Tawfiq Canaan

Tawfiq Canaan (b. 24 September 1882 - 15 January 1964) was a physician and pioneer in the field of medicine in Palestine, also well-known for being one of the foremost researchers of Palestinian popular heritage.

A medical officer in the Ottoman army in World War I and the first President of the Palestine Arab Medical Association established in 1944, Canaan authored more than 37 studies over the course of his medical career on tropical medicine and bacteriology, particularly malaria, and other topics, such as leprosy, tuberculosis, and health in Palestine.

Canaan's keen interest in Palestinian folklore, popular beliefs, and superstitions led to his collection of over 1,400 amulets, now held by Bir Zeit university in Ramallah. His published analyses of these and other folk traditions brought him recognition as an ethnographer and anthropologist. A member of the Palestine Oriental Society and The American School for Oriental Research, Canaan published a number of books and more than 50 articles in English and German on folklore and superstition that have served as valuable resources to researchers of Palestinian and Middle Eastern heritage ever since.

Canaan was also a Palestinian nationalist and outspoken public figure who wrote two books on the Palestine problem, which reflected his involvement in confronting British imperialism and Zionism.

Arrested by the British authorities in 1939, his family home and clinic in Jerusalem destroyed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Canaan nevertheless managed to re-establish his life and career there. After taking sanctuary in a convent in the Old City with his family for two years, they eventually took up residence on the grounds of the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives where Canaan served as the Director, and where they lived through his retirement until his death in 1964.

Early life
Born in Beit Jala, Tawfiq Canaan was the second child of Katharina Khairallah and Bechara Canaan, PhD, and first Arab pastor of the Arab Lutheran Church. He completed his secondary school education at the Schneller School which his father had also attended. In 1899, he went to Beirut to study medicine at the Syrian Protestant College (today the American University of Beirut). Shortly after his arrival there, his father died of pneumonia, and to lift the financial burden on his family, he began giving private lessons and doing other work at the university to supplement his income.

Of his father, Tawfiq Canaan said: "'We used to go with my father on short and long trips all over the country in order to get acquainted with the country and the people. This continuous contact with the people nurtured in all of us, and particularly in me, love for the country and the people. This feeling of belonging and unshaken loyalty remained with me till this day.'" Khaled Nashef, writing in the Jerusalem Quarterly, has ventured that Canaan's interest and knowledge of nature in Palestine, later reflected in writings such as "Plant-lore in Palestinian Superstition" (1928) may have been related to these trips.

Canaan graduated from the school of medicine with honors and delivered the graduation speech for his class on June 28, 1905. Entitled "Modern Treatment," the speech touched on the medical uses of serums, animal organs and X-rays. Published in Al-Muqtataf, it likely constitutes his first published piece.

Medical career
Upon graduation, Canaan began his medical career as an assistant to Dr. Gussendorf, the Director of the German Hospital in Jerusalem. Canaan co-administered the hospital with Dr. Adolf Einszler in Dr. Grussendorf's absence in 1906, and also worked shifts at the German-Jewish Hospital (Shaare Zedek) and the English Hospital.

In 1910, Canaan became the director of the clinic at the Shaare Zedek hospital. The following year, he published his first medical article on "Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis in Jerusalem," based on studies he conducted with Dr. Wallach, the Director of the Shaare Zedek hospital. Between 1912 and 1914, Canaan was back and forth between Palestine and Germany to specialize in tropical medicine and microbiology studies under Professors Mühlens, Ruge, Much, and Huntemüler.

In January 1912, Canaan married Margot Eilender, the daughter of a German importer. In 1913, they built their family home in the al-Musrarah district of Jerusalem where three of their children (Theo, Nada, and Leila) were born. Canaan opened a clinic there, the only Arab clinic to operate in Jerusalem at the time.

Also in 1913, Canaan was appointed director of the Malaria Branch of the International Health Bureau, a world center for medical research and microscopic examination founded by The German Society for Fighting Malaria, The Jewish Health Bureau, and The Jewish Physicians and Scientists for Improving Health in Palestine.

In August 1914, after a four-month stay in Germany, Canaan returned to work in the German Hospital with Grussendorf. As a citizen of the Ottoman empire, who administered Palestine at the time, he was drafted as an officer into the Ottoman army when World War I broke out that October. First assigned as a physician to a contingent in Nazareth, he was transferred that same year to 'Awja al-Hafeer. There, the German chief physician appointed him as Head of the Laboratories on the Sinai Front, a position which afforded him the ability to travel between Bir as-Saba, Beit Hanoun, Gaza, and Shaykh Nouran, as well as Damascus, Amman, and Aleppo. During this period, he collected more than two hundred amulets to add to a collection he began amassing in the early twentieth century.

After the war ended, in 1919, Canaan was appointed Director of The Leprosy Hospital (Asylum of the Lepers) in Talbiyyah - the only leprosy hospital in Syria, Palestine, and the Transjordan. Leprosy was considered an incurable disease at the time. Research progress in the field of bacteriology and microscopic examination, to which Canaan contributed, resulted in the discovery of a cure using chaulmoogra oil.

In 1923, the German Hospital reopened and Canaan was put in charge of the Internal Medicine Division, a position he held until 1940, when the German Hospital could no longer continue smooth operations, since by 1939, most German citizens had already left Palestine or had been arrested by the British authorities.

Canaan treated people from all social classes and segments of Palestinian and Arab society over the course of his medical career. He was one of a number of other physicians from Jerusalem to examine Sherif Hussein of Mecca in Amman before his death in 1931 and removed a bullet from the thigh of Abu Jildah, a notorious Palestinian rebel in 1936.

Beginnings
In 1911, the geographical journal Globus published a German translation of a lecture Canaan delivered in Arabic on "Agriculture in Palestine" on May 22, 1909, a work which remains a useful basic reference on the development of agriculture in Palestine at the time. In this first article outside the realm of medicine, Canaan reveals himself as a well-versed researcher in the field of "Oriental Studies", quoting Schumacher, Bauer, Guthe, Burckhardt, alongside classical sources, like Strabo and Josephus, and Arab sources like Mujeer ad-Din. Canaan's focus on Palestinian peasantry is also here first apparent.

Canaan used the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, as a basic source to compare past and present agricultural practices. He was influenced in this by the Old Testament studies produced by Gustaf Dalman, Albrecht Alt, and Martin Noth, who along with Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, were all acquaintances of his. Canaan and Dalman, who headed The Evangelical German Institute beginning in 1903, apparently shared the idea that it is not possible to understand the Old Testament without studying Palestinian folklore.

In 1913, the Journal of the German Palestine Society published Canaan's article on "The Calendar of Palestinian Peasants," his first work in the field of Palestinian folklore. A year later, he published his first book, Superstition and Popular Medicine.

'Nativist' ethnography
According to Salim Tamari, Canaan was the most prominent of a school of 'nativist' ethnographers who published their works in The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1920-1948). This group was driven by the concern that the "native culture of Palestine", and in particular peasant society, was being undermined by the forces of modernity. Tamari writes: "'Implicit in their scholarship (and made explicit by Canaan himself) was another theme, namely that the peasants of Palestine represent - through their folk norms ... the living heritage of all the accumulated ancient cultures that had appeared in Palestine (principally the Canaanite, Philistine, Hebraic, Nabatean, Syrio-Aramaic and Arab).'"

Canaan was a member of the Palestine Oriental Society, established in 1920 by Albert Tobias Clay. He was also a member of The American School for Oriental Research - established in 1900 - the Jerusalem branch of which was headed from 1920 to 1929 by the American archaeologist William Foxwell Albright. In the articles he published for the journal of the Palestine Oriental Society - examples of which include "Haunted Springs and Water Demons in Palestine" (1920-1921), "Tasit ar-Radjfeh" (Fear Cup; 1923), "Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine" (1924-1927), and "Plant-lore in Palestinian Superstition" (1928) - Canaan exhibited his deep interest in superstition.

Tamari notes that unlike the Canaanite revivalist writings produced by Palestinian writers after 1948, which were in many ways a response to Zionist narratives tracing Jewish connections back to the time of the Israelites (See Canaanite movement), "Canaan and his group, by contrast, were not Canaanites. They contested Zionist claims to biblical patrimonies by stressing present day continuities between the biblical heritage (and occasionally pre-biblical roots) and Palestinian popular beliefs and practices."

In 1929, during a trip to Petra, Canaan discovered in its northern boundary a Kebaran shelter which he named Wadi Madamagh. Canaan counted among his acquaintances a number of specialists in the field of Palestinian archaeology, including William Foxwell Albright, Nelson Glueck, and Kathleen Kenyon.

Tawfiq Canaan collection of Palestinian amulets
This collection was gathered together by Tawfiq Canaan beginning in the early twentieth century until 1947. It was donated to Bir Zeit university by Canaan's family where it is currently held, and comprises more than 1,400 amulets and other objects, related to popular medicine and folk practices. Canaan collected these objects from his patients who came from various Palestinian cities and villages, and other Arab countries including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen.

Canaan believed there was a close relationship between popular beliefs and superstitions marshalled to cure diseases and scientific medicine. Canaan's analysis of the talismans were facilitated by the interviews he conducted with individuals who wore them, though he also used specialized sources and references on sorcery and witchcraft. He deciphered some of the symbols and wrote about the meanings of the shapes, writings, letters and numbers used. He published one such article on the subject in a journal published by Antiquities Museum of the American University in Beirut in 1937.

The collection is composed of:


 * Amulets (Arabic: hujub) or talismans written on paper and placed in triangular cloth or leather wraps or in cylinders or silver cases.
 * Jewelry, including necklaces, bracelets, rings and semiprecious stones. These items are still worn today although their status as amulets has since waned.
 * Glass beads and stones of all types and colors used for healing and repelling the evil eye. Hebron-made beads in the shape of eyes of various sizes were given names including rooster eye, baby camel eye and camel eye.
 * Paper amulets that include talismans, supplications and prayers, which were hung in homes for protection.
 * Pilgrims' certificates bearing religious symbols of the three Semitic religions, in stamp or written form which were given to pilgrims who visited holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron.
 * Silver votive offerings, most of which are from Aleppo, Syria, and shaped in the form of the human body or its parts. These were hung in churches and on religious icons to heal illnesses and protect the health of children.
 * Organic materials like animal bones and tortoise shells, sometimes inscribed with talismanic writings, used primarily for treating epilepsy.
 * Vessels such as "fear cups" inscribed with Quranic verses and supplications. Water was placed in the cup and left under the light of the moon and stars for several nights before being given to an afflicted person to drink from.
 * Ceramic dishes inscribed with talismans for curing diseases and facilitating birth.

Canaan's collection continues to provide valuable information on folk medicine and the manifestations of magic in the popular beliefs and practices of Palestinian and neighboring Arab societies - practices that exist to this day.

Nationalist writings
Canaan's political positions and his strong sense of nationalism find clear expression in two of his published works: The Palestine Arab Cause (1936) and Conflict in the Land of Peace (1936). Published in English, Arabic, and French, The Palestine Arab Cause was a 48-page booklet that "resembled a political pamphlet directed at British public opinion". First published as a series of articles in the local and foreign press after the outbreak of the 1936 revolt, the writings were considered by the Mandatory authorities to be subversive. Canaan described British policy as "a destructive campaign against the Arabs with the ultimate aim of exterminating them from their country." He questioned the nationality laws enacted by the Mandatory authorities which prevented Palestinian immigrants in the Americas, who had been citizens of the Ottoman Empire, from obtaining Palestinian citizenship in Mandate Palestine.

Canaan was also a co-signatory to a document sent to the Higher Arab Committee on August 6, 1936 and there is reason to believe that Canaan strongly supported providing the Arab rebels with arms. From 1936 onward, Canaan "clearly expressed his rejection of British and Zionist policies, in particular the policy of open-door Jewish immigration to Palestine."

Arrests of Canaan, his wife, and sister
On September 3, 1939, the day that Britain and France declared war on Germany, Canaan was arrested by the British Mandate authorities. After two court appearances, he was released, but was imprisoned for nine weeks in Acre at the behest of the Criminal Investigation Department. His wife was also arrested because she was German, and his sister Badra was arrested on the accusation that she was "inciting Arab women against Britain." Both were imprisoned with Jewish criminal prisoners at a women's facility in Bethlehem; his wife for nine months, and his sister for four years. They were then sent to Wilhelma, southwest al-'Abbasiyyah (near Jaffa), a former German colony that had been transformed into a detention camp for German Palestinians.

Canaan's wife and sister were among those who founded the Arab Women's Committee in Jerusalem in 1934. A charitable society at the outset, it soon took on a political orientation and by May 1936 the Committee was calling for civil disobedience and continuation of the strike that kicked off the 1936 revolt. Canaan's sister Badra also participated as assistant secretary in the Palestinian delegation to The Eastern Women's Conference held in support of Palestine in Cairo in October 1938.

Arab Medical Association of Palestine
Established on August 4, 1944 by way of a decision adopted at the Arab Medical Conference in Haifa in 1934, the Society was an umbrella group for medical societies in various cities. Canaan was the first president of the Society which produced the first issue of its journal al-Majallah at-Tibbiyyah al-'Arabiyyah al-Filastiniyyah in Arabic and English in December 1945. Canaan was also a member of the journal's editorial board, with Mahmoud ad-Dajani as editor-in-chief. The Society organized its first medical conference in Palestine in July 1945. Among the invitees was Howard Walter Florey, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for isolating and purifying penicillin for general medical use.

When the political and security situation in Palestine deteriorated, the Society trained and organized relief units and centers in the cities and villages to provide medical aid to the Palestinian and Arab fighters. It also contacted and coordinated with the Red Cross to protect hospitals and the other humanitarian institutions. The Society also made an appeal to medical societies and Red Crescent and Red Cross organizations in a number of Arab capitals, some of which responded by sending limited medical aid.

Canaan was also a founding member of the Higher Arab Relief Committee, established on 24 January, 1948, to receive aid coming to the country and supervise in its distribution.

1948 war
Bombs and mortar shells hit some Arab houses in al-Musrarah quarter on 22 February, 1948. Shortly thereafter, Canaan's children left the house, but Tawfiq, his wife, Badra (his sister), and Nora (his sister-in-law) remained there. Canaan deposited his collection of amulets and 250 icons at an international organization in West Jerusalem early that year for safekeeping. After the house sustained a direct hit on 9 May, 1948, Canaan and those who remained went to the Old City where they had arranged to stay at a convent. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch gave the family a room where they lived for two and a half years. Canaan's daughter Leila Mantoura wrote of this time: "'Mother and father would go daily to the top of the Wall of Jerusalem to look at their home. They witnessed it being ransacked, together with the wonderful priceless library and manuscripts, which mother guarded jealously and with great pride. They saw mother's Biedermeyer furniture being loaded into trucks and then their home being set on fire.'" Canaan's family home, library, and three manuscripts ready for publication were destroyed in the process.

Canaan continued his work as physician, treating patients out of his new temporary home. He also continued to carry out his capacity as head of the Arab Medical Society of Palestine and his duties to his country.

After difficult negotiations with the Mandate Government, the Arab Medical Society of Palestine succeeded in taking over operations at the Central Hospital and the Hospice Hospital in Jerusalem, the Infectious Diseases Hospital near Beit Safafa, and the Mental Hospital in Bethlehem. The Society officially took control of the Central Hospital and its facilities in the Russian Compound (al-Mascobiyyah) and the Austrian Hospice Hospital in May 1948. These facilities received the wounded and the sick during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. A large Red Cross flag flew over the Central Hospital which was run by one of Canaan's colleagues. Jewish militias nevertheless shelled the hospital, destroying a large section. After the surrounding houses and a part of the hospital were occupied by the Jewish militias who continually shelled the medical facility preventing patient access, the Society was finally forced to evacuate in October 1948.

Canaan managed the Austrian Hospice himself, which was transformed into a hospital in early 1948 with the agreement of the Mandatory authorities. He and its staff managed to keep it running during the battle for Jerusalem, until they were also forced to evacuate due to continuous shelling.

Post-1948
After the war ended and with the influx of refugees in Jerusalem, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) appointed Canaan as manager of medical operations. He helped establish clinics at the Saint John Hospice in the Old City, and in 'Aizariyyeh, Hebron, Beit Jala, and Taybeh (near Ramallah). He also regularly visited mobile clinics established by the LWF in rural areas.

In 1950, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the LWF jointly reestablished the Augusta Victoria Hospital in the same building and with the same name on the Mount of Olives (Jabal al-Tur). Canaan was appointed its first medical director and held the position for five years.

After his son Theo died in 1954 while renovating an archaeological monument in Jerash, Canaan and his wife were bereft. When he retired at the age of seventy-five, he was offered a house on the grounds of the Augusta Victoria Hospital where he lived with his family and continued to write until his death on January 15, 1964. His last article, "Crime in the Traditions and Customs of the Arabs in Jordan," was published in German in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästinavereins that same year. Canaan was buried in the Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery in Bethlehem, near Beit Jala, his childhood home.

Folklore and ethnography

 * "Agriculture in Palestine" (1909). In Globus, a translation from Arabic into German of a lecture he delivered on 22 May, 1909.
 * "Demons as an Aetiological Factor in Popular Medicine" (1912). In Al-Kulliyeh (Beirut), a translation from German into English of part of his book Superstition and Popular Medicine (1914).
 * "The Calendar of Palestinian Peasants" (1913). In Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästinavereins (Journal of the German Palestine Society).
 * Superstition and Popular Medicine (1914).
 * "Haunted Springs and Water Demons in Palestine" (1920-1921).
 * "Tasit ar-Radjfeh" ("Fear Cup"; 1923).
 * Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (1927). Jerusalem: The Syrian Orphanage Press.
 * "Plant-lore in Palestinian Superstition" (1928).
 * Belief in Demons in the Holy Land (1929, in German).
 * "Studies in the Topography and Folklore of Petra" (1929).
 * "Light and Darkness in Palestine Folklore" (1931). In JPOS.
 * "Unwritten Laws Affecting the Arab Women of Palestine" (1931). In JPOS.
 * The Palestine Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore (1933). The Syrian Orphanage Press, Jerusalem.
 * "Arabic Magic Bowls" (1936). In Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society.
 * "Review of Dalman's Arbeit und Sitte in Palastina" (1934). In JPOS.
 * "Review of Granquist's Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village" (1933 and 1937). In JPOS.
 * "The Decipherment of Arabic Talismans" (1938). Beirut.
 * "Superstition and Folklore about Bread" (1962).
 * Ya Kafi Ya Shafi: The Tawfik Canaan Collection of Palestinian Amulets (1998). Khaled Nashef, ed. Birzeit University.
 * "The 'Azazime Bedouin and Their Region". Translated from the original German by William Templer. In Arab World Geographer (1999).

Politics

 * The Palestine Arab Cause (1936). Published in English, Arabic, and French.
 * Conflict in the Land of Peace (1936). A 48-page booklet originally written in English.

Medical

 * "Modern Treatment" (1905). In Al-Muqtataf (Beirut).
 * "Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis in Jerusalem" (1911). In Al-Kulliyeh (Beirut).
 * "Topographical studies in Leishmaniasis in Palestine" (1945). Journal of the Palestinian Arab Medical Association.

Awards

 * The Order of the Red Crescent in World War I.
 * The Iron Cross in World War I.
 * The Holy Sepulchre Cross with a red ribbon, awarded by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in 1951.
 * The Federal Merit Cross from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951.