Translating Late Ottoman Modernity in Palestine

Debates on Ethno-Confessional Relations and Identity in the Arab Palestinian Newspaper Filasṭīn (1911–1914)

By (author) Evelin Dierauff

Book cover: Translating Late Ottoman Modernity in Palestine

Extent: 456 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, Twentieth- & Twenty-First- Century History

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(January 2020)

ISBN: 9783847110668

6.3 x 9.25 inches

Price: $107.00

On back order

The relations between the different ethnic and confessional groups residing in late Ottoman Palestine


Filastin was published from 1911 onwards in the coastal town of Jaffa by the cousins Yusuf and Isa al-Isa, Arab Palestinians of Greek Orthodox confession. Soon, it had established itself as a ‘forum of debate’ in late Ottoman Palestine, serving a pool of authors from different ethnic and confessional but similar educational backgrounds and moral values as a public medium to which they contributed through publishing articles, protest letters, petitions, etc. On its pages, these authors controversially discussed concepts of collective identity, society-building, political order and all kinds of reforms that they perceived progressive and as fitting the ‘spirit of the age’, as they called it: the age of Ottoman Constitutionalism and modernity. This study explores local debates on Palestinian group relations through Filastin during the years 1911 until 1914 which is relevant since, during this period of time, the Arab Middle East in general and Palestine in specific underwent a so-called ‘saddle period’; a deep and fundamental change with regard to social relations and political concepts that is still rather unexplored in today’s scholarship.

  • By (author) Evelin Dierauff