Palestine · A closer look
1516
The Ottomans arrive
Selim I defeated the Mamluks at Marj Dabiq and Palestine passed to the Ottoman Empire, where it stayed for four hundred years. His son Suleiman rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem between 1537 and 1541. They are the walls that stand today.
Part of a wider empire
Ottoman conquest placed Palestine within a much larger imperial system centred on Istanbul. Local elites remained important intermediaries in taxation and administration, while religious and charitable institutions connected provincial life to imperial patronage. The four centuries that followed were not a single unchanging arrangement. The balance between governors, local families and central government shifted, as did the administrative districts through which the region was governed.
Building under Suleiman
Suleiman's reign brought major architectural patronage across the Ottoman world. In Jerusalem, restoration included the Dome of the Rock's exterior tiles, expressing imperial attention to a holy city far from the capital. The surviving walls and religious monuments should be read as part of that wider programme. Their purpose combined practical repair, the provision of public amenities and a visible assertion of the ruler's legitimacy.
Local life and political change
The Ottoman centuries included urban commerce, farming communities, religious networks and, later, new forms of political participation. By the early twentieth century, representatives from Palestinian towns sat in the Ottoman parliament, while newspapers debated reform and competing political futures. This makes the period more than a long prelude to British rule. It provided institutions and public debates through which people responded to the upheavals of the First World War.