134 | Making Jerusalem Ottoman
limits of the dense Muslim public building concentrated on and closer to the
Haram. The imaret was a major Muslim monument close to the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher. Christian rights to the church were confirmed at the time of
the Ottoman conquest, reaffirming the privilege granted during the first Mus-
lim conquest in the seventh century. After the Ottoman conquest, the church
attracted growing numbers of Christian pilgrims, to judge from the increasing
revenues recorded from entrance fees. The establishment of the imaret as a major
Ottoman institution close to the church reminded Christians again of where they
were and who was in control.
Ottoman beneficence was displayed daily to all those who passed by and
to those who entered the imaret. When this kitchen was founded in the mid-
sixteenth century, the city population was roughly 13,500. Thus, a facility feed-
ing 500 persons twice a day—and whose resources were reportedly strained by
the demands of large numbers of poor people—was a noticeable institution. It is
not clear whether the imaret fed only Muslims, since the endowment deed sim-
ply specified that the 400 people served in addition to guests and staff be from
among the “poor and needy and weak and destitute,” without defining them fur-
ther. Later accounts by Christian travelers recounted that Christians as well as
Muslims were given food.
The imaret also contributed to pushing against the boundaries of the Chris-
tian presence in another neighborhood of the city. The Franciscan monastery
building on Mt. Zion, said to mark the tomb of the prophet David (Nabi DaɆud)
just outside the southwest corner of the city, was claimed by Muslims even in
Mamluk times. For Christians, it marked the site of the Last Supper. Under Ot-
toman rule, the monks were squeezed into ever-decreasing spaces inside the
building and pushed out entirely by the mid-sixteenth century. The building was
then given to a local Sufi leader, Shaykh Ahmad al-Dajjani and his followers. The
shaykh and his followers were also listed among the food recipients in the kitch-
en’s accounts registers and allowed exceptionally to take food out of the imaret
to their own quarters. Together, the establishment of endowments for the imaret
and the Sufi community worked to enhance Muslim control over city space at the
expense of the Christian residents.
Jews, too, lost space to the Muslims during the early decades of Ottoman
rule. The Ramban synagogue shared a wall with the ɇUmari mosque, a situa-
tion that prompted disputes about the use of a third, adjoining building. The
local Muslims finally managed to have the synagogue closed on the grounds
that the noise of the Jews praying was disturbing to those who came to pray at
the mosque. As the populations of both communities grew steadily through the
mid-sixteenth century, it is possible that what had once been a tolerable if annoy-
ing noise had become an unbearable affront. Another challenge to Jewish space
sought unsuccessfully to claim the area occupied by the Jewish cemetery on the