Vol. 3 · No. 2

Uzi Baram

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Abstract

This article seeks to expose the volatile issues of groupings by employing a resource that contributed to the process of racialising differences. The travellers who visited Palestine, while it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (1516-1917), brought with them the quest for understanding human differences via the Race world-view. In using Race, groups were described by intermingling physical features and behavioural traits. There are many issues involved in the descriptions of people in travel accounts but a comprehensive analysis is beyond the scope of this study. I will argue that a critical inquiry into travel accounts can bring forward understandings of peoples whose complexity has been erased from history. This article proposes a methodology for the travel accounts that reveals the assumptions of the travellers and their Race world-view in order to expose the variability of groupings in Ottoman Palestine.