Jerusalem under the Ottomans

For about four centuries Jerusalem was an Ottoman district (sancak), with one break, in 1831–1840. In that time the sultans had its wall rebuilt and brought water to its fountains, Hürrem Sultan’s endowed kitchen fed hundreds of guests and poor people, and its court kept registers that survive.

Who ran it, and for how long

Ottoman rule in Jerusalem is dated 1517–1917 in round years. TDV puts the start probably in October 1516, before Sultan Selim I reached the city on 29 December 1516, and the end in December 1917. Jerusalem was always a district; the province it answered to changed, and from 1872 it answered directly to the central government. The province ladder and the sultans’ works at the Haram al-Sharif (the walled sanctuary with the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock) are told in Ottoman Palestine.

“Between 1517 and 1917, for four full centuries, the lands of Jerusalem and Palestine were one of the most peaceful regions of the Ottoman state, and one of those that received the most service.”

Mehmet İpşirli, a study of Ottoman health services in Jerusalem, 2016, translated from Turkish. TDV adds that under Süleyman the Magnificent the city “lived the golden age of its history”.

From the 18th century, local families held the main offices in the city.

Muftis

The Ebü’l-Lutf family held the office of mufti (a legal scholar who issues rulings) most often.

Head of the Prophet’s descendants

The nakîbüleşraf was mostly chosen from the Hüseynî family.

Court officers and mayors

Senior court officers and the mayors came mostly from the Hâlidî family.

District governors

In the 18th century most governors of the district came from the local Tûkān and Nimr families.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem.

The wall and its gates

Süleyman I had the wall built in five years, 1536–1540, on foundations left from earlier times. It is more than 3 km long and more than 12 m high, with 34 towers and 7 gates.

The wall in four lines

• Five years: 1536–1540.
• Older foundations: the wall follows foundations left from earlier times.
• Dated gates: six of the seven carry a panel with the year of building.
• First step: the works began with the repair of the Dome of the Rock.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem.

Water: pools, pipes and fountains

Jerusalem had no clean water source of its own; its water came from rainwater gathered in pools made for the purpose. Süleyman had clean rainwater collected in three large pools beside the fort he built between Hebron and Jerusalem. Finely graded clay pipes (künk) carried it to the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and part went to fountains (çeşme) and public drinking fountains (sebil) in the city.

He also had the canals from Bethlehem and Hebron repaired, the pools that shared out the city’s water renewed and six fountains built, five of them inside the wall. The works then needed repair, and Ottoman documents record it:

26.01.1574

Selim II orders the fortress warden (dizdar) to repair the clay pipes of Süleyman’s water, damaged by attacks to steal the water or to water fields.

1585

Murad III sends a palace officer (saray çavuşu) to repair the ruined pools between Jerusalem and Hebron, with the money set aside for it, together with the Jerusalem judge (kadı).

1850

The water routes are repaired more thoroughly under Sultan Abdülmecid I, and the water again reaches the al-Aqsa Mosque and the city. The city’s notables send Istanbul a petition of thanks (mahzar).

1866

The outlets and routes of the Ayn-i Salih stream near Bethlehem are repaired.

1900

For the 25th year of Abdülhamid II’s reign, a fountain and a cistern (sarnıç) are built at Babü’l-Halil in Jerusalem.

1901

The routes of three springs that fed 18 fountains of Süleyman’s foundation were damaged. The repair is recorded at 600,000 kuruş.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem; TDV «Kudüs».

Endowments: how kitchens, schools and lodges were paid for

An endowment (Turkish vakıf, Arabic waqf) is property whose income pays for a named purpose. In Jerusalem such endowments paid for water works, schools, lodges and soup kitchens. The largest single case is the complex of Hürrem Sultan.

Hürrem Sultan’s complex, 1551

1. Founded 1551 Süleyman’s wife founded a complex of mosque, school (medrese), inn (han), hostel (ribat) and soup kitchen (imaret).
2. Paid by land She set aside many villages and wide lands in Syria and Palestine, mostly near Remle, to meet its costs.
3. Extended 1558 After her death Süleyman added the land of four villages near Sayda.
4. Meals The kitchen fed hundreds of guests, Sufis (sûfî, members of mystic orders), madrasa students and poor people.

The city’s madrasas lived on endowments. Many Sufi lodges (tekke) and cells (zâviye) stood near the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Damascus Gate, and the Mevlevi, Shâzilî, Rifâ‘î and Ahmedî orders had a part in the city’s religious and cultural life. From the 18th century the madrasas declined, mainly because the endowments behind them weakened; those lay not only in Jerusalem but also in Anatolia, Egypt and Syria.

The surre, a purse of money and gifts sent each year from Istanbul and Egypt, went to Mecca and Medina and also to Jerusalem and Hebron. It was Jerusalem’s most important source of income.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; TDV «Surre»; İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem.

Courts and their registers

A judge (kadı) or his deputy kept a register (sicil) of what came before the court. The registers record legal relations among people of every class, and historians use them as a main source for the social and local history of Ottoman towns.

Jerusalem’s series

626 registers, beginning in 1530 and unbroken apart from 1574–1576. 416 of them are Ottoman.

One register

Narrow and long, about 15 × 45 cm. On average about 100 pages and 400–500 entries.

What fills them

Judgments and contracts, estates and marriages, price schedules and appointments, guild and endowment entries, and copies of imperial orders (ferman). The sultan’s calligraphic emblem on such orders is the tughra.

An example

Jerusalem court register no. 70, pages 18–50, is cited for the 1558 addition of four villages to Hürrem Sultan’s endowment.

Libraries

The registers hold details of the city’s private libraries.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Şer‘iyye sicilleri»; TDV «Kudüs».

Communities side by side

Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in the city throughout Ottoman rule. Ottoman censuses of the 16th century counted them by household (hâne); the census of 1849 counted persons.

The Muslims included Arabs and people from Anatolia, North Africa, India and Central Asia; the North African group was large. The Christians were Syriac, Jacobite, Armenian, Greek, Melkite, Serb, Frank (Western European) and Georgian groups. The Jewish community grew in the 16th century because the Ottomans let some of the Jews expelled from Spain settle in Jerusalem, and it is recorded in three quarters from 1538. In 1525–26 the city had ten quarters.

A Polish traveller of 1617 noted 12 households of local Armenians, 20 to 30 Coptic households, a few Greeks and four monasteries: Armenian, Greek, Frank and Serb.

Britain opened the first consulate in 1838, and Prussia, France, Austria and Russia followed. Three church changes fall in the 1840s: an English-German Protestant bishopric in 1841, the move of the Greek Orthodox patriarch from Istanbul to Jerusalem in 1845 and the revival of the Latin patriarchate in 1847.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; TDV «Millet».

The 19th-century city

The state tried to limit European interventions and to modernise Jerusalem. It set up a municipality, city services and links to the coast.

1863

The municipality is formed, and a council to run the district. Its work: street cleaning, sewers, lighting, street layout, tree planting.

1865

The telegraph reaches the city.

1868

The Jerusalem–Jaffa road opens.

1872

The district becomes an independent mutasarrıflık, answering directly to the central government.

1886

A police force is formed.

1891

The municipal hospital opens. İpşirli dates its service from 1890.

1892

The Jerusalem–Jaffa railway opens.

1895

Vaccination rules are issued.

1900

A public drinking fountain near Jaffa Gate and a clock tower on the gate.

1. Clock towerTDV dates a clock tower on Jaffa Gate to 1900.
2. The gateYafa Kapısı in Turkish, Jaffa Gate: one of the seven gates of Süleyman’s wall.
3. The wallMore than 3 km long and more than 12 m high.
4. The squareHorse-drawn carriages and carts stand by the gate. The Jaffa road opened in 1868 and the railway in 1892.

From the second half of the century investment from abroad moved building outside the wall, and mission schools grew in number beside the state schools.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem.

People and trade

Jerusalem had little farmland and no raw material for industry, and it lay off the main trade routes. Its main income came from its religious standing: visits by pilgrims and travellers of three faiths gave work to crafts and trade.

In 1806 a German traveller counted at least 700 tradespeople and merchants in the city. Income came from taxes and from sales to visitors, especially of souvenirs. The most important source was the surre sent from Istanbul and Egypt; money that Jews abroad sent to their fellow believers in the city and the support of European kingdoms for Christians also counted.

From the 1850s the city grew, building work increased and unemployment fell. Soap-making declined in the second half of the century, and the making of souvenirs moved to Bethlehem.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs».

Hard years, one line each

• 1660s–1670s: disputes over rights at the holy places between the Latin church and the Greek and Armenian churches led to bloody clashes, mainly between Latin and Greek Orthodox Christians.
• 1702–1705: a governor raised taxes, a revolt followed, and the governor of Damascus put it down by force in 1705.
• 1825–1826: villages near the city rose against conscription and taxes and took the city; calm returned in late 1826.
• 1834–1838: uprisings centred on the city during Egyptian rule.
• 1865, 1890, 1902: cholera epidemics, which in Jerusalem cost many lives.
• May 1915: a soldier’s diary mentions locust swarms on 20.05.1915 and, on 24.05.1915, four typhus cases in one day in the Bab Hutta quarter.

Süleyman’s wall is still standing, and the tiles that frame the upper windows of the Dome of the Rock belong to his time.

Sources, checked 03.11.2026: TDV «Kudüs»; TDV «Kubbetü’s-sahre»; İpşirli, Ottoman health services in Jerusalem; University of Arizona teaching set on the First World War.

Sources and limits

The story stops in December 1917. The photographs are from Wikimedia Commons, each with its author, date, licence and file page.

1. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (the Turkish Religious Foundation’s Islamic Encyclopaedia), entry «Kudüs», the Ottoman-period section — checked 03.11.2026
2. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry «Kubbetü’s-sahre» (the Dome of the Rock) — checked 03.11.2026
3. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry «Millet», the part on the Ottoman state — checked 03.11.2026
4. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry «Surre» — checked 03.11.2026
5. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entry «Şer‘iyye sicilleri» (court registers) — checked 03.11.2026
6. Mehmet İpşirli, «Osmanlı’nın Kudüs’e sağlık alanında hizmetleri» (Ottoman health services in Jerusalem), pages 80–85, summer 2016 issue, PDF on the site of Istanbul Medipol University — checked 03.11.2026
7. University of Arizona Center for Middle Eastern Studies, teaching set «Documents on the Effects of WWI on Ottoman Civilians», quoting a soldier’s diary (University of California Press, 2011) — checked 03.11.2026