1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria

British military maps 1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria 1841 Aldrich and Symonds map of Jerusalem.jpg The Aldrich and Symonds map of Jerusalem 1840–1841 Royal Engineers The National Archives (United Kingdom) The 1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria was an early scientific mapping of Palestine (including a detailed mapping of Jerusalem), Lebanon and Syria. It represented the second modern, triangulation-based attempt at surveying Palestine, following the French Carte de l'Égypte.Goren Faehndrich Schelhaas 2017 66 It has occasionally been mislabeled as an Ordnance Survey map; in fact none of the officers worked for the Ordnance Survey, which was a separate organization.Jones 1973 30 The Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, carried out almost 25 years later, was a separate and materially more detailed endeavor. Jerusalem map Cartography of Jerusalem The Jerusalem map was printed privately for the Board of Ordnance in August 1841. It was published in a reduced form in Ralph Carr Alderson's ‘’Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers’’ in 1845,”Addition to ‘Notes on Acre’”, Papers on Subjects connected with the Duties of the Corps of Royal Engineers, VII, 1845, 46-47 and subsequently as a supplement to the 1849 second edition of Reverend George Williams' The Holy City: Historical, Topographical, and Antiquarian Notices of Jerusalem together with a 130-page memoir on the plan.Williams George George Williams (priest) The Holy City: Historical, Topographical, and Antiquarian Notices of Jerusalem https://books.google.com/books?id=T_sqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1 1849 J.W. Parker 1–130 Supplement: Memoir on the Plan of JerusalemJones 1973 32 The memoir contained a three-page appendix defending the plan from criticism received from Edward Robinson. The map may have been the source of the modern tradition of dividing Jerusalem into four "quarters". Matthew Teller writes that this convention may have originated in the 1841 map,Teller Matthew Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City Profile Books 2022 978-1-78283-904-0 https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ 2023-05-30 Chapter 1 What wasn't corrected, though - and what, in retrospect, should have raised much more controversy than it did (it seems to have passed completely unremarked for the last 170-odd years) - was [Aldrich and Symonds's] map's labelling. Because here, newly arcing across the familiar quadrilateral of Jerusalem, are four double labels in bold capitals. At top left Haret En-Nassara and, beneath it, Christian Quarter; at bottom left Haret El-Arman and Armenian Quarter; at bottom centre Haret El-Yehud and Jews' Quarter; and at top right - the big innovation, covering perhaps half the city - Haret El-Muslimin and Mohammedan Quarter. No map had shown this before. Every map has shown it since. The idea, in 1841, of a Mohammedan (that is, Muslim) quarter of Jerusalem is bizarre. It's like a Catholic quarter of Rome. A Hindu quarter of Delhi. Nobody living there would conceive of the city in such a way. At that time, and for centuries before and decades after, Jerusalem was, if the term means anything at all, a Muslim city. Many people identified in other ways, but large numbers of Jerusalemites were Muslim and they lived all over the city. A Muslim quarter could only have been dreamt up by outsiders, searching for a handle on a place they barely understood, intent on asserting their own legitimacy among a hostile population, seeing what they wanted to see. Its only purpose could be to draw attention to what it excludes. or at least George Williams' subsequent labelling of it.Teller Matthew Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City Profile Books 2022 978-1-78283-904-0 https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ 2023-05-30 Chapter 1 But it may not have been Aldrich and Symonds. Below the frame of their map, printed in italic script, a single line notes that 'The Writing' had been added by 'the Revd. G. Williams' and 'the Revd. Robert Willis’… Some sources suggest [Williams] arrived before [Michael] Alexander, in 1841. If so, did he meet Aldrich and Symonds? We don't know. But Williams became their champion, defending them when the Haram inaccuracy came up and then publishing their work. The survey the two Royal Engineers did was not intended for commercial release (Aldrich had originally been sent to Syria under 'secret service'), and it was several years before their military plan of Jerusalem came to public attention, published first in 1845 by their senior officer Alderson in plain form, without most of the detail and labelling, and then in full in 1849, in the second edition of Williams's book The Holy City. Did Aldrich and/or Symonds invent the idea of four quarters in Jerusalem? It's possible, but they were military surveyors, not scholars. It seems more likely they spent their very short stay producing a usable street-plan for their superior officers, without necessarily getting wrapped up in details of names and places. The 1845 publication, shorn of street names, quarter labels and other detail, suggests that… Compounding his anachronisms, and perhaps with an urge to reproduce Roman urban design in this new context, Williams writes how two main streets, north-south and east-west, 'divide Jerusalem into four quarters.' Then the crucial line: 'The subdivisions of the streets and quarters are numerous, but unimportant.' Historians will, I hope, be able to delve more deeply into Williams's work, but for me, this is evidence enough. For almost two hundred years, virtually the entire world has accepted the ill-informed, dismissive judgementalism of a jejune Old Etonian missionary as representing enduring fact about the social make-up of Jerusalem. It's shameful… With Britain's increased standing in Palestine after 1840, and the growth of interest in biblical archaeology that was to become an obsession a few decades later, it was vital for the Protestant missionaries to establish boundaries in Jerusalem… Williams spread his ideas around. Ernst Gustav Schultz, who came to Jerusalem in 1842 as Prussian vice-consul, writes in his 1845 book Jerusalem: Eine Vorlesung ('A Lecture'): 'It is with sincere gratitude I must mention that, on my arrival in Jerusalem, Mr Williams ... willingly alerted me to the important information that he [and] another young Anglican clergyman, Mr Rolands, had discovered about the topography of [Jerusalem].' Later come the lines: 'Let us now divide the city into quarters,' and, after mentioning Jews and Christians, 'All the rest of the city is the Mohammedan Quarter.' Included was a map, drawn by Heinrich Kiepert, that labelled the four quarters, mirroring Williams's treatment in The Holy City. Acre, Gaza, Haifa and Jaffa maps The maps of the Old City of Acre, Old City of Gaza, Old City of Haifa and Old Jaffa were published in Ralph Carr Alderson's Notes on Acre and Some of the Coast Defences of Syria in 1843.Alderson Ralph Carr Notes on Acre and Some of the Coast Defences of Syria 1843 https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8iYbb68sz4C 2025-11-30 Regional maps Some of the regional maps were never published in their entirety.Goren Faehndrich Schelhaas 2017 66 A private printing for the British Foreign Office was produced in 1846.Jones 1973 37 The only published map, Map 2, was published in Charles Henry Churchill's book on Mount Lebanon.Jones 1973 37 Map 3 was used in the creation of Van de Velde's map.Goren Faehndrich Schelhaas 2017 66 Charles Wilson later explained that the data "was in too fragmentary a state for publication". Goren 2002 90 Criticism The survey contained a number of flaws. The theodolite was often operated by Symonds alone, miscalculations were made around heights (e.g. on the Sea of Galilee), and the outlines of the Haram es-Sharif in Jerusalem were known to have been miscalculated. As such, scholars such as Edward Robinson and August Petermann chose not to trust the work.Goren Faehndrich Schelhaas 2017 102-103 List of officers involved in the survey Edward Aldrich Julian SymondsNote that Yolande Jones' 1973 publication mislabels Lt. Symonds as "John", a mistake repeated by other authors. Charles Rochfort Scott Ralph Carr Alderson Frederick Robe Charles Francis Skyring Richard Wilbraham Gallery Regional maps City maps Bibliography Primary sources Alderson Ralph Carr Papers on subjects connected with the duties of the corps of Royal Engineers https://archive.org/details/papersonsubjects06grea/page/n55 6 1843 Notes on Acre and Some of the Coast Defences of Syria Secondary sources Moscrop John James Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land https://books.google.com/books?id=KzN2_eaDhz4C 1 January 2000 A&C Black 978-0-7185-0220-1 Rupert Chapman https://www.academia.edu/3673054 British Archaeology and the Holy Land in the 19th Century: sources and a framework for study' Britain and the Holy Land 1800–1914 none Schelhaas Bruno Faehndrich Jutta Goren Haim Mapping the Holy Land: The Foundation of a Scientific Cartography of Palestine https://books.google.com/books?id=XhKMDwAAQBAJ 28 February 2017 Bloomsbury Publishing 978-0-85772-785-5 Yolande Jones 1973 http://christadelphiansbrazil2015.weebly.com/uploads/5/3/4/2/53420237/palestine_survey.pdf British Military Surveys of Palestine and Syria 1840-1841 The Cartographic Journal 10 1 29–41 10.1179/caj.1973.10.1.29 2020-01-03 2019-12-26 https://web.archive.org/web/20191226223744/http://christadelphiansbrazil2015.weebly.com/uploads/5/3/4/2/53420237/palestine_survey.pdf dead British surveyors in Palestine and Syria, 1840–1841', International Cartographic Conference A Coruña 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20220225054159/https://www.cartesia.org/geodoc/icc2005/pdf/oral/TEMA16/Session%205/HAIM%20GOREN.pdf 2022-02-25 Planography of Jerusalem: memoir to accompany the new ground-plan of the city of Jerusalem and the environs, constructed anew by C.W.M. Vande Velde Tobler Titus Titus Tobler 1858 Justus Perthes https://archive.org/details/ldpd_10827265_000 van de Velde Carel Willem Meredith Memoir to Accompany the Map of the Holy Land https://archive.org/details/memoirtoaccompa00veldgoog/page/n6 1858 Justus Perthes Sacred, but Not Surveyed: Nineteenth-Century Surveys of Palestine Haim Goren Imago Mundi 54 2002 87–110 1151507 10.1080/03085690208592960 140702955 Schelhaas Bruno Faehndrich Jutta Goren Haim Mapping the Holy Land: The Foundation of a Scientific Cartography of Palestine https://books.google.com/books?id=XhKMDwAAQBAJ 28 February 2017 Bloomsbury Publishing 978-0-85772-785-5 References Category:19th-century maps and globes Category:1841 documents Category:Old maps of Jerusalem Category:Ordnance Survey Category:Collection of the National Archives (United Kingdom) Category:Maps of Palestine (region)