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)