A Witness to the Land: Journeys Through Syria and Palestine

By: Şehabeddin Cenab
Translated by: Ahmet Istanbullu

A Witness to the Land is a journey into the beating heart of Syria and Palestine, and a document of their fateful transformation. At the height of World War I, Ottoman writer and physician Şehabeddin Cenab travels through the Levant on a mission requested by the Ottoman military command. Yet what he records are not official reports. Instead, he offers the intimate letters of a man captivated by place.

With the soul of a poet and the eye of a scholar, Cenab captures the beauty of landscapes and cities, reflects on changing social realities, and documents the final Ottoman chapter in the Arab East at the very moment history is about to turn. From Aleppo and Damascus to Beirut and Nablus, he paints the Levant with unmatched vividness, exposing the tensions and contradictions of power: his praise of Jamal Pasha slips suddenly into revealing silence, hinting at conflicts unspoken.

What elevates this work beyond travel literature are the rare Ottoman documents included at its conclusion. Newly translated into Arabic, they reveal with striking clarity how Palestine began to lose its Arab identity, how Zionist ambitions, backed by European support, laid the foundations for a Jewish homeland, and how the major powers divided the Arab world among themselves. Through these pages, the Balfour Declaration moves from distant rhetoric to irreversible reality.

A Witness to the Land is not simply a travelogue. It is a living testimony to a historical turning point that reshaped the destiny of the East forever.