Familiarity and otherness in late-Ottoman travel accounts in Palestine.

Abstract

Apart from the more common pilgrimage reports, or rihla higaziyya, the rihla maqdisiyya (journey to the Palestinian territories) definitely forms a distinct typology of account, both from a historical and a literary point of view. The territories of Palestine, which are traditionally considered as a part of the wider unit of Bilad al-Sham in the perspective of Arab historians and geographers, represent a peculiar pole of attraction for Arab travellers throughout the centuries, due to the significant presence of holy places and the special regard accorded to the city of Jerusalem as early as the Islamic conquest of the area. In the late-Ottoman period (mid-19th - 20th century), Palestine experiences considerable social changes which most Arab travellers, more or less consciously, tend to highlight in their accounts, thus showing evidence of their familiarity and extraneity and/or otherness at a time, along with a more or less explicit search for both an individual and collective identity, which our contribution aims at bringing out through the analysis of representative cases.