Mavi Boncuk |
Ottoman Haifa : a history of four centuries under Turkish rule
by Carmel, Alex[1]
Publication date 2011
Publisher London ; New York : I. B. Tauris ; New York : Distributed in the United States by Palgrave Macmillan
xi, 212 p., [16] p. of plates : 23 cm
Under Ottoman rule, the city of Haifa, located at the southern point of the largest hay on the coast of Israel, was transformed from a scarcely-inhabited fortress town to a major modern city. Today the city is the third-largest in Israel and has over 250,000 inhabitants
This book details the history of Haifa under the Ottomans during the period 1516-1918. Alex Carmel uses a variety of original sourcesuincluding travel literature from the time u? to uncover the realities of life in Haifa under Ottoman rule and paints a vivid picture of the development of the city in this era. He shows that it experienced its first significant boom as early as 1761 under Dahar al-Umar and that after the establishment of the Wnrttemberg Templer Haifa Colony in 1868, the city began to flourish. The final chapter of the book shows how the city coped with the devastating effects of the Great War and the subsequent fall of the Ottoman Empire and establishment of the British Mandate
EXCERPT
Carmel's work has become the benchmark of the historiography of Israel's third largest city and remains to this day, the best-known and most highly-regarded survey of Haifa under Ottoman rule. This, the first English edition of Ottoman Haifa, will be essential reading for all historians of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. --Book Jacket
"Throughout the first century of Ottoman rule, the sources at our disposal only mention one ship that tried to anchor off Haifa, that of Rauwolf, and even that, as we have seen, was only there out of necessity. The anchorage, though the best along the coast, offered no protection from attacks launched from the land. Neither had Haifa, lowly as it was, anything to attract maritime traffic to its shore, for it was no more than a ruined, almost desolate, village. Without commerce and without attraction for Christian pilgrims from Europe, it offered no incentive for ships to visit. "
Contents
List of Illustrations vii Preface by Jakob Eisler ix
Introduction 1
1 Ancient Haifa After the Ottoman Conquest 7
2 The Foundation of New Haifa 33
3 Days of Awakening 61
4 Haifa Thrives 87
5 Haifa at the End of Turkish Rule 133
Postscript: Haifa During the First World War 159 Notes
167 Select Bibliography and Abbreviations
Index of Names 207 Index of Places 210
See also: The Templers: German settlers who left their mark on Palestine
When the German Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Jerusalem in 1898, the Templers turned out in their finest attire to cheer him, and their colony of Wilhelma, near Jaffa, was named in honour of King Wilhelm II of Wuerttemberg.
With the advent of World War I, many Templers went to fight for Germany, dying on the battlefields of Europe and in Palestine, which was eventually conquered by the British.
A memorial to 24 of their WWI dead stands in the Templers' well-tended cemetery, tucked away behind two large green gates on Emek Refaim street.
Germany's defeat was disastrous for the Templers. Their German loyalties meant they were now considered enemy aliens by the British, and in 1918 850 of them - most of their population - were sent to internment camps in Egypt and their properties and livestock seized.
[1] Alex Carmel (1931–2002) was an historian of the Middle East, specializing in nineteenth-century Palestine. Carmel's family left Germany after the pogrom of 1938, and he lived in Haifa since 1939 and later chose his name after Mount Carmel there. Carmel studied (Ph.D. 1971) and taught modern history and Oriental studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Carmel wrote several works on the history of Palestine in the Turkish period and examined the role of German and Swiss Christian settlers in 19th-century Palestine, such as the Temple Society.
He helped set up the University of Haifa, where he was a member of the Department of Studies of the Land of Israel in the Faculty of Human Sciences, and founded the “Gottlieb Schumacher Institute for Research on the Christian Contribution to the Reconstruction of Palestine in the 19th Century” in Haifa in 1987 after the German-American engineer and archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher.He joined the faculty of the University of Haifa in 1968 and was a visiting professor at the universities of Basle, Bern, Fribourg and the Free University of Berlin.
WORKS
- Die Siedlungen der württembergischen Templer in Palästina 1868–1918: ihre lokalpolitischen und internationalen Probleme. 2. Auflage. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-17-015361-7.
- Geschichte Haifas in der türkischen Zeit 1516-1918. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, ISBN 3-447-01636-1.
- Palästina-Chronik 1853 bis 1882. Vaas Verlag, Ulm 1978, ISBN 3-88360-001-6.
- Christen als Pioniere im heiligen Land. Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel 1981, ISBN 3-7245-0476-4.
- Palästina-Chronik 1883 bis 1914. Vaas Verlag, Ulm 1983.
- Alex Carmel, Hugo Schmid (Bearb.), Gustav Bauernfeind (Ill.): Der Orientmaler Gustav Bauernfeind. 1848–1904. Leben und Werk/The life and work of Gustav Bauernfeind, orientalist painter. Herausgegeben in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Gottlieb-Schumacher-Institut zur Erforschung des Christlichen Beitrages zum Wiederaufbau Palästinas im 19. Jahrhundert an der Universität Haifa, Israel. Hauswedell, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7762-0319-6.
- mit Ejal Jakob Eisler: Der Kaiser reist in Heilige Land. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart/ Berlin/ Köln 1999, ISBN 3-17-015920-8.