We look forward to seeing you at Ifpo for the upcoming public lecture of the Ifpo/CBRL insights series. Dr. Omar al-Ghul will make a presentation about
“Early 20th century ethnographies about Palestine”
on Monday, December 12th, 2016, 6 pm
Venue: Ifpo – Institute Francais du Porche-Orient

 From the second half of the 19th century onwards, numerous Western travellers, clergymen, politicians and scholars showed enormous interest in Palestine and in the life of its inhabitants. Most of them regarded Palestine as the “Holy Land” and the Palestinians as the closest representatives of its inhabitants 3000 years ago. With the beginning of the 20th century, a new ethnography of Palestine emerged, in which the lives of Palestinians were studied in their own right. The lecture presents the works of Gustaf Dalman, Hilma Granqvist and Tawfiq Canaan and discusses them in their historical context.
بدأت موجة اهتمام واسعة بفلسطين وبسكانها منذ منتصف القرن التاسع عشر، على يد عدد كبير من الرحالة، ورجال الدين، والسياسيين، والباحثين. واعتنى هؤلاء بدراسة فلسطين بوصفها “الأرض المقدسة”، ودرسوا أهلها بوصفهم أقرب مثال على الناس الذين سكنوا فلسطين قبل ثلاثة آلاف سنة. غير أن بداية القرن العشرين شهدت ظهور دراسات إثنوغرافية مختلفة درست الفلسطينيين وعاداتهم وتقاليدهم لأنها عدتها مهمة في حد ذاتها، فستعرض المحاضرة لأعمال غوستاف دالمن، وهيلما غرانكفست، وتوفيق كنعان وتناقشها في سياقها التاريخي
About the speaker: Dr. Omar Al Ghul is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Epigraphy at Yarmouk University. He is a specialist of Northwest Semitic epigraphy and is the Director of the Jordanian Dead Sea Scrolls Project. He obtained his Ph.D. in Tübingen, Germany, in 1991 in the field of Ancient Oriental Languages. He is the author of many scientific articles and edited books, among them Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls (2012) in Arabic. He also recently translated J. Euting’s Nabatäische Inschriften aus Arabien (2012).