Singer | 133of Islam, achieved most importantly with the conquest of Mecca and Medina in
the Hijaz but also with the conquest of Jerusalem and Hebron and the guarantee
of secure pilgrimage to all four places. By the eighteenth century, the frontiers
represented by the city began to take on a more familiar form of international
rivalry and confessional challenge, even if they did not demarcate real territorial
boundaries.
Claiming Space through New Institutions
Along with the inanimate signs, the city had meanwhile been infused with the
personnel and administrative forms of Ottoman rule. A sancakbey, or member
of the military-administrative corps, governed the subprovince of Jerusalem. A
garrison of Janissaries (infantry) was quartered with their own commander in
the newly repaired citadel at the western city wall. The Ottomans also appointed
a chief judge (kadi) from the H·anafī madhhab (school of Muslim law) officially
preeminent in the Ottoman Empire.
The officials in the city were joined by sipahis (cavalry officers) and other
military officials. Each was granted a tımar, or a right to collect specific local rev-
enues in remuneration for their services. Tı m a rs were apportioned on the basis of
population and revenue surveys, compiled by Ottoman officials who periodically
investigated countryside and town, and this information was recorded in special
survey registers, the tapu tahrir defterleri. Local people served as translators of
regional agrarian language and practice to the new administration. Ottoman ad-
ministrative language reiterated the ideology of a just and beneficent sultan who
protected his lands and subjects equally from outside attack and from internal
injustice. Official orders reiterated this idea to city dwellers, peasants and Bedou-
ins, and local Christians and Jews.
One additional instrument used to push at the internal frontiers in the city
was the Haseki Sultan imaret, a public kitchen built in the 1550s by Hurrem Sul-
tan, the powerful wife of Sultan Süleyman. It was part of a complex that included
a small mosque, caravansary, and rooms for travelers, a typical Ottoman instru-
ment of colonizat ion. La rger complexes were established in ma ny cit ies across t he
empire, confirming an Ottoman presence while providing necessary local social
and cultural services. The message embedded in the building and functions of
the public kitchen was one of imperial power and beneficence combined, echoing
Süleyman’s walls and water fountains.
The imaret broadcast the Ottoman message in several ways: The name of a
generous Ottoman patroness replaced that of the earlier Mamluk woman. Physi-
cally, it was huge, set on the steep slope of a street rising away from the valley
on the western side of the Haram. A view opened across to the mosques of the
Haram from the upper stories of the imaret. Spatially, it marked out the western