Lecture 18- 5/27/10

Today's lecture covered Jerusalem's rise throughout the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, eventually becoming the modern city it is today. Left without the protection of city walls, the Mamluk city was one in which religious significance reigned supreme. Lacking this protection, Jerusalem was no longer the administrative power seat it had been in years past, but rather left as a city whose importance was contained within the religious ideology. Within the Islamic and Jewish faiths (to a lesser extent, the Christian faith), the city came to become prominent in the spiritual realm, making up for its lack of administrative power with a connection to the religious imagination that made the holiness of the city unrestricted by its backwater role in the political and economic worlds.

During the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem began to rise from the ashes. With its city walls rebuilt under Suleiman the Magnificent, the city once again gained political power, at the same time continuing to play a prominent role in the religious ideology of the region. Once again blessed with an upswing in building volume, Ottoman Jerusalem was made into a city clearly worthy of its claim as the third holiest in the Islamic faith.

However, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, coupled with corruption amongst local politicians, brought Jerusalem once again to its knees. This time, however, the decline in population eventually came to an end with the beginnings of the Zionist movement. With aliyah to the city now firmly engrained in the religious and secular ideology of the Jewish ethnicity, a return of Jewish population to the west side of the city served to once again make Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city despite its being under Islamic rule.