A BOOK FROM YEAR 1714 BRINGS THE EVIDENCE THAT PALESTINE WAS NEVER ARABIC!
The author spoke Hebrew, Arabic, ancient Greek, and European languages perfectly. The book was written in Latin. In 1695 he was sent to Israel, at the time known as Palestine.
During his travels, he investigated about 2500 places where people were mentioned in the Bible or Michna lived.
1) He mapped the land of Israel first.
2) Then he identified each of the places mentioned in Michna or Talmud with their original source. If the source was Jewish, he listed it in the Holy Scriptures. If the source was Roman or Greek, it indicated the connection in Greek or Latin.
3) he organized a demographic survey and census of each community.
His conclusions
1. No settlement in Israel has a name of Arab origin.
Most colonial names come from Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Roman languages. In fact, until today except Ramlah, no Arab colony has an original Arab name. So far, most colonial names are of Hebrew or Greek origin, sometimes distorted names into Arab names without any sense. There is no meaning in Arabic in names such as Acco (Acre), Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza or Jenin and cities named Ramallah, El Halil and El-Kuds (Jerusalem) lack historical roots or philology Arabic.
In 1696, the year Reland went around the country, Ramallah, for example, was named Bet ' allah (Hebrew name Beit El) and Hebron was named Hebron (Hevron) and the Arabs called Mearat HaMachpelah El Chalil, their name for the ancestor Abraham.
2. Most land was empty
Most of the land was empty and few inhabitants and concentrated mostly in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most inhabitants were Jewish and other Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomadic bedouins. Nablus, known as Shchem, was just an exception because there were about 120 people living there, members of the Muslim Natsha family, and about 70 Shomronites.
In the capital of Galilee, Nazareth, lived around 700 Christians and in Jerusalem about 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians.
The interesting thing is that Reland mentioned Muslims as nomadic Bedouins who arrived in the area as a reinforcement of the building and agriculture workforce. In other words, seasonal workers.
In Gaza, for example, lived around 550 people, fifty percent Jews and the rest mostly Christians. The Jews grew up and worked in their flourishing vineyards, olive orchards and wheat fields. Christians worked in the trade and transport of goods and goods.
Tiberius and Tzfat were mostly Jewish and with the exception of mentioning fishermen fishing in Lake Kinneret - Lake Galilee - a traditional occupation of Tiberius, there is no mention of their occupations.
A city like Um El Phahem was a village where ten families lived, about fifty people in total, all Christian. There was also a small Maronite church in the village (the Shehadah family).
3. No Palestinian legacy or Palestinian nation.
The book totally contradicts any post-modern theory claiming a ′′ Palestinian legacy ′′ or a Palestinian nation. The book confirms the link, the pertinence, the kinship of Israel's land with the Jews and the absolute lack of belonging to the Arabs, who stole the Latin name Palestina and took it for their own use.
Adrian Reland (1676-1718), Dutch orientalist, was born in Ryp, studied at Utrecht and Leiden and was a teacher of oriental languages successively at Harderwijk (1699) and Utrecht (1701). His most important works are Palestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata (Utrecht, 1714) and Antiquitates sacrae veterum Hebraeorum.