Jerusalem’s Ottoman Municipality: an Actor in the Slow Transition from Communal Charity to Social Welfare?

Abstract

As a privileged site for individual and collective acts of charity, Jerusalem witnessed an important increase in charity and poor relief institutions in the nineteenth century, many of them European-backed and related to missionary ambitions. Partly in response to the perceived threat of the latter, the municipality of Jerusalem gradually became a crucial actor in poor relief, in the framework of an evolving legal framework defining the social responsibilities of municipalities and the rights of citizens. Drawing on the archives of the municipality, as well as diaries and memoirs of Jerusalemites, this article examines this transformation particularly in the realms of social welfare and health services.