The collision of Empires as seen from Istanbul: the border of British-controlled Egypt and Ottoman Palestine as reflected in Ottoman maps

Abstract

This article analyses the historical and cartographical understanding of the creation of the border between Egypt and Ottoman Palestine e Israel's current southern border e by examining Ottoman maps from the period between the mid nineteenth century and World War I. These maps deal with different stages of the border's definition and demarcation, and shed light on the Ottoman view of the region and its borders, which differs considerably from the more widely known British perspective. Most of these maps were not produced to deal directly with the issue of the border, but when embedded within the broader Ottoman cartographic and geopolitical framework, provide crucial information which allows us to trace the process of border definition.

Advancing the historical geography of late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine using GIScience: A review

“…Until the beginning of the 19th century, Palestine under Ottoman rule attracted little attention from the international community. Then, the international focus was gradually diverted to the Southern Levant, enhanced by substantial geo‐political developments such as the Egyptian occupation of Palestine (1831), the Tanzimat reforms (mid‐19th century), the Crimean war (1856), the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), the entry of Britain into Egypt (1882) and confrontation with the Ottomans (1906), the Jewish immigration waves to Palestine starting in the late 19th century, the outbreak of World War I, and the occupation of Palestine in 1917 initiating the British Mandate for a period of nearly 30 years (Aaronsohn, 1983; Ben‐Arieh, 1970; Ben‐Arieh & Bartal, 1983; Ben‐Bassat & Ben‐Artzi, 2015; Goren, 2002; Penslar, 1990). These changes, along with modernization processes (e.g., Gerber, 1982), resulted in dramatic tremors in the landscape and cityscapes of Palestine (Ben‐Arieh, 1981).…”

“…Two decades later, and in light of the coming confrontation between the British and Ottoman Empires along the Egyptian border, a survey team led by Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Francis Newcombe mapped the Southern Levant (Newcombe, 1914) and produced the first complete and accurate map by modern standards available for this region (Zohar, 2019) (Figure 1). Other maps include Russian maps (Frumin, 2004), Ottoman maps found in the Istanbul archive (Ben‐Bassat & Ben‐Artzi, 2015), American maps (Edson, 2014), cadastral maps (Gavish & Kark, 1993), and Hebrew maps (Rubin, 2018).…”

A Nomadic State of Mind: Mental Maps of Bedouins in the Negev and Sinai During the Time of the Ottomans, the British Mandate, and the State of Israel

“…However, most studies deal with the image of the city and settlements in mental maps, and hardly concern themselves with nomadic space, including research of the modern era in the Middle East. (Ben-Bassat & Bussow, 2018).…”

Analyzing routes in Ottoman Greater Syria using historical GIS: The 1849 Saida map

“…Thus, while the literature examining the European cartography of Greater Syria in the 19th century has been accumulating, there is a substantial lack of information about Ottoman cartography. In the last few years, however, there has been increasing interest in Ottoman cartography and the valuable information Ottoman maps may contain about the imperial provinces (Ben‐Bassat & Ben‐Artzi, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019; Kark, 2004; Marom, 2018).…”