Urban Governance Under the Ottomans by Ulrike Freitag Nora Lafi

Author:Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi [Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415725477
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2014-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Translocal activities

The authors of the Provincial Code of 1864, upon declaring that practically every settlement should have a belediye, had apparently only a vague idea of what this should entail. Ottoman law did not include a territorial definition of a city. Neither the instructions of 1867 nor the laws of 1871 and 1877 contained any provision regarding the borders of the municipality and they thus gave no answer to the question of where the powers of the councillors ended.

Jerusalem’s councillors took advantage of this legal situation. From early on, the activities of Jerusalem’s municipality went beyond the city walls and any built-up areas around it. This probably seemed quite natural to the actors involved, considering the city’s vital interests in the hinterland. For example, Jerusalem’s water supply depended on cisterns located near Bethlehem, the city imported grain from the Trans-Jordanian territories, and one of its most important pilgrimage shrines was that of Nabī Mūsā, located far away in the desert near Jericho (al-Arīḥa).

There are indications that, from 1895 onwards, the Municipal Council also supervised construction activities in the villages of Ramallah, Bayt Jala, and ‘Ayn Kārim. In 1899, this right was officially sanctioned by the government Land Registry Office (Defter-i Hakani Nezareti).118 Over the years, the municipality gained further powers, such as the organisation of village markets, overseeing the cleanliness of village streets, and the supervision of the harvest, even as far away as the Hebron region.119 More than that, it acquired a hierarchically superior position vis-à-vis the other municipalities in the district, as it was entitled to check their yearly budgets and report further up the hierarchical ladder to the Administrative Council and the Interior Ministry in Istanbul. Jerusalem’s municipal councillors were even involved in the creation of new municipalities in smaller towns, as in the cases of Bethlehem and Ramallah. In the 1890s, the municipality of Gaza received administrative assistance for the construction of a slaughterhouse. In addition, the district-wide introduction of fire-fighting services and extensive vaccination campaigns were coordinated by Jerusalem’s belediye.120

The expansion of Jerusalem’s administration into the countryside was paralleled by the expansion of the urban elites’ economic influence. A good example is Jerusalem’s last mayor, Ḥusayn al-Ḥusaynī, who, during his term in office, frequently travelled through the countryside to supervise the management of his large estates, including whole villages of several hundred inhabitants. On these occasions, official functions and private interests were closely intertwined.121 The same was true of Saʿīd al-Shawwā, who served as the mayor of Gaza and was one of the most important landowners in the area.122

Around 1910, the Jerusalem municipality’s powers of intervention had expanded to cover the entire district. Again, the institution of the belediye was very much a function of the local political structure, and reflected the centralisation of Jerusalem in Palestine. The activities of the Jerusalem municipality also reflected the ambitions of the governor and the city’s elite families. The latter increasingly emerged as the political elite of the whole of southern Palestine and showed they had ambitions to extend their activities to include the northern district of Nablus.

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