128 | Making Jerusalem Ottoman
Numerous Christian sites continued to occupy prominent, mostly elevated
locations in the city: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Franciscan monastery
on Mt. Zion, and the churches on the Mount of Olives and in the Kidron Valley.
The Jews, meanwhile, maintained several synagogues in the southwest area of
the city, rituals at the western Wailing Wall (which was then very different from
the expansive plaza it occupies today), and a cemetery to the southeast of the
city walls. These buildings and sites were far less conspicuous vertically than the
Christian ones, yet they had some prominence across the horizontal landscape
of the city. In their daily activities moving through the streets of the city, people
were not only (perhaps not even primarily) aware of the buildings that stood
out above them in the city skyline. More intimately, the familiar structures were
those they met at eye level. Visibility must be considered on more than one plane,
at more than one altitude. Overhead, the competition emerged between Muslim
and Christian sites, while at ground level all three confessional groups, as well as
their constituent fractions, claimed attention. (See figure 9.2.)
Conquering Space with Buildings
For much of the sixteenth century, the Ottomans concentrated on asserting and
expanding the boundaries of their own sovereignty and Muslim predominance
Figure 9.2 View of the Old City, facing northeast, with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
(largest dome) to the left and the Dome of the Rock and the platform of the Haram al-Sharif
(the Noble Sanctuary) to the right. (Photograph by Nina Ergin.)