Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The British occupied Jerusalem in December 1917 and historians often argue that Palestine did not exist as an official administrative unit until the creation of Mandatory Palestine by the British in 1918. In fact, as we shall see below, Palestine existed as a distinct administrative unit and a formal province for over a millennium. This was first as the joint Roman province of ‘Syria Palaestina’ (135‒390 AD) and subsequently, as a province separate from Syria, in the form of the three administrative provinces of Byzantine Palestine: Palaestina Prima (Палестина Прима), or Palaestina I, Palaestina Secunda (Палестина Секунда) and Palaestina Salutaris or Palaestina Tertia (Палестина Терция). Moreover, these three provinces were effectively governed politically, militarily and religiously from Palaestina Prima as a ‘three-in-one’ polity from the 4th century until the early 7th century.

And once again Palestine existed as a separate administrative entity in the form of the administrative Arab Muslim province of Jund Filastin. This administrative province of Jund Filastin (Arabic: جند فلسطين ) existed for nearly four and half centuries from the Muslim conquest of Palestine in 637‒638 until the Latin Crusader invasion of 1099 AD.

For nearly half a millennium from the 630s until the Crusader invasion of Palestine in 1099, and the creation of the first Crusader Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099‒1187), the official Arab Islamic administrative province of Jund Filastin existed within the wider geographic region of al-Sham. In Muslim geography and cartography, al-Sham (‘the North’) was a geographic region (iqlim: al-Maqdisi 2002: 135‒162) – a vast region which included the territories of present-day Syria, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and south Turkey. For several centuries, al-Sham consisted of several administrative Muslim provinces, Palestine included. In 1890 Guy Le Strange (1854‒1933), a scholar of Arabic and Persian at Cambridge University, published an important work entitled: Palestine under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from AD 650 to 1500, published in London by the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Translating extensively from the works of the medieval Arab geographers, Le Strange conveniently and mistakenly rendered all geographic Arabic references to ‘al-Sham’ into ‘Syria’. Subsequently further confusion was added to this automatic conflation of the al-Sham region with modern Syria by some historians of the modern Middle East and by the fact that the city of Damascus, the capital of present-day Syria, was also historically called al-Sham. This historic city of al-Sham became synonymous with the capital city of the Muslim province of Dimashq (Damascus) in the Middle Ages.

Yet today anyone who is familiar with the works of medieval Muslim geographers and Arab historians knows that the region of al-Sham consisted of a vast geographic region, from southern Turkey in the north to Palestine in the south, and several provinces (al-Maqdisi 2002: 137‒138). Al-Sham, in medieval Islamic geography and history works, was not synonymous with present-day Syria. This vast ‘northern’ region became the basis of the medieval Islamic term for the geographic area of Bilad al‑Sham ( ,(بِلَد الشَّام which often referred to the two Muslim provinces of Damascus and Aleppo.

Under Arab Islam the Greek and Latin forms of the name (Palaistinê and Palaestina) were rendered in Arabic into Filastin and the Arab Islamic province of Jund Filastin existed for nearly half a millennium from the 630s to the late 11th century. Before Islam the al-Sham region was partly populated by Monophysite Arabs and Miaphysite Christians, including Ghassanid Arabs and Aramaic-speaking Christians. While Palestine became an administrative province under Islam, al-Sham was never a single administrative province; the Muslim province of Dimashq (Damascus) in the Middle Ages was only one of the five provinces of the al-Sham region, one of which extended deep into present-day southern Turkey. In any case Filastin and al-Sham were neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. The province of Filastin was part of wider region of al-Sham (al-Maqdisi 2002: 165‒162). However, of all the neighbouring countries, Palestine’s historic links with al-Sham under Islam were the closest and most enduring (al-Maqdisi 2002: 165‒162). However, it would wrong to argue that the Arab Islamic term al-Sham made the perception of Palestine anachronistic under both the Mamluks and Ottomans. As we shall see below, the two geo-political terms coexisted throughout the Middle Ages and modern period and the term Filastin was viewed as a component of the wider region of al-Sham. And Palestine’s strategic and geographic location between Egypt and al-Sham (‘countries of the north’)

had a lasting impact on its history, arts and culture as well as identity as a geo-political and administrative unit.

The history of Palestine, unlike the myth-narratives of the Old Testament, has multiple ‘beginnings’ and the idea of Palestine has evolved over time from these multiple ‘beginnings’ into a geo-political concept and a distinct territorial polity. The concept of Palestine is often approached in an abstract or ahistorical way, rather than as a contextualised representation of an entity whose (physical, administrative, territorial and cultural) boundaries have evolved and changed across three millennia.

But there are no pure ideas or an ideal concept of Palestine per se; empirical evidence and human experience are fundamental to the formation of ideas and knowledge about Palestine. Crucially, we do not know Palestine only ‘from without’ through perceptions and generalisations but also ‘from within’ through embodied experiences and affections. The classical Greek scholars – who were among the first to popularise the concept of Palestine – conceived of time in two distinct ways: khronos, the way human beings measure time quantitatively and chronologically: days, months, years, centuries; and kairos, the way human beings experience and remember particular moments or events from and with a particular perspective. Following this distinction between the two different notions of time, this work explores the multi-linear evolution of the conception of Palestine and the experiences of Palestine through time and across time. While putting the highest value on synchronic (contemporary)

evidence and testimony, this work analyses the conception of Palestine across time both synchronically and diachronically.

Although there are multiple beginnings and multiple meanings to the idea of Palestine, the important question is not so much about the ‘origin’ of the idea of Palestine, or where the idea came from, but how the identity of Palestine evolved and experienced through and across time. Also, to borrow from Martin Heidegger’s notions of Being and Time (2010) and temporality (past, present and future) and the way human beings experience the world through time, ideas, terms and discourses on Palestine should be explored synchronically and diachronically as well as the human experiences of Palestine time. Furthermore, terms and concepts evolve multi-linearly and discursively and are experienced differently by different people – to borrow from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (2001) discourse on ‘family resemblance’ and multiple meanings.

In Palestine, the indigenous collective consciousness of, and Arabic terminology for, ‘the people of Palestine’ (Ahl Filastin, Abnaa Filastin or Abnaa al-Balad) long preceded, but also followed, the modern Arabic nationalist terms Sha’b Filastin (the ‘people of Palestine’) or al-Sha’b al-Filastini (the ‘Palestinian people’). Of course, the actual connotations of terms and representations of social and collective identities have evolved and changed historically and the evolution of the multicultural identity for the people of Palestine is no exception. The Islamic reference to the Arabic term sha’b, people or nation, is enshrined in the Quran and the term is described positively and pluralistically: ‘O mankind! We created you … and made you into nations [pl. shu‘ub] and tribes [qabail], that ye may know each other’.

Thus, social pluralism became fundamental to the way collective identities were framed throughout Islamic history. Of particular relevance to the evolution of the indigenous concept of Palestine are the self-representation of the people of Palestine in indigenous Palestinian Arabic writings between the 15th and 20th centuries. These representations are framed as follows: the Arabic terms Ahl Filastin and Ard Filastin (‘people of Palestine’ and ‘land of Palestine’) were repeatedly used by indigenous Palestinian Arab writers in the 10th‒18th centuries, long before the emergence of a nascent Palestinian national movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the second half of the 19th century the Arabic term Ahl Filastin evolved into Abnaa Filastin and Abnaa al-Balad – the (indigenous) ‘sons and daughters of Palestine’ and the ‘sons and daughters of the country’ respectively; and these terms evolved into Sha’b Filastin – the nation or people of Palestine – in the early 20th century; and again into al-Sha’b al-Filastini and al-Kiyan al-Filastini – the Palestinian people/nation and the Palestinian entity – in the second half of the 20th century. All these terms (Sha’b Filastin, al-Sha’b al-Filastini and al-Kiyan al-Filastini) refer to the articulation and consolidation of the collective identity of the Palestinian nation under the impact of modern Palestinian territorial nationalism; but, read flexibly and not literally, these collective terms are also deeply rooted in a premodern indigenous collective consciousness centred around Ahl Filastin, Ard Filastin and Abnaa al-Balad.

The ancient term Palestine (country, Balad or Bilad) and modern Palestinian nationality are not identical or synonymous; the latter has existed for millennia while the former has come into a modern use and was the product of the emergence of modern Palestinian nationalism. This critical distinction between Palestine as a country and Palestinian nationality should also be kept in mind when reflecting on the fact that some historians of modern Palestinian nationalism have overlooked the links between land and country (and Palestine-based territorial consciousness) which was evident in the works of Palestinian Muslim scholars and writers such al-Maqdisi (Shams al‑Din Abi ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al‑Muqaddasi, 1866 ) (محمد بن أحمد شمس الدين المقدسي , 1994, 2002), Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi (c. 1495), Khair al-Din al-Ramli (1585–1671) and Salih ibn Ahmad al-Tumurtashi in the 10th‒17th centuries and the reimagining of Palestine in modern Palestinian territorial nationalism. As we shall see below, these Muslim writers of the 10th‒17th centuries displayed a sense of, and pride in, Palestinian regional-territorial identity, though of course within the context of the multiple identities Palestinians at the time possessed (religious and local identities included). Reading the history of Palestine through the eyes of the indigenous people, this work argues that the reimagined modern Palestinian people as a national community (Palestinian-framed nationalism)

along the lines suggested by Benedict Anderson (1991) should also take into account the literature and social memory of historic Palestine bequeathed to us by indigenous Palestinian authors between the 10th and late 17th centuries: al-Maqdisi, al-Ramli, Mujir al-Din and al-Tumurtashi.

All these writers produced a rich literature with extensive description of the medieval territorial and administrative Arab province of Filastin.

Late 19th century Palestine saw a cultural and educational renaissance coupled with incipient local nationalism. An important distinction made in this work is between this nascent Palestinian national identity or local Palestinian nationalism of the late Ottoman period, under the impact of modernity and through the literary works and journalism of Palestinian writers such as Khalil Beidas, Ruhi al-Khalidi, Yousef al-‘Issa, ‘Issa al-‘Issa, Khalil al-Sakakini and Tawfiq Cana’an, and Palestinian territorially based regional consciousness of historic Filastin. Although regional consciousness is found in the writings of Josephus in 1st century AD Roman Palestine and the works of the celebrated authors Prokopios (Procopios) and Eusebius of Provincia Palaestina in the 4th and 6th centuries, by the 19th century Palestine had for centuries been an Arab country with Arabic and the symbols of Islam being key markers (and signifiers) of its identity. In fact, territorially based consciousness of Filastin as a distinct Arab region/country (bilad), with Arabic and Islam being key markers of identity, is also evident in the works of al-Maqdisi, Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi, Khair al-Din al-Ramli and Salih ibn Ahmad al-Tumurtashi in the period between the 10th and late 17th centuries. The territorially based multi-faceted regional identity articulated by Palestinian Muslim authors was partly derived from the cultural and religious heritage of the Arab Islamic province of Filastin, an administrative province which existed for several centuries.

This work makes a third distinction between historic Palestine (Late Bronze Age to 1917) and Mandatory Palestine (1917‒1948). Palestinian territorial nationalism has evolved since the late Ottoman period and, like all modern nationalisms, it continues to renew itself. However, historians, who tend to focus on the boundaries of British Mandatory Palestine, have overlooked the evolution of Palestinian territorial nationalism from the late Ottoman period into the British Mandatory period (1917‒1948).

While Palestinian nationalists of the late Ottoman period draw inspiration from historic Palestine – including greater Palaestina under the Byzantines and the Arab province of Filastin under Islam – Palestinian nationalism has since 1918 been fixated symbolically on the territorial map of Mandatory Palestine as a key marker of territorial nationalism. The political and cultural geography of Palestinian nationalism has had a major impact on the evolution of the modern geo-political concept of Palestine. For instance, traditionally different styles of embroidery by and for women were a signifier of regional identities within Palestine. Today embroidery (as well as necklaces, and many other forms of art work produced in Palestine)

repeatedly reproduces the territorial map of Mandatory Palestine, with the names of its historic Arab cities, as a powerful symbol of Palestinian national identity.

Of course, the issue of historic Palestine and the rise of modern Palestinian nationalism is a complex one. However, a discussion about the histories and shared memories of Palestine has to address the emergence and becoming of the Palestinian national identity which has emerged since the late 19th‒early 20th centuries. The evolution of this modern national identity, which will be explored in chapter nine, will be addressed within the conceptual and methodological framework of ‘being Palestine, becoming Palestine’ proposed by, among others, Mahmoud Darwish.

For Darwish, in particular, being and becoming is a lifelong process of learning, development, self-discovery and the opening up of possibilities, something which is central to the pluralist social traditions of Palestine.

These pluralist, multifaith and shared traditions were woven into the fabric of modern Palestinian national identity as conceived by the Palestinian ‘national’ poet. Darwish’s conceptualisation of ‘being Palestine, becoming Palestine’, of formation and transformation of Palestinian identity, was not a binary or two-tier conception; it is rather in line with the multidimensional and textured identity of Palestine and the Palestinians. Moreover, the modern national conception of Palestine did not totally displace and/ or completely replace older conceptions of Palestine; on the contrary, the nationalist idea did not come out of the blue and was, as I argue here, deeply rooted in the ancient past. In fact, the new nationalist idea of the nation-state simply added further modern overarching layers to the already multi-layered identity and histories of the country.

The current debate about the one-state or two-state solutions in Palestine is beyond the scope of this work. However, it will explore the conceptual experiences of Palestine both ‘from within’ and ‘from without’.

It will make a clear distinction between Palestine as a country and ‘regional territorially based consciousness’ of Palestine, on the one hand, and Palestinian nationality and ‘national, territorially based consciousness’ of Palestine, on the other. Palestinian nationalism and nationality, like all other nationalisms and nationalities, are a modern phenomenon.

The emergence of modern Palestinian national identity along the lines of reimagined communities (to paraphrase Benedict Anderson 1991)

has been explored by Rashid Khalidi (1997: 171‒190, 1998), Muhammad Muslih (1989, 1991) and others. Yet Palestine as a country (with its shifting boundaries) has existed across more than three millennia and this historical reality was bound to produce forms of territorially based consciousness.

Evidence of this regional territorially based consciousness of Filastin as a country under Muslim rule can be found ‘from within’ Palestine. As we shall see below, the shared memories of territorially based consciousness of a distinct Arab region called Filastin, with clear boundaries extending to Rafah in the south to the district town of al-Lajjun (in Marj Ibn ‘Amer)

in the north, is shown clearly in the works of four Palestinian Muslim scholars and writers: al-Maqdisi, Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi and Khair al-Din al-Ramli and Salih ibn Ahmad al-Tumurtashi in the 10th‒17th centuries, as well as in the records of the Islamic Sharia Court (Sijillat al-Mahkamah al-Shari’yyah) of Jerusalem in the 18th‒19th centuries. In the 17th century both al-Ramli, of al-Ramla, and al-Tumurtashi, of Gaza, called the country where they were living Filastin and unquestionably assumed that their readers would do likewise. What is even more remarkable is al-Ramli’s use of the term ‘the country’ and even ‘our country’ (biladuna), which is exactly how Palestinians today describe Palestine.

Of course, there are multiple ideas (and representations) of being Palestine and being Palestinian – ancient, medieval, modern, nationalist. The nationalist framing of Palestinian identity have been dealt with by many scholars (Khalidi, R. 1997: 171‒190, 1998; Suleiman 2016, Masalha 2012; Muslih 1989, 1991; Kimmerling and Migdal 1993; Said 1980). As Rashid Khalidi (1998) and Muhammad Muslih (1989, 1991) have shown, a distinct Palestinian national identity anchored in the land of Palestine emerged in the late 19th‒early 20th century. However, much of Palestinian national identity is derived from attachment to the past and to Palestine as a country.

Moreover, throughout the world countries existed long before the emergence of modern nationalism, the nation-state or modern national identities, and the existence of Palestine for over three millennia is no exception. The idea that Palestinian national identity emerged out of the blue, or was created ex nihilo, in the late 19th‒early 20th century is completely untenable.

Viewed from the perspective of this work, and of the multi-layered identity of historic Palestine, the impact of the features and historic heritage of the country, which has evolved across millennia, on modern Palestinian national identity construction can hardly be overstated.

However, there are three ways of juxtaposing the old notions of Palestine with the emergence of modern Palestinian national identity. These ways can be explored through (a) essentialising, (b) nominalising or (c)

conceptualising strategies:

(a) All these evolving ideas of Palestine are essentially the same; they only differ in appearances, manifestations, attributes.

(b) Although nominally the same, and despite the similarities in appearance, all these perceptions of Palestine are fundamentally different.

(c) The conceptualising strategy applied in this work is related to Wittgenstein’s (2001) idea of ‘family resemblance’, although sharing many features of old Palestine, modern Palestinian national identity is distinct.

Furthermore, much of the millennia of history of Palestine as a country, narrated in a tapestry of stories which explored the evolving multi-textured, embroidered identity of the country, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Palestinian‒Zionist conflict which in historical terms is a relatively recent development of late 19th‒early 20th century. Furthermore, the conception and historic identity of Palestine should not be confounded or automatically conflated with the reframing and reconfiguration of modern Palestinian national identity, although clearly the latter would have a major impact on the perception, representational experiences and evolution of modern Palestine from the late Ottoman period onwards. The themes of imported modernities, nationalism, ethnicity and the nation-state are some of the key preoccupations of historians of the ‘modern Middle East’. But historians often reproduce their own preoccupation with identity politics and imported nationalism and modernities and the millennia of Palestinian history cannot just be treated as a footnote to modern nationalism or the idea of a modern nation-state in Palestine. Moreover, the millennia of Palestinian history cannot be an appendage to the ‘Israel‒Palestine’ conflict or subsidiary to the debates on identity politics in Palestine-Israel.

It is impossible to talk about Palestine intelligently without having a concept of the real Palestine in the same way as we cannot talk about Britain or China without having a concept of these two countries. Concepts are better understood not in the abstract or nebulously, but from the ground up: from the real, concrete and historical to the representational, from the observations and experiences to the concept, from the particular to the general. However, Israeli historians often seek to belittle Palestine and minimise the fact that the conceptual experiences of Palestine are deeply rooted in the ancient past. In her Introduction to Islamic Art and Archaeology in Palestine, Myriam Rosen-Ayalon (2006: 15), Mayer Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues: ‘As a geographical entity, the concept of Palestine is relatively modern and it is somewhat difficult to find references to it in historical sources’. She then goes on to contradict herself by referring to some of the ‘historical sources’:

The Muslim conquerors translated the Roman terms ‘Palestina prima’ and ‘Palestina secunda’ as ‘Jund Filastin’ and ‘Jund al-Urdun’ to designate the two parallel strips of land that divided the country from north to south. They made Ramla the capital of Jund Filastin to replace Caesarea, and Tiberias the capital of Jund al-Urdun to replace Baysan ... The division adopted later by the Ottomans was more or less identical. (Rosen-Ayalon 2006: 15; see also Avni 2014: 41)

The conventional wisdom that the conception of Palestine is a modern, artificial construct is not confined to Israeli academics or opinion formers in the West; it is also shared by some influential Palestinian intellectuals.

In fact, it is not just Israeli authors who continue to propagate the myth of the recent provenance of the idea of Palestine. Palestinian and pan-Arab intellectual ‘Azmi Beshara has also repeated the claim in interviews in the Israeli Hebrew media that the idea of Palestine and ‘Palestinian nationality’ are ‘colonial inventions’. For instance, Beshara had this to say long before he was forced to leave Palestine for exile in Qatar in 2007:

I don’t think there is a Palestinian nation at all; No, I think there is an Arab nation [ummah ‘arabiyyah] ... And I always thought like that.

I didn’t change my opinion. I don’t think there is a Palestinian nation I think ‘Palestinian nation’ is a colonial invention. When were any Palestinians? When was this? ... Despite my strong struggle against the occupation, I’m not a Palestinian nationalist, never. I think Palestine until the late 19th century was greater southern Syria.4

In fact, contrary to the claims made by Beshara, not only did colonialism not create Palestine or Palestinian nationalism; British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialist nationalism gave birth to the Israeli state and brought about the destruction of much of Palestine and expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 (Masalha 1992, 2012; Pappe 2006). Furthermore, while the term (‘ummah ‘arabiyyah’)is just over 100

years old, the term ‘Palestine’ is more than three millennia old. Working from a particular type of collective memory (and forgetfulness) and pan-Arab nationalist identity construction, rather than the actual histories of Palestine and the region, Beshara failed to acknowledge that all nationalisms (French, Arab, Indian, Egyptian, Palestinian, Turkish, Iranian, Jewish, Scottish) are ‘invented traditions’ and that the idea of an ‘Arab nation’ (‘ummah ‘arabiyyah’) was also a late 19th century form of reimagining; the concept was reconfigured by Nahdah (reawakening) intellectuals as a form of secularisation of the religio-medieval representations of the ‘Islamic ummah’ (ummah islamiyyah). Some pan-Arab intellectuals have failed to come to terms with the emergence of wataniyyah (or a two-tier ‘homeland nationalism’) over the last century. This two-tier nationalism which has emerged in Palestine, Iraq, Syria and other Arab countries in the course of the last century was in part the outcome of the influence of European nationalist ideas and the colonial legacy. In large measure, it was the product of the multi-layered Arab Islamic identity which is deeply rooted in the cultural history and political geography of this region.

Moreover, as we shall show, contrary to Beshara’s ahistoricism and Rosen-Ayalon’s self-contradiction, the conception of Palestine as a country and a geo-political unit is deeply rooted in the political history, cultural geography and heritage of the country from the late Bronze Age onwards.

Furthermore, in fact it was the Christian Byzantines, not the pagan Romans, who in Late Antiquity created the administrative provinces of Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda, and the Arab Islamic provinces of Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdun to the north-east were no parallel or equal strips; in fact, the province of Jund Filastin encompassed both Byzantine Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Salutaris (the Third Palestine Province) in the south and south-east. Moreover, geographically the Arab province of Jund Filastin, which was four to five times the size of Jund al-Urdun, effectively encapsulated the core of Byzantine Palaestina. Also, if the Muslim conquerors came from Arabia to the south and south-east of Palestine, why would they want to divide Palestine ‘from north to south’, rather than ‘from south to north’ (Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdun respectively)? Crucially, as we shall see below, the perception of Palestine is deeply embedded in the ancient past and extensively grounded in ancient, medieval and early modern historical sources.

The evolution across time of the country of Palestine as a distinct political geography – with its own distinct and diverse traditions and a melange of styles – is deeply rooted in the local psyche and consciousness; the toponym (place name) of Palestine is deeply rooted in the ancient past from the Late Bronze Age onwards. The name is found in numerous and diverse sources for the Ancient Near East throughout the last 3300 years.

The name Palestine was used by the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, classical Greek writers, Romans, Christian Byzantines and Medieval Arabs.

The toponym Palestine is also evident in countless inscriptions, histories, ‘world maps’, ecclesiastical histories, chronicles, letters, coins and encyclopaedias from Classical and Late Antiquity, medieval and modern Palestine.

For a millennium and a half of Classical Antiquity and Byzantine Christianity as well as under Islam in the Middle Ages the term Palestine also acquired official administrative status.

This book sets out to chart and explain the historical beginnings and ancient roots of the name ‘Palestine’ within the multifaith and shared settings of the country. It also presents a list of major ancient and medieval sources for and references to the name Palestine and to its cognates and manifestations in various Semitic and European languages – such as Peleset, Palashtu, Pilistu, Παλαιστίνη, Палестины, Palaistinē, Palaestina, Philistia, Filastin/ פְּלִשְׁתִּים ,فلسطين /Plishtim, פלסטין ,פלשתינה – throughout the ancient, medieval and modern history of the region. Different Assyrian spellings are Pilishti, Pilishte, Palashtu, Pilishtu, Pilistu, Pilisti, Pilistin and Greek and Latin-Roman forms are: Palaistinê and Palaestia. The silver coinage of Philistia (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod) of late 600 and 500‒400

BC (see below) shows that the process of peaceful and gradual ‘Hellenisation’ of Palestinian place names, which also became closely associated with cosmopolitanism, started long before the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. These processes were revived under and after Alexander, accelerated in Late Antiquity and lasted for 1000 years. The English name ‘Palestine’ comes from the Old French name Philistin, which comes from the classical Latin Philistinus (Palaestina) which in turn comes from the late classical Greek-speaking Philistinoi. Interestingly, the pronunciation of the medieval/modern Arabic toponyms Filastin (standard Arabic) and Falastin (vernacular Palestinian Arabic) are close to the Old French pronunciation, Philistin, and the classical Greek term Philistinoi.

The work also seeks to demonstrate how the name Palestine (rather than the term ‘Cana’an’) was most commonly and formally used in ancient history, in a wide range of sources including material evidence, toponymy, maps, coins produced ‘in Palestine’, famous texts and inscriptions from the Levant and the wider Mediterranean region. The book further argues that academic and school history curricula should be based on historical facts/ empirical evidence/archaeological discoveries and evidence-based historical research – not on religious belief or Old Testament sacred narratives and religio-ideological myth-narratives (e.g. ‘Israelites’ conquest of Canaan’)

(Numbers 13: 1‒16; Joshua 1:1–18; 2:1–5:15; 2:1–24; 3:1–17; 4:1–5:1; 6:1–12:24; 9:1–27; 10:1–43; 11:1–23).