Palestine By Road And Rail - A Concise Guide To The Important Sites In Palestine And Syria

A rare guide to Palestine and Syria, prepared for HM Forces "in a simple way to enable everybody to visit them without the presence of the ubiquitous guides" (p3). Original printed pink wraps 12x16cm. Printed on economical wartime paper in Palestine by Ahva Co-op Printing Press, Jerusalem. 95pp complete with folding Plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Map of Palestine and Southern Syria, with adverts for Matson Tours and Matson Photo Service to the wraps. Wraps good only, creased in places, dusted with some ink marks, and tear to spine paper. Interiors mostly very good, tanned and foxed, with short closed tears to the title page, and chip to the lower corner of p32 (not affecting text). The Plan and Map are neatly folded, with ink annotation to roads on the Map. Authored by St. H. (Stephan Hanna) Stephan and Boulos Afif, with a Foreword by Rev. Fr. Eugene Hoade, OFM. Stephan (1894–1949) was a writer, translator and radio broadcaster of history and folklore in Palestine. He worked for the Mandatory authorities in the Treasury, then in the Department of Antiquities. Boulos Afif was a Jerusalem-based photographer and publisher, also credited with the Guide Map of Jerusalem with B. Gauer, and related other works with Stephan. Hoade was Principal at Terra Sancta College, a keen archaeologist, and author of the much reprinted Guide to the Holy Land (1942). Their account includes a brief history, followed by descriptions of Jerusalem and Damascus, and several tours taking in Bethlehem, Hebron, Beersheba, Gaza, Ascalon, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Petah Tikvah, Haifa, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, Nazareth, Nabulus, Tiberias, Safad, Rosh Pinnah, Jisr Banat Ja'qub, Baalbek, Kantara, Lydda, Der'a, and Rayaq. This appears to be institutionally very rare. Worldcat records just 3 locations, of which 2 are in Jerusalem (Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Library; National Library of Israel; Stanford University - OCLC 234128765). Not recorded on Library Hub.…