Late Ottoman Gaza: An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation
Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Buessow, Cambridge University Press, £85

YUVAL BEN-BASSAT and Johann Buessow are the sort of historians who like digging through archives for granular detail. Ben-Bassat’s previous work includes a study on petitions sent from Palestine to the Ottoman sultan at the end of the 19th century. Buessow’s CV includes the work Egyptian Rule in Syria through the Eyes of An Anonymous Damascene Chronicler 1831-1840. 

This book is equally specific, delimited and detailed. This is not a history of heroes, this is what you can learn from, say, the 1905 Ottoman census in Palestine.

The manuscript was finished shortly before October 2023; the authors considered, and then rejected, updating it in the light of events since then which have plunged Gaza into the abyss. The tone is studiously academic and politically neutral, telling you what the evidence says and implies, and framing it within their particular expertise.