Fahmi Gharib, Taqwim Filastin (Alexandria: Matba‘at al-Jarida al- Tijariyya al-Misriyya, 1929) 21.!‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghouthi, al-Qada’ ‘ind al-Badu fi Filastin (n.p.: n.p., 1929) 22.!n.a., al-Hawadith al-Damawiyya fi Filastin (Jerusalem: Sharikat al-Nashr al- Haqiqa, 1929)(London: Cass, 1974), 70; James Renton, “The Age of Nationality and the Origins of the Zionist-Palestinian Conflict,” The International History Review 35(3) (2013): 576-599.254 This periodical was later merged with the Palestinian Events (al-Waqi‘a al-Filastiniyya) in 1934. Thesepublications included notices of new British laws and regulations, notices of appointments of variousMandatory officials, registration of trademarks and other legal and administrative issues.255 This book was reprinted at least nine times, the ninth edition appearing in 1937. 276 23.!Assaf Jurays Wahbah, al-Mukalamat al-Ma’lufa bi-al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya al- Darija fi Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1929)1930-1939 1.! Constantine Thuyudri, Filastin wa-Mustaqbaluha (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al- Tijariyya, 1930) 2.! Jibra’il Katul, Nizam al-Ta‘lim fi Filastin (Jerusalem: Maktab al-Akhbar li- Hukumat Filastin, Matba‘at Dayr al-Rum al-Urthudhuks, 1930) 3.! Muhammad al-Tawil, Kitab al-Haqa’iq al-Majhula: Idhtirabat Filastin al-Akhira (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-Mulul, 1930) 4.! Ava Kutshing, Husayn al-Khalidi (trans.), al-‘Inaya bi-l-Atfal lil-Nisa’ wa-l- Banat fi Filastin (n.p: n.d. 1930?) 5.! Haim Arlosoroff, al-Sahyuniyya wa-l-Amakin al-Islamiyya al-Muqaddasa fi Filastin: Kilmat al-Wikala al-Yahudiyya alqaha al-Duktur Khayim Arlusuruf (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1931) 6.! N.a., Qanun Niqabat Ashab wa-Sa’iqay al-Sayyarat fi Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1931) 7.! Muhammad Ali al-Tahir (a.k.a. Mohamed Ali eltaher), Nazarat al-Shura (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Shura, 1932) 8.! ‘Umar al-Salih al-Barghouthi, Fahrasat Qawanin Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Mir’at al-Sharq, 1931?) 9.! Tawfiq Canaan, The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore (Jerusalem: Syrian Orphanage Press, 1933) 10.!n.a., al-‘Abath bi-l-Qada’ fi Filastin, Sahifa Baqiyya la Yamhuha illa Ijra’ Tahqiq Nazih (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Aba’ al-Yasu‘iyyin, 1933?) 11.!Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, Tarikh Filasṭin min Aqdam al-Azmana ila Ayyamuna hadhihi. (Jerusalem: Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, 1934). 12.!Firdinan Tawtal al-Yasu‘i (Ferdinand Taontel), Tarikh Suriya wa-Lubnan wa- Filastin al-Musawwar (Beirut: al-Mabta‘a al-Kathulikiyya, 1934) 13.!Nikula Jabra, Harakat al-Idhrabat bayn al-‘Ummal al-‘Arab fi Filastin (Jaffa: Matba‘at al-Nur, 1935) 14.!The Palestine Arab Party, Report on Illiteracy in Palestine: Submitted to the Members of the British Parliament (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al-Maqdis, 1935) 15.!Fahmi El-Husseini, The Palestine Conflict: Causes and Remedies (Gaza: Arab National Committee, 1936) 16.!Wadi‘ al-Bustani, al-Intidab al-Filastini: Batil wa-Mihal (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al- Amrikiyya, 1936) 17.!Mamlakat Misr, al-‘Alaqat al-Tijariyya bayn Misr wa-Filastin (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Amiriyya, 1936) 18.!Sahil al-Sayyid, Al-Murshid al-‘Arabi, Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al- ‘Asriyya, 1936) 19.!Mahammad Ali al-Tahir (a.k.a. Mohamed Ali eltaher),‘An Thawrat Filastin: Sanat 1936 (Cairo: Maktab al-Isti‘malat al-Filastini al-‘Arabi, 1936) 20.!Basim Amin Faris, Electric Power in Syria and Palestine (Beirut: American Press, 1936) 21.!Fakhri al-Nashashibi, Sawt min Qubur Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Jerusalem, 1938) 277 22.!Hasan Siddiqi al-Dajjani, Tafsil Thulumat Filastin (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al- Tijariyya, 1936) 23.!Nuh Ibrahim, Majmu‘at Qasa’id Filastin al-Mujahada (Jaffa: Matba‘a al-Khamis, 1936) or (Damascus: Matba‘at al-I‘tidal, 194?) 24.!Tawfiq Canaan, The Palestine Arab Cause (Jerusalem: Modern Press, 1936)256 25.!Tawfiq Canaan, Conflict in the Land of Peace (Jerusalem, 1936) 26.!Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya Amam al-Wafd al-Barlamani al-‘Iraqi (Haifa: Matba‘at al-Nafir, 1936) 27.!Ellias N. Haddad and William Foxwell Albright, al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya al- ‘Amiyya fi Filastin (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Dar al-Aytam al-Suriya, 1936)257 28.!Muhammad Libada al-Nabulusi, Thawrat Filastin al-Kubra (Damascus: Matba‘at al-Fayha’, 1936) 29.!‘Umar Abu al-Nasr, Ibrahim Najm and Amin ‘Aql, Jihad Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1936) 30.!Aziz Shehadeh, A.B.C. of the Arab Case in Palestine (Jaffa: The Modern Library, 1936) 31.!Yusuf Haykal, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya (Jaffa: Matba‘at al-Fajr, 1937) 32.!‘Issa al-Sifri, al-Qadiya al-Filastiniyya: Tahlil wa Naqd (Jaffa, 1937) 33.!‘Issa al-Sifri, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya bayn al-Intidab wa-l-Sahyuniyya (Jaffa: Maktabat Filastin al-Jadida, 1937) 34.!Tawfiq Canaan, Kala in Palastina (Hamburg, 1937) 35.!n.a., Mughamarati fi Jibal Filastin (n.p., n.p., 1937) 36.!Britanya al-Udhma, al-Shahadat al-Siyasiyya Amam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya fi Filastin (Damascus: Matba‘at al-Sha‘b, 1937) 37.!Ittihad ‘Ummal Filastin, Kashf al-Qina‘: Majmu‘at Mushahadat wa-Haqa‘iq ‘an Ahwal al-Idhtirabat al-Akhira fi Filastin (Haifa: Matba‘at Zaytuni, 1937) 38.!G. Mansur (ed.), The Arab Workers under the Palestine Mandate (Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1937) 39.!Al-Lajna al-Filastiniyya al-‘Arabiyya, al-Yahud wa-l-Islam: Qadiman wa- Hadithan: al-Yahud wa Filastin (Cairo: Maktab al-Isti‘malat al-Filastini al- ‘Arabi, 1937) 40.!Muhammad Mustafa Ghandur, al-Qadiyya al-Filastiniyya fi 170 Yawman (Acre, 1938) 41.!Wafil (?), al-Hamlat al-Harbiyya bi-Filastin (Cairo: Wizarat al-Harbiyya wa-l- Bahriyya, 1938) 42.!Da’irat al-Mabahith al-Iqtisadiyya, Iqtisadiyyat Filastin ma Bayn al-Yahud wa-l- ‘Arab (Jerusalem: al-Wikala al-Yahudiyya, 1937/1938) 43.!n.a., al-Nar wa-l-Damar fi Filastin al-Shahida (n.p.: n.p., 1938) 44.!n.a. Filastin al-Shahida: Sijill Musawwar (n.p.: n.p., 1938) 45.!Sa‘id Himadeh, al-Nizam al-Iqtisadi fi Filastin (Beirut: al-Matba‘a al- Amirkaniyya, 1939)256 The book was also translated to Arabic: Tawfiq Kana‘an, Musa Salih Salamah (trans.) ‘Arab Filastin(Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1936).257 This book was also published in German as Arabisch wie es in Palästina gesprochen wird: ein Leitfadenfür Anfänger and English as The Spoken Arabic of Palestine: For Use in Beginners’ Classes. 2781940-1948 1.! Aref Odeh, An Easy Guide to the Spoken Arabic of Palestine: Self-Taught and with English Pronunciation (2nd ed.) (Jerusalem: Living Waters Press, 1940) 2.! Ghayrath Pitrus; Suriya al-Jadida, Filastin, Shahidat al-Isti‘mar al-Sahyuni (San Paulo: Dar al-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr al-‘Arabiyya, 1940) 3.! Jabir Shibli, Asra‘ am Ta‘awwun fi Filastin? (Jerusalem: Sharika Matba‘at al- Umma, 1940?)258 4.! Stephan Hanna Stephan and Boulus Afif, Palestine by Road and Rail: A Concise Guide to the Important Sites in Palestine and Syria, with a Map and a Plan (Jerusalem: Ahva, 1942) 5.! Judah Magnus, Filastin wa-l-Ittihad al-‘Arabi (Jerusalem: Matba‘at Bayt al- Maqdis, 1942), I-IV 6.! Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, Filastin (Jerusalem, 1941-3) 7.! Said al-Sabbagh, al-Madaniyyat al-Qadima wa-Tarikh Suriya wa-Filastin (2nd edition) (Jaffa and Haifa: al-Maktaba al-‘Asriyya, 1944) 8.! Sa‘id al-Sabbagh, Tarikh Suriyya wa Filastin (2nd ed.) (Jaffa and Haifa: Sharika al-Tiba‘a al-Yafiyya, 1944) 9.! Rashid Hajj Ibrahim, Mudhakkira Marfu‘a: Hawla Qadiyyat al-Aradi fi Filastin (Damascus: Matba‘a Juda Bayil, 1944) 10.!Ibrahim ‘Abd al-Sattar, Shu‘ara’ Filastin al-‘Arabiyya fi Thawratuha al- Qawmiyya (Haifa: Nadi al-Akha’ al-‘Arabi, 1944?) 11.!Wadi‘ Talhuq, Filastin al-‘Arabiyya: Fi Madiha wa-Hadiruha wa-Mustaqbaluha (Beirut: Majallat al-‘Alman, 1945) 12.!‘Asabat al-Taharrur al-Watani fi Filastin, al-‘Uqda al-Filastiniyya wa-l-Tariq ila Halluha (Haifa: Matba‘at Haddad, 1945?) 13.!Maktabat Bayt al-Maqdis, al-Mukhtasar al-Jughrafi li-Ahdath Filastin wa-Sharq al-Urdunn (Jerusalem: al-Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1945)259 14.!Nicola Kattan, The Geography of the Near East: With Special Reference to Palestine (Jerusalem: Palestine Educational Co., 1945)260 15.!Al-Jabha al-‘Arabiyya, Filastin: Watn al-‘Arab (Jaffa: Matba‘at al-Sharq, 1945) 16.!Muhammad Jamil Bayhum, Filastin: Andalus al-Sharq (Beirut: Matabi‘ Sadir, 1946) 17.!Najib Sadaqa, Qadiyyat Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub, 1946) 18.!Al-Lajna al-Thaqafa al-‘Arabiyya, al-Kitab al-‘Arabi al-Filastini (n.p.: Matba‘at al-Liwa al-Tijariyya, 1946) 19.!Michael Abcarius, Palestine through Fog of Propaganda (London: Hutchinson, 1946) 20.!Tawfiq Canaan, The Hygienic and Sanitary Conditions of the Arabs of Palestine (Jerusalem, 1946) 21.!Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, Ahl al-‘Ilm bayn Misr wa-Filastin (Jerusalem, al- Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1946)258 This book was translated into Arabic from its original English.259 This book was designed for elementary school students in Palestine and Transjordan. The 1945 copyindicates this was its fourth printing, but I was not able to locate earlier editions.260 Roughly one-third of the book covers Palestine and the remaining two-thirds cover Transjordan, Syria,Iraq, Turkey, Cyprus, Arabia, the peoples of the Near East and other topics. 279 22.!Wasfi ‘Anabtawi and Sa‘id Sabbagh, Filastin wa-l-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya wa-Sa’ir al-Buldan al-Sharq al-‘Adna wa-Hawd al-Bahr al-Mutawassit (Jaffa: Maktabat al-Tahir Ikhwan, 1946). 23.!Muhammad Yunis al-Husayni, al-Tatawwur al-Ijtima‘i wa-l-Iqtisadi fi Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Jaffa: Maktabat al-tahir ikhwan, 1946) 24.!Wadi‘ al-Bustani, Diwan al-Filastiniyyat (Beirut: Dar al-Tiba‘a wa-l-Nashr al- Sharqiyya, 1946) 25.!Al-Maktab al-‘Arabi, Mushkilat Filastin: ‘Ard al-‘Amm (Matba‘at Bayt al- Maqdis, 1946) 26.!Ahmad Samih al-Khalidi, Tarajim Rijal al-Hukm wa-l-Idara fi Filastin: Min ‘Ahd al-Khulafa’ al-Rashidin ila al-Qarn al-Rab‘ ‘Ashar al-Hijri (Jerusalem: al- Matba‘a al-‘Asriyya, 1947). 27.!Zaki Salh, Filastin wa-Taqrir al-Inglizi al-Amriki li-‘Am 1946 (Dar al-Fikr al- ‘Arabi, 1947)261 28.!‘Issa al-Sifri, al-Wu‘ud al-Thalatha fi Tarikh Filastin (Jaffa: al-Maktaba al- ‘Asriyya, 1947) 29.!Nadim al-Bitar, Qadiyyat al-Arab al-Filastiniyya (Matabi‘ Sadir Rayhani, 1947) 30.!Muhammad Rif‘at, Qadiyyat Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1947) 31.!‘Asabat al-Taharrur al-Watani bi-Filastin, Tariq Filastin ila al-Huriyya (Jerusalem: ‘Asabat al-Taharrur al-Watani, 1947) 32.!League of Arab States, Khutab al-Wufud al-‘Arabiyya fi Mu’tamar Filastin bi- Lundan, Sibtimbir 1946 (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-Amiriyya, 1947) 33.!Bulus Salamah, Filastin wa-Akhwatuha: Qasida (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Nasr, 1947) 34.!Maktab ‘Ali,’ Dalil al-Naql al-‘Arabi: Lil-Muwasalat wa-l-Tijara wa-l-Sina‘a fi Filastin wa-l-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya (Jerusalem: Matba‘at al-‘Arab, 1947) 35.!Jafri Butrus Ghali, Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Fusul lil-Nashr, 1947) 36.!The Arab Higher Committee, The Palestine Arab Case (Cairo: Costa Tsoumas & Co., 1947) 37.!Fakhri al-Din al-‘Ubaydi, Filastin: Wadh‘uha al-Jughrafi wa-Tatawwuruha al- Tarikhi (Baghdad: Matba‘at al-Ma‘arif, 1948) 38.!Taniyus Faris Nasr, Inqidhu Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Beirut: .n.p., 1948) 39.!Augustine al-Marmaj, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Beirut: Jean d’Acre Press, 1948) 40.!Muhammad ‘Ali Tahir, Awraq Majmu‘a: Kitab Ahmar ‘an Fadha’i‘ al-Ingiliz fi Filastin wa Ghadr al-Yahud wa-Sabr al-‘Arab (Cairo: Maktabat al-Isti‘lamat al- Filastini al-‘Arabi, 1948) 41.!Mahmud Muhammad Sadiq, Bi-l-Dima’ Taharrur: Malhamat al-Harb al- Muqadassa wa-Nashid al-‘Uruba fi Tahrir Filastin (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1948) 42.!Al-Nafir, Majmu‘a Shahadat ‘Arab Filastin amam al-Lajna al-Milkiyya al- Britaniyya (Haifa: al-Nafir, 1948?) 43.!Yusuf Majalli, Filastin wa-l-Madhhar al-Jughrafi li-Mushkilatuha (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlu al-Misriyya, 1948?) 44.!Sa‘id Shuqayr, Ma’sa ‘Ai’lat al-Shuhada’ wa-l-Mujahidin (Ramallah: Matba‘at Ramallah, 1948)261 Located in the Khalidiyya Library in Jerusalem. 28045.!Wadi‘ Talhuq, al-Salibiyya al-Jadida fi Filastin (Damascus: Matba‘at al-Nidal, 1948)46.!al-Hay’a al-‘Arabiyya al-‘Ulya li-Filastin, Qadiyyat Filastin al-‘Arabiyya (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Sa‘ada, 1948?)47.!Fu’ad Salih Saba, Majmu‘at al-Qawanin al-Tijariyya bi-Filastin (Jerusalem: n.p., n.d.)48.!Butrus Hanna Madwar, Jughrafiyat Filastin (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Zahra, n.d.)49.!Yusuf Haykal, Safra ila Filastin (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Fajr, n.d.) 281