Summary
U.S. humorist whose 1869 Holy Land travel account The Innocents Abroad opens Chapter 1 of Perceptions of Palestine as the best-known of the nineteenth-century travel books that formed the derogatory Western image of Palestine and its Arabs (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 281-293).
Details
- Twain is quoted: of Palestine, “Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. … It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land. … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes”; of its Arab inhabitants, they were “all abject beggars by nature, instinct, and education”; of an Arab village, “thoroughly ugly and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable and filthy—just the style of cities that have adorned the country since Adam’s time” (lines 281-293 / printed p.16).
- Christison states that Twain’s exaggerations have since been used by proponents of Israel and are highlighted in Israeli government press handouts presenting Israel’s redemption of a land previously empty and barren, and by U.S. propagandists for Israel; his travelogue sold sixty-seven thousand copies in its first year (lines 281-301).
- Twain’s treatment of the all-Arab town of Nablus is given as typical of the genre: calling it Shechem, its biblical name, he described Jews’ ancient roots there in detail, never mentioned an Arab presence and used the name Nablus only once (lines 317-323).