Palestine in Arab History: 621–1798

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An event with AlMahdi AlRawadieh and Nabil Matar

 

Saturday, September 6th, 2025

5 p.m. – 7 p.m.

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Based on their current book project, AlMahdi AlRawadieh and Nabil Matar trace how Palestine was imagined, named, and lived in Arabic sources from the Prophet’s Isrāʾ (621) to the eve of Napoleon’s campaign (1798). Drawing on original archival research conducted across the globe, as well as on tafsīr, faḍāʾil (merit) literature, Sufi itineraries, biographical dictionaries, coins, and administrative maps, they show how Palestine provided terminological and geographical stability, social belonging, and demographic diversity long before Zionist settler-colonialism and anti-Zionist national struggle.

 

In this light, they challenge claims that Palestine was a nineteenth-century invention, critically assessing Europe’s early-modern cartographic “Holy Land." From Ortelius onward, they show how a biblical geography was retrojected onto Ottoman-Arab space and set the ground for later imperial projects. Their focus on the continuities of Palestine in Arabic administrative, devotional, and literary texts offers a methodological intervention in contemporary historical studies, which privilege non-Arabic sources, and a rejoinder to erasures of Palestine in history.

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Professor Nabil Matar is a leading historian of Euro–Islamic encounters. A member of the Institute's faculty network, his work bridges Arabic and European sources to rethink the Mediterranean in the early modern period. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge), Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia), and Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (Columbia). In 2017, he received the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Award in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation.

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Dr. AlMahdi AlRawadieh is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Jordan, where he teaches courses on Islamic and Arab history and mentors graduate research on early modern Arab-Ottoman contexts. His work focuses on Arabic historiography and the social-intellectual history of Bilād al-Shām, with special attention to how geographies, travel writing, and devotional literature shaped ideas of place. Along with Nabil Matar, he is currently co-authoring the book project Palestine in Arab History: 621–1798.

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The event is open to the public. Due to limited space, we kindly ask that you register to secure a seat:​​