The book sets out to explore the history of Palestinian nationalism by asking if there were historical antecedents of this identity prior to the twentieth century, and whether this nationalism existed on every social level. It argues that such identity, or a kind of popular nationalism, did exist, aroused by the memory of the Crusades, the Holy Land, and the term Palestine.

This text explores the socio-economic history of Turkish society in the 17th-18th centuries, the outcome of the Tanzimat (reforms) in the province of Jerusalem as an example of the whole phenomenon, and the historical origins of the Turkish and Arab identities leading to nationalism.