Palestine acquired its name from the Mediterranean immigrants who came from the southern Greek Islands in the 12 lh century B.C., and were known as the "people of the sea". In the old Egyptian scripts, they were referred to as the P.L.S.T, the N was added later possibly to pluralize the noun; they are referred to as the Philistines. The land, previously known as the Land of Canaan, took the name of the new settlers and came to be known as Palestine. Throughout the centuries of Muslim rule, Palestine had been an integral part of a larger geographical unit, Bilad Al-Sham or Greater Syria, as a sub-district or "Jund" in the language of that time. The sub-district of Palestine embraced a larger area than the
present one. The new boundaries were set during the time of British colonization (1918-1948), and on the bases of the
Sykes-Picot agreement between France and Britain that divided the territories of the disintegrated Ottoman State.