314 | Zionism in the Era of Ottoman Brotherhood
as with Bedouins beyond the Jordan River, partnering in land purchases, con-
struction, agriculture, and trade. Along with his brother-in-law Shaul Yahuda,
in 1861 Yehoshuɇa purchased two dunams (approximately 1,900 square meters) of
vineyards in the village of Qalunya, two hours’ journey west of Jerusalem on the
Jerusalem–Jaffa road. Ye h o s huɇa also had a hand in early Jewish land purchases
outside the city walls in Jerusalem, buying modest shares in several new Jew-
ish compounds being built—Naতalat Shivɇa in the 1860s and Meah Shearim and
Even Israel in the 1870s.
At the time, Muslims, Christians, and Jews were beginning to leave the
crowded, relatively stifling walled city for new suburban compounds and neigh-
borhoods being constructed outside, a process that created new public spaces in
Jerusalem and transformed the city irrevocably. This expansion of residential
settlement outside the city walls, coinciding as it did with the arrival of thou-
sands of European foreign citizens, also meant that these extramuros compounds
and neighborhoods were more ethnoreligiously homogeneous than the markedly
heterogeneous intramuros city. In 1884, the family moved outside the city walls
to one of these new Jewish compounds. Rather than living surrounded by their
Arabic-speaking Muslim neighbors as they once were in Bab Hitta and al-Wad,
in Mazkeret Moshe the Yellins were for the first time in an exclusively Ashkenazi
Jewish—Yiddish- and, increasingly, Hebrew-speaking—enclave.
At around the same time, Yehoshuɇa translated his family and business con-
nections into political involvement when he was appointed as the British repre-
sentative to the provincial government’s commercial council, where he served for
three years. At some point in the late 1880s, Yehoshuɇa lost his British protection
and gained Ottoman nationality, and in 1897 he became the first Ashkenazi Jew
appointed to the Jerusalem municipality, where he served until 1901. During
his tenure on the city council, Yellin was actively involved in the work of several
committees, including overseeing municipal taxes and property appraisals. In
addition, he was tapped by the governor to serve on the Ziraat Bankası (Imperial
Agricultural Bank) council, where he helped oversee the bank’s management of
loans to villagers on the outskirts of Jerusalem. This expansion of local govern-
ment in Jerusalem was a by-product of empire-wide reforms in administration,
finance, public works, and education, all of which made a visible mark on the
city and its population. Furthermore, this inclusion of religious minorities and
foreign nationals like Yellin in urban governance was a central marker of an Ot-
toman civic cosmopolitanism.
The Next Generation
The educational and professional trajectory that Yehoshuɇa chose for his two
sons, David (b. 1864) and Shlomo (b. 1874), illustrates the different ways that they