Two journeys to seventeenth-century Palestine

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 37-50

  Matar, Nabil ^a  

^a FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DOCUMENTARY SOURCE; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY; TRAVEL BEHAVIOR;

PALESTINE;

EID: 0033812992     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2676560     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. Uriel Heyd, Ottoman Documents on Palestine (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 41.
2. Wolf-Dieter Hȧtteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen: Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, 1977); see also Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century (Princetoa: Princeton University Press, 1978).
3. Wolf-Dieter Hȧtteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century (Erlangen: Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, 1977); see also Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century (Princetoa: Princeton University Press, 1978).
4. 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, al-Hadra al-Unsiyya fi al-Rihla al-Qudsiyya, ed Akram Hasan al-'Ulabi (Beirut: al-Masadir, 1991).
5. The work was known, however, to later Moroccan historians: see Evariste Levi-Provencal, Les Historiens des Chotfa (Paris: Emile Laross, 1922), p. 262, n. 2.
6. Rihlat al-Shaykh al-Imam Abi Salim al-Ayyashi, 2 vols. (Fez: n.p., A.H. 1316). The edition I am using is a rare lithograph at Widener Library, Harvard University.
7. For medieval accounts of Palestine by Arabs, see Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650-1500 (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1890); and Father Marmargee al-Dumaski, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-Arabiyya (Beirut, 1947; reprinted Abu Dhabi: Cultural Foundation Publications of Abu Dhabi with the assistance of the Palestine Ministry of Culture, 1997). See the study of these geographical writings by Shukri Arraf, Junda Filastin wal Urdun fi al-Adab al-Jughrafi al-Islami (Jerusalem: Matba'at al-Sharq al-'Arabiyya, n.d).
8. For medieval accounts of Palestine by Arabs, see Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650-1500 (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1890); and Father Marmargee al-Dumaski, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-Arabiyya (Beirut, 1947; reprinted Abu Dhabi: Cultural Foundation Publications of Abu Dhabi with the assistance of the Palestine Ministry of Culture, 1997). See the study of these geographical writings by Shukri Arraf, Junda Filastin wal Urdun fi al-Adab al-Jughrafi al-Islami (Jerusalem: Matba'at al-Sharq al-'Arabiyya, n.d).
9. For medieval accounts of Palestine by Arabs, see Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650-1500 (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1890); and Father Marmargee al-Dumaski, Buldaniyyat Filastin al-Arabiyya (Beirut, 1947; reprinted Abu Dhabi: Cultural Foundation Publications of Abu Dhabi with the assistance of the Palestine Ministry of Culture, 1997). See the study of these geographical writings by Shukri Arraf, Junda Filastin wal Urdun fi al-Adab al-Jughrafi al-Islami (Jerusalem: Matba'at al-Sharq al-'Arabiyya, n.d).
10. Jerusalem, and more particularly the Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary, enclosing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque), is referred to in Arabic as the "first qibla and the third sanctuary" - indicating the first direction of Muslim prayer (before it was changed to Mecca) and the third sanctuary, after those of Mecca and Medina.
11. All translations are mine. The quotation is from vol. 2, p. 300. All further references in parentheses in this section will be to this text.
12. The Hadith are authenticated sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and traditions from his life; the Musnad of al-Shafi'i and of Abu Hanifa are, respectively, the books of jurisprudence of the founders of two of die four great Islamic schools of jurisprudence, the Shafi'ite and the Hanafite.
13. The zawiyya had been established by a benefactor in the eighth century as part of a religious endowment see 'Abd al-Latif Tibawi, The Islamic Pious Foundations in Jerusalem (London: Islamic Cultural Centre, 1978), pp. 12-13. Sadly, this zawiyya, along with the entire Maghrebi quarter, was bulldozed by the Israelis in the wake of their June 1967 victory.
14. Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali stated in 1496 that the Franks "hacked pieces from the rock and carried some of them to Constantinople and others to Sicily where, it is said, they sold them for their weight in gold" Al-Uns al-Jalil bi-Tarikh al-Quds wal Khalil, introd. Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum (Najaf: al-Matba'a al-Haydariyya 1907), 1:339.
15. Cohen and Lewis, Population and Revenue, p. 31.
16. Nabulsi, al-Hadra al-Unsiyya, p. 299.
17. Ibid., 298.
18. For the "borders" of Palestine, see Haim Gerber, "'Palestine' and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century," International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, no. 4 (November 1998), pp. 563-72.
19. T.[homas] B., A Journey to Jerusalem, p. A6v. I am using the edition mentioned above, published by Nathaniel Crouch. All further references in parentheses in this section will be to this text.
20. William Biddulph, The Travels of Certaine Englishmen into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Blocke Sea (London: Thomas Haveland, 1609), p. 130 ff.
21. See especially the "Prologue to the Reader" ("the hissing of snakish Papists") and chapters 7 and 8 in The Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations of William Lithgow, ed. and introd Gilbert Phelps (1632; reprinted London: Folio Society, 1974).
22. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell through the Twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland and Ireland, 4 vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1907), 2: 6 ff.
23. Ibid, 9.
24. For differences between Moroccan and Middle Eastern Islam, see Edmund Burke, "Morocco and the Near East Reflections on Some Basic Differences," Archives Européens de Sociologie 10 (1969), pp. 75-83.
25. Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570; reprinted in facsimile, Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1964), pl. 51, and the 1584 expanded edition, pl. 36. For studies of his maps of Palestine, see R. V. Tooley, "Maps of Palestine in the Atlas of Ortelius," The Map Collector, June 1978, pp. 28-31.
26. Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570; reprinted in facsimile, Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1964), pl. 51, and the 1584 expanded edition, pl. 36. For studies of his maps of Palestine, see R. V. Tooley, "Maps of Palestine in the Atlas of Ortelius," The Map Collector, June 1978, pp. 28-31.
27. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, introd J. P. Stern (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 62.