The American Colony

In 1881, a group of evangelical Christians established a utopian society in Jerusalem, which became known as the American Colony. The society engaged in philanthropic work among the people of Jerusalem, eventually coming to play an important humanitarian role during the two world wars and the troubled period of mandatory Palestine leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. As part of its activities, the Colony developed a rich photographic archive, which included portraits of life in Arab lands across the Near East and spanning the period from 1898 to 1948. This archive was later donated to the Library of Congress. From the Nile to the Euphrates brings together over 150 photographs from this extraordinary collection, annotated and introduced by John Munro, a longtime resident of the region. Depicting scenes of major historical significance as well as of everyday life, they shed evocative light on a crucial formative period of twentieth-century Arab history.