UC Berkeley

This article presents a large corpus of Mamluk and Ottoman endowment deeds )15th and 16th centuries( regarding Palestine, and explores the contribution of one such deed, the Waqfiyya of Haseki Sultan )1552 CE( to the study of the historical geography of Palestine. The article presents a methodology for geographical-historical analysis of endowment deeds, their translation, spatial interpretation and identifying the sites mentioned therein. This methodology is then applied in relation to the Waqfiyya of Haseki Sultan, which includes 187 toponyms. The results include the identification of the Talmudic Kfar Tbay in Moshav Kfar Daniel, the identification of Beit 'Arif in the Ben-Shemen Youth Village, the delimitation of Kafr Sallam's possible locations in the Emek Hefer, the locating of 'Arab al-Jammasin north of the Yarkon )east of Ramat Hasharon(, indications for a possible route of the Umayyad aqueduct to Ramla north of Tel Gezer, and early evidence of oak forests south of the Yarkon