Tawfiq Canaan

Dr. Tawfiq Canaan was born in Beit Jala and graduated in medicine from the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut in 1905. He served as chief medical officer at the German Augusta Victoria Hospital and directed the Hansen Leprosy Hospital in Jerusalem, publishing over forty pioneering scientific papers on tropical diseases, malaria, and leprosy epidemiology.

Alongside his medical career, Canaan was the supreme pioneer of Palestinian ethnography and folklore. Over five decades, he researched peasant folklore, supernatural beliefs, and traditional medicine, amassing an extraordinary collection of over fourteen hundred Palestinian talismans, amulets, and woven textiles that preserved indigenous folk culture before the cataclysm of 1948.