CHS guest lecture - SARAH IRVING (Staffordshire University): 'Knowing the land: Geography, God and the 1927 Palestine earthquake'

The land - the physical earth - of Palestine has, perhaps even more than in most nationalisms, been a key image in both Palestinian and Zionist national narratives, in addition to the significance attached to the same soil by Muslim, Jewish and Christian attributions of sacredness. How, though, did the various communities of Mandate Palestine 'know' and understand their land when it rose up in seismic waves, killing several hundred and damaging buildings across Palestine and Transjordan? This talk explores scientific, religious and popular debates about the causes and nature of earthquakes and descriptions of this quake itself as an opportunity to discuss types of knowledge and their production and circulation in the interwar Bilad al-Sham.

Moderator: Karène Sanchez-Summerer