The Servants of Thālith-i Ḥaramullah: The Repair Activities of the Ottoman Sulṭāns in the Ḥaram of Jerusalem
The Servants of Thālith-i Ḥaramullah: The Repair Activities of the Ottoman Sulṭāns in the Ḥaram of Jerusalem

Summary/Abstract: Jerusalem is the third holy city of Muslims after Mecca and Medina, which are called Harameyn. For this reason, it is referred to as salis-i Haramullah in many sources. The verses in the Qur'an about the al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Prophet Muhammad's and other prophets' acquaintance with this city were influential in the recognition of Jerusalem as a holy city. After the city came under Muslim rule for the first time in 638, two magnificent buildings such as the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque were built by the Umayyads in the al-Haram al-Sharif area of the city. Later, especially during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, the city was equipped with Islamic buildings such as masjids, dervish lodges (zawiyahs), madrasahs and fountains. When the Ottoman Empire annexed the city from the Mamluks in 1517, the responsibility for the maintenance and repair of these buildings passed to the Ottoman sultans. Thanks to the reconstruction and renovation works initiated by Sultan Süleyman I for the first time in Jerusalem, many buildings in the city were overhauled. Similar to the repair work in this period, the repairs of 1780, 1812 and 1848 were also comprehensive repairs in which many buildings in Jerusalem's al-Haram al-Sharif were overhauled. It is seen that the Ottoman sultans acted with the understanding of Hâdimü'l-Haramayni'ş-Şerîfeyn in a total of twenty repair works in Jerusalem under Ottoman rule. With this understanding, the Ottoman sultans did not separate Jerusalem from the Haramayn and showed their ownership of the Muslims of Jerusalem by protecting the Islamic buildings in Jerusalem. The most important factor that mobilized the Ottoman sultans in this regard was the Jerusalem scholars. It has been determined that the scholars of Jerusalem wrote petitions from time to time to prevent any delay in the buildings in need of repair in the al-Haram al-Sharif region. In particular, the buildings that could not be repaired by the waqfs to which they were affiliated were repaired thanks to the reminders made by the Jerusalem scholars to the Ottoman sultans. Thus, the Islamic buildings in Jerusalem, one of the three holy places of Muslims, were able to survive for centuries and continue to serve Muslims.

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