Magic, Medicine, and Materiality: Tawfiq Canaan and Assemblages of the Sacred in Palestine

Sacred landscapes are natural/cultural conglomerations designated for religious practice, often believed to have special power or to be inhabited by spirits that serve as intermediaries between humans and the Divine.This essay explores the significance of sacred sanctuaries and landmarks in popular beliefs, folklore, and cultural heritage in Palestine, with specific focus on the roles that such places traditionally played in healing practices.Authors Marshall and Qobbaj draw upon the work of Palestinian ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan, as well as the writings of his European contemporaries and earlier travel writers.They combine these historical ethnographic sources with oral history interviews with older residents of Palestinian villages and rural areas to examine the persistence and transformation of these traditional healing practices.The work draws inspiration from Canaan, who regarded Palestinian fellahin not as static figures within a fading cultural landscape, but as keepers of valuable knowledge and know-how contending with drastically changing socio-economic and political contexts.Examining a diverse array of sacred sites including stones, springs, and shrines, as well as a variety of different objects and utterances, this contribution presents a conceptualization of sacred places and objects as sociospatial assemblages that blend diverse human and non-human elements and that entangle the metaphysical realm within the realm of physical landscapes and material cultural practices.Here, the authors highlight Canaan's work in theorizing the lived, material religion of early twentiethcentury Palestinian peasants, not as mere inhabitants of a holy land, but as active (re) producers of sacralized landscapes.