132 | Making Jerusalem Ottoman
benefits of Ottoman rule were announced at eye level, unavoidable by everyone
who passed through the city: Ottoman officials; Muslim dignitaries, merchants,
artisans, tradesmen, and pilgrims of all faiths; and Bedouins and peasants.
Repeated repairs to the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque on the Ha-
ram were a third aspect of the Ottoman conquest in Jerusalem. The first of these
was carried out between 1545 and 1566, when the exterior of the Dome of the Rock
was decorated with unmistakably Ottoman tiles. These were made according to
the innovations in ceramic style introduced in the Süleymaniye mosque com-
plex (built in Istanbul, 1550–1557), where red had been added to the familiar blue-
turquoise-white combination. Gülru Necipoğlu has persuasively argued that this
color scheme was meant to contrast emphatically with the blue-yellow-green pat-
tern of the Timurids that can be found in fifteenth-century Ottoman mosques
and, more importantly, that was still being used by the Safavids, the chief Muslim
rivals to the Ottomans in the sixteenth century. Similar changes were made to
Muslim monuments in Mecca and Medina as well. Moreover, it is not clear that
the tiles were installed as part of necessary refurbishing of the Dome of the Rock.
Rather, they served to cover the external mosaics dating to Umayyad times. The
restoration to the Dome of the Rock was thus another project in the conquest of
Jerusalem, this one proclaiming its message of Ottoman supremacy to all Mus-
lims who encountered their holiest site in the city.
Building repairs continued over the centuries of Ottoman rule, but the in-
tensity of new construction that characterized the initial period declined. This
perhaps reflected the consolidation of Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces, as
well as the stabilization of frontiers in all directions. The Dome of the Rock re-
mained a focus of what might be called competitive construction through the Ot-
toman (1516–1917), British Mandate (1917–1948), Jordanian (1948–1967), and Israeli
(1967 to present) eras. Major repairs were made several times in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, repairs that scholars have linked chiefly to two themes.
First, competition with foreign powers for control (even symbolic) over Jerusa-
lem became heightened as early as the eighteenth century. The foreign presence
was frequently emphasized by investments in restorations to the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher. Thus, the dialogue between the domes—the Dome of the Rock
and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher—continued without pause. One clear indi-
cation of Ottoman perceptions of Jerusalem’s importance was the relative cost of
the restorations on the Haram. Those of the early eighteenth century rivaled the
sums spent to rebuild the Bulgarian fortresses of Niş and Vidin, which were a far
more obvious part of the Ottoman defenses than Jerusalem at the time.
Thus, initially, the Ottomans had defined Jerusalem’s most obvious fron-
tiers—local security, Muslim ritual, and civilian survival—all of which had to
be secured after the conquest. They marked themselves with reference to their
predecessors and with reference to their new role as protectors of the holy places