Palestine cover art

Palestine

A Four Thousand Year History

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Palestine

By: Nur Masalha
Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.

Starting with the earliest references in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, Nur Masalha explores how Palestine and its Palestinian identity have evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day. Drawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, Masalha shows how Palestine's multicultural past has been distorted and mythologized by Biblical lore and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the process, Masalha reveals that the concept of Palestine, contrary to accepted belief, is not a modern invention or one constructed in opposition to Israel, but rooted firmly in ancient past. Palestine represents the authoritative account of the country's history.

©2018 Nur Masalha (P)2021 Tantor Israel & Palestine Middle East Religious Studies Palestine History

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Justice for Some cover art
The Palestine-Israel Conflict cover art
The Invention of the Jewish People cover art
Culture and Imperialism cover art
Orientalism cover art
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict cover art
The Maya cover art
The Rise of the West cover art
History of Bali cover art
The Oxford History of the Biblical World cover art
Palestinian Walks cover art
The General's Son cover art
Israel cover art
Arabs cover art
Escaping the Rabbit Hole cover art
What's Wrong with China cover art
All stars
Most relevant
Any negative reviews will be cry baby zionists whose creation myth of a land without a people and a people without a land is taken apart with evidence by this book.

Very detailed and deep history of the land of Palestine

Myth busting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this book really opened my eyes to the colonial roots of current world issues and covers aspects of language, cartography, politics, ancient history and the involvement of different European cultures in the Middle East.. excellent read for those trying to understand history away from colonial bias.

thorough and broad information

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It's extremely thorough, and apart from being unclear sometimes when it's a quote or the main text being read the narration is good. My only criticism is that it can get very repetitive as the author reiterates certain things every time they come up. By the time it gets to the chapter on Israelis renaming things and talks about the Rockefeller Museum being originally the Palestinian Archaeological Museum, it's already told you it was renamed *every single time* it discusses any item currently stored there or person who worked there. And Ben-Gurion is seldom referred to as anything shorter than "Defence Minister and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of modern Israel". The latter chapters in particular are still very informative though, so I'd still recommend it.

Exhaustive

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A hard one to rate, this, largely because I'm not sure there's anything new here. But then, that's basically the whole point.

The premise - which is really pretty much impossible to argue with - is that Palestine / Israel has been continuously populated for thousands of years, with substantial continuity of population, language, place names, and culture. Up until the last century, that is. Even the name Palestine (and its variants - remember the Biblical Philistines?) has proved remarkably resilient.

In addition, as the final couple of chapters detail, there is little hard historical or archaeological evidence for an established Jewish presence on the area, even back when the old Kingdom of Israel was meant to have existed. And, finally, the founders of the Zionist project kinda knew this - albeit I suspect they would have claimed that this evidence was deliberately destroyed - and so set out to create their own historical and cultural myths.

None of this should, really, be controversial. The fact that it has become so is doubtless why the author spends so long laying out quite granular, fairly repetitive examples of how something called Palestine (or similar, as much of the emphasis is on the evolution and continuity of etymology) was acknowledged by observers, travellers, and others throughout history.

This means much of the books is effectively made up of what amounts to lists of references - and in some cases, actual lists. Which makes it rather less engaging than I'd hoped - but a potentially very useful reference book.

It's also reminded me that I've still not read Edward Said's classic book on Palestine, written over 40 years ago now. Maybe one for later in the year.

Interesting, compelling, necessary, but sadly not that engaging

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Early rewie, but it is a great book. First three chapters and you can see that people like Ben Shapiro, Bishop Robert Baron and Irish - Birish are in a lot of problems. Shema Israel


Also, be carful with people like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro together with Jonathan Pageu. Amount of nonsense that these people are spweeimg because you have Nicea in this book is beyond beleife

Great Book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews