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3. Confessionalism and Public Space in Ottoman and Colonial Jerusalem
- Indiana University Press
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3 Confessionalism and Public Space in Ottoman and Colonial Jerusalem Salim Tamari For many observers, Jerusalem epitomizes a “city of identities”; an ultimate geography defined by sharp ethnic and religious divisions, where distinct social groups worship and live in separate quarters.1 While the city does contain a plethora of holy sites worshiped by the three Abrahamic traditions, civic identities and spatial logics have not always fallen into such broadly cast categories drawn around religious lines. An examination of the early twentieth century transition from the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate yields a complex local narrative of seemingly increased fluidity of agency and norms, and the simultaneous beginning of a profound redefinition and administration of space and society. As sovereignty arrangements shifted and the incoming British sought to legitimize and consolidate their governing authority, colonial administrators continued the process of institutional and secular modernization begun under the Ottomans. But they also took significant legal, physical, and conceptual steps which recast citizenship and the physical form of the city into larger and less flexible categories of religion and ethnicity. In particular, through physical planning and municipal regulations, the British Mandate authorities projected a modernist discourse that was heavily framed by orientalist and biblical narratives, leading to a process of what I call here confessionalization of public discourse. In contrast to the Ottomans, whose modernizing schemes focused on the provision of public institutions and secular civic spaces throughout the city, the British newcomers viewed the city as two separate and opposing pieces: the old city, home to key religious sites and monuments, and the modern perimeter. Because of its historic value, as seen through colonial eyes at least, a key objective for British administrators was to preserve the 60 Salim Tamari old city and its built environmental character in terms of its pre- Ottoman “biblical ” past. Physical manifestations of the old city’s religious and symbolic identity were the sole important characteristics to be conserved for visitors and pilgrims, while residents in both old and new parts of the city—and the logic of urban planning practice more generally—were themselves subject to divisions based on the newly asserted primacy of ethnic and religious groupings as a marker for Jerusalem ’s larger identity and importance as a world historic city. This chapter examines the colonial transition from Ottoman Empire to British colonial rule and how it manifests in the physical spaces of Jerusalem and the confessional identities of its residents. Drawing on biographic narratives of the city’s transformation during this crucial juncture, the analysis fleshes out details of urban planning practice and citizen response, supplementing a more institutional history of Jerusalem during the Mandate period. In contrast to traditional portrayals of transition in the city from Ottoman to Mandate administration, which suggest a clean rupture occurring in 1917, this chapter shows that the colonial process did not follow the guidelines of a single master plan, but one with multiple actors navigating through spaces of ambiguous negotiability. In making this argument, the chapter draws directly on primary resources dating to the transition period, particularly the diary of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, a local artist and civil servant. In addition to adding nuance and detail to the analysis, Wasif’s diary shows that he benefitted from a somewhat inadvertent proximity to key actors in the Mandate period, creating a view that is at once subaltern while maintaining proximity to the world of power- holders.2 The diary thus accommodates the subjective experience of an urban resident living through the transition as well as an interpretation of urban life as seen through the lenses of both the ruler and the ruled. Three Crucial Decades One often forgets that the British Mandate over Palestine occupied barely three decades of the country’s modern history. In scholarly literature and Palestinian popular imagination, the Mandate has acquired a colossal, if not mythical, impact on the formation of modern Palestinian society and perceptions of its destiny . A quick list of the Mandate’s oft- cited achievements (and disasters) drives home this point: the creation of modern institutions of government, including a new civil service and police force, and the centralization of the national bureaucracy in Jerusalem; the modernization of the land code and the taxation system; the creation of a legal corpus to replace (and supplement) the Ottoman code; the conduct of a national census (1922 and 1931), and the creation of the popu- [3.17.156.200] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:19 GMT) Confessionalism and Public...