Table Of ContentTHE ZEALOUS
INTRUDERS
The Western Rediscovery
of Palestine,
NAOMI SHEPHERD
1817
HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, SAN ERANCISCO
Cambridge, Hagerstown, New York, Philadelphia, Washington
London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney
William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd
l.ondon • Glasgow • Sydney ■ Auckland
Toronto - Johannesburg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shepherd, Naomi.
The Zealous Intruders.
1. Palestine—Description and travel. 2. Visitors,
Foreign—Palestine—History—19th century. 3. Christian
pilgrims and pilgrimages—Palestine—History—
19th century. 4. Palestine—History—1799-1917.
5. Palestine—Foreign public opinion, Occidental
History—19th century. I. Title.
DS107.S54 1988 956.94'03 87-17605
ISBN 0-06-067271-4
88 89 90 91 92 COL 10 987654 3 21
First published in 1987
Copyright © Naomi Shepherd 1987
Map by Tamar Sofer
Photoset in Linotron Sabon at
The Spartan Press Ltd,
Lymington, Hants
Made and printed in Great Britain by
T. J. Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
To Yehuda
CONTENTS
1 The Rediscovery of Palestine,
1799-1831 11
2 The Baroque in the Desert 45
3 Palestine and the Authentication
of the Bible 73
4 ‘King Consul’ 107
5 Feudal Palestine: Akil Aga 141
6 Popular Palestine 170
7 By Appointment to Palestine:
Soldiers and Scholars 193
8 ‘Till the Conversion of the Jews’ 228
Bibliography 259
Index 275
ILLUSTRATIONS
Between pages 62-63
Sir Sidney Smith and Ahmed Djezzar (Victoria & Albert Museum/
Searight Collection)
‘The Pesthousc at Jaffa’ (Louvre, Paris. Photo: Reunion des Musees
Nationaux)
Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (Victoria & Albert Museum/
Searight Collection. Photo: Courtauld Institute of Art)
Good Friday in the Holy Sepulchre (Victoria &c Albert Museum/
Searight Collection. Photo: Courtauld Institute of Art)
The Dome of the Rock (Victoria & Albert Muscum/Searight Collec
tion. Photo: Courtauld Institute of Art)
James Silk Buckingham and his wife (Royal Geographical Society)
Jean Louis Burckhardt as Sheikh Ibrahim (Victoria 8c Albert
Museum/Searight Collection)
The Baroque in the desert (B. Weinrcb Architectural Books Ltd)
Between pages 12.6-117
‘The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple’ (Birmingham Museums and
Art Gallery)
‘Judah and Tamar’ (Wallace Collection, London)
Akil Aga (Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Copyright reserved: repro
duced by kind permission of Her Majesty the Queen)
Khan el Tujjar (Author’s collection)
Reception of the Prince of Wales by Akil Aga in thedesert (Royal
Library, Windsor Castle. Copyright reserved: reproduced by kind
permission of Her Majesty the Queen)
European tourists in the mid-century (Victoria & Albert Museum/
Searight Collection. Photo: Courtauld Institute of Art)
Between pages 142-/43
The Moabite Stone (Louvre, Paris. Photo: Reunion des Musees
Nationaux)
A fake ‘Moabite’ figurine (Palestine Exploration Fund)
The sarcophagus of Queen Saddam (Louvre, Paris. Photo: Reunion des
Musees Nationaux)
Sir Moses Montefiore (Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation,
London)
Ashkenazi Jews (Palestine Exploration Fund)
The Wailing Wall (Mansell Collection)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank all those who made valuable suggestions for
further reading and research during the preparation of this book, and in
particular: Professor Yehoshua Ben Arieh; Dr Andre Chouraqui; Pere
Marcel Dubois; Professor Albert Hourani; Sarah Kochav; Dr Tudor
Parfitt; Dr Ronni Reich; and Dr Mayir Verete. Dr Amnon Cohen kindly
allowed me to consult his unpublished thesis on Ahmed Djezzar Pasha;
and Dr Ruth Kark allowed me to read her forthcoming study of the
American consuls in Jerusalem in typescript.
I am deeply indebted to Mme Paula Lazard, in whose private
collection of books on the subject 1 found many rare volumes; to
another dedicated collector, Professor Yaakov Wahrman, who
shared with me his encyclopaedic knowledge on the period literature;
and to Martin Gilbert, for again giving me access to his Jerusalem
library.
For expert help in the archives, I am particularly grateful to the
following: Mme Marie Gallup, curator of the archives at the French
Ministere de l’Exterieur, Quai d’Orsay; Dr Rupert Chapman, director
of the Palestine Exploration Fund, London; and Edmund Swinglehurst,
archivist at Thomas Cook, London, who kindly showed me holograph
copies of letters exchanged by Thomas and John Cook on the subject of
their Palestine tours. I should also like to thank the staff of the Public
Record Office, Kew, London, and of the library of the Ben Zvi Institute,
Jerusalem, for their exceptional helpfulness.
Rodney Searight kindly displayed for me a selection of paintings in
his possession by artists working in the Near East during the nineteenth
century, some of which appear in this book. Jane Martineau, Briony
Llewellyn of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Lady Delia Millar
enabled me to track down paintings of Akil Aga and his tribe by Carl
Haag.
Dr Aharon Kempinski suggested many additional sources and
discussed with me the subject of nineteenth-century archaeologists in
Palestine; he also read chapter VII in manuscript.
Yitzhak Tischler first suggested to me the subject of this book; I hope
he will not be too disappointed with the result.
THE ZEALOUS INTRUDERS
I should also like to recall the contribution of the late Bezalel Rabani,
sometime inspector of antiquities in the Upper Galilee, at whose home
in Tabgha, many years ago, 1 first read some of the works quoted in this
study.
Stefan Mendelsohn read the entire manuscript and eliminated a
number of stylistic and factual blunders. Any remaining errors are of
course my own.
I am grateful to the Conservateur of the Library at the Institut de
France for permission to consult and quote from the letters of Charles
Clermont-Ganneau; to the Palestine Exploration Fund, for permission
to quote from the Conder letters; to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
for permission to quote from Conder’s private letters; to the Secretary
of the Church’s Mission to the Jews for permission to quote from the
papers of the London Society (CMJ) deposited at the New Bodleian
Library, Oxford; and to Penguin Books Ltd, for permission to quote
from T. Carmi’s prose translation of ‘The Dirge of Moses Remos’ in
The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse.
1 am deeply grateful to Carol O’Brien, my editor at Collins, both for
her initial encouragement and for the constructive criticism which
determined the final shape of the book.
No list of acknowledgements would be complete without mention of
the help of my family. Thanks, then, to Joshua, who provided liaison
with libraries in London and Oxford; to Sarah and Isaac, for their
practical help and patience; and to my husband, Yehuda Layish, to
whom the book is dedicated.
