Singer | 135slopes of the Mount of Olives. The challenge here apparently had more of an eco-
nomic than a cultural or political motive, and with the adjustment of rents paid
by the Jews, their claim on the property was confirmed.
Additional claims and counterclaims on space by local Muslims, Christians,
and Jews continued to come before the chief kadi of Jerusalem. While the out-
comes of these competing claims varied, that they were adjudicated by the Otto-
man-appointed kadi made clear that the locus of local administrative authority
was ultimately Istanbul. This in itself confirmed the Ottoman conquest of the city
and the successful imposition of Ottoman sovereignty.
***In many ways, Jerusalem was unique, and thus the Ottoman challenge to and
conquest of its internal frontiers might be regarded in the same way. As the third-
holiest city of Islam, Jerusalem was the object of substantial investments by the
Ottomans, emblematic of their responsibility for and control of the sacred Mus-
lim sites. However, unlike Mecca and Medina, the city was shared sacred space,
and communities and pilgrims from three faiths resided and visited there. The
Ottomans recognized and protected the Christian and Jewish residents and pil-
grims yet made sure to assert the predominance of Muslim buildings, sights, and
sounds, as well as Ottoman officials and their deputies.
At the same time, the case of Jerusalem exemplifies practices and stages of
Ottoman conquest that became increasingly familiar throughout the empire
from the mid-fifteenth century. The occupation and conversion of non-Muslim
sacred or ritual sites was part of the usual pattern of conquest, as were the build-
ing of Sufi convents and the support of dervish communities. The Ottomans
added to, repaired, and took over local Muslim construction wherever they ex-
isted in virtually all the places they conquered. They strengthened fortifications,
established local Janissary garrisons, added social and cultural institutions, and
introduced Ottoman administrative forms and personnel as part of the process
of consolidating conquests, military and peaceful alike.
The combination of Ottoman investments in Jerusalem, a circumscribed
space otherwise of little note, reflected the spiritual importance of the city. To-
gether, the actions there chronicle the Ottoman consciousness of a complex col-
lection of internal frontiers that had to be breached and secured to establish firm
Ottoman rule. Ottoman actions in Jerusalem emphasized its affiliation to the
empire—the new layer of “Ottoman” added to the city’s long-standing identity
as “Muslim” and “sacred,” meanwhile aiming to create a deeper identification
of Jerusalem with the Ottomans in the eyes of local residents (urban and rural)
and foreigners. The Ottomans in the sixteenth century were uncontested as mas-
ters of the city. Yet they nonetheless worked steadily to insert themselves into its