The earliest written record referring to Palestine as a geographical region is in the Histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, which calls the area Palaistine, referring to the territory previously held by Philistia, a state that existed in that area from the 12th to the 7th century BCE. The Roman Empire conquered the region and in 6 CE established the province known as Judaea, but then in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina.[4] In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established. While Palestine's boundaries have changed throughout history, it has generally comprised the southern portion of regions such as Syria or the Levant.
Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of HebrewPelesheth. The term "Peleset" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c.1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the temple at Medinet Habu which refers to the Peleset among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III's reign,[8][9] and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue. Seven known Assyrian inscriptions refer to the region of "Palashtu" or "Pilistu", beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c.800 BCE through to a treaty made by Esarhaddon more than a century later.[10][11] Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.[iv]
The term is generally accepted to be a cognate of the biblical name Peleshet (פלשתPəlésheth, usually transliterated as Philistia). The term and its derivates are used more than 250 times in Masoretic-derived versions of the Hebrew Bible, of which 10 uses are in the Torah, with undefined boundaries, and almost 200 of the remaining references are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel.[10][11][15][18] The term is rarely used in the Septuagint, which used a transliteration Land of Phylistieim (Γῆ τῶν Φυλιστιείμ), different from the contemporary Greek place name Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη).[19] It is also theorized to be the portmanteau of the Greek word for the Philistines and palaistês, which means "wrestler/rival/adversary".[20] This aligns with the Greek practice of punning place names since the latter is also the etymological meaning for Israel.[21][22][23]
The Septuagint instead used the term "allophuloi" (άλλόφυλοι, "other nations") throughout the Books of Judges and Samuel,[24][25] such that the term "Philistines" has been interpreted to mean "non-Israelites of the Promised Land" when used in the context of Samson, Saul and David,[26] and Rabbinic sources explain that these peoples were different from the Philistines of the Book of Genesis.[viii]
Kingdoms of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age (c.830 BCE)
The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization.[37] During the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550 and 1400BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse.[38]
The Israelites emerged from a dramatic social transformation that took place in the people of the central hill country of Canaan around 1200BCE, with no signs of violent invasion or even of peaceful infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group from elsewhere.[39][xiii] During the Iron Age, the Israelites established two related kingdoms, Israel and Judah. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th or 9th century BCE and later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire before a revolt against the latter led to its destruction in 586BCE. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c.740 BCE,[40] which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c.627 BCE.[41]
In 539BCE, the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Hebrew Bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder, the exiled Jews were eventually allowed to return to Jerusalem.[44] The returned population in Judah were allowed to self-rule under Persian governance, and some parts of the fallen kingdom became a Persian province known as Yehud.[45][46] Except Yehud, at least another four Persian provinces existed in the region: Samaria, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, in addition to the Phoenician city states in the north and the Arabian tribes in the south.[47] During the same period, the Edomites migrated from Transjordan to the southern parts of Judea, which became known as Idumaea.[48] The Qedarites were the dominant Arab tribe; their territory ran from the Hejaz in the south to the Negev in the north through the period of Persian and Hellenistic dominion.[49][50]
In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region, which changed hands several times during the wars of the Diadochi and later Syrian Wars. It ultimately fell to the Seleucid Empire between 219 and 200BCE. During that period, the region became heavily hellenized, building tensions between Greeks and locals.
In 167BCE, the Maccabean Revolt erupted, leading to the establishment of an independent Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. From 110BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, including Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea.[52] The Jewish control over the wider region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea, a term that had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judaean Mountains.[xv][53] During the same period, the Edomites were converted to Judaism.[48]
Between 73 and 63BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War. Pompey conquered Judea in 63BCE, splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. In around 40BCE, the Parthians conquered Palestine, deposed the Roman ally Hyrcanus II, and installed a puppet ruler of the Hasmonean line known as Antigonus II.[54][55] By 37BCE, the Parthians withdrew from Palestine.[54]
In the first and second centuries CE, the province of Judea became the site of two large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. During the First Jewish-Roman War, which lasted from 66 to 73CE, the Romans razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple.[60] In Masada, Jewish zealots preferred to commit suicide than endure Roman captivity. In 132CE, another Jewish rebellion erupted. The Bar Kokhba revolt took three years to put down, incurred massive costs on both the Romans and the Jews, and desolated much of Judea.[61][62] The center of Jewish life in Palestine moved to the Galilee.[63] During or after the revolt, Hadrian joined the province of Iudaea with Galilee and the Paralia to form the new province of Syria Palaestina, and Jerusalem was renamed "Aelia Capitolina". Some scholars view these actions as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland,[64][65] but this theory is debated.[19]
Between 259 and 272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire. Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil wars of the Tetrarchy, the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine's mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction. In 614CE, Palestine was annexed by another Persian dynasty; the Sassanids, until returning to Byzantine control in 628CE.[66]
The majority of the population was Christian and was to remain so until the conquest of Saladin in 1187. The Muslim conquest apparently had little impact on social and administrative continuities for several decades.[71][xvii][72][xviii] The word 'Arab' at the time referred predominantly to Bedouin nomads, though Arab settlement is attested in the Judean highlands and near Jerusalem by the 5th century, and some tribes had converted to Christianity.[73] The local population engaged in farming, which was considered demeaning, and were called Nabaț, referring to Aramaic-speaking villagers. A ḥadīth, brought in the name of a Muslim freedman who settled in Palestine, ordered the Muslim Arabs not to settle in the villages, "for he who abides in villages it is as if he abides in graves".[74]
The Umayyads, who had spurred a strong economic resurgence in the area,[75] were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. Ramla became the administrative centre for the following centuries, while Tiberias became a thriving centre of Muslim scholarship.[76] From 878, Palestine was ruled from Egypt by semi-autonomous rulers for almost a century, beginning with the Turkish freeman Ahmad ibn Tulun, for whom both Jews and Christians prayed when he lay dying[77] and ending with the Ikhshidid rulers. Reverence for Jerusalem increased during this period, with many of the Egyptian rulers choosing to be buried there.[xix] However, the later period became characterized by persecution of Christians as the threat from Byzantium grew.[78] The Fatimids, with a predominantly Berber army, conquered the region in 970, a date that marks the beginning of a period of unceasing warfare between numerous enemies, which destroyed Palestine, and in particular, devastating its Jewish population.[79] Between 1071 and 1073, Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire,[80] only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098.[81]
Crusader/Ayyubid period
The Hospitaller fortress in Acre was destroyed in 1291 and partially rebuilt in the 18th century.
The Fatimids again lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099. The Crusaders set up[82] the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291).[83] Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until their defeat by Saladin's forces in 1187,[84] after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyubids,[84] except for the years 1229–1244 when Jerusalem and other areas were retaken[85] by the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem, by then ruled from Acre (1191–1291), but, despite seven further crusades, the Franks were no longer a significant power in the region.[86] The Fourth Crusade, which did not reach Palestine, led directly to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, dramatically reducing Christian influence throughout the region.[87]
In 1486, hostilities broke out between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire in a battle for control over western Asia, and the Ottomans conquered Palestine in 1516.[90] Between the mid-16th and 17th centuries, a close-knit alliance of three local dynasties, the Ridwans of Gaza, the Turabays of al-Lajjun and the Farrukhs of Nablus, governed Palestine on behalf of the Porte (imperial Ottoman government).[91]
In the 18th century, the Zaydani clan under the leadership of Zahir al-Umar ruled large parts of Palestine autonomously[92] until the Ottomans were able to defeat them in their Galilee strongholds in 1775–76.[93] Zahir had turned the port city of Acre into a major regional power, partly fueled by his monopolization of the cotton and olive oil trade from Palestine to Europe. Acre's regional dominance was further elevated under Zahir's successor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar at the expense of Damascus.[94]
In 1830, on the eve of Muhammad Ali's invasion,[95] the Porte transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Acre. According to Silverburg, in regional and cultural terms this move was important for creating an Arab Palestine detached from greater Syria (bilad al-Sham).[96] According to Pappe, it was an attempt to reinforce the Syrian front in face of Muhammad Ali's invasion.[97] Two years later, Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Ali's Egypt,[95] but Egyptian rule was challenged in 1834 by a countrywide popular uprising against conscription and other measures considered intrusive by the population.[98] Its suppression devastated many of Palestine's villages and major towns.[99]
In 1840, Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations.[100] The death of Aqil Agha marked the last local challenge to Ottoman centralization in Palestine,[101] and beginning in the 1860s, Palestine underwent an acceleration in its socio-economic development, due to its incorporation into the global, and particularly European, economic pattern of growth. The beneficiaries of this process were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who emerged as a new layer within the Arab elite.[102] From 1880 large-scale Jewish immigration began, almost entirely from Europe, based on an explicitly Zionist ideology.[citation needed] There was also a revival of the Hebrew language and culture.[xx]
In 2000, the Second Intifada (also called al-Aqsa Intifada) began, and Israel built a separation barrier. In the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, Israel withdrew all settlers and military presence from the Gaza Strip, but maintained military control of numerous aspects of the territory including its borders, air space and coast. Israel's ongoing military occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues to be the world's longest military occupation in modern times.[xxii][xxiii]
The boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history.[xxv][xxvi] The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah, the Dead Sea and River Jordan) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories.[131] At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period, territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the ArabCaliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and the northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun, while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq, which during the 9th century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filastin.[132]
The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to the coast north of Mount Carmel. Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt.[133]Pliny, writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.[134]
Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, "First Palestine", and Palaestina Secunda, "Second Palestine"), have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn ("Jordan" or Jund al-Urdunn).[10]
1916–1922 various proposals: Three proposals for the post World War I administration of Palestine. The red line is the "International Administration" proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, the dashed blue line is the 1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference, and the thin blue line refers to the final borders of the 1923–48 Mandatory Palestine.
1937 British proposal: The first official proposal for partition, published in 1937 by the Peel Commission. An ongoing British Mandate was proposed to keep "the sanctity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem", in the form of an enclave from Jerusalem to Jaffa, including Lydda and Ramle.
The region of Palestine is the eponym for the Palestinian people and the culture of Palestine, both of which are defined as relating to the whole historical region, usually defined as the localities within the border of Mandatory Palestine. The 1968 Palestinian National Covenant described Palestine as the "homeland of the Arab Palestinian people", with "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate".[141]
However, since the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the term State of Palestine refers only to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This discrepancy was described by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as a negotiated concession in a September 2011 speech to the United Nations: "... we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967."[142]
Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two methods – censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settlement.
The Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE saw a major shift in the population of Palestine. The sheer scale and scope of the overall destruction has been described by Dio Cassius in his Roman History, where he notes that Roman war operations in the country had left some 580,000 Jews dead, with many more dying of hunger and disease, while 50 of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. "Thus," writes Dio Cassius, "nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate."[144][145]
According to Israeli archaeologists Magen Broshi and Yigal Shiloh, the population of ancient Palestine did not exceed one million.[xxix][xxx] By 300CE, Christianity had spread so significantly that Jews comprised only a quarter of the population.[xxxi]
Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods
In a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman rule of Palestine, Bernard Lewis reports:
[T]he first half century of Ottoman rule brought a sharp increase in population. The towns grew rapidly, villages became larger and more numerous, and there was an extensive development of agriculture, industry, and trade. The two last were certainly helped to no small extent by the influx of Spanish and other Western Jews.
From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.[146]
According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 was about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews.[147]
According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of whom 94% were Arabs.[148] In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.[149] McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882; 737,389 in 1914; 725,507 in 1922; 880,746 in 1931; and 1,339,763 in 1946.[150]
In 1920, the League of Nations' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine described the 700,000 people living in Palestine as follows:[151]
Of these, 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850, there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years, a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2015[update], the total population of Israel was 8.5million people, of which 75% were Jews, 21% Arabs, and 4% "others".[152] Of the Jewish group, 76% were Sabras (born in Israel); the rest were olim (immigrants)—16% from Europe, the former Soviet republics, and the Americas, and 8% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.[153]
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics evaluations, in 2015 the Palestinian population of the West Bank was approximately 2.9million and that of the Gaza Strip was 1.8million.[154] By 2022, the population of the Gaza strip had increased to an estimated 2,375,259,[155] corresponding to a density of more than 6,507 people per square kilometre.
Both Israeli and Palestinian statistics include Arab residents of East Jerusalem in their reports.[156][bettersourceneeded] According to these estimates the total population in the region of Palestine, as defined as Israel and the Palestinian territories, stands approximately 12.8million.[citation needed]
The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions is widely used in recording the distribution of plants. The scheme uses the code "PAL" to refer to the region of Palestine – a Level 3 area. The WGSRPD's Palestine is further divided into Israel (PAL-IS), including the Palestinian territories, and Jordan (PAL-JO), so is larger than some other definitions of "Palestine".[157]
↑ ʾEreṣ Yiśrāʾēl ("Land of Israel"). Sometimes called simply הָאָרֶץhāʾĀreṣ ("the Land"). Terms like פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָהPāleśtīnā and פָלַסְטִיןFālasṭīn are sometimes used in secular historical contexts to refer to the land when it is under European or Arab control, respectively.
↑ Northwestern parts, according to some definitions.
↑ Eberhard Schrader wrote in his seminal "Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung" ("KGF", in English "Cuneiform inscriptions and Historical Research") that the Assyrian tern "Palashtu" or "Pilistu" referred to the wider Palestine or "the East" in general, instead of "Philistia" (Schrader 1878, pp.123–124; Anspacher 1912, p.48).
↑ "The earliest occurrence of this name in a Greek text is in the mid-fifth century B.C., Histories of Herodotus, where it is applied to the area of the Levant between Phoenicia and Egypt." ..."The first known occurrence of the Greek word Palaistine is in the Histories of Herodotus, written near the mid-fifth century B.C. Palaistine Syria, or simply Palaistine, is applied to what may be identified as the southern part of Syria, comprising the region between Phoenicia and Egypt. Although some of Herodotus' references to Palestine are compatible with a narrow definition of the coastal strip of the Land of Israel, it is clear that Herodotus does call the whole land by the name of the coastal strip." ..."It is believed that Herodotus visited Palestine in the fifth decade of the fifth century B.C." ..."In the earliest Classical literature references to Palestine generally applied to the Land of Israel in the wider sense." (Jacobson 1999)
↑ "As early as the Histories of Herodotus, written in the second half of the fifth century BCE, the term Palaistinê is used to describe not just the geographical area where the Philistines lived, but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt—in other words, the Land of Israel. Herodotus, who had traveled through the area, would have had firsthand knowledge of the land and its people. Yet he used Palaistinê to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel" (Jacobson 2001)
↑ In The Histories, Herodotus referred to the practice of male circumcision associated with the Hebrew people: "the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine themselves confess that they learnt the custom of the Egyptians... Now these are the only nations who use circumcision." (Herodotus 1858, pp.Bk ii, Ch 104)
↑ "Rabbinic sources insist that the Philistines of Judges and Samuel were different people altogether from the Philistines of Genesis. (Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 60 (Braude: vol. 1, 513); the issue here is precisely whether Israel should have been obliged, later, to keep the Genesis treaty.) This parallels a shift in the Septuagint's translation of Hebrew pelistim. Before Judges, it uses the neutral transliteration phulistiim, but beginning with Judges it switches to the pejorative allophuloi. [To be precise, Codex Alexandrinus starts using the new translation at the beginning of Judges and uses it invariably thereafter, Vaticanus likewise switches at the beginning of Judges, but reverts to phulistiim on six occasions later in Judges, the last of which is 14:2.]" (Jobling & Rose 1996, p.404)
↑ The New Testament, taking up a term used once in the Tanakh (1 Samuel 13:19),[34][35] speaks of a larger theologically-defined area, of which Palestine is a part, as the "land of Israel"[36] (γῆ Ἰσραήλ) (Matthew 2:20–21), in a narrative paralleling that of the Book of Exodus.
↑ "The parallels between this narrative and that of Exodus continue to be drawn. Like Pharaoh before him, Herod, having been frustrated in his original efforts, now seeks to achieve his objectives by implementing a program of infanticide. As a result, here – as in Exodus – rescuing the hero's life from the clutches of the evil king necessitates a sudden flight to another country. And finally, in perhaps the most vivid parallel of all, the present narrative uses virtually the same words of the earlier one to provide the information that the coast is clear for the herds safe return: here, in Matthew 2:20, 'go [back]… for those who sought the child's life are dead; there, in Exodus 4:19, go back… for all the men who sought your life are dead'" (Goldberg 2001, p.147).
↑ Other writers, such as Strabo, referred to the region as Coele-Syria ("all Syria") around 10–20 CE (Feldman 1996, pp.557–558).
↑ "Several scholars hold the revisionist thesis that the Israelites did not move to the area as a distinct and foreign ethnic group at all, bringing with them their god Yahwe and forcibly evicting the indigenous population, but that they gradually evolved out of an amalgam of several ethnic groups, and that the Israelite cult developed on "Palestinian" soil amid the indigenous population. This would make the Israelites "Palestinians" not just in geographical and political terms (under the British Mandate, both Jews and Arabs living in the country were defined as Palestinians), but in ethnic and broader cultural terms as well. While this does not conform to the conventional view, or to the understanding of most Jews (and Arabs, for that matter), it is not easy to either prove or disprove. For although the Bible speaks at length about how the Israelites "took" the land, it is not a history book to draw reliable maps from. There is nothing in the extra-biblical sources, including the extensive Egyptian materials, to document the sojourn in Egypt or the exodus so vividly described in the Bible (and commonly dated to the thirteenth century). Biblical scholar Moshe Weinfeld sees the biblical account of the exodus, and of Moses and Joshua as founding heroes of the "national narration", as a later rendering of a lived experience that was subsequently either "forgotten" or consciously repressed – a textbook case of the "invented tradition" so familiar to modern students of ethnicity and nationalism." (Krämer 2011, p.8)
↑ "In both the Idumaean and the Ituraean alliances, and in the annexation of Samaria, the Judaeans had taken the leading role. They retained it. The whole political–military–religious league that now united the hill country of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, whatever it called itself, was directed by, and soon came to be called by others, 'the Ioudaioi'" (Smith 1999, p.210a)
↑ For example, in a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (a secular agnostic) described the dispute, whilst concluding: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" (Ehrman 2011, p.285)
↑ "The religious situation also evolved under the new masters. Christianity did remain the majority religion, but it lost the privileges it had enjoyed." (Flusin 2011, pp.199–226, 215)
↑ The earlier view, exemplifed by the writings of Moshe Gil, argued for a Jewish-Samaritan majority at the time of conquest: "We may reasonably state that at the time if the Muslim conquest, a large Jewish population still lived in Palestine. We do not know whether they formed the majority but we may assume with some certainly that they did so when grouped together with the Samaritans." (Gil 1997, p.3)
↑ "Under the Tulunids, Syro-Egyptian territory was deeply imbued with the concept of an extraordinary role devolving upon Jerusalem in Islam as al-Quds, Bayt al-Maqdis or Bayt al-Muqaddas, the "House of Holiness", the seat of the Last Judgment, the Gate to Paradise for Muslims as well as for Jews and Christians. In the popular conscience, this concept established a bond between the three monotheistic religions. If Ahmad ibn Tulun was interred on the slope of the Muqattam [near Cairo], Isa ibn Musa al-Nashari and Takin were laid to rest in Jerusalem in 910 and 933, as were their Ikhshidid successors and Kafir [for context see here]. To honor the great general and governor of Syria Anushtakin al-Dizbiri, who died in 433/1042, the Fatimid Dynasty had his remains solemnly conveyed from Aleppo to Jerusalem in 448/1056-57." (Bianquis 1998, p.103)
↑ "In 1914 about 12,000 Jewish farmers and fieldworkers lived in approximately forty Jewish settlements–and to repeat it once again, they were by no means all Zionists. The dominant languages were still Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian, or German in the case of Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, and Ladino (or 'Judeo-Spanish') and Arabic in the case of Sephardic and Oriental Jews. Biblical Hebrew served as the sacred language, while modern Hebrew (Ivrit) remained for the time being the language of a politically committed minority that had devoted itself to a revival of 'Hebrew culture'." (Krämer 2011, p.120)
↑ "Transjordan, however, controlled large portions of Judea and Samaria, later known as the West Bank" (Tucker & Roberts 2008, pp.248–249, 500, 522)
↑ The majority of the international community (including the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and the vast majority of human rights organizations) considers Israel to be continuing to occupying Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The government of Israel and some supporters have, at times, disputed this position of the international community. In 2011, Andrew Sanger explained the situation as follows: "Israel claims it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip, maintaining that it is neither a Stale nor a territory occupied or controlled by Israel, but rather it has 'sui generis' status. Pursuant to the Disengagement Plan, Israel dismantled all military institutions and settlements in Gaza and there is no longer a permanent Israeli military or civilian presence in the territory. However the Plan also provided that Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip, will continue to maintain exclusive authority in Gaza air space, and will continue to exercise security activity in the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip as well as maintaining an Israeli military presence on the Egyptian-Gaza border. and reserving the right to reenter Gaza at will. Israel continues to control six of Gaza's seven land crossings, its maritime borders and airspace and the movement of goods and persons in and out of the territory. Egypt controls one of Gaza's land crossings. Troops from the Israeli Defence Force regularly enter pans of the territory and/or deploy missile attacks, drones and sonic bombs into Gaza. Israel has declared a no-go buffer zone that stretches deep into Gaza: if Gazans enter this zone they are shot on sight. Gaza is also dependent on Israel for inter alia electricity, currency, telephone networks, issuing IDs, and permits to enter and leave the territory. Israel also has sole control of the Palestinian Population Registry through which the Israeli Army regulates who is classified as a Palestinian and who is a Gazan or West Banker. Since 2000 aside from a limited number of exceptions Israel has refused to add people to the Palestinian Population Registry. It is this direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza that has led the United Nations, the UN General Assembly, the UN Fact Finding Mission to Gaza, International human rights organisations, US Government websites, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a significant number of legal commentators, to reject the argument that Gaza is no longer occupied.",[116] and in 2012 Iain Scobbie explained: "Even after the accession to power of Hamas, Israel's claim that it no longer occupies Gaza has not been accepted by UN bodies, most States, nor the majority of academic commentators because of its exclusive control of its border with Gaza and crossing points including the effective control it exerted over the Rafah crossing until at least May 2011, its control of Gaza's maritime zones and airspace which constitute what Aronson terms the 'security envelope' around Gaza, as well as its ability to intervene forcibly at will in Gaza"[117] and Michelle Gawerc wrote in the same year: "While Israel withdrew from the immediate territory, Israel still controlled all access to and from Gaza through the border crossings, as well as through the coastline and the airspace. ln addition, Gaza was dependent upon Israel for water electricity sewage communication networks and for its trade (Gisha 2007. Dowty 2008). In other words, while Israel maintained that its occupation of Gaza ended with its unilateral disengagement Palestinians – as well as many human right organizations and international bodies – argued that Gaza was by all intents and purposes still occupied."[118] For more details of this terminology dispute, including with respect to the current status of the Gaza Strip, see International views on the Israeli-occupied territories and Status of territories captured by Israel.
↑ For an explanation of the differences between an annexed but disputed territory (e.g. Tibet) and a militarily occupied territory, please see the article Military occupation. The "longest military occupation" description has been described in a number of ways, including: "The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the longest military occupation in modern times,"[119] "...longest official military occupation of modern history—currently entering its thirty-fifth year,"[120] "...longest-lasting military occupation of the modern age, "[121] "This is probably the longest occupation in modern international relations, and it holds a central place in all literature on the law of belligerent occupation since the early 1970s,"[122] "These are settlements and a military occupation that is the longest in the twentieth and twenty-first century, the longest formerly being the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. So this is thirty-three years old [in 2000], pushing the record,"[123] "Israel is the only modern state that has held territories under military occupation for over four decades."[124] In 2014 Sharon Weill provided further context, writing: "Although the basic philosophy behind the law of military occupation is that it is a temporary situation modem occupations have well demonstrated that rien ne dure comme le provisoire A significant number of post-1945 occupations have lasted more than two decades such as the occupations of Namibia by South Africa and of East Timor by Indonesia as well as the ongoing occupations of Northern Cyprus by Turkey and of Western Sahara by Morocco. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, which is the longest in all occupation's history has already entered its fifth decade."[125]
↑ According to the Jewish Encyclopedia published between 1901 and 1906:[129] "Palestine extends, from 31° to 33° 20' N. latitude. Its southwest point (at Raphia, Tell Rifaḥ, southwest of Gaza) is about 34° 15' E. longitude, and its northwest point (mouth of the Liṭani) is at 35° 15' E. longitude, while the course of the Jordan reaches 35° 35' to the east. The west-Jordan country has, consequently, a length of about 150 English miles from north to south, and a breadth of about 23 miles (37km) at the north and 80 miles (129km) at the south. The area of this region, as measured by the surveyors of the English Palestine Exploration Fund, is about 6,040 square miles (15,644km2). The east-Jordan district is now being surveyed by the German Palästina-Verein, and although the work is not yet completed, its area may be estimated at 4,000 square miles (10,360km2). This entire region, as stated above, was not occupied exclusively by the Israelites, for the plain along the coast in the south belonged to the Philistines, and that in the north to the Phoenicians, while in the east-Jordan country, the Israelitic possessions never extended farther than the Arnon (Wadi al-Mujib) in the south, nor did the Israelites ever settle in the most northerly and easterly portions of the plain of Bashan. To-day the number of inhabitants does not exceed 650,000. Palestine, and especially the Israelitic state, covered, therefore, a very small area, approximating that of the state of Vermont." From the Jewish Encyclopedia
↑ According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), Palestine is:[130] "[A] geographical name of rather loose application. Etymological strictness would require it to denote exclusively the narrow strip of coast-land once occupied by the Philistines, from whose name it is derived. It is, however, conventionally used as a name for the territory which, in the Old Testament, is claimed as the inheritance of the pre-exilic Hebrews; thus it may be said generally to denote the southern third of the province of Syria. Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the " River of Egypt " to Hamath). However, the Hebrews themselves have preserved, in the proverbial expression " from Dan to Beersheba " (Judg. xx.i, &c.), an indication of the normal north-and-south limits of their land; and in defining the area of the country under discussion it is this indication which is generally followed. Taking as a guide the natural features most nearly corresponding to these outlying points, we may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from the mouth of the Litany or Kasimiya River (33° 20' N.) southward to the mouth of the Wadi Ghuzza; the latter joins the sea in 31° 28' N., a short distance south of Gaza, and runs thence in a south-easterly direction so as to include on its northern side the site of Beersheba. Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins. Perhaps the line of the pilgrim road from Damascus to Mecca is the most convenient possible boundary. The total length of the region is about 140m (459.32ft); its breadth west of the Jordan ranges from about 23m (75.46ft) in the north to about 80m (262.47ft) in the south."
↑ "The term Palestine in the textbooks refers to Palestinian National Authority." (Adwan 2006, p.242)
↑ See for example, Palestinian school textbooks[xxvii]
↑ "...the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period—the late Byzantine period, around AD 600" (Broshi 1979, p.7)
↑ "...the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age... If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure." (Shiloh 1980, p.33)
↑ By A.D. 300, Jews made up a mere quarter of the total population of the province of Syria Palaestina (Krämer 2011, p.15)
1 2 Robinson, 1865, p.15: "Palestine, or Palestina, now the most common name for the Holy Land, occurs three times in the English version of the Old Testament; and is there put for the Hebrew name פלשת, elsewhere rendered Philistia. As thus used, it refers strictly and only to the country of the Philistines, in the southwest corner of the land. So, too, in the Greek form, Παλαςτίνη, it is used by Josephus. But both Josephus and Philo apply the name to the whole land of the Hebrews; and Greek and Roman writers employed it in the like extent."
↑ Louis H. Feldman, whose view differs from that of Robinson, thinks that Josephus, when referring to Palestine, had in mind only the coastal region, writing: "Writers on geography in the first century [CE] clearly differentiate Judaea from Palestine. ...Jewish writers, notably Philo and Josephus, with few exceptions refer to the land as Judaea, reserving the name Palestine for the coastal area occupied [formerly] by the Philistines." (END QUOTE). See: p. 1 in: (Feldman 1990, pp.1–23).
↑ Jacobson 1999, p.[pageneeded]: "In the earliest Classical literature references to Palestine generally applied to the Land of Israel in the wider sense. A reappraisal of this question has given rise to the proposition that the name Palestine, in its Greek form Palaistine, was both a transliteration of a word used to describe the land of the Philistines and, at the same time, a literal translation of the name Israel. This dual interpretation reconciles apparent contradictions in early definitions of the name Palaistine and is compatible with the Greeks' penchant for punning, especially on place names."
↑ Beloe, W. (1821). Herodotus, Vol.II. London. p.269. It should be remembered that Syria is always regarded by Herodotus as synonymous with Assyria. What the Greeks called Palestine the Arabs call Falastin, which is the Philistines of Scripture. (tr. from Greek, with notes)
↑ "Palestine and Israel", David M. Jacobson, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 313 (February 1999), pp. 65–74; "The Southern and Eastern Borders of Abar-Nahara," Steven S. Tuell, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 284 (November 1991), pp. 51–57; "Herodotus' Description of the East Mediterranean Coast", Anson F. Rainey, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 321 (February 2001), pp. 57–63; Herodotus, Histories
↑ Drews 1998, p.49: "Our names 'Philistia' and 'Philistines' are unfortunate obfuscations, first introduced by the translators of the LXX and made definitive by Jerome's Vg. When turning a Hebrew text into Greek, the translators of the LXX might simply—as Josephus was later to do—have Hellenized the Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּים as Παλαιστίνοι, and the toponym פְּלִשְׁתִּ as Παλαιστίνη. Instead, they avoided the toponym altogether, turning it into an ethnonym. As for the ethnonym, they chose sometimes to transliterate it (incorrectly aspirating the initial letter, perhaps to compensate for their inability to aspirate the sigma) as φυλιστιιμ, a word that looked exotic rather than familiar, and more often to translate it as άάλλόφυλοι. Jerome followed the LXX's lead in eradicating the names, 'Palestine' and 'Palestinians', from his Old Testament, a practice adopted in most modern translations of the Bible."
↑ Drews 1998, p.51: "The LXX's regular translation of פְּלִשְׁתִּים into άλλόφυλοι is significant here. Not a proper name at all, allophyloi is a generic term, meaning something like 'people of other stock'. If we assume, as I think we must, that with their word allophyloi the translators of the LXX tried to convey in Greek what p'lištîm had conveyed in Hebrew, we must conclude that for the worshippers of Yahweh p'lištîm and b'nê yiśrā'ēl were mutually exclusive terms, p'lištîm (or allophyloi) being tantamount to 'non-Judaeans of the Promised Land' when used in a context of the third century BCE, and to 'non-Israelites of the Promised Land' when used in a context of Samson, Saul and David. Unlike an ethnonym, the noun פְּלִשְׁתִּים normally appeared without a definite article."
1 2 Tamari 2011, pp.29–30: "Filastin Risalesi, is the salnameh type military handbook issued for Palestine at the beginning of the Great War... The first is a general map of the country in which the boundaries extend far beyond the frontiers of the Mutasarflik of Jerusalem, which was, until then, the standard delineation of Palestine. The northern borders of this map include the city of Tyre (Sur) and the Litani River, thus encompassing all of the Galilee and parts of southern Lebanon, as well as districts of Nablus, Haifa and Akka—all of which were part of the Wilayat of Beirut until the end of the war."
↑ Wenning 2007, pp.26: All that can be said with certainty is that the Nabataeans are known in the sources since the fourth century B.C. Up to that time the Qedarites, the dominant Arab tribe of the Persian period, controlled the south from the Hejaz and all of the Negev.
↑ David F. Graf, 'Petra and the Nabataeans in the Early Hellenistic Period: the literary and archaeological evidence,' in Michel Mouton, Stephan G. Schmid (eds.), Men on the Rocks: The Formation of Nabataean Petra, Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH, 2013 pp.35–55 pp.47–48: 'the Idumean texts indicate that a large portion of the community in southern Palestine were Arabs, many of whom have names similar to those in the "Nabataean" onomasticon of later periods.' (p.47).
↑ "Founded in the years 22-10 or 9 B.C. by Herod the Great, close to the ruins of a small Phoenician naval station named Strato's Tower (Stratonos Pyrgos, Turns Stratonis), which flourished during the 3d to 1st c. B.C. This small harbor was situated on the N part of the site. Herod dedicated the new town and its port (limen Sebastos) to Caesar Augustus. During the Early Roman period Caesarea was the seat of the Roman procurators of the province of Judea. Vespasian, proclaimed emperor at Caesarea, raised it to the rank of Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta, and later Alexander Severus raised it to the rank of Metropolis Provinciae Syriae Palestinae." A. Negev, "CAESAREA MARITIMA Palestine, Israel" in: Richard Stillwell et al. (eds.), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (1976).
↑ Eshel 2008, pp.125: Although Dio's figure of 985 as the number of villages destroyed during the war seems hyperbolic, all Judaean villages, without exception, excavated thus far were razed following the Bar Kochba Revolt. This evidence supports the impression of total regional destruction following the war..
↑ Schäfer 2003, p.163: The entire spiritual and economic life of the Palestinian Jews moved to Galilee. Meyers & Chancey 2012, p.173: Galilee became the all-important focus of Jewish life
↑ H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, ISBN978-0-674-39731-6, page 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Iudaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."
↑ Ariel Lewin. The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications, 2005 p. 33. "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name – one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus – Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land." ISBN978-0-89236-800-6
↑ O'Mahony, 2003, p. 14: 'Before the Muslim conquest, the population of Palestine was overwhelmingly Christian, albeit with a sizeable Jewish community.'
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The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has seen many conflicts and come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.
Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group native to the region of Palestine.
Palestine, offically the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia
This is a timeline of major events in the history of Jerusalem; a city that had been fought over sixteen times in its history. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.
Syria Palaestina was the renamed Roman province formerly known as Judaea, following the Roman suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in what then became known as the Palestine region between the early 2nd and late 4th centuries AD. The provincial capital was Caesarea Maritima. It forms part of timeline of the period in the region referred to as Roman Palestine.
The history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict traces back to the late 19th century when Zionists sought to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants to the region. Following World War II and the Holocaust, international pressure mounted for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948.
The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout the history of Palestine.
Prior to the rise of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the term Palestinian referred to any person born in or living in Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. During the British Mandate over Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to any person legally considered to be a citizen of Mandatory Palestine as defined in the 1925 Citizenship Order.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jews who inhabited Palestine prior to the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948.
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel begins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed but then split into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
Sunni Islam is a major religion in Palestine, being the religion of the majority of the Palestinian population. Muslims comprise 85% of the population of the West Bank, when including Israeli settlers, and 99% of the population of the Gaza Strip. The largest denomination among Palestinian Muslims are Sunnis, comprising 85% of the total Muslim population.
Situated between three continents, the region of Palestine has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region was among the earliest to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. In the Bronze Age, the Canaanites established city-states influenced by surrounding civilizations, among them Egypt, which ruled the area in the Late Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, two related Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah, controlled much of Palestine, while the Philistines occupied its southern coast. The Assyrians conquered the region in the 8th century BCE, then the Babylonians in c. 601 BCE, followed by the Persians who conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late 330s BCE, beginning Hellenization.
Judea or Judaea is a mountainous region of the Levant. Traditionally dominated by the city of Jerusalem, it is now part of Palestine and Israel. The name's usage is historic, having been used in antiquity and still into the present day; it originates from Yehudah, a Hebrew name. Yehudah was a son of Jacob, who was later given the name "Israel" and whose sons collectively headed the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Yehudah's progeny among the Israelites formed the Tribe of Judah, with whom the Kingdom of Judah is associated. Related nomenclature continued to be used under the rule of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Under the Hasmoneans, the Herodians, and the Romans, the term was applied to an area larger than Judea of earlier periods. In 132 CE, the Roman province of Judaea was merged with Galilee to form the enlarged province of Syria Palaestina.
The known history of Gaza spans 4,000 years. Gaza was ruled, destroyed and repopulated by various dynasties, empires, and peoples.
This article presents a list of notable historical references to the name Palestine as a place name for the region of Palestine throughout history. This includes uses of the localized inflections in various languages, such as Arabic Filasṭīn and Latin Palaestina.
The timeline of the Palestine region is a timeline of major events in the history of Palestine. For more details on the history of Palestine see History of Palestine. In cases where the year or month is uncertain, it is marked with a slash, for example 636/7 and January/February.
Syria is a historical region located east of the Mediterranean Sea in West Asia, broadly synonymous with the Levant. Other synonyms are Greater Syria or Syria-Palestine. The region boundaries have changed throughout history. However, in modern times, the term "Syria" alone is used to refer to the country of Syria.
The following is a timeline of the history of Jaffa.
The study of the origins of the Palestinians, a population encompassing the Arab inhabitants of the former Mandatory Palestine and their descendants, is a subject approached through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from fields such as population genetics, demographic history, folklore, including oral traditions, linguistics, and other disciplines.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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