Descriptive Geography and Brief Historical Sketch of Palestine

This is a reprint of the 1850 first edition, published by A. Hart in Philadelphia, translated from the German by Isaac Leeser. Brown cloth binding, gilt titles, heavy pictorial dustjacket, printed on acid-free paper. 520 pp. 25 illustrations, including a large fold-out geographical map of Palestine laid in. Fierce contention over the land of Palestine is not news. Fought over millennia by religious, tribal and national factions - Jews, Muslims, Christians, Assyrians, Romans, Persians, Turks and currently the Israelis and the Palestinians - the rights to Palestine, now Israel and the "West Bank", remain a burning issue. The answer to 'who owns the land' lies in a volatile mix of politics, history and religion. The Descriptive Geography of Palestine, by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz (1805-1865), a German Jew and Zionist, while written from the Jewish perspective, utilizes a wide variety of ancient sources not commonly available, and thus provides added perspective for this ongoing, bloody debate. Prior to the Rabbi's work, descriptions of Palestine familiar to the West had been written by Christian travelers, who did not have the linguistic ability to compare and utilize the record of the Hebrew Scriptures and other ancient works. "For instance, " Rabbi Schwarz writes, "no one could hitherto indicate where to look for the Mount Hor, in Northern Palestine; Riblah, Kadesh-Barne?, Azmon, Katath, Nahallal, Shimron, Rakkath, &c.; since all the learned were unacquainted with the circumstance, that all these names were changed at a later period, as we see mentioned in Talmud Yerushalmi, and since the names into which they were changed are existing to this day. In this way, therefore, being able to draw from the source indicated, I have been permitted to discover nearly a hundred names which had hitherto remained unknown." The Descriptive Geography of Palestine is both geography of Palestine and a commentary on the relevant geographic passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, the entire Bible canon, Roman literature, and Arabic and Persian sources. It covers the boundaries of Palestine; an explanation of the seas, rivers, mountains, and valleys of Palestine; division of Palestine according to the twelve tribes; Palestine beyond Jordan; Jerusalem; animals, vegetables and minerals of Palestine; climate; and contains a short history of Palestine to 1850. "An uncommon degree of interest has been excited in modern times towards Palestine, to an extent scarcely ever before attained. It issues forth, as it were, out of its devastation of more than eighteen centuries standing; and people seek to reanimate it through their investigations and discoveries. The learned contend for the prize of contributing the most to its elucidation by discovering and tracing out the vestiges of antiquity which it offers; and it is therefore constantly visited and travelled over by the well-informed of all nations. How much more ardently, then, must the erudite man belonging to the house of Israel feel on the subject! For should not Israel march in the advance, and serve in this matter as an example to other nations? or shall it, to whose ancestor God said (Gen. 13. 15), "For the whole land which thou seest I will give unto thee and thy seed for ever," receive an account of its possessions-for its property the land remains, long as the time may be t! hat its claim is not acknowledged, and its rights usurped by the hand of power from the mouth of others?" Who shall inherit Palestine, the Land of Israel?