Aaronsohn S Maps

Scientist, diplomat, and spy, Aaron Aaronsohn was one of the most extraordinary figures in the early struggle to create a homeland for the Jews.Born to Jewish settlers in Palestine, he ran a spy network that enabled the British to capture Jerusalem during World War I and made him the rival of his contemporary, T.E.Lawrence-who may also have been his flamboyant sister Sarah's lover.A rugged adventurer, Aaronsohn became convinced during his explorations of the Middle East that water would govern the region's fate.He compiled both the area's first detailed water maps and a plan for Palestine's national borders that predicted and-in its insistence on partnership between Arabs and Jews-might have prevented the decades of conflict to come.And he paid for his devotion to the new nation with his life.A history that speaks directly to the present, Aaronsohn's Maps reveals for the first time Aaronsohn's key role in establishing Israel and the enduring importance of Aaronsohn's maps in Middle Eastern politics today.

Aaron Aaronsohn was one of the most extraordinary figures in the early struggle to create a homeland for the Jewish people. Brought to Palestine at age five, as a young man Aaronsohn was a rugged adventurer who became convinced during years of solo explorations that water should govern the region's fate. He compiled both the area's first detailed water maps and a plan for Palestine's national borders that predicted and—in its insistence on partnership between Arabs and Jews—might have prevented the decades of conflict to come. In World War I, he ran a spy network with his sister, Sarah, that enabled the British to capture Jerusalem but also made him the rival of his colleague T.E. Lawrence. There is evidence that beautiful, rebellious Sarah, who died tragically in 1917, was the only woman the enigmatic Lawrence ever loved. Ultimately, Aaron Aaronsohn also paid for his devotion to the new nation with his life. A history that speaks directly to the present, Aaronsohn's Maps reveals for the first time Aaronsohn's key role in establishing Israel and the enduring importance of Aaronsohn's maps in Middle Eastern politics today.

A celebrated botanist, who had won world fame as the discoverer of 'wild wheat, ' Aaron Aaronsohn (1876 1919) created the first Jewish Agricultural Experiment Station in Palestine then under Turkish rule in 1910. His venture was supported and funded from the u.s. by a group which included Julius Rosenwald, Justices Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter (both later on the u.s. Supreme Court), Judah L. Magnes (later President of the Hebrew University), and Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah. In World War I, reacting against the oppressive Turkish regime, Aaronsohn founded a Jewish spy organization, nili, to help the British in the forthcoming battle for Palestine. Here is told the story of Aaronsohn, who is revealed as a master of strategy, and his sister Sarah, whose self-sacrificing devotion to the cause shows her to be a great historic personality in her own right. Historian Shmuel Katz here rectifies the absence of a comprehensive biography of Aaronsohn and the nili spy ring. Meticulously researched British War Office intelligence documents and the letters and field reports of nili s central figures illustrate the crucial contribution made by nili to the British conquest of Palestine. Powerfully written, with deep sensitivity to the emotional lives of the people portrayed, The Aaronsohn Saga is both solid history and a marvelous read.

The rivalry that presaged the world's most tenacious conflict As the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to plague the Middle East, historian Ronald Florence offers extraordinary new insights on its origins. This is the story of T. E. Lawrence, the young British officer who became famous around the world as Lawrence of Arabia, Aaron Aaronsohn, an agronomist from Palestine, and the antagonism that divided them over the fate of the dying Ottoman Empire during World War I--a clash of visions that set Arab nationalism and Zionism on a direct collision course that reverberates to this day.

The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, "a sideshow to a sideshow." As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by four men far removed from the corridors of power. Curt Pruefer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Palestine. William Yale was the fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist digging ruins in Syria; by 1919 he was riding into legend at the head of an Arab army, as he fought a rearguard action against his own government and its imperial ambitions. Based on four years of intensive primary document research, Lawrence in Arabia definitively overturns received wisdom on how the modern Middle East was formed. Sweeping in its action, keen in its portraiture, acid in its condemnation of the destruction wrought by European colonial plots, this is a book that brilliantly captures the way in which the folly of the past creates the anguish of the present.

This book is a historical study of the survey and mapping system of Palestine under the British Mandate. It traces the background and the reasoning behind the establishment of the survey programme, examines the foundations upon which the system was based, and strives to understand the motivation of those who implemented it. This study shows that the roots of the modern survey system of Palestine are to be sought in the Balfour Declaration and its implications regarding land in Palestine. The land issue was at the core of the mapping of Mandatory Palestine, and it remains as a core issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

The book presents and discusses a large corpus of Jewish maps of the Holy Land that were drawn by Jewish scholars from the 11th to the 20th century, and thus fills a significant lacuna both in the history of cartography and in Jewish studies. The maps depict the biblical borders of the Holy Land, the allotments of the tribes, and the forty years of wanderings in the desert. Most of these maps are in Hebrew although there are several in Yiddish, Ladino and in European languages. The book focuses on four aspects: it presents an up-to-date corpus of known maps of various types and genres; it suggests a classification of these maps according to their source, shape and content; it presents and analyses the main topics that were depicted in the maps; and it puts the maps in their historical and cultural contexts, both within the Jewish world and the sphere of European cartography of their time. The book is an innovative contribution to the fields of history of cartography and Jewish studies. It is written for both professional readers and the general public. The Hebrew edition (2014), won the Izhak Ben-Zvi Prize.