Early Byzantine Descriptions of Palestine

The article provides an overview of the early Byzantine testimonies about Jerusalem and other centers of the Holy Land in the period before the Arab conquests of Palestine. The review considers the data about the Byzantine Middle East in comparison with chronologically close to them materials of the Latin and Oriental texts, to which special publications are devoted. The article was written when working on the topic of the state task of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the Program of Fundamental Scientific Research in the field of “Russia and the Middle East: Historical, Political and Cultural Contacts and Interrelations” of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and International Non-Profit Organization “Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society” in 2024.