Palestinian physician and author (1882–1964)
Tawfiq Canaan () (24 September 1882 – 15 January 1964) was a pioneering Palestinian physician, medical researcher, ethnographer, and Palestinian nationalist. Born in Beit Jala during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, he served as a medical officer in the Ottoman army during World War I. 
During British rule, he served as the first President of the Palestine Arab Medical Association founded in 1944, and as the director of several Jerusalem area hospitals before, during, and after the 1948 war. Over the course of his medical career, he authored more than thirty-seven studies on topics including tropical medicine, bacteriology, malaria, tuberculosis, and health conditions in Palestine, and contributed to research that led to a cure for leprosy.
Deeply interested in Palestinian folklore, popular beliefs, and superstitions, Canaan collected over 1,400 amulets and talismanic objects held to have healing and protective properties. His published analyses of these objects, and other popular folk traditions and practices, brought him recognition as an ethnographer and anthropologist. The several books and more than 50 articles he wrote in English and German serve as valuable resources to researchers of Palestinian and Middle-Eastern heritage. Canaan also published works in Arabic and was fluent in Hebrew.
An outspoken public figure, he also wrote two books on the Palestine problem, reflecting his involvement in confronting British imperialism and Zionism. He was arrested by the British authorities in 1939. The last two decades of his life were lived in the shadow of several personal tragedies: the loss of his brilliant son in an accident at Jerash, the loss and destruction of his family home, and of his clinic in Jerusalem during the 1948 war.
Canaan managed to re-establish his life and career in East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule. First taking sanctuary in a convent in the Old City for two years, he was appointed director of the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives, where he lived with his family through his retirement until his death in 1964.
Early life.
Born in the village of Beit Jala in Palestine during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Canaan studied as a child at the Schneller School, founded by German missionaries in nearby Jerusalem. His father, Bechara, who was also schooled there, founded the first Lutheran church, YMCA, and co-ed school in Beit Jala and the first Arab pastor for the German Protestant Palestine Mission. His mother, Katharina, was raised in a German orphanage in Beirut and met Bechara while working at a hospital in Jerusalem.
In 1898–99, Canaan went to Beirut to study medicine at the Syrian Protestant College (today the American University of Beirut). Obliged to work while studying as his father died of pneumonia shortly after his arrival, he graduated with distinction in 1905. His valedictory speech, "Modern Treatment", was likely his first published piece and broached the use of serums, animal organs and X-rays.
Canaan attributed his love of, interest in, and dedication to the people, culture and land of Palestine to his upbringing and the influence of his father who regularly took the family with him on his trips around the country. In the "Jerusalem Quarterly", Khaled Nashef suggests Canaan's knowledge of nature in Palestine as exhibited in writings such as "Plant-lore in Palestinian Superstition" (1928) among others were informed by these trips.
Medical career.
Returning to Jerusalem from Beirut, Canaan began work in the ], co-administering it with Dr. Adalbert Einsler (1848–1919) during a senior physician's absence in 1906. He was also sought as a manager at the German-Jewish Hospital (Shaare Zedek). His first published medical article as a practicing physician, “Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis in Jerusalem" (1911), was based on studies he conducted with the director there.
Between 1912 and 1914, Canaan travelled to Germany several times to further his knowledge of microbiology and tropical diseases. He met his wife, Margot Eilender, in an Esperanto class on his first trip there. Margot's father was a German importer and she was born and raised in Palestine. They were quickly married, having their first child Yasma that same year, and built their family home in the al-Musrarah district of Jerusalem in 1913, where their three other children (Theo, Nada, and Leila) were born. In that home, Canaan also opened the only Arab clinic operating in Jerusalem at the time.
One of the physicians Canaan collaborated with in Germany was Hans Müch, head of a mission to Palestine whose 1913 report on tuberculosis included three research papers authored by Canaan. That same year, he 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. He served patients at the Arab General Hospital in the hilltop village of Sheikh Badr next to Jerusalem.
World Wars I &amp; II.
Canaan was working in the German Hospital in Jerusalem in 1914 when World War I began in October. As a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, which administered Palestine at the time, Canaan was drafted as an officer into the Ottoman army. First assigned as a physician to a contingent in Nazareth, he was transferred that same year to 'Awja al-Hafeer. He was appointed Head of the Laboratories on the Sinai Front by the German chief physician in charge there, a position that allowed Canaan 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 200 amulets to add to a collection he had begun in the early 20th century. He contracted both cholera and typhus during the war and survived, though his brother Wadia was killed in the fighting and buried at the Zion cemetery in Jerusalem.
Soon after the end of the war, in 1919, Canaan was appointed Director of The Leprosy Hospital (Asylum of the Lepers "Jesushilfe", now Hansen House) in Talbiyyah, the only leprosy hospital in Syria, Palestine, and the Transjordan. Considered an incurable disease at the time, Canaan contributed to research in the fields of bacteriology and microscopic examination that resulted in the discovery of a cure using chaulmoogra oil.
With the reopening of the German Hospital in 1923, Canaan was appointed head of the Internal Medicine Division, a position he held until the hospital had to cease operations in 1940. The onset of World War II meant that most German citizens had either left Palestine or been arrested by the British Mandatory authorities as enemy aliens.
Over the course of his medical career, Canaan treated people from all classes and segments of Palestinian and Arab society. He was one of a number of 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. An entry on Canaan is included in the book "Famous Doctors in Tropical Medicine" (1932) by Dr. G. Olpp, director of the tropical medicine center in Tübingen, indicating he was well known &amp; regarded within the medical community.
Research &amp; writings on Palestine.
Canaan's interest in Palestinian peasantry (fellaheen) found its first public expression in an Arabic lecture he gave on "Agriculture in Palestine" in 1909. Published in German translation in the geographical journal "Globus" in 1911, it continues to be recognized as a useful historical reference for basic information on the development of Palestinian agriculture in the early 20th century. In this first article outside the field of medicine, Canaan exhibits his deep familiarity with the field of "Oriental Studies", referencing the work of Schumacher, Guthe and Burckhardt, alongside classical sources, like Strabo and Josephus, and Arab sources like Mujir ad-Din. Influenced by the Old Testament studies of Gustaf Dalman, Albrecht Alt, and Martin Noth, all of whom were personal acquaintances, Canaan used the Bible as a basic source to compare past and present agricultural practices. Canaan and Dalman co-headed the Evangelical German Institute beginning in 1903, and they shared the idea that it is not possible to understand the Old Testament without studying Palestinian folklore.
In "The Calendar of Palestinian Peasants," published by the "Journal of the German Palestine Society" () in 1913, Canaan focused on traditional beliefs organizing the agricultural practices of Palestinian fellaheen. A significant observation recorded in this paper was that people in southern Palestine divided the year into 7 periods of 50 days, a type of pentecontad calendar. Subsequent scholars referencing his work traced the origins of this calendar system to Western Mesopotamia circa the 3rd millennium BCE, suggesting it was also used by the Amorites. Canaan's first book on Palestinian folklore practices was published in 1914 and entitled "Superstition and Popular Medicine".
Palestine Oriental Society &amp; its journal.
A member of the American School for Oriental Research (established 1900), the Jerusalem branch of which was headed from 1920 to 1929 by the American archaeologist William Foxwell Albright, Canaan was also a member of the Palestine Oriental Society, (established in 1920 by Albert Tobias Clay). Albright was a lifelong friend of Canaan's, and edited his book "Mohammedan Saints and Sancruaries" (1927), as well as several of his articles, the last in 1962.
Canaan played a very active role in the Palestine Oriental Society, serving as a member of the board, as well as secretary and sometime treasurer from early in the 1920s through until 1948, though the last article he published in its journal was in 1937. Other articles Canaan published for the "Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society" (1920-1948) – such as, "Haunted Springs and Water Demons in Palestine" (1920–1921), "Tasit ar-Radjfeh" ("Fear Cup"; 1923), and "Plant-lore in Palestinian Superstition" (1928) – exhibit his deep interest in superstition.
Salim Tamari, director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, describes Canaan as the most prominent member of a school of "nativist" ethnographers who published their works in "The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (JPOS)". Their research and contributions were motivated by their belief that the "native culture of Palestine" was best represented in the traditions of the fellaheen, and that this ancient "living heritage" had to be urgently documented as the modern world encroached upon the Palestinian countryside. These Palestinian ethnographers included Omar Saleh al-Barghouti, Stephan Hanna Stephan, Elias Haddad, and Khalil Totah, and all of them (excepting Totah) were Jerusalemites, like Canaan.
"Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine".
"Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine" (1927) is identified by Meron Benvenisti as Canaan's "most outstanding contribution to the ethnography of Arab Palestine and to the annals of his country." In the introduction to the book, Canaan makes explicit his urgent motivation to document ancient, still practiced Palestinian traditions &amp; beliefs threatened by Western influence and the spread of European educational models: "The primitive features of Palestine are disappearing so quickly that before long most of them will be forgotten."
The shrines ("awlia"), sanctuaries ("maqamat") and cults that made up popular Islam and popular religion in Palestine, and local Christian, Jewish and Muslim rituals held in common are outlined in Canaan's work. While local saints worshipped in Palestine can be said to be rooted in Muslim traditions, "they are actually ennobled sheikhs, who after their death, have been elevated to sainthood." 
Local Muslims, many of whom had never stepped into a mosque, honoured these village saints at "awlia", often situated by trees or other natural landmarks, some at or nearby ancient sites of worship for the "local Baals of Canaan" given, as John Wilkinson puts it, a 'Muslim disguise'. Canaan saw these practices as evidence that the fellaheen were heirs to the practices of the earlier pre-monotheistic inhabitants of Palestine, "who built the first high places."
Also covered in this work are therapeutic bathing rituals people undertook to cure diseases and ailments, with descriptions of the specific water sources perceived to be especially holy or effective. Canaan noted how people with fevers, many from malaria, would drink from "al-Suhada" cistern in Hebron and bathe in springs in Silwan, Kolonia ("Ein al-Samiya") and Nebi Ayyub ("Ein al-Nebi Ayyub") and a well in Bayt Jibrin for al-Sheikh Ibrahim. Specific swamps were also considered to be sacred healing places. "Al-Matbaa" at Tel al-Sammam in the Plain of Esdraelon, associated with the "wali" ("saint") al-Sheik Ibrek, was widely renowned for curing sterility, rheumatism and nervous pains. Canaan noted that after washing in its water, women seeking to conceive would offer a present to