Tawfiq Canaan

Tawfiq Canaan (b. September 24, 1882, in Beit Jala) was a pioneering Palestinian physician, medical researcher, scholar, and prolific writer. He became especially known for his collections of amulets and his groundbreaking ethnographic work on Palestinian folklore and superstition.

Tawfiq Canaan was born on September 24, 1882, in Beit Jala.1 His parents, Bechara Canaan and Katharina Khairallah, were both Lutheran; he was their second child of six—in birth order: Lydia, Tawfiq, Wadi’, Badra, Hanna, and Nagib. His childhood was largely influenced by German Protestants, proponents of a minority denomination in those days.

Canaan’s father was an influential figure in society: Educated in Jerusalem, he became a pastor in 1891 for the German Protestant Palestine Mission and was the first native Arab Lutheran pastor in Palestine. He founded institutions in Beit Jala: the first Lutheran church in the town (1882), a coeducational school there, and the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Jerusalem (1878). He was also one of the first to learn to play the organ, which he in turn taught his children.

The pastor often took his children to historical sites around Beit Jala and on walks in the vicinity. Through his father’s work and family excursions, Canaan became acquainted with different segments of Palestinian society. His love of Palestinian people and culture originated with these outings, as he later related:

He was especially fascinated with the Palestinian fellahin and their traditions, which would have a great impact on his career in later years. Again, he attributed this to his father:

Canaan had a Protestant education, starting first in Beit Jala for primary school and then at age 11, moving to the (German) Schneller School in Jerusalem, as his father had,4 where he completed high school.

In the winter of 1899, he enrolled in the American University of Beirut (then the Syrian Protestant College) to study medicine. Soon after, his father died of pneumonia back in Palestine. All churches in Beit Jala rang their bells to signal mourning of and respect for Bechara Canaan, who had been an influential figure in society. His passing was particularly difficult for his son Tawfiq, who, although just a student, had to cover his own living expenses from that point on. (He was given a scholarship to cover tuition.) He supported himself by offering private language lessons and working at the university.

Since English had not been taught at Schneller, Canaan had to start in the lowest class, as the language of instruction was English. But his diligent application to his studies meant he soon caught up sufficiently to skip his freshman year altogether and enter as a sophomore. He was always the first in his class. Apparently he had an aptitude for dissection, as he wrote in his memoir:

In 1905, Canaan graduated with distinction as a medical doctor.

After graduation, in the summer of 1905, Canaan hastened back to Jerusalem and worked as an assistant doctor at the German (Kaiserwerth) Deaconess Hospital there under the supervision of a surgeon, the hospital director Dr. Gruendorf. He later shared, “My decision to go to Jerusalem and to work in the German hospital decided my whole future. I never was sorry for this decision.”6

The work was formative in introducing him to another one of his passions:

Despite Canaan’s hard work and popularity among his patients, the hospital broke his contract and replaced him with by a young German doctor a little over a year later. He later wrote, “I was deeply hurt, not only because my contract was broken without any cause, but for the preference of a European to an Arab.”8

He opened a private practice, which soon was profitable enough to support him. Alongside his practice, he was engaged by the London Jewish Society to work at their hospital (also known as the English Hospital) and was subsequently hired by the new Shaare Tzedek Medical Center, the first Jewish hospital in Jerusalem, which at that point was only four years old. Soon, he became its director. These experiences opened opportunities to treat Jewish patients as well.

By 1910, his reputation had grown, and he assumed additional responsibilities. The then mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein al-Husseini, appointed Canaan municipality doctor. About this role, he wrote in his memoirs:

Between 1906 and 1910, Canaan conducted research on the science of germs, in addition to his clinical work. In 1912, he went to Germany to specialize in microscopy bacteriology and tropical diseases, with an emphasis on tuberculosis.

In January 1912, Canaan married Margot Eilender, whose father was a German importer. The couple built their home in the Musrara neighborhood, close to Bab al-Amud, in 1913, and had four children: Yasma, Theo, Nada, and Leila there. Also in that family house, Canaan opened the first and the only Arab clinic in Jerusalem.

Canaan’s medical laboratory research led to his appointment, in 1913, as director of the malaria section at the International Health Bureau/Hygienic Institute (an international center for medical research and microscopic testing) in Jerusalem.

When World War I erupted, Canaan was drafted into the Ottoman army. He was appointed director of the malaria branch of the International Health Bureau, a world center for research. He also served as head of the laboratories on the Sinai Front. In these capacities, he traveled widely among many Arab cities, including throughout Palestine as well as Damascus, Amman, and Aleppo. During his wartime travels, he continued to add to his growing collection of amulets (good luck charms) from far-flung places. He also contracted cholera and typhus and survived both.

“By the end of the First World War,” Canaan wrote in his memoirs, “I was recognized as the best internal diseases physician in the country.”10 Among other achievements, Canaan had developed a reputation as an authority on leprosy (today called Hansen’s disease, a chronic, slow-developing bacterial infection spread through close contact that causes progressive and permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs, and eyes).

In 1919, back in Jerusalem in the New City neighborhood of Talbiyya, he became head of the Leper Home, built by the German Protestant Moravian Church in 1867. This was the only leprosy hospital in Palestine, Syria, and Transjordan. (After World War II, it was moved to Silwan just outside the Old City of Jerusalem and then to northward to Ramallah in West Bank after Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine in 1967.) At the time, leprosy was considered incurable, yet Canaan’s study of bacteriology and microscopic examination made it possible to cure many patients and had a major contribution to eradicating leprosy in Palestine. Indeed he wrote, “Every case which had some hope of recovery, regardless of how small, was treated with determination at the Leprosy Hospital.”11

Canaan continued to work at the Leper Home (now Hansen House) and in 1919, after the war, became its director, a position he retained until the end of the British Mandate.

Between World Wars I and II, he organized and led the Jerusalem Arab Medical Association. Later, he organized branches in Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, and Gaza, and in August 1944, founded the Palestine Arab Medical Association. In the 1940s, he was elected its first president, a title he held until the association was dissolved in 1948. He also served as member of the editorial board of its journal, which had significant contributions in Arabic and English and provided medical aid to Palestinians. The Jerusalem Association remained in existence, with Canaan at its helm, after the war; he held that role until 1954.

From 1924 to 1940, Canaan was chief of the German Hospital’s internal medicine division. By the 1930s, his reputation had spread throughout the region: Among his patients were Sherif Hussein of Mecca and the Palestinian fighter Abu Jilda, who sustained a bullet injury during the 1936–39 revolt.

It is noteworthy that this busy physician made major contributions to the cultural life of Jerusalem. In 1920, he became secretary of the newly founded Palestine Oriental Society, established to publish research about the “Orient.” He served as editor of their journal until 1939. He also was deeply invested in the YMCA in the New City, in what later became West Jerusalem, starting as a member in 1908 and becoming president for the first time in 1913–14 and a second time again later. (His father had served it as president for three terms.) After his retirement, he was elected honorary president for life.

The YMCA was close to his heart: He deeply enjoyed watching it take root and grow. In his memoirs, he called it “a great blessing for the country” and said that “our beloved institution was our pride as its blessings shown [sic; shone] on Jerusalem and its surroundings.”12

Canaan was also a musician: He composed almost 100 short musical pieces, many of which were played in the YMCA concerts.

The significance of Canaan’s work in documenting Palestinian folklore cannot be overstated. He was drawn to “popular medicine, the spiritual beliefs among peasants, the demonology, the relevant rituals that confer protection and blessings on the village and the superstition.”13 He developed a passion for collecting objects that his patients, particularly peasants, used to cure diseases and which they believed had healing powers. Fascinated with popular culture, he deciphered traditions that spanned biblical, Canaanite, Arabic, Nabatean, and peasant traditions. He particularly focused on fallahi practices, which people believed in, although they were disconnected from Islam and scientific medicine. In this way, Canaan became an ethnographer and anthropologist of the native culture: He gathered and labeled more than 1,400 amulets, talismans, and various other objects that related to popular medicine and folk practices: jewelry, glass beads, stones, certificates, offerings, vessels, ceramic dishes, fear cups, and other items.

In 1995, Birzeit University’s Founding Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (chaired by the Palestinian artist Vera Tamari) established “The Tawfik Canaan Collection of Palestinian Amulets.”

In October 1998, Birzeit University had an exhibition that featured 200 items from Canaan’s 1,400-piece collection (gathered between 1905 and 1947), which had become the largest from Palestine. The collection is now permanently housed in the Canaan Collection at Birzeit University Library, providing a rich heritage of folk medicine, and demonstrating the magic manifestations of popular beliefs and practices.

An example of what Canaan captured in those collections was displayed in the exhibit “Ya kafi, ya shafi” (O Protector, O Healer). The expression was used

Palestinian curator and museum registrar of the Palestinian museum Baha’ al-Ju’beh notes the importance of Canaan as a researcher of Palestinian popular heritage:

Canaan was also politically engaged and would pay the price (in 1939) of expressing his opposition of the Balfour Declaration. Ironically, Canaan had been previously thrown in jail in Nablus as a Christian who was assumed to have been pro-British; yet when the British took over, he expressed his viewpoints with no inhibitions and paid a price for that.

As a result of his hostility to Zionism and the British Mandate, the British authorities blacklisted him and, on September 3, 1939, they arrested him. His sister Badra and his wife, Margot, were also arrested on the premise of political activism, as they had helped found the Arab Women’s Committee in Jerusalem in 1934, which called for civil disobedience and the continuation of the Arab strike of 1936. (Margot would be arrested again during World War II as a German national in a British-administered territory.)