Maps to defend the Kaiser in Ottoman Asia: German Military Cartography of the Sinai, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, 1915-1918

Proceedings of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences 3 (2025 – 1): 195-229 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16925713 Maps to defend the Kaiser in Ottoman Asia: German Military Cartography of the Sinai, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, 1915-1918 by Imre Josef Demhardt* Keywords. — Ottoman Asia; Sinai Peninsula; Palestine; Mesopotamia; Vermessungsabteilung 27. Summary. — From 1915 onwards, the German Supreme Command deployed military cartographers to the Asian theatres of war of the Ottoman Empire on the Sinai Peninsula (1915-16), Palestine (191718), and Mesopotamia (1916-18). By September 1918 nine German topographical series covered significant parts of Ottoman Asia: Operationskarte at scale 1:800,000, Karte des türkisch-ägyptischen Grenzgebietes at scale 1:250,000, Karte von Mesopotamien (und Syrien) at scales 1:400,000 and 1:200,000, and Karte von Palästina at scales 1:250,000, 1:168,960, 1:100,000, 1:50,000, and 1:25,000. These topogra phical series consist of at least one hundred and eight released sheets of which some saw up to seven editions. This paper introduces newly-accessible map sheets and editions, and, for the first time, provides figures with detailed exemplary appraisals of characteristics of these map series. * * * In 1836-39, Helmuth von Moltke, who later rose to serve as chief of staff of the Prussian army, was a trailblazing officer who established a tradition of German officers advising the Ottoman army (von Moltke, 1841). Over the decades, German military relationships with the Sultan’s armed forces steadily grew tighter. When the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in World War I, well over three hundred German officers served in the Turkish army or were attached as advisors. However, a special German surveying section was deployed to the Levant only late into the war to survey, draw, and print military maps of the provinces to the south of Anatolia. The section’s purpose was to cartographically support the defence of both empires when the Ottoman-German alliance was forced to retreat in these parts of Ottom an Asia from 1916 onwards. This paper first introduces the strategic settings of German war cartography in Ottoman Asia and then provides an overview of the complicated structure of German military mapping institutions. Following this discussion are three regional case studies — the Sinai Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and Palestine — and appraisals of the respective military situations along with the map series that emerged from each. These three cases cover the bulk of German mapping in Ottoman theatres. The Caucasus front, where the Turks and Russians fought the fiercest battles for Ottoman Asia, is not included here due to the lack of significant German terrain reconnais- * Garrett Chair in the History of Cartography, Department of History, University of Texas at Arlington, 701 South Nedderman Drive, Arlington, TX 76019 (USA). Contact: [email protected] — 196 — sance and mapping activities. German maps of that theatre of war relied on pre-war surveys and cartography (fig. 1), Ottoman maps, as well as captured Russian and British maps. This treatment is a new take on a short preliminary carto-bibliographical survey published in the Proceedings of the International Cartographic Association, vol. 3, 2021 (“A provisional guide to German military topographic map series of Ottoman Asia in the First World War”). Since that first sounding new map material has been made accessible, especially thanks to map scholars and collectors Michael Brown (Israel), Jürgen Espenhorst (Germany), and Rick Smit (Netherlands). Their communications, and the investigations they triggered, resulted not only in improved listings in the tables of topographical map series but also in a revised assessment of the cartographic body. The author has personally inspected either original prints or scans of all map sheets and their editions listed in tables 1-5 * . The bulk of the discussed German military topographical map series of Ottoman Asia can be found (ranked in order of relevance) in the following repositories: — Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Kartensammlung; — Bayrisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (München), Abteilung Kriegsarchiv; — National Library of Israel (Jerusalem), Map Collection; — Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Istanbul; — Library of Congress (Washington DC), Geography & Map Division. * See tables at the end of the text (pp. 225-228). Fig. 1. — Detail of the lower half of an orientation sheet in 1:3.7 million on the status of topographic surveys in Ottoman Asia in 1914 by long-time Orient cartographer Hans Fischer. The colour code of terrestrial red in dicates surveys, but mostly not in the scales and qualities of European surveys, is restricted to Palestine, the Euphrates, and Tigris in Mesopotamia, as well as the plains between these rivers south of Baghdad. Coastal solid red is used for surveys larger than the scale 1:150,000, coastal vertical red stripes for surveys in a smaller scale, blue corridors are used for route observations of various accuracies, and terrain in yellow is used for ‘unexplored regions’, still making up most of Trans-Jordan, Syrian, and Mesopotamian regions beyond urban centres and well-travelled rivers and streets [Dr. A. Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt, vol. 66 (1920), Map 22 – University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections, Handset]. — 197 — Even from a cursory look through the expanded table listings, however, noticeable gaps remain not only but especially for Palestine and adjoining areas. Therefore, the author requests that readers contact him about not yet listed map sheets and further editions of listed sheets. Germany’s Military Interest in Ottoman Asia, 1914-1918 On 3 August 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Great War on the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) against the Entente Powers (primarily Britain, France, and Russia), although they initially kept this intent secret under the guise of ‘armed neutrality’. German hopes were that the addition of about three hundred thousand Ottoman soldiers, in whose armies numerous German military staff officers had already for decades served in positions of high command, would pull significant Entente forces away from the European fronts and offer Germany an allied base to attack Britain’s otherwise inaccessible empire directly. The Suez Canal, an Achilles’ heel for the logistical cohesion of the British Empire, was an especially tempting goal. For the Ottomans, on the other hand, the goal was rather Egypt, the land beyond that waterway. For centuries, the country of the Nile had been an Ottoman dependency until the British de facto annexed it in 1882. The since 1908 ruling modernizing Young Turk government in Constantinople longed to take Egypt back. Further strategic options eyed by Berlin were opening fronts in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and the Caucasus, vital assets or targets to Britain and Russia respectively (Reichsarchiv, 1933, p. 164). However, the Ot toman Empire soon proved to be a burden for the Central Powers, owing to its poor economic development, an inept civilian and military administration, and fighting forces that not yet had recovered from their humiliating defeat in the Balkan War of 1912 or implemented its lessons. The operational areas German and Ottoman planners expected in this theatre were mostly in remote corners of the Empire: the Sinai Peninsula, the Arabian Peninsula down to Yemen, the Persian Gulf, and eastern Anatolia. None of these emerging operational areas was closer to the capital and economic hub Constantinople than 1,600 km while others were as remote as 2,400 km. Communication and provisioning were not only challenged by the sheer distances but even more by the presence of unruly mostly non-Turkish populations in rugged desert or mountainous terrains, and, above all, dated caravan paths and underdeveloped and generally neglected roads. The few railway lines towards the theatres of war remained incomplete throughout World War I. The rail gaps in the southern Anatolian mountain ranges of Taurus and Amanus, for example, held up the deployment of troops and materials to Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Arabia for weeks if not months (Reichsarchiv, 1933, pp. 165-166). As it would transpire, the Oberste Heeresleitung (= German Supreme Army Command) was not aware of these severe strategic burdens of its new ally. Intially, the German strategists intended to give the Ottoman Empire time to deploy in Palestine and eastern Anatolia under cover of armed neutrality. In the face of the massive Russian summer attack on the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, however, Berlin almost immediately changed course and pressed Constantinople for relieving counterstrikes. The ruse of armed neutrality ended in late October by the Ottomans opening naval warfare against Russia in the Black Sea. By November, the Ottomans and Russians began campaigns in mountainous eastern Anatolia that evolved into almost four years of shifting front lines. Initially, the Russian forces drove the Ottomans far back into their own territory, taking a heavy toll on soldiers and material as well as a strong secondary effect on operations in all the other Asian fronts (Reichsarchiv, 1933, pp. 169-171). — 198 — The Anatolian front, and its spread into Ottoman-Russian-British fighting in western Persia since 1915, triggered only a few German maps. The British counterattack in the Sinai and their slow progress in Mesopotamia over the summer and autumn of 1915 coincided with the ill-fated opening of a seaborne gambit to capture Constantinople and with it to force a swift Ottoman surrender. To this end, the British and French on 25 April 1915 landed an invading army on the Gallipoli peninsula north of the Dardanelles Strait. The ensuing massive battle for Gallipoli undoubtedly represents the most prominent of all the Ottoman theatres of war, but no German original surveys took place during the eight months of that campaign. Here German map support was restricted to reprinting existing Ottoman or enemy maps. Anglo-French attempts to conquer the well-defended peninsula failed and on 9 January 1916 the last attackers evacuated the peninsula (Reichsarchiv, 1933, pp. 177191). Strategically this could be called an Ottoman ‘victory’, but it came at a price. While the Central Powers were noticeably relieved for months on European fronts in 1915, the Ottomans had to pull armies and resources from other fronts to defend the capital and maintain a sizeable force around the Dardanelles for the remainder of the war. Only when Bulgaria entered the war on 14 October 1915 as ally of the Central Powers, which by then had defeated Serbia in between them and Bulgaria, this provided Germany and Austria-Hungary the previously missing land bridge with the Ottoman Empire. It was now possible to send supplies and auxiliary troops directly to Constantinople by rail (Reichsarchiv, 1933, pp. 192-193). On 17 January 1916 the first train with military supplies from Berlin arrived in Constantinople. The opening of this supply artery coincided with the retreat of the Entente from Gallipoli a week earlier, alleviating the immediate threat to the Ottoman capital (Reichsarchiv, 1936, p. 603). That strategic advantage was more than annulled by the effects of the British-induced Arab Revolt that broke out in June 1916 in the Hejaz region of western Arabia. At first of only limited effects that revolt nevertheless cut off about ten thousand Ot toman soldiers who thereafter got stuck in isolated pockets stretching from Medina southeastward to Yemen for the rest of the war. While this transformed Ottoman Arabia south of Aqaba for two years until the summer of 1918 de facto into a “frozen theatre of war” (Pope & Wheal, 2003, p. 353), it was a constant threat to the German-Ottoman positions in Palestine and Mesopotamia. By mid-1916 the Oberste Heeresleitung, through reports received from German officers embedded in the Ottoman armies, realized the declining performance of the Ottoman transportation network with its backbone being the incomplete and inefficient railways. Because the extension of the Baghdad railway from Ras al-Ain in the direction of Mosul dragged on, the German Supreme Army Command resorted to another mode of transportation. The Germans employed a section of the Euphrates River for the makeshift transport of armaments downstream to Baghdad. Nevertheless, this did not overcome the limiting bottleneck through which all supplies for Ottoman and German operations south of Anatolia had to pass through: even before the head station of the Euphrates flotilla could be reached, there were and remained the railway gaps in the Taurus and Amanus mountain ranges. Instead of accelerating construction to close these gaps, the Ottoman government as from the second quarter of 1915 ‘deported’ the heavily Armenian railway workforce, causing both huge casualties and losses of construction expertise. Inevitably, from the onset inadequate and now deteriorating transport services exacerbated supply difficulties on all Asian fronts. Military commanders were ultimately unable to obtain supplies of food and clothing, which contributed to an increasing rate of desertion. — 199 — Overall, the signs were clear that the Ottoman Empire faced growing military and economic exhaustion two years into the war. Despite its own growing shortages, the German Empire tried to shore up Ottoman forces. By autumn 1916 the Germans delivered sixteen columns of trucks, deployed a railway engineering company to the Taurus region, and dispatched new rolling stock. These reinforcements increased the German military personnel serving within or alongside the Ottoman army and navy to around six hundred and thirty officers and five thousand nine hundred men (Reichsarchiv, 1936, p. 616). While the German involvement in the Ottoman-Russian front in eastern Anatolia was limited, this front most concerned the Ottoman headquarter and shaped its strategic decisions as well as the allocation of men and material (Reichsarchiv, 1936, p. 609). No German topographic map series focused on eastern Anatolia, which was only marginally covered by the northeastern sheets of Operationskarte and Karte von Mesopotamien (und Syrien) (tabs. 1 & 3) as well as reprints of Ottoman and Russian map series. After years of first Ottoman retreats and then a bloody stalemate, the Russian February revolution in 1917 caused the Russian front in eastern Anatolia to rapidly disintegrate. The October 1917 Bolshevik revolution, along with the following treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, took Russia out of the war. The administrative collapse of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus gave the Ottomans the windfall opportunity not only to regain the pre-war border, but to pursue a Pan-Turkish expansion into the Caucasus. That last-minute military advance culminated in their capture of Baku on the Caspian Sea on 14 September 1918. Taking the oilfields of Baku resulted in severe disputes between Berlin and Constantinople over their claims in a post-revolutionary Russia. The Oberste Heeresleitung envisioned the main task of Ottoman operations as fighting against the British in Mesopotamia and Palestine while otherwise establishing cooperation with Bolshevik Russia to secure oil supplies from Baku for the German war economy (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 35). This dispute swiftly was ‘resolved’ by the Ottoman and associated German forces surrender to the British and French on 30 October 1918. The Complicated Organization of German Military Cartography Reflecting the empire’s federal structure, the kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg all maintained separate general staffs with survey sections during peacetime, while the Prussian general staff and its Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme (= Cartographic Section of the Royal Prussian Survey) only took over directing the federated German armies and their surveying sections during wartime (Espenhorst, 2016, p. 90). Because many of the trigonometrical, topographic, and cartographic staff of the Royal Prussian Survey (and the federated surveys) and the general staff itself left in the summer of 1914 for active duty in the field, and all parties expected a rapid German victory, the Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme effectively ceased to function. All that remained in Berlin was the Stellvertretender Generalstab (= Deputy General Staff) for administrative purposes. In surveying and mapping the Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs (= Cartographic Section of Deputy General Staff) kept a low profile by supplying the field armies with prints and minor revisions of existing map series (Espenhorst, 2016, p. 92). — 200 — The German armies on the eastern and western fronts soon operated in insufficiently mapped areas or advanced beyond the map coverage. The armies set up their own Vermessungsabteilungen (= Survey Sections), while the Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs took on the production of maps for theatres of war without German army survey sections, such as the dispersed German units in Ottoman Asia. In the absence of German pre-war reconnaissance and the initial lack of German military surveyors in the battle regions of Ottoman Asia, the Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs was forced to rely its map production on thrown together civilian data, captured enemy maps (some merely reprinted in translation), and only from 1916 on a sizeable amount of survey material provided by the increasingly deployed German expeditionary forces. It was not until April 1917 that the realization that the small Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs was unable to meet the growing demand for cartography resulted in the reactivation of Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme. By then, however, the Vermessungsabteilungen of the field armies had already been firmly established as on-site rapid response units. These units established a custom of dating and numbering their often hastily made and rapidly revised maps for easy distinction of successive editions. By the end of the war, some ten thousand men served in military mapmaking in Berlin and in the numerous army-affiliated surveying sections (Espenhorst, 2016, p. 93). In returning to the outbreak of hostilities in Ottoman Asia, the Sultan’s military had only a few maps or series of maps of the future combat areas. Often these were of foreign pre-war origin, too small in scale for tactical needs, and severely out of date (fig. 2). Because of the lack of current large-scale Ottoman or German military survey material, the Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs in a makeshift action started with reprinting map series on combat areas for the Ottoman Empire. The first such project in 1915 was a bilingual German-Turkish reprint of a British map to aid with the defence of the Dardanelles (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 167). To create their own spatial intelligence in areas of highest need, the Oberste Heeresleitung in the same year dispatched the first few cartographers along with the initial detachment of auxiliary troops towards Constantinople. Until these mapping experts could get active, 1915 still was dominated by individual activities that resulted in better drawn maps, including explorer and geographer Albert Tafel (1876-1935), who began to survey the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, while Major Hans von Ramsay (1862-1938) from the German colonial forces in Africa undertook clandestine route traverses on the Sinai Peninsula towards the Suez Canal. In ad dition, small German map units were created in Erzurum and Baghdad in 1916, the latter under archaeologist Walter Andrae (1875-1956) (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 167). With the massive increase of German expeditionary forces in Ottoman Asia in 1917 not only the reconnaissance but also the map production, especially in Palestine, now happened in the field which cut out the long distance and time-consuming communication with Berlin. These efforts were aided by the map series on the Sinai Peninsula and a second map series with coverage of western Asia which were compiled and printed in Berlin: to meet the strategic planning needs of the German general staff the Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs in 1914 embarked on compiling the Operationskarte (= Operational Map; tab. 1) at scale 1:800,000. Including a few sheets finished after the armistice in November 1918, by 1920 this series comprised more than eighty sheets ranging from Ireland’s west coast to western Persia (Espenhorst, 2016, pp. 112-113). A sizeable number — fourteen sheets — covered the Asian parts of the Ottoman Empire (fig. 3). — 201 — Fig. 2. — Sheet 1 Baghdad is part of the Ottoman four sheet map series of the province Iraq of 1915-16 (according to Muslim calendar) at scale 1:500,000. To guide military operations in countering the British progress upstream the Euphrates and Tigris towards Baghdad, located on the narrowest part of the plain between the two rivers, it lacks topographic features and, unlike German map series (see figs. 3 & 7), provides only a few toponyms even in the densely-populated fertile plains along the rivers [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Kartenabteilung, Kart D 6407 Blatt 1]. — 202 — Fig. 3. — Sheet Baghdad of Operationskarte at scale 1:800,000 (1917, but print mark shows January 1918 in the neat line) is smaller in scale than the Ottoman map series Iraq (see fig. 2), still it contains more line features crucial for any ground operations, especially roadways, settlements, and toponyms. The area covered are the plains of Euphrates and Tigris in southern Mesopotamia with Persian mountain ranges in the NE corner and the Mendeli region (see fig. 7) along the NW sheet edge [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Kartenabteilung, Kart F 1448]. — 203 — The Sole Map Series to Support an Attack Operation: Sinai Peninsula, 1915-1916 Late in 1914 Ottoman forces did not rally, as one might have expected, for a counterattack to capture back Basra that the British had taken in late November. Instead, own imperialist desire and pressure from the Oberste Heeresleitung, which was desperate to get relief on the western front, the Ottomans prepared an attack across the British possession Sinai Peninsula on the Suez Canal. Both Constantinople and Berlin regarded the canal as a war-deciding Achilles’ heel of the British colonial empire. Germany supported these offensive Ottoman plans by dispatching the first auxiliary units in late autumn, army railway engineers to advance supply lines towards the border and a naval medical unit. The discussed rail issues delayed the deployment of about sixteen thousand men for the Ottoman attack until mid-January 1915. This small and insufficiently equipped force nevertheless crossed into the northern Sinai Peninsula and on 26 January 1915 waged a week-long attack on the Suez Canal, even briefly crossing into Egypt. Superior British defence, however, forced the Ottomans to retreat to its supply base in southern Palestine, but the attacker maintained outposts to control a sizable portion of the northern Sinai (Reichsarchiv, 1933, p. 172; Schulz 2012, p. 89). The weakness of the Ottoman forces and supplies, coupled with the British advances in Mesopotamia and the Russians in eastern Anatolia, let both Berlin and Constantinople in November 1915 arrive to the strategic assessment that an invasion of Egypt, as was the goal in January, was no longer within realistic reach. But raid-like disruptions of the shipping traffic on the Suez Canal were still deemed not only feasible but also desirable. To strengthen the Ottoman attack forces, in which neither Berlin nor the German officers embedded in the Ot toman armies had great faith, German special forces were sent in mid-January 1916 but had to use the bottleneck rail connection Constantinople – Aleppo – Damascus – Jerusalem. This first sizable German expeditionary force was code-named “Pascha”. It consisted of about one thousand six hundred and fifty men, mostly in artillery, machine gun platoons, an air squadron, and other special units. The first German units arrived in the southern Palestinian desert at the end of March 1916, but it took until June for the German-Ottoman deployment to be ‘somewhat’ ready for action (Reichsarchiv, 1936, p. 610). After almost half a year of subdued hostilities — the Ottomans only staged a number of smaller raids on the canal that the British easily thwarted but did not follow up — the Ottomans thought in July 1916, the hottest part of the year, the attack squadron was prepared to cross the Sinai, mustering eighteen thousand men and as many camels in the supply train. The advance failed to overcome fortified British positions in the battle at the fortified waterhole Bir Romani from 3 to 5 August 1916 and the Ottomans had to retreat to El Arish by mid-August (Schulz, 2012, p. 90). By then, the British had received significant reinforcements, not the least by transferring battle-hardened Indian troops from the Mesopotamia theatre of war, and until the end of 1916 drove the O ttoman-German alliance all the way back to the (Anglo-)EgyptianOttoman border just west of the Palestinian border city Gaza (Reichsarchiv, 1933, p. 194). Thus, the front returned to where the Ottomans had made their first push into the Sinai exactly two years prior. Until the First Battle of Gaza in March 1917, the small German air squadron attached to the Ottoman forces since 1915 remained a serious match for the steadily growing British air squadrons. The German planes also undertook aerial reconnaissance of enemy positions and supply lines (Neumann, 1920, p. 526). Orientation of the German pilots themselves, however, was — 210 — Fig. 7. — Detail of the upper half of Blatt 6 Mendeli of Karte von Nordbabylonien at scale 1:200,000, dated January 1918. This sheet is the enlarged mid-scale companion to Sheet 5d Baghdad of Operationskarte (1:800,000, 1917; see fig. 3) and to Ottoman Sheet 1 Baghdad of the map series Iraq (1:500,000, 1915-16; see fig. 2). The tentative form lines of Persian mountain ranges to the east of the Mesopotamian plains indicate insignificant progress on terrain reconnaissance over pre-war maps but an adaptation to joint Ottoman-German use in the field by an extensive map print and fully bilingual legend in German and Arab (see caption of fig. 6) [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Kartenabteilung, Kart D 6450 Blatt 6]. — 211 — Vermessungsabteilung 27 and Five German Map Series of Palestine and Trans-Jordan, 1917-1918 Any offensive operations in Palestine and Mesopotamia relying on the steadily weakening Ottoman forces had become a pipe dream by the turn of 1916/1917. To hold the bleeding, at least, the Oberste Heeresleitung reacted by reinforcing the German expeditionary forces through relocating more troops from the European western and eastern fronts as well as recruiting new units. The German hope was this would enable the Ottoman armies to muster a sustained defence of both Mesopotamia and Palestine in the summer of 1917 (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 420). This hope was fueled by the fact that on western outskirts of the border town Gaza the Ottomans twice, on March 26 and April 17, fended off British attempts to break into Palestine. On the other hand, there was the devastating loss of the Mesopotamian metropolis of Baghdad on 11 March 1917. To stem the rising British tide, Berlin and Constantinople agreed upon a joint operation in Mesopotamia that essentially replicated the 1916 second attack on the Suez Canal. For that purpose, a mixed Ottoman-German army group with the code name ‘Yildirim’ (= lightning) was formed and notably was placed not under Ottoman but German command. The core of the German units was to be the transferred German ‘Pascha’ units that had already reinforced the Ottoman forces that led the unsuccessful second Suez attack in the summer of 1916. That core received substantial reinforcements to form ‘Pascha II’, which on 1 October 1917 officially was designated as Deutsches Asien-Korps (= German Asia Corps). ‘Pascha II’ was not meant to operate on its own but to be embedded in the new Ottoman army group F ‘Yildirim’, which auspiciously was placed under the command of Erich von Falkenhayn, who had been chief of the German general staff in 1914-16. Deutsches Asien-Korps or ‘Pascha II’ consisted of three infantry battalions, a ranger battalion, field artillery, four air squadrons with a total of sixty-five airplanes, and several technical units, in all about four thousand five hundred men or slightly less than half the strength of a German division. As had become customary for a German army operating on European front lines, this for the first time within the expeditionary forces in Ottoman Asia included a Vermessungsabteilung or Survey Section. The composition of the German corps — unrealistically — was based on the belief that the Ottomans could provide rail transport, horses, and pack animals. And aggravating, the mechanized nature of the German special forces with their demands on the transport performance of the incomplete rail network vastly exceeded the needs of Ottoman formations of a comparable size (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 421). Even before the rapid deterioration of the transportation and supply chains from the summer of 1916, the eight machine rifle groups dispatched in early 1916 to join ‘Pascha I’, required fifty-one days to travel from Berlin to Beersheba. By 1917 this problem became even worse; infantry battalion 701 needed ninety days to travel from Pomerania to Nablus in central Palestine, of which only twenty-seven days were travelling, and sixty-three days were interruptions. The battalion spent twenty-two days of them at Haidar Pasha, the railhead on the Asian bank of the Bosporus in Constantinople, twenty-five days at the Amanus track gap, and fifteen days in Nazareth (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 427). The rail gap in the Taurus and Amanus mountains, coupled with the increasing lack of locomotives and fuel, caused that only three of the five ‘Yildirim’ divisions arrived in the staging area of Aleppo by the end of September 1917. The movement of the — 212 — German Asia Corps was delayed even more with many units still at home in September, and others waiting in Constantinople for further transport (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 422). By late summer 1917 it had become obvious that the British had learned their lesson from the first two lost battles of Gaza in the spring and regrouped their superior military force by transferring most men, weapons, and supplies from Mesopotamia to the northeastern Sinai Peninsula to seek the military decision in the Asian theatre of war by an invasion of Palestine and a further push northward into Anatolia, the Ottoman heartland. Therefore, the Ottoman Supreme Command successfully pleaded with their German counterparts to divert ‘Yildirim’ away from the extensive and poorly supplied Mesopotamian theatre of war to instead strengthen the defence of much smaller Palestine (Schulz, 2012, p. 90). The fading-away of the summer heat brought about the end of the long stalemate along the Gaza-Beersheba line. The British Palestine campaign had swollen to about ninety-five thousand well-provisioned men and gained aerial superiority, facing just thirty-three thousand defenders of Ottoman-German army group ‘Yildirim’ (Pope & Wheal, 2003, p. 353). On 27 October 1917, British artillery began to shell heavily on Gaza, supported by naval forces. On October 31, the British attacked Beersheba, which they captured by nightfall. On the night of November 7, the Ottomans were forced to evacuate Gaza, which they had defended successfully in March and April. The next day the full width of the Ottoman-German front line between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea depression began to withdraw steadily with great loss of men and material. It was not until mid-December that they could stabilize a front line that ran to the north of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Jericho (Reichsarchiv, 1942, p. 425). The British had achieved their strategic goal, chiefly having captured Jaffa and Jerusalem, and now paused both for organizing their long backward supply lines and sit out the winter rains. In March 1918 they took to the offensive again by extending their operations into the rugged Trans-Jordan, drawing on the support of the Arab rebellion, and all an effort to overstretch the vastly outnumbered defenders (Pope & Wheal, 2003, p. 353). This extension of the war zone to Trans-Jordan considerably increased the need for constantly updated tactical mapping from the river’s east bank well into the Arabian desert, while the British continued to further amass troops and equipment for a decisive final attack in late summer. The launch of a German map series on Palestine was deemed unnecessary because that Ot toman province until the end of 1916 figured only as a stage for marshalling troops and supplies for incursions into the Sinai Peninsula and attacks on the Suez Canal. For these purposes, the existing orientation maps and series sufficed. For orientation of the supply line units, Karto graphische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs already in 1915 had reprinted the Palestine Exploration Fund’s “Map of Western Palestine”. That series had been surveyed in 1871-1877, to produce a twenty-six sheet map series at the scale of 1:63,630 and won recognition as the most detailed and accurate nineteenth-century representation of the regions between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river. Unfortunately, as it would turn out, Berlin reproduced only the 1881 derived edition of the reduced scale of 1:168,960 on sixteen small sheets. The cartographic situation fundamentally had changed already late in 1916, when the British had driven back Ottoman and German troops to Gaza and it became a tactical burden to organize the defence of Palestine when early in 1917 the British pushed the front across the border to the line of Gaza-Beersheba. — 213 — When the Deutsches Asien-Korps was conceptualized in spring 1917, a surveying unit was an integral part as had become usual with German armies on the eastern and western fronts (Alt, 1920, pp. 99-100). This task was assigned to the newly-formed surveying detachment, Vermessungsabteilung 27 (Survey Section 27), operating under the command of captain Dr. Ing. (= Doctor of Engineering) Walther Hinrichs (1882-1964). He had studied archaeology, art history, and architecture and in 1909 got the doctorate in the latter field. In 1909-11 the Royal Berlin Museums detached Hinrichs to the excavations in Assur in upper Mesopotamia. Thereafter he served as an excavation architect in Egypt and Nubia (Rehm, 2020, pp. 5-6). Hinrichs thus enjoyed a good knowledge of the broader region, its people, and the Arabic language. Like all units of the German Asia Corps, the Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme furnished the Survey Section 27 with a booklet entitled Kurze Militärgeographische Beschreibung von Palästina (= Short military geographical description of Palestine) to guide their reconnaissance (Espenhorst, 2016, p. 119). The section accompanied ‘Pascha II’ on its long and difficult deployment route via Constantinople to Aleppo. There it briefly was quartered in Turkish barracks in mid-September 1917 and started its cartographic activity. The first work orders centred on producing maps for a then contemplated counterattack against the rebellious Arabs under Emir Feisal and the British archaeologist-turned-intel ligenceagent T. E. Lawrence, who operated from Aqaba against the Hejaz railway. However, this work made little progress due to regional illnesses that had incapacitated the section’s staff that was new to the Levant. Already at the end of September 1917 Vermessungsabteilung 27 had been on the move again, when the army group ‘Yildirim’ was definitively reassigned to the Gaza front. It was characteristic of the, at that time, intolerable cartographic situation that the pilots of the German air squadrons upon leaving Aleppo could not be given large-scale maps of their destinations in southern Palestine for guidance (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 167). The second home to Survey Section 27 was Jerusalem, where it arrived ahead of other staff of army group ‘Yildirim’ on 12 October 1917. The cartographers were moved into an empty house near the German-Protestant run Syrian orphanage in the Bukhara district. The working conditions were poor, with a lack of local material to set up offices and kerosene for the lamps after dark. The Germans had little hard currency and the Arabs no longer took Ottoman paper money. The trigonometric fieldwork of Vermessungsabteilung 27 was supposed to be supported by detailed Ottoman soldiers. However, most of them were captured deserters, who usually soon ran away again (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 168). Systematic surveying was difficult since the section arrived in Jerusalem when the front collapsed after stalling for months between Gaza and Beersheba. Instead, the Ottoman and German forces needed as quickly as possible provisional sheets of areas where it was expected that the new front line would stabilize. Early November saw Vermessungsabteilung 27 on the move, again, when army group ‘Yildirim’ evacuated Jerusalem and retreated to the north, now operating in areas without cartographic cover. The NE sheet of Karte des türkisch-ägyptischen Grenzgebietes at scale 1:250,000, which was still in widespread use for operations on the Palestine front in October 1917, only extended north to about the Ramla-Amman line. Vermessungsabteilung 27 undertook the remarkable emergency effort to produce within only thirty-six hours for staff officers of the army group two hundred copies of a single sheet map called Mittel-Palästina (fig. 8). This sheet was dated 30 November 1917 and provided a northern extension to the NE sheet of the Sinai map series (tab. 4). This cartographic parforce ride was only possible because the section possessed a single copy of the British map series at the scale of 1:168,960, itself a 1915 reprint — 214 — by Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs of a reduced version by the Palestine Exploration Fund of its (by then) about two-generation-old map series at scale 1:63,360. This quick work may have saved the day, but it highlighted the pressing need for maps of the upcoming battlegrounds. It is noteworthy, too, that in the spring of 1918 this emergency fix called Mittel-Palästina had to be repeated, when British and Arab forces extended the front into Trans-Jordan. This forced Vermessungsabteilung 27, once again, to draw an emergency map, an eastern extension of Mittel-Palästina that was titled Ostjordanland Südl. Teil (dated 11 April 1918). This map again followed the British scale of 1:168,960, and only made revisions taken from smaller German pre-war maps and the few field surveys German soldiers had conducted in the area. Fig. 8. — Sheet Karte von Mittelpalästina, dated 30.11.1917, at medium scale 1:168,960 already at first glance reveals that it was hastily drawn. The terrain is rough even for form lines (brown), basic hydrography (blue) and only major roadways, railway lines, and a small number of settlements (black). The sheets Kalkilje (see fig. 12) and its NE enlargement in sheet Azzun 59 N.O. (see fig. 13) cover the area to the east of the town (spelt here) Kilkilje (= modern day Qalqilya) on the north-south railway line near the latitude of the coastal town of Arsuf (= today part of Herzliya) [National Library of Israel, Maps, Pal 1236]. — 215 — After barely a month, the section had to move, again, and on November 13 along with headquarters of army group ‘Yildirim’ set up offices, workshops, and printing presses to Nazareth (fig. 9), its fourth base, in an Arab school and the Franciscan monastery. When the British advance northwards paused for the rainy season, Vermessungsabteilung 27 had a three-month long and relatively undisturbed residency in Nazareth. At the end of November, it produced another extension sheet entitled Karte von Nordpalästina at the for a German map unusual scale of 1:168,960 but easily explained by the fact that it was based on the Palestine Exploration Fund map series of that scale. But this large sheet also benefited from corrections taken from a captured copy of the latest edition of the British General Staff’s map series of Palestine at the scale of 1:250,000 (Alt, 1920, p. 100; Holzhausen, 1937, p. 168). After these early adaptations of British maps, the Survey Section 27 issued its first ‘own’ map series of Palestine at the still-tobe considered medium scale of 1:250,000 (tab. 5, figs. 10 & 11). The first two map sheets released were meant to provide the northern extension to Karte des türkisch-ägyptischen Grenzgebietes. The sheets Palästina südlicher Teil (Samaria) and Palästina nördlicher Teil (Galilee) again owed much to the captured British General Staff’s map series at scale 1:250,000. Such rehashed overview-scale maps based on old and new British map series satisfied strategic needs but did not aid on-the-spot tactical orientation for fighting units and the air wings (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 170). A large-scale map series was needed, as quickly as possible. Fig. 9. — City plan of Nazareth (detail) at scale 1:5,000 with numbers highlighting buildings occupied by German ‘Pascha II’ units with workshop (= 3) and administration (= 5, Casa Nova) of Vermessungsabteilung 27 on the southern outskirts of town on the road to Jerusalem. Undated plan (presumably late November 1917) surveyed and printed by Vermessungsabteilung 27 (assigned production # 21) at scale 1:5,000 with manuscript annotations of occupation changes after printing the plan [National Library of Israel, Map Nazareth 9]. — 216 — Fig. 10. — This extract from the hitherto earliest identified edition of Sheet Hauran, with its date 12.01.1918 exactly six months earlier than the latest found edition (see fig. 11), is practically void of any topographical information east of the Hejaz railway from Damascus to Lake Tiberias and south of the Hauran massif. Instead, it labels the southern third of the area covered by this sheet unerforscht (= unexplored) [National Library of Israel, Maps, Middle East 137 Sheet 57]. — 217 — Fig. 11. — The most recent identified edition of the Sheet Hauran at orientation scale 1:250,000 is dated 16.07.1918. Its dominant feature is the namesake mountain massif in southern Syria in the NE quadrant. Note the inset sketch left below the mapped area that credits most of the right half of the sheet to a British map of the same scale, most of the left side to reductions from the 1:50,000 map series by Vermessungsabteilung 27, and the southern desert regions, still blank on the first found edition of January 1918 (see fig. 10), were filled in topographically from a then still unpublished 1:1,000,000 map by Alois Musil [National Library of Israel, Maps, Middle East 137 Sheet 57b]. — 218 — The breakthrough moment for German military cartographers was when, by accident, their commander captain Hinrichs in Haifa came across the yellowed but complete twenty-six sheets of the Palestine Exploration Fund’s semi-official British “Map of Western Palestine” at its original large scale of 1:63,360. A quick field check showed that the terrain surveys on which the map was based were, though four decades old (1872-1877), outdated on settlements and communica tion lines, for the most part were accurate even when in parts superficial. However, the “Map of Western Palestine” after its publication in 1880 has never been updated and, ob viously, lacked the since greatly changed settlement patterns, not the least those of Jewish and Christian immigrants, as well as construction of roads and railways. Therefore, the old British map could not meet modern military tactical needs but provided a useful base for natural topography (Goering, 1925, p. 123; Fischer 1940, p. 77). Based on the data transfer from the “Map of Western Palestine” Vermessungsabteilung 27 developed its large-scale tactical German map series Karte von Palästina (= Map of Palestine) at the scale of 1:50,000. Although the first sheets were released in mid-January 1918 with only little retouches to the British map series, the entire front line had been covered already by midFebruary 1918. Later editions of the first sheets, as well as the sheets that were added in the following months, increasingly incorporated original field surveys by the Survey Section 27 and photogrammetric interpretation of aerial pictures supplied by the at the best time six air squadrons (Holzhausen, 1937, p. 170). In addition to extracting old and current enemy material, Vermessungsabteilung 27 began to systematically survey the rear areas once the front lines had consolidated in southern Palestine at the end of 1917. In some areas this grew into extensive triangulation networks partially filled with tachymetric surveys of terrain and paths. By redrawing the old British Palestine Exploration Fund map series at scale 1:63,360 and interpreting aerial photographs made by German air squadrons, and filling in own triangulation and topographical surveys, a comprehensive German war map series of central and northern Palestine and adjoining areas emerged between February and September 1918 at a scale of 1:50,000 in forty sheets. Some of these map sheets went through multiple revised editions; Blatt (= sheet) 59, Kalkilje (fig. 12), even reached a seventh edition (tab. 4). To complement this main series with more detailed terrain representations of selected areas close to the (then stagnant) front line, the small Survey Section 27 over the summer did extensive field work and in August and September 1918 issued seven sheets at the scale of 1:25,000. These even larger-scale sheets employed plane tabling and thus for some areas showed real contours (isohypses) instead of the hitherto merely tentative form lines. The advances over the British map series of the 1880s and the captured smaller-scale current British war maps were chiefly the updated and precise representation of settlements and traffic routes as well as some corrections on the topography like the bends of the lower Jordan river and the shores of the Dead Sea. While Vermessungsabteilung 27 diligently produced sheet after sheet for its series at scales 1:50,000 and 1:25,000, the Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme in Berlin aided with publishing revisions of the reduced-scale print of the Palestine Exploration Fund, such as the 1917 Karte von Mitteljudäa (= Map of Central Judaea) at the original scale of 1:168,960 (Fischer, 1940, p. 76). Although Vermessungsabteilung 27 in Nazareth was twenty-five times closer to the front than Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme in Berlin, this still proved to be too far behind the stalemate front for tactically needed almost real-time cartographic support of the fighting units. Therefore, it was decided to establish advanced field — 219 — Fig. 12. — For terrain representation the Sheet 59 Kalkilje, as is characteristic with the map series at scale 1:50,000, shows tentative form lines that for the most were taken from the surveys of the 1870s and the map series at scale 1:63,360 of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Updates of the terrain rendering were due to aerial photogrammetry and limited field surveys by Vermessungsabteilung 27. In contrast, the roads, railways, and the settlements were brought up to current status. The stagnant front line enabled that the shown edition of 13.07.1918 had already been the seventh edition since (likely) early April. Sheet Azzun 59 N.O. (see fig. 13) is the 1:25,000 enlargement of the NE quadrant of Sheet 59 Kalkilje. Note the German Christian settler colony Wilhelmina, which provided valuable local informants to the Survey Section 27, directly to the west of the railway line in the south. When issued in July 1918, the area in the southern half of the sheet was already occupied by British forces. This is indicated by the insertion of a rail line named Engl. Vollspurbahn (= English full-gauge railroad, in contrast to the Ottoman narrow-gauge railways) up to the centre of the sheet and an apparent rail gap (removed tracks) to the southernmost serviced Ottoman railhead Ras el Ain. The sheets of both map series 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 carry a block grid overprint to aid aerial navigation as well as artillery target direction [National Library of Israel, Maps, Pal 1248]. — 226 — Table 3 Map of Mesopotamia (and Syria) – 1:400,000 (plus two appendix series at 1:200,00). Medium-scale tactical map series of regions between southeastern Anatolia, et, Persia, and northern Arabia, twenty sheets in up to four editions plus three composite sheets Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme [= KA-KPL] or Kartographische Abteilung des stellvertretenden Generalstabs der Armee [= KA-sGA]: Karte von Mesopotamien (und Syrien) – scale: 1:400,000 – lithography – classified – ‘preliminary edition’. Production dates: 1916-18. B. Adana, May 1918 [KA-KPL] C. Tarabulus, May 1918 [KA-KPL] D. Damaskus, February 1918 [re-?]printed September 1918 [KA-KPL] E. Jerusalem, March 1918 [KA-KPL] 1b. Aleppo, May 1918 [KA-KPL] 1c. Hama, May 1918 [KA-KPL] 1d. Bosra, May 1918 [KA-KPL] 1e. Kaf, “November 1919” [sic! – likely print error] [KA-KPL] 2c. Der es-Sor, 1916 [KA-sGA] + December 1917 [KA-KPL] 3b. Mardin, May 1918 [KA-KPL] 3c. Ana, 1916 [KA-sGA] + February 1918 [KA-KPL] + February 1918 – bilingual German and Arabic [KA-KPL] 3d. Wadi Hauran, October 1917 [KA-KPL] 4a. Wan, October 1917 + January 1918 [KA-KPL] 4b. Mosul, July 1917 + August 1917 [KA-KPL] – see figs. 5 & 6 4c. Samarra, 1916 + 1916 update of SE quadrant only + May 1917 + October 1917 [KA-sGA] 4d. Kerbela, 1916 [KA-sGA] + February 1918 [KA-KPL] 5b. Urmija, November 1917 + July 1918 [KA-KPL] 5c. Suleimanije, 1916 + August 1917 but printed in 1918 [KA-sGA] 5d. Baghdad, 1917 + April 1917 + September 1917 + December 1917 [all KA-sGA] 6c. Kirmanschah, February 1917 [KA-sGA] Composite extracts from sheets 1b, 1c, 2c, 3c, 4c, 4d Karte des Euphrat von Dscherablus bis Felludscha, August 1917 [KA-KPL] Composite print from sheets 4d and 5d with parts of sheets 4c and 5c Samarra – Baghdad – Kerbela, August 1917 [KA-KPL] Composite print Baghdad – Samarra – Kerkuk, April 1918 [labelled ‘in the field’] Kartographische Abteilung der Königlich Preußischen Landesaufnahme: Karte von Nordbabylonien – scale: 1:200,000 – lithography – classified – ‘preliminary edition’. Production date: 1918. Blatt 6. Mendeli, January 1918 – see fig. 7 Blatt 9. Kut el-Amara, January 1918 Sheets adapted from the Ottoman series 1:200,000 on Anatolia Adana, July 1918 [KA-KPL] Biredschik, August 1918 [KA-KPL] Ma’asch, September 1918 [KA-KPL] Membidsch, 1918 [KA-KPL] — 227 — Table 4 Map of Palestine, 1:100,000, 1:50,000, and 1:25,000 (plus 1:168,960). Large-scale tactical map series of northern and central Palestine and Trans-Jordan, at scale 1:50,000 as base series in forty-one sheets plus very large-scale combat area reconnaissance series 1:25,000 in seven sheets and smaller-scale orientation derivatives (composite sheets) at 1:100,000 (and, for some areas, base for 1:250,000) Vermessungsabteilung 27: Karte von Palästina (series title often omitted on the sheets) – lithography – classified. Production dates: 1917-18. a) Scale: 1:168,960 (transitional from copying Palestine Exploration Fund map sheets to independent map series) No. 20a – Karte von Nordpalästina, 20.11.1917 No. 22 – Karte von Mittelpalästina, 30.11.1917 – see fig. 8 No. 115 – Ostjordanland Südl. Teil, 11.04.1918 (No. 115a, 10.05.1918, is a unique manuscript annotated version) b) Scale: 1:100,000 (reduced combined print from sheets of the 1:50,000 map series) No. 143a – Zusammendruck Tul Kerm – Jericho, 27.04.1918 + 16.07.1918 [= reduced combined print of 1:50,000 sheets 50-52 & 57-61 & 67-70] No. 172 – Zusammendruck es Salt – Amman, 27.08.1918 [= reduced combined print of 1:50,000 sheets 61-63 & 70-72] c) Scale: 1:50,000 (No. refers to production # within Vermessungsabteilung 27, Blatt refers to sheet # in series 1:50,000) No. 44a – Blatt 69 Jerusalem, 28.03.1918 No. 46b – Blatt 70 Jericho, 16.03.1918 + No. 140a – Blatt 70, 2nd improved edition, 23.05.1918 + No. 140b, 3rd improved edition, 01.08.1918 No. 47a – Blatt 68 Ramleh, 05.04.1918 + No. 139 – Blatt 68, 3rd improved edition, 17.05.1918 No. 51a – Blatt 60 Lubban, 18.04.1918 + No. 51b, improved edition, 18.05.1918 No. 52b – Blatt 50 Tul Kerm, 09.04.1918 + No. 52c, 4th improved edition, 30.04.1918 No. 60a – Blatt 80 Ain el Ruwer, 09.02.1918 + No. 60a, 03.07.1918 + No. 60b, 3rd improved edition, 09.07.1918 No. 63c – Blatt 61 ed Damje, 01.05.1918 + No. 149 – Blatt 61, 2nd improved edition, 21.06.1918 + No. 149a, 3rd improved edition + No. 149a, 4th improved edition, 31.07.1918 No. 65c – Blatt 59 Kalkilje, revised edition, 21.04.1918 + No. 65c, 17.06.1918 + No. 65d, 7th improved edition, 13.07.1918 – see fig. 12 No. 67 – Blatt 52 Tubas, 19.01.1918 + No. 67b, 19.06.1918 No. 67a – Blatt 71 Hesban, 10.04.1918 + No. 76c – Blatt 71, 4th improved edition, 10.07.1918 + No. 76d, 5th improved edition, 02.08.1918 No. 69a – Blatt 51 Nablus, 25.03.1918 + No. 69, June 1918 + No. 69b, 3rd improved edition, 25.07.1918 + No. 69d, 4th improved edition, 27.08.1918 No. 71a – Blatt 67 Nahr Rubin, 19.04.1918 + No. 71, June 1918 + No. 71b, 2nd improved edition, 10.07.1918 No. 76 – see under No. 67a No. 79 – Blatt 43 Dschenin, 15.02.1918 No. 82c – Blatt 42 Kaisarje, 05.05.1918 No. 86a – Blatt 62 es Salt, 08.04.1918 + No. 86c, 4th improved edition, 26.06.1918 + No. 86d, 5th improved edition, 05.08.1918 No. 97 – Blatt 53 Adschlun, 13.03.1918 No. 101 – Blatt 72 Amman, 19.03.1918 + No. 101b, 2nd improved edition, 24.06.1918 + No. 101c, 3rd improved edition, 27.08.1918 No. 102b – Blatt 63 Kalaat ez Zerka, 2nd improved edition, 10.07.1918 No. 105 – Blatt 54 Dscherasch, 23.03.1918 No. 107 – Blatt 45 et Tajibe, 23.09.1918 No. 111a – Blatt 34 Haifa, 1st improved edition, 11.07.1918 No. 118a – Blatt 35 Nazareth, 23.05.1918 No. 120 – Blatt 46 Deraa, 24.09.1918 No. 125 – Blatt 55 el Mefrak, 01.05.1918 — 228 — No. 126 – Blatt 58 Jaffa, 01.05.1918 + No. 126a, 2nd improved edition, 06.07.1918 No. 127 – Blatt 79 Bethlehem, 30.04.1918 No. 128 – Blatt 78 Bet Dschibrin, 01.05.1918 No. 129 – Blatt 47 Dschize, 03.05.1918 No. 131 – Blatt 44 Besan, 07.05.1918 + No. 131, improved edition, 01.09.1918 No. 133 – Blatt 48 Bosra, 11.05.1918 No. 135 – Blatt 39 Chirbet el Razale, 12.05.1918 No. 136 – Blatt 64 el Hallabat, ???.1918 No. 139 – see under No. 47 No. 140 – see under No. 46 No. 144 – Blatt 69 Jerusalem, 2nd improved edition, 12.06.1918 No. 149 – see under No. 63 No. 152 – Blatt 82 Kalaat Ziza, 22.06.1918 No. 153 – Blatt 77 Dschulis, 14.06.1918 No. 154 – Blatt 76 Wadi el Hesi, 25.06.1918 No. 166 – Blatt 36 Tiberias, 25.07.1918 No. 167 – Blatt 38 el Mzerib, ???.1918 No. 168 – Blatt 90 Ain Dschidi, ???.1918 No. ? [not printed on sheet] – Blatt 37 Mkes, 02.09.1918 No. ? [not printed on sheet] – Blatt 81 Madeba, no date [1918] d) Scale: 1:25,000 No. 169 – Blatt Wilhelma. 59. S.W., 12.08.1918 No. 174a – Blatt Rafat. 59. S.O., 1st improved edition, 15.09.1918 No. 176a – Blatt Abwen. 60. S.W., 1st improved edition, 15.09.1918 No. 178a – Blatt Sabje. 59. N.W., 1st improved edition, 15.09.1918 No. 180 – Blatt Muannis. 58. N., 08.09.1918 No. ? [not printed on sheet] – Blatt Azzun. 59. N.O., 18.08.1918 – see fig. 13 No. ? [not printed on sheet] – Blatt Jafr. Haris. 60. N.W., ???.1918 Table 5 Untitled map series at scale 1:250,000 of northern Palestine, northern Trans-Jordan and southern Syria, some sheets do not fit into a series grid, closely related to the series ‘Map of Palestine’ (see tab. 4). Vermessungsabteilung 27: Untitled – scale: 1:250,000 – photo-lithography – classified. Production dates: 1917-18 No. 23 – Samaria, 01.12.1917 + No. 108, 15.04.1918 + No. 108a, 29.05.1918 + No. 108b, 17.07.1918 No. 27a – Palästina-Karte Nördl. Teil, 15.12.1917 No. 57 – Hauran, 12.01.1918 + 31.01.1918 + No. 57a, 03.04.1918 + No. 57b, improved 2nd edition, 16.07.1918 – see figs. 10 & 11 No. 70 – el Maschatta, 01.02.1918 + 04.02.1918 + 23.02.1918 No. 75 – ed Dschafar, 10.02.1918 + 27.02.1918 No. 87 – Damaskus, 27.02.1918 + No. 87a, 19.07.1918 No. 100 – Hermon, 20.03.1918 + 03.07.1918 No. 108 – see under No. 23 No. 130 – Galiläa, 06.05.1918 — 229 — REFERENCES Nota bene: the carto-bibliographic details included in tables Nos. 1-5 have been taken from personal inspections of the listed maps by the author. In some cases, the listed map title in the tables by intention is different from citations in the references below. Alt, A. (1920). Aus der Kriegsarbeit der deutschen Wissenschaft in Palästina. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 43(3-4), 93-108. Espenhorst, J. (2016). A good map is half the battle! The military cartography of the Central Powers in World War I. In E. Liebenberg, I. J. Demhardt & S. Vervust (Eds.), History of military cartography (5th international symposium of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography, 2014) (pp. 83-130). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Fischer, H. (1940). Geschichte der Kartographie von Palästina (Fortsetzung und Schluß). Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 63(1-2), 1-111. Goering, W. (1925). Begleitworte zur Übersichtskarte von Palästina. In G. Dalman (Ed.), Hundert deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palästina (pp. 123-124). Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann. Holzhausen, R. (1937). Die Tätigkeit der Vermessungsabteilung 27 in Palästina. Mitteilungen des Reichsamts für Landesaufnahme, 13, 166-175. Neumann, G. P. (1920) (Ed.). Die deutschen Luftstreitkräfte im Weltkriege. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn. Pope, S. & Wheal, E.-A. (2003). Dictionary of the First World War. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military Classics. Rehm, E. (2020). Wertvolle Kopien. Gipsabgüsse altorientalischer Denkmäler in Deutschland. Münster: Zaphon (suppl.). Reichsarchiv (1933) (Ed.). Der Weltkrieg 1914-18. Neunter Band: Die Operationen des Jahres 1915. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn. Reichsarchiv (1936) (Ed.). Der Weltkrieg 1914-18. Zehnter Band: Die Operationen des Jahres 1916 bis zum Wechsel in der Obersten Heeresleitung. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn. Reichsarchiv (1942) (Ed.). Der Weltkrieg 1914-18. Dreizehnter Band: Die Kriegführung im Sommer und Herbst 1917. Die Ereignisse außerhalb der Westfront bis November 1918. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn. Schulz, G. M. (2012). Der Einsatz und die Erfolge der Fliegerabteilung 304b in Palästina. Blätter zur Geschichte der Deutschen Luftund Raumfahrt, XIX, 89-93. von Moltke, H. (1841). Briefe über Zustände und Begebenheiten in der Türkei aus den Jahren 1835 bis 1839. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn.