Historic Maps of Palestine Before 1948: What Each One Shows

What did Palestine look like on a map before 1948? Our wall art collection holds thirteen historic maps of Palestine and Jerusalem, published between 1846 and 1945 by American, German, British and Ottoman cartographers and newspapers. The oldest, from 1846, lays the twelve tribes over the Ottoman province; the latest, from November 1945, was printed for New York newspaper readers two and a half years before the Mandate ended. This article walks through them in date order, says who made each one and what it shows, and explains how to read the names, districts and railways on an old map of Palestine.

Why old maps of Palestine draw so much interest

People look for pre-1948 maps for different reasons: to find a grandparent's village, to see how the country was named and divided before the borders changed, to settle an argument, or simply to hang something beautiful that says where they are from. The maps themselves are quieter than the arguments around them. Each one shows what a particular publisher, in a particular year, thought a reader needed to know about the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and reading several in a row shows the country changing from a biblical atlas page to a surveyed province to a Mandate territory with railways and airfields.

How to read a nineteenth-century map of Palestine

• Two layers of names. Most Western maps before 1900 were made for Bible readers. They print the ancient regions (Galilee, Samaria, Judea, the Decapolis, Idumea) and the tribal allotments in large type, and the towns people actually lived in (Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, Acre, Nazareth) in small type, often with the Arabic name in italics beside the biblical one.
• Ottoman divisions are rarely drawn. Palestine was ruled from Istanbul until 1917, administered as the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (from 1872) and the sanjaks of Nablus and Acre to the north. Atlas publishers mostly ignored these boundaries, so the colored regions you see are usually ancient, not contemporary.
• The coast and the Jordan are the constants. Every map runs from the Mediterranean to the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea, and most take in the land east of the river that became Trans-Jordan.
• Railways date a map. The Jaffa to Jerusalem line opened in 1892 and the Haifa branch of the Hejaz Railway in 1905, so a map with a railway is a map of the twentieth century.
• Insets tell you the audience. Jerusalem plans and Sinai insets mean a religious readership; a Europe inset on a 1940s newspaper map means a readership following the war.

Ottoman-era maps, 1846 to 1911

1846: Palestine and Adjacent Countries, Mitchell, Philadelphia

The oldest map in the collection was published by S. Augustus Mitchell in Philadelphia for his New Universal Atlas. It is hand-colored in pink, yellow and green by tribal allotment, with an inset of the environs of Jerusalem in the top corner, a key to the tribes down the left margin and a list of the Decapolis cities on the right. The coast from Tyre to Gaza, the Jordan and the Dead Sea are drawn from the travelers' accounts available before any systematic survey. Map of Palestine and the Levant, 1846.

1849: Palaestina, from a German atlas

A finely engraved German sheet, titled Palaestina, with three insets: Ptolemais (Acre) and its bay, a plan of Jerusalem, and Arabia Petraea with the Sinai peninsula. This map shows the coast, the hill country and the land east of the Jordan with a density of place names that the American atlases of the same decade do not match. Map of Palestine, 1849.

1880: A New Map of Palestine or the Holy Land

An American atlas page in the Mitchell house style, with the vine-leaf border and pastel tribal coloring that families of the period knew from their school atlases. The Jordan is drawn as a red line down the center and the inset in the corner is a plan of "Modern Jerusalem", the walled city with the roads leading out to the Mount of Olives and Bethlehem. It is the one map in the set also offered unframed, which makes it the least expensive way in. Map of Palestine, 1880.

1881: Map of Western Palestine, Palestine Exploration Fund

The first map here based on a modern survey. The Palestine Exploration Fund, founded in London in 1865, sent Lieutenants Claude Conder and Herbert Kitchener of the Royal Engineers to survey the country west of the Jordan between 1871 and 1877; this single sheet reduces their 26-sheet Survey of Western Palestine to one tall map, from the Litani river in the north to the desert south of Beersheba. It records roughly ten thousand place names as they were spoken in the 1870s, which is why it remains the reference for anyone tracing a village. Map of Palestine, 1881.

1886: Palestine, Colton's General Atlas, New York

Plate 130 of Colton's atlas carries three insets, a New Testament map of Palestine, a map of Palestine before the Israelite conquest and the Sinai peninsula with the route of the Exodus, around a main map colored by region: Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Bashan, Idumea and Coele-Syria. It packs the whole biblical geography a nineteenth-century reader expected onto one page. Map of Palestine, 1886 (Colton).

1886: Johnson's Palestine, New York

Alvin J. Johnson's family atlas grew out of Colton's own plates in 1860 and then went its own way, and its Palestine page from the same year makes a good comparison: the same regions, a quieter palette, a single inset of Mount Sinai and the Red Sea, and a different decorative border. Hung side by side, the two 1886 maps show how much of the "standard" picture of Palestine was shared between publishers. Map of Palestine, 1886 (Johnson).

1895: Palestine in layered relief

By the 1890s the big European atlases had switched from tribal coloring to physical relief. This 1895 sheet colors the land by height, green along the coast and the Jordan rift, deepening orange and brown through the hills of Samaria and Judea and the Moab plateau, with a key in the corner and an inset of the Highlands of Judea. It shows the shape of the country more clearly than any other map here: a coastal plain, a central ridge and a deep valley. Map of Palestine, 1895.

1904: Palestine, an English atlas

An English sheet from the first years of the twentieth century, with the Jordan, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea picked out in strong blue against finely hachured hills, the Syrian desert fading to the east and the coast road and the new Jaffa to Jerusalem railway marked. It is the last map in the set made before the Hejaz Railway reached Haifa in 1905. Map of Palestine, 1904.

1911: An Ottoman map of the Syrian lands

The one map here made by the people who governed the country. Printed in Ottoman Turkish in 1911, it covers the whole eastern Mediterranean from Cyprus and Aleppo down to the Sinai, with an inset of Egypt and the Nile delta, red administrative boundaries and the railway lines of the last Ottoman decade. The title reads Suriye kıtası, the Syrian lands, which is how Istanbul described the provinces that included Palestine. Every place name is in the Arabic script, which makes it the only map in the set that a resident of Jaffa or Nablus in 1911 could have read without translation. Ottoman Map of the Levant, 1911.

British Mandate maps, 1936 to 1945

Britain occupied Palestine in 1917 and 1918, set up a civil administration in 1920 and governed under a League of Nations mandate, in force from 1923, until 14 May 1948. Trans-Jordan, east of the river, was administered separately from 1921. The maps of this period are not atlas pages but working documents: tourist guides, street plans and newspaper maps printed for readers following the news.

1936: Palestine, Land of Strife, Sunday News, New York

A full-page color map from New York's Sunday News, printed during the first months of the 1936 to 1939 revolt. Palestine is yellow, Trans-Jordan pink and Syria green; the Mandate boundary, railways and the new port at Haifa are drawn in, and the legend marks "scenes of recent riots" next to the cities visited by Jesus. The caption calls the revolt "recent disturbances". It is a snapshot of how an American newspaper explained Palestine to its readers, biblical sites and news events on the same sheet. Map of Palestine, 1936.

1942 (as listed): Jerusalem upon your palm, Arab Tourist Agency

A two-panel print from a folding tourist guide published by the Arab Tourist Agency of Jerusalem and dated 1942 in our listing. On the left, a simple line map of Palestine and Trans-Jordan marks the things a traveler needed: railways, airports, good roads, dry-weather roads and the boundary, from Beirut and Damascus down to Petra and the Sinai desert. On the right is the guide's cover, a map of Jerusalem drawn in the palm of a hand. The agency's address on the cover reads "Jerusalem, Jordan", which suggests this copy was printed after 1948 even if the map it reproduces is older. Map of Jerusalem and Palestine, 1942.

1942 (as listed): Jerusalem street plan

The guide's street plan of Jerusalem, with the walled Old City in orange, the newer districts of Rehavia, Talbiya, Katamon and the German Colony in cream and green, and an index of streets and buildings in the margins. It is the only city plan in the collection, and the only map here on which you can trace a walk. Map of Jerusalem, 1942.

1945: Palestine, Land of Strife, Sunday News, November 1945

The newspaper returned to the subject in November 1945, six months after the war in Europe ended and as the Anglo-American inquiry into Palestine was being set up. The design is the same, Palestine in yellow between the sea and the Jordan, Trans-Jordan in pink and Syria in green, but the legend now lists capitals, dates of battles, principal railroads and modern highways, and the two insets are Jerusalem and its environs and "Europe 1938". The side column compresses the history of the land from Joshua to the Mandate into a few hundred words. This is the last map in the set drawn with the Mandate boundaries, and the one most people mean when they search for a 1945 map of Palestine. Map of Palestine, 1945.

What changed after 1948

In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly recommended partitioning Palestine, and in the war that followed the state of Israel was established on about three quarters of the Mandate territory, the West Bank came under Jordanian rule and Gaza under Egyptian administration, while roughly 700,000 Palestinians became refugees. Maps printed from 1949 onward show armistice lines in place of the Mandate boundary, which is why the maps on this page stop in 1945. Our history of Palestine covers the period in detail, and Palestine before 1948 is a shorter note on the Mandate years.

Where the maps come from and how they are printed

Each print is reproduced from a high-resolution scan of an original held in public collections, cleaned of creases and foxing but not redrawn, so the paper tone and the engraver's lines survive. They are printed to order by giclée with archival pigment inks on 300 gsm acid-free matte paper and framed in a hand-made wooden frame behind UV-shielding acrylic, ready to hang. Sizes and frame colors are listed on each product page. All thirteen are in the maps collection, alongside Ottoman and European maps of Egypt, Sudan, the Levant and North Africa, and in Palestine wall art with our vintage posters and contemporary prints. For the rest of the range see wall art.

Frequently asked questions

What did Palestine look like before 1948?

From 1923 to 1948 it was a single territory under British Mandate, running from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river and the Dead Sea, with Trans-Jordan administered separately to the east. Before 1917 it was part of the Ottoman Empire, governed as the district of Jerusalem and the sanjaks of Nablus and Acre. The 1936 and 1945 maps above show the Mandate boundary; the Ottoman map of 1911 shows the earlier arrangement.

What is the oldest map of Palestine?

The oldest map in our collection is Mitchell's 1846 map of Palestine and adjacent countries. The oldest surviving maps of the land are far older: the Madaba mosaic map in Jordan dates from the sixth century, and printed maps of the Holy Land appear in the first atlases of the sixteenth century.

Where can I buy an old map of Palestine?

Originals turn up at map dealers and auctions at prices from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. Our framed reproductions of thirteen maps from 1846 to 1945 are in the maps collection.

What did the 1945 map of Palestine show?

The Sunday News map of November 1945 shows Mandate Palestine from the sea to the Jordan, Trans-Jordan, southern Syria and the Sinai, with cities, railways, highways, battle sites and an inset of Jerusalem.

Were there maps of Palestine during the Ottoman Empire?

Yes. European atlases published maps of Palestine throughout the Ottoman period, and the Ottoman government produced its own, such as the 1911 map of the Syrian lands above, printed in Ottoman Turkish.

Why do old maps of Palestine show the twelve tribes?

Because most nineteenth-century maps were made for Bible readers, who wanted to locate the places in scripture. The tribal regions are ancient; the small-type town names are the contemporary ones.