Jerusalem 1900: The Holy City in the Age of Possibilities 9780226188379

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jerusalem 1900

jerusalem 1900

The Holy City in the Age of Possibilities

vincent lemire Translated by Catherine Tihanyi and Lys Ann Weiss

the university of chicago press chicago and london

www.centrenationaldulivre.fr The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2017 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America Originally published in France as Jérusalem 1900. La ville sainte à l’âge des possibles, by Vincent Lemire © Armand Colin, Paris, 2013 ARMAND COLIN is a trademark of DUNOD Editeur, 11 rue Paul Bert, 92240 Malakoff 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17

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isbn-13: 978-0-226-18823-2 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-18837-9 (e-book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226188379.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lemire, Vincent, 1973– author. | Tihanyi, Catherine, translator. | Weiss, Lys Ann, translator. Title: Jerusalem 1900 : the Holy City in the age of possibilities / Vincent Lemire ; translated by Catherine Tihanyi and Lys Ann Weiss. Other titles: Jérusalem 1900. English Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Translation of: Jérusalem 1900 : la ville sainte à l’âge des possibles. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016033493 | isbn 9780226188232 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226188379 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: Jerusalem—History—19th century. | Jerusalem—History— 20th century. | Urban anthropology—Jerusalem. | Municipal government— Jerusalem. Classification: lcc ds109.925 .l4613 2017 | ddc 956.94/42034—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033493 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

To Robert Ilbert, citizen of the Mediterranean

When history tries to rebuild, to reconstitute what in the past was the way of life, the way of perceiving the world, the way of living relationships with others, one must keep in mind that the people of the past had a future that may be called the future of the past, which forms part of our own past. Yet a great part of the future of the past was never realized. People of the past had dreams, desires, utopias that make up a reservoir of unrealized meaning. An important aspect of the rereading and revision of the transmitted traditions thus consists in discerning the promises not fulfilled by the past. The past is not only events, what happened and can no longer be changed (a very inadequate definition of the past), but something that remains alive in memory, thanks to what I might call the arrows of the future that were not shot or whose trajectory was interrupted. In this sense, the unrealized future of the past perhaps makes up the richest part of a tradition. —Paul Ricoeur, “Identité narrative et communauté historique,” Cahiers de politique autrement (October 1994)

contents

List of Maps and Illustrations Acknowledgments

xiii

Translators’ Note

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Introduction: The Year 1900, the Age of Possibilities Forgotten History A Moment to Delineate, a Period to Define The Causes of Failure The Causes of Forgetting Why Remember? An Itinerary 1.

2.

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1 2 3 5 7 10 12

The Underside of Maps: One City or Four Quarters? A Rough-Cut Cartography External Boundaries, Internal Fractures Language, Citizenship, Property: Some Useful Concepts Inside and Outside City Walls The Four Quarters: A Late and Exogenous Topography The New City: Mixed Neighborhoods and Jewish Neighborhoods Summary: Of People and Places

15

Origins of the City as Museum Turning One’s Back on the Modern City Lament over the Tomb-City A City Becoming Unreadable From Scholarship to Archaeology

39

vii

17 18 19 21 26 30 32

41 42 44 46

viii

3.

4.

5.

6.

contents

Reconstructing Christ’s Jerusalem Toward an Intimate History of Archaeology and Pilgrimage Biblical Archaeology: “No Return” Inventions

48

Still-Undetermined Holy Sites Maurice Halbwachs as Advance Scout Localization and Designation How to Construct a Holy Site: The Example of the Garden Tomb Global and Structural Uncertainty Original Hybridity

56

The Scale of the Empire Ottomanism: A Defense against Fracturing Identities? The Seraglio People: Imperial Administration in Jerusalem Countering the Image of the “Turk’s Head”: A Gallery of Portraits September 1, 1900: Imperial Jubilee in Jerusalem The Road Network: A City Opened Up, a Region Ottomanized The Railway: A Jewish Contractor, French Capital, and Muslim Inauguration Ottomanism and Shared Urbanness: Drinking Water for All

77

The Municipal Revolution Origin of the Municipality: An Urban Community? Garbage Collection and the Municipalization of Urban Powers Elected Council Members: Citizens, City Dwellers, and Property Owners Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, the Founding Mayor At the Heart of Municipal Action: The Defense of Public Space Urbanites All? Public Health, Leisure, and Municipal Finances

102

The Wild Revolutionary Days of 1908 What Time Was It in Jerusalem? The Wild Days of August 1908: Jerusalem’s Forgotten Revolution

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50 52

58 59 61 67 70

80 82 85 89 92 94 98

104 107 109 112 116 120

127 132

contents

Unexpected Fracture Lines New Vectors of Lively Public Opinion Underneath Communities, Classes? 7.

ix 136 138 141

Intersecting Identities Albert Antébi, Levantine Urbanite An “Arab Awakening” in the Chaos of Battle Jerusalem and the Parochialism of the “People of the Holy Land” Jerusalem, the Thrice-Holy City, and the Municipium

145

Conclusion: The Bifurcation of Time The Bird People Ben-Yehuda, the Outsider Toward a Shared History

163

Notes

171

Bibliography

191

Index

199

147 151 154 158

164 165 168

m a p s a n d i l l u s t r at i o n s

maps 1.

The seven names of neighborhoods used in the Ottoman censuses of 1883 and 1905 28

2.

Population density in the various quarters of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century 36

3.

Pierre Loti in Jerusalem, 1894

4.

The construction of Christian holy sites

5.

The Ottoman administration in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century 78

40 57

table 1.

The population of Jerusalem inside and outside the walls (1800– 1914) 25

figures 1.

Map published in 1881, showing that the representation of the city in four quarters took hold gradually 16

2.

Map drawn during the mission of Charles Wilson (1864–65)

3.

Map drawn by Conrad Schick in 1894–95, based on actual data of that time 24

4.

David Roberts, view of Jerusalem, 1841 (Library of Congress)

5.

The Garden Tomb around 1900 (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 62

6.

The Garden Tomb and its surroundings

xi

64

23

45

xii

m a ps a nd illustr ations

7.

Ali Ekrem Bey, governor of Jerusalem, with Sheikh Salam Ibn Saïd, at Beersheba, 1906–8 88

8.

The fountain dedicated on September 1, 1900 (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 90

9.

The new railroad station in Jerusalem, inaugurated in 1892 (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 95

10.

The inauguration ceremony for the new aqueduct, held on the afternoon of November 27, 1901, in the Yemin Moshe quarter, near the Sultan’s Pool (Archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Conrad Schick Papers) 100

11.

Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi during the inauguration ceremony of November 27, 1901 (Archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Conrad Schick Papers) 113

12.

The municipal hospital of Jerusalem (1891), photographed during the 1920s (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 122

13.

Solemn entrance of the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, into Jerusalem on October 31, 1898 (Library of Congress) 124

14.

The clock tower at Jaffa Gate (1907), seen from outside the walls (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 128

15.

The pavilion of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (1912) and its director, Boris Schatz, across from the Jaffa Gate 130

16.

The Austrian post office, established in the 1870s, across from the citadel of the Jaffa Gate (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 139

17.

Charity sale organized in 1917 at the Notre-Dame-de-France nursing home for the benefit of the Red Crescent to help war victims. Albert Antébi stands on the right (Library of Congress, Matson Collection) 156

ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s

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his book grew out of a course taught to undergraduate history majors at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée between 2008 and 2010. My warm thanks to these students for their willingness to listen and for the unexpected questions they asked, which helped move this research forward. Thanks also to Frédéric Moret, Valérie Theis, Fabienne Bock, Geneviève Bührer-Thierry, Loïc Vadelorge, and to all my colleagues in the seminar Comparative Analysis of Powers (ACP / EA 3350), who supported this project throughout. In Jerusalem, the hospitable team of the Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem (CRFJ / CNRS-MAE USR 3132) made it possible for me to regularly spend time on the ground and in the archives. I am especially grateful for the support of its successive directors, Dominique Bourel, Sophie Kessler-Mesguich, Olivier Tourny, and, currently, Julien Loiseau, and also to Lyse Baer and Laurence Mouchnino, who extended such a gracious welcome to visitors. Thanks to the first editor of this work, Caroline Leclerc, who made it possible that my manuscript became the book published in French by Armand Colin (2013). Thanks to Priya Nelson for welcoming this work to the University of Chicago Press, which will give it a larger audience in the English-speaking world. Thanks to Catherine Tihanyi and Lys Ann Weiss for translating the book into English. Thanks to Lys Ann Weiss and Ellen Kladky for their outstanding editorial work on the English version. Thanks to Robert Ilbert, my dissertation supervisor, who continues to inspire our way of thinking about the notion of urbanity, between Alexandria and Jerusalem. And thanks to Patrick Boucheron for his loyal and demanding friendship, which, over the last twenty years, has been irreplaceable. While writing is a solitary pursuit, research can only be conducted

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ack now ledgments

through encounters, supports, involvements, helping hands, and encouragement. Thus I would like to cordially acknowledge those with whom I crossed paths over the last twenty years at my lectures, reflections, and conversations, and also those who helped me in Jerusalem to walk as peacefully as possible on the sometimes perilous slopes of that sacred city. Although there are many, everyone must be named: Katell Berthelot, Vincent Azoulay, Charles Enderlin, Pierre-Yves Saunier, Jean-Luc Pinol, Khader Salameh, Maurice Sartre, David Kessler, Esther Benbassa, Christian Ingrao, Valérie Hannin, Gadi Algazi, Marius Schattner, Marie-Armelle Beaulieu, Ronnie Ellenblum, Rashid Khalidi, Dan Bitan, Taline Ter Minassian, Emmanuel Laurentin, Denis Charbit, Johann Büssow, Haïfa Khalidi, Yusuf Natsheh, Helena Rigaud, Philippe Artières, Benjamin Barthe, Denis Bocquet, Anouk Cohen, Elias Sanbar, Salim Tamari, Issam Nassar, Michael Mahler, Leïla Shahid, Jean-François Pérouse, Meron Benvenisti, Adel Budeiri, Hanna Borne, George Hintlian, Daniel Rivet, Quentin Deluermoz, Michelle Campos, Laurence Américi, Serguey Loktionov, Katerina Stathi, Frédéric Abécassis, Nora Lafi, Roberto Mazza, Marie-Alpais Torchebœuf, Abla Muhtadi, Jean-Pierre Filiu, Serife Eroglu, Manea Erna Shirinyan, Jonas Sibony, Gaëlle Collin, Marie-Christine Bornes-Varol, Guillaume Vareilles, Jens Hanssen, Gudrun Krämer, Mahmoud Yazbak, Arman Khachatryan, David Labude, Henry Laurens, Françoise Lemaire, Menachem Klein, Jean-Michel de Tarragon, Mohammed Safadi, Abigail Jacobson, Dominique Trimbur, Samer Melki, Agathe Brillet, Elena Astafieva, Emmanuelle Giry, Raed Bader, Lucette Valensi, Bérangère Fourquaux, François Dumasy, Musa Sroor, Irène Salenson, Aurélia Smotriez, Huda al-Imam, Hervé Barbé, Philippe Bourmaud, Alain Dieckhoff, Sonya Mirzoyan, Beshara Doumani, Efraïm Levy, Lora Gerd, Bernard Heyberger, Manoël Pénicaud, Menachem Levin, Béatrice Hérold, Joseph Confavreux, Jonathan Rokem, Hassan Ahmed Hassan, Yaron Ben-Naeh, Emeline Rotolo, Erkal Unal, Amnon Cohen, Nufan al-Sawariah, Emre Uçaryigit, Anne Leblay-Kinoshita, Guy Stroumsa, Flavia Ruani, Stefania Ruggieri, Agamemnon Tselikas, Merav Mack, Önder Bayir, Chloé Rosner, Amos Reichman, Moti Ben-Ari, Dario Ingiusto, Vanessa Guéno, Mohammed Adnan al-Bakhit, Reuven Amitaï, Raja Khalidi, and Anne Kazazian. Each and every one of these people has crossed the path of this research, from Paris to Jerusalem and beyond; each has nourished this book by giving tips for reading, criticisms, instructions, invitations, requests, and shared experiences. The core team-members of the European Research Council project Open Jerusalem (“Opening Jerusalem Archives, for a connected history of ‘Citadinité’ in the Holy City, 1840–1940”) have considerably nourished this re-

ack now ledgments

xv

search with their advice and suggestions. Thus, thanks to Stéphane Ancel, Yasemin Avci, Leyla Dakhli, Angelos Dalachanis, Abdulhameed al-Kayyali, Falestin Naïli, Yann Potin, and Maria-Chiara Rioli. Without a doubt, the results of this large, collective, sincere, fluid, and itinerant investigation will allow the contemporary history of Jerusalem to be further renewed and disclosed in the years to come (www.openjlem.hypotheses.org).

t r a n s l at o r s ’ n o t e

Q

uotations in the text are drawn, wherever feasible, from published English-language editions; where no English-language edition was available, the translations are our own.

xvii

introduction

The Year 1900, the Age of Possibilities

Time forks perpetually towards innumerable futures. In one of them, I am your enemy. — Jorge Luis Borges

W

hen setting out to discover an unknown city, you have to travel light. You need to shed your preconceived notions and stereotypical images in order to perceive another reality. To set out on the discovery of “Jerusalem 1900,” the bare minimum of baggage you need to carry can be summed up in just a few lines: At the end of the nineteenth century, Jerusalem was a part of the Ottoman empire. Since 1872 it had been the administrative capital of a district called “Kudüs- i Sherif” or “Filastin” in the imperial archives. It had 20,000 inhabitants in 1870 and 70,000 on the eve of World War I. The walled part of the city was barely one square kilometer; perched at an altitude of roughly 760 meters atop the Palestinian ridge that runs across the region from north to south. The first European consulates opened up in the 1840s, and Western pilgrims became numerous from the 1880s on. Jerusalem was the common cradle of the three monotheistic religions and contained major holy sites for the faithful from all over the world. Its inhabitants were Jews, Muslims, and Christians, but also shopkeepers, teachers, engineers, and stone cutters. The Zionist movement was officially founded in Basel in 1897, and Jewish immigration to Jerusalem quickly increased. At the end of the nineteenth century, the city modernized and established autonomous municipal institutions. For the holy city, it was the “age of possibilities,” a moment largely forgotten today, buried under the rubble of wars and the noise of ideological quarrels.

1

2

introduction

FORGOTTEN HISTORY This historical moment is difficult to define without falling into nostalgia and the trap of legendary history. Yet there are some pathways to it. The period was marked by a degree of equilibrium within the urban community of Jerusalem, a measure of harmony among its inhabitants, a sort of urbanity that linked the different segments of the city’s population.1 This moment flourished in the context of Ottoman imperial rule, which began in Jerusalem in 1517 and lasted until 1917, when it gave way to occupation followed by the British Mandate. It was also a time of some secularization in the urban life of the three- times- holy city, a process fed by a greater porosity of identity affiliations and the relative plasticity of religious sites of memory. Identities, territorial markers, and borders were not frozen as they are today. All of this outlines an urban society that was more fluid, more open, with looser traditions that, thanks to their ambiguous nature, were less offensive. This period was not a magical parenthesis, because history does not unfold in parentheses. It was anything but a “golden age,” because a golden age is essentially a “gilded age” as told by earnest chroniclers. In fact, this history has been largely forgotten, as no one remembers or wants to remember. For the historian, then, it is no more than an “age of possibilities,” but one that we must take account of as a tipping point in the chronology, a pivotal moment when, for some years, the horizon was still open. This short and subtle entre-temps, or interval, allows us to tell another history of the holy city, one based on still little- known municipal archives, on figures that had remained in shadow, on some surprising episodes that belie the image of a holy city that was essentially immobile, in conflict, and fragmented.2 If it was really a “between- time,” then we ought to be able to distinguish it from what preceded and followed. In the years around 1900, Jerusalem was not just a collection of disparate and disputed holy places, and it was not yet a field of maneuvers for nationalist struggles or for the interests of the great powers. During its ephemeral Belle Époque, Jerusalem was not merely an open- air biblical museum, a mosaic of sanctuaries more or less solidly anchored to sacred texts, and it had not yet reached the tipping point into the geopolitical chronicle of its fixed battles. From this point of view, this book aims to set itself apart from a teleological vision of Jerusalem’s history: the kind of “telephone history” in which an unbroken phone line links the era of the Crusades to the territorial partition of the city in 1948 and all the way to today’s rifts. This traditional history of the holy city was a deterministic history, pointing to its own ending and told by stringing together mechanical causalities like beads on a necklace. Yet, by

the yea r 1900

3

placing ourselves on the balancing point of the years around 1900, we find nothing to show that the tragedy was already under way and the city’s fate already determined. Between the “sanctuary city” and the “battleground city” there was another city, and this fleeting period has left its traces. This history sketched itself out in the uncertainty of a troubled time, but archives exist that bear witness to this forgotten moment.3

A MOMENT TO DELINEATE, A PERIOD TO DEFINE It is hard to capture this historical moment within the safe boundaries of chronology. Of course, the “moment” in question does not simply balance on the thin line that separates two centuries: “Jerusalem 1900” is not limited to the year 1900. Rather, this historical moment lasted several years, or perhaps several decades, depending on whether it is defined with greater or less precision. Digging deep, we can see the first indications of an urban consciousness with the early establishment of a municipal institution in Jerusalem in the mid-1860s, on the initiative of members of the local elite. Following this institutional chronological timeline, we can fix its endpoint halfway through the British Mandate when, in 1934, the breakup of the municipal council into two distinct entities, one Jewish and the other Arab, marked the unrecognized but decisive preamble to the 1948 territorial partition of the city. This is the chronological frame of this history in its broadest version: from the mid-1860s to the mid-1930s, thus for about seventy years, a functioning, inter- community municipal institution administered the common affairs of all the inhabitants of the holy city.4 This historical fact, largely ignored in the historiography, is worth reporting on its own merits. The sharing of municipal responsibilities was obviously not perfect, but it did indeed exist, and it resonates strangely today, at a time when the splitting up, or “sharing out,” of Jerusalem lies at the heart of discussions on the future of the Middle East.5 If we constrain the chronology in order to examine the phenomenon more closely, and to give it greater density and coherence, we may note that the 1880s provide us with municipal archives that are thenceforth continuous, and which reveal a holy city spreading out from behind its ancient walls. Outside the walls a new city was emerging, whose modernity contrasted with the closed- in image of the old city. By the end of the 1890s almost half the population resided outside the walls, in contrast to barely 10 percent two decades earlier. At the other end of the chronology, we must remember that the taking of Jerusalem by General Allenby in 1917 and the establishment of the Mandate in 1922, far from encouraging the expression

4

introduction

of a shared urban consciousness, instead favored the splintering of religious identities, especially as a result of administrative regulations for individual religious assignment imposed by the Mandate authorities.6 These four decades, from the 1880s to the beginning of the 1920s, were indeed a time of another history of Jerusalem, for at that time the dividing lines of urban society moved away from traditional community identities in favor of other solidarities and other conflicts. As we come even closer to our chronological target, a whole series of events draws our attention. First, an inventory in the style of Jacques Prévert— that is, one neither exhaustive not exhaustively analyzed— may stir our imagination. Let us begin with the 1890s. The opening of the first train station in the holy city in 1892 was a decisive event in the city’s history and its relationship with the world: the new rail line put Jerusalem only a few hours away from Jaffa and the Mediterranean, thus eliminating long days of travel by camel or horse- drawn carriage. Two years later, in 1894, after thirty years of debate, English Protestants created the “Garden of the Tomb,” an alternative, open- air Holy Sepulcher intended to compete with the one traditionally consecrated by various Catholic and Orthodox churches. This episode, among many others, evidenced the uncertainty that still surrounded most holy sites in Jerusalem.7 In 1896, the move of the municipal offices to a brand- new building, on the boundary of the old city and the new, bore witness to the rise in power of the municipal institution and helped reinforce the centrality of the Jaffa Gate neighborhood, the beating heart of the rapidly expanding modern city.8 This process accelerated over the next decade. In 1900, during the jubilee of the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II, several new public buildings were opened by an urban community that was becoming increasingly visible. The following year, in 1901, the renovation of the hydraulic canals was likewise the occasion for numerous ceremonies in which all the inhabitants of the city participated, whatever their religious affiliation.9 In 1907 the installation of an enormous, four- sided clock made it possible to display from then on a shared and secularized time beyond the rhythms of each community’s prayers. In 1908, at the time of the “Young Turks” revolution, the scenes of popular rejoicing and countless speeches that accompanied the reestablishment of the Ottoman constitution also gave a picture of a city in motion, open to the flow of ideas running through the world at that time. Finally, in 1909, building on the enthusiasm of the preceding year, entrepreneurs from all the city’s communities set up a Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Jerusalem. Reading the monthly bulletins published by this new institution, we find repeated appeals to “fellow citizens of Jerusalem” and

the yea r 1900

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to the “city’s taxpayers,” but also to “good citizenship,” the “vital interests of the population,” and “public opinion”— a vocabulary we might not have expected to find blooming on the sanctified pavement of the holy city.

THE CAUSES OF FAILURE Before venturing on the study of this forgotten page of the city’s history, we must first address some major objections that might seem persuasive to readers. The first of these presents as a historical enigma: if Jerusalem enjoyed such harmony during those years, how can we explain its fall, from the end of the 1920s on, into the chaos of intercommunal conflicts? First, we must emphasize, right from the start, that there is no question of painting an idyllic portrait of a peaceful city blessed with a web of respect and mutual consideration between its inhabitants. Jerusalem around 1900 was, like all urban societies, a place crisscrossed by conflicts, competition, and power relations.10 The aim of this book is not to mask these antagonisms but to show that these conflicts did not yet happen along the fracture lines between communities that we see nowadays. The strength of Christian anti-Judaism, the complex positioning of the various Jewish communities regarding the Zionist project, the fundamental ambiguity of “Ottomanized” Arab elites toward the authorities in Istanbul, and the porosity of identity structures that were as yet poorly defined: all these facts, very often ignored or underestimated, show an urban society that was not necessarily peaceful but where the distribution of power opened up a wide range of “historical possibilities.”11 This objection, which views the deterioration of the situation in the 1920s as evidence of an essential fragmentation natural to Jerusalem’s urban society, reveals profound blindness on the part of some researchers. In the face of the political disaster that has engulfed the holy city today, it is difficult to avoid a deterministic reading of the events. To open our eyes to a truly contemporary history of the years around 1900 in Jerusalem— that is, a direct history, as far as possible unaffected by the magnetic fields of later events— we must shed the mechanistic vision of history. A history in the present tense, one “without tomorrow”: this forms the substance and the fragility of this thing that I call, for want of a better term, “Jerusalem 1900.” Some historians recently have taken up the techniques of “uchronia,” a counter- factual or alternative history, by attempting to write and rewrite history with “ifs” and unexpected bifurcations.12 This is not the intent here, but we can retain from those attempts a view of a history suspended in its own time, marked by the past but not yet constrained or polarized by

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introduction

the future. The resulting history would thus be “para- factual” rather than “counter- factual,” a history of possibilities that would take into account the different horizons of an era by attempting to systematically delete possible future events.13 The purpose would not be the abstract pleasure of theoretical experimentation but rather a pragmatic stance to try to perceive phenomena that have been undervalued or rendered invisible by a fatalistic reading of events. This being said, we must still respond to the provocative question asked above: why this failure? Why did this fragile equilibrium between the various communities break down so rapidly with the British Mandate? Part of the answer is contained in the question itself and brings us back to the historical responsibility of the Mandate authorities themselves. The historian Catherine Nicault has pointed out the responsibility of British policy, which, in her view, “breaks with the previous subtle systems of balance and equilibrium and irremediably compromises urban cohesion.”14 If one aim of the present book is to reassess the regulating role of Ottoman officials in Jerusalem before 1917, another is to emphasize the responsibility of the international community and the Mandate authorities for the rapid degradation of the situation in Palestine and Jerusalem from the 1920s onward.15 One of the original contradictions of the Mandate lay in the confrontation of a colonial type of occupation with the necessity of accepting the constraints of nascent international law as proposed by the League of Nations. Moreover, Lord Balfour’s promise in November 1917 of a “Jewish home” in Palestine, together with a long- held policy of more or less open support for various Arab nationalist movements, inevitably contributed to frustration and lack of understanding in each of the affected parties.16 If the fate of the holy city was not set in stone in the years around 1900, then the point of the major historical forking must lie later in the chronology: in August 1914, when the Ottoman empire decided to ally itself with Germany and Austria against the Allied powers.17 Even without giving in to the dangerous siren songs of counter- factual history, it is hard not to wonder what the fate of Palestine and of Jerusalem would have been if the Ottoman empire had been among the victors at the end of the war. The Balfour Declaration in November 1917, which approved the advance of British troops into Palestine, would have been impossible in the context of an Ottoman alliance with the Allied powers. To put it more directly: my aim here is to show, first, that the degradation of the situation in Jerusalem from the 1920s on was due less to internal factors than to external geopolitical causes, and second, that for this reason it is dishonest to seek the primary

the yea r 1900

7

cause of later rifts in the internal structures of the urban society of the 1880s or 1900s, as if one were digging up the roots of evil.

THE CAUSES OF FORGETTING A second objection also needs to be addressed. This one takes the form of an enigma that is more historiographical than historical: Why has this unique period been forgotten to such an extent? Why has it been overlooked both in historiography and by the political leaders of the holy city? This is a strong objection, indisputable from a factual viewpoint, and it precludes the use of “golden age” for the period of interest here, as this exceptional episode lacks historians and memoir- writers interested in keeping its memory alive. There are two reasons for this lack. First, we must not forget the difficulty of accessing sources. There is an enormous amount of administrative documentation for the period, but most of it is in Ottoman Turkish (an old form of Turkish written in Arabic characters) and is only accessible to a few Ottomanist researchers.18 Moreover, these scholars have to cover an immense field of research, given the vast size and long duration of the Ottoman empire, which lasted more than six centuries, from 1299 to 1923. In recent years, after a long period of ignoring this heritage, Turkey has attempted to reclaim its Ottoman history by training an increasing number of students in Ottoman paleography. Gradually, many towns of the empire have come out of the shadows, thanks to the research undertaken in the Istanbul archives.19 As for myself, I have had the opportunity to work for more than fifteen years with a Turkish historian, Yasemin Avci, using archives kept in Istanbul and also the volumes of deliberations of the municipal council of Jerusalem that exist for the period from 1892 to 1917.20 These documents offer us a gold mine of unpublished information on the practical administration of the territory and the urban society during those years. To explain fully, I must specify that the Ottoman archives of the municipality of Jerusalem were not accessible until 1993 due to the risks of the political and military situation on the ground.21 Faced with the difficulties of access to local sources,22 most historians tended to rely on more accessible documents, especially pilgrims’ travel narratives and consular archives produced by diplomatic representatives stationed in Jerusalem from the mid- nineteenth century on.23 These documents, which take an outside view of the city, tinged at best with a well- meaning orientalism and at worst with a total contempt for local reality, have helped bias perceptions of the city before World War I. These external sources, even though fascinating, tell us more about the rep-

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introduction

resentations of the Holy Land circulating in Europe than about the actual conditions of daily life inside the urban community of Jerusalem.24 In addition to the difficulty of accessing the sources, there is yet another factor to be addressed. If historians have prioritized Western sources without really attempting to overcome the linguistic obstacle of the Ottoman archives, it is because they found in the Western sources exactly what they were looking for: the image of an immobile city, frozen in its traditions and fragmented by irreconcilable religious conflicts. Such historiographical denial can be explained in several ways. First is an orientalist tradition that, by essentializing the “Islamic city,” radically isolating it from urban and Western issues and ideas, and denying it any sort of political vitality and juridical personality, put in place and maintained the idea of an unbridgeable chasm between “Islamic civilization” and the notion of an urban government. The “Islamic city” in this view was by its nature a composite of different communities and clans.25 The historian Ruth Kark, for instance, adopts this popular view by stating that “the concept of urban government is usually nonexistent in the Islamic world.”26 In a more recent work, she even claims that, in the specific case of Jerusalem, “it is very difficult to find evidence of the inhabitants’ identification with the city.”27 This denial of the city’s urban identity, shared by many historians, is evidently an essential obstacle to a better understanding of this historical reality.28 To this first, historiographical reason I must add one of a narrower, ideological nature. For traditional Israeli historiography, it has for a long time been crucial to describe the Ottoman era as a static period, thereby cultivating the image of a “land without people for a people without land.”29 This dominant discourse has even at times been adopted by certain historians who have built up their reputation by denouncing the excesses of traditional Zionist historiography.30 Tom Segev, who in several of his works has undertaken a radical reexamination of traditional Israeli historiography,31 offers this surprising description of Palestine at the end of the Ottoman period: Palestine was a rather remote region of the Ottoman Empire with no central government of its own and few accepted norms. Life proceeded slowly, at a pace set by the stride of the camel and the reins of tradition.32

After seeing hundreds of files of Ottoman administrative archives produced at that time in Jerusalem, one cannot help but be surprised by such a caricature. However, we have to keep in mind that this passage reflects the generally held view of late Ottoman Palestine. In this case, it is all the more

the yea r 1900

9

significant that this description comes from a historian definitely viewed as a leftist in Israel. Yet it would be inaccurate to reduce this historiographical denial to a crude neo-colonialist view. Arab nationalist historians, too, have contributed to keeping up the “black legend” of the Ottoman period in Jerusalem. Indeed, we too often forget that the first era of Palestinian nationalism, at the end of the nineteenth century, was not shaped as a reaction to the Zionist threat, which was still distant and in its infancy, but rather was in line with the global anti- imperial views of the anti-Ottoman “Arab awakening.”33 The Palestinian historian Adel Manna has highlighted this persistent misunderstanding: The Ottoman legacy is condemned both on the plane of collective memory and on that of the nationalistic historical narrative because of Arabs’ negative experience under Ottoman power, particularly from the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid (1876–1909) on. This sort of generalization, stemming from a nationalistic ideological view, has obscured the real history of the whole of the region, including Jerusalem.34

In recent years, the “new Palestinian historians” have grasped the stakes, historical and political, of reevaluating the positive role of the urban Ottoman bourgeoisie and of the municipal institutions established at the end of the nineteenth century.35 Now, the time is right to unveil another history of Jerusalem in the years around 1900. The public too seems to have the desire to discover this new history of the holy city, one closer to the inhabitants and their daily life and less polarized by the endless religious conflicts. This probably explains the success of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s recent “biography” of Jerusalem. The author devotes a great deal of space to lived anecdotes, and he defends a fresh view of the history of Jerusalem in his introduction. Montefiore aims to shed light on the complexity of identity schemes (“a hybrid metropolis of hybrid buildings and hybrid people”), to reject a teleological perspective (“I have tried to avoid teleology— writing history as if every event were inevitable”), and to reevaluate the role of the Arab and Ottoman periods (“The life of the Muslim city from Mamluks to the Mandate has been neglected”). This corresponds to the three lines of renewal necessary for the historiography of the holy city.36 However, even though there is some historiographical progress across Montefiore’s work, it remains beholden to traditional schemas. The first four parts of the book are called “Judaism,” “Paganism,” “Christianity,” and “Islam,” which shows quite clearly that religious categories

10

introduction

still structure his approach. His treatment of the different periods also lacks balance: out of 671 pages, the section devoted to the four centuries of the Ottoman period (1517–1917) takes up all of 24 pages. The narrative also falls into the teleological perspective, with the end of the Ottoman empire described only as a long agony, starting in the 1730s.37 Finally, the descriptions of the city in the nineteenth century use the most hackneyed representations: “a provincial Ottoman town, usually governed by a scruffy pasha who resided in a ramshackle seraglio. ”38 He still perceives Jerusalem at the end of the Ottoman period as a city frozen in its archaisms and with Westerners as the sole agents of modernization. Jerusalem had at least two faces . . . the gleaming, imperial edifices, built by the Europeans . . . existed alongside the old Ottoman city where black Sudanese guards protected the Haram and guarded condemned prisoners whose heads still rolled in public executions.39

As we can see, it is still a long way to a genuine renewal of the history of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century.

WHY REMEMBER? There is one last preliminary objection to be raised, which is possibly the most sensitive and the most essential one of all: Why should we remember? Why should we document this forgotten history? What meaning could an alternative vision of Jerusalem at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have? First, we can assert a simple “duty to history,” which needs no further justification than this: archives exist, they bear witness to an overlooked reality, there is no reason to pass them over in silence. From this point of view, this book will not escape the common rule: its significance will be formulated and reformulated by its readers according to their own contexts and needs. But where am I myself coming from, as people used to demand of speakers in the political demonstrations of the 1970s? While I worked on a dissertation on the history of hydraulic infrastructures in Jerusalem during the years 1840 to 1948, I spent several long years in the archives of both West and East Jerusalem, including Ottoman and Mandate municipal archives; the Central Zionist Archives; the archives of the Islamic waqfs in Abu Dis; the archives of the Maktaba al-Khalidiyya, the library founded by the Khalidi family in 1899; private archives; and archives of religious congregations, as well as archives in many other places, such as Istanbul, London, Nantes, and Geneva.40 In the process I came across many

the yea r 1900

11

documents that seemed to me to be out of sync with the fragmented view of the city’s history most often depicted in the enormous available bibliography.41 The hydraulic prism was what helped me see this mismatch: wells, springs, and cisterns are always meeting- places, for dialogue and for business, whatever tensions may exist within a community. These documents, properly organized and completed with others, allow me to propose another view of Jerusalem’s urban society in the years around 1900. In this way, we can break away from the notion of an “irremediable” history, of an “irreversible” conflict, a notion that predominates in presentday analyses of Jerusalem and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In truth, this notion has little historical value because all histories are reversible, remediable in the true sense of the word; no conflict lasts forever. History teaches us that anything that has been constructed can be undone. By showing that identities in Jerusalem have not been “for all time” the source of wars and conflict, and that the positions taken have been affected by countless aleatory factors, we can extricate ourselves from this ahistorical vision of an eternal conflict without beginning or end, a conflict literally existing “outside of time. ” The political stakes of a historiographical renewal are evident. Let us take this last objection a bit further: is it a question here of giving in to nostalgia, to a somewhat desperate temptation to endow the past with a more optimistic glow, so as to be better able to stand the hardships of the present? This book has the opposite aim: to say no to a “postcard” type of history, no to freezing Jerusalem’s past into a sepia folklore, in order to show, in contrast, the troubling presence of a period that at first sight might appear as a simple, enchanted parenthesis. Indeed, Jerusalem occupies a central position in the structuring of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its future prospects. “Jerusalem 1900,” a time of shared administration of the holy city, far from being an antique object on the dusty shelves of empathetic history, can on this basis rise to genuine reality and even, perhaps, a certain legacy. Within the framework of negotiations for a definitive peace accord between Palestinians and Israelis, the fate of Jerusalem forms part of essential issues, including the right of return of refugees, the drawing of boundaries, the moving out of the settlers, and, in particular, hydraulic concerns. Regardless of the framework of negotiations, discussions on the final status of the holy city revolve around the more or less unavoidable notion of Jerusalem as “capital of two states,” a position officially reconfirmed by the twenty- seven states of the European Union in December 2009.42 This perspective leaves only two options: either a territorial division of the city— that is, a new partition along a line of separation following that of

12

introduction

the ceasefire of 1949–67 or zigzagging more or less between neighborhoods said to be “Palestinian” and those said to be “Israeli”— or else an institutional division of its administration within the framework of a municipal entity distinct in some respects from the territory under Israeli control, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a future territory under Palestinian control. This would be a shared municipality, a “capital for two states,” administered jointly by political representatives elected by the whole of the population of the municipal territory, of which the geographic boundaries and the extent of its jurisdiction would of course form the essential stake of the negotiations. Let us not delude ourselves. This second option is not a naive utopia; it is in fact much more realistic and pragmatic than the option of a territorial division of the city, a division that has become impracticable due to increasing Israeli implantation within the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. In the perspective of a “capital for two states,” it might well be that the memory of the mixed municipality of the years 1870– 1930, a model of conflict resolution within an urban society, could once again become relevant and come to the fore. The historian does not work outside of the time of history in motion, and it is also this question of the institutional future of the city that gives meaning to my work here. “Jerusalem 1900” might be a history without a tomorrow, but perhaps it has the possibility of a “day after tomorrow,” one century later . . .

AN ITINERARY In order to uncover an unknown city, you have to choose an itinerary. This is not a simple matter in the case of “Jerusalem 1900,” because the reality of the period is hidden under our imaginary creations and our present projections: Jerusalem is a city of flesh and stone, but also of ink and paper. More than any other city in the world, Jerusalem has been described and narrated by countless passing travelers. Before we can study the “real city,” we must first clear the ground by examining the “dreamed city.” This is the subject of the first three chapters of this book. To take the measure of these layers of texts superimposed on Jerusalem, we will begin by studying its cartographic representations (Chapter 1: “The Underside of Maps: One City or Four Quarters?”) before analyzing the deep logic that helped transform the city into a vast museum of biblical times, at the end of the nineteenth century (Chapter 2: “Origins of the City as Museum”). To understand how the sites of religious memory gradually become structured, we will call upon the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs who, in the 1930s, was the first

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to attempt an overall reading of this vast patrimonial work site (Chapter 3: “Still-Undetermined Holy Sites”). To resituate Jerusalem in its imperial Ottoman context, we will then seek to get acquainted with the “people of the Seraglio,” the Ottoman officials and administrators who managed the city day by day and initiated the first works of modernization (Chapter 4: “The Scale of the Empire”). The urban community of Jerusalem in the years around 1900 was not limited, however, to its Ottoman administration. Members of the local elites of all faiths supported the municipalization of urban powers in order to bring about a genuine shared public space, a process propelled by outstanding personalities (Chapter 5: “The Municipal Revolution”). The “Young Turks” revolution of 1908 allows us to observe the rise of a public opinion that was to be henceforth integrated, and to emphasize that public debate in the Jerusalem of the time was not yet polarized along religious lines (Chapter 6: “The Wild Revolutionary Days of 1908”). Finally, we will try to map the identity positioning of Jerusalem’s citizens in the face of the growing Zionist project and the parallel emergence of Palestinian Arab nationalism (Chapter 7: “Intersecting Identities”). At the end of this itinerary, “Jerusalem 1900” does indeed look like a city at the crossroads, whose fate seems to waver between alternative scenarios. This uncertainty, these “contingent futures,” could be the starting point of a shared historical reference even as the holy city finds itself today at a new turn of its history.

chapter one

The Underside of Maps: One City or Four Quarters?

If the Old City is divided on today’s maps, in Hebrew as in the European languages, to the four nineteenth- century introduced community quarters and not to quarters which existed along centuries, it is because the foundations of its modern cartography were laid by people who came from outside and not from the city itself. — Adar Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period”

“H

ow many parts to Jerusalem?” This is often the general reader’s reaction to current works on the holy city, which, even before discussing its location and history, begin by splitting it up into four pieces, presenting the reader with four rectilinear segments, painstakingly drawn as if they were four apple slices neatly arranged on a dessert plate (“Jewish,” “Christian,” “Muslim,” and “Armenian” quarters). Each of these presumed quarters is drawn in a different bright color. The choice of colors might vary, but the intention is always the same: the city is compartmentalized, and care is taken so as not to go over the supposedly inherent dividing lines (fig. 1). Jerusalem, the object of the study, even barely broached is already dismembered. The rhetoric is always the same, artful but misleading: to grasp the “complexity” of the three- times- holy city, we are told, we must first understand its “diversity.” In reality, however, this praiseworthy statement of intent is followed by the opposite process: the complexity of population dynamics in the different parts of the city is set aside to give way to a simplistic classification resembling a childhood puzzle in four colors.

15

Figure 1. Map published in 1881, showing that the representation of the city in four quarters took hold gradually, at this point still with some differences compared to standard present- day representations. The quarter called here “Mahométan” (“M,” in the northeast) comprises the row of mosques, but also the area situated in front of the Wailing Wall; the “Jewish” quarter (“Quartier Juif,” indicated by “J,” to the south) is reduced to the remaining area, deprived in its eastern part of access to the Wailing Wall.

the u nderside of m a ps

17

A ROUGH- CUT CARTOGRAPHY In both travel guides and scholarly works, Jerusalem is usually presented as the juxtaposition of four clearly identified sections: the “Muslim quarter” in the northeast part of the old city, the “Christian quarter” in the northwest, the “Armenian quarter” in the southwest, and the “Jewish quarter” in the southeast. To these is generally added the location called the “Haram esh-Sharif,” the “Esplanade of the Mosques,” “Mount Moriah,” or “Temple Mount,” depending on the author’s affiliations. The new city, which grew up outside the walls in the 1860s and already held half the total population in 1900, usually does not feature in this first cartographic contact, probably because it differs too much from the assumed expectations of the reader. As for the city within the walls, the description of these “quarters” varies from one work to another, and the order of priority reveals more or less subtly the authors’ political choices or religious affiliations. Thus, some writers begin with the “Muslim quarter,” which had the largest number of inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century. Others arrange the quarters following the order of revelation of the major monotheistic religions (Jewish quarter, then Christian quarter, then Muslim quarter), with the Armenian quarter usually relegated to the end of the list, regardless of the order of description, and contradicting the notion of a “Christian quarter” that would logically include it. Still other authors, particularly those belonging to the European Christian tradition, lead with the “Christian quarter” and then more briefly devote a few paragraphs to the other sections of the city, presumed to be less interesting to their readers. At times, instead of starting with locales, the city is introduced in terms of its “communities,” roughly portrayed on the sole basis of religion (“the Christians,” “the Muslims,” “the Jews”). Whether referred to as “quarters” or “sectors” or “communities,” the vocabulary is that of a city divided and compartmentalized into a certain number of “zones” with impermeable boundaries. This way of describing the holy city, at the outset of most of the works devoted to the city’s history, leads immediately to a view of urban society that locks out any further questions. Even the authors most determined to include some of the gains of recent historiography end up, as if by reflex, organizing their analyses on the division of the city into crudely drawn ethno- religious communities.1 Yet the quadripartite division of Jerusalem, far from being an eternal given of the city’s geography, is a relatively late cartographic invention plastered on Jerusalem by European observers. Deconstructing this simplistic

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view is thus a necessary preliminary to analysis. If we accept these categories as a framework of understanding, it becomes impossible to account for the complexity of the issues that crisscross the history of the holy city.2 To gain a better understanding of the sites, we must first clear the ground of landmines by unearthing the simplistic, yet tenacious, markers set, ever since the nineteenth century, by Western pilgrims and explorers ignorant of local realities. This process of deconstruction is crucial in a city of pilgrimage and tourism that does not really belong to itself, or rather that belongs to temporary visitors as much as to its permanent residents. Jerusalem is as much a city of “ink and paper” as of flesh and stone— a “textual” city crisscrossed by texts and intertexts, as probably all cities are, but infinitely more so because of its central position in the imagination of monotheistic religions.

EXTERNAL BOUNDARIES, INTERNAL FRACTURES We may begin by emphasizing how the vision of a city divided into four hermetic sections prevents us from seeing the fracture lines within each of these supposed “communities.” Confrontations during the nineteenth century that set Eastern against Western Jews, secular against religious Jews, Jews native to Jerusalem or Palestine against immigrant Jews— confrontations that go a long way to explain the internal dynamics of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem— were erased for the benefit of an artificial vision of a “community” assumed to be united or unified. Place names locally used at the end of the nineteenth century in some neighborhoods said to be Jewish, such as Haret el-Halabiyya (Allepine quarter) or Haret el-Bukharriya (Bukharan quarter), already provide clues to these internal differences. The same goes for the supposed “Christian community”— a disparate collection of Greek and Russian Orthodox; Copts; Jacobite Syrians; Roman Catholics and Greek Uniate Catholics; German, English, and North American Protestants; and Ethiopians, Maronites, and Melkites, to mention only the main categories distinguishing the different houses of worship of Christianity, which at times confronted each other physically within the very walls of the sanctuary they claimed to be common to all, the Holy Sepulcher. The community called “Muslim” was just as varied, being divided between the two main historical branches of Islam: the Sunni (who were the majority in Palestine) and the Shiites, with the addition of Ismaelis and Druzes (the latter a Middle Eastern variant of the former), whose presence in Palestine for a long time had major consequences in political and geopolitical terms. In the old city of Jerusalem, local toponyms such as Haret

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19

el-Masharqa (Easterners’ quarter) in the northeast, Haret el-Magharba (Maghrebians’ quarter) in the south, or Haret es-Saltin (quarter of the inhabitants of the city of Salt), also in the south, testify to the geographic origins of the different Muslim groups of the city and reveal the cultural and ethnic diversity among Jerusalem’s Muslims, and how much that diversity is still a part of the collective memory of the inhabitants themselves. These internal fractures within communities are familiar to most researchers, and have long been the subject of numerous and accessible studies. They are even brought up in works about Jerusalem, as an aside to a narrative or a folkloric description. Yet, while this should prevent the artificial blending of such disparate entities, the old city of Jerusalem still keeps on being cut up into four rectilinear and homogeneous communities, offered to readers at the expense of common sense. Even though deconstructing this essentialist cartography should be the first task of conscientious historians, so many of them, out of laziness, imitation, or, more rarely, sheer ignorance, keep on reproducing ad nauseam the same vulgarized version. In so doing they contribute to the continuing existence of this simplistic schema and share in the responsibility of solidifying the barriers said at present to be unbreachable between those supposed communities.3

LANGUAGE, CITIZENSHIP, PROPERTY: SOME USEFUL CONCEPTS Before embarking on this necessary deconstruction, we may emphasize here and now that alternative categories can be mustered to provide a view closer to the lived reality of Jerusalem’s inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century. For instance, we can highlight the linguistic relationships among urban dwellers of Arabic language and culture, by grouping together Muslim and Christian Arabs, and, at least until World War I, certain Jews of Arabic culture and language. 4 In addition to linguistic relationships, the geographic and cultural origins of the inhabitants also come into play. For instance, we may distinguish natives of Jerusalem (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) from recent immigrants, who represent, after all, a category commonly used in Europe, both in the past and today. By doing so, we can bring to the fore legal distinctions that determined access to Ottoman citizenship, and hence property rights, voting rights, and military conscription. In the same way, we can start to perceive some affinities and porosities, which certain consulates had begun to make use of by the end of the nineteenth century: for example, between Russian Orthodox Christian immigrants and Russian Jewish immigrants;

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or between English Jewish immigrants and Anglican missionaries; between Jewish and Christian (mainly Baptist and millennialist) immigrants from the United States; and finally, between some important families of Lebanese, Syrian, or Jordanian origins, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Also relevant are some robust socioeconomic categories used by social scientists, such as access to real property ownership, which, from the 1860s on, was no longer directly linked to individual religious affiliation, but remained tied to Ottoman citizenship until the mid-1870s. Here we would need to stress the crucial legal distinction between Ottoman citizens, regardless of their religion, who had access to real estate ownership and the vote, and noncitizens, who were denied such access.5 In the context of a city subject to heavy immigration, categorization in terms of nationality and the figures that can be derived from this are useful in helping us understand, for example, why Greek Orthodox Christians, who had been Ottoman citizens for centuries, were able to build power based on extensive real property ownership, from which they still benefit today, while other Christian inhabitants of the city were for centuries prevented from owning real property in Palestine and in Jerusalem. These same legal categories help us understand the lack of balance between the overall population and the body of voters, and grasp the reasons for the lower representation in municipal institutions of the more recent Jewish and Christian arrivals at the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, there are the broader distinctions, familiar to social and urban historians, between the rich and the poor, between secular and religious, between artisans and intellectuals, and of course between the inhabitants of the old walled city who did not have to pay property taxes and the inhabitants of the suburbs who did (although the latter were sometimes free of them in certain situations). To really understand the history of Jerusalem, especially in the years around 1900, we must mobilize all these categories, which internally crosscut the artificially constructed divisions between three or four hastily labeled “religious communities.” The mere mention of some of those criteria of internal differentiation within each of the three great monotheistic religions shows that the list of the “four quarters” of the holy city is at best approximate and at worst totally false, for it masks the social reality of the urban community of Jerusalem around the turn of the twentieth century. It obviously reassures present- day readers, as it corresponds to the present system of categorization, but it typically stems from anachronic analyses. Pasting a present- day schema onto a past situation prevents us from grasping the singularity of a given historical context.6

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INSIDE AND OUTSIDE CITY WALLS Before embarking on the history of the recent four- way labeling of the old city, we must focus on the primary demographic change of the late nineteenth century in Jerusalem: the expansion outside the walls. If there is one incontestable fact about the years from 1880 to 1910, it is the phenomenon of new construction outside the walled city, which had multiple and longterm consequences: for taxation and electoral participation, but also on the symbolic and socio- economic planes, and even for city planning, given the many technical challenges posed by this new city. The causes of the building of this new city were simply demographic. The holy city— which had numbered 10,000 inhabitants in 1800, about 15,000 in 1850, and a bit more than 20,000 in 1870— grew to some 45,000 inhabitants in 1890 and to 70,000 on the eve of World War I.7 The population that increased sevenfold over barely more than a century very soon could no longer fit inside the old city, which measured only 1,000 meters by 800 meters, scarcely one square kilometer. Between 1880 and 1900 the new city of Jerusalem was born and grew up outside the walls, and in less than twenty years it came to hold half the total population. By the end of the 1880s the missionary press was bemoaning the extension of the city outside the walls, viewing it as the gradual erasing of the “biblical Jerusalem,” a notion that was in any case largely a fantasy. In 1889, a correspondent for the monthly La Terre Sainte noted: The holy city keeps on expanding; on the road to Jaffa, houses touch one another more than a kilometer from the walls. . . . They’re going to build a railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem. So I think that in a few years Jerusalem will be a city of one hundred thousand souls.8

The increasing densification of the neighborhoods outside the walls thus appeared to be in full swing by the end of the 1880s: a “new city” made of row houses sprouted in just a few years. In 1889, this expansion led the authorities to cut out a new gate at the northwest corner of the old city, exactly on the axis of development of the new city. In 1898, on the occasion of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s visit to Jerusalem, the walls were even breached around the Jaffa Gate, on the western side of the old city, to allow the emperor’s carriage to get through. We must fully understand the significance of these two breaches in the walls originally built by Suleiman, the first since their construction in the sixteenth century: the city was opening up

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to the outside. It literally reached outside itself to become a “new city,” as it was called at the time by local sources, one that expanded west, toward the sea. To accurately measure the stages of development of the city outside the walls, one must examine the plans of the city drawn up at that time. 9 The map drawn by the British mission led by Charles Wilson in 1865 shows no building outside the walls except the Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the first development built by the British philanthropist Moses Montefiore starting in 1855 in front of the Jaffa Gate, and the hill called the “Russian quarter,” which held the official Russian consular buildings from 1857 on; a few hundred inhabitants at most resided in these new neighborhoods (fig. 2).10 During the 1870s the building process outside the walls gained momentum— for instance, with the founding in 1874 of the Me’ah She’arim neighborhood— so that in 1881, just before the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine, it is estimated that some 2,000 persons were residing outside the old city,11 which corresponded to only about 6 percent of a total population of 30,000. In 1890, thanks to data from Ottoman censuses conducted from 1883 on, it is estimated that about 12,000 people were living outside the walls, or a bit more than 25 percent of a total population of about 45,000. The map drawn by Conrad Schick in 1894– 95 gives the measurement of the space that was henceforth referred to as the “new city” of Jerusalem (fig. 3).12 In 1897, when the economic crisis brutally interrupted real estate speculation, there were about 25,000 people outside the walls, which corresponded to almost half of the total population of about 55,000. This ratio remained fairly constant until World War I; in 1914 there were almost 70,000 inhabitants in Jerusalem, of whom 35,000 lived outside the walls. Thus, it really all played out in less than twenty years, between 1880 and the end of the century. The population settled outside the walls increased during this brief period from 2,000 to 25,000, from about 6 percent of the total population in 1880 to 50 percent in 1897 (see table 1). These numbers shed light on the impact of this trend. The three- timesholy city, which for centuries was concentrated within narrow walls and where all the inhabitants lived in close proximity to holy sites and to traditional centers of power, was literally cut in two so that in less than twenty years an entirely new city emerged, located to the west of the walls, which very quickly came to hold half the total population. The inhabitants of this new city, who came from all the religious communities, did not enjoy the same rights as real estate owners of the city inside the walls, with regard to tax status, military service obligations, and voting rights. The inhabitants

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Figure 2. Map drawn during the mission of Charles Wilson (1864– 65), on which there is not yet any dwelling outside the walls except for the Russian quarter in the northwest (1) and the first building of the Mishkenot Sha’ananim in the southwest (2), near the Sultan’s Pool.

of the old city, like those of Mecca and Medina, were in theory exempt from land taxes and military service because of the special status of the holy city. It must be noted that in the 1870s the exemption from military service applied to Muslims as well as to non-Muslims.13 The splitting of Jerusalem between old and new city in terms of build-

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Figure 3. Map drawn by Conrad Schick in 1894– 95, based on actual data of that time.

ings, of the socio- economic profile of the inhabitants, and of the regulations governing their lives makes it possible to qualify the significance of labeling the quarters of the old city as four ethno- religious compartments: aside from its lack of relevance, we must point out that the quadripartite division of the city disregards the most important change that affected Jerusalem from the end of the nineteenth century onward. This change, which led to the distinction between the old and the new city, was due in great part to the arrival of successive waves of immigration from various Jewish communities starting in the 1880s. We may state here and now that the split that gradually opened up in the twentieth century between what is called

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table 1. The population of Jerusalem inside and outside the walls (1800–1914)

Year

Total Population

Population Outside Walls

Percentage Population Outside Walls

1800

10,000

—

—

1850

15,000

—

—

1881

30,000

2,000

6

1890

45,000

12,000

26

1897

55,000

25,000

47

1914

70,000

35,000

50

at present “West Jerusalem” and “East Jerusalem”— that is, between Jewish Jerusalem and Arab Jerusalem— followed the line of separation between the old city and the “new city.” The articulation of these two urban entities, notably around the Jaffa Gate, during the years 1880– 1920 helped drive the development of a shared urban identity, thanks to a degree of secularization of lifestyles and the emergence of an urban middle class. This zone of contact, a factor in the dynamism of these years, gradually became a zone of friction in the 1930s until the partition of the municipal institution in 1934 into two distinct entities, one Jewish and one Arab, presaged the future division of the city at the end of the 1948 war. That the administrative building, built in 1896 on the exact junction of the old and new cities facing the Jaffa Gate, found itself between 1948 and 1967 on the line of demarcation (green line) separating the Israeli positions and the Jordanian positions is from this standpoint very suggestive. As a point of junction between the old and the new city, between the city of sanctuaries and the secularized city, between the city with an Arab majority and the city with a Jewish majority, the mixed administration of Jerusalem became, from the 1930s on, a point of tension, until it splintered into two distinct entities in 1934 and literally exploded under the joint assaults of the Israeli armed forces and the Arab legions during the 1948 war. A key institution of an urban cosmopolitan community during the years around 1900, the municipal institution became, during the years of the British Mandate, a place of confrontation between two national communities in the process of polarization (see chapter 5). The fate of the municipal administration building itself, abandoned after 1949 as it was, in the middle of the no man’s land that separated Israel from Jordan, matches the historiographic fate of the urban community as a whole: abandoned in a memory hole dug by the struggle of two competing nationalisms.

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THE FOUR QUARTERS: A LATE AND EXOGENOUS TOPOGRAPHY Until the 1920s, local administrative sources show much porosity between the supposed boundaries separating the “quarters” of the city. Consulting the fiscal archives of the Ottoman period, one finds that they negate the traditional view of a quadripartite city and show the “tradition” of the four quarters to be in reality a recent and exogenous view constructed by Western travelers during the nineteenth century. This so- called “traditional” representation comes not from the distant past but rather from the recent history of the city and illustrates one of the structuring givens of Jerusalem’s history. Very often, the origins of commonly held traditions should not be sought far back in a dark, distant, and thus unavoidably foggy “original time,” but are rather to be found in the recent past of the city, at the moment of its Western reinvention, which was generally played out during the nineteenth century when most of the traditions that are widespread today were set in place and stabilized. For present purposes, a simple diachronic analysis of dozens of plans of the city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offers decisive evidence for our argument: before 1837, cartographers did not assign any ethnoreligious categories to any given part of the city.14 Most of the maps focused on the old city, and when they did refer explicitly to the “new Jerusalem,” they only showed some of the holy sites that were then famous (much fewer than at present) and the placement of the dwellings of the “modern city,” without any ethnic and religious notation. It is important to note that the first occurrence of a quadripartite division occurred in 1837, around the same time as the opening of the first European consulate in the holy city (the British consulate, in September 1838). Further analysis of the available maps of the following period shows that the quadripartite division only became set from the 1860s on. As to the representation of the city in four distinct colors, it seems to have first appeared on a German map published in 1853, and was destined for a promising future. 15 Until the mid- nineteenth century, varied toponyms were used to designate the different parts of the city. Most often these were biblical toponyms expressed according to the fashion of the times (Bethesda or Bezetha, Acra, Moriah were the most common) and more rarely indigenous toponyms, variously located on different maps (Harret Bab- el Hitta and Harret el-Moghariby, for instance, on the fine map of Jerusalem drawn by C. W. M. Van de Velde in 1858). The diachronic study of the maps of the city produced by Europeans in the nineteenth century clearly shows that the division of the city into four homogeneous

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quarters is a late practice that is not based on any previous cartographic tradition. So what about local sources? Adar Arnon, in a seldom- cited article published in 1992, shows the strong interweaving of the various quarters of the city at the end of the nineteenth century, using data provided by Ottoman fiscal censuses of 1883 and 1905.16 He first notes that the question of what would be the most appropriate map correctly representing the city of Jerusalem “has so far not been the object of any academic discussion.” He then states that if the old city of Jerusalem is at present divided into the four communities’ quarters invented during the nineteenth century, and not according to local place names used for centuries, it is because the foundations of the modern cartography of the holy city were laid by external observers and not by the inhabitants of the city itself.17 Arnon here expresses a very straightforward idea, but one rarely exploited by historians using cartographic material: maps and plans are not neutral representations but must be subjected to the same type of critical analysis that texts receive; maps are no more “objective” or more exact than textual sources, they each express an individual perspective on observed reality. The case of Jerusalem is, as so often, a magnified illustration of this phenomenon. The figures in the 1905 census challenge the notion of four quarters, each with a homogeneous population (map 1). For instance, in 1905, in the al-Wad neighborhood, located just northwest of the Haram and an integral part of the so- called “Muslim” quarter as it is commonly represented, there were more Jewish heads of households (388) than Muslim (383)! Symmetrically, in the Bab el-Silsila neighborhood, right in the heart of the so- called “Jewish” quarter, 548 heads of families were Muslim, while 711 heads of families were Jewish. These two statistics, extracted from the census tables of the Ottoman administration, speak volumes on the supposed homogeneity of these neighborhoods. One last example: in the neighborhood of Sa’diyya, east of the Damas Gate and thus in the heart of the so- called “Muslim” quarter, there were 124 Christian heads of families and 161 Muslim ones.18 Clearly, when working with endogenous sources, we find that there is no ethno- religious homogeneity within the four supposed “quarters” of Jerusalem. A synthesis of these divergences in the 1905 survey from what is thought of as the “norm” shows that 29 percent of Muslim families lived in the so- called “Jewish” quarter, 32 percent of Jewish families lived within the so- called “Muslim” quarter, and 24 percent of Christian families lived within this same “Muslim” quarter. The numbers speak for themselves. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the four “quarters” of Jerusalem did not match tıhe socio- demographic reality of the city.19

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Map 1. The seven names of neighborhoods used in the Ottoman censuses of 1883 and 1905.

What do older descriptions of the city tell us? One of the best known and most complete is by Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n, written in Jerusalem at the end of the fifteenth century. This author, a native of Jerusalem and a qadi (judge) of the city, mentions not four but nineteen neighborhoods or harat within the walls. If we try to match these various toponyms to the quadripartite division of the city, we see many more divergences than convergences. In the quarter now labeled as “Muslim,” not one of the six toponyms reported by Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n directly or indirectly links to this religion: Haret el-Ghuriyya, from the name of a Jordanian tribe; Bab Hutta, “neighborhood of the Gate of Forgiveness”; Haret el-Masharqa, “neighborhood of the Orientals”; Bani Zayd, from the name of a Bedouin tribe; Bab al-’Amud, “Gate of the Column”; Mazarban, “neighborhood of the Bath.” In the so- called “Christian” quarter

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in the northwest of the city, we discover successively neighborhoods called Bani Murna (from the name of a Yemenite Arab tribe), Ez-Zara’na (from the name of another Arab tribe), Bab es-Sarb (“Gate of the Serbs”), and Haret elJawalda (“neighborhood of the tanners”). Out of the five toponyms used by Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n for the so- called “Christian” part of the city, only one refers directly to Christianity: Haret en-Nasara (“neighborhood of the Christians”), very small and located immediately behind the Holy Sepulcher. In the so- called “Jewish” quarter in the southeast of the city, we again find five toponyms, four of which refer to non-Jewish traditions: Haret esSaltin, “neighborhood of the people from Salt” (a city located in presentday Jordan); Haret esh-Sharaf, from the name of the mausoleum of Sharaf al-Din Musa, located nearby; Haret el-’Alam, the name of ‘Alam al-Din Suleiman, brother of the preceding Sharaf; Haret el-Magharba, the “neighborhood of the Maghrebians.” Only one of these toponyms specifically connects to Jewish inhabitants, that of Haret el-Yahud (“neighborhood of the Jews”), very small and quite close to the Zion Gate (Bab Sihyun). Finally, in the so- called “Armenian” quarter, two toponyms are divergent (Haret Bani el-Harit, from the name of a Bedouin tribe, and Haret ed-Dawiyya, from the name of an Arab tribe). Only one place name refers to Armenian tradition: Dir el-Arman, the “monastery of the Armenians.” Counting the nineteen neighborhoods identified by Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n around 1480, we can see that three are convergent with the present quadripartite division, while sixteen are neutral or divergent with respect to this “tradition.” Of course, place names did change during the Ottoman period— some new names appeared, some were forgotten— but there is no indication of any process of ethno- religious polarization of the toponymy during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Ottoman censuses of 1525, 1533, and 1554, for instance, simply add to the list just given the neighborhoods of Dara’na (from the name of a Jordanian tribe), Maslakh (“neighborhood of slaughterhouses”), and Bab elQattanin (“Gate of the Cotton Merchants”). The exogenous nature of the “traditional” division of Jerusalem into four categories also becomes apparent in a travel guide aimed at Arabic- speaking Christians, published in Jerusalem in 1890 by the Franciscan press.20 Out of the seventeen neighborhood names listed in this guide, we find a certain number of toponyms inherited from the beginning of the Ottoman period, as well as some newer place names, but only four refer to religious communities. It thus seems that the chasm between place names assigned by Westerners and toponyms of local origin does not stem from religious barriers (between a toponomy inspired by the Judeo-Christian tradition, on the one hand, and a Muslim- inspired toponomy, on the other), because this

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guide was compiled by Christians, aimed at Christians, and financed and printed by the Catholic Franciscans of Jerusalem. What distinguishes the place names collected in this guide from those transmitted by Western maps is that the former come from a local tradition transmitted by the Arabic language, while the latter represent an imported tradition. The chasm is precisely (and logically, since it involves place names) a cultural and linguistic gap rather than a religious one. Western visitors and pilgrims, massively ignorant of Arabic and concerned to put forward an ancient biblical toponymy, simply pass over in silence the place names used locally. If we look again at the registers of the censuses from the latter years of the Ottoman period (463 registers for the whole of Ottoman Palestine for the years from 1883 to 1905, currently archived in the Israel National Archives), this time not for the geographical distribution of the various families but rather for how the quarters of the old city of Jerusalem were officially denominated, it is once again clear that the quadripartite division does not appear at all in local usage. Between 1883 and 1905, in organizing the censuses of inhabitants of the old city, officials used the following seven place names, listed here in a counterclockwise direction, beginning at the northeast side of the old city: Bab Hutta, Sa’diyya, Bab al-’Amud, Nasara, Sharaf, Silsila, Wad (map 1). Out of these seven place names only one refers specifically to an ethno- religious community (Nasara, “Christian neighborhood,” located right around the Holy Sepulcher). It should be noted that these sources refer to daily administrative practice and that census officials logically chose the place names most frequently used by the whole of the population. We may also note that these local place names had a long life ahead: The historian Aref al-Aref, who was mayor of East Jerusalem after 1948, used these same seven place names for the various neighborhoods of the city in his Histoire d’Al-Quds, published in 1951.21 “At the present time,” wrote Adar Arnon in 1992, “the Arabic- speaking population of Jerusalem, especially that which lives inside the Walls, still uses, alongside of the prevailing four modern quarter-names, also the names of the old harat of the city.”22 Visitors trying to find their way among the narrow streets of the old city and asking for directions from the locals will quickly realize that these seven place names are still useful to know!

THE NEW CITY: MIXED NEIGHBORHOODS AND JEWISH NEIGHBORHOODS Could we make a quick attempt at a similar analysis for the new city, outside the walls? The issue is different, since all the buildings of the new city

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were constructed after 1855, with the process accelerating from the 1880s on, as we have seen. Ottoman fiscal censuses of the period 1883– 1905 tell us of a new and unstable situation. Still, the manner in which the different parts of the new city were named and the actual distribution of the population within these neighborhoods provide valuable information on the degree of diversity in the new city before World War I. Looking first at the twenty- five neighborhood names used by local officials to locate the inhabitants of the new city, we find that only four refer to an ethno- religious reality: Bukhariyya, “neighborhood of Bukharian Jews”; Habash, “Ethiopian neighborhood”; Yahudiyya, “neighborhood of the Jews”; and Isra’iliyya, “neighborhood of Knesset Israel.” The twenty- one other toponyms refer to functional elements, having to do with the landscape or patronyms, such as Birka, “neighborhood of the Basin”; Masabin, “neighborhood of the soap factories”; Manshiyya, the name of the public park inaugurated in 1892; Mahkeme, “Tribunal neighborhood”; Shifa, “neighborhood of health services” (located near the municipal hospital, built in 1891); Baq’a, “neighborhood of the plain”; Talbiyya, from the name of a landowner, Talib. It must be noted that some of these place names remained in current use until 1948, and some are still in use today (Talbiyya, Baq’a, and Musrara, for instance), but with the departure of a large portion of the Arab- speaking population after the 1948 war, most of these place names fell into disuse and were forgotten. If we now turn from the names of the neighborhoods to the ethnoreligious identities of the people who lived in them, on the basis of the 1905 census, we can see two apparently contradictory tendencies, depending on whether we look at the scale of the new city as a whole or the scale of the various neighborhoods. In the new city seen as a whole, the 1905 census shows that 75 percent of the population claimed to be Jewish, 15 percent Christian, and 10 percent Muslim. At first glance, the ethno- religious homogeneity of the new city appears to be quite strong. However on the scale of the various neighborhoods (which was that of the daily life of the inhabitants themselves), reality was more varied. At the northwest end of the new city, at a distance of one kilometer or more from the old city, around Mahane Yehudah in particular, the population was almost exclusively Jewish (between 94 percent and 99 percent, depending on the neighborhood). In contrast, diversity was the rule in all the neighborhoods located near the old city, whether to the north of the Damas Gate (30 percent Jewish, 29 percent Christian, and 41 percent Muslim), or immediately west of the Jaffa Gate, around the Basin and the Mamilla cemetery (51 percent Jewish, 41 percent Christian, and 8 percent Muslim), or farther south in the neighborhoods of

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Talbiyya, of the railroad, and of Baq’a (32 percent Jewish, 47 percent Christian, and 21 percent Muslim).23 Taking into account the population density in the various neighborhoods of the new city helps to explain these contrasts: the fairly poor Jewish neighborhoods of the northeast part of the city, where the most recent immigrants were concentrated, were very densely inhabited by a homogeneous Jewish population. However, the large residential neighborhoods inhabited by various middle classes and located closer to the old city were less densely populated and the inhabitants were very mixed. We may note in passing that, on the demographic level, while there were undoubtedly “Jewish” neighborhoods in the new city, there were no “Christian” or “Muslim” neighborhoods. Moreover, we must emphasize that in the mixed neighborhoods of the new city, all the families lived side by side, whether they were Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Two realities thus coexisted in the new city of Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century: “Jewish neighborhoods” and “mixed neighborhoods.” Analyzing local administrative sources allows us to grasp more precisely the diversity of this new city, which became West Jerusalem after the war of 1948.24

SUMMARY: OF PEOPLE AND PLACES At the close of this analysis, we can conclude that the description of the old city as consisting of four homogeneous quarters did not come out of ancient or local traditions but, on the contrary, was a recent and external invention brought in by Western cartographers from the mid- nineteenth century on. We can also see that the quadripartite division corresponded neither to toponymic reality nor to the social and demographic reality of the old city at that time, insofar as this can be documented, thanks to the existing administrative records. Why, then, this compulsion on the part of Western cartographers to cut up the city into four airtight compartments? There are two possible explanations. Reading the travel narratives that often accompanied cartographic representations of the city in the Western world, it appears that the quadripartite division was a response to the anxiety that Western visitors to the holy city felt when they first saw the walls of Jerusalem: disturbed at not finding before their eyes the city they had conceived in their imagination, based on their reading and their religious practices, pilgrims and tourists attempted to confine the frightening complexity of the place into simple and accessible, even simplistic, frameworks. This reaction was transmitted from one travel narrative to another, then from one map to another, since the genre of pilgrimage and travel narratives

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relies heavily on transmission: to go on a pilgrimage involves first of all walking in the footsteps of those who have gone before and who have prepared the path for those who would follow. Sometimes Westerners pushed toponymic invention even further by translating their own place names into Arabic, as if to give their imported cartography a local and authentic patina: the British Admiralty’s map, drawn and printed in 1841, shows the names of the four quarters in English, with the Arabic translation below: Haret elMusilim, Haret en-Nasara, Haret el-Arman, Haret el-Yahud (respectively, the Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish neighborhoods). No doubt, for British military men, the place names also involved practical and linguistic concerns. Adar Arnon, who points out this absurdity, notes that there has never been a map, census, or local description that identified any quarter of the city as a “Muslim quarter,” since the Muslim population was a large majority at the time. Would we see a “Christian quarter” on a map of Paris or of Rome in modern times? Arnon vigorously condemns the maneuvers that upheld this strange mania. “The attempt made by the compilers of this map to show that their partition of the city was derived from local tradition was therefore futile.”25 We may, however, offer a second explanation, based on the cartographers’ confusing the residents of Jerusalem with the city’s famous sites, the local population with the landmarks of the city— in short, confusing people with place. In most of the maps they produced, Western cartographers did not aim to take account of the urban reality of the time, but rather assumed that their role was to help visitors find the biblical city for which they had undertaken so long a voyage. These maps were primarily focused on monuments, not on people— in contrast, for instance, to a taxation census. But if history is a “human science,” what does the historian seek, if not the men and women of Jerusalem, its inhabitants, its residents, and not just its monuments? At this point, the question of sources and their use by historians of Jerusalem arises in concrete terms. The countless maps of Jerusalem produced from the mid- nineteenth century on, when the practice of pilgrimage and tourism was on the rise, needed to help hurried visitors to rapidly find the holy sites they wanted to visit. In this way, we can understand that European cartographers, concerned with simplifying their maps and making them more user- friendly, would choose to assign to a whole community the “quarter” located around the symbolic holy place. This was not without a grain of truth, since many Jews in fact lived around the Wailing Wall and the Hurva synagogue, and many Christians, particularly clergy, lived near the Holy Sepulcher, while many of Jerusalem’s Armenians clustered around

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the Church of St. James. That many families belonging to these “communities” lived outside of these supposed quarters was no great concern to transient observers. At any rate, these outsiders had no real way of knowing, and as for the Ottoman censuses that we rely on today, most Western scholars simply had no access to them. Consequently, if we accept once and for all that Western maps and travel narratives were primarily aimed at tourists and pilgrims, we must recognize the inevitable consequences for the sources for the history of the city at that time. What sociologist today would work on the population dynamics of Marrakesh on the basis of maps printed in travel guides published in France and aimed at tourists? What urbanist would research the dynamics of the real estate market in Paris on the basis of maps used by American, Chinese, or Japanese tourists, or on the basis of the guidebooks they used to find the locations of museums, hotels, department stores, and the Eiffel Tower? What kind of reality do those documents speak of? They are neither “incorrect” nor “lies,” but they do document a very specific reality: international mass tourism in Paris at the beginning of the twenty- first century, its economy, its routes, its iconic sites. The examples chosen are deliberately provocative, but they are still on this side of the gaping chasm that separates, particularly in Jerusalem, the city lived by its inhabitants from the city dreamed (and traversed) by Western visitors. Jerusalem is, perhaps more than any other city, a city of ink and paper as much as a city of people and stones. Memories, projections, phantasms, and external imaginings are probably more present there than they are elsewhere, and this means we have to be particularly attentive to them. In terms of the present study, the choice of favoring internal social dynamics and that of prioritizing native and local sources are thus two inseparable options. Of course, external sources should not be disregarded, but they must be used with prudence and thoughtfulness. Finally, we must add that Western maps often appear to contradict themselves, since a close look shows that the listed locales, including religious buildings, are clearly more intermixed than one would have expected at first. An example is the map published in 1886 by a clergyman, Abbé Henri Nicole, with a key precisely identifying 120 landmarks in the city.26 First, out of the 120 sites or buildings identified, 94 are religious and only 26 pertain to daily secular life (post office, hospital, courthouse, hammam, and so forth). The function of the map is thus clearly established: it is a map aimed at pilgrims and not at the city’s inhabitants. A historian studying Catholic pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the mid-1880s has a valuable document there.

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But if the historian seeks to study the social dynamics operating within the local population, he or she will need to supplement this map with different kinds of documents. Another point again shows the absurd nature of the cartographic quadripartition. The key that accompanies this map is typically organized in four sections (Christian, Armenian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters), but when we compare the assigned religious identities of the sites with their geographic locations, diversity is much more apparent than homogeneity. For instance, looking at the Armenian quarter, out of the nineteen buildings listed, the majority have no link to Armenian culture or religion: “residence of the Protestant bishop,” “Anglican Church,” “Protestant boys’ school,” “Austrian post office,” “St. George Greek monastery,” “small Ashkenazi synagogue,” “Syrian monastery,” “English Protestant hospital,” “Protestant Dispensary,” “Protestant school for young girls.” In the so- called “Muslim” quarter, Abbé Nicole lists twenty- one notable buildings, of which thirteen pertain to the Christian religion (the “convent of the Sisters of Zion,” the “Via Dolorosa”) and only two are related or linked to Islam (the “Hospice” and the “Temple of the Whirling Dervishes”). The explanation is straightforward and even tautological: Western cartographic sources, essentially produced by Christian pilgrims for Christian pilgrims, focus first on the religious elements of the urban landscape and manifest a great ignorance of local realities, particularly of the emblematic sites frequented by Muslim inhabitants. A last example illustrates this process. Although Jerusalem is the third holy city of Islam, although the majority of its population was Islamic during the 1880s, and although it is filled with famous mosques and Koranic schools, out of the 120 buildings Abbé Nicole identifies in the city, he notes 26 monasteries or convents, 12 Christian schools, 19 churches and chapels, but only 2 mosques and 1 madrasa (Koranic school). It is not surprising or even shocking that European cartography of Jerusalem was adapted to its public. What is surprising is that this imported cartography should have been used by historians to describe local realities of Jerusalem! Let us consider one final example of the usefulness of local sources. The analysis of Ottoman censuses for the years 1883 to 1905 is not limited to information on the religious identities of heads of families and thus on the ethno- religious diversity of the city; it also allows us to establish rather precisely the population density in each neighborhood— and the analysis of the different densities within an urban society is one of the major tools used in uncovering the inhabitants’ relative standards of living. A historian researching Paris around 1900 can show that the high population density in

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Map 2. Population density in the various quarters of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century.

Belleville or in the Marais at that time evidences the working- class character of these neighborhoods. The same sort of analysis can be applied to Jerusalem, if the socio- economic questions are stated broadly. On the basis of the population densities documented by Ottoman censuses, Jerusalem’s old city can be divided into three parts (map 2): the western section, the north and northeast section, and the central and southeast section. The western part of the city (Nasara, Sharaf), located west of the ancient Roman Cardo, had a low population density. Although this area occupied one- third of the territory of the old city, it included only 13 per-

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cent of its inhabitants. The northern and northeastern part, between the Damas Gate and the Lions Gate (Bab Hutta, Sa’diyya and Bab al-’Amud), had an average population density: it occupied one- third of the city’s territory and held 36 percent of the population. Finally, the central and southeastern part of the city (Al-Wad, Silsila) had a very high population density: it occupied one- third of the city’s territory but had more than 50 percent of its population. If we compare the different population densities with the diversity of the quarters, we can see that the central part of the city, the most densely populated, is also the one with the greatest diversity; we recall that the neighborhoods of Al-Wad and Silsila both had almost equal numbers of Jewish and Muslim families. Clearly, focusing on the lived reality of the inhabitants of Jerusalem leads to major qualifications of the view transmitted by traditional historiography of the city. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jerusalem was characterized more by diversity than by separation of communities. h Why devote these pages to the issue of the representations and denominations of the various quarters of Jerusalem? Because this is not simply a controversy among scholars, but a historiographical issue in the broad sense of the term— one that, moreover, is laden with essential pedagogical and political issues. By showing that the quadripartite division of the old city is a Western invention dating from the mid- nineteenth century; that in reality diversity was more widespread than homogeneity; and that the segmentation of quarters according to ethno- religious criteria fails to stand up to toponymic analysis, or to demographic analysis, or even to the geography of the iconic buildings of the city, we take a great step forward in understanding our subject, “Jerusalem 1900.” Drawing on local administrative sources not only makes it possible to deconstruct false claims in a critical perspective, but also yields positive knowledge. By analyzing the toponymic data furnished by Ottoman censuses, we come across numerous tangible specifics about the history of the peopling of Jerusalem (thanks to place names referring to the geographical origin of ancient immigrants), about public services (municipal hospital, municipal park), or about socio- economic infrastructures and their dynamics (the soapmakers’ neighborhood, the baths neighborhood). Instead of artificial ethno- religious categories, these sources unveil the city as it was lived daily by its inhabitants. Some of the most perceptive observers of the time were aware of this; one such was Conrad Schick, a German scholar who lived in Jerusalem

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from 1846 until his death in 1901. On the map he published in 1895 in a German scientific journal, he rejected his contemporaries’ habit of cutting the city into four homogeneous quarters. On the central part of the old city, he wrote in clear handwriting “Gemischtes Quartier,” “mixed quarters” in German. Schick’s cartographic precision was unique, and it was not by chance that it came from one of the residents most familiar with the local society of Jerusalem, who resided there continuously for more than fifty years. Schick, who was born in the German kingdom of Württemberg and grew up steeped in Protestant culture, shows that the true line separating different kinds of documents is not between those that are “Western” or “Eastern,” or even less “Jewish,” “Christian,” or Muslim.” More simply and logically, the line separates those who seek to gain knowledge of local realities through the means available from those who stick to “traditions” created out of whole cloth by passing visitors. We might assume that breaching this line would affect only historiography. However, the quadripartite division of the old city of Jerusalem wound up having real political and historical consequences when it was made official by British occupiers after 1917. The consequences affected both the physical aspect of the city and its residents’ identification cards. In fact, while most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem lived in mixed neighborhoods at the beginning of the century, during the Mandate period there was a process of polarization and homogenization of neighborhoods, which accelerated in the 1930s and up to the actual partition of the city in 1948– 49. Today this quadripartite division is one of the principal bases of the current discussion on the future “final status” of the holy city.27 Even if the twentieth century imbued this representation with a degree of reality, we must remember that it is recent and thus, by definition, provisional.

c h a p t e r t wo

Origins of the City as Museum

In this way by continuing excavations on all sides, under the convents, under the churches, to some thirty or forty feet below the existing level, the Jerusalem of Christ will soon be reconstituted. — Pierre Loti, Jérusalem (1895)

O

n Tuesday, April 3, 1894, Pierre Loti visited the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion in Jerusalem and lingered at day’s end on the terrace atop the building: In the luminous and already golden hour that precedes the evening, one has a bird’s eye view of the whole extent of the Holy City. . . . We are almost in the middle of the Mussulman quarter, and the first cupolas, the first roofs below us belong to mysterious dwellings. . . . Farther away and towards the west in the faubourg of Jaffa: the consulates, the hotels, all the modern things, which from here can scarcely be distinguished and upon which, for that matter, we willingly turn our back.1

Pierre Loti, indefatigable wanderer of the Mediterranean, reveals here, in the literal sense of the word, the viewpoint adopted by most travelers, tourists, pilgrims, and scholars, whose numbers were steadily increasing at the end of the nineteenth century, when they visited the holy city for the first time. Impressed by the locale, awed by the symbolic weight expressed there, they immediately tried to cling to what they knew about it or to what they thought they knew about it. Even before penetrating inside the walls, many climbed directly up the Mount of Olives (map 3). From the top of this spiritual hill, whose toponymy had been densely Christianized, they admired the panorama of the 39

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Map 3. Pierre Loti in Jerusalem, 1894.

“city of Jesus” in the belief that they were looking at the very image of the city that Christ had before his eyes when he was arrested. They all sought a “viewpoint” on the city, as if they could somehow tame it.2 Pierre Loti’s narrative is yet another version of this reflex, and his description illustrates the shared vision constructed by Western visitors at the time. He immediately identifies the “Muslim quarter” in which he finds himself, taking up in his turn the quadripartite division of the city, which by then had become an obligatory trope. He acknowledges his ignorance of the lived realities of the inhabitants of this quarter by noting that the domes at his feet “belong to mysterious dwellings.” We understand that he has no intention of pierc-

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ing these mysteries, whose properly touristic function was to remain behind an enigmatic veil.3

TURNING ONE’S BACK ON THE MODERN CITY The rest of his description expresses even more clearly the “viewpoint” he adopts on the city as he deliberately discards “all the modern things, which from here can scarcely be distinguished and upon which, for that matter, we willingly turn our back.” Just like most of the Western visitors whose accounts make up a great part of the sources used by historians of Jerusalem, Pierre Loti “turns his back” on the modern city. This is no hypercritical historical interpretation, loudly condemning the bias of Western sources, but rather a simple account of a first reading of Loti’s narrative. He does, of course, perceive the realities of modern urban life, of an urban society in the process of becoming secularized. He is neither blind nor an idiot. He does see, but he is not looking, or rather he refuses to look, he “turns his back,” as he says himself, because that is not what he has come for. While he was still on the way to Jerusalem, a few days earlier, on Tuesday March 27, Loti came across a carriage with particularly noisy travelers, and he felt a deep unease: “We were not prepared for such an encounter; and our mental reverie, our religious dream is more than ever disconcerted. Oh their bearing, their noisy chatter, their laughter on this holy ground to which we have come, humbly pensive by the old road of the prophets.”4 Pierre Loti, like all pilgrims, tourists, and visitors to the holy land, was not “prepared” to see contemporary Palestine, the Palestine of his own time, and this chance encounter with contemporary reality strongly displeased him. When he got to Jerusalem a few days later, he was not able to totally avoid what he called “the pitiful and banal heap” of the modern city, but when at last he admired the old city, he exclaimed: “But it is the real Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that we have seen of old in pictures and prints; and coming across it after the horrible new suburb with its smoking factory chimneys, it seems a holy vision.”5 That says it all. Jerusalem for travelers was not a real city, it was the city they had “seen of old in pictures and prints.” As Lucette Valensi so insightfully writes, pilgrims “all remember the city they are heading for,”6 and paradoxically this “memory” is even stronger when they arrive there for the first time. In travel narratives, descriptions, and letters of the time, examples of this denial are legion: after the opening of the railroad line between Jaffa and Jerusalem, one pilgrim recalls with regret the charm of travel on camelback; another says he is saddened by the growth of neigh-

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borhoods outside the city walls, which set a distance between “the new Jerusalem” and the ancient biblical city that visitors considered the only “authentic” one. There is nothing surprising in the creation of this folklore by passing tourists. It illustrates the invention of the Western touristic gaze, which at the time was beginning to aim at the Mediterranean world and then beyond. What is more surprising, shocking even, is that these descriptions, which openly claim to “turn their backs” on the modern realities of the city, have been used as sources by historians claiming to write the history of the city at the time.

LAMENT OVER THE TOMB-CITY While Pierre Loti, in the spring of 1894, lamented the “horrible new suburb where factory chimneys spew smoke,” travelers at the beginning of the century grieved over what seemed to them a “dead city,” over the emptiness of a gigantic open- air grave. A quick rereading of Chateaubriand’s 1811 description in his Record of a Journey from Paris to Jerusalem— the founding text of the tradition of voyages in the Orient— helps us understand the logic of this seeming paradox and the evolution of the Western gaze during the nineteenth century. The holy city, under Western visitors’ gaze, was subjected to a double constraint: either it was seen as “asleep” or “frozen,” as was often said at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in which case it exemplified “Ottoman negligence” or “Oriental laziness,” or else it was looked upon, as Pierre Loti did in 1894, as a “pitiful and banal heap” of a modernized city, in which case it was declared to be too noisy, desecrated, and deconsecrated, which was even more unforgivable in the visitors’ eyes. Between these two symmetrical but equally false views, there is no room for a contemporary gaze— that is, literally, for a view of the city “of that time. ” Nor is there room for a historical gaze, a contextualized view of a human reality that was, here as elsewhere, dynamic, transient, in motion. In this light, Chateaubriand’s text functions as a matrix of a tradition that was to enjoy a fine future: turning the holy city into a closed space, morbid and sepulchral, totally in sync with the narrative of the passion of Christ. Four years after publishing The Genius of Christianity, Chateaubriand set out on his pilgrimage to the holy city and stayed in Jerusalem for a short week, from October 5 to 12, 1806. Like most first- time visitors, he immediately sought to go to a high place (the Mount of Olives, in his case) so as to enjoy a view of the city from above, allowing him a sweeping view of the whole of the landscape. In his description of the local architecture of Jerusalem, his point of view revealed itself abruptly: “The houses of Jerusa-

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lem are heavy square masses, very low, lacking chimneys and windows and look like prisons or tombs.”7 It must be noted that he is not talking about fortresses or ancient monuments, but rather the dwellings of the city, in which at the time lived about ten thousand people, men, women, and children, craftsmen, merchants, doctors, teachers . . . Chateaubriand had no qualms about adding to this astonishing vision of a dead city, dead in the literal sense of the word, made up of “prisons” and “tombs” for the dead instead of houses for the living: “Gazing at those stone houses, enclosed by a stony landscape, one questions whether they are not the confused monuments of some cemetery in the midst of the desert.”8 One could not express more clearly the New Testament filter through which Chateaubriand and all the pilgrims who followed him looked at the city. It is not a living city, but “confused monuments,” ungraspable in themselves because they are shrouded in the mystery of the Scriptures, and it is above all the phantasmagoric materialization of the narrative of the Passion of Christ, polarized at both ends by the motifs of the prison (the place of flagellation) and of the tomb (the place of burial and of resurrection). “Prisons” and “tombs,” a “cemetery in the midst of the desert,” this is what Chateaubriand was literally gazing upon, if we are willing to accept that the gaze is always a viewpoint. When he later describes the interior of the city, we understand that this morbid vision influences even the gaze he casts on the inhabitants themselves, pitiful puppets in a terrifying theater: “Entering the city, nothing will console you for its melancholy exterior . . . A few miserable shops display their wretchedness to your gaze; and often these same shops are closed for fear of a cadi passing by. No one in the streets, no one at the gates of the city.”9 If we compare this frightening vision of the qadi, the city judge, with the archives of the Jerusalem court, which are very well preserved and readily available today, we can see that Chateaubriand, ignorant of local realities, was simply applying the stereotyped caricature of the “Turk’s head” that European culture has since learned to despise. 10 While walking by a butcher’s stall and witnessing an ordinary scene, Chateaubriand showed once again the resonance of the religious representations he mobilized to apprehend the reality before him: “in an out of the way corner, an Arab butcher slaughters a beast suspended by its feet from a ruined wall. Given the fierce and haggard air of the man, and his blood- stained arms, you might imagine him about to slay his fellow man rather than sacrifice a lamb.”11 Here we are in the heart of the process of “folklorization,” a process that turns reality into unreality, at play in the minds of visitors to the holy city.

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Instead of seeing a butcher occupied with doing his ordinary job, Chateaubriand describes an entirely different scene, a founding event in the three monotheistic religions: the sacrifice of Isaac/Ismail, saved at the very last minute by the immolation of a lamb (Genesis 22). Yet nothing in this scene should have derailed Chateaubriand’s vision and narrative. Nothing except, of course, the essential: his imagination, his readings, his culture— that is, the means at his disposal to apprehend the reality of Jerusalem. No matter, the city as a whole is condemned for all eternity in Chateaubriand’s eyes. “The only noise you hear in the deicidal city is, now and then, that of some mare galloping over the desert: she bears the Janissary who brings the head of some Bedouin or who is off to rob the fellahin.”12 The extravagant vision, bordering on delirium, that is transmitted here should be interpreted within the general psychic economy of the Christian pilgrimage, which turned Jerusalem into the framework, and in a way the guilty principle, of Christ’s death. The morbid and apocalyptic vision of the city, reduced to a collection of prisons and tombs within which each ordinary scene bears on death, flows from this global system of representations.

A CITY BECOMING UNREADABLE Chateaubriand was not the only one to express the uneasiness that overtook Western visitors as they first encountered the holy city, of which they sketched a very dark picture throughout the nineteenth century. Our aim here is not to make an exhaustive study of this enormous written production, but only to understand that the view of the city in 1900— perceived as a large, open- air museum— was the logical result of this secular literary accumulation. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine, in 1832, transmitted the same impression as Chateaubriand, painting a portrait of a deserted and mournful city: No one passed in or out; no mendicant even was seated against her curbstones; no sentinel showed himself at her threshold; we saw, indeed, no living object, heard no living sound; we found the same void, the same silence, at the entrance of a city containing thirty thousand souls, during the twelve hours of the day, as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneum.13

Italian ruins, which travelers often visited at the beginning of their journey, before arriving in the Holy Land, were routinely conjured to understand modern Palestine. Lamartine takes care to mention that 30,000 people live

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Figure 4. David Roberts, view of Jerusalem, 1841. (Library of Congress)

in Jerusalem (an exaggerated number for the 1830s, since it is estimated that the population at that time was about 15,000), even as he admits to not seeing them. The aesthetic of the ruin, which structured the Western gaze on the Mediterranean at that time, is perfectly expressed in the 247 lithographs that David Roberts produced in 1838– 39 in a six- volume edition, which circulated widely in upper- class European society during the 1840s (fig. 4). Today, when we compare these panoramas with the first photographs taken in the Middle East from the mid-1840s on, we see the gap between reality and the staging in Roberts’s images. His great success was due largely to his perfect adaptation to the expectations of the European public: monuments partly covered with sand, fallen columns, ruins covered with vegetation, all this shows the passage of time and the chasm that opened up, in the mind of the European public, between a West engaged with modernity and an East stuck in its origins, immobile and frozen. Sand covering ruins, so frequent in Roberts’s lithographs, does indeed function as a metaphor of time slipping away and of forgetting. The notion of the “forgotten Jerusalem” that, from the 1840s on, propelled archaeologists and scholars into a project of Reconquista of the holy land did have some historical foundation. Christine Géraud-Gomez has shown how the practice of pilgrimage markedly declined in the modern period, leaving a long breathing space between medieval crusades and the invention of the large, collective pilgrimages at the end of the nineteenth

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century.14 Jerusalem in the modern period was still present in European imaginings, but the earthly Jerusalem located in Palestine was visited less and less often. This long “crisis of the pilgrimage,” which lasted until the nineteenth century, largely explains the concern and uneasiness of travelers such as Chateaubriand or Lamartine, who had the impression of “coming back” to a dead city, one that had become ungraspable and unreadable. Before them, in 1784, French Academy member Constantin-François de Volney had already expressed this notion: We do know that at all times the pious curiosity to visit the holy sites has led Christians from all countries to Jerusalem. . . . We recall that it was this fervor, stirring up all of Europe, that produced the Crusades. Since their unfortunate result, Europeans’ zeal has cooled from day to day and the number of pilgrims has substantially diminished.15

In a way, the earthly Jerusalem was forgotten during the modern period and replaced with an “internal crusade,” destined to be fought in Europe even against Protestantism, in the context of the vast movement of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1784, Volney well expressed the result of this collective forgetting: Seeing its crumbling walls, its moats filled in, its fortifications obstructed with rubble, we have trouble recognizing the metropolis that in the past fought against the most powerful empires, that for a moment even challenged Rome itself and that by a strange turn of fate today in its fall is receiving homage and respect. In a word, we can barely recognize Jerusalem.16

European travelers, facing what appeared to them a strange and dying city, no longer recognized Jerusalem. The expression is a very strong one, and we must take the measure of the emotional charge for travelers sincerely motivated by their Christian faith.

FROM SCHOLARSHIP TO ARCHAEOLOGY This uneasiness in the face of a city that had become unreadable was the real driving force of the archaeological and missionary movements that began in the second half of the nineteenth century. To understand Pierre Loti’s state of mind in 1894, we must keep in mind that reconquest of the holy city through scholarship and archaeology began late in the nineteenth century.

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Chateaubriand in 1806, Lamartine in 1832, and all their fellow travelers in the first half of the century could only lament a topography that had become ungraspable; they found themselves in a kind of void. The very first visits by scholars of biblical studies only began in the 1840s with Edward Robinson, who published his first Biblical Researches in Boston in 1841, and with the British clergyman George Williams, who published his Historical and Topographical Notices on Jerusalem in 1845. A French Academy member, Félix de Saulcy, arriving at Jerusalem for a first inspection tour at the end of 1850, only produced, like his colleagues of the time, some descriptions of places based on observations of sites and reading of the holy texts.17 There was as yet no expedition with the means and the required permits to undertake any archaeological work— that is, to dig below ground. The first genuinely archaeological expedition was that of Captain Charles Wilson, who arrived with a team of five topographers in October 1864, for an eight- month stay. Yet again, when we read the three volumes of his Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, published upon the expedition’s return to London in 1865, we recognize that the purpose of the mission was to establish an exact topography and cartography of the city and its surroundings— that is, to work on the surface of the city, without being able to undertake underground excavations, for lack of both the means and the necessary permits. The very first digs were led by Lieutenant Warren in 1867 and then in the 1870s, through the Palestine Exploration Fund (established in London following Wilson’s expedition).18 It was only at the end of the 1880s that the process truly took off, with the foundation of the first European research institutes in Jerusalem itself. The first of these was the École Pratique d’Études Bibliques (Applied School of Biblical Studies), established in 1890, known today as the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem (French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem).19 The purpose of this brief summary of the well- known chronology of the history of biblical scholarship in the holy city is to recall that the process of reinvention of the holy sites, if it can be explained over the long term by the “forgetting” phase of the modern period, by visitors’ laments between 1800 and 1840, and then by the first expeditions between 1840 and 1870, only took off very late in the nineteenth century, if we look at the actual, concrete development. Most of the holy sites visited by Pierre Loti in April 1894 were very recently created; they were still the fresh products of the legacy construction process then in full swing. This is key to understanding the dynamics of the history of Jerusalem at the time and grasping the general climate of the city in the years around 1900. The holy sites were proliferating; they were being structured and strengthened, and were even

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in competition with each other. We shall return to this later, but let us note here that this was a dynamic process, one not yet set. To the eyes of both visitors and inhabitants of Jerusalem, the holy sites in 1900 were still largely “uncertain,” as we shall show in the next chapter.

RECONSTRUCTING CHRIST’S JERUSALEM Let us meet up again with Pierre Loti— still perched on the terrace of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion on this day of April 3, 1894— to help us understand the forces at play in the gigantic manufacturing of a legacy, a process of construction that was speeding up at the time: In excavating beneath their cloister, they [the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion] have discovered other impressive ruins: a kind of Roman guard- room, which probably was used by the soldiers of the Praetorium; the beginning of a road, with an antique pavement, the direction of which is the same as that of the Via Dolorosa as now recognized, and, finally, the entrances of some subterranean caverns which seem to lead to the Haram esh-Sherif, to the enclosure of the temple. 20

Since Father Marie-Alphonse de Ratisbonne had bought the land in 1856, a series of excavations had been undertaken to uncover vestiges dating from the Roman era. The aim was to try to bring the bounds of the convent, which had been built in its entirety at the end of the 1860s, into the closed circle of the famous holy sites of Jerusalem. The excavations of the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion were rapidly crowned with success, as a certain number of Roman ruins were uncovered— although later excavations since the 1970s have shed doubt on the reliability of the makeshift memorial construction of the period. After listing some of the most notable discoveries under the convent, Loti sums up in one crystal- clear sentence the overall project that undergirded all the excavations done in Jerusalem during those years: “In this way by continuing excavations on all sides, under the convents, under the churches, to some thirty or forty feet below the existing level, the Jerusalem of Christ will soon be reconstituted.”21 Yet again, Loti’s statement is very clear. He makes no attempt to conceal the scope of the project driven by archaeologists and pilgrims in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century. After stating explicitly that he has “turned his back” on the lived realities of the inhabitants of the modern city, he here reveals the core of his thinking. The increasing number of archaeological excavations in Jerusalem at that

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time were undertaken with the aim of “reconstituting Christ’s Jerusalem” some 10 or 12 meters below the existing city. The new Jerusalem, whether made up of “mysterious dwellings” in the “Muslim quarter” or, even worse, “the horrible new suburb with smoke pouring out of factory smokestacks,” obviously occupied most of the surface area, and everyone was aware of this. To get around it, to really make it disappear, so as not to be bothered by its presence, one had to dig under the ground in order to re- create the city “of Christ.”22 Was this an isolated project shared only by the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion and a handful of scholars? It is clear that this was not the case and that bringing the biblical city to the light of day was the shared aim of the participants in the archaeological movement in Jerusalem, in spite of its diversity and its numerous internal conflicts. The actual city at the end of the nineteenth century was deliberately set aside in the attempt to “find the Bible under the cobblestones”— that is, to uncover, beneath the daily urban reality of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, the more or less imaginary traces of the ancient city. The turn of the twentieth century, which saw the blossoming of modern Jerusalem in terms not only of demography but also of economy and urbanism, no doubt helped strengthen visitors’ impulse to turn their gaze away. As the city modernized, as its society secularized, as its religious character became more diluted within the dynamics of the urbanity that reconfigured it, the entrepreneurs of memory redoubled their efforts. It is in this way that the years around 1900 were a determining moment in the history of the city, as if the tipping over from one century to another was held in tension between two parallel logics of modernization and of memorialization. Loti dwells upon the collective nature of the project: In the convent of the Sisters of Zion, of course, this street and these subterranean passages end abruptly, lost in the accumulated earth, as soon as the boundary of the community’s territory is reached. But farther on, they say, in different places, other religious have begun similar excavations; each monastery is busy sinking shafts deep into the ground, and one is able by piecing together theoretically the fragments of the Herodian roads and the debris of the ancient ramparts to discover and follow as far as Calvary the way followed by Christ.23

The biblical archaeology of Jerusalem, though not a coordinated plan, appears to have been a conjunction of converging projects. What Loti tells us here is that the clerical sappers of Jerusalem were well aware that they were working toward the unveiling of the biblical city, thus deliberately

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turning their backs on the modern city, which then appeared as no more than the ephemeral background of a transcendent narrative. The chronological short- circuit that constantly set the dream city, rather than the real city, in front of observers’ eyes is one of the main causes of the drama presently playing out in Jerusalem. It prevents participants in the conflicts from making the needed political decisions precisely because the sacred aspect ended up superimposed on urban reality itself. The historian’s humble role lies simply in showing the historical nature of the construction of these places that today are held sacred and restoring to them, as far as possible, a measure of nuance and fluidity.

TOWARD AN INTIMATE HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND PILGRIMAGE A second reading of Pierre Loti can help us understand, in addition to the historical process he describes, the intimate dimension of the memorializing short- circuit that took hold of visitors to the holy city at the end of the nineteenth century. To grasp its deeper logic, we need to take seriously the approach that involved seeking tangible traces of biblical narratives in the city’s underground. To understand the energy, the power, and the longterm existence of this phenomenon, we need to examine it closely, without skepticism or excessive irony. Loti perfectly expresses its psychological motivations: What strikes me as singular in these excavations is the preservation of this ancient pavement, the polish of these reddish stones, which, buried for centuries underground, have been spared the wear of footsteps. . . . On one of those flags, roughly cut with a knife, there is even a game of “margelle,” similar to those of our own days!— a game which had been traced by Roman soldiers to while away their hours of guard. Puerile as it is, this detail is strangely affecting. Its presence seems to throw a gleam of sudden life into this phantom of a place!24

The exclamation marks express the emotion that overtook the visitor, the giddiness he experienced when an apparently unimportant detail set his imagination galloping so that it suddenly leaped the chronological gap separating him from the remembrance. The vision of a vestige claimed to be biblical enabled the visitor to affirm his faith (fides, “trust” in Latin)— that is, precisely, to do away with any doubt:

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Are we in very truth in the guard- room of the Praetorium? And this beginning of a street, which starts from here in deep sepulchral darkness, to lose itself in the earth, is it indeed the beginning of the way that led Christ to Golgotha? We are not yet justified in affirming it, despite the strong probabilities. But the Sister who accompanies me in these vaults, throwing over the age- old walls the light of her lantern, has succeeded in imparting to me for the moment her own ardent conviction. I, too, in the presence of these debris, am much moved as she herself, I too for a time have no doubt of it.25

We now understand that the purpose of these excavations was only secondarily scientific, in the sense that scientific tools were just one means among others at the service of a cause that was more burning and more immediate. It was a question of believing and making others believe, of strengthening and reaffirming faith at a time when the secularization of Europe was under way, and to accomplish this thanks to holy sites that not only were “famous” but, going forward, would offer the means to convince visitors. The end of Loti’s narrative reinforces the impression of a hallucinatory vision, as if the traveler was no longer in control of his gestures and reactions. The game of “margelle” attracts and holds my eyes. . . . Now, I can almost see them, see the soldiers of Pilate, sitting playing there, while Jesus is being questioned in the Praetorium. Involuntarily, spontaneously, I see with my mind’s eye the scenes of the Passion with their intimate realities, their details at once very human and very small. . . . There passes before me the little group of sufferers dragging their crosses over these old red pavements.26

As Loti switches from the past tense (“the way that led Christ to Golgotha”) to the narrative present (“there passes before me”), he helps us enter into the deep logic of the pilgrimage. The pilgrim here achieves his passionate quest, and the visions accompanying it do indeed take on the appearance of an “involuntary” image, a hallucinatory delirium, in the psychological sense of the term: “As I pass through these underground places, at the side of this white- robed nun, the vision thus vouchsafed to me is revealed unequally, in flashes, for fleeting seconds, with empty intervals, lacunae, dark abysmal gaps, as in dreams . . .”27 When he returns to the surface, Loti becomes fully conscious of the journey in time he has just made, and of the incomparable power of the spiritual

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experience he has just had: “When we ascend from the vaults, putting foot once more in the present day and among actual things, it is as if we were emerging from the thick night of Time into which we had been plunged, and in which our fanciful eyes had perceived the reflections of very ancient phantoms.”28 For archaeologists as for the Western pilgrims who supported them, avoidance of the real city came primarily not from the Christian West’s contempt for the Islamic East, nor from their “folklorizing” gaze on the country they visited, but rather from a need to gaze upon the origin of the Christian faith, or perhaps simply of Christian culture, at the very moment when this latter seemed to be vanishing in the heart of a Europe undergoing industrialization. Looking away from the living Jerusalem, alive in the present and the everyday, or as Loti puts it, from “the horrible new suburb with its smoking factory chimneys,” was not only a simple orientalist impulse but, for Loti as well as for other visitors who wandered about and described the holy city at that time, a burning necessity.

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: “NO RETURN” INVENTIONS From our observation point around the 1900s, a paradox becomes clear: the proliferation and diversity of holy sites in Jerusalem is a relatively recent fact in the history of the city. Le Corbusier put it beautifully in speaking of the Western Middle Ages as the time “when the cathedrals were still white,” thus reminding us that any ancient monument, before acquiring the patina of age, was imagined, conceived, and constructed during its own time. 29 When it comes to Jerusalem, the most active phase of the gigantic “patrimonial” construction happened in fact during the modern era (nineteenth and twentieth centuries) and particularly the period from 1870 to 1930. As evidence, we need only look at maps of Jerusalem from the first half of the nineteenth century, which show that the quantity of holy sites of all faiths was much smaller in 1800 than in 1900. If we then compare the topographic maps published between 1870 and 1930, we see that this was the period that gave its actual physiognomy to the sacred geography of the city. If we read travel accounts and descriptions of the city in chronological order (a few of the most famous being the Bordeaux Pilgrim in the fourth century, Bishop Arculf in the seventh century, Al-Muqaddasi in the tenth, Nasir Khusraw in the eleventh, Rabbi Jacob in the thirteenth, Isaac ben Joseph Ibn Chelo in the fourteenth, Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n at the end of the fifteenth), we come to the same conclusion: holy sites were fewer in number and more indeterminate in their locations and religious identities in the past than they are now. Of

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course, the holy sites that proliferated in Jerusalem in the years around 1900 were based on ancient ruins from various times, but most of these vestiges had no sacred character in and of themselves. Fragments of paving stones, pieces of ancient fortifications, remains of hydraulic structures are for the most part secular from the standpoint of their original functions; they were only made sacred during this gigantic patrimonial construction. The structuring, legitimation, and finally the sanctification of the holy sites of Jerusalem were thus contemporary to their nineteenth- century construction. The convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion visited by Pierre Loti in 1894 provides an excellent example. The land was bought in 1856 by Father Marie-Alphonse de Ratisbonne. Even though it was located alongside the Via Dolorosa, it did not at first have any “sacred” archaeological remains worthy of immediate elevation to the rank of holy sites. The process of patrimonialization and sanctification of the holy sites happened through excavations done during the 1860s and took the form of a crude memorial bricolage, consisting of three main elements: a ruined section of a Roman arch of triumph, which came to be called Ecce Homo; an underground section of paving, also Roman, called the Lithostrotos; and an underground cistern discovered in 1868 that was called the Struthion Pool, the name Flavius Josephus used in his Jewish War. Since the convent was located not far from the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, the object of the excavations was to localize in that place the first stage of the Passion story, consisting of the triptych of the arrest/judgment/flagellation, centered on Pontius Pilate’s praetorium. Loti’s account of his visit to these sites twenty- five years after their archaeological consecration shows that the project was succeeding beautifully. We have seen that he was convinced he stood in the “guard- room of the Praetorium . . . the beginning of the way that led Christ to Golgotha.” We have also seen how the detail of the stone with the game of margelle engraved on it, cleverly connected with the discovery of some osselets, played its role perfectly in echoing the evangelical description of the Roman soldiers guarding Christ and gambling for his tunic in a dice game. The “patrimonial” mise-en-scène thus worked perfectly. A “holy site” came into existence where there had been no sanctuary previously. Its reputation became solidly established with the Catholic authorities of the city, and it was thenceforth included in the pilgrims’ circuit. A century later, however, a critical event shattered this fine arrangement. New excavations under the Lithostrotos in the 1960s found numerous coins dating from the second century after Jesus Christ—underneath the paving stones. Unless one imagines that the stratigraphy quite improbably had turned upside down, these coins proved that the paving stones could not date from Jesus’

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time. Since the 1960s, it has been shown that the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion’s Lithostrotos and the fragment of the arch of Ecce Homo also date from the second century after Christ, and probably only from Emperor Hadrian’s time, when he had the city rebuilt under the name Aelia Capitolina between 134 and 138— that is, more than a century after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. These days, the Sisters themselves recognize that these archaeological discoveries have utterly negated the authenticity of the locale. 30 Has the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion closed its doors? Certainly not. Have pilgrims stopped going there? Of course not. Has the convent been crossed off the list of Catholic religious establishments placed under the protection of the French consulate in Jerusalem? No, inevitably not. This example of an “archaeological setup with no takedown,” which could be multiplied at will, reveals an essential historical process in Jerusalem: holy sites proceed from a cumulative, or even accumulative, logic and grow out of what one could call “no- return inventions.” Even as their construction proceeds tentatively, by bricolage and approximation, their eventual sanctification is, almost without exception, definitively acquired. If holy sites require, in their initial launch phase, some degree of archaeological and scientific credibility, they go on to live their holy site “lives” autonomously and self- sufficiently. The example of the Roman paving stones located underneath the Sisters’ convent is, from this point of view, striking. We have seen in Loti’s account how pseudo- scientific evidence at first played a pivotal role in securing the traveler’s beliefs. However, after that beginning, once thousands of pilgrims had contributed with their prayers to a second sanctification of the place, the site no longer needed the ultraConcordist framework that had legitimized its beginnings. This is how, in Jerusalem, numerous holy sites can undergo a kind of archaeological renewal without endangering their reputation, since they benefit from a form of patrimonial inertia. They are so much part of the decor that it seems they have been so always. We need only read the brochure, published in 1989, that is handed out to visitors to the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion: The Holy Site is not primarily the historical site where the event of the salvation occurred, but it is the site that the faithful have memorialized from one generation to another. . . . We are well aware that in Jerusalem and elsewhere there are few Holy Sites whose locations have not changed in the course of centuries. And even rarer are those of which we can be certain, today, that they are truly set on the historical site of the event.31

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This short text helps us understand how the proliferation of holy sites in Jerusalem works. They are archaeological setups that are never taken down, regardless of the contradictions occasioned by new discoveries, which, we are told, always “overthrow” earlier hypotheses, but without ever repealing the previously awarded “holy place” certificates. h This immersion in visitors’ representations of Jerusalem allows us to understand why the city, at the end of the nineteenth century, became covered with holy sites to the point of transforming itself into an open- air biblical museum. Because Europe had mostly “forgotten Jerusalem” in the modern era, because the holy city had become unreadable and ungraspable in the eyes of visitors, because the pilgrims themselves, at the end of the nineteenth century, were demanding to be convinced and to be strengthened in their faith by rationalized and structured holy sites, Jerusalem transformed itself into a gigantic patrimonial construction, within which each chapel had to defend its place, each confession defend its rank. At the very moment when the inhabitants of the city invented a new modernity, when an authentic urban society emerged through secular and intercommunal institutions, Jerusalem was subjected as never before to intense pressure for the construction of patrimony. This patrimonial fever took the form of the archaeological reinvention of holy sites— a process that, as we have seen, often consisted of a series of total inventions. Even as we seek to grasp here the indications of a modernization of urban society at that time, we also have to take into account the parallel tendency to the patrimonialization of urban space, which tended to turn Jerusalem into a simple aggregation of holy sites. In this way we can understand the singular tension the city experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, characterized by both the dynamics of modernization and the dynamics of patrimonialization. This tension, which emerged at a specific time in the history of the city, was the true basis for its identity at the time, which still endures today.

chapter three

Still-Undetermined Holy Sites

Everyone, Muslims as well as Christians, calls it the Virgin’s Fountain, or for Muslims, it’s the Fountain of Our Lady Mary (Ain Siti Miriam), as they venerate her under that name. —La Terre Sainte (1878)

D

uring his stay in Jerusalem at the end of October 1939, the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs visited the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion and looked at the excavations under it, just as Pierre Loti had done forty- five years before. After returning to Paris, Halbwachs published La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte (The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land, 1941). He was arrested by the Gestapo in July 1944 and died in Buchenwald in March 1945. With this testamentary book, published in the urgency of the Occupation, Halbwachs is probably the one who has best understood the mechanism of the construction of holy places in Jerusalem, and his book vividly brings out the dynamic character of this process: “The Ecce Homo arch was believed to be the place where Pilate had presented Jesus to the people. It is now agreed that it dates from Hadrian’s time, but it is interesting that the memory of the Ecce Homo has remained attached to it.”1 These few lines say it all: this holy place, hastily put together during the 1860s, resisted its archaeological revision. As Halbwachs so well put it, the evangelical memory remained stubbornly attached to it. Written at the very time when the dating of the site had been called into question, Halbwachs’s account reflects the subtlety of his reasoning. As the author who had published Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (The Social Frameworks of Memory)2 in 1925, as the first scholar to have attempted a sociological approach to memory processes, he was also the first 56

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Map 4. The construction of Christian holy sites.

to grasp the significance of Jerusalem in understanding the links between memory processes and topographical anchors, between memory and places of memory. Nowhere else could a sociologist find such a promising terrain for study, upon which had been deposited so many interwoven layers of memory. In the preceding chapter we have analyzed why pilgrims, scholars, and archaeologists all had thrown themselves at the holy city. Here, a reading of Halbwachs will help us understand how this process worked— that is, according to what rules and logic.

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MAURICE HALBWACHS AS ADVANCE SCOUT When Halbwachs describes the Struthion pool and the Lithostrotos in the convent’s underground, he emphasizes the historicity of the patrimonial construction he observes: “It was completely cleared and explored during the 1927–32 excavations. There was a maze of dark hallways, partly or completely obstructed, some of which went under the Temple esplanade, and we imagine that, if it were possible to follow them, we would approach the remains of the old Jewish sanctuary. Nowhere else in Jerusalem did we have the impression of being so close to ancient Jerusalem.”3 The sociologist, plunged into the heart of the memorialized underground of the holy city, surrounded by walls that must, as he puts it, have “witnessed strange scenes,” found it difficult to maintain the cool stance of critical distance. Like many before him, he was seized by the emotive power of Jerusalem’s old stones. The visitor’s intimate perspective is expressed in a sentence that at first seems ordinary: while Pierre Loti relied on the Lithostrotos to reconstruct the “Jerusalem of Christ,” Halbwachs evokes the “old Jewish sanctuary” to locate the place he found himself in. We do know that in the fall of 1940, as he was putting the final touches to his manuscript, he wrote a few pages about his Jewish and non-Jewish genealogy, on the occasion of his mother’s death and in the context of the flood of anti-Semitism to which he fell victim four years later. Historians have not yet taken the full measure of Halbwachs’s Legendary Topography in understanding how the construction of holy sites functioned in Jerusalem. Indeed, this work is rarely listed in the bibliographies of the city’s history. Yet Halbwachs’s work on the logics of memorial stratification, of topographic localization, and of confessional designation does offer valuable keys to understanding the contemporary physiognomy of the city, which was stabilizing precisely at the turn of the twentieth century. There are some explanations for the neglect of Halbwachs’s work. His Legendary Topography was published in 1941, at the start of the German occupation, and he had no opportunity to promote it before his arrest in 1944. Another possible explanation: the troubled context at the time of publication may explain the unfinished aspect of his text. All those who have studied this surprising and fairly short text (150 pages) have pointed out that it is “oddly arranged” and that it seems “disconcerting” at first reading.4 His short introduction is followed by a series of chapters devoted to the indepth study of various holy sites; a very long conclusion (50 pages) finally gives the reader the essential elements of his argument. Without going more deeply into these issues, it suffices to say that his Legendary Topography

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provides an invaluable framework for understanding the layout of the sacred geography of the city at the end of the nineteenth century.

LOCALIZATION AND DESIGNATION Before getting into analytical details, we must note that Halbwachs helps us grasp two distinct but complementary processes in the construction of holy sites: on the one hand, a process of localization that tends toward the gradual specification of the geographic location of given biblical events; on the other hand, a process of designation that tends to polarize the confessional attribution and identity of a holy site. In other words, Halbwachs sheds light on both how the holy sites came to be located within urban space and how they came to be organized within the various faiths existing in the city— all of which, as we know, draw from the same Old Testament texts. Although Halbwachs does not explicitly discuss these two major structuring elements of “locating” and “designating,” they nonetheless guide his investigation. They were the two objectives sought by pilgrims, scholars, and archaeologists toward the end of the century as they engaged in the process of redrawing the sacred geography of Jerusalem. Halbwachs’s study is essentially based on an analysis of Jewish and Christian holy sites. It is important to note, as Halbwachs does, the lesser involvement of the various branches of Islam in this “race for holy sites.” Perhaps this was motivated by an Islamic worldview less attached to places than to texts, but mainly, and paradoxically, it might have been due to the prevalence of the Islamic religion at that time in Jerusalem. There was most likely a direct link between the greater numbers of Muslim residents in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century and their lesser involvement in the patrimonial and religious competition. If Jerusalem became covered with holy sites assigned “Jewish” or “Christian” designations during the second half of the nineteenth century, it was more a symptom of the relative numerical weakness of the two communities than a sign of their power. The old stones, excavated and then “sanctified,” helped make up for the smaller number of individuals, in the context of a competition that Jerusalem’s Muslims declined to participate in, out of a conviction that they were de facto at home in Jerusalem at the end of the Ottoman period. This wait- and- see attitude was in any case a given of the Palestinian identity that was then in formation: the conviction that they were the majority on the demographic, political, and sociological planes delayed the entry of the inhabitants of Palestine and Jerusalem in a competition imposed by others.5

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Halbwachs was conscious that he was entering largely unknown territory in his research: It has to be seen how Christian localizations, thus founded in many cases on Jewish memories, as ancient Jewish traditions gradually became erased, have then acquired the means of surviving by themselves and to spread and diversify, and as well to separate, and to reinforce themselves. Here we are engaging in the discovery of a terrain that has been little explored up to now.6

To integrate the spatial dimension into his reflection on collective memory, Halbwachs used concepts from British “associationist psychology” so as to bring to light the constants at play in the successive localizations and appropriations of sanctuaries: The associative school in England sought to find out how representations get their names, dissociate, and combine within a consciousness. Here we are studying memory . . . as it applies to places, and we are researching how the collective remembrances attached to places are born, divide, come together, or spread out, in various cases. If this is not a product of chance, there must exist some simple laws that regulate group memory, and that we must attempt to grasp within these very facts.7

Clearly, the implications of his Legendary Topography greatly transcend the particular case of Jerusalem. In this text Halbwachs lays the groundwork for the concept of “sites of memory,” even though he does not use the term. His contribution lies primarily in providing the conceptual tools needed to understand the functioning and organization of these sites of memory within a certain number of interconnected memory networks. Even though the notion itself was successfully popularized during the 1980s, the analytical frameworks Halbwachs had built fifty years previously were largely forgotten along the way. In the introduction to Lieux de mémoire, edited by Pierre Nora and published in 1984, Halbwachs is cited only once, and without any reference to the issue of “memorial topographies” or to the concepts that Halbwachs had specifically elaborated to analyze their organization.8 It is also for this reason that a careful rereading of the Legendary Topography is indicated. In the conclusion to his book, on the basis of the many cases he researched, Halbwachs lays out three distinct modes of logic and proposes three concepts to understand the spatial organization of the holy sites: a

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logic of concentration, in which several different biblical memories are assembled in one place; a logic of splintering, or proliferation of a given biblical memory into multiple episodes within a restricted area; and a logic of duality, in which the same biblical memory is localized in two contradictory and rival places. Of course, he adds that the elaboration of a holy site can involve more than one of these logics. Reading Halbwachs allows us to grasp something essential to an understanding of the sacred geography of Jerusalem during the years around 1900: holy sites at that time were still very much undetermined, from the viewpoint of both their localization and their religious designation. This uncertainty and ambiguity, which stemmed from a sort of topographic fluidity as well as from a sort of interconfessional porosity, is crucial for our understanding of the holy city in the “age of possibilities” around the turn of the twentieth century.

HOW TO CONSTRUCT A HOLY SITE: THE EXAMPLE OF THE GARDEN TOMB A first example provides a concrete illustration of Halbwachs’s theory. It is the invention and promotion of the “Garden Tomb,” the alternative Holy Sepulcher located north of the actual Damas Gate and created by Protestants between 1860 and 1890 (fig. 5). This holy site, visited nowadays by thousands of pilgrims, was constructed from scratch in about thirty years, based in part on a certain number of localization clues, but mostly on a very specific historical need. Protestants had been deprived of any official presence within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher founded by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, yet the numbers of Protestant pilgrims were increasing from the mid- nineteenth century on. Thus, they sought a way to compete with the traditional Holy Sepulcher by means of a site of memory they could control and which they could freely access. The debate surrounding the location of the crucifixion (Golgotha) and the burial of Christ is obviously one of the oldest and most intense within Christian archaeology in Jerusalem. Without getting into the details of this huge controversy, we need only note that this debate was based in great part on the genuine uncertainty regarding the location of the successive walls of the city. The only agreed- on details in the Gospels indicate that the crucifixion occurred outside the city walls. Revisionist Protestant archaeologists relied on this textual clue to challenge the credibility of the traditional Holy Sepulcher, located at present in the middle of Jerusalem, well within its walls. Catholic scholars responded to this by pointing out that the walls had been moved repeatedly throughout the course of history. A second argu-

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Figure 5. The Garden Tomb around 1900. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

ment pertains to toponymy. According to the texts, Christ was crucified on Mount Golgotha. This name can be translated as “Mount of the Skull,” and we will see that this toponymic element played a decisive role in the patrimonial construction of the Garden Tomb. The third textual clue used by revisionist archaeologists drew on the location of the burial place, said to be in the garden of the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea. This is mentioned both in John 19.41 (“Now at the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, not yet used for burial. There, because the tomb was near at hand . . . they laid Jesus”) and in Matthew 27.57 (“When evening fell, there came a man of Arimathaea, Joseph by name, who was a man of means, and had himself become a disciple of Jesus. He approached Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.”).9 To understand how, in the mid-1890s, the Garden Tomb became a serious competitor to the traditional Holy Sepulcher, we need to look at the chronology of events. The story of this patrimonial invention shows how in this case the three modes of logic discussed by Halbwachs (concentration, splintering, and duality) successively came together and finally gave birth to a new holy place. The tomb was accidentally discovered in 1867,

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then excavated in full in 1873. There was no decisive patrimonialization at that time, because this tomb formed part of a fairly well- known cemetery, located north of the Damas Gate, that included a large number of ancient graves, most of which could equally well match the minimal criteria mentioned in the Gospels: the tomb must be closed by a stone rolled in front of it; it must be empty; and it must date from the first century since the Gospel describes it as “a new tomb.” Things took off in 1881 with the publication in the prestigious bulletin of the British Palestine Exploration Fund of an article by Lieutenant Conder discussing the skull- like shape of a neighboring cliff, which he decided to identify as the famous “Golgotha” of the Gospels (Golgotha meaning “skull” in Amharic).10 However, at the time, the future of the Garden Tomb was still far from being secured, since Conder was defending the authenticity of another tomb he had discovered about 200 meters farther west. A first step had nonetheless been taken, and subsequent research focused on the limited perimeter around what Protestant archaeologists henceforth referred to as “Skull Hill.” It is during this first phase that the logic of concentration formulated by Halbwachs comes into play. The revisionist archaeologists, as if they were laying down a first stratum of memories, brought together within a given perimeter a certain number of disparate elements, each of which contributed to an initial consecration of the place. To consolidate this new and still fragile site of memory, they used all possible arguments: in addition to the proximity of “Skull Hill,” they invoked the neighboring “Jeremiah’s Grotto,” where the prophet was thought to have composed his Lamentations, interpreted as a premonitory meditation on the suffering and death of the Messiah.11 Here as elsewhere, the construction of the holy places proceeded by bricolage, osmosis, and association of ideas. First, a delimited area had to be sown with biblical memories, whatever these might be. Then, a system of linkages between these different commemorative markers had to be created, so as to constitute a memorial system that would be as coherent as possible. Halbwachs perfectly formulates this process of concentration of biblical memories: “It’s as if there had been no necessary link, as if a place that had already been consecrated by one memory had attracted others, as if the memories themselves obeyed a sort of herd instinct.”12 At this stage, everything still remained to be done, since two alternative tombs were competing to genuinely challenge the traditional Holy Sepulcher: the one discovered and defended since 1881 by Lieutenant Conder, and the one discovered in 1867 and defended since 1883 by General Gordon, another prominent participant in Protestant archaeology in Jerusalem.13 The second phase, the decisive one, was to enable memory to anchor

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Figure 6. The Garden Tomb and its surroundings.

itself to one of the points in the perimeter, so that the patrimonialization of the site could really begin. This second phase came into play in 1890 when new excavations revealed, opposite “Gordon’s Tomb,” a huge underground cistern with a capacity of about 1 million liters (1,000 cubic meters).14 Integration of this discovery into the patrimonial construction in process worked through a deductive structure as weak as it was efficacious. It can be summed up as follows: This enormous cistern proves the past existence of an opulent garden, which must have belonged to a wealthy man; the texts mention that Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy; this garden, then, could have belonged to Joseph, who rescued Christ’s body and buried it after the crucifixion. Such reasoning might surprise us by its crudeness and is best seen as an obtuse case of paralogical thinking. However, this example, among many others, does shed light on the process applied to most of the holy sites that were emerging in the holy city at the time, and the case of the “Garden Tomb” is no more ridiculous than any other. To analyze how the discovery of the cistern was integrated into the patrimonial construction taking place, we can make good use of the concept of fragmentation, as formulated by Halbwachs: “At times a localization breaks up and proliferates. The various parts of a single event take place in neighboring but distinct locations. It seems that by spreading out over several points of a place, through this repetition itself, the memory becomes reinforced, multiplying the traces it has left behind.”15 In this case it was simply the proximity of an “available” tomb and the newly discovered cistern that created the opportunity to progress along the path of legitimization of the site by bringing together two episodes from the Gospels within the same sequence of events: Joseph of Arimathea’s garden and Christ’s sepulcher. After the discovery of this cistern, the pace of the patrimonial construction sped up. The Times of London published an appeal on September 22,

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1892, to raise the funds needed to purchase the piece of land that held both the tomb and the cistern.16 In 1893, the Garden Tomb Association was formed, and the land was finally bought in 1894. Not surprisingly, as we can see in contemporary photographs (fig. 5), much care had been devoted to transforming the rocky ground into a magnificent garden filled with sweetsmelling flowers so that visitors could see the correspondence of the landscape they beheld and the biblical text they had in mind. The reputation of the Garden Tomb as a holy site was then truly on its way. It began to appear on maps a few years later. Today, it is a necessary stop for pilgrims to Jerusalem, particularly, of course, for Protestants. Since 1894, then, a second Holy Sepulcher has actually existed in Jerusalem. Its development may have been laborious, and in fact took thirty years, but the result is undeniable: Protestant archaeologists, with much research and trial and error, succeeded in creating an alternative Holy Sepulcher from scratch. To understand the pairing henceforth formed by the Garden Tomb and the traditional Holy Sepulcher, we must turn to Halbwachs’s third category, his logic of duality: “As we have also seen, sometimes a Christian fact was localized simultaneously in two points distant from each other. A competition seems to have grown up between the two places, with each one trying not only to remember the event that it claimed to represent but also to attract others linked to it.”17 As testimony to this emerging duality, we have, purely by chance, an eyewitness account to draw on— that of Pierre Loti, whom we have already encountered in Jerusalem. Loti visited the holy city in the month of April 1894, at the very time of the purchase of the land by the new British association. Loti’s description is valuable because it shows the uncertainty that still hovered over these places, the doubt that gripped the visitor, and finally, the remarkable fragility that still characterized the holy sites of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century: Proceeding to- day to the Monastery of the Dominicans— where Father S— has been good enough to arrange that I should meet him in order that he might show me the line of the old walls of Jerusalem and disclose to me the most recent proofs of the authenticity of the Holy Sepulchre— I pass the hill, covered with short grass and dotted with tombs, which is still known as the “Calvary of Gordon.” Thirty years ago Gordon, wandering in these parts, was struck by a certain resemblance to a large death’s head presented by the rocks at the base of this hill; he concluded, too readily no doubt, that here must be the “Field of the Skull,” the true Golgotha, and his opinion, until the last few years, until the time of the most recent Russian excavations, re-

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ceived credit among all the more sceptical spirits, only too eager to find flaws in the old traditions. This resemblance of the rocks is for that matter, striking enough; especially to- day, when the sun is well placed and the light favourable; the skull is clearly outlined, contemplating from the two caverns of its eyes the mournful surroundings.18

Loti’s account is instructive, as it confirms the uneasiness felt by visitors when they passed by the so- called “Skull Hill,” and it also shows how pilgrims finally believed only what they wanted to believe, based on a set of clues that they compiled for themselves at their own convenience. Loti makes up for his initial uneasiness by bringing up recent Russian excavations, a subject he returns to a few lines later in recounting his visit to the École Biblique, founded four years earlier (1890) not far from the Garden Tomb: We are now in the tranquil study of the Dominicans, looking at a large map fastened to the walls. . . . On the large mural map which we are examining are traced the three old enclosing walls, conjectured from the excavations in the earth and from study of the old authors: the first, enclosing only the primitive city and the Temple; the second extending farther to the north- west, but leaving without, in one of its re- entrant angles, Calvary and the Sepulchre; the third, that subsisting at the present day, enclosing the whole; this third wall is later, however, than the time of Christ. The latest Russian excavations, it seems, give striking support to the conjecture concerning the line and the re- entrant angle of this second enclosure. The objection, therefore, falls to the ground, fails utterly, and one may continue to accept as authentic that venerable place whence, for so many centuries, an immense and unceasing prayer has gone up to heaven.19

Reading these admirably sincere lines, we perceive the visitor’s relief when a supporting argument reinforces his original conviction, shaken just a few minutes earlier by a contradiction. We could not get a better sense of the logic, at once intimate and collective, that presided over the construction of the holy sites of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century. Loti’s shaky lines reveal both the fragility and the strength of the intellectual and spiritual engagement that made possible such a flourishing of holy sites. We reckon the degree of interconnectedness of the scientific and the religious, of the rational and the imaginary, of knowledge and belief.

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We understand definitively the power of this logic of patrimonialization to which the city was subject at that time, and the extent to which that logic was fundamental to an urban identity in process of becoming.

GLOBAL AND STRUCTURAL UNCERTAINTY This account of the invention of the Garden Tomb might lead us to believe that the uncertainty characterizing the holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century applied only to some isolated elements of the sacred geography of the city, some details of a topography universally known and recognized. This was not the case. Uncertainty was at that time a structural given of Jerusalem’s geography, touching upon fundamental elements of its topography: names of valleys, toponyms linked to relief, hydrography, the location of ancient walls, of the ancient “City of David,” of Herod’s palace and Pilate’s tribunal, the specific location of the Temple itself . . . Most of the “hot spots” of biblical geography during the nineteenth century were the subject of intense debate among scholars of the holy city. If we seek a closer look at the truth of the city of Jerusalem in the years around 1900, we must seek it in the minds of the people living there at the time, without revising the notions held then in the light of information we have acquired since. To do this, we must begin with the recognition that no element of sacred topography had yet been definitively localized and identified. By taking seriously the sources from that period, reading them for what they really tell us and not for what we wish to see in them, we find that they delineate a geography with fuzzy boundaries, with porous limits, where doubts very often win out over certainties. The “ambiguity of the sites,” with respect to their location, dating, and attribution, forms the basis for the uniqueness of the context of the time: a certain plasticity of interfaith borders, a certain flexibility in identity affiliations— what Élias Sanbar calls “the syncretism of the people of the Holy Land” in evoking the common world of the inhabitants of Palestine, regardless of their religious identities, in the years around 1900.20 It is not possible to list exhaustively all the issues pertaining at that time to the ancient topography of the city. Here we will limit ourselves to some representative examples, beginning with the “City of David,” which offers an excellent case of this structural uncertainty. The localization of the original urban nucleus of royal Jerusalem was obviously a key patrimony issue that, for a long time, remained the subject of passionate debates between those proposing to locate it to the south of the Temple Mount and those defending a higher location in the middle of the old city, thus west of

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the sanctuary (map 4). The arguments on either side were based, as is often the case, on analysis of the hydraulic infrastructures put in place or inherited. On the basis of a very short passage in 2 Chronicles (32.30: “It was this same Hezekiah who blocked the upper outflow of the waters of Gihon and directed them downwards and westwards to the city of David.”), scholars over the second half of the nineteenth century engaged in intense discussions to figure out the locations of the “City of David” and the source of the Gihon. Many chose to locate the “waters of the Gihon” not in an eastern valley, as is the present- day consensus, but to the northwest of the old city, which meant totally changing the location of the “City of David.” Edward Robinson, for instance, in his Biblical Researches published in Boston in 1841, claimed that the source of the Gihon lies next to the actual Mamilla Pool, to the northwest of the walls, and that the lower basin dug by Ezekiel was in fact the “Basin of the Patriarch,” located close to the Holy Sepulcher in the old city (map 4).21 Robinson was not the only one to defend the Garden Tomb hypothesis, and his partisans were neither eccentric nor self- taught. Félix de Saulcy, a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles- lettres, an archaeologist, and a well- known numismatist, defended the same idea in successive publications.22 Thus, in 1853, on returning from his first stay in Jerusalem, he brought up an ancient local tradition involving “subterranean sounds of running water that could be heard in the silence of the night, next to the Damas Gate. ”23 In his various publications, de Saulcy repeatedly changed his opinion about the location of the lower basin of Ezekiel as he hesitated between the actual Sultan’s Pool and the actual Basin of the Patriarch, thus agreeing with Robinson’s hypothesis (map 4). However, when it came to the source of the Gihon, he defended to his death a location north or northwest of the actual city. In 1882, in his last work, he seemed definite: “After having searched a long time for what might be the fountain called in the holy texts by the name of Gihon, I am now convinced that Gihon and the Birket el-Mamilla are probably one and the same thing.”24 From this brief overview of the debate over the location of the source of the Gihon and the City of David, we need only retain the following: in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was no certainty about the location of the City of David, and for good reason, since the first systematic excavations of the mount referred to as the Ophel did not begin until the 1970s, and this debate still goes on today.25 Simply studying the sequence of cartography produced on Jerusalem between 1830 and 1930 is enough to show how slowly the topography and toponymy became fixed. The valley of Gihon is located sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of

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the actual city, the valley of Hinnom is also mobile, as is the Tyropoeon Valley (today “stabilized” as being the central valley of the city) . . . Even Mount Zion finds itself located in different places on different maps.26 Fluidity dominates, even for elements linked to the relief and the hydrography of the city. If we go beyond the general toponymy of the city to focus on the localization of key elements of its biblical patrimony, the uncertainty is still greater. For Christian pilgrims, the location of the praetorium of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, was one of the most important issues: as the place where Christ was condemned, it was the point of departure of the Via Dolorosa, leading to the site of the crucifixion (Golgotha). Halbwachs devotes an entire chapter of his book to the multiple localizations of Pilate’s tribunal. He comments that “few problems . . . are more obscure” and invites his readers to follow him “to see several traditions clash across the centuries and up to the present, with varied outcomes.”27 There were at least four coexisting hypotheses. The most ancient among them suggested setting Pilate’s tribunal on Mount Zion, at the southwest end of the city, close to one of the sites said to contain the Cenacle (the place of the Last Supper) and close also to the Column of the Flagellation, identified in the fourth century by the Pilgrim of Bordeaux.28 A second hypothesis, defended at the end of the nineteenth century by the Assumptionists, set the tribunal in the Mahkeme, the Ottoman tribunal, located on the west side of the Haram esh-Sharif, immediately to the north of the actual Wailing Wall (map 4). A third hypothesis, defended by, among others, Gustav Dalman, who became the director of the German Archaeological Institute in Jerusalem in 1902, proposed locating the tribunal in the palace built by Herod near the western citadel, at the level of the present Jaffa Gate. Halbwachs notes along the way that “the greatest number of modern scholars agree with this thesis.”29 The fourth and last hypothesis, accepted in the nineteenth century by most pilgrims and still maintained today because of the actual path of the Via Dolorosa, suggests locating the site of Pilate’s praetorium at the level of the Antonia Fortress, built by Herod, according to Flavius Josephus, at the northwest angle of the Temple Esplanade (map 4). We recall how Pierre Loti in 1894 brought up the excavations undertaken by the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, to claim they were the pavement of the “guard- room of the Praetorium.” At the end of the nineteenth century, the memory of Pontius Pilate’s praetorium, in spite of being one of the most scientifically credible elements of the urban historical patrimony, thus floated among at least three possible localities, and perhaps even four. The “ambiguity of the sites”

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reached all the way to the poles of the religious geography of the city, as seen in James Fergusson’s claim in his Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, published in London in 1847, that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher built by Constantine in the fourth century was originally located not on its nineteenth- century site, but instead on that of the Dome of the Rock, on the Haram esh-Sharif, a site traditionally claimed to be that of the First and Second Temple! Numerous British scholars then rallied to dispute Fergusson’s arguments and to defend the traditional location of the Holy Sepulcher, a location that was challenged once again, a few years later, by a much more successful competitor with, as we have seen, the invention of the Garden Tomb. With regard to their localization and dating, the key elements of the religious geography of the city were characterized, at the end of the nineteenth century, by an intrinsic uncertainty: none of these holy sites was yet considered unquestionably authentic, and it seems that this very ambiguity formed an integral part of the urban representations in which they were immersed.

ORIGINAL HYBRIDITY Jerusalem’s holy sites at the turn of the twentieth century were thus characterized by a certain fluidity with regard to topography and chronology. Was this uncertainty the symptom of ignorance of ancient topography? Was the veil covering the holy sites of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century simply one of ignorance, soon to be lifted thanks to scholars’ and archaeologists’ patient research? If that were the case, the remarkable ambiguity of these “uncertain holy sites” of Jerusalem would only be the expression of a collective blindness, of the incapacity of an urban society to successfully undertake research into its own past. This schematic view of the “unveiled truth” was obviously propagated by Western archaeologists. Bristling with knowledge and armed with picks and shovels, Western scholars claimed to have “rediscovered” the holy city by bringing to the surface the incontrovertible proofs that would make it possible to finally apprehend the authentic history of the holy city. This rhetorical magic trick stemmed from a simple and to all appearances banal expression: the rediscovery of the holy sites. The word rediscovery suggests that certainties are already “there,” buried in the ground, only waiting to be “brought back” to the light of day. Yet, the reality is the opposite: the uncertainty in which the holy sites of the city were still immersed at the time was not a symptom of the veil of ignorance that supposedly had gradually covered the sacred geography of the city; on the contrary, it was the sign of intimate and profound knowledge of

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the intrinsically syncretic roots of the great monotheistic narratives, knowledge shared by those whom Sanbar calls “the people of the Holy Land,” that is, by all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, regardless of religion. As is well known, the text that Jews called the Tanakh, Christians the Old Testament, and Muslims al-Kitaab (the Book) is the common matrix of the three monotheistic religions in all their diverse denominations. As is also well known, the city of Jerusalem is one of the essential contexts of the original biblical text on which later religious traditions were based. The syncretism of the holy sites in Jerusalem is thus not an accidental or secondary fact, but in reality the essential, fundamental given that makes it possible to understand the common world underlying the representations of its residents. To put it more directly, nonspecificity, mixing, and hybridization appear as the original, unique mark of the holy sites of Jerusalem, while designation, distinction, and separation are only later processes that, historically, appeared rather late. A Eurocentric reading would see the lack of specificity of the holy sites of Jerusalem in the nineteenth century only as a sign of collective ignorance. If we take into account endogenous representations, however, we arrive at the opposite conclusion— that this apparent lack of specificity shows a shared knowledge on the part of the city’s inhabitants, who knew, more or less consciously, that they were heirs of a very ancient common history. And how could they not be aware of this? Why would the inhabitants of Jerusalem be the only people not able to construct a collective memory, a common worldview? Did they not have, before their eyes and beneath their feet, all the elements that would enable them to construct and maintain this common identity? To become convinced of this, we must begin by asking these questions as we push aside overused paradigms and set out on a quest for the traces of this syncretic culture still visible and perceptible today.30 Maurice Halbwachs, in the conclusion to his Legendary Topography, attempts to express in just a few lines the interweaving of religious traditions in Jerusalem. His analysis applies to the three monotheisms as they each (including Judaism) constitute and institutionalize themselves through a process of reappropriation of traditions and differentiation of themselves from the others: For a new community, the traditions of older groups provide the natural support for its own memories, strengthening and upholding them like a garden trellis. Thus they gradually gain more authority and, as it were, consecration. Yet, at the same time and at length, the community drags these traditions into the stream of its memories, detaching them from a

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past becoming ever more obscure, from the darkness of time where they seem to become lost, and transforms them by making them its own. By doing this, it disfigures them by changing their place in time and space. It also renews them by unusual connections, unexpected oppositions, by the groupings and alliances it makes them enter into. 31

The interactions that link the various religious traditions in Jerusalem enabled Halbwachs to grasp a sacred geography that was fundamentally dynamic and interwoven rather than immobile and compartmentalized, as is so often believed. There are relatively well- known examples that illustrate this geography. Among the best known is the case of the Umayyad inscriptions devoted to the prophet Jesus/Isa, visible on the interior of the Dome of the Rock:32 the figure of Isa ibn Maryam (Jesus, son of Mary) occupies an essential place confirmed by multiple Muslim traditions connected to the remembrance of Jesus in Jerusalem, as, for instance, the eastern spring described in 1878 in the journal La Terre Sainte: “Everyone, Muslims as well as Christians, calls it the Virgin’s Fountain, or for Muslims, it’s the Fountain of Our Lady Mary (Ain Siti Miriam), as they venerate her under that name. There is no doubt indeed that the Savior’s mother drank from it.”33 Other toponyms used in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century, among them that of Bab Sitti Mariam (Mary’s Gate) used to locate the eastern gate to the city leading to the cave of the Assumption, show the importance of the figure of Jesus and, even more, that of his mother in the religious representations of the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is logical that this interweaving of references should be stronger in Jerusalem than elsewhere, since, in the holy city, biblical figures are not only features of a given religious identity but also figures of “local” history, regardless of the spiritual power attributed to them. Outside of Jerusalem and the holy land, it is not surprising that each sanctuary should be consecrated to a specific religion, to the exclusion of all others, as these sanctuaries are not located on sites common to the three monotheistic traditions. Synagogues, churches, mosques, temples— in short, most of the worship sites located outside of the Holy Land— are clearly assigned to a given religion, with very rare points of contact between the different traditions. Each maintains and cultivates its own patrimony and its own remembrances. It is thus from a biased viewpoint that we seek in Jerusalem the same “clarity” in boundaries between faiths, the same impermeability of traditions. Many local toponyms confirm the importance of the figure of the prophet Jesus among Jerusalem’s Muslims, as shown, for instance, by the

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Mosque of the Ascension located atop the Mount of Olives. A Muslim holy site explicitly commemorating the ascension of Christ after his death, the Mosque of the Ascension stands on the site of an ancient Byzantine chapel, exactly opposite the Dome of the Rock. Inside, there is what is presented as the imprint of Jesus’ right foot, which is still visible today. Halbwachs, visiting the site in the late 1930s, claimed that the fragment of rock “bearing the imprint of the left foot had been transferred to the mosque of Al-Aqsa where the imams were still displaying it.”34 According to Halbwachs, the presence of this Muslim holy site devoted to the figure of Jesus goes back to the end of the twelfth century: “After Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, Arabs retook possession of the Mount of Olives. In 1200, a Muslim restored the kiosk erected by the Crusaders on the place of the Ascension into the form of a mosque. The mystery of Jesus’ Ascension was at any rate honored in Islam.”35 This is an obvious echo of the imprint of Muhammad’s foot displayed in the center of the Dome of the Rock, commemorating the night journey of the founding prophet of Islam. Today, even though the Mosque of the Ascension is located just a few steps away from the most popular sites on the Mount of Olives, it is nearly deserted. The site seems neutralized, as if it had been “demonetized.” This hybrid holy site, uncertain, opened to original porosities that in the past linked the various religious traditions of Jerusalem, no longer corresponds to pilgrims’ expectations of solidly established markers with impermeable limits— the sort of markers needed to reaffirm their beliefs and respective identities in a largely secularized social environment. A small mosque, bare and unpretentious, with a mihrab turned toward Mecca and bearing the footprint of the prophet Jesus, is an admirable symbol of the syncretism of “the people of Jerusalem.” It is a confusing, uncomfortable place for a European, African, or Asian pilgrim of today, who has come to Jerusalem to strengthen his or her own spiritual practice and not to weaken it through contact with disquieting composites. The extraordinary growth of pilgrimages to the holy land since the end of the nineteenth century ultimately appears to be a determining factor in explaining the polarization and the differentiation of the traditions linked to Jerusalem’s holy sites. The accumulation of these exogenous gazes, seeking clear and well- marked identities, largely explains this development. In the nineteenth century, other essential sites in Jerusalem were still marked by this interweaving of religious traditions. For instance, Mount Zion, which we would expect to be clearly dedicated to a “Jewish” remembrance of the city, is a representative example of the hybridization of sites. One of the graves claimed to be that of David is located there, and the his-

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tory of this unusual site deserves a closer look. The tomb of King David, a founding figure of Jewish history, was first mentioned in Christian sources of the tenth and eleventh centuries, a little before the period of the crusades.36 Around 1173, a text attributed to Rabbi Abraham reported, in an exchange of letters with Benjamin of Tudele, that excavations had brought to light, about fifteen years previously, David’s tomb at the top of Mount Zion. It was at that place that the Franciscan Custody established its headquarters at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1524, a few years after having conquered the city, Ottoman authorities expelled the Franciscans and replaced the church with a mosque destined to maintain the memory of Nebi Daoud, “the prophet David.” Other Christian traditions, in particular the Cenacle (the Last Supper or cena), the Dormition of the Virgin, Pilate’s praetorium, and Caiaphas’ house (where the judgment by the Sanhedrin took place), all successively presented in proximity to each other, contributed to the complexity of the locale. The building that Melchior de Vogüé described in 1876 perfectly illustrates the inextricable interlinkages of traditions: The Neby Daoud (tomb of the prophet David) also has two stories. The bottom one, formed by ancient substructions, is divided into two halls: one is named the hall of the washing of the feet; the other, smaller, is the so- called tomb of David. The upper floor is divided into two compartments, one located above David’s tomb. During the time when the Franciscans occupied it, they claimed it was the site of the descent of the Holy Spirit. The other compartment is nowadays called the Cenacle. 37

When Halbwachs visited the site in the fall of 1939, he was also struck by this piling- up of traditions: “We went up to the upper part of the old church, transformed into a mosque that is remarkable mainly because of its impressive bareness.” He concludes his analysis of this unclassifiable building thus: “The legend of David’s tomb, apocryphal, much more recent, abandoned, taken up again, and finally rejected by Christians, has been adopted by Muslims.”38 As we can see, the list of traditions is not clearly assigned to a given faith. The remembrance of the great personages of the history of the city (King David being one of them) is mobilized in turn by each of the monotheistic religions, according to the needs, possibilities, and constraints inherent to each context. This “distribution of memories” is developed according to sometimes unexpected logic: while the tomb of King David, a priori a key figure of Jewish memory of the city, was successively consecrated by Christians and Muslims, only very recently has it been brought to the foreground

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by Judaism. Only after the partition of the city in 1949, when Mount Zion became part of Israeli territory but at the border of Jordan’s territory (that is, precisely in a boundary position), did a visit to David’s Tomb became obligatory for Jewish pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. All these examples show how wrong it is to postulate a priori an original designation for the holy sites of Jerusalem: as a hybrid reality in motion, Jerusalem’s holy sites evidence, on the contrary, a syncretism that is particularly strong within local traditions— if we take the time to analyze them in their full historical depth. And so we come to the point of stating a surprising paradox: while Jerusalem seems nowadays to embody the very symbol of religious opposition and confrontation, in reality it was until recently the locus of uncommon religious intermixture. Could “everybody’s city”— to borrow the favorite phrase of the poet Édouard Glissant— be in reality an archipelago of fundamental and universal religious creolization, rather than a walled field of unalterable identities? To understand what constitutes the distinctive identity of Jerusalem, the alternative deserves at least to be considered.39 h In spring 1866, representatives of all religious faiths in Jerusalem collectively wrote to the sultan requesting the renovation of the city’s drinking water pipes.40 To justify their request to the Ottoman authorities, they invoked the memory of two eminent historical figures. The first was that of the Sultan Suleiman cennet-mekan hazretleri (“His Excellence the Sultan Suleiman, may Paradise be his home”), also known as Suleiman the Magnificent, who had restored the hydraulic pipeworks of the city and turned them into waqf (inalienable public grants) in 1541. The second figure was that of Hazret-I Suleyman ali-I nebiyyina (“Our Lord the very high prophet Solomon”), legendary king and founder of the Temple of Jerusalem. We should not be surprised to see rubbing shoulders, at the end of the nineteenth century, these two figures whom we might rather imagine today as the bearers of two incompatible, even antagonistic, memories. In the mind of the city dwellers of the times, it was completely logical to invoke at once and in the same text the memory of Suleiman and that of Solomon. The great sultan Suleiman was celebrated for undertaking vast works of beautification and for building the walls of the city, thus ensuring the safety and pride of each and every inhabitant of the holy city. And Solomon, the legendary king of Jerusalem, the builder of the First Temple according to biblical tradition, was not yet the bearer of an exclusively Jewish memory, but appeared rather

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as the founding figure of a claimed and shared local identity. After all, when Suleiman the Magnificent had a series of public fountains built in the city, did he not have engraved on some of them that these sabil had been inaugurated in the “reign of our Master the very high Sultan, the second Solomon among the kings of the earth”? Between Solomon and Suleiman, between one Suleiman and another, there was much more proximity than distance in the minds of the inhabitants of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century. If we seek to truly understand what makes up both the imaginary and the ordinary that were lived by the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the years around 1900, we must take into account the Ottoman worldview. To access these unexpected collective representations, we must look toward Istanbul, the seat of the imperial power that had ruled over the life of the inhabitants of the holy city since 1517.

chapter four

The Scale of the Empire

For the last quarter of a century the condition of this City has been one of progress and improvement; for the first half of that period [1865–77] the progress was slow; it has proceeded much more rapidly during the latter half [1877– 90]. Turkish administration has generally improved under the wholesome laws, regulations and restraints enacted by the central Government. — Noel Temple Moore, British consul in Jerusalem, February 15, 1890

“P

alestine was a rather remote region of the Ottoman Empire with no central government of its own and few accepted norms. Life proceeded slowly, at a pace set by the stride of the camel and the reins of tradition.” This is how Tom Segev describes Palestine just before World War I in the introduction to his book One Palestine, Complete (2000).1 This surprising description contradicts all the information in primary sources and available archives. Yet it was written by one of the leaders of the “new Israeli historians.” We need to ponder the historiographical and political weight of such a description, which, in just a few lines, gives support to the founding myth about Palestine being “a land without people for a people without land.”2 A land not only without people but also without law or administration, writes Segev, an empty land, almost a wasteland, with “tradition” and “camel” as sole discernible landmarks. A “remote” province and, what’s more, one that the empire had turned away from and abandoned to its fate. Until the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the arrival of British troops, Palestine is supposed to have lived “at a slow pace. ” In other words, it had not yet “entered into history,” to borrow former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s unfortunate statement of 2007 regarding an Africa he believes to be immersed in an “imaginary world where everything begins anew always” 77

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Map 5. The Ottoman administration in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century.

and where “there is no place for either the human adventure or the idea of progress.” The parallel between these two descriptions is not due to chance since both draw on the same source: the same ignorance of local dynamics and of endogenous factors of modernization, the same Western conceit that progress is the prerogative of Europe alone, whether expressed on its own soil or projected outward through colonial ambitions.

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In the case of Palestine and Jerusalem during the Ottoman period, three ideological matrices came together to give credence to this hackneyed view. First, the tradition of orientalist studies, which created a model of the “Islamic city” in a state of immobility consubstantial with the religious structures that envelop it. Next, traditional Zionist historiography, with its need to convincingly present pre-Mandate Palestine as an empty, archaic, and thus “available” space. Finally, Arab nationalist historiography, including that of Palestine, which came to its original identity through its opposition to Ottoman imperialism and its authoritarian derivatives, the Young Turk governments during World War I. Western orientalism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism thus have paradoxically joined hands to bury the history of Palestine and of Ottoman Jerusalem under a “black legend” that today is in urgent need of revision. To get a sense of the stakes involved in a new history of Ottoman Jerusalem, we must note that Tom Segev is not an isolated case and that his view is largely shared by the most highly regarded historians of Jerusalem. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, professor emeritus and former rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author in the late 1970s of an important body of work devoted to Jerusalem in the nineteenth century,3 writes about available sources on Jerusalem at the end of the Ottoman period: “there are no writings in Arabic on this region, and the Ottoman sources are not clear either.”4 He remains silent on the Ottomanist and Arab- speaking historians who, for years, had already been studying hundreds of linear meters of documents preserved in Istanbul (for imperial Ottoman sources) and the archives of the waqf of Jerusalem preserved in Abu-Dis, to cite only the best known.5 In contrast, Ben-Arieh gives much credence to travel narratives: “A great number of travelers who visited Eretz-Israel at that time were European scientists. Their aims were scientific, and they undertook scientific expeditions, which they carried out with the help of the scientific tools of the time. ”6 In the face of the claimed absence of local sources, we are thus supposed to place our trust in “European scientists,” even though, as we have seen (especially when it comes to cartography and toponymy), their information was shaky, uncertain, and to say the least, out of sync with local realities (see chapter 1). This disregard for local sources leads Ben-Arieh to offer a largely biased view of the urban society of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century. To gain a full sense of the historiographical path that has yet to be traveled, let us look at some passages from his book, published in Israel in 1980 and in France in 2003:

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The direct contribution of the Ottoman regime to the development of Jerusalem was relatively minimal. . . . The Turkish pashas who came to Jerusalem after 1840 did hold the title of “Pasha” but their power was much diminished after the Egyptian conquest. . . . Given that they were only appointed for one year . . . , their terms were so short that the pashas showed no interest whatever in the growth and development of the city.7

As we shall see, Ottoman sources show, on the contrary, that the governors of Jerusalem gained in powers and responsibilities from the midnineteenth century on, that they served for terms much longer than one year (for instance, twelve years for Mehmed Rauf Pasha [1877– 89]; seven years for Ibrahim Hakki Pasha [1890–97]) and that they often requested the Jerusalem posting, which they considered a genuine promotion as shown in the preserved personal correspondence and journals of some of them. Do these contradictions reflect a simple quarrel between Ottoman specialists, one that might be inconsequential for the overall view of Jerusalem’s history? Certainly not. A quick look at Ben-Arieh’s text following the quotation above shows that underrating Ottoman administration leads him, and many other authors in his wake, to deny any endogenous dynamism of the urban society— a society that they describe, moreover, according to crude ethno- religious categories: The contribution of the Muslim community was unfortunately very minimal. . . . Arab Muslims had only Turkey, “the sick man of the Bosphorus,” as political support. The Jews themselves were receiving help from Jewish communities abroad. . . . The Arabs had no money, and the Turks were not keen to help them. . . . Muslim activity was very small compared to that of the other two communities, the Christian and the Jewish.8

It is clear that a genuine “urban” history of Ottoman Jerusalem— that is, a history of the city, documented and shared— still remains to be written.

OTTOMANISM: A DEFENSE AGAINST FRACTURING IDENTITIES? Today there are many young researchers using local administrative sources to propound a new vision of Jerusalem’s Ottoman history.9 In Turkey itself, the present crisis of secular Kemalism and the return to favor of the Ottoman legacy have made possible, over nearly two decades, somewhat

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of a renaissance of Ottoman studies, and especially a renewal of university training in Arabic script and Ottoman paleography, both indispensable for conducting research in the kilometers of records preserved in the imperial archives of Istanbul, where authorized access has been considerably eased since the 1990s.10 It is now possible to set Jerusalem back into the Ottoman fabric of which it was a part between 1517 and 1917, particularly at the end of the nineteenth century, when the imperial administration was modernizing by leaps and bounds. This historiographical breakthrough is shedding precious light on the Ottoman legacy, largely ignored until now and yet so relevant today for the Mediterranean basin. Such research is particularly indispensable in the specific case of Jerusalem. Only the Ottoman context enables us to understand how the different communities of the holy city were able to live together relatively harmoniously until World War I. Only this common context makes it possible to understand why Jerusalem’s notables of all religions could call upon both the remembrance of King Solomon and that of Sultan Suleiman when they sent a joint request to the sultan in 1866.11 The sultan himself, contrary to Tom Segev’s claim, had a special interest in the holy city whose symbolic, political, and strategic import he clearly understood. The Ottoman sovereign- sultan, indeed, stood at the head of a large empire going back to the fourteenth century, which encompassed provinces with strong Muslim and Christian majorities along with cities of strongly Jewish culture (for instance, Salonica [Thessaloniki], which numbered 90,000 Jews out of a total population of 130,000 in 1900). The sultan drew his legitimacy from assumed universalism, the foundation stone of all supranational imperial ideologies. Far from losing steam, this imperial ideological matrix was actually reactivated at the end of the nineteenth century with the irruption onto the Ottoman political scene of the “Young Turks” movement, a descendant of the Young Ottomans movement that had been active during the years from 1850 to 1870. The Young Ottomans and then the Young Turks were directly inspired by the universalism of the French Revolution and by the growing number of Masonic lodges that, from mid- century on, had been multiplying in all the large cities of the empire. The Young Ottomans and then the Young Turks included in their ranks members of the various minorities of the empire (Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Arabs, and so forth) and aimed to transcend emerging religious or national rivalries by regenerating an original Ottomanism. The Young Turks were very much involved in the Tanzimat policies, the large reform and modernization movement of the empire that began in Istanbul in the mid- nineteenth century. The Young Turks envisioned a new Pax Ottomanica, the only movement

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capable of safeguarding the territorial integrity of the empire by channeling the national aspirations of its various populations. Michelle Campos’s book Ottoman Brothers (2010) drew upon a wealth of public and private sources to describe Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book brings out the integrative power of the Young Turks’ ideology and of supranational universalism, particularly present in Jerusalem in the years around 1900 by virtue of interreligious exchanges and a strong, locally anchored syncretic legacy.12 As we know, the acceleration of centrifugal nationalist claims, the alliance with Germany, the authoritarian turn and “Turkish nationalism” stance taken by the Ottoman government after 1910, followed by the dismembering of the empire at the close of World War I, finally put an end to the project of “Ottoman renaissance. ” However, its ultimate failure should not make us forget the power of attraction of Ottomanism and its Young Turks avatar during the years 1880–1910, especially in the most cosmopolitan cities of the empire, such as Alexandria, Jerusalem, Beirut, and Salonica (Thessaloniki).13 If Jerusalem experienced, in the years from 1880 to 1910, such a social and cultural flowering, it was also because the city benefited from its specific context, to which we remain blind if we stick to the fable of the long decline of the Ottoman empire, the “sick man of Europe,” since the beginning of the eighteenth century. By taking a closer look, we can see, to the contrary, that the end of the nineteenth century broke with this deterministic chronology, notably with the rise in the responsibilities of the civil administration of the provinces.

THE SERAGLIO PEOPLE: IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION IN JERUSALEM “The governor of the Mutessarifat [of Jerusalem] is Mohamed [Mehmed] Tevfik Bey, a young man of integrity and intelligence, and animated with the desire to ameliorate as much as possible the condition of the province under his rule. ”14 Was the author of these lines a fervent defender of Ottoman sovereignty over Jerusalem, an imperial functionary writing a laudatory portrait of one of his colleagues? No, these lines were written by John Dickson, British consul posted in Jerusalem between 1891 and 1906, in a report addressed to his superiors on May 11, 1900, about the administrative personnel employed in the Saraya (Seraglio) of Jerusalem, the seat of the governorate, located in the northeast of the old city, bordering the Haram esh-Sharif and the Via Dolorosa (map 5). This document shows that it is possible to revitalize the historical approach to Ottoman Jerusalem even on the basis of Western sources, if only we focus on the best- informed observ-

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ers of the local situation rather than limiting ourselves to the stock descriptions of passing travelers. Dickson then reports that since 1872 the district (sanjak) of Jerusalem has been independent of Damascus Province and directly connected to the imperial capital, which shows the special attention the central government paid to this territory.15 Dickson adds that the governor of Jerusalem “holds the title of Mutessarif, but in practice he has all the powers of a Vali [governor- general of a province], as he answers directly to the Porte [Istanbul] and is subordinate neither to the Vali of Damascus nor to that of Beirut.” In his observations of Ottoman administrative structures, Dickson directly contradicts Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, who describes governors as gradually less active and influential. Dickson then notes that since the 1864 reform of provincial administration, the civil functions of the government have been separated from the military functions and that a military governor is specifically appointed to command the garrison, which is another sign of the ongoing administrative modernization. Judicial authority is exercised by the kadi (qadi, judge) who presides over the civil tribunal and the religious tribunal (he is helped in the latter by the mufti, or chief jurist). The president of the tribunal is named for just one year in a single post, to keep him from being influenced by local interests, and he thus has to move very frequently through the empire. After the governor and the judge, Dickson notes that the third top administrator is the muhasebeci, the general treasurer or head accountant, charged with keeping and validating the public accounts of the province. To these three principal officials, Dickson adds the tahrirat katibi (general secretary of the provincial administration), the evkaf müdürü (administrator of the waqf, religious foundations), the tapu müdürü (administrator of the cadastre), the tahrir-i emlak müdürü (administrator of real property taxes), the mamur el-tasakir (in charge of passports), the jandarma kumandani (commandant of the gendarmery, as distinct from the garrison), and the raïs el-belediye (president of the municipality, an official to whom we will return in the next chapter).16 It must be emphasized that this is not a theoretical organizational chart of an ideal provincial administration, but rather the local British consul’s direct observation of the officials actually active in Jerusalem in the spring of 1900. Other documents confirm this general picture. For instance, an Ottoman register titled Hükumet (Government), preserved in the National Archives of Israel, lists twenty- three officials permanently employed at the seat of the governorate in Jerusalem during Governor Mehmed Rauf Pasha’s mandate (1877– 89). A large number for a “remote region of the Ottoman Empire with no central government of its own”!

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After the 1864 reform, the Ottoman imperial system was no longer limited to these officials, and it also included a certain number of deliberative bodies serving as links between the population and the administration. Dickson’s 1900 report makes it clear that this theoretical framework did indeed apply to Jerusalem: The governor is assisted in his administration of the district by an Administrative Council (Meclis-I Idare) consisting of twelve members, six Muslims and six non Muslims. Out of the six Muslims, four are permanent: the Kadi, the Mufti, the Mudir el-Tahrirat [general secretary] and the Muhasebeci [general treasurer] while the other two Muslim members are elected every two years. Among the six non Muslim members, four are permanent. They are the representatives of religious communities: one from the Latin rite, a Greek Orthodox, an Armenian and a Jew. The two others [one Latin and one Greek Orthodox] are elected. The Mutessarif [governor] presides over the administrative council. He is assisted by a secretary- interpreter who also serves as intermediary with the staff of the consulates.

The British consul’s description is incontrovertible, as it comes from an observer, Dickson, who cannot be suspected of favoring the Ottoman administration. He had held his post for nine years when he wrote this report: Ottoman administration did exist, he encountered it, it functioned! Since the great reforms (Tanzimat) begun during the 1840s and strengthened after 1876, Ottoman administration could easily be compared to administrative standards current in Europe at that time, especially given a strict separation between political, military, and judicial powers; a post specifically dedicated to verifying public finances; and one devoted to the cadastre and real estate taxes. There was also a junction between the appointed officials and elected representatives provided by an administrative council charged with validating the ensemble of procedures. Moreover, Dickson calls attention to the religious diversity of these deliberative institutions by pointing out that, of the twelve members of the administrative council, six were non-Muslims, even though the population of the district of Jerusalem (the district including the city) was about two- thirds Muslim at the time (200,000 Muslims out of a total of 300,000 inhabitants). The 1864 law did not create the Administrative Council (Meclis-i Idare) out of thin air; rather, this council was the successor of the Consultative Council (Majlis al-shura) put in place during the Egyptian occupation of Palestine in the 1830s.17 Voters in the elections had to be male and own a cer-

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tain amount of property. To have the right to vote, a man had to be at least twenty- five years old and subject to a yearly property tax of a minimum of 50 kurush (50 piasters). To be elected, a candidate had to be older than thirty and paying a yearly property tax of at least 100 piasters.18 For purposes of comparison, we may note that the price of a goat in the market in Jaffa in 1890 was about 40 piasters and the price of a donkey about 130 piasters, while the yearly salary of a primary school teacher in Jerusalem in the 1890s was 1,800 piasters.19 The suffrage conditions in Jerusalem thus would have been similar to those in several European countries at that time: the Ottoman empire was on the road to administrative modernity in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

COUNTERING THE IMAGE OF THE “TURK’S HEAD”: A GALLERY OF PORTRAITS Beyond the structure of the imperial administration, what can we know of the officials who conducted its business? Consul Dickson describes the governor Mehmed Tevfik Bey (1897–1901) as “a young man of integrity and intelligence. ” Could this be an isolated case, an exception that would serve to confirm the common rule of the “scruffy pasha” in a “ramshackle seraglio,” as Simon Sebag Montefiore claimed?20 Reading other reports submitted by British consuls between 1870 and 1914, it is clear that this was not the case and that praise was more frequent than criticism. For instance, on July 27, 1872, Consul Noel Temple Moore (Dickson’s predecessor) pointed out that the governor, Mustafa Sureyya Pasha, “benefits from his long experience in the region having already been governor of Jerusalem some years previously and his new appointment was met here with general satisfaction.” In 1890, in one of his last reports, this same consul wrote: “For the last quarter of a century the condition of this City has been one of progress and improvement; for the first half of that period [1865–77] the progress was slow; it has proceeded much more rapidly during the latter half [1877–90]. Turkish administration has generally improved under the wholesome laws, regulations and restraints enacted by the central Government.”21 The situation in the holy city had improved since 1865, in the view of Moore, who held the post of consul for twenty- seven years, from 1863 to 1890. This improvement was the result of an efficient synergy between government and local administration. When it came to evaluating the actual deeds of the city’s governors, consuls’ reports were equally full of praise. In January 1903, for instance, as a serious cholera epidemic spread through the region, Consul Dickson pointed out that “concerning the general functioning of the administra-

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tion . . . almost the whole of the Authorities’ attention was concentrated in reinforcing preventative measures against the spread of cholera.”22 Clearly, reading available sources without preconceived notions leads to substantial qualifications of traditional descriptions of the Ottoman administration. In his book Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908, the German historian Johann Büssow presents an exhaustive chronology of the Ottoman governors in Jerusalem from the 1870s to the 1910s. A gallery of portraits of these “great imperial officials” shows that they are in the main persons of high rank within the Ottoman administration, well educated, polyglot, and heavily involved in the decision process of ongoing administrative reforms at the imperial level. Let us look at some examples, following the chronology from 1870 to 1910. We begin with Mehmed Kamil Pasha, governor of Jerusalem from June 1873 to December 1874, born in Cyprus in 1832, brought up in British culture. After his post in Jerusalem, he served as governor of Aleppo (1877– 79), minister of education (1880– 81), and then grand vizier (prime minister), a post he held four times starting in 1885. Mehmed Rauf Pasha is another figure who cannot be ignored. He was governor of Jerusalem for twelve years, from 1877 to 1889. A fluent speaker of French and a fervent reformer, he was very close to Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha. He participated in the writing of the imperial constitution of 1876 and held strong Ottomanist convictions. During his term in Jerusalem, he successfully put down tribal rebellions in the Gaza region, considerably strengthened the administrative structure of the province, successfully organized a census of the population in 1883,23 and undertook numerous road- building projects. After serving in Jerusalem, he was appointed governor of Beirut (1889), of Erzurum (1895– 1901), and of Salonica (Thessaloniki, 1904–8). Another important personage was Ibrahim Hakki Pasha, governor of Jerusalem for seven years from 1890 to 1897. He had previously been governor of Tripoli (in Syria), and his policies were particularly well received by European consuls. Construction of the railroad line between Jerusalem and Jaffa was accomplished under his authority, and the line was inaugurated with much ceremony in September 1892. He was made grand vizier (prime minister) in 1910– 11. Then there was Mehmed Tevfik Bey (1897–1901), already mentioned earlier. He was part of a new generation of officials serving the Ottoman state, graduates of the new Imperial School of Administration in Istanbul (mülkiye), liberals and committed reformers. We are familiar with his term as governor through his personal memoirs and those of his wife, Naciye Neyyal. When he was appointed to Jerusalem, he was only thirty years old and had directly requested the sultan to appoint him to this

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post, pointing out that he had already worked for twelve years as interpreter within the government translation department, that he spoke French perfectly, and that this ability would be particularly useful in Jerusalem when dealing with European consuls. During his term in Jerusalem he broadened the existing administrative structure by creating the subdistrict of Beersheba, in the middle of the Negev desert. This policy was continued by one of his successors, Rüsdi Osman Kazim Bey (1902– 4), who created numerous rural districts (nahiye) around Jerusalem in order to consolidate the imperial administrative presence in rural areas. He was succeeded by Ahmed Reshid Pasha, who held the post of governor from 1904 to 1906. He too held a degree from the Imperial School of Administration. A fluent speaker of French, he had been secretary in the imperial palace of Yildiz for fourteen years before coming to Jerusalem and was later appointed governor of Manastir, of Ankara, and of Aleppo. We must close this portrait gallery with Ali Ekrem Bey (1867– 1937), who was posted in Jerusalem from December 1906 to the revolution of July 1908 and who is probably the best- known governor of Jerusalem, thanks to the preservation of his memoirs (as well as those of his daughter, Hatice Selma Ekrem) along with many personal papers dating from his stay in the holy city. Like Mehmed Tevfik before him, Ali Ekrem had explicitly requested the post of governor of Jerusalem, even though it was not officially vacant and in fact was still held by Ahmed Reshid. To reach his goal, he even refused the post of governor- general of the province of Çatalca, very close to the capital city, Istanbul, which shows how desirable the governorship of Jerusalem was to the civil servants of the Ottoman state. In a letter addressed to the minister of the interior in 1908, he notes that the Jerusalem position is more prestigious than a post “in any other province” because of its “extraordinary importance to all European countries” as well as the strategic advantage of directly facing Egypt, which had been occupied by British troops since 1882.24 People who had dealings with Ali Ekrem Bey were struck by his high degree of culture. Before being named to Jerusalem, he had been secretary (Mayben katibi) at the imperial palace of Yildiz for seventeen years (1888– 1905). He spoke perfect French, published poems, and later ended his career as professor of literature in the greatest universities of Istanbul. He owed his erudite and French- speaking background to his father, Namik Kemal, one of the most famous Ottoman writers of the time, who had been a fervent admirer of the French Revolution, a universalist, and a freemason. Namik Kemal had founded the famous “Progress” lodge in Istanbul, led the Young Ottoman movement, fled to Paris as a refugee between 1867 and 1871, and authored the first Ottoman constitution in

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Figure 7. Ali Ekrem Bey, governor of Jerusalem, with Sheikh Salam Ibn Saïd, at Beersheba, 1906–8.

1876. This family legacy made Ali Ekrem Bey a keen observer of the great geopolitical stakes at play in Jerusalem. During his stay in the holy city, he led an effective anti- corruption campaign and completed the administrative structure in the Beersheba region, south of his own district.25 There exists a photograph of him, taken during his term, wearing his official uniform as governor and standing next to Sheikh Salam Ibn Saïd (fig. 7). This brief overview of the Ottoman governors of Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century shows that the traditional image, widespread in Europe, is obviously false— inspired less by available documents than by the pejorative imaginary picture of the “ignorant and bloodthirsty pasha” and the so- called “Turk’s head.” The latter, a stereotypical simulacrum invented at the end of the eighteenth century, traditionally functioned as a kind of “repulsion dynamometer,” with young boys at country fairs beating on the image with sticks.26 Upon closer look, in no way did Jerusalem’s governors resemble those “great wicked Turks” described in Western sources. In fact, seen from Jerusalem, the impression is exactly the opposite: they were in the main polyglots, well educated and cultured; they usually stayed several years at their post and tried to improve the functioning of the local administration they were charged with by applying governmental reforms

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to the best of their abilities. In reality, they were neither more nor less than zealous civil servants of the Ottoman state and resembled, for instance, French prefects. Olivier Bouquet, the author of an impressive prosopography of the “sultan’s pashas” in the empire as a whole, likewise emphasizes the gap between reality and caricature: “Beyond the juicy figure of the big- bellied Turk lazing about in his harem or of the bloodthirsty janissary, which have been served up in narratives of European travelers and in certain Ottoman literary sources, pashas were agents of the state, honored by the sultan with the most prestigious titles going at the end of the empire. ”27 Based on the analysis of several hundred personnel files that gave him information on, among other things, “family social and geographic origins, education and professional backgrounds, languages spoken, successive posts, salaries, rank and merit, and medals received,” Bouquet concludes that as “genuine trekkers of empire in a fully controlled and occupied space, rather than unstable agents of an empire prey to the sole decisions of the palace, they lived a career that often lasted several decades, at all times remaining fully associated with the administrative and political life of the empire. ” This view corresponds pretty well with the impression given by our gallery of portraits of Jerusalem’s governors. In any case, it is very far from the grotesque image still too often promoted in current historiography.

SEPTEMBER

1, 1900: IMPERIAL JUBILEE IN JERUSALEM

To get a feel for the actual actions of the Ottoman governors in the holy city and particularly their reception by the inhabitants, let us pause to examine a specific event located at the intersection of the ordinary, everyday “small history” of Jerusalem and the “big history” of the empire: the inauguration on September 1, 1900, of a monumental public fountain in the immediate vicinity of the old city. The year 1900 is an important date in the history of the Ottoman empire, marking a sort of ultimate apogee of imperial power. In that year, precisely on September 1, Sultan Abdul Hamid II celebrated the jubilee of the first twenty- five years of his reign, and Ottoman flags adorned all the cities of the empire. 28 Accounts agree that this imperial jubilee, far from being a merely formal celebration, involved the whole of the population participating in the ceremonies and collective jubilation, especially in Jerusalem. For his part, the sultan took advantage of the occasion to show his interest in the holy city by initiating a number of public works. Without ignoring the official nature of these festivities, we can try to see in them the ties uniting the inhabitants of the holy city with the imperial capital at the turn of the twentieth century. In Jerusalem, the ceremonies held on

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September 1, 1900, were organized around a monumental fountain built and inaugurated for the occasion before the Jaffa Gate (Bab al-Khalil, “Gate of Hebron,” in Arabic), located on the western wall of the old city (fig. 8). The building of the new fountain and the reorganizing of the perimeter around the Jaffa Gate were a delicate undertaking in urbanism, as this was the gate where pilgrims and tourists entered the old city. In a way, it was the “showcase” of Jerusalem for the eyes of the world. The project of building the new fountain had been greatly helped by works undertaken two years previously, upon the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The breach in the wall made at that time to allow his carriage to pass required filling ditches at the level of the Jaffa Gate, which in turn made it possible to plan the reorganization of this whole area.29 On August 3, 1900, Jerusalem’s governor, Mehmed Tevfik Bey, sent a cable to the Ministry of the Interior (Dahiliye Nezareti) to inform the ministry of the good progress of the works and of the laying down of the first stone of the fountain. Along the way, he noted that the project was undertaken on the initiative of the inhabitants themselves, for the occasion of the imperial jubilee: The twenty- fifth anniversary of the coronation of his Excellency, Refuge of the Caliphate at the throne of the Ottomans, is a joyous celebration for all his subjects. To commemorate this event . . . all the city’s inhabi-

Figure 8. The fountain dedicated on September 1, 1900. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

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tants, of all classes and nations, have decided to build a fountain and a cistern on the most important place of the Kudüs- i Sherif, at the Gate of Hebron [Jaffa Gate]. The front piece of the fountain will be decorated with the ornament of the sublime Tughra [monogram] of the sultan.30

On the same day, the Hebrew newspaper Ha-Tzvi confirmed that the project was funded “with a public subscription of one thousand Turkish pounds.”31 This initiative by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, of all religious and ethnic identities, even though it had probably been promoted by the enterprising governor Tevfik Bey, does indicate that the inhabitants were not indifferent to the Ottoman environment in which they lived, and that they willingly participated in the imperial celebrations. It must be noted that the sum collected by this public subscription was large: 1,000 Turkish pounds equaled 100,000 piasters, which— to use our earlier comparison— amounted to fifty- five times the annual salary of a primary school teacher. This monument in the form of a fountain thus embodied both the inhabitants’ loyalty to the sultan and the special relationship linking the imperial capital with the holy city. On September 1, 1900, in the midst of an enormous crowd, the German scholar Conrad Schick witnessed the dedication of the fountain. His description of the monument is invaluable, as British authorities rushed to destroy it immediately upon their arrival in 1917: At Jerusalem a fountain has been erected on the esplanade created two years previously at the Jaffa Gate by filling the ditches of the citadel. . . . Arriving in the city from the west, one is met with the front of this fountain which is an edifice with a cupola, resplendent with gilding, built right against the grey walls of the citadel. . . . On the outside there are four columns of red stone and protruding moldings. Above, there is the cupola with the ubiquitous golden crescent. The basin containing the water is equipped with twelve faucets on which are attached goblets for drinking. The diameter of the edifice is about 8 to 9 feet and its total height is about 25 feet. It is built of alternating red and white stones.32

In the bulletin of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Schick’s dispatch is illustrated with a photograph showing this architectural piece, whose Ottomanism is clearly marked by a number of significant details: the alternating red and white masonry, the sultan’s monogram on the frontispiece, and the cupola topped with a crescent.33 The special link that united the sultan to Jerusalem should not be surprising. The Ottoman sovereign was well aware of the symbolic and geo-

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strategic stakes at play around the holy city, and in the particular attention he gave to Jerusalem, he was inspired by the example of his illustrious predecessor, Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520– 66), who undertook major public works during the 1530s (the complete renovation of the water system, the construction of the present wall and of its six monumental gates). All this is well known, but it is usually forgotten that at the time of these works, Suleiman’s walls were decorated with the six- pointed star (or hexagram) usually called “Solomon’s seal” (Khatam Süleyman), to remind the people that Sultan Suleiman placed himself in the direct line of King Solomon by initiating these public works of beautification. Among other indications of this link uniting the Sublime Porte to the holy city, there is the fact that the grand vizier was sometimes honored with the epithet Assafane (literally, “worthy of Assaf”)— Assaf being the biblical name of King David’s private secretary and officiant at the Temple at Jerusalem. Research into the complexities of the memory networks linking the holy city to the Ottoman imperial throne makes clear why Jerusalem was of such great value to the sultan and to his local representative, the governor.

THE ROAD NETWORK: A CITY OPENED UP, A REGION OTTOMANIZED The development of transport infrastructures was probably a priority for all the governors of Jerusalem from the 1870s up to the beginning of World War I. Archives preserved in Istanbul show that this was one of the topics most often mentioned. Far from being a “rather remote region” at the beginning of the twentieth century as Tom Segev claims, the district of Jerusalem became gradually better linked to the great routes of regional and international transport. To understand how this new road network came to be organized, we need to keep in mind that the topography of Palestine is structured from west to east into three distinct spaces. First, on the west, there is the Mediterranean coast and the coastal plain, with Acre and Haifa to the north, Jaffa and Gaza to the south. This coastal plain had a low population density until the nineteenth century. At the center is the Palestinian ridge (the present- day West Bank), a mountain chain oriented toward the northeast and rising to about 800 meters in altitude. Its ridge line shelters the three great historic cities of this mountainous region: Nablus to the north, Jerusalem in the center, and Hebron to the south. Finally, east of Palestine is the Jordan Valley, linking Lake Tiberias in the north to the Dead Sea in the south. The Jordan River flows into a very deep tectonic depres-

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sion as the valley reaches 240 meters below sea level at Jericho and almost 400 meters below at its lowest point. For the representatives of Ottoman power, the challenge was to structure the transportation network so as to make the holy city, the sanjak capital, the crossroads of the whole region. The planning policy for the territory was conducted over the long term with the continued involvement of successive governors. Gradually, from the 1870s to the 1910s, a star- shaped network was built up and became ever denser around Jerusalem, thus reinforcing the city’s central position. The first road, built during 1867– 69, logically had to be the western road, from Jerusalem to Jaffa, linking the holy city to the great maritime routes under Governor Nazif Pasha’s plan. Three years later, in 1872, work was started on the north road, Jerusalem to Nablus, which was completed in the spring of 1881. To accomplish these works, an imperial decree in 1879 introduced the “right of expropriation for the public good” (Istimlak Karanamesi) in the Ottoman Civil Code. This concept was directly borrowed from the French model. In September 1881 work began on the southern road, Jerusalem to Hebron, which was opened by Governor Mehmed Rauf Pasha in May 1888. Finally, in 1892 the east road, Jerusalem to Jericho, was opened. This road provided the link between the holy city and the Jordan Valley, as well as to the Dead Sea and to presentday Jordan, thanks to a new bridge over the Jordan River, opened in 1885, and a ferry service on the Dead Sea, launched in 1895. From 1892 on, Jerusalem came to be at the center of a network of roads that was coherent and modern, and which enabled the administration to open up the region. From this star- shaped network centered on Jerusalem, other, secondary roads were built, notably the Gaza–Hebron road in 1888, the Hebron– Dead Sea road in 1895, the Jaffa– Haifa road in 1898, and the Jaffa–Nablus road in 1908. That same year, the first motorcar created a sensation in Jerusalem. It was driven by the organizer of the first world tour by car, the American financier and automobile advocate Charles Jasper Glidden. The policy of territorial organization enabled the central power to gradually extend the new administrative standards to the whole of the district. This is how a large census of the population was organized in 1883, and then again in 1905, providing the administration with better tools to improve the fiscal system, which was adapted to the economic flowering of the region with a new income tax in 1906. In the most rural areas of the district, after the reform of 1864, village heads were given the title of mukhtar and were charged with ensuring public order and respect for imperial rules. From the 1880s on, rural counties (nahiye) were created to further strengthen the ad-

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ministrative structure. A telegraph service was set up, under the responsibility of a “telegraph administrator” (telegraph müdürü) that has left traces in archives from the 1870s on. In January 1905, Governor Ahmed Reshid Pasha inaugurated a new organ for the diffusion of administrative information, the Kudüs-i Sherif / Al-Quds al-Sharif, published in Arabic and in Ottoman Turkish, distributed in all the villages of the district, and read aloud during communal assemblies (madafa). On February 9, 1905, the bulletin of the German Templars, Die Warte, featured an enthusiastic description of this new practice of collective reading: It’s quite an event each time when the rumor spreads in the village: “The paper has arrived!” Orientals being curious by nature, everyone quickly assembles on the madafe [place of deliberations], and the words of the khatib [clerk, scholar] are greeted with the same attention as those of the most famous storyteller.34

In Jerusalem itself, the opening to the exterior contributed to the improvement of school and cultural facilities. Thus the first Ottoman secondary school (i’dadi) was created in 1889 in the neighborhood of Bab Hutta, near Herod’s Gate. Indeed, Jerusalem and its region came to match less and less the image of a holy city frozen in its biblical memories.

THE RAILWAY: A JEWISH CONTRACTOR, FRENCH CAPITAL, AND MUSLIM INAUGURATION If 1892 was the year of completion of the first star- shaped road network around Jerusalem, it was also the year of the inauguration of the railroad line from Jaffa to Jerusalem, the other great work with which Ottoman administrators were engaged (fig. 9). The contract was given in October 1888 to Joseph Navon, a Sephardi Jewish entrepreneur deeply involved in building houses in Jerusalem (in particular in the business district Mahane Yehudah). Navon resold the contract the following year to a French company, the Société Anonyme Ottomane du Chemin de Fer Jaffa–Jérusalem (the Ottoman Corporation of the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railroad).35 Work began in August 1889 and proceeded at a fast pace until the inauguration on September 26, 1892, which was greeted with general excitement. To grasp the sense of modernity stemming from this new railroad line, we may note, for example, that it came along sixteen years before the opening of the famous “railroad line of Hedjaz” between Damascus and Medina, which was inaugurated in 1908. Thus, far from being a “remote region,” the sanjak of Jerusalem was in

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Figure 9. The new railroad station in Jerusalem, completed in 1892. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

reality one of the earliest and most intensively modernized provinces of the empire. The inauguration ceremony involved a remarkable assortment of national and religious symbols: The station is decorated with hundreds of Turkish and French flags. . . . The train, covered with flags, palms, draperies, is ready to leave. At ten o’clock there is the arrival of sultan’s delegate, the governors of Jerusalem and Jaffa, all the members of the Commission of Turkey and Constantinople, and a Muslim priest wearing a green turban. . . . Following Muslim ritual, they drag onto the rails three sheep with gilded horns, two white and one black. The imam and the authorities stand around them. The soldiers present arms; the imam prays out loud, then music plays, interrupted by three full- throated cheers yelled out by the soldiers, while the three sheep, their throats slit, lie bleeding on the rails. . . . All this is well and good. For our part, we only regret that the company that built this rail line with Christian capital was satisfied with this Muslim sham benediction with sheep’s blood: a bit of holy water wouldn’t have hurt, on the contrary.36

The new railroad line well symbolized the cosmopolitan atmosphere that characterized Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century. The contract had been given by the sultan to a Sephardi Jew well known to favor

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Jewish immigration, since he was one of the most active real estate developers in Jerusalem’s new quarters. Unable to raise sufficient capital, Joseph Navon in turn sold the contract to a French enterprise during the summer of 1889, right under the nose of British competitors, according to the French consul’s dispatches: “M. Navon apparently entered into communication with the tax and current accounts department in Paris, to which he offered to cede his firman. Before final negotiations, this corporation sent to Palestine two engineers, M. Bussière and M. Chevalier, accompanied by six foremen and draftsmen.”37 Finally, the inauguration, in the presence of all the imperial officials, with sheep’s blood spread on the rails (but without holy water), was aimed at reminding all concerned that the sultan- caliph’s sovereignty over the region was not threatened by this new mode of transportation, in spite of its having been financed with French capital. To get a real sense of the historical import of this event, let us read the dispatch of the British consul, John Dickson, who found himself somewhat carried away by the collective enthusiasm uniting all the city’s inhabitants on the morning of September 26, 1892: “The opening of the railroad line caused the greatest of sensation and the most extreme excitement among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and will be no doubt viewed as the beginning of a new era in the history of the city. . . . The inauguration of the Jerusalem train station is an event of world historical import.38 From a strictly practical viewpoint, it is undeniable that the new line offered new horizons to the residents of the holy city: Jaffa (and thus international maritime lines) henceforth were only three and a half hours from Jerusalem, in contrast to the fourteen hours the trip had previously taken by mail coach. From a symbolic viewpoint, it is interesting to note that the joy shared by the city’s inhabitants contrasted with the often negative reactions of visiting pilgrims who were uncomfortable with discovering in the “biblical city” the very symbol of modernity they believed they had left behind in their own countries. This is reminiscent of Pierre Loti’s first impressions when he came to Jerusalem at the end of the month of March 1894, eighteen months after the inauguration of the new train station, and lamented the “pitiful and banal heap” that was the modern city, on which one had to “turn one’s back” so as to gaze only at the “venerable pictures of yesteryear.”39 The city dreamt by pilgrims certainly failed to match the city lived in by its inhabitants, and the arrival of the railway embodied precisely the clash between the two irreconcilable representations. The new station, located about 500 meters southwest of the old city, in the valley of Emek Refa’im, created a new polarity within urban space.

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There visiting dignitaries were greeted on arrival and seen off at departure, and numerous services for tourists were established. Many surviving photographs of the station at that time bear witness to the intense activity of this place of contacts, freed from any religious references, and opened to modernity. In the spring of 1897, from April 3 to April 25, very special visitors stayed in Jerusalem and the region. It was a film crew working for the Frères Lumière and directed by Alexandre Promio. 40 Just two years after the invention of film (workers leaving the Lumière factories were filmed on March 19, 1895, and the first public showing took place in Paris at the end of December, 1895), a crew from the famous company based in Lyon traveled to Jerusalem, as part of a grand tour around the Mediterranean. Their aim was to capture on film the first moving pictures of the history of the holy city. These unreleased images are preserved today in the archives of the Institut Lumière in Lyon. The film sequences each last about forty seconds, as the camera operators could only shoot for the time of a single reel, and yet they open up for us a view of an unexpected city, a city in motion. One of these sequences was shot from the rear platform of the Jerusalem– Jaffa train as it was leaving. We see a curious crowd assembled on the platform, at the right of the image, and the station in the background. The crowd, at first immobile, then proceeds to wave hats and handkerchiefs toward the train, which sets out and gradually picks up speed. The station becomes more distant and then disappears, in what was, no doubt, one of the first “traveling” shots in the history of cinema.41 Some would say that this image is banal. In fact, if we take the time to examine each of the nine sequences shot by the Lumière crew in the spring of 1897, we can see that this very banality makes these images invaluable, as it brings us back to the unique atmosphere of this “Jerusalem 1900.” On the shot filmed outside the Jaffa Gate, it is the animation of the passers- by and the diversity of their appearance that strikes us at first glance. City dwellers of all ages, of all origins, and of all social classes pass each other in front of the filming camera— without paying any attention to it, for that matter, and surely mistaking it for one of the many photo cameras ubiquitous in the city since the 1840s. They offer present- day spectators the feeling of sharing with them a form of contemporaneity and proximity, induced no doubt by the motion of the bodies and the gazes, but also precisely by the peaceful banality projected by the images. Even though they do not provide any new, concrete information on the city’s history, at first glance they do generate a sort of revelation: around the Jaffa Gate, we discover an urban community in motion, engaged, in more or less banal fashion, in a process of secularization and westernization, as we see clearly if we look at the clothing worn by

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those passing in front of the camera. Alexandre Promio’s nine sequences are exactly that: nine reverse- angle shots that reverse the perspective and offer us access to the daily life of inhabitants of Jerusalem at that time. How many films and news reports, often dramatic and at times even theatrical, have been made in Jerusalem since then . . . However, in the midst of this flood of images, we should remember this first traveling shot and immerse ourselves in this particular memory, for it lifts the veil from another history of Jerusalem, of the city in an “age of possibilities.”

OTTOMANISM AND SHARED URBANNESS: DRINKING WATER FOR ALL Rabbi Nathan Netta Hirsch Hamburger, a famous mohel officiating in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century,42 recounts in his memoirs how the president of the tribunal of Jerusalem (qadi) organized the distribution of drinking water in the compound of the tribunal: “In summer, when the cisterns were dry, the guard of the tribunal [Mahkeme] distributed water to the inhabitants in the form of one container of free water per woman per day. Many Jews and Arabs lined up every day, two or three hours before noon.”43 The Mahkeme, a public building located in the heart of the old city, borders the Esplanade of the Mosques at the level of the Gate of the Chain (Bab el-Silsila) (map 5). It was thus a point of contact between the Haram eshSharif and residential quarters, one to which anyone, regardless of gender or religion, was allowed access, in contrast to the Haram. Rabbi Hamburger continues his narrative: “When the cistern of the Talmud Torah (Jewish school) was empty, two children from each class in turn were sent with a container to get water at the Mahkeme. Immediately the guard would put the children at the head of the line so that they wouldn’t miss class too long.”44 Reading this firsthand account, we see that Ottomanism was not just a surface imperial ideology but rather carried a form of “urbanness” shared by all of Jerusalem’s inhabitants. We have seen above that the qadi was one of the most respected officials of the imperial administration, that he embodied a judicial authority independent from the governor, and that his term of appointment (for only one year) was supposed to ensure his impartiality. We see here that he also assumed the role of distributing the water resource when it became scarce— in effect, performing a function of conflict resolution in the interest of all the inhabitants of the city, regardless of their religious identity. At the time of writing his memoirs, at the end of the 1930s, when Rabbi Hamburger remembered the guardian of the Mahkeme

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putting the children from the Talmud Torah school at the head of the line, he simply bore witness to a forgotten history, one buried under the memory of later conflicts.45 To ascertain whether this personal memory was representative of the overall situation, let us pause, before concluding this discussion, to consider the key issue of the distribution of drinking water, in order to gauge the ability of the Ottoman authorities to transcend divisions within the community. Jerusalem, because of its climate, its topographic location, and the substantial growth of its population from the 1880s on, often faced shortages of drinking water.46 To remedy this situation, Ottoman authorities relied on a network of piping and a distribution system set up by Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1540s and funded by a pious foundation (waqf) specifically organized for this project. There were frequent projects of maintenance and modernization, which each time generated anxiety in the inhabitants of the city. On July 2, 1901, upon the request of local authorities, Sultan Abdul Hamid II granted a budget of 6,000 Turkish pounds to renovate the southern aqueduct of Jerusalem. A British observer specified that the “work site has been put under the responsibility of Mr. Franghia, a Greek engineer, who ordered 20,000 meters of pipes from Belgium.”47 On November 27, 1901, the day of the sultan’s personal birthday, the opening of the new pipeline was held (fig. 10). Let us again give the floor to Conrad Schick, the scholar of German origin residing in the holy city since 1846 and familiar with all its complexities: The inauguration ceremonies were held in a pouring rain on November 27, on the birthday of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan. At eight in the morning the outlet was opened on the Haram esh-Sharif, in the presence of the governor, the commander of the troops, and local notables. . . . At 1:30 in the afternoon, the governor presided over a ceremony meant more for the public, near the Sultan’s Basin. The road was decorated with flags and garlands. . . . In the evening the place was illuminated, and there was a great celebration by the populace. 48

In the three photographs that Schick enclosed with his letter, we can see that the crowd of the curious, bunched together behind the VIPs, reflects all the components of the holy city: practicing Jews, Bedouins, Greek Orthodox, Arabs, Western pilgrims, and peasants from surrounding areas . . . All are crowding around the official parade to see the happy event. An urban community, brought together through a common hydraulic destiny, beyond religious differences, reveals itself to our eyes. One photo in particular is

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Figure 10. The inauguration ceremony for the new aqueduct, held on the afternoon of November 27, 1901, in the Yemin Moshe quarter, near the Sultan’s Pool. (Archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Conrad Schick Papers)

telling: taken at the moment of the prayer of thanks led by the mufti, it shows the Muslim officials opening their hands toward the sky, while the engineer Franghia, an Ottoman citizen but of Greek Orthodox faith, who directed the works, joins his hands. Why was there such unanimity in this ceremony? It was because local administrative authorities took pains to explicitly communicate that these hydraulic works, though funded by a Muslim religious foundation, were to benefit the whole of the urban population. Schick continues with his account: “The water was made to flow over the Haram esh-Sharif [the Esplanade of the Mosques], but one branch of the conduit had been laid near the Jaffa Gate”— that is, to the west of the old city— to supply the fountain inaugurated on the occasion of the jubilee of the preceding year and to ensure a regular distribution of drinking water in the Yemin Moshe quarter, the first Jewish quarter built outside the walls by the British philanthropist, Moses Montefiore. This interpretation is not a historic reconstruction but is actually the reality perceived by the people at the time, as is shown by the

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account of Albert Antébi, the director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, in a letter of August 1901 in which he tells of the discussions that took place upstream in the hydraulic work site: “As a member of the commission organized for this, I took pains to make it benefit the Jewish quarter by installing some faucets there. It had already been decided to put faucets near the Montefiore houses.”49 The hydraulic works of 1901 show the deliberate intention, on the part of the authorities, to ensure the equitable distribution of the drinking water resource, without regard to ethno- religious barriers. Beyond this specific example, the run we have made through the Ottoman administrative structures shows that the history of Jerusalem cannot disregard the “scale of empire. ” In the years around 1900, the Pax Ottomanica, far from being an empty formula, became concretely embodied in the holy city.

chapter five

The Municipal Revolution

In 1967 a part of the municipal archives from the Ottoman period were found, but their use was hampered by a strange problem of competence: since Ataturk’s revolution there are almost no readers able to decipher a Turkish text written in the old writing form. — Yochanan Cohen-Yashar, “Les archives municipales de Jérusalem”

I

n September 1875, during one of his frequent visits to Jerusalem, the famous British Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore wrote in his journal about his meeting with Jerusalem’s mayor, Rafadulo Dimitri Astiriyadis Efendi, a Greek Orthodox man of Ottoman nationality, who told him of the progress recently achieved by the still new municipal administration: I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of that gentleman during my visit to the Holy City in the year 1866. He spoke enthusiastically of the great improvements which have taken place since that time. Under the present regulations all houses must be built, he said, according to the plan approved of by the government, the object being to have proper roads in all directions. It is part of his duty to see the law in question properly carried out, but he finds it difficult sometimes to convince builders of its utility and importance. 1

To grasp the implications of Montefiore’s account, we must point out that in no way could he be suspected of partiality toward the local authorities; that he was one of those most invested in supporting Jewish communities in Jerusalem; that he himself had built hundreds of dwellings in the holy city since 1850; and that on this account he was well versed in the requirements for building permits. Montefiore made a total of eight trips 102

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to Jerusalem during his lifetime. He is one of the major figures in urban memory, a memory made concrete in the famous “Montefiore windmill” standing across from the Jaffa Gate. His account provides us with incontrovertible evidence of a municipal institution that was actively engaged in supervising urban construction, and was already doing so in the 1870s— that is, even before the 1877 promulgation of the Ottoman law regarding municipalities. How, then, are we to understand how the mixed municipality of Jerusalem, which functioned without interruption from the 1860s to the 1930s, could so often have been forgotten by historians of the holy city? As we have already noted, there are numerous ideological explanations. The odd blending of orientalist works on the “Islamic city” with traditional Zionist historiography and with Arab nationalist historiography long prevented the emergence of the history of this municipal institution, a history that corresponds so poorly to the present- day view of a city torn apart by national issues. However, in addition to ideological factors, the issue of sources also helps explain this long historiographical silence: until recently, the municipal archives of the Ottoman period remained inaccessible for lack of identification in the archival inventories, and then they remained unexploited for lack of interested researchers qualified to deal with them. Only in the early years of the twenty- first century did work begin on their transliteration and translation by a team of Turkish and French researchers.2 Finally, two chronologies came together in the 1990s to make it possible at last to bring to light these Ottoman municipal archives. The first is an Israeli chronology, which corresponds to the 1993 inauguration of the new municipal building in Jerusalem, allowing researchers to have access for the first time to Ottoman documents preserved by the Jordanian municipality (1948– 67) and reclaimed by the Israeli army during the 1967 war. The second is a Turkish chronology, which corresponds to the transformation of Turkey’s relationship to its Ottoman legacy and the rise of Ottomanist historians, more and more of whom are able to decipher the archives of the old empire. Today, even though the exploitation of this new data is not complete, it is possible to produce new information on the role, scope, and functioning of this neglected institution. The history of the Ottoman municipality of Jerusalem is not just a matter of scholarly interest. In the previous chapter, by looking at the scale of empire, we were able to show that Ottoman Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century was anything but “a rather remote region of the Ottoman Empire with no central government of its own.” Now we must delve deeper and change the scale of the analysis so as to discern the local and endog-

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enous social dynamics. We speak here of a “municipal revolution” because, for the first time in the history of the holy city, a common administrative institution was charged with representing all the inhabitants without regard to their ethnic and religious differences. The municipal revolution was thus also an urban revolution, so true is it that in Jerusalem as elsewhere, “urban identity” was constructed on a municipal scale— that is, on a certain “living together” involving the whole of the city and its specific potentialities. If the imperial scale served to highlight those who were “citizens of the empire” ever since the Ottoman civil code of 1869 (Medjelle), the municipal scale makes it possible to distinguish the people who were also “urban dwellers of Jerusalem” since the founding of the municipal institution in the 1860s. These two administrative structures, the “imperial superstructure” and the “municipal infrastructure,” thus appear to be two complementary integrative matrices that enabled, each at its own level, the coexistence of diverse communities within urban space. This new municipal history of Jerusalem is thus fundamental, since it involves assessing the capacity of this institution to embody a specific urban identity, a certain community of interests and a common destiny, all oriented toward the “becoming” of a shared modernity in the years around 1900. Moreover, if the municipality seems to have been the vector for a certain administrative modernity, the question remains as to its ability to place this modernity in the service of an actual modernization of urban space by valorizing its projects and accomplishments. Finally, we must bring out an important chronological element in order to pursue the analysis: we must remember that, in the same way that the Ottoman empire vanished after World War I, the shared municipal environment was torn apart in 1934 as pressure from competing nationalist projects led to the splitting up of the municipal institution. This institution has never been reconstituted, as the city was physically split into two separate entities after 1948, and the “reunification” announced by Israeli municipal authorities after 1967 happened unilaterally within the structure of military occupation. Thus, we must set out in search of a poorly identified and now vanished institutional object.3

ORIGIN OF THE MUNICIPALITY: AN URBAN COMMUNITY? The history of the municipality of Jerusalem is embedded in the general problem of new relations between the central power and local powers within the reformed Ottoman empire of the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of local representative institutions coexisting and collaborating with imperial authority was the guiding principle of Ottoman administra-

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tive reforms at the time. To gauge the causal links between the pre- existence of an “urban community” and the municipalization of urban powers, we must identify the part played by local initiative and that played by the central government in the origins of these institutions.4 In the case of Jerusalem, the scale clearly dips in favor of local initiative. This is not surprising since the municipality of Jerusalem was one of the earliest, or perhaps the first, to come into existence in the empire after the singular experience of the municipality of Galata, founded in Istanbul in 1856.5 Regardless of whether the municipality of Jerusalem was founded in 1863, as claimed by the Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref and by the Israeli historian Emanuel Gutmann,6 or in 1866–67, as indicated by the first documentary clues, the municipality of Jerusalem was one of the earliest of the empire. It was created at least ten years before the Ottoman government’s Great Law of October 5, 1877, on provincial municipalities (Vilayet Belediye Kanunu) led to a general movement of municipalization of provincial urban areas. In comparison, the municipality of Hebron was founded in 1886, that of Gaza in 1893, and that of Bethlehem only in 1894.7 The precocity of the municipality of Jerusalem should in itself suffice to call into question the traditional view of the city as a battleground, fragmented between irreconcilable communities. The early date of its foundation is not the only clue pointing to the existence of an “urban community” prior to the foundation of the municipality of Jerusalem: even before the 1860s and the formal establishment of a “municipality” (Belediye), several institutions separate from the imperial administration embodied a form of common urban identity. In addition to the governor, the qadi, and the other officials of the governorate described in the preceding chapter, there were two institutions representing the specific interests of Jerusalem’s local notables. The first was the post of naqib al-Ashraf (literally, “the leader of the nobles”), representing the local Muslim aristocracy, the “Ashraf” families believed to be descended from the Prophet. Historians have often reduced this role to a simple honorific post, but certain episodes allow us to qualify this minimalist view. Looking at the so- called “affair of the flag” that agitated Jerusalem during the summer of 1843, we come across a naqib al-Ashraf vigorously opposing the disloyal maneuverings of the governor of the time. That summer, on the occasion of the opening of the French consulate, the tricolor flag raised over the new consulate was trampled during a riot that seemed to have been fomented from on high. The affair attracted a lot of attention, and the naqib al-Ashraf, Abdallah al-Alami, decided to denounce the governor’s doings and to give a list of the rioters in a letter addressed to his uncle, the shaykh al-Islam (great mufti) of Istanbul.8 After a tense confrontation with the incriminated

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governor, the naqib finally obtained his dismissal and made a triumphant return to Jerusalem, where the new governor bestowed on him a “cloak of honor” as a sign of respect and reassurance. In a report sent to Paris a few months later, the French consul explained that the moral and political authority enjoyed by the naqib al-Ashraf of Jerusalem was specific to the holy city: The Naqib has also an indirect jurisdiction over the merchants’ and tradesmen’s guilds. This is how: all these guilds have as leaders poor nobles who have no means of income except through their work or their business. A great number of simple craftsmen or merchants also belong to the class of sheriffs or nobles. Consequently, no judgment against any of those individuals can be executed without giving prior notice to the Naqib, who usually does his best to reconcile differences even before they are brought before a judge. 9

The Naqib was thus a representative of the local nobility and also did the work of mediator, thanks to the indirect control he wielded over the guilds. We must emphasize the importance of these Ashraf families in Jerusalem, given the particular history of the city and its strong Islamic identity. As the French consul pointed out: “In the holy cities, the noble class has maintained a character much more distinct than in the other cities of the empire. ”10 The position of naqib al-Ashraf was not eliminated after the foundation of the municipality; its holder, appointed for a six- month term, received a monthly stipend of 400 to 490 piasters during the years 1895– 1905. As a final indication of the strong porosity between the institution of the naqib al-Ashraf and the municipality, we may consider the career of Sai’d al-Husayni, who was naqib al-Ashraf in 1896, then president of the municipality from 1903 to 1906, and finally an elected deputy in the Ottoman Parliament from 1908 to 1916.11 The other institution that seemed to embody a form of “premunicipal urban community” in Jerusalem was the Majlis al-Shura (literally, “Assembly of the Council”), established during Egypt’s occupation of Palestine during the 1830s. This consultative assembly, presided over by the naqib al-Ashraf, was composed of twelve to fourteen members representing the major religious communities, and its duties were confirmed when the Ottoman authorities regained control of the holy city in 1841.12 In most of the large cities of the empire, such as Damascus and Jerusalem, the Majlis alShura kept on functioning until the 1864 law on the administration of the provinces. At that point it was replaced by the Provincial Administrative

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Council (Meclis i-Idare), a kind of general council providing a framework and support for the governor’s activities.13 This bundle of converging indices seems to show that the creation of the municipality of Jerusalem was indeed the result of endogenous initiative, carried out by the local nobility, and characterized by a preexisting urban consciousness. The date of the foundation of the municipality is poorly documented. The Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref (mayor of Jordanian Jerusalem during the 1950s) and the Israeli historian Emanuel Gutmann both date its origin to 1863, though without documentary backing.14 At present, we can say that the first traces left in the archives by the new municipality date from 1866, when the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion received a mazbata (order) in May from the municipality regarding planned works on their buildings.15 Two years later, in July 1868, the same convent received a tezkere (missive) from the municipality authorizing the building of an orphanage and stipulating that “the alignment of the public road” must be preserved. Enclosed with the letter was an “order of delineation of boundaries.”16 This was not a simple formal authorization but a document containing precise information on the alignments, which seems to indicate that it came from a well- established institution. All these sources accord with a letter preserved in the archives of the Prussian consulate, written on November 6, 1867, by Governor Nazif Pasha, describing the functioning of the Majlis i-belediye (literally, “Municipal Council”) and specifying that it was presided over by its drogman (interpreter), Rafadulo Dimitri Astiriyadis Efendi, who evidently held the post of mayor three times, in 1867, in 1875 (when he met Moses Montefiore), then in 1877– 78, alternating with Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi. That one of the first mayors of Jerusalem was a Greek Orthodox drogman, and thus by definition a polyglot, shows the specificity of this municipal institution charged with embodying the entire urban community without regard to religious and ethnic differences. Even more than the naqib al-Ashraf (who was a descendant of one of the great Muslim families of the city), the new mayor of Jerusalem bore henceforth the responsibility of representing the holy city in its totality. In this way the municipality of Jerusalem can be interpreted as a “construction of urbanness.”

GARBAGE COLLECTION AND THE MUNICIPALIZATION OF URBAN POWERS Beyond the formal existence of a municipal institution, we need to look at its range of responsibilities in order to measure its importance in terms of

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existing administrative structures. From this point of view, it is clear that the municipal institution’s power rose during the period 1870–1910, and it attests to the existence of an urban community that, far from weakening, was becoming stronger, and reached its apogee in the years around 1900. The mixed municipality of Jerusalem, a laboratory of shared urban identity, thus provides an excellent historical observatory. Rather than limit ourselves to internal sources, which can always be suspected of self- justification, let us look once again to the European consular sources. On November 13, 1900, the British consul John Dickson described the municipal institution, noting that demographic growth and then urban expansion outside the walls had enabled the municipality to fully claim legitimacy with regard to the governor and consular authorities.17 This hypothesis can be confirmed by bringing up, for instance, the conflict between the municipality and the various European consulates in 1904 regarding a new residency tax on dwellings located outside the walls. The tax was intended to pay for garbage collection, street cleaning, and the installation of streetlights. This conflict, in appearance so trivial, in fact reveals the dynamic link between urban expansion outside the walls and the extension of municipal power. It was thanks to the dynamics of urban development that the young municipal institution was able to consolidate its legitimacy within the local administration. The rise in power of the municipality effectively coincided with the acceleration of demographic growth from the 1880s on. Jerusalem had 10,000 inhabitants in 1800, 20,000 in 1870, and 70,000 in 1914. Particularly striking is that there were only 2,000 residents outside the walls in 1881 (6 percent of the population), 12,000 in 1890, and 35,000 on the eve of World War I. In 1914, one inhabitant in two was residing outside the walls. The 1904 fiscal conflict is remarkably well documented in municipal archives, as well as in those of the governorate and the consulates. In brief, the municipality, “because of the extension of the residential part of Jerusalem located outside the walls,” decided in 1904 to extend to real estate owners of property located outside the walls the taxes for street cleaning and lighting that were already levied on the inhabitants of the old city.18 The municipality had already attempted, in 1894, to improve the cleanliness of the streets outside the walls with a series of letters sent to the consuls and to the leaders of religious communities requesting that they themselves ensure the cleanliness of their doorsteps and that they encourage their clients and members to practice public responsibility and hygiene. 19 Ten years later, in 1904, the failure of this first initiative led the municipal council to take over the cleaning of the city outside the walls and thus to levy a tax for this service, taking advantage of that situation to set up a system of public

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lighting as well. The municipality got the idea from the existence of a tax on the sprinkling of streets outside the walls. “For some years now, a mixed commission, including delegates from the consulates, has set the annual amount— based on the varying price of water, and small, in any case— that each foreigner and Ottoman is required to pay annually to the municipality to ensure the road- sprinkling service. ”20 The municipal project, like all decisions pertaining to taxation, and in accordance with Article 50 of the 1877 law, received prior approval from the cemiyyet i-belediye (“municipal assembly,” made up of members of the municipal council and members of the Provincial Administrative Council [Meclis i-Idare]) during its session of November 1904, confirming that its decisions were to be immediately executed in conformity with Article 53 of the 1877 law.21 The Western consuls, united on this occasion, managed to oppose the application of this measure for more than a year with petitions and collective letters, before finally accepting it and acknowledging that this measure was not an “innovation” that violated the sacrosanct principle of the status quo that governed the delicate balance of powers in the holy city. Beyond the anecdotal nature of this affair, it does show that the geographic limits of municipal sovereignty were not definitively set but resulted from multiple negotiations, power relations, and compromises, and that they progressed along with urban expansion. In the present case, it is clear that the municipality of Jerusalem did finally obtain the acknowledgment of its authority outside the walls of the city— everywhere that “the considerable development of the external city” justified it, as explained in a French consular dispatch.22

ELECTED COUNCIL MEMBERS: CITIZENS, CITY DWELLERS, AND PROPERTY OWNERS The British consul specified in his November 1900 report that the municipal council included “five elected members,” a smaller number than required by Article 4 of the 1877 law, which specified six to twelve members, elected on the basis of the size of the population.23 It is difficult to check this information against other sources, since the seventeen volumes of deliberations of the municipal council (1892–1916) that are available are basically archives of daily administrative practices and thus contain little information regarding elections. At any rate, during the 1908 elections, this anomaly ended, as the minimum number was reestablished. David Yellin, one of the Jewish members of the council, records that ten municipal council members were elected that year, including six Muslims, two Jews (one

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Sephardi and one Ashkenazi), and two Christians (one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic).24 Yellin also notes that 1,200 voters participated in the 1908 elections, including 700 Muslims, 300 Christians, and 200 Jews. Among the five elected members mentioned by Consul Dickson in November 1900, he counted “three Muslims, one Christian and one Jew.” In the municipal council of 1889, historian Johann Büssow lists four Jewish council members: David Yellin, Yosef Elyashar, Rahamin Mizrahi, and Yitshaq Adas.25 The municipality of Jerusalem was thus a mixed institution, welcoming members of all communities among its elected representatives. And yet, regardless of the period studied, how are we to explain the rather large gap between the demographic weight of each community and its actual representation within the electoral body and the municipal council? This fundamental question is linked to that of the representativeness, and thus the legitimacy, of the municipal institution itself. The gap can be simply explained by articles of the electoral code in the 1877 law on provincial municipalities, which limited the right to vote to Ottoman citizens of at least twenty- five years of age and paying a property tax of at least 50 piasters per year. The right to run for office was reserved for Ottoman citizens who were at least thirty years old and paying property tax of at least 100 piasters per year.26 These provisions are quite common in electoral laws; even today, foreigners do not have the right to vote (including in local elections) in most European countries, including France. In the case of Jerusalem, which experienced heavy Jewish immigration from the 1880s on, this law led to a large gap between the “social body” and the “electoral body.” More precisely, it was the large proportion of recent Jewish immigrants who did not yet have Ottoman citizenship or who did not own any property in Jerusalem that explained the relative underrepresentation of Jewish communities in the municipal council. We can qualify this statement by recalling that in the 1908 municipal council, four council members out of the ten elected were non-Muslims. We should also note that, beyond the quantitative weight of each community on the council, the qualitative breakdown of positions tended to reestablish an equilibrium. Thus, as we have seen, David Yellin— who was born and died in Jerusalem (1864– 1941), was a professor at the school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Jerusalem, served as president of the B’nai B’rith lodge of Jerusalem, and became the first president of the Jewish National Council— held the post of deputy mayor of the holy city starting in 1905.27 Thus, the gap between the social body and the electoral body can largely be explained by the particular migration profile of Jerusalem at that time. However, a second explanation concerns the Ottoman political aim of avoid-

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ing any risk of interference from foreign powers in municipal elections. For this reason, Article 19 of the 1877 law explicitly stated that a municipal council member “should not be employed and thus protected by a foreign power or have claim to a foreign nationality.”28 We recognize that it was not just nationality in the strict sense that was the issue, but more broadly, the fact of being “protected by a foreign power.” At stake was the risk of the municipal institution being influenced by the Western consulates, which in certain cities of the empire, and particularly in Jerusalem, extended their protection to several thousand foreign residents. The new municipal institutions were thus clearly conceived by imperial authorities as a means to affirm Ottoman sovereignty over the large, cosmopolitan cities of the empire. Taking this into account, we may note that the experience of the “municipality of the sixth circle,” founded in Istanbul in 1856 in the Westernized quarter of Galata, seems to have been more of an exception than a model.29 So no one was fooled at the time of the vote on the municipal law of 1877, as Georges Young clearly shows. Young was the prominent French specialist who translated and commented on Ottoman law, and published his famous Corps de droit ottoman in 1905 in Paris. Young notes, regarding the 1877 law, that “the embassies of France and Great Britain protested the total elimination of the foreign element in the institutions organized by this law.” He even cites an official proposal by Great Britain in 1878, aimed at establishing, alongside the municipal councils, mixed commissions including foreign consuls, which would look after the interests of foreigners.30 This demand was, of course, rejected, which shows that Ottoman authorities were conscious of the risk of interference and acted accordingly. This is not to say that the municipal council of Jerusalem was uniformly “Muslim” or “Arab,” since the issue was neither religious nor even directly “national” but rather “imperial.” To have a seat on the municipal council, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, one had to be an Ottoman citizen, and citizenship had been opened to all the religious and national minorities of the empire ever since the promulgation of the Civil Code (Medjelle) of 1869, which in many respects was modeled on the French concept of jus soli. The examples of Rafadulo Dimitri Astiriyadis Efendi, who served as mayor several times between 1867 and 1878, and David Yellin, municipal councilor and then deputy mayor from 1905 on, specifically illustrate this municipal suffrage. On the whole, the municipal council of Jerusalem, with its assembly of illustrious notables who were city dwellers, property owners, and Ottoman citizens, looked much like French municipalities of the nineteenth century.31 If pressure from the consulates still weighed on municipal actions, as we know happened in 1904, this interference of Western powers in the af-

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fairs of the city was strictly limited by the electoral code. On November 15, 1906, in a dispatch sent to the grand vizier, the young governor, Ali Ekrem Bey, pointed out that “in a region where more than half of the inhabitants are foreign nationals, it is impossible in the domain of municipal policies to treat those foreigners as if they didn’t exist. That is why the consuls have the firm intention of participating actively in municipal affairs.”32 In the years around 1900, when the flow of immigration to Jerusalem was increasing, pragmatism and defense of the imperial sovereignty did seem to combine to trace the thin line of a shared municipal policy.

YUSSUF ZIYA AL-KHALIDI, THE FOUNDING MAYOR In photographs taken on November 27, 1901, during the inauguration ceremony for the new aqueduct of Jerusalem, we see clearly, next to the mufti, the charismatic figure of Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, a prominent individual in the municipal history of Jerusalem. He has a white beard, wears a fez, and is dressed all in black, including his gloves. He stands in the midst of the official delegation present to celebrate the event (fig. 11). A man very much committed to the project of modernization of the urban infrastructure, on that particular day he was standing in for his sick brother, Yassin al-Khalidi, the mayor of Jerusalem since the 1898 elections.33 Above him in the photograph, crowded behind a pilaster of the Al-Aqsa mosque, excited children are watching the scene. The officials, clearly used to this sort of performance, are maintaining their pose and remain immobile: they are posing for posterity . . . but posterity has forgotten them. This photograph is not included in books on the history of Jerusalem, it is never published, because historians of the holy city do not understand what it illustrates. And yet, the event was important. On that day the whole of the population of Jerusalem was assembled to celebrate the opening of a new drinking water pipeline. That afternoon, before the Jaffa Gate, the streetlights had been decorated, and the water line had even been punctured to let one jet of water burst toward the sky. In the photographs we clearly see the Jewish residents of the neighboring quarter of Yemin Moshe and Mishkenot Shaanim who have come out of their houses to join in the celebration. We need to look thoroughly at these pictures, we need to feel them deeply so we can open our eyes on a forgotten reality, buried in the debris of later confrontations: an urban community did exist in Jerusalem in the years around 1900, and it was the leaders of the municipality who most embodied this urbanness in full flower. Who were these municipal councilors, these “notable and

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Figure 11. Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi during the inauguration ceremony of November 27, 1901. (Archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Conrad Schick Papers)

memorable,” yet forgotten, city dwellers, who vitalized the municipal institution from the 1870s to World War I? Let us follow the life trajectory of Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi (whom Western sources refer to as Joseph Pasha or Joseph Khalidi), for he was the founding mayor— the one who laid the foundations of municipal authority. He was born in 1842 in Jerusalem, a descendant of one of the greatest families of the city, son of Muhammad ‘Ali al-Khalidi, who had served several times as naqib of the tribunal of Jerusalem (“vice president,” or adjunct to the qadi). Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi was educated at the British Diocesan Boys’ School of Jerusalem, and then at the Malta Protestant College; he went on to study medicine and engineering in Istanbul.34 Speaking perfect French, English, and German in addition of his two native languages, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, he returned to Palestine at age twenty- two to train in public administration by occupying the post of kaymakan (deputy governor) of Jaffa from 1864 to 1868. He then, at the age of twenty- eight, became mayor of Jerusalem for a first term from 1870 to 1877. In the course of those years he distinguished himself by his activism in all domains and his ability to make Westerners bend to his will when they tried to hinder his projects. This is how we discover him, in the summer of 1870, in the caverns beneath the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, busy recovering public use of a subterranean water source that had been privatized by the convent.35 This first victory no doubt helped increase the visibility of the brand- new

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municipal institution among the leaders in the holy city. In the Diaire des Dames de Sion, at any rate, we see that he literally put his body on the line to carry out his decision: Joseph Effendi showed up in the Tunnel at midnight with two workers to show them that they would need to demolish the stone stairs located above the broken- down door. . . . Joseph Effendi stood behind the workers, and about fifty soldiers hid behind them. The struggle begins. . . . Soon beams, planks, dirt fall under the onslaught of axes. Joseph Effendi shows himself; he is pushed back.36

Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi was especially concerned with bettering public hygiene in the holy city, thanks to his dual training in engineering and in medicine, and he already, at age twenty- eight, showed proof of an uncommon will. Still concerned with public hygiene, we find him on January 9, 1873, addressing a letter to the German consul (written in French) regarding the lack of respect for sanitary regulations by certain Jewish butchers of German nationality: The duty of the municipal president is to protect the population of his city from all harmful things. . . . Some Israelite butchers, your subjects, have for a long time killed very scrawny and anemic cattle and oxen. The municipality has brought this up with them several times, but they wouldn’t take this as orders to be respected, as they are foreign subjects. I am thus forced, Mr. Consul General, to disturb you so as to entreat you to be so good as to order your butcher subjects to kill fat and healthy cattle and to conform to municipal regulations.37

The intent to have the new municipal authority respected is obvious here, but so is the need to use consuls as relays of the municipal power in order to reach “foreign subjects” who considered themselves protected by their special status. As a committed reformer, close to the network of the Young Ottomans who were involved in advancing the constitutional cause, Yussuf Ziya alKhalidi was a natural choice to run for representative in December 1876 in the first Ottoman legislative elections. He was elected representative of Jerusalem and traveled to Istanbul for the opening of the inaugural session of the Ottoman Parliament on March 19, 1877, in the sumptuous imperial palace of Dolmabahçe, on the shore of the Bosphorus. We may suppose that he played a decisive role in the adoption, on October 5, 1877, of the

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famous law on provincial municipalities (Vilayet Belediye Kanunu) that pushed forward the municipalization movement in all the cities of the empire. The U.S. consul in Istanbul described him as “the finest orator” of the Parliament, having “made a sensation in the Parliament by his eloquence and boldness.”38 Jerusalem thus seems to have been no less than the laboratory of the municipalization of urban power in the Ottoman empire in the 1870s. Following the dissolution of Parliament in February 1878, Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi returned to Jerusalem and took up once again his mayoral post, which had been occupied in his absence by his deputy, Rafadulo Dimitri Astiriyadis Efendi. Clearly, this man who held the post of mayor in the 1870s and stood in for a later mayor in the November 27, 1901, photograph was a most important personality among Jerusalem’s notables, which reinforces the idea of a valued and respected municipal institution that was attracting leading figures. Alexander Schölch, who in the 1980s was one the first historians to propose a renewed view of Palestine during the Ottoman period, said of Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi that he was “undoubtedly one of the most educated, intelligent, and enlightened leaders that Jerusalem produced in the nineteenth century.”39 This assessment is confirmed by the brilliant career he pursued from the 1870s to the 1890s, when his radical reformism led him gradually farther from the sphere of imperial power. He was consul in Poti, a Russian port on the Black Sea, then professor of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish at the Imperial Academy of Vienna in 1875– 76. He was also posted in Kurdistan, where he published an Arabic-Kurdish dictionary in 1892. The Khalidi family library, the Maktaba al-Khalidiyya, which was opened to the public in Jerusalem in 1900, still contains a number of manuscripts written by Yussuf Ziya, among them one titled Risalat mumahakat al-ta’wil fi munaqadat al-injil (Interpretive Discussions concerning Contradictions in the Bible), which he began writing in Istanbul in 1864 and finished in 1878. The entire cultural patrimony of the family unfolds in this library, which includes, of course, the great classics of Arabic literature, but also works of Plato, Voltaire, Dante, Shakespeare, La Fontaine, Montesquieu, Darwin, Hugo, Zola, and many others— the founding texts of French Freemasonry, as well as a great number of Lebanese and Egyptian literary journals, and also Arabic-Hebrew and French-Hebrew dictionaries.40 The library also includes a collection of correspondence between Yussuf Ziya and his nephew Rouhi al-Khalidi with whom he had an almost fatherson relationship, as he had no son of his own. Rouhi, like his uncle, had been a serious student: his education took place between 1880 and 1890, first in Jerusalem at, among other institutions, the Alliance Israélite Uni-

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verselle, where he learned Hebrew; then in Beirut and Istanbul; and finally in France at the Sorbonne, where he followed a political science curriculum, and where he also gave lectures on Ottoman administration and Muslim religion.41 Rouhi was named Ottoman consul in Bordeaux in 1898 and married a French woman. He was active in the Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient de France. He was very close to the militant Young Turks group, before being elected representative from Jerusalem during the elections that followed the 1908 revolution, then was reelected in 1912, which enabled him to become vice- president of the chamber.42 Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, who died in 1906, did not witness the political success of his favorite nephew, but it does seem that these two eminent Jerusalem personalities followed comparable itineraries that blended openness to the world with a sincere loyalty to the empire. At any rate, they were both interested in the municipal issue: can it be a coincidence that today, while perusing the shelves of the Khalidi library, one can come across Le petit manuel de l’électeur—élections municipales, published in Bordeaux in 1892 and sold for 50 centimes? Certainly not: ideas were circulating, and so did texts. For instance, they traveled from Bordeaux to Jerusalem, no doubt with much more fluidity than narrow cultural categorization might lead us to suppose. Polyglot, great traveler, fine scholar, and committed reformer, Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi was the founding mayor, precursor and builder of a municipal institution that he conceived as possibly overcoming religious and ethnic rivalries. We will see in the next chapter how this municipalist commitment linked with his vision of the emergent national identities at the turn of the twentieth century.

AT THE HEART OF MUNICIPAL ACTION: THE DEFENSE OF PUBLIC SPACE The municipal revolution in Jerusalem meant not only the emergence of a renewed notable class but also, and more concretely, a new conception of public space as “common property” that had to be defended against private encroachment. This aspect of municipal policy became more and more significant as the city gained in population, speeded up its development from the 1880s on, and extended its boundaries outside the walls of the old city. The issue at stake for the young municipal authority was large: the prevention of a disordered expansion of the city and the defense of a common and coherent public space that would guarantee a shared urbanness. In the case of Jerusalem, taking into account the challenges presented by Jewish immigration, we can understand why this specific aspect of municipal

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action would be a subject of debate. Traditional historiography has generally played down the role of the municipality of Jerusalem, as in the work of Ruth Kark, who claims that it “indirectly contributed to the growth of the urban population by refraining from intervening in the spontaneous settling process of the immigrants.” In this she follows Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, who likewise claimed that the contribution of Ottoman institutions to the development of Jerusalem was “relatively minor.”43 By delving into the municipal archives themselves, we learn that the reality was entirely different. We recall the first building permits granted to the convent of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion in 1866–68, and also the admiring comment of Moses Montefiore in 1875 that “all houses must be built . . . according to the plan approved of by the government,” so as to preserve the “proper alignment” of the streets. But what was the actual situation at the end of the nineteenth century, when real estate pressure became considerably stronger, while the 1877 law provided new regulatory tools to the municipality? Article 5 of this law specified the duties of the memleket mühendisi (engineer), who had an ex officio seat on the municipal council and was charged with “dealing with all the affairs concerning roads and buildings,” as well as the preservation and updating of “all plans and maps.”44 We also know that since 1891 the Jerusalem municipality had effectively controlled building permits given “in neighboring villages,” thus extending its authority to the entire urban area, which was still developing.45 Everything indicates that far from weakening, municipal control over buildings and public space was, to the contrary, considerably strengthened at the end of the nineteenth century, especially following the pivotal term of Husayn Salim al-Husayni, who held the post of mayor from 1882 to 1897. David Yellin, for instance, claimed that in 1898 “every new building project, small or large, has to first pass before the baladiyya [municipality], and without that no building can legally be built.”46 On May 26, 1898, a report by the municipal engineer, preserved in the archives, listed buildings constructed illegally, so as to administer sanctions provided by Articles 65 and 66 of the 1877 law.47 One year later, on May 11, 1899, the Jerusalem municipality hired an ebniye müfetisi (building inspector) to assist the municipal engineer in his work of regulating buildings.48 These internal archives are confirmed by what external data we can collect: thus, in November 1900, the British consul notes that the municipality has an “Architect” and a “Chief inspector,” each paid 600 piasters per month, and two “Inspectors,” each paid 250 piasters per month.49 This control over buildings was based on the Ottoman legislative arsenal, begun as early as 1863 by the Ebniye ve Turuk Nizamnamesi (Reg-

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ulations for Roads and Buildings)50 and reinforced in 1891 by the Ebniye kanunu (Urbanism Code).51 Even for buildings constructed on miri land (collective land), over which the central government was theoretically the sole sovereign, it was the municipal engineer who was charged with verifying that they were in conformity with the building permits granted. When it came to road alignment and maintenance and garbage pickup, the municipality of Jerusalem made use of the 1891 Ebniye kanunu to widen some streets outside the walls from 2 arsin to 8 arsin (an Ottoman arsin was about 70 cm).52 In 1894, in accordance with Article 48 of the 1891 regulations, the municipality demanded the destruction of buildings preventing street alignment and granted the owners five days before the intervention of the zabita (municipal agents).53 This active policy for the defense of public space also used the right of expropriation (Istimlak Kararnamesi), which had been incorporated into the Ottoman Civil Code in 1879 and specified the rules of expropriation for the public good as well as the amount of compensation to private property owners. This policy could not have worked without the presence of the zabita, the municipal agents whose actions regarding each infraction of the regulations are noted in the archives. As defined in chapter 7 of the 1877 municipal law (Articles 56– 61), the function of these agents was to ensure public order as well as to “supervise the application of laws and regulations.”54 The 1877 law specified that they would “bring before the municipal council through a tezkéré [warrant] anyone who breached those regulations.” In 1902, an imperial decree authorized the Jerusalem municipality to hire additional agents, thus increasing their number from eight to thirty, which shows their importance for effective control of the urban fabric.55 The municipal government also aimed to rigorously fix street names and the numbering of alleys. Article 47 of the 1877 law gave this function to the meclis-i belediye emlak kalemi (municipal office of the cadastre). Certain resolutions of the municipal council of Jerusalem confirm that this regulation was actually applied,56 as described by the local chronicler, Abraham Moses Luncz, in his almanac for 1892: the municipality “is labeling all the houses and shops in all the quarters of the city, and a heavy fine is to be imposed on anyone who effaces or hides the numbers.”57 Evidently, and contrary to the popular historiographical view that has been widespread for so long, the Ottoman municipality of Jerusalem did practice an effective control over the built environment and on the streets and alleys of the holy city. And yet, can we advance the hypothesis of genuine urban planning? Beyond the actual control over building permits and street

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alignment, did the municipality have a global vision of its territory and its growth over the long term? A document preserved in the French consular archives allows us to affirm that in 1909 there was a project going on to prepare a municipal plan.58 A few months earlier, on January 27, 1909, the Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine had already mentioned that the chamber, “in accord with the municipality, is now proceeding with a call for public bids to draft a municipal plan for Jerusalem.”59 The notice of the call for bidding set out precisely the aims of the competition. The assignment was to prepare: a drawing of the plan of Jerusalem, overall and in details, including streets and present buildings, showing altitudes in relation to Siloam, and using as points of reference the Hebron and Damas Gates, the municipal hospital, etc., the whole within a perimeter ranging from the Russian Tower, the old folks’ home on the Saint John road, Holy Cross, Katamone, Baka, and Siloam. After this plan is complete, to outline the following projects: 1. a municipal plan for future roads and buildings; 2. a plan showing the limits of the new urban city with the desired expansion of mulks lands, following the criteria set by the municipality; 3. a plan of the sewers of the city.

The municipality proposed to provide urban- planning candidates with “all the necessary explanations with the help of presently existing plans.” It must be noted that the competition mentions “future roads and buildings,” as well as the “desired expansion” of the city, thus taking on board essential elements for true prospective planning, as it would be theorized in France, for example, by the Cornudet Law of March 14, 1919. The results came soon, since on November 15, 1909, there was talk of setting up the electrification and public lighting of the city. Then, in March 1914, plans were drawn up for the first tramway lines in the holy city; the contract for constructing them was given just before the war to the Paris bank Périer.60 The start of World War I interrupted the process, but we cannot cross out with one stroke of the pen the unquestionable progress already achieved. The present brief journey into the actual workings of municipal policies pertaining to urbanism shows that the defense of a common public space had indeed been taken up by the young Ottoman municipality, which made it one of the essential elements of its credibility and its new legitimacy.

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URBANITES ALL? PUBLIC HEALTH, LEISURE, AND MUNICIPAL FINANCES Before concluding, we must still address the essential question that cuts across all others and points to their meaning and implications: that of the ability of the municipal institution to foster, produce, or develop what sociologists today call “shared living” or the “social bond”— what we might call, in terms of Jerusalem of the years around 1900, a “shared urbanness,” a term that helps bring out the properly urban aspects of the particular sociability we are investigating here. Did the Ottoman municipality of Jerusalem finally succeed in having an impact on the realities and the differing outlooks of the people it administered, in order to create and maintain a “common sense of being part of the city”? Or did it fail in this ultimate objective— an objective that is common to all municipalities in the world, whether in 1900 or in 2000? In setting off on our quest for “external signs of urban identity,” let us remain faithful to the methods guiding this investigation: let us go back to the sources. Protection of public health is one of the traditional functions of municipal institutions and one of the most visible underpinnings of “urbanness in action.” In Jerusalem, this issue was a priority during the long term of service of Mayor Husayn Salim al-Husayni (1882–97), who became the artisan of a genuine municipal public health department. This led to the opening in 1891 of the municipal hospital of Jerusalem off Jaffa Street, right below the Russian quarter. The municipal doctor (belediye tabibi) held office hours for free, three days per week, open to city residents of all religions; he also administered the municipal pharmacy, which opened the following year (1892) and provided patients with medicines at cost or free, according to their income. 61 The institution underwent regular modernization, as shown in an 1895 letter from Istanbul authorizing the importation of surgical equipment needed by the hospital, and exempting this equipment from import taxes.62 To ensure stable resources for the hospital, a municipal decree stipulated that tolls collected on the Jerusalem–Jaffa road were to go to the hospital budget.63 It must be noted that this was a significant resource: for example, in 1887 the French consul noted that “the traffic of passengers and merchandise between Jaffa and Jerusalem at present is sixteen times greater than it was twenty- two years ago,” adding that “today it brings in to the municipality of Jerusalem the sum of 2,500 Turkish pounds” per year, or about one- third of the yearly revenue of the municipality during that year.64 The British consul Dickson wrote that the municipal doctor’s salary was 900 piasters per month.65 He held an ex officio seat on the municipal

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council, alongside the municipal veterinarian (belediye baytar), and he was charged with implementing at the local level the prevention of epidemiological risks, coordinated by the imperial government.66 In April 1892, for instance, during a severe cholera epidemic, we find traces in municipal archives of an immediate grant of 38,500 piasters to finance a vaccination campaign in the whole region, as well as a list of measures taken to establish a strict cordon sanitaire aimed at limiting the risks of the epidemic spreading.67 In addition, a March 1899 report shows that every three months the municipal doctor was sending imperial authorities a list of all the city’s inhabitants who had been vaccinated, as well as an overall summary of sanitary conditions.68 The same type of response to epidemiological risk is apparent in a new and particularly dramatic outbreak of cholera in the fall of 1902, during which the municipal doctor ordered quarantine measures that were praised by Western consuls.69 In 1905, when a scarlet fever epidemic struck mostly children in the city’s Jewish communities, the municipal hospital mobilized to come to the aid of the whole population (fig. 12).70 Finally, in 1906, new sanitary regulations were published by the municipality, including the obligation to have the body of any deceased person examined by the municipal doctor; thus death itself became “municipalized.”71 As we can see, it was indeed a genuine municipal public health policy that became established in Jerusalem in the 1890s. In addition to the protection of public health and the fight against epidemic risks, the development of green spaces and public recreational spaces is the other major underpinning of shared urbanness, if we take into account the crowded conditions that define any “living together” in an urban space. Here again, this was a priority of Mayor Husayn Salim al-Husayni, who in 1892 opened the first municipal park of Jerusalem, below Jaffa Street, and appointed as its supervisor one of his protégés, the Greek Orthodox Jirjis al-Jawhariyya.72 Called Al-Muntazah al-Baladi (literally, “the city park”), it was located near the hospital, opened one year earlier, and traced the first outline of a “municipal quarter” in the making, at the point of contact between the old city and the new. Before the opening of this public park, there were other spaces for promenade and relaxation, but they were outside the center, on the border of the city— for example, near Job’s Well (Bir Eyub) in the eastern valley, which after heavy rains attracted coffee vendors to serve the strollers who came to listen to the sound of the water and to relax beside the ephemeral stream.73 The new municipal park in the heart of the city, a place of promenade for urban dwellers and a space for the notables to show themselves, also contained a storage building for flags, lights, and garlands used to decorate the city during celebrations. So the supervisor of

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Figure 12. The municipal hospital of Jerusalem (1891), photographed during the 1920s. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

the municipal park became also the “official decorator” of the municipality. Finally, the park also included the Café Belediye (municipal café), housed in a small, two- story building, which welcomed every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday a military band installed in a bandshell. The upkeep of this public park prompted reflection on the risk of deforestation of the neighboring hills, which were then the object of an initial reforestation program, begun in 1904 with various seedlings brought specially from Jericho. The next year a large, citywide planting program was launched, featuring the planting of trees along Jaffa Street. This was accompanied by the installation of a first public lighting network and the placement of the first garbage cans along public streets.74 Another event was the opening in 1904 of the municipal theater, across from the Jaffa Gate, yet another sign of urban life in full bloom.75 To finance all these new expenses, the municipality collected taxes, which increased as the city developed. The establishment of municipal taxation was one of the major provisions of the 1877 law (Articles 39–41), which foresaw three main sources of revenue for the municipalities of the empire. These were, in order of importance, taxes (rüsumu) stemming primarily from the various licenses and excise duties (kantar) and tolls on vehicles, passengers, and merchandise on the main roads and the Jaffa– Jerusalem railway line; taxes on slaughtering (zebhiyye rüsumu), on skins (derma rüsumu), and on livestock sales (bac-i hayvan rüsumu); and taxes on real estate activities, in particular a tax on building permits (insaat rü-

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sumu) and a tax on increase in real estate value (rüsum-u serefiyye).76 As the municipality increased its activities, other, subsidiary taxes were gradually added to these three main sources: for instance, a tax on vehicles and carts (arabalar rüsumu), a tax on work permits (rüsum-u ruhsatiyye), and a tax for public lights, garbage collection, and street cleaning (rüsum-u tenvirattanzimat). According to the budgets preserved in the municipal archives, it is clear that the municipal income grew along with the overall growth of the city. The annual budget rose to about 3,000 Turkish pounds (300,000 piasters) in 1877, 8,000 Turkish pounds at the end of the 1890s, and 12,000 or even 14,000 Turkish pounds around 1910. If it is true that an urban community is built in part through a dynamic and redistributive fiscal policy, then there can be no doubt that the urban community of Jerusalem grew in strength during the period 1870– 1910. h In 1895, the municipality found itself running out of room in the buildings of the governorate (Saray) located northeast of the old city, and the decision was made to construct a new municipal building, larger and more modern, outside the walls, across from the Jaffa Gate— in the very heart of the new “municipal quarter” that was in the process of emerging in the vicinity of the hospital, the municipal park, the bandshell, and the “municipal café.”77 The new building was opened in 1896. In one of the photographs taken during the solemn entrance of Kaiser Wilhelm II into Jerusalem on October 31, 1898, we can clearly recognize the new building on the left, at the corner of Jaffa Street and Mamilla Street, with its characteristic turret projecting diagonally into the crossing (fig. 13). Soon, within the bounds of this new “municipal quarter,” there would be a new public fountain (sabil), completed in 1900, and then the monumental clock tower, in 1907. In January 1909, in the Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Jérusalem, which covered all the religions and nationalities in the holy city (Nazif Bey al-Khalidi, M. Gerassimos, Nissim Elyachar, and others), the merchants of Jerusalem requested that the municipality speed up the move of the judicial institutions near the Jaffa Gate, in what they called “the new business quarter.”78 During the years 1890– 1910, the area around the Jaffa Gate increasingly appeared to be the beating heart of a new urbanness. As in many other Ottoman cities in the same period, a Levantine society emerged, actualized by the new possibilities offered by the Ottoman empire as well as the opening to the West. The municipal institution was at once the laboratory and

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Figure 13. Solemn entrance of the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, into Jerusalem on October 31, 1898. The new municipal building, constructed in 1896, is on the left of the photograph, with its characteristic turret visible, at the corner of Jaffa and Mamilla Streets. (Library of Congress)

the display window of this urban community in full expansion. If this municipal history has been forgotten today, the reason is that it appears to us, after the fact, as lacking a future— stopped short by World War I, the British occupation, and the rise of competing nationalisms in Palestine. Yet does geopolitics force the historian to throw this local history into oblivion? On the contrary, to present- day inhabitants of Jerusalem, this history is an indispensable reference point. To finance its new building, the municipality took advantage of works done in the summer of 1898 and the filling of the ditches, in order to create thirty- eight new shops providing rental income to feed municipal coffers.79 In the photograph taken on October 31, 1898, if we turn our eyes for a moment from the sumptuous decor and the official parade, we can see some signs of this ordinary, shared urbanness: to the right, a new Nicodem store, a glove and notions shop, and a pub and billiard hall. On the left, upon the turret of the municipal building, two placards are visible: the one above has “National Hotel” written in French and Arabic, while on the lower sign we can read “Isaac J. Cohen, Tailor,” written in white letters on a black background. In the Jerusalem of the years around 1900, boundaries were decidedly different from those of today that zigzag across maps of the holy city.

chapter six

The Wild Revolutionary Days of 1908

In Jerusalem’s bazaar a worthy shopkeeper explains this constitution to us: “You know, the sultan didn’t do this from his heart. He is scared, so they told him: ‘You have to give that!’ And he said: ‘Do it and say that it’s me!’ And they did it. But you know, it’s not him!” —Jérusalem, October 1908

O

n August 7, 1908, at day’s end, thousands of people converged toward the Jaffa Gate and assembled at the foot of the clock tower that had been completed the previous year, to celebrate the reestablishment of the Ottoman constitution. Although the governor had not planned on celebrating the event until the next day, eyewitnesses relate that tens of thousands of Jerusalem’s inhabitants had already taken to the streets spontaneously on this Friday evening.1 The official decorator of the municipality, the Greek Orthodox Jirjis al-Jawhariyya, had probably been asked to bring out the flags and garlands that were stored in the building of the municipal park, but it seems that all the inhabitants were also participating in the decor of their own accord: The houses and shops are covered with flags as for great solemn occasions. There are garlands made of greenery or colored paper blooming on the streets, and everywhere triumphal arches have been put up. The first one we encounter, in front of a café, is decorated with apples and peppers, with a superb gourd hanging in the middle. . . . Everyone is dressed up for a holiday, orators are making speeches in the open air, we are drenched with rosewater, the Turks embrace and congratulate each other, and yell: “Long live freedom! Long live the Sultan!”2

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Fifteen days earlier, at the other end of the empire, around Salonica (Thessaloniki), a group of Ottoman officers affiliated with the revolutionary movement of the Young Turks had mutinied against the regular army and proclaimed the reestablishment of the 1876 constitution. On July 24, to keep the revolution from becoming completely unmanageable, Sultan Abdul Hamid II decided to “go with the flow,” in his own words, and declared the return of the constitutional regime. 3 The Ottoman empire thus fully entered into the revolutionary twentieth century. We must connect this local chronology to the global chronologies to see clearly that in this summer of 1908, the holy city participated in a history that went far beyond the borders of Palestine and even of the Ottoman empire. Like the Russian empire in 1905, like the Persian empire in 1906, the Ottoman empire was wobbling under the blows of revolutionary ideals. When the inhabitants of the holy city sang the Marseillaise and yelled, “Liberté, égalité, justice, fraternité!” they were turning their gaze toward the French Revolution. On August 1, 1908, in the Parisian weekly Le socialisme, edited by Jules Guesde, the Romanian socialist Christian Rakovsky analyzed the growing Young Turks revolution in real time, as it was happening: “After Russia and Persia, now Turkey too has entered into the revolutionary movement. . . . The proletariat should greet the Turkish revolution with enthusiasm.”4 According to this socialist writer, there was no doubt: the revolutionary days of 1908 in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the empire all had their place in the great historical gallery of struggles for freedom. Contrary to what traditional historians’ neglect of these events might lead one to believe, Jerusalem was not bypassed by the 1908 revolution: on the contrary, the scenes of popular rejoicing that took place there transcended the formal and official setting. Eyewitnesses described continuous demonstrations, parades, and speeches that went on day and night for more than two weeks, as a correspondent for Jérusalem magazine reported when describing the popular euphoria: They are yelling, singing, the band in vain tries to make itself heard, but the musicians, separated by the crowd, are not able to come together and finish a single measure. . . . Soldiers try to form an honor guard, but they are overwhelmed, and in the path they formed from the gate to the official stand, the crowd presses in as it does in the surrounding areas. . . . The demonstrations, too, continue, to the chagrin of peaceful bourgeois who can no longer sleep at night. Turks, Greeks, Jews, Latins, Armenians all meet together in various neighborhoods, then run about the streets singing and firing shots into the air. Many speeches are made,

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people call each other brother, they embrace, they pledge to be faithful to the Young Turks’ motto, “Liberté, égalité, justice, fraternité.”5

Why has this unique event been omitted from the countless books on the history of Jerusalem? Probably because it clashes with the traditional historiography of the holy city. It doesn’t mesh with expected schemas, it can neither illustrate nor confirm them, so most historians have preferred to turn away from it, while patiently waiting for the start of World War I to confirm the usual teleological narrative, bringing with it the first load of interethnic and interreligious conflicts. Yet “the revolution did happen” in Jerusalem, and in recent years a new generation of historians has been striving to narrate it and to contribute to a new approach to the history of the holy city, somewhere between “relational history” and “history from the bottom up,” keeping their distance from the ethno- religious labels that have long been crudely pasted onto the city’s history.6 Since these revolutionary days really did happen, they can be used as an observation platform for the urban society of the time. To this end, we must avoid oversimplification and instead take into account the intrinsic complexity of these events. This revolutionary episode, in fact, modified relations between the inhabitants and the central power, the inhabitants’ views of each other, and also the religious, cultural, and national representations that took on a new configuration with regard to Ottoman imperial power. There is no question here of painting a sugarcoated portrait of this forgotten revolution: in Jerusalem, beyond the collective rejoicing, fracture lines were already appearing or reappearing in the urban community; however, as we will see, these conflicts were not structured according to the present- day binary schema of “Jews versus Palestinians.” Because it unsettles hackneyed analytic frameworks, the 1908 revolution in Jerusalem is unquestionably a revelatory historical event. To gauge its full import, we must go beyond the revolutionary days themselves and observe later changes in the Jerusalem of the years 1909– 14, so as to find out if this revolutionary episode was just a flash in the pan with no future or, on the contrary, if it affected the political face of the holy city over the longer term, especially with regard to the expression of public opinion.

WHAT TIME WAS IT IN JERUSALEM? The clock tower, located at the Jaffa Gate and completed in 1907 (fig. 14), is unquestionably the monument that best captures the ambivalence of the revolutionary days and the complexity of the historical context that

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Figure 14. The clock tower at the Jaffa Gate (1907), seen from outside the walls. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

gave them birth. In many of the photographs taken in August 1908, we can see the brand- new monument decorated with flags, pennants, streamers, and greenery. In some, we even see young boys who took advantage of the general confusion to climb to the top, 25 meters above the ground, so as to reach the small, circular, steel balcony just below the clock’s four quadrants. Let us follow them to this improvised observation point to take advantage, as they did, of the stunning view of what was taking place. Indeed, this clock tower perfectly embodies the contradictions at play in the Ottoman political system and the urban society of Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century, between ostentatious modernization and authoritarian temptation, between Westernization and isolationism, between secular tendencies and identity contraction.7 The history of this monumental clock is a short one: it was completed with great pomp in September 1907 and destroyed in 1922 by the new British occupiers, who were scandalized by this Ottomanist and modernist symbol laid over the ancient vestiges of the holy city. Its destruction in 1922 was done according to the principles of an explicitly backward- looking restoration that was defended by C. R. Ashbee and the Pro-Jerusalem Society: “Our aim is to discover and preserve all that remains of the past and undo

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as far as we can the evil that has been done since. ”8 The issue thus was to locate the line separating the good past from the chaff. Governor Ronald Storrs, on his part, accepted without misgiving the political dimension of this demolition: The clock tower erected by the loyal burgesses of Jerusalem, in a style midway between that of the Eddystone lighthouse and a jubilee memorial to commemorate the thirty- third anniversary [sic] of the reign of the late Sultan Abdul Hamid, has been bodily removed from the north side of the Jaffa Gate, which it too long disfigured.9

Like a chrysalis that lacked time to complete its transformation— like the 1908 revolution itself— the clock tower thus appeared to be the final witness to an “age of possibilities” for the holy city, brutally interrupted. Yet at the time of its construction, the clock tower was an integral part of the monumental program initiated jointly by the imperial government and local authorities in the quarter around the Jaffa Gate, beginning in the 1890s. After the creation of the municipal hospital (1891), the public park and the “municipal café” (1892), the new city hall (1896), the breach in the walls and the filling of the ditches (1898), and the public fountain (1900), the clock seemed like the crowning touch of a complete urbanism project aiming at creating a new city center around the “municipal quarter,” located at the junction of the old city and what is still called the “new city” of Jerusalem. In 1912, one last piece added an unexpected artistic dimension to the area around the Jaffa Gate: a monumental wooden pavilion, topped by a crenellated tower about 10 meters high, constructed by the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (founded in 1906 by Boris Schatz with the aim of creating a “Jewish national style”) to provide an exhibition and sale space for objects created by its students. As we look today at a period photograph of this surprising pavilion, with its top frieze decorated with menorahs and other Hebrew symbols, and the proud founder Boris Schatz posing on the front steps, we understand that something really did happen in Jerusalem during those years, something that had escaped us until now (fig. 15). On the scale of the quarter, the clock tower did indeed dominate the whole area and gave meaning to the ongoing project of urban development. It was imposing, first of all, by its height, because from the top, at 25 meters (as from the Dome of the Rock), it commanded a view of the entire city and even beyond, as related in a memoir by Wasif al-Jawhariyya (Jirjis’s son), who was ten years old when the clock tower was completed: “When the

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Figure 15. The pavilion of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (1912) and its director, Boris Schatz, across from the Jaffa Gate.

clock tower was built at the Jaffa Gate, the municipality installed four ‘Lux’ lamps on its walls so as to give light in all directions. The tower was visible from even the most distant villages, so it looked like a beacon.”10 Intended to signify Jerusalem’s new centrality in its surroundings, the clock tower showed itself in all its modernity, standing as a public monument free of any religious interpretation. Like a municipal belfry, it was the first “urban”monument of the holy city, and it placed Jerusalem within a global temporality, resonating with the great cities of the world at that time, such as Paris and the tower of the Gare de Lyon (1900). Funded with an intercommunity public subscription, the clock at Jaffa Gate can also be interpreted as the municipal development of a “public time,” a common identification of a temporal referent shared by all, beyond religious differences. Up to that time, each religious community had referred to its own world of sound to construct its own temporality (the muezzin for Muslims, the shofar for Jews, bells for Christians); the clock at the Jaffa Gate henceforth provided secularized hours for all, a public time that,

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like the public space that was invented at the same moment, enabled urban dwellers to move within a shared urbanness. It was no accident that this new public time ticked at the Jaffa Gate, in the heart of what the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce called “the business quarter”— a neutral space, inclusive and open to all, within which all the segments of the urban community encountered each other. It was also no accident that all the pilgrims cried scandal and even blasphemy when they discovered this monument, and that the British army, having barely entered into Jerusalem, decided to demolish it. The clock tower was the expression of a reality pilgrims did not want to see— a city that was modernizing and that bore less and less resemblance to the holy images they had come there to admire. Like the railroad station, located 500 meters farther south, the clock tower was deliberately anchored in the present and turned toward the future, while passing visitors, whether pilgrims or simple tourists, were seeking the biblical past of the city. In the Jerusalem of the years around 1900, the “secularizers” came from the local population in all its diversity, while the “millennialists” had to be sought among Western visitors . . . This “monument of modernity” did not have just one meaning. First, we must recall that the public subscription funding it was not launched spontaneously by the inhabitants, but resulted from an initiative of the central power relayed through the governor. This clock thus has to be viewed in the context of its cousins erected during the same period in the great Ottoman cities to reaffirm the unity of the empire and the authority of its sultan. On July 21, 1905, in Istanbul, Abdul Hamid II barely escaped an anarchist attack that left twenty- six dead, which led the sultan’s administration to rush into a repressive mode that ended up encouraging more revolutionary agitation.11 The Jerusalem clock was not the first to be erected in Palestine. For instance, in Jaffa, a wealthier town, and thus one better able to quickly assemble the needed funds, a comparable clock was erected on September 1, 1900, the day of the jubilee of Abdul Hamid. In Jerusalem, the subscription process took longer, so construction was delayed, and the opening did not take place until September 1, 1907. The modernity of the monument was further qualified by a discourse of respect for Islamic tradition. Governor Ali Ekrem Bey, in a letter addressed to Istanbul on October 28, 1907, emphasized how Muslims could make use of the clock to better respect the schedule of prayers, and added that, of the four clock faces, only two showed “Western” time while the other two displayed “Oriental” time. 12 Located at the point of contact between the old city and the new, the religious city and the profane, the clock tower was indeed the symbol of this ambivalent historical moment— that of a holy city in process of secular-

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ization but in which, at the same time, the authorities wanted to preserve traditional structures. The Jaffa Gate clock was also symptomatic of the geopolitical issues involving the holy city. To see how this was so, we need only consult consular archives to discover, for instance, that furnishing the clockwork mechanism was the object of intense competition between France and Great Britain, as each of these powers earnestly tried to set the holy city on “London time” or on “Paris time. ” On July 10, 1908, two weeks before the outbreak of the revolution, the British consul was pleased to have succeeded in convincing the governor to replace the French mechanism bought the preceding year with a mechanism “made in England.”13 The French clock mechanism, being defective, was to be relegated to the middle of the Negev, to Beersheba where a tower was also being built! It is interesting to note that, beyond the anecdotal nature of this affair, European diplomats were aware of the political symbolism embodied in this new tower at the Jaffa Gate. The clock tower thus appears as a sort of “precipitate” of the recent history of the holy city: bearer of a shared urbanity and modernity, but at the same time a symbolic reaffirmation of imperial authority. Even if these two perspectives are not necessarily contradictory, the specific context of the tower’s construction gave it an ambiguous character. This can be seen even in its architecture, a hybrid compromise between Victorian and Ottoman styles. Better than any other monument of Jerusalem, the clock tower, in the end, reveals the subtle in-between time in which the city moved during the years around 1900, ready to tilt toward political modernity by participating feverishly in the revolutionary days of the summer of 1908.

THE WILD DAYS OF AUGUST 1908 : JERUSALEM’S FORGOTTEN REVOLUTION Like any other revolutionary episode, the days of August 1908 in Jerusalem should be interpreted as both revealing latent tendencies and reconfiguring inherited social and political structures. In any case, speeches and demonstrations that took place all over the city for more than fifteen days cannot be ignored just because they would rattle the analytical frameworks traditionally used to study the holy city. The modes of transmission of the information that triggered these “wild days” are in themselves indicative of the political strains affecting the city. When the sultan, on July 24, proclaimed the reestablishment of the constitution, it took almost a week for the news to reach Jerusalem by means of

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foreign papers, word of mouth, the Hebrew newspaper Ha-Havatselet (The Lily), and posters put up on walls.14 A few days later the official government paper, Kudüs-i Sherif/Al-Quds al-Sharif, spread the news more widely: the 1876 constitution was reestablished, a general amnesty was given to political prisoners, and censorship laws were repealed. But Governor Ali Ekrem Bey still delayed, and the former mayor of the city, Husayn Salim al-Husayni (1882– 97), had to appeal to Istanbul by cable to get the governor to officially proclaim the constitution during a ceremony that had been planned for Saturday, August 8.15 As we have seen, the population began to celebrate a day ahead of the official date and kept on celebrating for two weeks. It is difficult to understand Ali Ekrem Bey’s position, as he was a French speaker open to new ideas, and a committed reformer. He was also the son of the famous Namik Kemal (1840– 88), an ardent advocate for the constitutional cause and coauthor of the 1876 constitution, the one whose reestablishment his son was specifically charged with proclaiming to the people of Jerusalem! This enigma might be explained by the climate of uncertainty that had surrounded Ottoman administrators since 1905: in the face of increasingly unpredictable events, they chose prudence to avoid any missteps that could prove fatal to their careers. Another, more intimate fact perhaps explains Ali Ekrem Bey’s uneasiness. He was born in 1867, at the time of his father’s first exile to Europe. The boy grew up in the almost total absence of his father, who was exiled once again, during the 1880s, on account of his radical ideas. Namik Kemal was sent to the island of Chios, where he died in 1888 when his son was only twenty- one years old. This paternal legacy was no doubt hard for Jerusalem’s governor to bear.16 What caught the attention of observers during those days of August 1908 were the scenes of fraternization, perceived as citizens’ appropriation of a universal Ottomanism, a direct legacy of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The legacy of the Revolution had long been put forward by the Young Turks, who dated the beginning of their movement to July 14, 1889 (the centennial of the French Revolution), and recruited heavily from the numerous Masonic lodges founded since the 1860s in the great Ottoman cities.17 Already on Wednesday, August 5, the well- known local Hebrew newspaper Ha-Havatselet argued that the reestablishment of the 1876 constitution was a guarantee of the future coexistence of the religious communities: “All those under the protection of the Ottoman government, without any distinction based on religion or nationality, shall be called Ottomans.” In this summer of 1908, Ottoman universalism still remained embodied in the figure of the sultan himself:

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Long live liberty! Long live the constitution! These words, in the past few days, have echoed through the streets of Jerusalem, repeated in Arabic, in Turkish, in Greek, in Armenian, and even at times in French. . . . The night of the 8th was spent in music in the public park. The Marseillaise was played, and six speeches were made. The final speech lasted only one hour and a half! . . . One sees portraits of the sultan, H. M. Abdul Hamid II, everywhere. He is represented at every age, from twenty to sixty years old. However, he is not an emaciated old man, a shaggy frightened figure with a long white beard, as portrayed in our own illustrated newspapers. He is a handsome officer in dress uniform, with a full face, his black beard carefully trimmed in the Turkish style. There are flags flying around these portraits; I can see flags of all nationalities, Turkish, Greek, German, Italian, and even American.18

In this month of August 1908, the imperial figure of the sultan, somewhat “rejuvenated” for the occasion, was still the bearer of a renewed and fraternal Ottomanism. It was not until the next spring, in April 1909, following his counter-revolutionary schemes, that he was deposed by the Young Turks and replaced with Mehmed V, the “last sultan,” henceforth deprived of any power.19 Let us listen further to the reporter for the periodical Jérusalem, who gives a very detailed description of the banners displayed during the demonstrations: A white banner with red letters proclaims: Long live the sultan! Long live the constitution! Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! Justice! . . . Everyone is wearing the red and white rosette, the constitutional rosette, we are told. We can read on them in tiny letters: Long live the Ottoman army! Long live our sultan! Liberty, equality, fraternity! Long live liberty!

One might suppose that the banners glorifying the sultan had been promoted by the authorities and that all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were not communing with equal fervor toward the Ottoman power, as our impromptu reporter notes: “In Jerusalem’s bazaar a worthy shopkeeper explains this constitution to us: ‘You know, the sultan didn’t do this from his heart. He is scared, so they told him: “You have to give that!” And he said: “Do it and say that it’s me!” And they did it. But you know, it’s not him!’” Jerusalem’s inhabitants were clearly not dupes. They interpreted the reestablishment of the constitution as the result of an authentic revolution that forced the sultan into a provisional compromise. The incessant speeches, joyous and polyglot, were another element that struck observers.

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Sir John Gray Hill, a lawyer originally from Liverpool and the owner, since the late 1880s, of a large property on Mount Scopus, wrote for the Times of London that “the speeches are given every day in public places and in the streets, which during the night remain lighted and crowded with people. ”20 The speeches were made by official authorities as well as by simple urban dwellers attempting to interpret on their own behalf the motto of the Young Turks: A young Jew yells at us in French: Hey, we have freedom, we have it! Long live the constitution! Is it going to last? Yes, of course it’s going to last, why wouldn’t it? . . . As the Armenian group comes out, a young seminarian climbs onto the side of a cistern and from this improvised podium harangues the crowd. He praises the sultan. . . . The Greek group is next, always with its blue and white flags. They all yell: Zito eleftéria! Long live liberty! with extraordinary fervor.

The speeches in the public space, the diffusion of controversies and of ideas, testifies to the emergence of a new, educated middle class, whose members were able to express themselves, to read, and to communicate in several languages. These revolutionary days also provided an opportunity to make economic and social demands, regardless of ethnic and religious differences. Thus, the coachmen of the Jerusalem– Jaffa road went on strike to obtain a wage hike; a movement came together to demand the end of suffrage based on property ownership and a move to universal male suffrage for municipal elections.21 Some speakers even denounced the administrative abuses in fiscal matters, in a tone clearly borrowed from the vocabulary of class struggle: The speaker was fulminating against the government, its plundering and its injustices, when he noticed a group of effendis [notables]: “And you, too,” he yelled at them, “you have to repent the injustices you’ve caused! You have pressured the people in demanding once again taxes that had already been paid, and in grabbing three or four times the tithe. You have starved the poor while you lived in luxury. You must change your behavior, repent, and make amends for the past if you don’t want the people’s justice to avenge it and punish you!” And the orator sits down, tired, but one of the effendis gets up and, offering him a glass of lemonade, says: “What you’re telling us does not cause offense because it’s the truth. Rest a bit, and then continue!”

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The surprising reaction of the notables speaks volumes on the atmosphere at that moment in the revolutionized holy city and on the freedom of speech the inhabitants had effectively seized. There is no doubt: in Jerusalem, in this month of August 1908, the revolution did indeed take place!

UNEXPECTED FRACTURE LINES In addition to the fraternal discourse, most of the observers noted that the slogan “liberty, equality, justice” (“hurriyya, musawah, ‘adala” in Arabic) was made concrete by the free access for all the inhabitants to all the holy sites of the city.22 Yet the detailed analysis of the parades and the reactions they triggered in each community reveals that behind this surface unanimity, conflicts did reemerge, but not along expected scenarios. Let us once again follow our reporter, who points out the fraternal ambience of the parades: All the races are present, side by side, all the religions are fraternizing. The Jews, wearing magnificent coats of yellow or violet velvet, and fur hats, surround their banners on which can be seen the Tablets of the Law embroidered in gold on a blue background. . . . The Armenian seminarians are no less enthusiastic, they sing at the top of their voices and carry small red flags. The Greeks carry a dozen Hellenic flags. . . . We can also see the black turbans of the Copts. . . . The imams circulate in the midst of the crowd, and we can recognize the dervishes by their large, yellow felt hats that make one think of an upside- down flower vase. 23

After this general description, the correspondent follows the Jewish parade in particular: The rumor is that, from now on, people can freely go anywhere, even to Omar’s mosque, where in the past one could enter only if accompanied by a cavas or a Turkish soldier. . . . The Jewish group, with its banner leading, goes directly to Omar’s mosque, toward this bit of land that for eleven centuries, from Solomon to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, was the unique locus of the religious life of God’s people. For fifteen hundred years, entry had been forbidden to the sons of Israel. Today the imams welcome them with enthusiasm, embrace them, and serve them refreshments: all are brothers, all are Ottomans! Long may it last!

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This scene well illustrates the fraternal atmosphere of Jerusalem during those revolutionary days. It strengthens the hypothesis of a genuine appropriation of Ottomanist ideology by Jerusalem’s inhabitants. To gauge the import of the symbol, we must imagine this group of Jewish visitors, preceded by a banner with “the Tablets of the Law embroidered in gold on a blue background,” welcomed enthusiastically by the Muslim authorities who control the Esplanade of the Mosques. This simple anecdote allows us to perceive how unique was the history of Jerusalem in the years around 1900, how difficult to imagine now, but also how necessary to preserve its trace. 24 In a surprising change of tone, the remainder of the account suddenly allows the correspondent’s own viewpoint to appear: Liberty! This word has not yet found a precise meaning, and each hears it in his own way. Jews interpret it in an almost tragic sense. We know that entry to the Holy Sepulcher is forbidden to them. What would they do there, anyway? Doesn’t this place remind them of their crime? Is it not the cause of the curse that weighs upon this race, of the contempt that all peoples feel for them, of the disgust they inspire everywhere? And the blood that, since the insolent challenge of the court, falls on their heads, should it not make them run far away? Our Jews think otherwise. To proclaim themselves free, they decided to come in a crowd to the Holy Sepulcher square.

After this deliberately anti-Semitic passage, the correspondent resumes his narrative and reports how the visit went: They showed up one evening, banner at the fore, and pretended they were going to force the little gate of the square, near the Protestant Church of the Redeemer. But there had been a warning. Greeks, Armenians, Latins, all were awaiting them steadfastly. There were arguments, shoving, the Jews threatened, the Christians held firm, and in the face of this resolute attitude, the Jews understood that they were not going to be the strongest and returned to their ghetto while swearing to return. They did not come back, and they did well not to do so.

The description of this scene reminds us of a truth that, no matter how disturbing it is today, is nonetheless indisputable: at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was Christian anti-Judaism that was the main breed-

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ing ground of anti-Semitism. This document reminds us that anti-Semitism is deeply anchored in the twenty centuries of Christian anti-Judaism, much more so than in Muslim tradition. By freeing speech, the 1908 revolution made it possible for us to perceive phenomena that were usually masked. Like all revolutionary episodes, the one in the summer of 1908 in Jerusalem was as much a laboratory for history’s participants as an observatory for the historian.

NEW VECTORS OF LIVELY PUBLIC OPINION Were the wild days of August 1908 only a flash in the pan, a moment of elation without a future? Did those revolutionary days and nights close in on themselves, once collective euphoria passed, like a mere enchanted parenthesis? Analysis of the public debates crisscrossing the urban society of Jerusalem during the years 1908–14 tends to prove the opposite. In the same way that public space and public time came to the fore in the Jerusalem of the years around 1900, so, too, did genuine public opinion. By “public opinion” we mean here the appearance of a common field of discussion and exchange on subjects affecting the whole of the urban community, along lines of confrontation that did not necessarily correspond to traditional religious dividing lines. Crystallization of a public space for debate assumes, according to Jürgen Habermas’s now classic theory, a certain number of preexisting conditions.25 In the specific case of Jerusalem, several chronologies converged from the 1890s on. First, the means of communication modernized, making possible a more rapid dissemination of information. The road network around Jerusalem was completed in 1892, the Jerusalem– Jaffa railroad line opened that same year, and the great international maritime lines departing from Jaffa became more numerous during the 1880s. Regional markets and great pilgrimages were developing, which facilitated exchanges of information among ordinary folks. Finally, foreign postal services were put in place during the 1870s, which made possible a broader diffusion of the foreign press within the urban bourgeoisie of the region (fig. 16).26 The education infrastructure also became consolidated during this time period and helped ensure the population’s greater participation in public debates. This was due in part to the special identity of Jerusalem, a city of scholarship and culture for all the monotheistic religions— witness the British consul who pointed out in 1885 that “Jerusalem is unquestionably the city of the empire best endowed with schools.”27 Here again, this eyewitness account negates the notion of an archaic city closed in on itself. There

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Figure 16. The Austrian post office, established in the 1870s, across from the citadel of the Jaffa Gate. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

is no dearth of sources on the topic of schools, which were of particular interest to European observers. The geographer Vital Cuinet for instance, counted 158 primary schools (ibtida’i) in 1885 and 242 in 1901.28 From the end of the 1880s on, the Ottoman government encouraged the opening of secondary schools (rüs¸diye) based on the French model: in 1901, Vital Cuinet counted two in each major city of the district (Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, and Gaza), one for boys and one for girls, for a total of 260 girls and 405 boys attending secondary schools in 1901. In addition, the number of foreign educational institutions was increasing during those years, leading the imperial power to attempt to control them. By including the foreign schools in his calculations, Vital Cuinet counted 374 schools in the Jerusalem district in 1901, for a total of about 30,000 children attending school. For a population of 300,000 (including all generations), this represented the best performance in the empire in terms of schooling.29 Municipal authorities were actively involved with the schooling question: Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi opened the first state high school (rüs¸diye) in Jerusalem in 1868 on the site of an old madrasa, after completing his own higher education in Istanbul.30 Crystallization of local public opinion was also helped by the development of print journalism, which underwent a major expansion in Jerusalem from the 1880s on.31 Ever since the 1830s and 1840s, religious printers had been present in Jerusalem, in the large Armenian, Greek, Jewish, and Catholic institutions. However, a commercial press with information and opinion did not really develop until the 1880s.32 The press in Hebrew,

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less directly controlled by the authorities, developed earlier and more actively than the press in the Turkish and Arabic languages. The first newspaper printed in Jerusalem in Hebrew, Ha-Levanon (Lebanon) was founded in 1863, while Arabic- speaking readers had to content themselves for a long time with publications printed outside of Palestine, specifically in Cairo and Beirut. In 1900, the Greek Orthodox publisher in Jerusalem, Jurji Habib Hananya, founded Al-Quds (Jerusalem), but he failed to obtain the license for the paper and in short order had to give up his project.33 Arabicspeaking intellectuals generally published their pieces in the Egyptian or Lebanese press, as did, for instance, Rouhi al-Khalidi who published numerous articles during the decade 1890– 1900 under the pseudonym Al-Maqdisi (The Jerusalemite).34 The explosion in the number of newspapers following the 1908 revolution is the best proof available of a preliminary crystallization of local public opinion in the years around 1900. Michelle Campos, in her study of Freemasonry in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century, counts no fewer than sixteen new papers in Arabic founded immediately after the 1908 revolution, to which must be added five new papers in Hebrew, three in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and one in Greek. This implies a prior incubation period, as it is not possible that the hatching of so many newspapers could be a matter of spontaneous generation.35 Some new titles overtly expressed the political stance taken by the paper, such as Filastin and AlNajah (“Palestine” and “Victory,” in Arabic) or Ha-Herut (“Liberty,” in Hebrew).36 Among these papers, some were explicitly trying to expand their circulation beyond the urban bourgeoisie, as shown by an editorial in Filastin, which mentioned the free copies of each issue that were sent to the mukhtars (village heads) of every community numbering more than one hundred inhabitants so as to “let the fellah know what is happening in the country and teach him his rights.”37 Other accounts show that the actual readership of these newspapers was much larger than the number of copies printed; for instance, in an editorial, Jurji Habib Hananya, the publisher of Al-Quds (printed again from the summer of 1908 on), bitterly noted that “each issue of the paper is shared by fifty other readers, so how can a publisher earn his living under those circumstances?”38 Thanks to its spread among a population that was increasingly better educated and better connected to channels of information, the 1908 revolution made possible the flowering of an articulate and self- aware public opinion.

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UNDERNEATH COMMUNITIES, CLASSES? Analysis of the debates agitating the urban community of Jerusalem in the years 1908– 14 shows that the themes developed in this specific context did not stem primarily from emerging national categories— contrary to what a static chronology might lead us to believe. Rather, following the spread of revolutionary themes, some conflicts were formulated in terms of “class struggle,” as if economic and social categories had suddenly risen to the surface. To glimpse these new social conflicts, we must turn to some rarely used sources, such as the Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine that was published in French in September 1909 and devoted to the need to modernize the infrastructure of the holy city.39 To make their point, the organization’s members drew explicitly from the institutional accomplishments of the revolution: “The chamber will not fail in its imperative duty to translate public opinion and to represent the general interest, in spite of any opposition and constraint. This is the principal essence of a constitutional government.”40 The themes of “public opinion” and “general interest” are not historical reconstructions based on hindsight, but the rhetorical tools brought to bear by the participants themselves. In this specific case, the heart of the debate concerned the funding of restoration of the public water supply system, clearly an issue of general interest. After the work done in 1900–1901 and the completion of the new hydraulic line in November 1901, the situation did improve, but the increasing need for water necessitated new measures, as Governor Ahmed Reshid Pasha had already realized in 1904. He noted that if no further works were undertaken, “this issue would become a subject of debate in Europe” and would risk straining Ottoman sovereignty over the holy city.41 However, it was the revolutionary days of summer 1908 that radically changed the situation. From that moment on, the tone of the debate was transformed and the leaders of civil society no longer hesitated to address themselves directly to the political authorities; this was true in all segments of urban society. So, for instance, Isaac Levy, director of the branch of the Anglo-Palestine Company (heir to the Jewish Colonial Trust founded by Herzl in 1899) and director of the local newspaper Hachkafa, published in the fall of 1908 an open letter to the governor in Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and French, in which he addressed the governor without mincing words: “So, your Excellency, could you please take on this task so that the people you are administering will begrudge you neither their fullest cooperation

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nor their warmest devotion. Above all, your Excellency, keep the following in mind: if the people were nothing up to this day, they have decided to be everything in the future. ”42 This sounds almost like the first stanza of the Internationale: “We are nothing, let us be all!” To mobilize those whom he was calling his “fellow citizens,” Levy was taking up again the themes developed during the revolutionary days by insisting on the necessity of citizens’ participation in debates of public interest: “It is up to you to take the initiative in a project of public health that is exclusively yours.”43 The new governor, Ali Subhi Bey (successor to Ali Ekrem Bey, who had been appointed to Beirut following the revolution), was forced to respond publicly and respectfully to this challenge: I have read the open letter you addressed to me. I would like to respond to the warm welcome I received from this sanjak [Ottoman administrative district] by my efforts to serve them. . . . I invited the merchants with the goal of creating a chamber of commerce that would serve as an advisory body, but upon the recommendation of the Israelites, who have had to be excused on account of their imminent religious celebration, I have decided to postpone the creation of this body until next Monday.44

Here we can see the new relation between political power and civil society that was in the process of being established as a result of the revolution: Ali Subhi Bey had to accept the new terms of the debate, submit to the new configuration of public space, and treat the city dwellers, who openly challenged him, almost as equals. He also had to treat with respect the whole of the people he was administering, even to the extent of changing his own calendar if an “imminent” Jewish holiday was in preparation. If we go beyond the rhetorical framework of the debate so as to analyze its content, it becomes clear that the social issue nestled in the heart of the public debate in revolutionized Jerusalem, and that national issues and geopolitical stakes were not systematically brought to the forefront. In its bulletin of September 1909, the chamber of commerce presented two competing proposals to fund hydraulic works: one suggested that the main portion of the investment should be financed through privatization of the water supply system and an increase in the price of water, while the other advocated covering the expenses by an appropriation of revenue from the municipal tax on the skins of butchered animals.45 Put simply, one of these projects leaned toward privatization of the water resource, while the other

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(which had the support of the chamber of commerce) favored municipal funding of the investment, keeping the water supply network in the public sphere. Reading the Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine, we can see the extent to which the argument focused on the social issue: By demanding the free delivery of skins to the municipality, we would be placing the burden on meat- eaters (well- to- do bourgeois, rich rentiers) to the tune of at most 100,000 francs per year, while with M. Frank’s proposal, water drinkers, all poor people, would be paying three or four times as much for water.46

“Meat eaters” versus “water drinkers”: these were the categories conjured up by the chamber of commerce to clarify the nature of the debate. We find no trace here of ethno- religious labels, as the “rich rentiers” and the “poor people” were found in all religious communities in Jerusalem, just as they are everywhere else. The chamber of commerce members continued even more directly with their attack on the proposal to privatize the water resource: This is the anti- democratic side of the proposal. Sacrificing the vital interests of the masses for the selfishness of the wealthy should be banned in a constitutional government. Never in any country have we seen the price of water double so as to lower the price of meat by 5 percent. . . . We hope that the authorities and our council members will respond to the general expectation.

By defending the “vital interests of the masses” and by attacking the “selfishness of the wealthy,” the members of the chamber of commerce (who came from all the communities of the city) were simply taking into consideration the emergence of a public opinion common to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, an integral part of an urban community whose existence and manifest visibility could no longer be ignored at that time. It was thus pragmatic behavior on the part of Jerusalem’s notables, who had to respond to what they called a “general expectation,” even though it was evident that the chamber of commerce members came from the same “wealthy” segment mentioned in the discussion. This very special moment in the history of the holy city has to be told. It was a moment suspended between two centuries, during which the dividing

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lines within the urban society did not follow those of the categories used today. In telling this history, there is no question of effacing with a stroke of the pen other potential categories, some of which were destined to have a powerful future. Rather, it is an attempt to perceive alternative horizons that were opening up, within the fragile context of an ultimately ephemeral age of possibilities.

chapter seven

Intersecting Identities

For the last few months Jerusalem has become the center of nationality struggles. Until then we were living peacefully. The Orientals were grateful to their European coreligionists for the help they brought to their moral and material misery. Zionism was created supposedly to bring about closer relations within Judaism; all it has succeeded in doing is to cause fighting between nationalities. — Albert Antébi, letter, December 29, 1901

O

n Thursday, December 7, 1899, Albert Antébi, the director of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) in Jerusalem, picked up his pen to complain about the behavior of certain of his coreligionists to Narcisse Leven, president of the AIU in Paris. Albert Antébi was born in Damascus, did his studies in France, and took up his post in Jerusalem in 1896. French diplomats called him “the consul of the Jews” because of his great influence within the Jewish communities of the holy city. Yet the letter he wrote that day aimed at denouncing what he called the “arrogance” of American and Ashkenazi Jews in their dealings with him: Yesterday morning at eleven, while coming out of the Bikur Holim hospital . . . I was heatedly addressed in German by a Jew who is an American citizen. I was only able to make out in his ranting the words “Alliance, Paris, London, Ali.” I understood instantly that he was demanding that I kick all the Muslims out of our school and out of Nahalat Zvi, threatening that otherwise he would kill me and my entire staff, especially the master blacksmith Ali Courdi. I invited him to come to the school and politely express his grievances to me, and he immediately hurled himself upon me. . . . Then there were blows and injuries, and the affair went 145

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to court. He even threatened in front of the police commander that he would kill me and everyone on my staff. . . . In general, the American Jews, who feel safe because of their impunity, cause trouble for us by their arrogance. 1

This scene reflects the dissensions that were cutting across the various Jewish communities in Jerusalem at the end of the nineteenth century, a well- known situation that has been abundantly studied.2 But Antébi’s account goes further, for it also points to the issue of the anti-Arab attitude professed by a faction of Jews who were recent immigrants, accusing Jews of Arab culture, like Antébi, of a guilty closeness to the Muslims of Jerusalem. As it happens, the issue here was the presence of a Muslim teacher (the master blacksmith Ali Courdi) in the school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Jerusalem, which, as we know, also included many Christian and Muslim students. The rest of Antébi’s letter shows that this incident was not isolated and that on the contrary it revealed a fracture within what is usually called “the” Jewish community of Jerusalem: This incident really upset and affected me as it showed the feelings a great part of the Jewish population are holding toward us. . . . Last Thursday, three Ashkenazim came into the forge, playing with the drilling machines, displaying an offensive attitude, and refusing to get out: “The school is public, it belongs to all the Jews.” This is the state of mind of the population with whom we are living. It costs me, on the one hand, to bring charges against Jews, and on the other, the local government is impotent to take measures against Jews who are foreign nationals. You can see how difficult my situation is. Never have I seen such a city and such a people! I am disgusted, discouraged.3

The words Antébi used are very strong, and the episodes he describes give us, beyond his own interpretation of them, some idea of the cultural cleavage that separated, in the Jerusalem of the years around 1900, Arabicspeaking Jews of Arab culture, born in the Middle East, and Jews who were recent immigrants to the region and who, for the most part, looked down upon the indigenous population, regardless of who they were. In addition, Antébi’s account highlights the very great diversity of convictions, positions, and postures that cut across each of the communities of the holy city at the very beginning of the twentieth century. As we reach the close of this inquiry, now that we have a more com-

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plete and more complex image of Jerusalem in the years around 1900, it is time to ask the fundamental question: what can we finally say about the identities, the relative positioning, and the contrasting views that the city dwellers of Jerusalem had of each other? The difficulty of the answer lies in the incongruity of the question, as these mutual gazes have to be sought in the diversity, complexity, and probably the fluidity of urban identities that interweave to fabricate the singular identity of the holy city in these years around 1900. For this, we can take as our point of departure the well- turned phrase of Élias Sanbar, who states that one must first “free oneself from thinking of a zero moment of identities, free oneself from the notion that they have birth dates from whence their continuity would arise, refuse the concept of genesis as a moment that followed chaos.”4 In Figures du Palestinien, Sanbar proposes a definition that pretty well corresponds to what we can glimpse of the particular identity of Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century: Palestinian identity, he writes, contains within its own genesis the whole of that of the “People of the Holy Land” and thus the whole of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identities. It is “mixed” by its very principle, and the labeling of first “Arab” then “Muslim” are only late, and ultimately secondary, reductions. The permanence of this unique identity, he writes, comes not from its “immobility” but, on the contrary, “from its motion, its chain of figures ever different but always identifiable. ” This postulate allows Sanbar to grasp what he calls the “contemporaneity” of each given period— that is, “to read each historical moment in what was its present,” by overturning the false evidence of “immutable identities.” Drawing on the historiographical gains of relational history, which seeks to analyze the effects of mutual interactions between social groupings, we can make progress toward an “urban” history of Jerusalem, one that takes into account the three essential dimensions of urban “living- together”: proximity, diversity, and interaction.5 To pursue this, in our last chapter, we must think about both intercommunity relationships and intracommunity relationships, and we must do so from various observation points. We make no claim here to an exhaustive panorama, but rather attempt to illuminate some of the lines of perspective that were crisscrossing the urban society of Jerusalem at that time, and which require a three- dimensional view.

ALBERT ANTÉBI, LEVANTINE URBANITE Let us carry on reading Albert Antébi’s letters. In addition to the cultural divide he highlights within the Jewish communities of Jerusalem, can we observe truly political divergences? In Antébi’s case, the answer is yes. For

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example, in a letter of January 8, 1900, one month after the letter quoted above, he details his position on the Zionist project, which had attracted the media’s attention ever since the congress held in Basel three years earlier: You know that I am not a Zionist. Having been posted in Jerusalem for more than three years already in the midst of a poor population, making a living from this industrial center and collaborating in the real work of renewal of our unfortunate coreligionists, I am able to gauge the extent of the harm done to Judaism by this nefarious campaign. It sets Ottoman authorities against us, makes the Muslim population suspicious of any progress we have accomplished. It creates an empty space around us, even among the consuls and European colonies that look upon us with worry and jealousy. . . . I hold Jerusalem in esteem for its historical past but I don’t believe in its future for our nation.6

Reading the last line of this letter, two attitudes are possible: we can smile and mock Antébi because the history of the century that is beginning will show him to be mainly wrong; or, instead, we can make use of his testimony to perceive more clearly Jerusalem’s contemporary reality in this month of January 1900— a complex reality very distant from today’s situation. As the Zionist project gained more visibility, Antébi’s opposition gradually became stronger and incorporated Ottomanist ideology opposing separatist national claims. For instance, on December 29, 1901, Antébi points out the precise nature of the risk he feels the Zionist project poses to the internal equilibrium of the urban community: For the last few months Jerusalem has become the center of nationality struggles. Until then we were living peacefully. The Orientals were grateful to their European coreligionists for the help they brought to their moral and material misery. Zionism was created supposedly to bring about closer relations within Judaism; all it has succeeded in doing is to cause fighting between nationalities.7

Written at the very moment of the fifth Zionist congress in Basel, this letter brutally reveals the view of an eminent member of Jerusalem’s Jewish community on the Zionist political project, which, according to him, risked causing “fighting between nationalities” among urban dwellers who “until then . . . were living peacefully.” The aim here is not to present Antébi as

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the spokesman for a like- minded Jewish community in Jerusalem, given that we have just seen how it was traversed by many dissensions, but rather to show the complexity of individual positioning within the very specific context of the years around 1900. We must note in passing that Antébi’s personal position resonates with the debates among the Zionists themselves, who became divided over the course of the fifth, sixth, and seventh congresses (1901– 5) between the Zionists called “Palestinians,” who favored settling in Palestine, and those called “territorialists,” who supported the investigation of an alternative possibility, in Uganda or elsewhere. 8 When the Young Turks revolution began, Antébi became even more specific in his denunciation of Zionist projects, as shown in the letter he wrote on August 4, 1908: Don’t forget that if the Young Turks party supports the equality of all Ottomans without any religious distinction, by the same token it will oppose with all its might all separatist aspirations; all the Macedonian, Armenian, and especially Zionist cases will be opposed with the same energy, and it would be an immeasurable harm, a crime against Ottoman Judaism, to want to weaken it and put it on the index by creating under the protection of the constitution a national Jewish party.9

For Antébi, then, the emergence of the Zionist project runs contrary to the supranational utopian ideal of the Young Turks revolution. We must grant that he was right on this point, while still bearing in mind that the Young Turks movement itself was rife with contradictions from its beginning in the 1880s, divided between a “liberal- federalist” wing opened to various national expressions and a “Turkish-nationalist” wing that finally won out after 1912. At any rate, in this month of August 1908, that history was not yet written, and Antébi could still project himself optimistically into a renewed Ottomanist ideology: I want to be a Jewish deputy to the Ottoman Parliament and not to the Moriah Hebrew temple. Ottoman Jews must have the same rights, duties, and aspirations that English, German, and French Jews have. I want to create powerful, economic Jewish clusters immersed in universal democracy. I do not want to be a subject of a Judean autocracy. Let political Zionism remain a party of protest against the persecution of our brothers, let it keep on embodying the ideal of the immortality of our people, fine, but I will oppose it as a governmental party.10

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From the distance of a century, those passionate lines trigger a strange feeling, in which Antébi’s enthusiasm mixes with our own uneasiness at reading them after the fact. We are now almost embarrassed reading his letters over his shoulder, all the while knowing “more than he does,” or rather, while knowing further about the rest of the story. To ensure a rigorous reading of this type of document, we must force ourselves to turn away from the future of these events, from what is for us a “past tense” but was for him a “conditional future tense,” a “could.” In so doing, we can see what Antébi reveals to us about his own present, the uncertain present he lived in and about which he certainly has things to tell us that we don’t already know. Even after stating this principle, the difficulty remains, as Antébi was clearly one of history’s vanquished— not only because his Ottomanist bet ran full- tilt up against the Nationalist-Turkish turn taken by the new leaders of the empire from 1912 on, but also because Antébi’s unique position of being in contact with all of Jerusalem’s communities made him day by day more vulnerable to the identity spasms agitating the Jewish communities of Jerusalem after 1912. In the spring of 1913, his Zionist adversaries denounced him by name to the Alliance Israélite Universelle organization because he was sending two of his daughters, Renée and Margot, to the Catholic school of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.11 Antébi tried to defend himself, and in the same way that he was claiming the right to instruct Muslim and Christian children in the AIU school of which he was the director, he claimed the right to send his own children to any school he wanted. As he wrote to his superiors on May 22: “The Sisters of Saint Joseph do not proselytize and they excuse non-Christians from all religion classes. They even take Saturdays off in Jerusalem because they have a majority of Jewish day students. Thus they are providing instruction to forty- eight Jewish girls in Jerusalem, twenty- three in Jaffa, and three in Ramleh. These sisters are friendly toward the population as well as toward the French government.”12 It was a lost cause, however, and the wind of history blew against him, so the AIU leadership ordered him to accept the new demands for a strict polarization of communities with an argument that seems astonishing: Israelite newspapers are presently making a lot of noise about the fact that you’re sending one or more of your children to a Congregationalist school, and we are getting daily letters from friends of the Alliance who tell of their surprise about this and the resulting scandal. . . . If this is true, we request that you take them out upon receiving this letter. We cannot accept that one of our professors should show such a deplorable

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example to the population in the midst of which he practices, in Jerusalem even less than elsewhere. 13

On July 20, 1913, Antébi threw in the towel and asked to leave the Alliance: “I am giving up and request my exit. I have eight children, I want to ensure the means of their sustenance. I can no longer live this life that you are making unbearable. ” The break was made definitive in the fall of 1913, when he went to the Paris seat of the Alliance to finalize his departure. This affair, far from being anecdotal, reveals the contradictions that were then at play in the urban society of Jerusalem. We can make out here both the incontestable imbrication of communities and at the same time the increasing difficulty, for the participants themselves, of accepting this situation in the lead- up to the first world war, while the issue of nationalities was increasingly central to a world in the process of becoming. Antébi’s poignant fate embodies both the reality of a genuine “urban community of Jerusalem” in the years around 1900 and at the same time the final failure of this model, crushed by much greater outside powers. The end of Antébi’s life provides us with a troubling illustration. After the Ottoman empire entered the war at the side of Germany in the fall of 1914, Antébi struggled inch by inch to limit the effect of the measures taken by Djemal Pasha against the Jews of Jerusalem, among other things obtaining clemency for Zionist leaders David Ben-Gurion and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. Finally, exiled himself to Damascus and then to Istanbul in 1916, he was conscripted into the Ottoman army and sent to the Caucasus front in 1917. He died from typhus shortly after the end of the war, upon his return to Istanbul in 1919.14 His tragic fate strangely reflects that of Jerusalem: Albert Antébi, the “Levantine,” born in Damascus, at once Jew and Arab, Ottoman citizen, and French by his education and universalist convictions, found himself an outsider when the war erupted and the principle of nationalities became an irresistible force. 15

AN “ARAB AWAKENING” IN THE CHAOS OF BATTLE If the Jewish communities of Jerusalem seemed mostly divided in the face of the emerging political issues in the Jerusalem of the years around 1900, what can we say about the Muslim and Christian communities? In the face of the emerging Zionist project, can we observe an emerging consensus within the Christian and Muslim communities on the issue of Arab nationalism? The answer, we know, is negative. Just as Zionism did not lead to a consensus among the Jews of Palestine, Arab nationalism did not

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lead to consensus among Muslims and Christians. In the suspended time of the years 1897– 1908, while the Zionist project was still in its infancy, we observe in the Christian and Islamic communities what was really a cacophony, to such an extent that it would be ridiculous to imagine them as constituted categories. We must first point out that, at that time, the settling of Jewish migrants in Palestine was not systematically seen as a threat to local populations— far from it. Even if it seems strange today, there were many friendly and even admiring comments on the first Zionist colonies in the major Arab press outlets during the years 1890– 1900. For instance, in al-Manar, a periodical of Islamic and reform tendencies printed in Cairo, in which many Palestinian intellectuals published their opinions, the Syrian intellectual Rashid Rida opined several times that Arab nationalists should take inspiration from the Zionist model: There is need to awaken a people numbed in its torpor, to make it conscious of the solid links uniting Jews in spite of their dispersion over countries and kingdoms and to make it observe the way they help each other and give support to their people. . . . You who are wallowing in your torpor, lift up your head, open your eyes wide, and contemplate the actions of peoples and nations.16

Four years later, in 1902, still in al-Manar, Rashid Rida was even more explicit, revealing the rationale for mirror- image construction of Arab and Zionist nationalisms: On the social plane, the only privilege we have, compared to Jews, lies in the fact that they are deprived of power while a certain number of our countries are still led by our princes. . . . Ah! If only we had looked at the path Jews are traveling these days! . . . Isn’t it the path that present- day Israelites have taken that has enabled them to recover their lost strength and pride? Power is all they lack to become the most powerful nation, which, of course, they aspire to. 17

In this last sentence, we can see all the ambiguity that, at the time, seemed to predominate among Arab intellectuals with regard to the Zionist project, viewed both as a potentially beneficial model for the region and as a possible threat. Of course, one could adduce other texts to illustrate the opposite— that is, the early emergence of a resolute and uncompromising Arab-Palestinian nationalism. The book Le réveil de la nation arabe dans l’Asie turque (The

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Awakening of the Arab Nation in Turkish Asia), published in Paris in 1905 by Neguib Azoury, is the work most frequently used by historians to illustrate the crystallization of Arab-Palestinian nationalism. However, a close study of its content, as well as the context of its publication, shows that even though Azoury’s book was definitely a major step in this history, it cannot be considered as representative of a local consensus. First, because Azoury defends, in his text, the project of an independent state to include all Arabspeaking peoples, from Iraq to Egypt and from the Turkish borders to the Gulf of Oman. So here we are at the origin of pan-Arabism more than at the origin of Palestinian nationalism, narrowly defined, even though we know that the borders between the two ideologies remained porous for a long time. Second, because Azoury’s life history hints that his political position was closely linked to settling personal scores: he was a Catholic Maronite born in Syria, who worked for the governorate of Jerusalem between 1898 and 1904, married the sister- in- law of the dragoman Bishara Habib (the governor’s interpreter), and (as we know today) illegally, secretly, but unsuccessfully conspired to take over his brother- in- law’s position.18 It was after his flight to Cairo and then to Paris in 1904–5 that he wrote and published Le réveil de la nation arabe, a work in which specialists have noted many exaggerations and lies in his denunciation of the Ottoman administration of Jerusalem.19 Finally, there is one last argument that causes us to qualify the book’s impact. Even though it had a considerable impact on Western embassies, only a small number of copies made it to Palestine itself. Published in French, filled with Latin references, very laudatory of the French diplomatic corps, and much influenced by Maurice Barrès’s Catholic anti-Semitism, Azoury’s text was primarily aimed at a French and European public.20 The value of the book, however, lies in the premonitory nature of the author’s vision as a whole, which has helped give it a historiographical posterity: There are two important phenomena, of the same nature yet opposed, that have not yet attracted anyone’s attention, and that are happening at this moment in Asian Turkey: these are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort by the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the old kingdom of Israel. These two movements are fated to continually fight each other until one is victorious over the other. The fate of the whole world hangs on the final result of this struggle between two peoples standing for two contradictory principles.21

Besides its low impact in Palestine itself, Azoury’s line of argument met with general skepticism in the Arab world, as the coherence of the Zionist

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project still seemed quite weak to many people. In 1906, another Christian Arab, Farid Kassab, directly responded to Azoury by taking aim at his position as well as his scenario of what he called “the universal Jewish menace. ” Kassab wrote that Azoury “is not only anti-Jew from the religious viewpoint but also an anti-Semite. . . . Jews are neither morally nor politically foreigners in the Orient. . . . We have seen Jews very close up in Palestine, we have observed them, and we can reassure the worried Azoury and his church. Jews are not thinking of forming an empire, of fighting against Arabs, of ripping away a cave or a tomb from the Christians.”22 As we are well aware, this type of debate was destined to invade the Middle East and the world after World War I. At any rate, looking at these premises, we find no trace of consensus or even of any sort of agreement on the facts among Arab intellectuals of the time.

JERUSALEM AND THE PAROCHIALISM OF THE “PEOPLE OF THE HOLY LAND” Turning away from transnational debates and coming back once again to Jerusalem, we find that the echoes of these first pan-Arabic discourses were even fainter there because the inhabitants of the holy city largely shared the consciousness of belonging to a very specific segment of the Arab world, the one Élias Sanbar calls in the first part of his book, Figures du Palestinien (Images of the Palestinian), the “people of the holy land.”23 Sanbar reminds us that the irreducible specificity of Palestine lies in the concentration and the sharing of the holy sites of the three monotheistic religions, and that the consciousness of this uniqueness is deeply anchored in each of the inhabitants of Palestine. It is for this reason, Sanbar argues, that assignment of the label “people of the holy land” to the “Arabs of Palestine” happened later here than elsewhere, and that the pan-Arabist graft itself occurred later and was less deep in Palestine than, for instance, in Syria or Egypt. Sanbar’s thinking is even more applicable to the particular case of Jerusalem, the crossing- point of all identities. Reading his book, we become aware of certain echoes of the analysis developed several decades earlier by Maurice Halbwachs. As Sanbar puts it: The basic premise I am defending, the method I am using, are located at the exact opposite point from those that proclaim the timelessness of identities. . . . If the beginning of history never happened, if identities have no birth date, and if our roots lie in front of us, it is because only a

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flux of identities exists, ungraspable in any other way than in their mobility across times and places.

If we follow Sanbar’s reasoning, then Muslims and Christian Arabs of Palestine ended up opposing the Zionist project only because the nationality principle broke through the fluidity of identities intrinsic to Palestine in general and to Jerusalem in particular.24 A dispatch from the French consul, Georges Gueyraud, dated November 30, 1909, on the subject of the “influential Muslim notables” of Jerusalem, offers a good illustration of this view. In his introductory note, the consul dwelled at length on what differentiates Jerusalem and Palestine from the rest of the Arab world: Its population, formed by an amalgam of the most varied races, has at all times taken on the aspect of perfect cosmopolitanism in which the Muslim element is, as it were, submerged. . . . This mixture, this juxtaposition on the ground of such diverse elements would unavoidably lead the conquering race to have greater tolerance than elsewhere. Would it not fall to them— of course, with certain limits— to undertake the delicate mission of reestablishing the peace that has so often been disturbed in the holy places by the rival religions?25

If we follow Gueyraud, the lack of consensus among Muslim notables of Jerusalem regarding the Zionist project would thus be explained by a very specific type of parochialism, inclusive and integrationist, that would at first have precluded any direct opposition. Beyond the holy places themselves, it was the everyday social reality that Gueyraud had in mind in his analysis: Moreover, the continuous contact with tourists and pilgrims who travel to this region all year round, bringing their ideas and their money, would surely lead the native to some degree of evolution and encourage him, unbeknownst to himself, to become familiar with European civilization— whence the assiduous frequenting of the establishments founded by Catholic or Protestant missions.

Despite the fairly contemptuous tone of the description, it does point to the reality of the exchanges taking place within religious and educational institutions in Jerusalem, as we see in a photograph taken in the gardens of

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Figure 17. Charity sale organized in 1917 at the Notre-Dame- de-France nursing home for the benefit of the Red Crescent to help war victims. Albert Antébi stands on the right. (Library of Congress, Matson Collection)

the Notre-Dame- de-France nursing home in 1917, on the occasion of a charity sale to benefit war wounded, in which we can see Albert Antébi standing on the right (fig. 17). So what was the reality of the positions taken within the Arab communities of Jerusalem toward Zionist projects? We might look in vain for an overall view, but we can map the specificity of “Jerusalem’s parochialism” by, for instance, analyzing the position of the Jerusalem deputy elected to the Ottoman Parliament of 1908, Rouhi al-Khalidi. Nephew of the former Jerusalem mayor Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, Rouhi al-Khalidi was a brilliant student educated in Jerusalem (in Muslim schools and at the Alliance Israélite Universelle School), in Beirut, in Tripoli, in Istanbul, and finally in Paris. He was Ottoman consul in Bordeaux and an active member of the Freemasons in France, before being elected deputy representing Jerusalem in 1908. On May 16, 1911, he participated in a parliamentary debate on Zionism, and it is immediately clear that the Zionist threat, though still quite vague at the beginning of the century, had since become more clearly identified. Rouhi al-Khalidi, in order to protect himself from any accusation of anti-Semitism, reminded his audience that, as Jerusalem’s deputy, he represented a large number of Jewish voters who were loyal to the empire. He added that “the Jews [al-Isra’iliyun] are a great people, and the country benefits from their

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skills, their wealth, their schools, and their knowledge, but they should settle in other regions of the empire and acquire Ottoman nationality.” The project of establishing a “Jewish kingdom [mamlaka isra’iliyya]” with Jerusalem as its capital, he said, was dangerous for Palestine. 26 Nissim Masliah, a Jewish deputy from Izmir belonging to the Young Turks party (CUP), responded to al-Khalidi by pointing out the links between the Torah and the Koran, and accused him of hiding an anti-Ottomanist stance behind the anti-Zionist struggle: Rouhi al-Khalidi might wish to burn the Torah, but the Koran is there to prove what is written in it. . . . I advise him to be wary of what he has sown in the Chamber because the plant that will grow from it will not be a good one. He and his friends are only seeking, through their words, to oppose the government.27

Once again, there is no question of setting out on a search for the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict; rather, we seek to identify the specific position of the Jerusalem deputy, Rouhi al-Khalidi, who used the moniker alMaqdisi (The Jerusalemite) in the opinion pieces he published in the Arab press. Comparing his speech to that of his colleague, Shukri al-‘Asali, the deputy from Damascus, during the same debate reveals a clear difference of tone. While al-‘Asali propounds a clearly anti-Zionist position, Rouhi alKhalidi’s stance seems to be more qualified, as if he were hesitating to reject as a whole any Jewish settlement in Palestine. The historian Walid Khalidi provides an insightful account of the ambiguity of the speech given on that day by his ancestor: On the one hand, he admired the accomplishments of the Jewish settlers and their modern methods. On the other, he felt bitter about the backwardness of Palestinian peasants, and he was angry at the Arabs who were selling the land and at the intermediaries and Ottoman officials who were facilitating the purchase. 28

As we can see, the fault lines were far from clear in 1911. The land issue raised by Rouhi al-Khalidi was probably a fundamental element: the hesitation of local political authorities no doubt reflected the equivocations of the central Ottoman administration, whose positions toward Zionism became increasingly confused after the 1908 revolution. After the dethronement of the sultan Abdul Hamid II in April 1909 and his replacement by his brother Mehmed V, henceforth deprived of any power, the position of the Young

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Turks government became increasingly unclear, as is shown by a cable from the French consul in Jerusalem, dated July 27, 1909: The governor of Jerusalem, Soubhy Bey, left for Constantinople about ten days ago. . . . The grand vizier is said to have sent a cable to Soubhy Bey stating that the government needed 6 million Turkish pounds and wanted to know if there were buyers for imperial lands. The governor replied in the affirmative, but [the buyers were] some Israelites. . . . The grand vizier is said to have responded with the request for a list of land parcels that were available or already occupied. This was a delaying response. 29

The rest of the cable shows that, in the context of financial collapse that had become general, the imperial government was flying blind, without any coherent policy toward the Zionist project: Hilmi Pasha’s temporizing tactics seem to corroborate the opinion I’ve heard expressed: the grand vizier would prefer Palestine to be exploited by foreigners rather than by Jews, while other members of the government would, on the contrary, favor the latter with the aim of creating a new Israelite influence in Arab provinces that would counterbalance, by its numbers and economic activity, Arab influence whose particularism and even separatism are worrisome. I am told that our governor was receiving very contradictory letters and instructions, at times favorable and at times hostile, from various members of the government.30

Reading this document, we can understand how the position of the deputy from Jerusalem might be difficult to formulate and especially delicate to express, within the context of the imperial power that was gradually losing all credibility with his interlocutors. In any case, the imperial context no doubt contributed to fostering the hesitations of the Muslim and Christian communities of Jerusalem toward the Zionist project.

JERUSALEM, THE THRICE-HOLY CITY, AND THE MUNICIPIUM Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi’s letter, written in French, to the great rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn, on March 1, 1899, which the recipient sent in turn to Theodor Herzl, is rightly considered as one of the founding acts of hostile Palestinian political reaction to the Zionist project. Alexander Schölch even looks upon this letter as “prophetic,” for the way it sets out, with disturbing clar-

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ity, the tragedies that were to come. 31 However, there are two points that are usually omitted in the quotations taken from this long letter. The first concerns Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi’s activities as the head of the municipality of Jerusalem, which he himself brought up in his letter to show that he had worked all his life “for the good of this city” and for all of its citizens, “Jews, Christians, and Muslims,” among whom he made “no distinction.”32 It is striking to realize that it was not nascent pan-Arabism and even less Islamism that powered Khalidi’s argument, but, on the contrary, the experience of heading an urban community perceived as a shared space in which “cousins” lived side by side having “the same father, Abraham, from whom we are all descended.” The second concern flows from the first: historians of Palestinian nationalism usually do not quote from the beginning of Khalidi’s letter, where he clearly expresses a more nuanced view toward the Zionist project than in the passages that they generally put forth. Let us take the time to calmly read this fascinating letter, written in French at the Khedivial Hotel of Istanbul, in the Galata quarter, by a fifty- seven- year- old man steeped in cultures and historical referents: I am proud to think that I do not need to speak of my feelings toward your people. Everyone who knows me is well aware that I do not make any distinction between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I draw inspiration particularly from the sublime words of our prophet Malachi: “Have we not all one father? Did not one God create us?” [Malachi 2.10]

After having thus set forth his sincere attachment to a syncretic view of the three monotheistic religions, al-Khalidi says he feels “comfortable” in dealing “frankly with the great issue that is at present stirring up the Jewish people”— that is, “Zionism.” (We should note that he wrote this on March 1, 1899, only eighteen months after the founding congress of Zionism, which had been held in Basel at the end of August 1897.) The idea is in itself entirely natural, beautiful, and just. Who could contest the rights of Jews over Palestine? My God, historically, it is really your country! And what a marvelous thing it would be if Jews, so talented, could be once again reconstituted into an independent nation, respected, happy, and able to render to pitiful humankind the services it rendered to it in the past!

It is clear why this passage is less frequently cited than the rest of the letter. The comment, “. . . historically, it is really your country!” sounds

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strange to the ears of a present- day reader, cognizant of the violence of the present debates on the legitimacy and the respective anteriority of the Israeli and Palestinian nations. In the next paragraph, Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi attempts to confront this Zionist idea, “natural, beautiful, and just,” with the reality on the ground, and this is where the warning comes to light: We need to take into account reality, established facts, the brutal force of circumstances. The reality is that Palestine is now an integral part of the Ottoman empire, and, what is of graver importance, it is inhabited by others besides Israelites. This reality, these established facts, the brutal force of circumstances leave to Zionism, geographically speaking, no hope of realizing its project, and what is of prime importance, seriously jeopardize the situation of the Jews in Turkey.

Of the three factors mentioned here, all are on point, but only one is a fact of long duration: Turkish Jews were indeed endangered during the period 1912– 17 by the rise in power of the Zionist project and by the increasing distrust of Ottoman authorities toward them. However, the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of the war definitively crossed off the first part of al-Khalidi’s argument. There remains “what is of graver importance” in his eyes, and what was undoubtedly so over the longue durée: that is, the presence in Palestine of a large non-Jewish population, active and historically in place for a long time. This was the most serious obstacle on the road to the Zionist project, and we must note that al-Khalidi in this passage brings together various Zionist positions, such as that of Ahad Ha’am, a Russian writer and leader of “spiritualist” Zionism, who wrote as early as 1891: We are in the habit of believing, in foreign countries, that Palestine is an almost entirely desolate land, an uncultivated desert, a fallow field, where anyone wanting to buy some land can go and buy it at will. In reality, it is not so: like everywhere on earth, it is difficult to find an unsown arable field. . . . We are in the habit, in foreign countries, of believing that Arabs are all savages of the desert, a people comparable to a donkey, incapable of seeing and understanding what is happening around them. This is a serious mistake. . . . The day when the presence of our people becomes big enough to encroach, by a little or a lot, upon the positions of the autochthones, they will not willingly give up their place to us.33

Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi and Ahad Ha’am are in agreement, and they look to the same future landscape. The rest of the letter, focused on al-Khalidi’s municipal work, reveals

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what lies at the heart of his political position, in the broadest sense of the term: from the standpoint of his municipal experience, from the viewpoint of the urban community he served for his whole life, he definitively critiques the Zionist project: I was mayor of Jerusalem for ten years, and then deputy from this city to the imperial Parliament, a post I still hold. I am working now for the welfare of this city, to bring it drinking water. I am thus able to speak to you from knowledge. We all consider ourselves, we Arabs and Turks, as the guardians of places that are equally sacred to the three religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So how can the leaders of Zionism imagine that they’ll succeed in tearing away these sacred sites from the other two religions, which make up the great majority?

This text is well worth a complete reading without hurriedly limiting its meaning and reducing it solely to its conclusion. What it unveils is the whole of the richness and complexity of identity structures at play in Jerusalem in the years around 1900, at that moment of uncertainty when all historical potentialities were still open. In the particular case of Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, it is not at all “Arab” identity and even less “Muslim” identity that explain his rejection of the Zionist project, but rather the “urban identity” specific to Jerusalem, fundamentally syncretic and shared, and whose internal equilibrium was threatened, in his view, by the rise in power of the Zionist project. The end of the letter confirms this reading, as shown by the passage concerning the specific threat to Jews represented by those whom he refers to as “fanatical Christians.” There are in Palestine fanatical Christians, particularly among the Orthodox and the Catholics, who, regarding Palestine as belonging only to themselves, are very jealous of the progress of Jews in the country of their ancestors, and do not let any occasion pass by to fire up hatred among Muslims against Jews. There is reason to fear a popular movement against your coreligionists, who have had so much sorrow over the centuries, that would be fatal to them and that the Turkish government, with the best will in the world, would not easily be able to suppress. It is this likely eventuality that has put the pen in my hand to write to you.

Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, whose calling card would, until his death in 1906, bear the title “Deputy of Jerusalem” in spite of the dissolution of the first Parliament in 1878, presents himself here as the legitimate represen-

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tative of the whole population of the holy city and as protector of its civil peace, doing so with a sincerity we have no reason to doubt. In this, he chose to embody in himself the ideal of parliamentary representation at once universalist and popular, as he said one day to his nephew Rouhi: “the title of deputy is given by the will of the nation and by election, and it ceases only when someone else is elected.”34 Reading Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi’s letter in its entirety makes it understandable why it is usually quoted only in bits and pieces: the global analysis of this text prevents simplification and historical shortcuts, and forces us to grasp the full complexity of al-Khalidi’s position. The sentence always quoted, and often with transcription errors, is one of the last in the letter, and to our ears it does sound like a political slogan: “In God’s name, let everyone leave Palestine alone. ” However, this sentence follows immediately after another one, which suggests that al-Khalidi is situating himself much more within the perspective of the discussions that at the time were dividing “Palestinian” Zionists and “territorial” Zionists, rather than within the perspective of a definitive condemnation of the Zionist project itself: My God, the earth is big enough, there are still uninhabited countries where millions of poor Israelites could settle and who might become happy there and one day form a nation. That might perhaps be the best and most rational solution to the Jewish question. But in God’s name, let everyone leave Palestine alone.

The former mayor of Jerusalem, who presented himself in 1873 as the municipium of the holy city— that is, according to ancient Roman tradition, as the embodiment of the juridical person of the city itself— here reveals not only his own “share of truth” but also an essential aspect of the identity of Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century: an urban identity that was if not common at least shared.

conclusion

The Bifurcation of Time

Bifurcations in space depend on something deeper— that is, bifurcations of time. You must not even say, I am bifurcating in time, you must say that time is endlessly bifurcating. It makes bends, it’s anti- fate. Yes, time makes bends, it bifurcates. Of course, there is dead time, but then it bifurcates, then the bifurcation bifurcates in turn. So that makes lots of bifurcations, and that is what time is. — Gilles Deleuze, 1984

B

etween 1870 and 1917, the history of Jerusalem reached a tipping point, and the time of Jerusalem bifurcated. To borrow the layered chronology of the late Eric Hobsbawm, the holy city split away from “the age of empires” and entered “the age of extremes.”1 With World War I, the growth of nationalisms definitively buried the supranational world of the Ottoman empire, in Jerusalem as elsewhere. “The age of possibilities,” in any case, snapped shut. By 1917, when the British army led by General Allenby entered the holy city, Levantine Jerusalem already no longer existed.2 Since 1912, integrationist Ottomanism had given way to an authoritarian and aggressive Turkish nationalism, the empire had entered the war on the side of Germany, Turkish troops stationed in Jerusalem were constantly commandeering urban dwellers’ property, Jews and Armenians were particularly singled out, and many were expelled from the city. Jerusalem had only 45,000 inhabitants in 1917, in contrast to 70,000 on the eve of the war. The policies of the British Mandate would only aggravate an already difficult situation by deepening fault lines between identities during the next two decades, until discord turned into guerrilla warfare between Zionists and Palestinian nationalists at the end of the 1930s, and then broke out into open

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warfare in 1948– 49. In this new chapter of the region’s history, the urban community of Jerusalem could only disappear, buried under the staggering blows of first religious and ethnic, and then national polarizations. After the 1934 elections, the municipal government tore itself to pieces between Jewish and Arab council members. The territorial division of 1948 logically followed: henceforth, people would speak of East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. The fracture still remains to this day in spite of the “reunification” unilaterally decided by the Israeli municipality after the war of 1967.

THE BIRD PEOPLE But we have not yet reached that point. Before fearfully closing the shutters, let us take advantage of the light of day to attempt one last time to illuminate the “Jerusalem 1900” that we have tried to observe throughout this book. As we have seen, “its name was diversity,” and we understand it just as the historian Lucien Febvre did in a still famous article of 1946 concerning not just the Jura region and rural France in general, but also the full range of observable social phenomena.3 Continuing with the words of Febvre and the Annales School, it was also called “complexities and nuances.” These complexities and nuances, of which I was only able to give a brief view here, had their specific dynamics that existed outside the one- track rails of ideologies and preconstructed categories. In working on the city of pilgrims, on the legacy of the Ottoman worldview, on the new municipal context, on the unexpected splits that were revealed during the 1908 revolution, we have been able to gauge the extent to which references, projections, and the institutional contexts in which Jerusalem’s inhabitants lived were infinitely varied and cannot be locked into the identity categories crudely imposed by present- day conflicts. Let us continue on this last walk in Febvre’s company: And these nuances, all this garden of delicate varieties: in vain do thick and crude administrators trample them underfoot under the indifferent gaze of thick and crude politicians whom these practices drive distracted, these nuances do take their revenge. They bring about the failure of the sorry, pseudo- subtle aims and plans of these politicians and administrators. These people, stunned, go back to their mounds of paper. To their printed forms. To their printed questionnaires. And they don’t understand: how is it that, with a net made to catch cattle, they are not able to catch the bird people?4

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Febvre’s text is admirable because, building on his studies of the Jura region, he opens up his perspective to human sciences in general and— why not?— to Jerusalem in particular. Reading him with this in mind, we understand that his “net made to catch cattle” can be applied as much to the present- day political positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as to the historians who have attempted for decades to catch Jerusalem’s inhabitants, “the bird people,” with nets crudely sized to catch “communities,” “ethnicities,” “religions,” and “homogeneous neighborhoods.” Complexity, nuances, and diversity, then, as Febvre used to teach in the postwar years. So let us return to Jerusalem’s citizens, those “bird people,” and to the city’s irreducible and always dynamic diversity, and let us beware of the “net made to catch cattle” because that would leave us emptyhanded. These inhabitants, in the years around 1900, were they in the end urbanites of Jerusalem or citizens of future nations? In which of these two places did they belong— in the city where they lived in their own present or in the nations they envisaged for the future? Probably in both, but in infinitely variable proportions. Yussuf Ziya al-Khalidi, a Jerusalem native, descendant of a prestigious urban dynasty, the embodiment of a municipium, was as much an urbanite of Jerusalem as a loyal citizen of the Ottoman empire, which he sincerely respected. For him, Palestine was an obvious presence, and not yet a future struggle. Rashid Rida, in contrast, born in Syria, employed by the governorate of Jerusalem for some years before heading off to liven up with his wit the transnational network of nascent pan-Arabism, was probably less an urbanite of Jerusalem than a virtual citizen of the panArab state he wished for. Urbanness in the full sense of the term is not a hollow word: it is the result of a trajectory, an investment, a projection.

BEN-YEHUDA, THE OUTSIDER To better understand this idea, and before we let the “bird people” take flight, let us pause to look at the career of a glorious adopted urbanite of Jerusalem, Eliezer ben-Yehuda. Born in 1858 in Lithuania, of Hasidic Jewish parents, he was soon convinced of the necessity of establishing an independent Jewish state to protect his coreligionists from anti-Semitic pogroms, and of the importance of a revival of the Hebrew language to enable an authentic Jewish national rebirth. After spending two years in Paris (1878– 80), he arrived in Palestine to settle there permanently in September 1881. In his memoirs, written during World War I, he tells of his arrival in Jaffa and in Jerusalem in 1881. Let him tell the story:

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Arab travelers began to embark at the first Syrian dock. Their numbers increased, the closer we came to Jaffa’s harbor. Most of them were slender, strong, and wore traditional clothes made of richly ornamented cloth. They all showed joy and gaiety, were bantering, and had a good time. I have to confess that this first encounter with our cousins in Ishmael didn’t make me happy. A depressing feeling of fear filled my soul, as if I found myself facing a threatening wall. I sensed that they felt themselves citizens of this country, the land of my ancestors, while I, the descendant of those ancestors, was returning to this land as a stranger, son of a foreign land, of a foreign people. I had, in this land of my fathers, neither political rights nor citizenship. I was a foreigner here, an outsider.5

The rest of his account is even more striking, especially coming from an intellectual convinced from the outset of the theoretical validity of the project of national Jewish rebirth: I was not prepared for these feelings and had not foreseen them. I was suddenly broken, flooded with regrets coming from the depth of my being. Perhaps in truth my entire undertaking was vain and hollow, perhaps my dream of a rebirth of Israel on the ancestral land was a mere dream that had no place in reality . . . There it was: reality, concreteness! The country’s citizens, that’s who they were, those who lived there.

To grasp the full implications of this account, we need to recall, once again, that Ben-Yehuda was not an economic immigrant but an authentic “proto-Zionist” who had reflected at length on his personal project and the political framework in which it existed. When he finally set foot on land, his discomfort, instead of easing, increased to the point of anguish: My feet were walking on the holy land, the land of my fathers— yet my heart was empty of all joy, my head of all thoughts, of all inspiration! My brain was as if empty, frozen, immobile. I was filled with only one thing: terror. I did not rip my clothes, I did not fall facedown onto the ground, I did not embrace the rocks, nor did I kiss the sand. I was there, standing, petrified. Oh, the terror! the terror!

This memory, of course, might have been reconstructed at a distance of forty years, but we could also suppose that in 1917 Ben-Yehuda would convey more optimism than pessimism on the situation of the time. That was

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evidently not the case. Let us follow him to Jerusalem, where he arrived the next day: In this frame of mind, I crossed the walls of the holy city through the Jaffa Gate, and entered the city of David, king of Israel, destroyed and deserted, debased all the way down to the abyss, without any particular feeling awakening in me. Even the words “David’s citadel” that my guides were yelling in my ears at the moment when we passed the tower on the right of the Jaffa Gate, even those words made no impression on me. If someone had predicted that my arrival in Jerusalem would be so insipid, that it wouldn’t heat up my blood, or shake up my senses, I would have certainly called that person a wretch. And yet, I had to admit that this was the case. I wandered over the distance between the Jaffa Gate and the Temple esplanade in an almost total state of indifference, as if I were taking a walk in the streets of any city in the world.

Complexity, nuances, and diversity, we said, to suggest how carefully one must attempt to approach the fragile notion of “urban identity” in the case of Jerusalem, a city of stone and flesh but also of memory, of ink and paper. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s superb text, poignant with truth, is perhaps the best example: how indeed can we understand his “almost total state of indifference” when he arrived in Jerusalem, this man steeped in culture and biblical references and who, as we know, was to become, in the course of the following years, a pillar of the Jewish notables of the holy city, editor in chief of the great newspaper Ha-Levanon, and then the successful restorer of Hebrew as a national language? Yet we can understand, provided we set aside the “net made to catch cattle” and remember that urbanness, just like citizenship, is not an inert and innate given but, on the contrary, the result of active construction and participation in the life of the city. As we know, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was to become an eminent urbanite of Jerusalem, as well as one of the most famous citizens of the country to come. But in this month of September 1881, as he put it himself, “the country’s citizens, that’s who they were, those who lived there. ” As of 2012, among the 700,000 inhabitants of the “Greater Jerusalem,” there are citizens on the west as well as to the east of the ceasefire line of 1949. They are citizens of two countries, one a nation- state, Israel, in the process of becoming, and the other, a state that is always yet to come, Palestine. But are there still urban dwellers of Jerusalem capable of cultivating the “living- together” that is the hallmark of all urban culture? Will they still be there in a few decades? No one knows the answer. That history is

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not yet written, time still can split, bifurcate. In the betting game, only one conclusion forces itself upon us concerning Jerusalem’s future: the worst is probable, yet it is never certain.

TOWARD A SHARED HISTORY In the end, what is the use of this book, what is the use of this fragment of history I have called “Jerusalem 1900”? Certainly, not to delegitimize later national constructions nor to make them responsible, guilty, and accountable for conflicts yet to come. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the burgeoning and then the triumph of various nationalisms was a logical and inevitable outcome, including in Jerusalem. In this national and territorial competition, Zionists were obviously behind at the beginning of the 1920s but succeeded in catching up with increasing activity, with effective strategic choices, and with the support of the international community after World War II and the Shoah. Facing them, Palestinian nationalists were ill served by their internal divisions, by the ambiguity of the pan-Arab worldview they held onto for too long, but above all, paradoxically, by their dominant initial position, which at first fostered a wait- and- see attitude among them.6 Jerusalem, at the heart of this conflict, found itself divided turn by turn between 1949 and 1967, then “reunified” through war after 1967, without ever healing the scar between west and east. All this is known and should be told without excess or bias, by using the “possible futures” that shaped the history of the region in the twentieth century.7 At the edge of this tragic history, “Jerusalem 1900” should not be reduced to the status of an old, yellowed photograph to be glanced at from time to time with a nostalgic or melancholy look. This “other history” of the holy city, its “age of possibilities,” should, on the contrary, serve as a common landmark and thus perhaps also as a point of departure for thinking of a possible shared future for Jerusalem. The future of a nation or a metropolis cannot be constructed on forgetting and denial: the present inhabitants of Jerusalem have to be able to share this piece of common history so as to at least think about a shared future. A collective history of “Jerusalem 1900” could be this common referent: The present- day Jewish residents need to know that their city was not a field of ruins before the first Zionists settled there; the Arab residents need to know that their history did not begin in 1917, and they should be able to claim the riches of the Ottoman legacy; and all need to remember that at the distance of a century— a mere scratch on the scale of its historical time— Jerusalem was something other than the sinister battlefield that it is tending to become today.

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Contrary to what some might think, this book is not a voice crying in the wilderness, it is not an isolated viewpoint. For the last twenty years or so, following the hopes raised by the defunct “peace process,” many historians have become conscious of the fundamental importance of a new history of Jerusalem in the years 1870– 1930. Conferences, group publications, occasional monographs have gradually enriched this “other history” of Jerusalem, even though these historiographical renewals too often remain confined to the limited sphere of specialists and academics.8 Young Palestinian, Israeli, European, and American historians meet at conferences, exchange their viewpoints with relative cordiality, share their discoveries and archives, but these advances have a hard time reaching the public at large, perhaps left ignorant for fear of triggering controversies and misunderstandings. And yet, the role of history is to help enlighten public debate. It is this book’s ambition to be a point of departure for a genuine shared history of Jerusalem.9

notes

abbreviations used in the notes AIU

Alliance Israélite Universelle

BOA

Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi (Ottoman Archives of Istanbul)

CZA

Central Zionist Archives

HAJM

Historical Archives of the Jerusalem Municipality

ISA

Israel State Archives

MAE

Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

PRO-FO

Public Record Office-Foreign Office

introduction The chapter epigraph by Jorge Luis Borges is drawn from his 1941 short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” translated by Anthony Boucher and published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1948). 1. Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi, and Florian Riedler, eds., The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migration and the Making of Urban Modernity (New York: SOAS/ Routledge, 2011). 2. Patrick Boucheron, L’entre-temps. Conversation sur l’histoire (Paris: Verdier, 2012). 3. Yasemin Avci, Vincent Lemire, and Falestin Naili, “Publishing Jerusalem’s Ottoman Municipal Archives (1892– 1917): A Turning Point for the City’s Historiography,” Jerusalem Quarterly 60 (January 2015): 110–19. 4. Yasemin Avci and Vincent Lemire, “De la modernité administrative à la modernisation urbaine. Une réévaluation de la municipalité ottomane de Jérusalem (1867– 1917),” in Municipalités méditerranéennes, les réformes urbaines ottomanes au miroir d’une histoire comparée (Moyen-Orient, Maghreb, Europe méridionale), ed. Nora Lafi (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 73–138. 5. Michael Dumper, Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History and the Future of the Holy City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). 6. Philippe Bourmaud, “Construction nationale et discrimination au Proche-Orient

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de la fin de l’Empire Ottoman à nos jours,” Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire 103 (July– September 2009): 63– 76; Lena Jayyusi, Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917–Present (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 2014). 7. Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter, and Leonard Hammer, Holy Places in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Confrontation and Co-existence (London: Routledge, 2010). 8. Johann Büssow, “Ottoman Reform and Urban Government in the District of Jerusalem, 1867– 1917,” in Urban Governance under the Ottomans: Between Cosmopolitanism and Conflict, ed. Nora Lafi and Ulrike Freitag (London: Routledge, 2014). 9. Vincent Lemire, “L’eau en partage à Jérusalem,” in Se réconcilier avec le passé. Rencontres des mémoires de Strasbourg, ed. Jean-Pierre Rioux and Marcel Spisser (Toulouse: CRDP Editions, 2013), 133– 40. 10. Jonathan Marc Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014). 11. Pascal Firges, Tobias P. Graf, Christian Roth, and Gülay Tulasoglu, eds., WellConnected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History, Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage 57 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 12. Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravélou, “Explorer le champ des possibles. Approches contrefactuelles et futurs non advenus en histoire,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 59, no. 3 (July–September 2012): 118– 43. 13. Christian Delacroix, François Dosse, and Patrick Garcia, eds., Historicité (Paris: La Découverte, 2009). 14. Catherine Nicault, Une histoire de Jérusalem, 1850–1967 (Paris: CNRS, 2008), 10. 15. Deborah S. Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 16. Henry Laurens, La question de Palestine, vol. 2: 1922–1947, Une mission sacrée de civilisation (Paris: Fayard, 2002). 17. Ran Aaronsohn and Dominique Trimbur, eds., De Balfour à Ben-Gourion. Les puissances européennes et la Palestine, 1917–1948 (Paris: CNRS, 2008). 18. Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 19. Lafi, ed., Municipalités méditerranéennes. 20. Avci and Lemire, “De la modernité administrative à la modernisation urbaine. ” A translation and publishing project of these Ottoman municipal archives is in process in the framework of the “Open-Jerusalem” Project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) for the period 2014–2019. 21. Yochanan Cohen-Yashar, “Les Archives municipales de Jérusalem,” Ariel (1966): 66– 71. 22. Roberto Mazza, “Missing Voices in Rediscovering Late Ottoman and Early British Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Quarterly 53 (April 2013): 61–71. 23. Issam Nassar, “Jerusalem in the Late Ottoman Period: Historical Writing and the Native Voice,” in Jerusalem Idea and Reality, ed. T. Mayer and Mourad S. Ali (London: Routledge, 2008), 205– 23. 24. Shimon Gibson, Yoni Shapira, and Rupert L. Chapman III, eds., Travellers and Hotels in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem, Palestine Exploration Fund Annual 11 (Leeds: Maney, 2013).

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25. Xavier de Planhol, Les fondements géographiques de l’histoire de l’Islam (Paris: Flammarion, 1968). 26. Ruth Kark, “The Jerusalem Municipality at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” Asian and African Studies 14 (1980): 117–41 (quotation on 118). 27. Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs, Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 368. 28. Emmanuel Gutmann, “The Beginning of Local Government in Jerusalem,” Public Administration in Israel and Abroad 8 (1968): 52–60. “Oriental cities were only geographical concepts, they were in no way social, political and administrative units” (52). 29. Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2012); Ilan Pappé, Une terre pour deux peuples. Histoire de la Palestine moderne (Paris: Fayard, 2004). 30. On this historiographical turn in Israel, see Ilan Greilsammer, La nouvelle histoire d’Israël. Essai sur une identité nationale (Paris: Gallimard, 1998); Florence Heyman and Michel Abitbol, eds., L’historiographie israélienne aujourd’hui (Paris: CNRS, 1998). 31. Tom Segev, Le septième million (Paris: Liana Levi, 1993); Segev, Les premiers Israéliens (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1998). 32. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Henry Holt & Co. , 2000), 1. 33. Henry Laurens, L’Orient arabe, arabisme et islamisme de 1798 à 1945 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993). 34. Adel Manna, “Jérusalem sous les Ottomans,” in Jérusalem, le sacré et le politique, ed. Farouk Mardam-Bey and Élias Sanbar (Arles: Actes Sud, 2000), 191– 217 (quotation on 192). 35. Beshara Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine,” in The Israel/Palestine Question: Rewriting Histories, ed. Ilan Pappé (New York: Routledge, 1999), 11– 40; Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne. La construction d’une conscience nationale moderne, trans. Joelle Marelli (Paris: La Fabrique, 2003; original English edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). See also the publications of the Jerusalem Quarterly File, edited by Salim Tamari and published by the Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, D.C., since 1998; these articles are also available online and for free in Arabic and in English: http://www.palestine- studies.org/jq. 36. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), xx, xxii–xxiii. 37. Ibid., 310. 38. Ibid., 344. 39. Ibid., 356– 57. 40. Vincent Lemire, La soif de Jérusalem. Essai d’hydrohistoire (1840–1948) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011). 41. James D. Purvis, Jerusalem, the Holy City: A Bibliography, 2 vols. (London, 1991). 42. Irène Salenson, Jérusalem: Bâtir deux villes en une (Paris: L’Aube, 2014).

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chapter one The source for the chapter epigraph is Adar Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period, Middle Eastern Studies 28, no. 1 (January 1992): 1– 65 (quotation on 60). 1. This is the case, for instance, in the recent work by Catherine Nicault, who mostly uses the traditional approach (Catherine Nicault, Une histoire de Jérusalem, 1850–1967 [Paris: CNRS, 2008]). Her first chapter presents in succession first “the Muslims,” then “the Christians,” and then “the Jews,” in their respective relationship to Jerusalem. The second chapter describes the expansion outside the walls of “Jewish residential zones,” and then “the monumental Christian imprint,” before describing the suburbs with the “great Muslim families.” Finally, regarding the old city, the author adopts the same order: first the “Muslim quarter,” then the “Christian and Armenian sectors,” and finally the “Jewish quarter.” 2. Yair Wallach, “Shared Space in Pre-1948 Jerusalem? Integration, Segregation and Urban Space through the Eyes of Justice Gad Frumkin,” Conflict in Cities Working Papers 21 (2011); available online: http://www.conflictincities.org/workingpapers.html 3. Seth J. Frantzman and Ruth Kark, “The Muslim Settlement of Late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine: Comparison with Jewish Settlement Patterns,” Digest of Middle East Studies 22, no. 1 (2013): 74– 93. 4. On this see Orit Bashkin, “Un arabe juif dans l’Irak de l’entre- deux- guerres. La carrière d’Anwar Shâ’ul,” Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire 103 (September 2009): 120– 31. 5. Musa Sroor, “The Real Estate Market in Jerusalem between Muslims and Christians (1800–1810),” Oriente Moderno 93, no. 2 (2013): 561– 76. 6. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Benjamin Stora, Jane Marie Todd, and Michael B. Smith, A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations from the Origins to the Present Day (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013). 7. Yehoshuah Ben-Arieh, “The Population of Large Towns in Palestine during the First Eighty Years of the Nineteenth Century according to Western Sources,” in Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, ed. Moshe Ma’oz (Jerusalem, 1975), 49– 69. While the qualitative demographic data (referring to the religious affiliations of the inhabitants) are the object of controversies, there is relative consensus on the overall quantitative data. 8. La Terre Sainte 330 (April 1889): 110. 9. Many works provide access to the cartographic history of the holy city, although they have to be used with caution. See Dan Bahat, Cartá’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem: An Illustrated Survey (Jerusalem, 1986); Dan Bahat and Chaim Rubinstein, The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1996); Eran Laor, Maps of the Holy Land: Cartobibliography of Printed Maps, 1475–1900, Based on the Eran Laor Collection at the Jewish National and University Library (Jerusalem, 1986); and Rehav Rubin, Image and Reality: Jerusalem in Maps and Views (Jerusalem, 1999). In addition, there are numerous invaluable electronic sources; most of the ancient plans of Jerusalem are now numbered on the site Ancient Maps of Jerusalem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: http:// maps- of- jerusalem.huji.ac.il. This site includes more than three hundred plans dating from the fifteenth century to 1930. The digitization format makes it possible to analyze each of these maps in detail.

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10. Charles Wilson, Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem (London: Ordnance Survey Office, 1865); 1005 x 710 mm. 11. Ruth Kark, Jerusalem Neighborhoods: Planning and By-laws (1855–1930) (Jerusalem, 1991), 104–14. 12. Conrad Schick, Nähere Umgebung von Jerusalem (Leipzig: Wargner & Debes, 1894–95); 454 x 390 mm. 13. Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 488. 14. We were able to conduct this analysis thanks to the site Ancient Maps of Jerusalem. 15. Charles Franz Zimpel, Plan von Jerusalem mit Darstellung aller Weg . . . (Stuttgart, 1853); 600 x 497 mm. 16. Adar Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period,” Middle Eastern Studies 28, no. 1 (January 1992): 1–65. 17. Ibid., 60. 18. Ibid., 39. 19. Michelle Campos is currently working on this very issue, precisely about the al-Wad neighborhood. She presented some first results in the MESA (Middle East Studies Association) 2015 Congress, during a panel organized by the ERC Open-Jerusalem Project: Michelle Campos, “Mapping People and Places in Late Ottoman Jerusalem through GIS,” Panel 4125, November 22, 2015, entitled “Open Jerusalem! Towards a New Entangled History of Citadinité (1840–1940): Concepts, Methods and Archives.” See also Michelle Campos, “Making Citizens and Contesting Citizenship in Late Ottoman Palestine,” in Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, ed. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 17–33. 20. As-Sayr as-Salim fi Yafa war-Ramla wa-Urshalim (Guide for Travel to Jaffa, Ramleh and Jerusalem) (Jerusalem: Imprimerie Franciscaine, 1890), 163–67. 21. Aref al-Aref, Tarikh al-Quds (History of Al-Quds) (Cairo, 1951). 22. Adar Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period,” 26. 23. Israel State Archives (ISA), Ottoman census of 1905. Statistics cited in Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period,” 55. 24. Demographers have been debating for years the statistics provided by the Ottoman censuses of Jerusalem. For a reasoned comparison of the Ottoman figures and the data from the European consulates, see Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period,” 45–49. 25. Arnon, “The Quarters of Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period,” 49. 26. Henri Nicole, Plan topographique de Jérusalem et de ses environs (Paris: Victor Poupin, 1886); 413 x 420 mm. 27. Yves Lacoste, La géographie, ça sert d’abord à faire la guerre (Paris: Maspero, 1976).

chapter two The source for the chapter epigraph is Pierre Loti, Jérusalem (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1895), translated by W. P. Baines (Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1916), 89. 1. Pierre Loti, Jérusalem (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1895); English translation by W. P. Baines (Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1916), 89.

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notes to pages 40 – 49

2. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957). 3. Abdul Karim Abu Khashan, “Pierre Loti’s Perplexed Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Quarterly 48 (January 2012): 17– 30. 4. Loti, Jérusalem, trans. Baines, 10. 5. Ibid., 42. 6. Lucette Valensi, “Anthropologie comparée des pratiques de dévotion. Le pélerinage en Terre Sainte au temps des Ottomans,” in Urbanité arabe. Hommage à Bernard Lepetit, ed. Jocelyne Dakhlia (Paris, 1998), 33– 75. 7. François-René de Chateaubriand, Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (Paris: BernardinBréchet, 1867), 314; English translation by A. S. Kline, Record of a Journey from Paris to Jerusalem and Back, published online at Poetry in Translation website, 2011. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Musa Sroor, “Les juges et la privatisation des biens waqfs à Jérusalem au XIXe siècle,” in Mélanges en l’honneur du Prof. Suraiya Faroqhi (Tunis: Fondation Temimi pour la Recherche Scientifique et l’Information, 2009), 317– 29. [The “Turk’s head” was part of a game at French fairs, a figure that children would hit and that was literally a whipping boy. This game is reminiscent of the “whack- a- mole” game at fairs in the United States, except that in the French game, the object to be hit was a caricature of an imaginary Turk’s head.— Trans.] 11. Chateaubriand, Itinéraire, 312; trans. Kline. 12. Ibid. (emphasis added). 13. Alphonse de Lamartine, Souvenirs, impressions, pensées et paysages pendant un voyage en Orient, 1832–1833 (Paris: Ch. Gosselin, 1835); English translation, A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land: comprising recollections, Sketches and Reflections made during a Tour in the East in 1832–1833 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835; facsimile reprint, 1978), 255. 14. Christine Géraud-Gomez, Le crépuscule du Grand Voyage, les récits de pélerins à Jérusalem (1458–1612) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000). 15. Constantin-François Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte (1783–1785) (Paris, 1787); cited in Multiple Jérusalem, ed. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Dédale 3–4 (Paris, 1996), 190–92. 16. Ibid. 17. Nicole Villa, ed., Félix de Saulcy (1807–1880) et la Terre Sainte (Paris: Éditions de la RMN, 1982). 18. Vincent Lemire, La soif de Jérusalem. Essai d’hydrohistoire (1840–1948) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011), 152– 54 (“the foundation of the Palestine Exploration Fund”); John James Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land (New York, 2000). 19. Dominique Trimbur, Une école française à Jérusalem. De l’École Pratique d’Études Bibliques des Dominicains à l’École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem (Paris, 2002). 20. Loti, Jérusalem, trans. Baines, 88. 21. Ibid., 89. 22. Vincent Lemire, “Un américain en Terre-Sainte: Edward Robinson, proto-

notes to pages 49 – 60

177

archéologue à contre- courant,” preface to Renaud Soler, Edward Robinson (1794–1863) et l’émergence de l’archéologie biblique (Paris: Geuthner, 2014). 23. Loti, Jérusalem, trans. Baines, 89. 24. Ibid., 89– 90 [slightly modified— Trans.]. 25. Ibid., 90. 26. Ibid., 90– 91. [The game of margelle is also known as osselets and was played in antiquity. It was the ancestor of dice games and was often played with small bones or sculpted figures. The “dice” were thrown inside a circle divided into segments, as can be seen on the slab mentioned by Loti, which is still preserved in Jerusalem. The word margelle itself refers to the rim of a well or a pool.— Trans.] 27. Loti, Jérusalem, trans. Baines, 92. 28. Ibid., 93. 29. Le Corbusier, Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches. Voyage au pays des timides (Paris: Plon, 2002). 30. Personal communication through letter by Sister Isabelle de Sion to Vincent Lemire, May 11, 2001. 31. Une maison à Jérusalem: Ecce Homo (Jerusalem, 1989), 29– 30.

chapter three The chapter epigraph is drawn from La Terre Sainte 79 (October 1878): 841. 1. Maurice Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte [The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land] (Paris: PUF, 1971; first published, 1941), 79. [The conclusion (only) of this work has been translated into English as Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). The passages from Halbwachs’s book quoted here are our own translation— Trans.] 2. English translation published in Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed., trans., and introd. Lewis A. Coser, Heritage of Sociology Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 3. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography]. 4. Fernand Dumont, preface to 1971 edition of Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire, v. 5. Élias Sanbar, Figures du palestinien. Identité des origines, identité de devenir (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). 6. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 144. 7. Ibid., 145. 8. Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); English translation, Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). The title of the introduction (“Between Memory and History: The Problematic of Place”) is misleading since a topographical approach is largely ignored in favor of a simple topology of collective memory. Nora also ignores the topographic issue in his book Présent, nation, mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 2011). The problematic of place is paradoxically absent from the vast publication project on sites of memory.

178

notes to pages 62– 71

9. Citations are from The New English Bible with the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). 10. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (January 1881): 201 and following. 11. Lamentations 1.12: “Is it of no concern to you who pass by? If only you would look and see: is there any agony like mine, like these my torments with which the Lord has cruelly punished me in the day of his anger?” Frequently cited also is the narrative of Jeremiah thrown into the cistern, or “pit,” as if to spin yet another thread with the gigantic cistern that was discovered nearby in 1890. Jeremiah 38.6: “So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the pit, in the court of the guard- house, letting him down with ropes. There was no water in the pit, only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.” [The cistern is called either a “cistern” or a “pit” in different English translations of the Bible. — Trans.] 12. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 145. 13. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (1885): 79. 14. Conrad Schick, “Two Cisterns near Jeremiah’s Grotto,” Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (1890): 11–12. 15. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 145. 16. Bill White, A Special Place: The Story of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem (Grantham, Lincolnshire, UK: Stanborough Press, 1990), chap. 3 (“Letters to the Times”), 23. 17. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 146. 18. Pierre Loti, Jérusalem (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1895); English translation by W. P. Baines (Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1916), 94–95. 19. Loti, Jérusalem, trans. Baines, 95–96 (emphasis on “one may continue . . .” added by author). 20. Sanbar, Figures du palestinien. 21. Vincent Lemire, “Un américain en Terre-Sainte: Edward Robinson, protoarchéologue à contre- courant,” preface to Renaud Soler, Edward Robinson (1794–1863) et l’émergence de l’archéologie biblique (Paris: Geuthner, 2014). 22. Nicole Villa, ed., Félix de Saulcy (1807–1880) et la Terre sainte (Paris: Éditions de la RMN, 1982). 23. Félix de Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte et dans les terres bibliques, exécuté de décembre 1850 à avril 1851, 2 vols. (Paris, 1853), 338. 24. Félix de Saulcy, Jérusalem (Paris: 1882), 187. 25. Jean-François Mondot, Une bible pour deux mémoires. Archéologues israéliens et palestiniens (Paris: Stock, 2006); Ronny Reich, Excavating the City of David: Where Jerusalem’s History Began (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2011). 26. See the numbered maps on the website of Hebrew University of Jerusalem: http:// maps- of- jerusalem.huji.ac.il. 27. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 75. 28. “From this Sion arises . . . and a column is found there, which is that of the Flagellation of Christ (Ex eadem ascenditur Sion . . . , et columna adhuc ibi est, in qua Christum flagellis ceciderunt).” 29. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography],144. 30. Vincent Lemire, Le manteau rapiécé des prophètes. Lieux saints partagés d’Israël- Palestine (exh. cat.) (Marseille, June 2015).

notes to pages 72– 81

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31. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography],144. 32. Max Van Berchem, Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum, vol. 2: Southern Syria and Jerusalem (Cairo: IFAO, 1927), 228–46. 33. La Terre Sainte 79 (October 1878): 841. 34. Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 91. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 69. 37. Cited by Halbwachs, La topographie légendaire [Legendary Topography], 65. 38. Ibid., 70. 39. Édouard Glissant, Traité du Tout-Monde (Paris: Gallimard, 1997). 40. Ottoman Archives of Istanbul (BOA), Irade dahiliye, 38228, 8 muharrem 1283 (May 23, 1866).

chapter four The document quoted in the chapter epigraph is archived in PRO-FO 195/1690. 1. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Henry Holt & Co. , 2000). 2. Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2012). 3. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (vol. 1: The Old City; vol. 2: Emergence of the New City) (New York, 1984–86); first published in Hebrew (Jerusalem, 1977–79). 4. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Jérusalem au dix-neuvième siècle. Géographie d’une renaissance (Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat, 2003), 109. 5. Sylvia Auld and Robert Hillenbrand, eds., Ottoman Jerusalem: The Living City, 1517–1917, 2 vols. (London, 2000). 6. [Yehoshua Ben-Arieh expresses the same set of opinions about the dearth of Arabic sources and his positive view of Western travel accounts and “scientific” research in his prologue to the English edition of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1: The Old City.— Trans.] 7. Ben-Arieh, Jérusalem au dix-neuvième siècle. Géographie d’une renaissance, 109. 8. Ibid., 110– 12. 9. See especially Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011); Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Early Twentieth-century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Roberto Mazza, Jerusalem from the Ottomans to the British (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009); Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp, and Stefan Weber, eds., The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire (Würzburg: Ergon in Kommission, 2002). 10. Yasemin Avci, Degisim Sürecinde Bir Osmanli Kenti: Kudüs (1890–1914) (Ankara, 2004); Yasemin Avci and Vincent Lemire, “De la modernité administrative à la mo-

180

notes to pages 81– 89

dernisation urbaine: Une réévaluation de la municipalité ottomane de Jérusalem (1867– 1917),” in Municipalités méditerranéennes, les réformes urbaines ottomanes au miroir d’une histoire comparée, ed. Nora Lafi (Berlin: Éditions Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 73–138. 11. Ottoman Archives of Istanbul (BOA), Irade dahiliye, 38228 (8 muharrem 1283), 23 May 1866. 12. Campos, Ottoman Brothers. 13. Michelle Campos, “Jewish Identities in the Middle East, 1876– 1956: Between Others and Brothers,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 3 (2014): 585–88. 14. Mordechai Eliav, Britain and the Holy Land, 1838–1914: Selected Documents from the British Consulate in Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1997), 287. 15. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 41–59. Büssow notes that in July 1872 the sanjak of Jerusalem, which was part of the Vilayet (province) of Damascus, had been declared autonomous and its jurisdiction had been extended to the whole of historical Palestine by incorporating the old districts of Nablus and of Acre in the north. A few weeks later, on July 23, 1872, in the face of opposition from the governor of Damascus, and particularly in the face of the noisy satisfaction of Western powers happy to finally see the local administration coincide with their image of the “Holy Land,” the imperial government changed this measure, in part by once again separating the districts of Nablus and Acre from Jerusalem, while preserving the autonomous character of the district of Jerusalem, which would remain directly connected to the capital until the fall of the empire. 16. Eliav, Britain and the Holy Land, 1838–1914, 288. 17. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 75. 18. Georges Young, Corps de droit ottoman (Paris, 1905), vol. 1: 69– 84. 19. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 564. 20. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), 344. 21. PRO-FO 195/1690, February 15, 1890. 22. PRO-FO 195/2149, January 27, 1903. 23. Censuses of the Ottoman period are still accessible at present in the Israel State Archives (ISA, Ottoman Nüfus Registers). 24. ISA, Ali Ekrem Bey collection, no. 11, n.d. (probably August 1, 1908). 25. Selma Ekrem, “Jerusalem 1908: In the Household of the Ottoman Governor,” Jerusalem Quarterly 50 (June 2012): 66– 88; David Kushner, To Be Governor of Jerusalem: The City and District during the Time of Ali Ekrem Bey, 1906–1908 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005). 26. There is a brief description of the contraption in the preliminary files of Bouvard et Pécuchet, drafted in the 1870s by the novelist Gustave Flaubert: “repulsion dynamometer (= Turk’s head) invented by Mr. Régnier upon Buffon’s request.” [See above, chapter 2, note 10.— Trans.] 27. Olivier Bouquet, Les Pachas du Sultan. Essai prosopographique sur les agents supérieurs de l’État ottoman (1839–1909) (Louvain: Peeters, 2007). 28. François Georgeon, Abdülhamid II, le sultan Calife (1876–1909) (Paris, 2003), 349–55.

notes to pages 90 – 101

181

29. Historical Archives of the Jerusalem Municipality (HAJM), Register of Deliberations of the Municipal Council (Kudüs Belediyesi Maclis Zabit Defterleri), vol. 2, fol. 30, 23 Mart 1315/ 5 May 1899. This document mentions the filling of the ditches and the construction of thirty- eight shops and six hydraulic reservoirs. 30. BOA, Y.A. HUS, 409/55, 21 temmuz 1316/ 3 August 1900. The Tughra is the sultan’s monogram. 31. Ha-Or/Ha-Tzevi, vol. 15, p. 1 (August 3, 1900) (cited and translated by Ruth Kark, “The Jerusalem Municipality at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” Asian and African Studies 14 [1980]: 139n122). 32. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (January 1901), 1– 2. 33. Ibid., 1. 34. Die Warte, February 9, 1905, cited by Alex Carmel, Palästina-Chronik 2 (1983): 258. 35. Paul Cotterell, The Railways of Palestine and Israel (Oxford: Tourret, 1984). 36. La Terre Sainte 413 (October 15, 1892): 691– 92. 37. MAE, Consular and Commercial Correspondence, Jerusalem, vol. 5, fols. 132– 34, August 23, 1889. 38. PRO-FO 78/4432, no. 17, November 4, 1892. 39. Pierre Loti, Jérusalem (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1895); English translation by W. P. Baines (Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1916). 40. Jean-Claude Seguin, Alexandre Promio ou les énigmes de la lumière (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000). 41. Ibid. Alexandre Promio is considered to have been the first cinematographer to use the technique of “traveling,” which consisting in placing his camera on a support in motion in order to create a dynamic shot. 42. [A mohel is a rabbi who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision.— Trans.] 43. Nathan Netta Hirsch Hamburger, Three Worlds (Jerusalem, 1939– 46), vol. 2: 58 (in Hebrew). 44. Ibid. 45. Vincent Lemire, “Zama bi-Yerushalaim: a- historya shel haair birei ashpakat h-amaim 1840– 1948,” Cathedra 151 (2014): 133– 58 (in Hebrew). 46. Vincent Lemire, La soif de Jérusalem: Essai d’hydrohistoire (1840–1948) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011), 345– 53. 47. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (October 1901): 319. 48. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (January 1902): 3– 4. 49. Letter of Albert Antébi (Jerusalem) to Frederik David Moccata (London), August 12, 1901, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Givat Ram]), dossier AIU, no. 57. See also Elizabeth Antébi, Albert Antébi (1873–1919) ou la religion de la France, Mémoire EPHE under the direction of Gérard Nahon, May 1996.

chapter five The chapter epigraph is taken from Yochanan Cohen-Yashar, “Les archives municipales de Jérusalem,” Ariel 103 (December 1996): 66– 71.

182

notes to pages 102– 109

1. Moses Montefiore, “A Narrative of a Forty Days Journey in the Holy Land, September 1875,” in Diaries of Sir Moses Montefiore and Lady Montefiore, Comprising their Lives and Work as Recorded in Their Diaries from 1812 to 1883, ed. L. Loewe (Chicago: Bedford-Clarke Co. , 1890), 279. 2. Yasemin Avci and Vincent Lemire, “De la modernité administrative à la modernité urbaine: Une réévaluation de la municipalité ottomane de Jérusalem (1867–1917),” in Municipalités méditerranéennes, les réformes urbaines ottomanes au miroir d’une histoire comparée, ed. Nora Lafi (Berlin: Éditions Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 73–138. [At present there is a systematic transliteration, translation, and publication project ongoing under the direction of Vincent Lemire, Yasemin Avci, and Falestin Naïli.— V. L.] 3. Malek Sharif, Imperial Norms and Local Realities: The Ottoman Municipal Laws and the Municipality of Beirut (1860–1908) (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2014); Mahmud alShunaq, Baladiyyat al-Quds al-sharif fi al-‘ahd al-‘Uthmani [The Municipality of Jerusalem during the Ottoman Period] (Ramallah: Ministry of Information, 2010); Mahmoud Yazbak, “The Municipality of a Muslim Town: Nablus 1864– 1914,” Archiv Orientalni: Journal of African and Asian Studies 67 (1999): 339–60. 4. Peter Sluglett, ed., The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750–1950 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2008). 5. Steven Rosenthal, “Foreigners and Municipal Reform in Istanbul,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1980): 227– 45. 6. Aref al-Aref, “The Closing Phase of Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem,” in Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, ed. Moshe Ma’oz (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1979); Emanuel Gutmann, “The Beginning of Local Government in Jerusalem,” Public Administration in Israel and Abroad 8 (1968): 52–61. 7. Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 78. 8. MAE, Consular and Commercial Correspondence, Jerusalem, vol. 2, fol. 44, August 28, 1843. 9. Ibid., fol. 198, June 10, 1844. 10. Ibid., fol. 200, June 9, 1844. 11. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 555–56. 12. Al-Aref, “The Closing Phase of Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem,” 337. 13. Elizabeth Thompson, “Ottoman Political Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus Advisory Council in 1844– 1845,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 3 (1993): 457– 75. 14. Aref al-Aref died in 1973, but Emanuel Gutmann personally confirmed to me in a letter in December 2001 that he had no specific documents to back up the 1863 date. 15. MAE, Nantes, Jerusalem, series A, Religious establishments, Sisters of Sion, box 98, May 1866. 16. Ibid., July 1868. 17. PRO-FO 195/2084, November 13, 1900. 18. MAE, Nantes, Constantinople, series D, Jerusalem, August 11, 1905. 19. HAJM, Deliberations, 23 zilhicce 1311 (June 27, 1894). 20. MAE, Nantes, Constantinople, series D, Jerusalem, August 11, 1905.

notes to pages 109 – 117

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21. Georges Young, Corps de droit ottoman (Paris, 1905), vol. 1: 79 (chap. 6, “Assemblée municipale,” articles 50–55). 22. MAE, Nantes, Constantinople, series D, Jerusalem, August 11, 1905. 23. PRO-FO 195/2084, November 13, 1900. 24. David Yellin, Yerushalayim shel temol [Jerusalem in the Past] (Jerusalem, 1972), 202. 25. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 554. 26. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1, chap. 6, articles 18 and 19. 27. Yellin, Yerushalayim shel temol [Jerusalem in the Past]. 28. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1, chap. 6, article 19. 29. Steven Rosenthal, “Foreigners and Municipal Reform in Istanbul,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1980): 227–45. 30. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1: 69. 31. Maurice Agulhon, Louis Girard, Jean-Louis Robert, and William Serman, eds., Les maires de France, du Consulat à nos jours (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1986). 32. ISA, RG 83, Ali Ekrem Collection, no. 23, November 15, 1906. 33. Yassin al-Khalidi’s biography has been written by Adel Manna, A’lam Filastin fi awakhir al-‘ahd al-‘uthmani 1800–1918 [Notables of Palestine at the End of the Ottoman Period], expanded edition (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1994), 154– 55. 34. Alexandre Schölch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882 (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993), 241– 52 (“A Palestinian Reformer: Yussuf alKhalidi”); Adel Manna, “Yussuf Diya al-Khalidi,” in Encyclopedia of the Palestinians, ed. Philip Mattar (New York: Routledge, 2000), 229–30; Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 119–29. 35. Vincent Lemire, La soif de Jérusalem. Essai d’hydrohistoire (1840–1948) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011), 277–90. 36. Diaire de Notre-Dame de Sion, Wednesday, July 13, 1870. 37. ISA, RG 67, German Consulate, January 9, 1873. 38. Robert Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period (Baltimore, 1963), 267; cited by Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 250. 39. Schölch, Palestine in Transformation, 250. 40. Walid Khalidi, Al-Maktaba al-Khalidiyya fi Al-Quds, 1720–2001 [The Khalidi Library in Jerusalem, 1720–2001] (Beirut, 2002). 41. Rouhi al-Khalidi, Risala fi sur’at intishar al-din al-islami fi aqsam al-‘alam [Essay on the Spread of the Islamic Religion in the World] (Tripoli: Al-Balagha Press, 1897); cited by Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 132. 42. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 128– 41. 43. Ruth Kark, “The Contribution of the Ottoman Regime to the Development of Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1840–1917,” in Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period: Political, Social and Economic Transformation, ed. David Kushner (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak BenZvi, 1986), 51; Ben-Arieh, Jérusalem au dix-neuvième siècle. Géographie d’une renaissance, 109. 44. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1: 78. 45. HAJM, Deliberations, 6 zilkade 1316 (March 18, 1899).

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notes to pages 117– 122

46. David Yellin, Hamelitz 38, no. 17 (1898): 1–2; cited by Ruth Kark, “The Jerusalem Municipality at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” Asian and African Studies 14 (1980): 133. 47. HAJM, Deliberations, 5 muharrem 1316 (May 26, 1898). 48. HAJM, Deliberations, 30 zilhicce 1316 (May 11, 1899). 49. PRO-FO 195/2084, November 13, 1900. 50. Osman Nuri Ergin, Mecelle-i Umûr-i Belediyye (Istanbul, 1995), vol. 4: 1673– 85. 51. Ibid., vol. 4: 1700–1719. 52. HAJM, Deliberations, 9 muharrem 1316 (May 30, 1898). 53. Ibid., 15 cemaziyel- evvel 1312 (November 14, 1894). 54. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1: 80. 55. BOA, Irade Hususi, 24, 9 zilhicce 1319 (March 19, 1902). 56. HAJM, Deliberations, 11 safer 1319 (March 30, 1901). 57. Abraham Moses Luncz, Palestine Calendar 1892, 178; cited by Kark, “The Jerusalem Municipality,” 134. 58. MAE, Nantes, Constantinople, series D, May 18, 1909. 59. Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine 1 (Jerusalem) (July 1909): 13. 60. MAE, Nantes, Constantinople, series E, carton 549, March 5, 1914. 61. HAJM, Deliberations, 20 saban 1309 (March 20, 1892). 62. Ibid., 20 mart 1311 (April 1, 1895). 63. Ibid., 30 zilhicce 1316 (May 11, 1899). 64. MAE, Paris, Consular and Commercial Correspondence, Jerusalem, vol. 5, fols. 78–82, September 26, 1887. In another report, written two years later in 1889, the consul states that “the toll for each vehicle is 1.20 francs per horse when the vehicle is occupied and 0.60 francs when it is empty” (ibid., fols. 118–23, March 27, 1889). 65. PRO-FO 195/2084, November 13, 1900. 66. HAJM, Deliberations, 4 rebiyyülahir 1314 (September 12, 1896). 67. Ibid., 14 ramazan 1309 (April 12, 1892). 68. Ibid., 6 zilkade 1316 (March 18, 1899). 69. PRO-FO 195 /2149, January 27, 1903. 70. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 538. 71. Ibid., 540. 72. Salim Tamari, “Jerusalem Ottoman Modernity: The Times and Lives of Wasif Jawhariyyeh,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 9 (2000): 5–27. 73. Robert Walter Stewart, The Tent and the Khan: A Journey to Sinai and Palestine (London, 1857), 316: “So abundant were the rains during the time I was in Jerusalem, that the Ain Ayub overflowed for nearly a week, and sent a copious stream down the wadi. . . . The neighbourhood presented the appearance of a jubilee in consequence. Despite the rain the people flocked in holiday attire to the well. The coffee- house keepers had brought down an unlimited supply of stools, chibouks, nargilehs, and coffee, and groups were seated, some with their feet actually in the water, smoking, chattering, and watching the stream, which proclaimed that for one summer at least there would be a sufficiency of water in the land.” 74. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 359. 75. Ibid., 357.

notes to pages 123– 134

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76. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 1: 69– 84 (“Municipalités provinciales,” Articles 39– 41). 77. Luncz, Palestine Calendar 1897, 155. 78. MAE, Nantes, Consulat de Jérusalem, series B, carton 8. 79. BOA, irade dahiliye, 4 safer 1316 (June 24, 1898).

chapter six The source of the chapter epigraph is Jérusalem 52 (October 1908): 218– 22. 1. PRO-FO 195/2287, August 10, 1908. 2. Jérusalem 52 (October 1908): 218–22 (“Proclamation of the Turkish Constitution in Jerusalem”). The article is illustrated with five photographs. 3. François Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, le sultan calife (1876–1909) (Paris, 2003), 403– 25 (“From Revolution to Deposition”). 4. Christian Rakovsky, “La révolution turque,” Le socialisme, August 1, 1908. 5. Jérusalem 52 (October 1908): 218–22. 6. See especially Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 7. François Georgeon and Frédéric Hitzel, eds., Les Ottomans et le temps (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 8. C. R. Ashbee, interview in the Observer (1919), issue included in the Papers of Sir Ronald Storrs (1881– 1956), Cambridge, Pembroke College, Box 3, file 1, 1919; cited by Annabel Wharton, “Jerusalem Remade,” in Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), 46. 9. Ronald Storrs, preface to C. R. Ashbee, ed., Jerusalem 1918–1920 . . . Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council . . . (London: J. Murray, for the Pro-Jerusalem Society, Council, 1921), vi. 10. Wasif al-Jawhariyya, Al-Quds al-‘uthmaniyya fi 1-mudhakkirat al-Jawhariyya [Ottoman Jerusalem in Jawhariyya’s Memoirs], ed. Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar (Jerusalem, 2003), 50; translated into English by Nada Elzeer: The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904–1948 (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2013). 11. Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, le sultan calife (1876–1909), 389– 93. 12. BOA, Y.PRK.UM/80/69/21, Ramazan 1325 (October 28, 1907); cited by Johann Büssow, Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem, 1872–1908 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 427. 13. PRO-FO 195/2287, July 10, 1908. 14. Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 20–34. 15. Ibid. 16. Bernard Lewis, Islam et laïcité: La naissance de la Turquie moderne (Paris: Fayard, 1988); originally published in English, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961; 2d ed., 1968; 3d ed., 2002). 17. Campos, Ottoman Brothers. 18. Jérusalem 52 (September 3, 1908).

186

notes to pages 134– 143

19. Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, le sultan calife (1876–1909), 421– 25. 20. Times (London), September 3, 1908. 21. Yasemin Avci, Degisim Sürecinde Bir Osmanli Kenti: Kudüs (1890–1914) (Ankara, 2004), 148. 22. Times (London), September 3, 1908. 23. Jérusalem 52 (October 1908): 218–22. 24. Menachem Klein, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron (London: Hurst & Co. , 2014). 25. Jürgen Habermas, L’espace public: Archéologie de la publicité comme dimension constitutive de la société bourgeoise (Paris: Payot, 1988). 26. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 437– 53. 27. PRO-FO 195/1514, December 12, 1885. 28. Vital Cuinet, Syrie, Liban et Palestine. Géographie administrative statistique descriptive et raisonnée (Paris, 1901), 563– 64. 29. Ibid. 30. Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne. La construction d’une conscience nationale moderne (Paris, 2003), 121; originally published in English, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 31. Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). 32. The Franciscan printing house also published Arabic texts. See Agostino Arce, Catalogus descriptivus illustratus Operum in Typographia Ierosolomyrum Franciscali Impressorum, vol. 1: 1847–1880 (Jerusalem, 1969). 33. Büssow, Hamidian Palestine, 463. 34. Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 133–34. 35. Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 137. 36. Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 96– 104. 37. Filastin, September 29, 1913; cited by Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 102. 38. Al-Quds, September 30, 1913; cited by Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 100. 39. Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine 3 (September–October 1909). 40. Ibid., 22. 41. BOA, Yildiz Mütenevvî Maruzat Evraki (YMTV) 2781, 264/119, 16 receb 1322 (September 26, 1904). 42. Jérusalem 53 (November 1908): 251. 43. CZA, L.2/392, November 4, 1908. 44. Jérusalem 53 (November 1908): 252. 45. Vincent Lemire, La soif de Jérusalem. Essai d’hydrohistoire (1840–1948) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011), 376– 404. 46. Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine 3 (September–October 1909): 26.

notes to pages 145– 153

187

chapter seven The source of the chapter epigraph is AIU Archives, Israel, IV E 12 no. 1586/16. 1. Letter of Albert Antébi (Jerusalem) to Narcisse Leven (Paris), December 17, 1899, AIU Archives, Israel, III E 10, no. 2420/25; cited by Élizabeth Antébi, L’homme du Sérail (Paris: Nil Éditions, 1996), vol. 2, letter 46. 2. A recent synthesis can be found in Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 82–116 (“Between Ottomanism and Zionism: The Case of the Sephardi Community”). 3. Letter from Antébi to Leven, December 17, 1899. 4. Élias Sanbar, Figures du Palestinien. Identité des origines, identité de devenir (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). 5. Zachary Lockman, “Railway Workers and Relational History: Arabs and Jews in British- ruled Palestine,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 3 (1993): 601– 27. 6. Letter of Albert Antébi (Jerusalem) to Narcisse Leven (Paris), January 8, 1900, AIU Archives, Israel, IV E 11, no. 2693/4; cited by Élizabeth Antébi, L’homme du Sérail, vol. 2, letter 47. 7. Letter of Albert Antébi, December 29, 1901, AIU Archives, Israel, IV E 12, no. 1586/16. 8. Denis Charbit, Sionismes, textes fondamentaux (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998). 9. AIU Archives, Israel, VIII E 25, no. 6318, August 4, 1908. 10. Ibid. 11. Élizabeth Antébi, L’homme du Sérail, vol. 2: 24, letters 466 and 467. 12. AIU Archives, Israel, VIII E 24, no. 3520/5. 13. AIU Archives, Israel, X E 31. 14. Élizabeth Antébi, L’homme du Sérail. 15. Salim Tamari, Year of the Locust: A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 16. Rashid Rida, “Khabar wa tibâr Jam’iyyat al yahûd as sahyûniyyîn,” al-Manâr 1 (1898): 105– 8; cited by Henry Laurens, Le retour des exilés. La lutte pour la Palestine de 1869 à 1997 (Paris: Laffont, 1998), 83– 86. 17. Rashid Rida, “Hayât umma ba’da mawtihâ, ‘Jam’iyyat al yahûd al sahyû- niyya’” al- Manar 4 (January 26, 1902): 801–9; cited by Laurens, Le retour des exilés, 90– 92. 18. Martin Kramer, “Azoury: A Further Episode,” Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 4 (1982): 277– 79. 19. Ibid. 20. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 277–79. 21. Neguib Azoury, Le réveil de la nation arabe dans l’Asie turque en présence des intérêts et des rivalités des puissances étrangères, de la curie romaine et du patriarcat oecuménique, partie asiatique de la question d’Orient et programme de la Ligue de la patrie arabe (Paris: Plon, 1905), 4.

188

notes to pages 154– 166

22. Farid Kassab, Le nouvel empire arabe, la curie romaine et le prétendu péril juif universel, réponse à M. N. Azoury Bey (Paris, 1906), 24. 23. Sanbar, Figures du Palestinien. 24. Élias Sanbar, ed., Jérusalem et la Palestine. Le fonds photographique de l’École biblique de Jérusalem (Paris: Hazan, 2013). 25. MAE, Turkey/Palestine, CXXXII.F.173– 74; cited by Laurens, Le retour des exilés, 133– 34. 26. The text of the May 16, 1911, speech by Rouhi al-Khalidi was reprinted in many newspapers of the time, notably in Filastin, Al-Karmil, Lisan al-Hal, and Al-Muqtabas. There is a draft and a typed version in the Khalidiyya library in Jerusalem. It is analyzed in Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne. La construction d’une conscience nationale moderne (Paris, 2003), 135–41; originally published in English: Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 27. Lisan al-Hal, May 18, 1911; French translation in Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 136–37. 28. Walid Khalidi, “Kitab al- sionism,” in Studia Palaestina: Studies in Honour of Constantine K. Zurayk, ed. Hisham Nashabe (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1988), 37–81; quotation on 78. 29. MAE, Turkey/Palestine, CXXXII, fols. 158– 59; cited by Laurens, Le retour des exilés, 128. 30. Ibid. 31. Alexander Schölch, Palestine in Transformation, 1856–1882: Studies in Social, Economic, and Political Development (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993), 250. 32. CZA (Jerusalem), H.197, March 1, 1899. 33. Ahad Haam, “La vérité d’Erez Israël” (1891), in Oeuvres complètes (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1954), 23–24; cited by Charbit, Sionismes, textes fondamentaux, 394– 95. 34. Rouhi al-Khalidi, Asbab al-inqilab al-‘uthmani wa turkiyya al-fatat (The Young Turks and the Origins of the Ottoman Revolution) (Cairo: Al-Manâr Press, 1326/1908), 99; cited by Rashid Khalidi, L’identité palestinienne, 129.

conclusion The chapter epigraph by Gilles Deleuze is drawn from a lecture, “Truth and Time,” presented on January 10, 1984, at the University of Vincennes, France. 1. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (New York: Pantheon, 1987); The Age of Extremes (New York: Pantheon, 1994). 2. Eugene L. Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2015). 3. Lucien Febvre, “Que la France se nomme diversité. À propos de quelques études jurassiennes,” Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations 1, no. 3 (1946): 271– 74. 4. Ibid. 5. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Le rêve traversé, trans. Gérard Hadad (Paris: Éditions du Scribe, 1988); original edition in Hebrew (New York, 1918).

notes to pages 168– 169

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6. Henry Laurens, La question de Palestine, 4 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1999–2011). 7. Leyla Dakhli, Vincent Lemire, and Daniel Rivet, eds., “Proche-Orient: Foyers, frontières, fractures,” special issue of Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire 103 (July– September 2009). 8. See the bibliography at the end of this book. 9. The Open Jerusalem Project I am directing (2014– 19), funded by the European Research Council (ERC), is the continuation of this work (openjlem.hypotheses.org).

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index

Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 4, 99, 126, 131, 134, 157; jubilee celebration, 89–92 Abraham, Rabbi, 74 absence of people, Western visitors’ perception of, 43–45 Adas, Yitshaq, 110 Aelia Capitolina, 54 “affair of the flag,” 105–6 “age of possibilities,” 1–5, 61, 98, 129, 144, 163, 168; causes of failure, 5–7; causes of forgetting, 7–10; importance of remembering, 10–12 al-Alami, Abdallah, 105–6 al-‘Asali, Shukri, 157 al-Husayni, Husayn Salim, 117, 120–21, 133 al-Husayni, Sai’d, 106 al-Jawhariyya, Jirjis, 121, 125 al-Jawhariyya, Wasif, 129–30 al-Khalidi, Muhammad ‘Ali, 113 al-Khalidi, Rouhi (pseud. Al-Maqdisi), 115–16, 140, 156–57 al-Khalidi, Yassin, 112 al-Khalidi, Yussuf Ziya (Joseph Pasha, Joseph Khalidi), 107, 112–16, 113 (fig. 11), 139, 156, 165; letter to Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, 158–62 Alliance Israélite Universelle, 101, 115–16, 145–51 Al-Muntazah al-Baladi (municipal park), 121–22 Al-Muqaddasi, 52 Annales School, 164–65 Antébi, Albert, 101, 145–51, 156, 156 (fig. 17)

anti-corruption campaign, 88 anti-Ottomanism, 157 anti-Semitism, 137–38, 153–54, 156 Antonia Fortress, 69 aqueducts, 99–100, 100 (fig. 10), 112 archaeological excavations, 47; at convent of Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, 48–52; and Garden Tomb, 61–67; at Mount Ophel, 68; Russian, 65–66 archaeological movement, 46–52 archaeological renewal, 54 archaeologists: revisionist, 61–65; Western, 70 architecture: of clock tower, 132; local, 42–43 archival research, 10–11 archives, 7–8, 103; consular, 7, 119, 132; of Islamic waqfs (Abu Dis), 10, 35, 79; of Jerusalem court, 43; municipal, 2–3, 10, 103, 108–9, 117, 121, 123; Ottoman, 7–8, 79, 81, 92; private, 10 Arculf, Bishop, 52 Armenians, 33–34, 163 Arnon, Adar, 27, 30, 33 Ascension, Mosque (Chapel) of, 73 Ashbee, C. R., 128–29 “Ashraf” families, 105–6 Assaf, 92 associationist psychology, 60 Assumption, cave of, 72 Assumptionists, 69 Astiriyadis Efendi, Rafadulo Dimitri, 102, 107, 111, 115 Austrian post office, 139 (fig. 16) automobile, 93 Avci, Yasemin, 7

199

200

index

Azoury, Neguib, Le réveil de la nation arabe dans l’Asie turque, 152–54

Büssow, Johann, 86, 110, 180n15 butchers, 114

Bab Sitti Mariam, 72 Balfour, Lord (Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour), 6 Balfour Declaration, 6, 77 banality, 97–98 Barrès, Maurice, 153 “Basin of the Patriarch,” 68 Beersheba, 87–88, 88 (fig. 7), 132 Beirut, 116, 140 belediye baytar (municipal veterinarian), 121 belediye tabibi (municipal doctor), 120–21 Ben-Arieh, Yehoshua, 79–80, 83, 117 Ben-Gurion, David, 151 Benjamin of Tudele, 74 ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 165–68 Ben-Zvi, Yad Izhak, 151 Bethlehem, 105 Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, 129, 130 (fig. 15) biblical citations: 2 Chronicles 32.30, 68; John 19.41, 62; Lamentations 1.12, 178n11; Matthew 27.57, 62 “biblical city,” 21, 33, 43–44, 96; “reconstruction” of, 48–52; visitors’ viewpoint on, 39–44 biblical scholarship, on Jerusalem, 46–48 biblical topography: debates over, 67–70; and hybridity of religious traditions, 70–75 bifurcation of time, 163–69 bird people, metaphor of, 164–65 Bordeaux, 116 Bordeaux Pilgrim, 52, 69 Bouquet, Olivier, 89 bricolage, 53–54, 63 bridge, over Jordan River, 93 British Admiralty, 33 British Diocesan Boys’ School, 113 British Mandate, 3, 6, 25, 163 building inspector, 117 building permits, 117–18 Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce, d’industrie et d’agriculture de Palestine, 119, 141–43 Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Jérusalem, 123 burial of Christ, debate over site of, 61–65. See also Garden Tomb

Café Belediye (municipal cafe), 122 Caiaphas, house of, 74 Cairo, 140 Campos, Michelle, 82, 140, 175n19 “capital of two states,” Jerusalem as, 11–12 cartography, 15–38. See also maps cemiyyet i-belediye (municipal assembly), 109 Cenacle (place of Last Supper), 69, 74 censorship laws, repeal of, 133 Central Zionist Archives, 10 Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 4–5, 131 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 47; Record of a Journey from Paris to Jerusalem, 42–44 cholera epidemic, 85–86, 121 Christian community, 18; and Arab nationalism, 151–54. See also under urban quarters Christianity: and hybridity of religious traditions, 70–75; and race for holy sites, 59 Christians, 33; and anti-Judaism, 137–38; under Ottoman rule, 81–82; as threat to Jews, 161 Church of St. James, 34 Church of the Holy Sepulcher, 61, 70 cistern, discovery of, at Garden Tomb, 64–65 “City of David,” 67–69 city walls, 21–25 class struggle, 135, 141–43 clock tower, 4, 123, 125, 127–32, 128 (fig. 14) Column of the Flagellation, 69 communications, 94, 132–33, 138 compartmentalization, 15–18 concentration, logic of, 61–63 Conder, Lieutenant, 63 Constantine, Emperor, 61, 70 consulates: British, 26, 82–86, 96, 108–11, 117, 120, 132, 138; European, 26, 108–9, 111–12; French, 54, 96, 105–6, 111, 119– 20, 155, 158; German, 114; U.S., 115 contemporaneity, sense of, 97–98, 147 convent (Sisters of Our Lady of Sion), 39, 48– 55, 57–58, 69, 107, 113–14, 117 Coptic Christians, 18 cosmopolitanism, 95–96 Counter-Reformation, 46

index Courdi, Ali, 145–46 crucifixion, 44; debate over site of, 61–65, 69 Cuinet, Vital, 139 Dalman, Gustav, 69 Damas Gate, 27, 31, 37, 61, 63, 68 David, King, 92 “dead city,” 42–44 Dead Sea, 93 deconstruction, 18–19 designation, 59 Diaire des Dames de Sion, 114 Dickson, John, 82–86, 96, 108, 110, 120 diversity, in relational history, 147 Djemal Pasha, 151 Dome of the Rock, 72–73 Dormition of the Virgin, 74 drinking water, 89–92, 90 (fig. 8), 98–101, 123 Druzes, 18 duality, logic of, 61–62, 65 East Jerusalem (Arab), 25, 164 Ebniye kanunu (Urbanism Code), 118 ebniye müfetisi (building inspector), 117 Ebniye ve Turuk Nizamnamesi (Regulations for Roads and Buildings), 117–18 Ecce Homo arch, 53–54, 56 École Pratique d’Études Bibliques (now École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem), 47, 66 education infrastructure, 94, 138–39 Egypt, occupation of Palestine, 106 Ekrem, Hatice Selma, 87 Ekrem Bey, Ali, 87–88, 88 (fig. 7), 112, 131, 133, 142 el-Aref, Aref, 30, 105, 107, 182n14 electoral laws, 110 electrification, 119 elite, local, 3, 81, 105, 111, 115, 121, 135–36, 143, 155, 167 Elyashar, Yosef, 110 Emek Refa’im, valley of, 96 Enlightenment, 133 Ethiopian Christians, 18 European Union, 11 exemptions, from taxation and military service, 22–23 exile, 133, 151 expropriation for the public good, right of, 93, 118

201

Febvre, Lucien, 164–65 Fergusson, James, Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, 70 ferry service, on Dead Sea, 93 film footage, historic, 97–98 Flaubert, Gustave, 180n26 folklorization, 42–44 foreign postal services, 138, 139 (fig. 16) foreign press, 138 foreign residents, 111 foreign schools, 139 “forgotten city,” 45–46 fountain, monumental, 89–92, 90 (fig. 8), 123 fragmentation, logic of, 61–62, 64 France, 132. See also under consulates Franciscan order, 29–30, 74, 186n32 fraternalism, 136–38 Freemasonry, 81, 87, 115–16, 133, 156 French Revolution, 81, 126, 133 Frères Lumière, 97–98 funding: for clock tower, 131; for renovation of water supply system, 141–43 Galata, municipality of (Istanbul), 105, 111 game of “margelle,” 50–51, 53, 177n26 garbage collection, 108–9 Garden Tomb, 4, 61–67, 62 (fig. 5), 64 (fig. 6), 68 Garden Tomb Association, 65 Gaza, 105 gaze: exogenous, 73; historical, 42; touristic, 41–45 Géraud-Gomez, Christine, 45 German Archaeological Institute, 69 Gihon, source of, 68–69 Glissant, Édouard, 75 Golgotha, debate over site of, 61–65, 69 Gordon, General, 63, 65–66 governor, office of, 83, 86–89. See also names of governors; names of individuals Great Britain, 132. See also under consulates Great Law of October 5, 1877 (Ottoman; on provincial municipalities), 105, 109–11, 114–15, 117–18, 122 Greek Orthodox, 18, 20 Greek Uniate Catholics, 18 green line, 25 Gueyraud, Georges, 155 Gutmann, Emanuel, 105, 107, 182n14 Ha’am, Ahad, 160 Habermas, Jürgen, 138

202

index

Habib, Bishara, 153 Hadrian, Emperor, 54 Hakki Pasha, Ibrahim, 80, 86 Halbwachs, Maurice, 56–61, 154; La topographie légendaire . . . (Legendary Topography . . .), 56–61, 69, 71–74 Hamburger, Rabbi Nathan Netta Hirsch, 98–99 Hananya, Jurji Habib, 140 Haram esh-Sharif (Esplanade of the Mosques, Mount Moriah, Temple Mount), 17, 69– 70, 82, 98, 100, 137 Hebrew language, revival of, 165 Hebron, municipality of, 105 Herod, King, 69 Herod’s Gate, 94 Herzl, Theodor, 158 hexagram (Khatam Süleyman, “Solomon’s seal”), 92 high place, as viewpoint, 39–40, 42–43 Hill, Sir John Gray, 135 Hinnom, valley of, 69 historians: Arab nationalist, 9; “new Israeli,” 77; “new Palestinian,” 9; Ottomanist, 7, 103 historical determinism, 2–3, 5–7, 11 historiographical issues, 37–38 historiography: Arab nationalist, 79, 103; Israeli, 8; traditional Zionist, 79, 103 history: counter-factual, 6; duty to, 10; parafactual, 6 Hobsbawm, Eric, 163 Holy Sepulcher, 33, 61, 68, 70. See also Church of the Holy Sepulcher; Garden Tomb holy sites, 26; archaeological reinvention of, 55; construction of, 57 (map 4), 59–67; free access to, 136–38; persistence of, 53– 55; proliferation of, 52–55; rediscovery of, 70; reinvention of, 47–52; sanctification of, 53; syncretism of, 71–75; uncertainty of, 4, 61, 67–71. See also sites of memory; and names of specific sites Hükemet (Government), 83 Hurva synagogue, 33 hybridity, of religious traditions, 70–75 hydraulic infrastructure, 4, 10–11, 75–76, 89–92, 98–101, 112, 141–43 Ibn Saïd, Salam, 88, 88 (fig. 7) identities: ethno-religious, 31–32; intersecting, 147–51; religious, 4 identity, Palestinian, 147; formation of, 59

immigration, Jewish, 1, 24–25, 110, 112, 152; recent immigrants, 19–20, 32, 110, 145–47 Imperial Academy of Vienna, 115 imperial jubilee, of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1900), 4, 89–92, 131 Imperial School of Administration, 86–87 in-between time, 132 income tax, 93 Institut Lumière (Lyon), 97 interaction, in relational history, 147 intercommunal conflict, 5 international law, 6 Isaac ben Joseph Ibn Chelo, 52 Isaac/Ismail, sacrifice of, 43–44 Isa ibn Maryam, 72 Islam: and hybridity of religious traditions, 70–75; and race for holy sites, 59. See also Muslim community; Muslims, under Ottoman rule. See also under urban quarters Islamism, 159 Ismaelis, 18 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, future prospects of, 11–12 Istanbul, 113–14, 116 Jacob, Rabbi, 52 Jacobite Syrians, 18 Jaffa, 113, 131, 166 Jaffa Gate, 4, 21, 25, 31, 69, 90, 97, 100, 103, 112, 122–23, 125, 127, 128 (fig. 14), 129–30, 130 (fig. 15), 131, 139 (fig. 16) Jeremiah (biblical figure), 178n11 “Jeremiah’s Grotto,” 63 Jesus Christ, 42–44, 72–73. See also Isa ibn Maryam Jewish community, 18; internal conflicts, 145–47, 150; and 1908 revolution, 136– 37. See also under urban quarters Jews, 33, 81–82, 163; American, 145–46; Ashkenazi, 145–46; Turkish, and Zionism, 160 Job’s Well, 121 Jordan River, 93 Joseph of Arimathea, 62, 64 Josephus, Flavius, 69; Jewish War, 53 Judaism: and hybridity of religious traditions, 70–75; and race for holy sites, 59 Kahn, Zadoc, 158–62 Kamil Pasha, Mehmed, 86 Kark, Ruth, 8, 117

index Kassab, Farid, 154 Kazim Bey, Rüsdi Osman, 87 Kemal, Namik, 87, 133 Khalidi, Joseph. See al-Khalidi, Yussuf Ziya Khalidi, Walid, 157 Khalidi family, 10, 115–16. See also alKhalidi, Rouhi; al-Khalidi, Yussuf Ziya; Maktaba al-Khalidiyya Kudüs-i Sherif (Filastin; administrative district), 1 Kurdistan, 115 labor strike, 135 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 44–45, 47 “land without people for a people without land,” 8, 77–80 League of Nations, 6 Le Corbusier, 52 legacy construction, 47–52 legislative elections, 114 Leven, Narcisse, 145–51 Levy, Isaac, 141–42 linguistic relationships, 19 Lions Gate, 37 Lithostrotos, 53–54, 58 localization, 59–60 local sources, disregard for, 77–80 Loti, Pierre, 39–42, 40 (map 3), 46–53, 58, 65–66, 69, 96 Luncz, Abraham Moses, 118 Mahkeme (Ottoman tribunal), 69, 98 Majlis al-Shura (Assembly of the Council), 106–7 Maktaba al-Khalidiyya, 10, 115–16 Malta Protestant College, 113 Mamilla cemetery, 31 Mamilla Pool, 68 Mandate. See British Mandate Manna, Adel, 9 maps, 15–38, 16 (fig. 1); Abbé Nicole (1886), 34–35; British Admiralty (1841), 33; historical, 26–27, 52, 68–69; pilgrim and tourist, 33–35; Schick (1894–95), 22, 24 (fig. 3), 38; topographic, 52; updating of, 65, 117; Van de Velde (1858), 26; Wilson (1865), 22, 23 (fig. 2) “margelle,” 50–51, 53, 177n26 markets, regional, 138 Maronites, 18 Mary (mother of Jesus), 72 Masliah, Nissim, 157

203

mayor, post of, 107, 111–16. See also names of individuals meclis-i belediye emlak kalemi (municipal office of the cadastre), 118 Meclis-i Idare (Provincial Administrative Council), 84, 106–7, 109 Mehmed V, Sultan, 134, 157 Melkites, 18 members, of municipal council, 109–12 memorialization, 47–52 memory hole, 25; and pilgrim/travel narratives, 41–42 Midhat Pasha, Grand Vizier, 86 military conscription, 19, 22–23, 151 military governor, 83 Mishkenot Sha’ananim, 22 missionary movement, 46–48 missionary press, 21, 29–30, 186n32 Mizrahi, Rahamin, 110 modernization, 49–50, 55, 92–98, 104, 112, 120–21, 127–32 Montefiore, Moses, 22, 100, 102–3, 107, 117 Montefiore, Simon Sebag, 9–10, 85 Montefiore windmill, 103 Moore, Noel Temple, 85 Mount of Olives, 39–42, 73 Mount Ophel, 68 Mount Zion, 69, 73–75 mufti (chief jurist), 83 muhasebeci (general treasurer), 83 Mujı¯r al-Dı¯n, 28–29, 52 mukhtar (head of village), 93, 140 mülkiye, 86 municipal administration, 102–4 municipal assembly (cemiyyet i-belediye), 109 municipal budget, 123 municipal building (1896), 4, 25, 123–24, 124 (fig. 13) municipal café, 122 municipal council: breakup of, 3; members of, 109–12; records of, 7–8; and risk of foreign influence, 111–12 municipal doctor, 120–21 municipal elections, 109–11 municipal engineer, 117–18 municipal hospital, 120–21, 122 (fig. 12) municipal institution, 1, 3–4, 25; and defense of public space, 116–19; as mixed institution, 109–10; origin of, 104–7; powers of, 107–9; representativeness of, 110 municipalization movement, 115

204

index

municipal park, 121–22 municipal pharmacy, 120–21 municipal plan, proposal for, 119 municipal quarter, 121, 123–24 municipal theater, 122 municipal veterinarian, 121 municipium, 162, 165 Muslim community, 18–19; and Arab nationalism, 151–54 Muslims, under Ottoman rule, 81–82 naqib al-Ashraf (leader of the nobles), 105–7 Nasir Khusraw, 52 National Archives of Israel, 83 nationalism: Arab, 79, 151–54; Palestinian, 9, 153, 159, 163–64, 168; Turkish, 163 natives of Jerusalem, 19–20 Navon, Joseph, 94–96 Nazif Pasha, Governor, 93, 107 Nebi Daoud, 74 neighborhoods, 28 (map 1); al-Wad, 27; Bab al-‘Amud, 28, 30, 37; Bab el-Qattanin, 29; Bab el-Silsila, 27; Bab es-Sarb, 29; Bab Hutta, 28, 30, 37, 94; Bani Murna, 29; Bani Zayd, 28; Baq’a, 31–32; Birka, 31; Bukhariyya, 31; Dara’na, 29; Dir el-Arman, 29; El-Wad, 37; Ez-Zara’na, 29; Habash, 31; Haret Bani el-Harit, 29; Haret ed-Dawiyya, 29; Haret el-‘Alam, 29; Haret el-Bukharriya, 18; Haret elGhuriyya, 28; Haret el-Halabiyya, 18; Haret el-Jawalda, 29; Haret el-Magharba, 19, 29; Haret el-Masharqa, 19, 28; Haret el-Yahud, 29; Haret en-Nasara, 29; Haret esh-Sharaf, 29; Haret es-Saltin, 19, 29; Isra’iliyya, 31; Mahane Yehudah, 31; Mahkeme, 31; Manshiyya, 31; Masabin, 31; Maslakh, 29; Mazarban, 28; Me’ah She’arim neighborhood, 22; Mishkenot Shaanim, 112; Mishkenot She’arim neighborhood, 23 (fig. 2); mixed, 30–32, 38; Nasara, 30, 36–37; Sa’diyya, 27, 30, 37; Sharaf, 30, 36–37; Shifa, 31; Silsila, 30, 37; Talbiyya, 31–32; Wad, 30; Yahudiyya, 31; Yemin Moshe, 100, 100 (fig. 10), 112. See also urban quarters new city, 17, 21–25, 30–32, 39, 41, 96, 108–9, 129 newspapers and periodicals, 139–40; alManar, 152; Al-Quds, 140; Filastin, 140; Ha-Havatselet (Hebrew-language),

133; Ha-Levanon (Hebrew-language), 140, 167; Ha-Tzvi (Hebrew-language), 91; Jérusalem (periodical), 126–27, 134; Kudüs-i Sherif/Al-Quds al-Sharif (official organ, in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish), 94, 133; Le Socialisme (Paris), 126; La Terre Sainte, 21, 72; Times of London, 64–65, 135 Neyyal, Naciye, 86 Nicault, Catherine, 6 Nora, Pierre, Lieux de mémoire, 60 “no-return inventions,” 53–55 nostalgia, historical, 11 notables. See elite, local Notre-Dame-de-France nursing home, 156, 156 (fig. 17) old city, 21–25, 39, 41, 108, 129. See also neighborhoods; urban quarters Open Jerusalem Project, 189n9 orientalism, 8, 79, 103 Ottoman administration, 78 (map 5), 85–89, 153 Ottoman censuses, 22, 27, 28 (map 1), 29–32, 35–37, 93, 175n24 Ottoman citizenship, 19–20, 110–11 Ottoman Civil Code, 93, 104, 111, 118 Ottoman constitution (1876), 86–88, 133; reestablishment of, 4, 125–26, 132–33 Ottomanism, 80–82, 86, 98–101, 149–50, 163 Ottoman Parliament, 114, 156 Ottoman studies, 81 Ottoman Turkish language, 7 Palestine, Ottoman, 8–9 Palestine, topography of, 92–93 Palestine Exploration Fund, 47, 63, 91 pan-Arabism, 153–54, 159, 165, 168 parochialism, 154–58 partition of Jerusalem: of 1934, 25, 104; of 1948, 3, 25, 104, 164 Passion story, 53 patrimonialization, 53–55, 58; example of Garden Tomb, 61–67 “people of the holy land,” 67, 71, 147, 154–58 Périer (bank) (Paris), 119 photographs, historical, 45, 62 (fig. 5), 65, 88, 88 (fig. 7), 90 (fig. 8), 95 (fig. 9), 97, 99– 100, 100 (fig. 10), 112, 113 (fig. 11), 115, 122 (fig. 12), 123, 124 (fig. 13), 128, 128

index (fig. 14), 129, 130 (fig. 15), 139 (fig. 16), 155–56, 156 (fig. 17) pilgrimage, 18, 45–46, 50–52, 138. See also pilgrims, Western pilgrimage narratives, and quadripartite division, 32–35 pilgrims, Western, 1, 7, 30, 61; viewpoint on city, 39–42, 96, 131 place names: cartographic, 26; local, 18–19, 26–30, 28 (map 1), 31, 72; translated, 33. See also names of places political amnesty, 133 Pontius Pilate, 53, 69–70 population density, 32, 35–37, 36 (map 2) population diversity, 37 population dynamics, and cartographic representations, 15–18 population figures, 44–45, 108, 163 population growth, 1, 3, 21–25, 25 (table 1), 108 population homogeneity, supposed, 27–30 Poti, 115 praetorium, 50–51, 53, 69–70, 74 prison image, 42–44 Pro-Jerusalem Society, 128–29 Promio, Alexandre, 97–98, 181n41 property ownership, 110 property rights, 19–20, 22–23 property taxes, 20, 85, 110 Protestantism, 46 Protestants, 4, 18, 38; and creation of Garden Tomb, 4, 61–67 proto-Zionist, 165–68 proximity, in relational history, 147 public health, 85–86, 120–21 public hygiene, 108–9, 114 public lighting, 108–9, 119, 122, 130 public opinion, 138–43 public reading, 94 public recreation, 121–22 public space, defense of, 116–19 public speaking, and 1908 revolution, 134–36 public time, 127–32 public works, 89–92 qadi (judge), 83, 98 quadripartite division, 15–18, 24–30, 32–38. See also urban quarters railroad, 4; of Hedjaz (Damascus–Medina), 94; Jerusalem–Jaffa, 86, 94–98, 138

205

railroad station, 4, 95–98, 95 (fig. 9) raïs el-belediye (president of the municipality), 83 Rakovsky, Christian, 126 Ratisbonne, Father Marie-Alphonse de, 48, 53 Rauf Pasha, Mehmed, 80, 83, 86, 93 readership, of newspapers, 140 Red Crescent, 156 (fig. 17) reforestation program, 122 relational history, 147 religious congregations, archives of, 10 religious diversity: in Ottoman administration, 84, 109–10; and public time, 127–32 research institutes, European, in Jerusalem, 47 Reshid Pasha, Ahmed, 87, 94, 141 residency tax, 108–9 “reunification,” post-1967, 104, 164 revolution (1908), 4, 125–27, 132–38, 140–43, 149, 157 Rida, Rashid, 152, 165 road network, 92–94, 138 road tolls, 120 Roberts, David, 45; view of Jerusalem (1841), 45 (fig. 4) Robinson, Edward, Biblical Researches, 47, 68 Roman Catholics, 18 ruins: aesthetic of, 45–46, 45 (fig. 4); Roman, 48–53 running for office, right of, 110 rural districts (nahiye), creation of, 87, 93–94 Russian Orthodox, 18 Salonica (Thessaloniki), 81, 126 Sanbar, Élias, 67, 147, 154–55 sanctification, acquired, 54 sand covering ruins, as metaphor of time, 45 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 77–78 Saulcy, Félix de, 47, 68 scarlet fever epidemic, 121 Schatz, Boris, 129, 130 (fig. 15) Schick, Conrad, 22, 24 (fig. 3), 37–38, 91, 99–100 scholars, Western, viewpoint on city, 39–42 Schölch, Alexander, 115, 158 schools, 94, 138–39, 145–47, 150–51 secularization, 2, 25, 49–50, 97–98, 127–32 Segev, Tom, 8–9, 77, 79, 81 Seraglio, 82–89. See also Ottoman administration shared history, importance of, 168–69

206

index

Shiites, 18 Shoah, 168 shops, 124 Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, 39, 48–55, 57–58, 69, 107, 113–14, 117. See also convent (Sisters of Our Lady of Sion) Sisters of Saint Joseph, school of, 150 sites of memory, 2, 60, 177n8 Skull Hill, 62–63, 66. See also Golgotha, debate over site of Société Anonyme Ottomane du Chemin de Fer Jaffa–Jérusalem, 94 Solomon, King, 75–76, 81, 92 Sorbonne (Paris), 116 Soubhy Bey, 158 Stewart, Robert Walter, The Tent and the Khan, 184n73 Storrs, Ronald, 129 street cleaning, 108–9 street names and numbering, 118 Struthion Pool, 53 Subhi Bey, Ali, 142 Suleiman the Magnificent, 21, 75–76, 81, 92, 99 Sultan’s Pool, 68, 100 (fig. 10) Sunni, 18 Sureyya Pasha, Mustafa, 85 syncretism, religious, 70–75 Tanzimat reforms, 81, 84, 93, 104, 106 taxation, 20, 22–23, 85, 93, 108, 110, 122–23 telegraph service, 94 Tevfik Bey, Mehmed, 85–87, 90–91 tomb image, 42–44 tomb of King David, 73–75 topography: biblical, 67–75; exogenous, 26–30, 32–35; of Palestine, 92–93; uncertainty of, 67–70 toponymic invention, 33 toponyms. See place names tourism, 18 tourists, Western, viewpoint on city, 39–42 tramway lines, 119 transportation infrastructure, 92–98 travel, 4 travelers, Western, 26, 30; and New Testament filter, 43–44; viewpoint on city, 39–42. See also pilgrims, Western travel guides, 29–30 travel narratives, 7; and quadripartite division, 32–35. See also Chateaubriand,

François-René de; Lamartine, Alphonse de; Loti, Pierre tripartite division, 36–37, 36 (map 2) Turkey, 80–81 “Turk’s head” caricature, 43–44, 88–89, 176n10 Tyropoeon Valley, 69 uchronia, 5 universalism, 82, 133–34 unreadability, of living city, 44–46 urban community, 104–7 urban consciousness, 3–4 urban density, 21 urban development, 127–32 urban expansion, 3, 17, 21–25, 108–9, 119 urban identity, 25; denial of, 8; future of, 167– 68; shared, 4, 71, 89–92, 98–101, 104–5, 120–23, 127–32, 161–62 urbanity, 2, 4 urban middle class, 25, 32 urban monument, 127–32 urban planning, 116–19 urban quarters, 18–20; Armenian quarter, 17, 29; Christian quarter, 17, 29, 32–33; four quarters, 15–18, 24–30, 32–38; Jewish quarter, 17–18, 27, 29–32; municipal quarter, 121, 123–24; Muslim quarter, 17, 27–28, 32–33, 35, 40–41; representation of, 15–18; “Russian quarter,” 22, 23 (fig. 2) vaccination campaign, 121 Valensi, Lucette, 41 Van de Velde, C. W. M., 26 Via Dolorosa, 51, 53, 69, 82 viewpoint, of visitors, 39–42 Virgin’s Fountain, 72 Vogüé, Melchior de, 74 Volney, Constantin-François de, 46 voting rights, 19, 22–23, 84–85, 110 Wailing Wall, 33, 69 waqf (pious foundation), 99 Warren, Lieutenant, 47 Warte, Die (bulletin of German Templars), 94 water shortages, 99 water supply, 10–11, 75–76, 89–92, 98–101, 112, 141–43 westernization, 97–98 West Jerusalem (Jewish), 25, 164

index Wilhelm II, Kaiser, visit to Jerusalem, 21, 90, 123, 124 (fig. 13) Williams, George, Historical and Topographical Notices on Jerusalem, 47 Wilson, Charles, 22, 23 (fig. 2); Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, 47 World War I, 6, 21–22, 77, 82, 108, 119, 124, 127, 151, 156, 156 (fig. 17), 163, 165–67 World War II, 56, 58, 168 Yellin, David, 109–11, 117 Young, Georges, 111

207

Young Ottomans, 81, 87, 114 Young Turks, 4, 81–82, 116, 126, 133–35, 149, 157–58. See also revolution (1908) zabita (municipal agents), 118 Zionism, 1, 79, 148–51, 163–64, 168; alKhalidi and, 158–62; Palestine Arabs and, 154–58; “spiritualist,” 160 Zionist colonies, 152 Zionist congresses, 148–49, 159 Zionist model, and Arab nationalism, 151–54