Due to the relative weakness of the Porte in the nineteenth century, access
to and circulation in the Ottoman Empire were facilitated for European
travelers and diplomats. In 1838, Britain opened a consulate in Jerusalem
and, soon afterwards, British explorers and geographers began to survey the
Holy Land in search for evidence that would allow them to authenticate the
biblical narrative whose veracity was then increasingly questioned. ‘Sacred
geography’, as such enterprise became known, emphasized the features of
modern Palestine that confirmed Scriptures while everything that did not
fit in the biblical framework – notably Islam and the Ottoman presence –
was either ignored or disparaged as the reasons of the Holy Land’s supposed
decline. Such discourse laid the foundations of future imperialist designs on
Palestine, notably Zionism, which was to be officially endorsed by Britain in
the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
