Missing voices in rediscovering late Ottoman and early British Jerusalem

Abstract

non peer-reviewedLooking at the vast and conflicting literature about Jerusalem, it soon becomes evident that there are gaps in the historiographic output. The city’s transition from Ottoman to British rule is one such omission: very little attention has been paid to that formative period. What are the reasons for this lack of interest? The relative scarcity of works dealing with this era is due to a number of factors, including a lack of political interest in this period, and an arbitrary division of history that fails to take into account both the changes and continuities in this transition. However, in the last decade a number of works were produced that focus on this period, significantly including local voices often overlooked in favor of Western sources only. A discussion of how historical literature on turn-of-the-century Jerusalem is moving forward will afford the opportunity for a reassessment of the field