Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The long history and geography of Palestine (ancient, medieval and modern)

are deeply ingrained in the social and cultural memory of Europe and the Arab world. In 1890 German historian Gustav Reinhold Röhricht, in Bibliotheca Geographica Palestine, listed 3515 books issued in many languages between 333

AD and 1878 AD which dealt with the geography of Palestine. Röhricht’s work also contains a chronological list of maps relating to Palestine.

Preoccupation with the history, geography and cartography of Palestine was also evident in the publications of the National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, the official magazine of the National Geographic Society, based in Washington, DC. The NGS is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, history, archaeology and natural sciences. The National Geographic has been published continuously since its first issue in 1888. The archives of the magazine show a huge focus on the cartography, history and archaeology of historic Palestine (ancient and modern). The historic ‘Palestine Maps’ (no mention of ‘Maps of Canaan’) of the National Geographic (not known to be particularly pro-Palestinian) produced the following titles: ‘Impressions of Palestine’, 1 March 1915 (‘Former British Ambassador to the U.S., James Bryce, relates his impressions of a predominantly Muslim Palestine’); ‘Jerusalem’s Locust Plague: Being a Description of the Recent Locust Influx into Palestine, and Comparing Same with Ancient Locust Invasions as Narrated in the Old World’s History Book, the Bible’, 1

December 1915 (‘John D. Whiting compares the recent invasion of locusts in Palestine and Syria with the ancient locust plagues described in the Bible’); ‘Among the Bethlehem Shepherds: A Visit to the Valley Which David Probably Recalled When He Wrote the Twenty-third Psalm’, 1 December 1926

(‘Shepherd families of Palestine live much as their ancestors did; often the youngest boy tends the sheep, with flute and staff in hand’); ‘Changing Palestine’, 1 April 1934 (‘Improved transportation and communication give Palestine growing room as the small but strategic land continues its role as a meeting place for East and West’); ‘Bombs over Bible Lands’, 1 August 1941

(‘In Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, where Romans, Babylonians, and Assyrians once battled, Germany and Russia vie for control of the oil-rich nations, disrupting historic lands with bombs, planes, and tanks’); ‘Palestine Today’, 1 October 1946 (‘Under the control of Great Britain, Palestine struggles to cope with immigration. Growing cities and farms make a strange mix in the ancient land’); ‘An Archaeologist Looks at Palestine’, 1 December 1947 (‘The author encounters history at every turn, in an ancient land that has been a cockpit of unending conflict for many centuries’).