Palestine (region)

Palestine
Παλαιστίνη (Ancient Greek)
Palaestina (Latin)
فِلَسْطِين (Arabic)
פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה or אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל (Hebrew)[i]
  Boundaries of the Roman province Syria Palaestina, where dashed green line shows the boundary between Byzantine Palaestina Prima (later Jund Filastin) and Palaestina Secunda (later Jund al-Urdunn), as well as Palaestina Salutaris (later Jebel et-Tih and the Jifar)
  Borders of Mandatory Palestine
  Borders between Israel and Palestine (West Bank and Gaza Strip) which largely follow the Green Line
LanguagesArabic, Hebrew
Ethnic groups
Arabs, Jews, Samaritans
Countries Israel
Palestine
Jordan[ii]

The region of Palestine,[iii] also known as historic Palestine[1][2][3] or land of Palestine,[4][5][6] is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes the modern states of Israel and Palestine, and some definitions include parts of northwestern Jordan. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, and Judea.

The earliest written record referring to Palestine as a geographical region is in the Histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, which calls the area Palaistine,[7] referring to the territory previously held by Philistia, a state that existed in that area from the 12th to the 7th century BCE. The Roman Empire conquered the region in 63 BCE and appointed client kings to rule over it until Rome began directly ruling over the region and established a predominately-Jewish province named "Judaea" in 6 CE.[8] The Roman Empire killed the vast majority of Jews in Judaea to suppress the Bar Kokhba Revolt during 132-136 CE; shortly after the revolt, the Romans expelled and enslaved nearly all of the remaining Jews in Judaea, depopulating the region.[9][10][11][12] Roman authorities renamed the province of Judaea to "Syria Palaestina" in c. 135 CE to punish Jews for the Bar Kokhba Revolt and permanently sever ties between Jews and the province.[13][14][15] In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established. While Palestine's boundaries have changed throughout history, it has generally comprised the southern portion of regions such as Syria or the Levant.

As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, Palestine has been a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. In the Bronze Age, it was home to Canaanite city-states; and the later Iron Age saw the emergence of Israel and Judah. It has since come under the sway of various empires, including the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, and the Seleucid Empire. The brief Hasmonean dynasty ended with its gradual incorporation into the Roman Empire, and later the Byzantine Empire, during which Palestine became a center of Christianity. In the 7th century, Palestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, ending Byzantine rule in the region; Rashidun rule was succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Fatimid Caliphate. Following the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established through the Crusades, the population of Palestine became predominantly Muslim. In the 13th century, it became part of the Mamluk Sultanate, and after 1516, spent four centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire.

During World War I, Palestine was occupied by the United Kingdom as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Between 1919 and 1922, the League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine, which came under British administration as Mandatory Palestine through the 1940s. Tensions between Jews and Arabs escalated into the 1947–1949 Palestine war, which ended with the establishment of Israel on most of the territory, and neighboring Jordan and Egypt controlling the West Bank and the Gaza Strip respectively. The 1967 Six-Day War saw Israel's occupation of both territories, which has been among the core issues of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[16][17][18]


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-roman> tags or {{efn-lr}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-roman}} template or {{notelist-lr}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Publishing, Britannica Educational (1 October 2010). Historic Palestine, Israel, and the Emerging Palestinian Autonomous Areas. Britannica Educational Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61530-395-3 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ Svirsky, Marcelo; Ben-Arie, Ronnen (7 November 2017). From Shared Life to Co-Resistance in Historic Palestine. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-78348-965-7 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ Domínguez de Olazábal, Itxaso (3 October 2022). "On Indigenous Refusal against Externally-Imposed Frameworks in Historic Palestine". Millennium: Journal of International Studies. 51 (1): 212–236. doi:10.1177/03058298221131359. ISSN 0305-8298 – via CrossRef.
  4. ^ Bosworth, Edmund (1 January 1986). "The land of Palestine in the late Ottoman period as mirrored in Western guide books". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. doi:10.1080/13530198608705426.
  5. ^ Farag, Joseph R. (4 May 2021). "Beyond the land of Palestine: deserts, shores, seas". Middle Eastern Literatures. 24 (2): 93–110. doi:10.1080/1475262X.2022.2088266. ISSN 1475-262X.
  6. ^ Edgley, Thomas (1710). A Sermon, Preach'd at Exon, May 10th, 1710. Before an Assembly of the United Ministers of Devon and Cornwall: Publish'd at the Request of Many of the Auditory. Exon. Jos. Bliss.
  7. ^ Herodotus 3:91:1.
  8. ^ Feldman 1996, p. 553.
  9. ^ Zissu, Boaz (2018). "Interbellum Judea 70-132 CE: An Archaeological Perspective". Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70‒132 CE. Joshua Schwartz, Peter J. Tomson. Leiden, The Netherlands. pp. 19, 28–29, 37. ISBN 978-90-04-34986-5. OCLC 988856967.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Jones, A.H.M. (1971). The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (2nd ed.). Oxford. p. 277. This provoked the last Jewish war, which seems from our meager accounts [...] to have resulted in the desolation of Judaea and the practical extermination of its Jewish population.
  11. ^ Applebaum, Shimon (1989). "Romanization and Indigenism in Judaea". Judaea in Hellenistic and Roman Times. Judaea in Hellenistic and Roman Times (vol. 40). Brill. p. 157. doi:10.1163/9789004666641_017. ISBN 978-90-04-66664-1. Retrieved 18 June 2024.
  12. ^ Bartrop, Paul R.; Totten, Samuel (2004). "The History of Genocide: An Overview". Teaching about Genocide: Issues, Approaches, and Resources. Information Age. p. 24. ISBN 1-59311-075-8. In the aftermath of the Roman victories over the Jews of Palestine (Judaea) during the first century CE, at which time the Temple was destroyed (70 CE) and the last remnants of Jewish opposition to Roman rule under Simeon Bar Kochba were snuffed out at Betar (135 CE), the Jews were a devastated people. Over half a million had been killed in the aftermath of the wars, their cities had been laid waste, and the survivors were dispersed through slave markets across the known world. In what was a clear case of genocide, the Jewish state was extinguished, and would not appear again for over 1,800 years.
  13. ^ "The Forgotten History of the Term "Palestine" | Hudson Institute". www.hudson.org. 17 June 2025. Retrieved 9 July 2025. In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea's second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, "Palestinian Syria." They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y'hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y'hudah). "Palaestina" referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.
  14. ^ Lehmann, Clayton Miles (Summer 1998). "Palestine: History: 135–337: Syria Palaestina and the Tetrarchy". The On-line Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. Archived from the original on 11 August 2009. Retrieved 24 August 2014. In the aftermath of the Bar Cochba Revolt, the Romans excluded Jews from a large area around Aelia Capitolina, which Gentiles only inhabited. The province now hosted two legions and many auxiliary units, two colonies, and—to complete the disassociation with Judaea—a new name, Syria Palaestina.
  15. ^ Magness, Jodi (2013). The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon's Temple to the Muslim Conquest (Reprinted with corrections ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-521-12413-3. To further punish the Jews, Hadrian instituted bans restricting or prohibiting some Jewish practices, such as circumcision and sabbath observance. For the first time, Jews living under Roman rule were subject to persecution under the law for practicing their religion. Finally, to obliterate the memory of this troublesome people, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judea to Syria-Palaestina, reviving the name of the ancient kingdom of Philistia.
  16. ^ Reuters: recognition 2012.
  17. ^ Miskin 2012.
  18. ^ AP 2013.
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