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Dossier : Fabriques de la tradition

Ottoman Spatial Organization of the pre-modern City of Medina

L'organisation spatiale ottomane de la ville de Médine au début des temps modernes
Atef Alshehri

Résumés

Étude du développement urbain prémoderne de Médine, ville alors sous administration ottomane des provinces arabes. C’est plus particulièrement l’organisation spatiale de la ville qui est examinée ici, à l’appui de sources variées tant visuelles que topographiques ou historiques. Malgré son éloignement du lieu d’exercice du pouvoir politique, Médine a conservé pour la structure étatique ottomane une importance réelle, tout autant que les villes les plus importantes des provinces. Cela est évident au travers du rôle joué par le pouvoir dans la façon de mettre en scène sa propre image à Médine en introduisant des caractères d’urbanisation typiquement ottomans. Toutefois, l’importance spirituelle de la ville de Médine a, à son tour, façonné les méthodes d’organisation de l’espace en les conciliant avec les principes religieux et avec le problème délicat des lieux saints. À la fin de l’époque ottomane, le caractère urbain et la forme de la ville de Médine montraient une fusion entre innovations spatiales et tradition solidement ancrée, ce qui a forgé une image historique durable de la ville.

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Entrées d’index

Index géographique :

Asie, Moyen-Orient, Arabie Saoudite, Médine

Index chronologique :

XXe siècle
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Texte intégral

The author would like to thank the ABE journal editors, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank Mr Mehmet Tütüncü for providing some of the images contained in this article.

  • 1 André Raymond, “Urban Life and Middle Eastern Cities: The Traditional Arab City,” in Youssef M. Ch (...)

1The urban growth of the pre-modern city of Medina operated within the larger context of the Arab provinces, which entered into the Ottoman realm by the early sixteenth century. Medina itself, as part of the Hijaz in western Arabia, had been administered via Egypt during the previous Mamluk period, and this arrangement continued under the Ottomans. Despite its remoteness from the Ottoman center, Medina as a sacred precinct possessed significant and steady symbolic value for the Ottoman legitimization of political authority. This fact left an unmistakable mark on the development of material and non-material culture of Medina for centuries to come.1

  • 2 Ottoman political history studies were foundational for later urban studies; see, for example, Pet (...)
  • 3 André Raymond, Grandes villes arabes à l’époque ottomane, Paris: Sindbad, 1985 (Bibliothèque arabe (...)
  • 4 See, for example, Stefan Weber, Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation (1808-1918), (...)

2Urban studies of the Arab provinces during the Ottoman period, which went beyond the political history of the Ottoman imperial center, have expanded in the past few decades.2 The erudite work of André Raymond on several major Arab cities of the Ottoman era is ground-breaking, especially for its comprehensive consideration of the built environment in relation to socio-economic determinants.3 This alternative look from the provinces of the Ottoman Empire is the basis of an emerging breed of nuanced urban studies with intimate insight into the intricacies of material and non-material culture of major Arab cities under the Ottoman rule.4

  • 5 Robert Hillenbrand, “Traditional Architecture in the Arabian Peninsula,” Bulletin (British Society (...)
  • 6 Hasan Kayali, “The Ottoman Experience of World War I: Historiographical Problems and Trends,” The (...)
  • 7 Ehud R. Toledano, “The Arabic-Speaking World in the Ottoman Period,” in Christine Woodhead (ed.), (...)
  • 8 William L. Ochsenwald, “Ottoman Arabia and the Holy Hijaz, 1516-1918,” Journal of Global Initiativ (...)

3Nevertheless, the field is still uneven: other cities, not to mention rural and tribal areas, such as those of the Arabian Peninsula, considered to be the backwaters of the major Arab provinces—or “terrae incognitae” in the words of Robert Hillenbrand,—are disproportionally underrepresented.5 Arab and Turkish historical narratives of the modern Middle East further exacerbated this research lacuna by losing perspective of the pre-existing context.6 The ensuing research obstacles could not be enumerated here, but modern political borders, nationalist agendas, and linguistic divide between Arabic and Turkish sources further obliterated historical urban networks which were once an interrelated ensemble.7 For the Arabian peninsula in particular, difficulty of access is another persistent obstacle, especially to conduct archaeological or field work, although in recent years, access has become relatively easier.8

  • 9 Jean Sauvaget, La Mosquée Omeyyade de Médine, Paris: Vanoest, 1947.
  • 10 Rifaat Ali Abou-el-Haj, “The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule,” (...)
  • 11 See M. J. L. Young, “In Praise of the City of the Prophet: The ‘Kitāb Al-Jawharat Al-Thamīnah Fī M (...)

4Contemporaneous writing from the Ottoman period on the urban history of Medina seems to have fallen behind shrouds of obscurity. The stratigraphy of Medina urban history sources compiled by Sauvaget in 1947 shows decreasing writing output after the seminal work of the late Mamluk scholar al-Samhūdī (died 1506 AD).9 This obscurity, however, is probably the result of modern nationalist Arab historiography, which dismissed the Ottoman period as a phase of complete intellectual and linguistic decay.10 This period was cast as unworthy of consideration, despite indications that Medina scholarly institutions increasingly flourished during the same period. Nevertheless, studies on homegrown urban history of Medina during the Ottoman period have appeared sporadically in specialist literature over the past few decades.11 In other cognate genres, such as travel writings, descriptions of Medina were recorded, some by European travelers, including visual representations in the later Ottoman period.

  • 12 The catalogue was published as a series: Al-Madīnah Al-Munawwarah fī Al-Wathāʼiq Al-ʿuthmānīyah (3 (...)

5Apart from attested textual sources, the current state of affairs in Medina presents serious challenges to researchers in urban history. Chances for fruitful autoptic investigation are dwindling day by day, due to the rapid urbanization and the annihilation of most of the historic urban fabric except for a few faint remains. On the other hand, for the Ottoman period in particular, local primary sources exist in the form of tens of thousands of Ottoman chancery and court records. However, only a very small fraction of these documents has been catalogued. The vast majority remain largely unexplored, while court records are totally inaccessible for researchers. This untapped resource is likely to demonstrate a more vivid picture of the Ottoman administration of Medina on a wide variety of subjects ranging from the Ottoman imperial household endowments to complaints about street beggars.12

Integrating Medina into the empire

  • 13 Nikolai Ivanov, al-fat al-ʿuthmānī lil- aqār al-ʿarabiyyah 15161574, Yusuf ʿAtallah, trans., B (...)
  • 14 David Ayalon, “The End of the Mamlūk Sultanate: Why did the Ottomans Spare the Mamlūks of Egypt an (...)
  • 15 Alan Mikhail and Christine M. Philliou, “The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn,” Comparative St (...)

6The Ottoman ambition to expand southward crystalized after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 AD.13 At that point, the Ottomans rose to prominence from mere fighters on the peripheries of the Muslim lands to a growing empire in the middle of Eurasia. Toppling the Byzantine Empire and expanding into Europe secured for the Ottomans the moral and political position as the leading Muslim power of the time, further demoting an already fading Mamluk authority.14 Economically, their proliferation into the southern and eastern Mediterranean guaranteed them access to the transit trade heartland of the historic Middle East.15 Politically, presiding over the core territory of the Abbasid caliphate including the holy cities of Arabia would establish the Ottoman authority as the undisputed leader of the Muslim world.

  • 16 Bruce Masters, “Institutions of Ottoman Rule,” The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918: A Socia (...)
  • 17 Nikolai Ivanov, al-fat al-ʿuthmānī lil- aqār al-ʿarabiyyah 15161574, op. cit. (note 13), p. 93 (...)
  • 18 Esther Peskes, “Western Arabia and Yemen (Fifth/Eleventh Century to the Ottoman Conquest),” in Mar (...)
  • 19 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, London: Tauris, 199 (...)

7Surely, in 1517 AD, after a decisive victory over the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt, Sultan Selim I assumed the title of the “Servitor of the Two Holy Shrines.”16 Sharif Barakat of Makkah swiftly embraced the new Ottoman regime, which was perceived as a relief from the continuous setbacks suffered by the Mamluks in protecting pilgrimage routes.17 In addition, the Sharif saw this as an opportunity to reinforce his hold on power and neutralize his rivals from other branches of the ashraf of Hijaz (singular, sharif, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad) especially those in Medina.18 More critically, the holy cities of Makkah and Medina were heavily dependent on economic aid and military protection coming from Egypt, especially at a time when Portuguese maritime attacks were intensifying in the Red Sea.19

  • 20 Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, op. cit. (note 7), p. 228.
  • 21 Michael Winter, “Ottoman Egypt, 1525–1609,” in Martin W. Daly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egyp (...)
  • 22 Benjamin Claude Brower, “The Hajj by Land,” in Eric Tagliacozzo and Shawkat M. Toorawa (eds.), The (...)
  • 23 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, op. cit. (note 19), (...)
  • 24 Stanford Jay Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, (...)

8Spatially, the Ottoman annexation of the Arab provinces from Iraq to North Africa constituted a vast network of interconnected urban centers. This situation was unprecedented on such a scale since the early Abbasid Empire. Externally, the Arab provinces operated within the wider Ottoman Empire context, which provided access to faraway lands, communities, and resources.20 Keeping a steady flow of pilgrimage caravans from Cairo and Damascus was as important for Egypt and Syria as it was for the holy cities in Arabia. This was not only for the obvious religious reasons, but also for the economic benefits.21 Cairo and Damascus operated as hubs for pilgrims and traders coming from the farther frontiers of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia to join the annual caravans departing for Medina then Makkah.22 These caravans were under the Ottoman military protection which was financed by the provincial budget of Egypt and Syria.23 Ottoman military corps from Syria and Egypt were rotated on a yearly basis to protect roadside stations along the pilgrimage routes which converged in Medina.24

  • 25 Thomas Philipp, “Bilād al-Šām in the Modern Period: Integration into the Ottoman Empire and New Re (...)

9Ottoman expansion into the Arab provinces coincided with major changes in global trade patterns, when the historical link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean shifted from the overland routes of the Middle East to the newly discovered maritime routes around Africa and the Indian Ocean.25 This strategic economic shift made the annual pilgrimage, and the nexus of trade and commercial activities related to it, all more important as an economic stimulus.

  • 26 Kamal S. Salibi, “Middle Eastern Parallels: Syria-Iraq-Arabia in Ottoman Times,” Middle Eastern St (...)

10Politically, the annual march of the heavily guarded pilgrimage caravans from Egypt and Syria represented a repeated Ottoman show of power, and an ‘annual reconquest’ of the holy cities.26 This periodic military presence somehow made up for the remoteness of the holy cities from the Ottoman seat of power in Istanbul. Maintaining protected and steady links between Medina and the Arab provinces was an important instrument of Ottoman exertion of political power. Any disruption to this link, at any point in time, also constituted a threat to the Ottoman presence in Arabia. The severity of this threat was proven in 1805, when the Wahhabis succeeded in taking over Medina, and in 1916, when the Sharif of Makkah rebelled, initiating the final Ottoman exodus from Arabia.

  • 27 Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Ann Arbor, MI: (...)
  • 28 Frederick E. Anscombe, “Islam and the Age of Ottoman Reform,” Past & Present, no. 208, 2010, p. 15 (...)
  • 29 Naim R. Farooqi, “Moguls, Ottomans, and Pilgrims: Protecting the Routes to Mecca in the Sixteenth (...)

11Nevertheless, to be understood properly, Ottoman patronage of Medina should not be reduced to the mere political or economic facts. In the context of the sixteenth century European imperial competition for global domination, the Ottomans’ status as the leading Muslim sovereign required mobilizing all the resources at hand, including religious sentiment.27 This sentiment is what gave them the impetus to go further afield to secure pilgrimage access by both land and sea, even if they also reaped earthly gains from their efforts.28 They were called upon by Muslim rulers from places as far as India and Sumatra to send naval forces to deter Portuguese attacks on pilgrims ships sailing in the Indian Ocean or entering the Red Sea.29 In essence, religious ideology became intertwined with the Ottoman perception of their own political legitimacy and identity inside the empire and abroad.

  • 30 The Imperial surre was an annual gift in cash and kind from the Ottoman sultan and the members of (...)
  • 31 Syed Tanvir Wasti, “The Ottoman Ceremony of the Royal Purse,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 41, no. (...)

12This same devotional sentiment can be sensed much closer to home, during the ceremony of dispatching the imperial purse surre caravan from Istanbul.30 After leaving the palace and crossing the Bosphorus, the caravan would land at the ‘haram’ pier—named in reference to the holy cities of Makkah and Medina—on the Asian side of Istanbul. From there, the caravan would embark on an uninterrupted land journey from Istanbul, via Damascus, all the way to Medina.31 The metaphoric designation of ‘haram’ at Istanbul’s end of the long stretch to the sacred precinct in Medina can be interpreted as a supra-spatial connection between the holy cities and the shorelines of Istanbul, transcending spatial and temporal realities, even if only metaphorically.

13Ultimately, Medina was the physical place to manifest this devotional sentiment most explicitly. It was a symbolic testimony to the Ottoman sultan, as the “Servitor of the Two Holy Shrines,” to have a territorial connection to the Prophet’s legacy and final resting place. Medina represented this kind of connection, as the seat of the first four “rightly-guided’ caliphs, whose names were inscribed on the medallions displayed in the prayer halls of all major Ottoman mosques of Istanbul. This continuous chain of caliphs, which started in Medina, continued until it reached the Ottoman sultans.

Creating an urban structure for Ottoman Medina

14To a large extent, the Ottoman patronage of Medina shaped the urban character by which it was known until the modern period. The city also inherited a long period of Mamluk administration, the end of which was characterized by severe economic decline. The deteriorating urban condition of Medina, however, was not exclusively a Mamluk phenomenon. Its roots may have started as early as the eighth century, with the shift of Islamic political power outside of Arabia to the newly conquered lands of Iraq and Syria. Since then, Medina had continued to be a shrine but ceased to be a political capital. The nature of the ensuing decline can be extrapolated from written descriptions, such as that of al-Samhūdi and some of his predecessors.

  • 32 ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh Al-Samhūdī, Qāsim al-Sāmarrā’ī (eds.), Wafāʼ al-Wafā bi-Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafá, (...)

15Al-Samhūdi’s urban topography of Medina, known in short as al-Wafā, is distinctive for its thoroughness and depth, and for its acceptance as the ultimate description of the Prophet’s city.32 Its timing is also significant as it dates from a turning point in the history of the city, towards the end of the Mamluk period. At the same time, the depth and breadth of the written depictions allude to a personal quest by al-Samhūdi to reconstruct a nostalgic image of the Prophetic city “as it should have been” rather than how it appeared before his eyes.

  • 33 Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Maarī, al-Taʿrīf bi-mā ānasat al-Hijrah min Maʿālim Dār al-Hijrah, Muḥammad (...)
  • 34 Caesar Farah, “Ibn-al-Najjār: A Neglected Arabic Historian,” Journal of the American Oriental Soci (...)
  • 35 Ibn al-Najjār, al-Durrah al-Thamīnah fī Akhbār al-Madīnah, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Shukr (ed.), Medina: Marka (...)

16The overtones of al-Samhūdi’s words voice a sense of loss of the Prophet’s city, which also resonates in the writings of several previous urban historians. Al-Maṭarī (died 1363 AD) went further to declare the total loss of Medina landmarks in his work al-taʿrīf bi-mā ānsat al-hijrah min maʿālim dār al-hijrah, which could be translated as: “Explanation of what negligence consigned to oblivion, of the landmarks of the city of immigration,” a title which explicitly declared the author’s outright condemnation of the dire state of the city’s urban fabric.33 Just a few decades before the fall of Baghdad, Ibn al-Najjār (died 1245 AD) reported in his treatise on Medina that it was in a state of unprecedented urban decay, and was liable to undergo the loss of both its built heritage and sacral memory.34 He cited this particular risk as his primary motivation for documenting the city before it disappeared completely.35

  • 36 Donald Whitcomb, “Out of Arabia: Early Islamic Aqaba in its Regional Context,” in Roland-Pierre Ga (...)

17Unsurprisingly, despite the intervening period of physical decline, the symbolic significance of Medina to political legitimacy had always been, a persistent concern in the eras prior to the Ottomans. This can be interpreted from a tenth-century map attributed to al-Balkhī school of geography in Abbasid Baghdad, depicting Medina’s administrative and economic ties with several important cities of the region (fig. 1). In particular, Medina is linked directly by postal dispatch to the Abbasid Caliphal centers of both Baghdad and al-Raqqa.36 Maintaining a direct connection with Medina, the historic source of political legitimacy, was clear testimony to the sovereign’s hold on power.

Figure 1: Medina in its regional context according to the Al-Balkhī school of land mapping in Baghdad, tenth century.

Figure 1: Medina in its regional context according to the Al-Balkhī school of land mapping in Baghdad, tenth century.

Source: Donald Whitcomb, “Out of Arabia: Early Islamic Aqaba in Its Regional Context,” in Roland-Pierre Gayraud(ed.), Colloque international d'archéologie islamique, Cairo: IFAO, 1998, p. 403-418.

  • 37 Halil Inalcik, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica, no. 2, 1954, p. 103-129. URL: https (...)
  • 38 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, op. cit. (note 1 (...)

18Halil Inalcik has proposed a now widely accepted view of the Ottoman method of conquest as a two-stage, gradual process. It essentially holds true for Medina, but with some modifications.37 Initially, the Ottomans sought to maintain the status quo of the existing regime in Medina by preserving the expedient policies of their previous Mamluk adversaries, including keeping Medina endowments in Egypt.38 This could be summed up in the words of Sultan Selim I to his newly appointed governor of Egypt:

  • 39 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 10. Mısır, Sudan, Habes̨, Istanbul: Ikdam Matbaası, 1938, p. 125, quot (...)

“l hope to see you serve the Prophet well. I have no desire for anything from Egypt. I have conquered only the title 'the servant of the holy cities' and I have left in trust ‘waqf’ to His Excellency the Prophet all the revenues of Egypt. Bear witness that from now on you are the agent of the ‘waqf’ of God, so serve it well.”39

  • 40 Stanford Jay Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, (...)

19This endowment covered the costs of the pilgrimage caravan from Cairo which stopped in Medina. It also provided cash and supplies to support the institutions, residents, and holy places in the city.40

20The second stage, of eliminating local ruling dynasty and replacing it with direct Ottoman control, never actually took place in the Hijaz. The local ashraf dynasty, with their lineage traced to the Prophet, were an irreplaceable asset to bolstering Ottoman legitimacy in the holy cities. Until the Ottoman takeover in 1517, Makkah and Medina were ruled separately by two different branches of the ashraf. However, the Sharif of Makkah quickly moved to declare his allegiance to Sultan Selim I, thereby guaranteeing that his branch of the dynasty would rule over all of the Hijaz. In practice, it demoted the rival branch of the dynasty in Medina, which became effectively subordinate to Makkah.

  • 41 Dina Khoury, “The Ottoman Centre Versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiograph (...)
  • 42 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Ottoman Empire and the World around It, London: I. B. Tauris, 2004 (Library of (...)

21As was probably the case with the provincial elites in other Arab provinces, the relationship between the Ottoman authority and the local ashraf dynasty in the Hijaz was cautious at best.41 A discontented Sharif could mobilize the Arab tribes of the Hijaz against the Ottoman authority. Insurrections occasionally broke out, as Evliya Çelebi once witnessed in the seventeenth century.42 To avoid political unrest, the central Ottoman authority left the choice of the reigning Sharif to members of the dynasty. The chosen candidate was endorsed by an imperial decree and usually confirmed during the reception of the annual pilgrimage caravan from Istanbul.

  • 43 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” New (...)
  • 44 Norman Itzkowitz, “Eighteenth Century Ottoman Realities,” Studia Islamica, vol. 16, 1962, p. 73-94

22On the other hand, Ottoman authority counterbalanced the Sharif’s power by several means, including stationing an Ottoman governor in Jeddah who also controlled the military garrison. However, this governor split revenues from Jeddah port customs duties with the Sharif.43 The Ottomans also deployed an array of their own cadre of military, bureaucratic and religious personnel (representing the seyfiyye, kalemiyye and ilmiyye branches of the Ottoman government regime) to fill the various official posts in the city such as the garrison commander, chief judge, and sheikh al-haram, the overseer of the Prophet’s Mosque, who was usually a palace eunuch from Istanbul.44

  • 45 William L. Ochsenwald, “Ottoman Subsidies to the Hijaz, 1877-1886,” International Journal of Middl (...)

23Ottoman reliance on a calculated balance of shared power with the Sharif might explain the absence of the typical Ottoman instruments of direct control, such as tax-farming and the timar systems, which were never actually applied in the Hijaz. Moreover, Medina, and the Hijaz in general, did not possess a strong economic or agricultural base. The territory was far from the major trade arteries, and did not provide much income from taxation either.45 As a result, Medina depended on the income provided by the Ottoman subsidies, a form of welfare which could be thought of as an alternative, but indirect, instrument of control.

  • 46 Justin A. McCarthy, “Ottoman Sources on Arabian Population,” in Abdelgadir Abdalla, Sami Al-Sakkar(...)
  • 47 Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, Madison, WI (...)
  • 48 John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia: Comprehending an Account of Those Territories in Hedjaz (...)
  • 49 William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: the Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1 (...)

24Ottoman population statistics for the Hijaz are sparse, due to absence of census data.46 Unlike other Arab provinces, Hijaz was exempt from taxation and military conscription, which meant there was no practical reason to conduct a comprehensive census.47 Nevertheless, circumstantial evidence and traveler reports point to a population increase, especially over the later Ottoman period. The security provided to pilgrimage routes encouraged immigration, both internal from Arabia and external from other Arab provinces and beyond. Other sources of population increase included Ottoman military, religious, and governmental functionaries, in addition to religious education seekers in many of the waqf madrasas of Medina. By the year 1853 AD, Medina had about 20,000 inhabitants according to contemporaneous traveler accounts.48 This figure nearly doubled by the early 1900s.49

  • 50 Michael Christopher Low, “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of (...)
  • 51 Mostafa Minawi, “Beyond Rhetoric: Reassessing Bedouin-Ottoman Relations Along the Route of the Hij (...)
  • 52 Nile Green, “The Hajj as Its Own Undoing: Infrastructure and Integration on the Muslim Journey to (...)

25The exclusion of the Hijaz from typical administrative regimes, such as census, taxation, and conscription, points to the fact that it was not fully integrated into the Ottoman system. In particular, integrating population from the Hijaz tribal hinterland into urban life does not seem to have been a serious prospect for the Ottoman administration. By the end of the nineteenth century, the official Ottoman rhetoric had already adopted a colonial view of the nomadic population in Arabia, who were perceived as a lingering political threat.50 It is important to note that self-serving provincial lords participated in reinforcing this negative view of their own countrymen, who were sometimes manipulated to serve local rulers’ political agendas, fighting rival lords or the Ottoman state itself.51 Whenever Ottoman subsidies were held back, Bedouins resorted to escalating highway raids on pilgrimage caravans, most severely in Arabia’s segment of the journey.52

  • 53 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” op. (...)
  • 54 Bernard Haykel, “Western Arabia and Yemen During the Ottoman Period,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 446.

26Even earlier traveler reports pointed to restrictions on the local population by the Ottoman authority. The seventeenth century Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi, in his travel memoirs, or Seyahatname, observed that Bedouins were not allowed to settle in Medina.53 Travelers’ accounts also recorded the noticeable presence of a non-Arab population. However, their residency status is hard to ascertain, especially if these reports were made around the pilgrimage season. On occasions, communities from outside the dominion of the Ottoman Empire were subject to the turbulence of politics. For instance, in 1633 AD, Persian subjects were banned from entering Medina by Sultan Murad iv, due to the Ottoman war with the Safavids.54

  • 55 C. A. Bayly, “The Consolidation and Failure of the East India Company’s State, 1818–57,” in The Ne (...)
  • 56 Anam elkabashi, “ᵓAfāriqah fī Al-Madīnah,” Dirāsāt Afrīqīyyah, vol. 23, no. 38, 2007, p. 105-117.

27Historically, Medina was always a destination for immigration, as is explicit in one of its names, dār al-hijrah, or “house of immigration.” The phenomenon materialized in the formation of a distinct social class called mujāwirn, travelers who chose to settle in Medina for scholarly and spiritual purposes. During the Ottoman period, Medina received waves of Muslim population from the frontiers of the empire and elsewhere during pilgrimage seasons, but especially at times of political and military conflicts. Resistance to British occupation of India, for instance, forced some Indian Muslims to set sail for Medina, especially after the Indian rebellion of 1857.55 After the French occupation of North Africa, immigrants from the Greater Maghreb increased, as did those from central Asia as a result of the Ottoman-Russian wars. Absence of census data, however, obscured the details of immigrant numbers and their original domicile. Imperial surre registers indicate numbers and origins of immigrant recipients of the annual Imperial gifts, but these records remain partial accounts and thus unrepresentative of the actual situation.56

The architectural and urban character of Ottoman Medina

  • 57 Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, op. cit. (note 7), p. 230.
  • 58 The Prophet’s Mosque is the first purpose-built Mosque in Islam, but Qubā Mosque takes precedence (...)

28Generally, the spatial footprint of Ottoman Medina increased with the development of new neighborhoods, institutions, and infrastructure within and around the city.57 Spiritual significance played a fundamental role in the city’s development, especially if explicit Prophetic sanctions were to be observed. It was up to the sultan to make decisions related to important religious sites, as attested by an eight-meter scroll dating from around 1540 AD, conserved at the Topkapi Palace Museum Archive in Istanbul (fig. 2). It appears to have been addressed to Sultan Süleyman I by several notables from Medina, and demonstrates his patronage of the city at the height of the Ottoman reign. The section shown here contains visual representations of the three Medina landmarks that are most revered for their direct connection to the life of Prophet Mohammed. They are ranked by religious importance, with the Qubā Mosque at the top, the Prophet’s Mosque in the middle, and the Baqīʿ cemetery at the bottom.58

Figure 2: Sections of the Sultan Süleyman Tesekkurname scroll.

Figure 2: Sections of the Sultan Süleyman Tesekkurname scroll.

Source: Istanbul (Turkey), Topkapi Palace Museum Archive.

  • 59 Sultan Süleyman Teşekkürname, circa 1540 AD, MS# E 7750, Topkapi Palace Museum Archives, Istanbul.

29The visual depictions are accompanied by a body of text evoking prose and poetry in honor of Medina and its association with the life of Prophet Mohammed. The text also includes prayers for the sultan in appreciation of his patronage, offered from inside the Prophet’s mausoleum chamber, the most spiritually significant part of the Prophet’s Mosque. The scroll concludes with signatures and personal prayers by several scholars and notables from Medina.59 The form and content of this visual commemoration reflects the symbolic value attached to Medina and its patronage by the highest Ottoman authority.

  • 60 Guy Burak, “Between Istanbul and Gujarat: Descriptions of Mecca in the Sixteenth-Century Indian Oc (...)
  • 61 Madrid (Spain), Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, MS 1708; See also, Ḥamad Al-Jāsir, (...)

30Further architectural details can be gleaned from contemporaneous chronicles, which focused exclusively on the Ottoman rebuilding of the holy cities. These works started to appear within a relatively short period of the annexation of western Arabia. Although the writings may be biased towards the Ottomans, they provide detailed accounts of the new wave of architectural and urban organization.60 In the case of Medina particularly, a short firsthand account written by a contemporaneous Medina judge named Mohammed ibn Khir al-Rūmī (died 1541/42 AD) describes the construction activities decreed by Sultan Süleyman I in some detail. This source unwittingly corroborates the information on the abovementioned scroll about locations and building activities. The judge added more information, such as details about the Prophet’s Mosque renovation, including doors, minarets, and interior refurbishments. He also goes into the extensive overhaul of the city wall, including watchtowers, additional gates, and a military fort to the northwest of Medina (fig. 3). The manuscript gives credit to several people involved in the building process, some of whom were also signatories of the scroll.61

Figure 3: The sixteenth-century Ottoman military fort on the northern side of the city wall in Medina.

Figure 3: The sixteenth-century Ottoman military fort on the northern side of the city wall in Medina.

Source: Mirza and Sons, Delhi, 1907.

  • 62 Evliyā Çelebī in Medina: the Relevant Sections of the Seyāhatnāme, Nurettin Gemici (ed.) and Rober (...)
  • 63 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” op. (...)

31More than a century later, Evliya Çelebi provided an animated, if not dramatized, image of Medina.62 He was exuberant in his praise of its urban markets, claiming he saw “seven hundred well-decorated shopping streets.” His statement is probably more rhetorical than precise, but the exaggeration nevertheless indicates that the city was bustling with trade. Evliya Çelebi also marvelled at the wide variety of products for sale, from many parts of the world: “Here could be found wares from all seven climes,” brought to the city by “seventy thousand traders and pilgrims.” His account also contains observations about the social conditions in the city; for example, he notes that many locals were merchants and traders, and that wealthy inhabitants wore Kashmir shawls and Damascene fabrics. He also expresses astonishment at “how Anatolian the city felt,” for thousands of Anatolian immigrants had already settled in Medina by that time.63

  • 64 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftspeople under the Ottomans, London: I. B. (...)
  • 65 Zeynep çelik, “New Approaches to the ‘Non-Western’ City,” The Journal of the Society of Architectu (...)
  • 66 Irene A. Bierman, “Franchising Ottoman Istanbul: The Case of Ottoman Crete,” in Nur Akin, Afife Ba (...)
  • 67 Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, op. cit. (not (...)

32As part of a growing provincial and empire-wide network, arts and crafts filtered into Medina from neighboring Arab provinces and beyond. This cultural exchange process was also fueled by the effort of the central Ottoman authority to inscribe its own image in the urban fabric of the city. 64 In a place like Medina, the presence of the Ottoman political power iconography asserted its legitimacy.65 Irene Bierman labeled this process as “the franchising of Ottoman Istanbul,” where a standard mosque design with typical Ottoman features is transplanted in several places across the Ottoman lands.66 Indeed, several smaller mosques in Medina were rebuilt in the manner of typical Ottoman mosques, or Rῡmī style, with single or multiple domes on squinches, and typical Ottoman minarets, such as the Musalla Mosque (fig. 4).67

Figure 4: Musalla Mosque in Medina around the mid-nineteenth century with its typical Ottoman minaret and domes.

Figure 4: Musalla Mosque in Medina around the mid-nineteenth century with its typical Ottoman minaret and domes.

Source: Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855, vol. 2.

  • 68 Mohammed A. AL-Hussayen, “Characteristics and Traits of the Majidi Building of the Eminent Prophet (...)
  • 69 Mohammed Hazza Alshehri, al-Masjid al-Nabawī al-Sharīf fī al-Ar al-Uthmānī 923-1344 AH, Cairo: (...)

33At the same time, Ottoman interventions were more carefully restrained when it came to highly spiritual sites. For example, the Prophet’s Mosque was never completely demolished, but merely restored as needed, step by step. It was given its first Ottoman-style minaret, with a characteristically slim tower and protruding conical top, as early as the reign of Sultan Süleyman I in the sixteenth century, but only after the previous Mamluk minaret was confirmed to be structurally unsound. Drastic changes, especially of architectural elements from the Prophetic period, were completely avoided. During the reign of Sultan Abdülmejid I, architects of his major renovation of the Prophet’s Mosque had to develop two overlapping floor plan grids, one to maintain the exact column locations from the Prophet’s period, and the other grid to erect new columns for the new extension.68 Allegedly, the sultan wanted to erect a totally new mosque in the manner of the grand Ottoman mosques of Istanbul. However, religious scholars advised him to refrain from making such a radical change, warning him that the original Prophetic topoi of the mosque form and its components would be lost, if he did.69 It is this level of consideration and respect which consolidated the urban image of Medina and its identity until the modern period.

  • 70 Robert Bertram Serjeant, “Haram and Hawtah, the Sacred Enclave in Arabia,” in Abdurrahman Badawi ( (...)

34On the urban scale, one of the hallmarks of the Ottoman spatial organization of Medina was the strict compliance with the religious spatial sanctions instituted by Prophet Mohammed upon his migration to Medina in 622 AD. The most prominent spatial sanction was the formation of a sacred precinct, or haram, around Medina, which is still in effect. The limits of this precinct were defined by features in the natural landscape to the north, south, east, and west. It stipulated that only Muslims were permitted to enter the city, and set forth various other regulations regarding the use of natural resources, for example.70 Outside the sacred precinct, Ottoman military control outposts were laid out along the travel routes.

  • 71 ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʼ al-Wafāʼ bi-Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafá, op. cit. (note 32), vol.  (...)

35Within the city, the Prophet’s market, known later as Manākha market, was also established as an open space by the Prophet’s sanction. No construction was permitted within its boundaries, according to al-Samhūdī.71 As a public space, it was one of the most resilient urban elements of the city throughout its history (fig. 5). It maintained its pivotal position as the town’s business center across all periods. As the city evolved during the Ottoman period, Manākha continued to be the main urban space and eventually the geographic center, where all major streets and thoroughfares converged.

Figure 5: Successive periods of Medina’s urban growth, until 1926.

Figure 5: Successive periods of Medina’s urban growth, until 1926.

This map was created based on multiple cadastral and historical sources. It reveals that the market existed continually from the seventh century until the end of the Ottoman reign in 1919 AD.

Source: author, based on Egyptian Survey Authority, Medina [Map], 1:1000, 1952; Moḥammad al-uaiyyin, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, Riyadh: Al-Turāth, 2010 and Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

  • 72 Attilio Petruccioli, “The Arab City neither Spontaneous nor Created,” Environmental Design: Journa (...)

36A comparison of the urban structure within the walls to that outside them (fig. 6) reveals some of the intricate dynamics between Medina’s major urban components during the Ottoman period. For instance, the city wall separated the periphery zones of Medina, with their orchards and farmland, and intensified the density of the enclosed core. The physiognomy of the street network and urban spaces of the core part, as opposed to peripheries, indicates deep morphological differences in terms of street pattern, land use pattern, and overall architectural form. Furthermore, closer examination of the figure-ground relationship of the core part reveals a highly compact physical form with passages much narrower and more curvilinear, in contrast to the zones that are extra muros. This compact urban form is a result of a process of urban agglomeration and incrementation to achieve maximum spatial results.72

extra-muros

Figure 6: Map of intra-muros

Figure 6: Map of intra-muros

Source: author, based on: Egyptian Survey Authority, Prophet’s Mosque and its Proximity [Map], 1:500, 1951; Moḥammad al-uaiyyin, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, Riyadh: Al-Turāth, 2010; Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

  • 73 Attilio Petruccioli, “Polarity and Antipolarity in the Formation of the xixth Century City,” in Att (...)
  • 74 Jamel Akbar, “Gates as Signs of Autonomy in Muslim Towns,” Muqarnas, vol. 10, 1993, p. 141-147. DO (...)

37The attraction of the Prophet’s Mosque as an urban node intensified density in its vicinity.73 The outcome is a highly efficient spatial configuration of nested hierarchies by means of architectural devices such as small courts, dead-end streets, covered alleyways and variable building heights of three or four floors to accommodate for high demand around religious occasions, such as the pilgrimage season or the month of Ramadan. At the same time, the hierarchical spatial configuration adhered to the territorial proliferation rules that reflected the social demands of privacy and security, through the progression of spaces from private to public, or the use of communal gates to prevent trespassing.74

Figure 7: Ottoman map of Medina, circa 1852/1853 AD.

Figure 7: Ottoman map of Medina, circa 1852/1853 AD.

It indicates public institutions, city walls, and land-use designations. When comparing this map with the layered city plans in fig. 5, the footprint of the city’s core appears to have only slightly changed. Limited space and the city wall may have restrained horizontal expansion, but there was also an extra factor which provided stability to the built form: the waqf (the charitable endowment system), which reserved many properties for non-profit purposes, hence keeping them out of the real-estate market and prolonging their uninterrupted presence in the urban fabric.

Source: Ömer Faruk Yılmaz, Belgelerle Osmanlı devrinde Hicaz, İstanbul: Çamlıca, 2008.

  • 75 William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: the Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1 (...)
  • 76 Mohammed A. Al-Hussayen, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, R (...)
  • 77 Ibid. (note 71), p. 125.

38Historical records indicate that waqf institutions flourished during the Ottoman reign in Medina. They included lodges, libraries, and schools to accommodate travelers and scholars. The vast expanse of the Ottoman Empire secured access to new sources of donations and charitable endowments, which came from places as far as Anatolia, Macedonia, and Central Asia.75 Ottoman court records of the period (1790-1813 AD) registered eighty-two charitable lodges (ribās), mostly in the core area of Medina.76 Al-Maṭarī attested to the presence of two waqf schools in Medina as early as the thirteenth century AD. By the end of the fifteenth century, this number rose to eight schools according to al-Samhūdi. Towards the end of the Ottoman reign, at least twenty-eight schools operated in the core area, although the actual number is likely to be higher.77

Inscribing the modern image of Medina

39Medina became a city of old and new quarters when Mohamed Ali Pasha of Egypt extended the city wall from the southern and western sides (fig. 5). The new wall annexed all the sprawling developments of the town. From this point forward, the city acquired a dual character, that of an ‘old town’ within the old wall and a ‘new town’ annexed within the new wall. The urban fabric of the new neighborhoods is much less compact, compared to the fabric of the old part. The spatial configuration in the newly annexed quarters relies more on horizontal (instead of volumetric) spatial devices in the plan, such as gated communal courtyards as opposed to narrow passages (fig. 6).

  • 78 Juan E. Campo, “Visualizing the Hajj: Representations of a Changing Sacred Landscape Past and Pres (...)
  • 79 Moritz visited Medina in 1914 accompanying the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan and later published a v (...)
  • 80 Map of Medina in 1852/1853 AD, in Ömer Faruk Yılmaz, İlhan Ovalıoğlu, Raşit Gündoğdu, Cevat Ekici (...)

40This emerging quarter could be thought of as the New Medina. It contains all the standard hallmarks, such as a wide thoroughfare, a ceremonial gate, public institutions, and affluent residential quarters. Some of the earliest photographs of Medina show the Ottoman state ceremonials when the Mamal pilgrimage caravan arrived from Cairo.78 It would enter from the ceremonial ʿAnbariyyah gate then promenade along the thoroughfare on its way to the Prophet’s Mosque in the old city (figs. 8−9).79 In 1908, the same ceremonial thoroughfare was used as the link between the newly opened railway station, just outside the gate, and the heart of the city. The 1852/53 map already indicates the existence of urban features such as the thoroughfare and the ceremonial gate (fig. 7). It also indicates official institutions such as the Ottoman army barracks and the tekke multi-dome traveler lodge on either side of the ʿAnbariyyah avenue, which also appear in Moritz photograph of 1914 (fig. 9).80

Figure 8: Medina: Procession of the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan through Manākha market in 1914.

Figure 8: Medina: Procession of the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan through Manākha market in 1914.

The imperial purse ‘surre’ funds would be distributed by the commander of the caravan in Medina.

Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.

Figure 9: A view of the ʿAnbariyyah gate (in the background) and thoroughfare in 1914, which formed the beginning of a major avenue, linking the station (just outside the gate) with the Manākha market in the middle of the city.

Figure 9: A view of the ʿAnbariyyah gate (in the background) and thoroughfare in 1914, which formed the beginning of a major avenue, linking the station (just outside the gate) with the Manākha market in the middle of the city.

The multi-dome tekke (Ottoman traveler lodge) can be seen on the right, and the military barracks to the left.

Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.

  • 81 Syed Tanvir Wasti, “Muhammad Inshaullah and the Hijaz Railway,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 34, n (...)
  • 82 William L. Ochsenwald, “The Financing of the Hijaz Railroad,” Die Welt des Islams, vol. 14, no. 1/ (...)
  • 83 Michael Christopher Low, “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of (...)
  • 84 Philippe Pétriat, “For Pilgrims and for Trade,” Turkish Historical Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014, p. (...)

41The Ottoman shaping of Medina urbanization culminated in the opening of the Ottoman Hijaz railway in 1908. A traditional town, walled for almost a millennium, suddenly came into direct contact with modern industrial technology. Nevertheless, calls for a railway link between the holy cities and the rest of the world had begun to be heard in the mid-nineteenth century, in the time of the tanzimat.81 The scheme, however, was promoted as a manifestation of Sultan Abdülhamid ii’s Pan-Islamic policy.82 In the wider context of the nineteenth-century colonial race, the Ottoman Empire adopted infrastructural schemes such as railway and telegraph lines in order to affirm its presence in the provinces, and deter European colonial ambitions.83 In this spirit, the Hijaz railway was part of a larger scheme to connect Istanbul to its Arab provinces circumscribing the northern frontiers of the Arabian Peninsula from Kuwait via Basra, Baghdad, Mosul, Aleppo, and Damascus to Medina. The line was planned to continue on to Makkah and Jeddah, but it stopped at Medina. This was due in part to the resistance of Sharif Husayn of Makkah, who suspected it would undermine his authority.84

  • 85 Saleḥ Lamʿī Mostafā, al-Madīnah al-Munauwwarah: Taauwwrhā al-ʿUmrānī wa Turathuhā al-Miʿmarī, Bei (...)

42The urban consequences of introducing the railway to Medina developed quickly. For instance, population increased within two years, from 30,000-40,000 inhabitants in 1908 AD to 60,000 in 1910 AD.85 In addition, train transport facilitated the influx of immigrants and pilgrims who arrived via Istanbul and Damascus from as far as central Asia. The Moritz map of 1914 (fig. 11) indicates the development of a new neighborhood (Neustadt on the map) to the northeast of the Prophet’s Mosque. On the Ottoman map of 1852/53, the same area is shown as farmland, covered with orchards and crops (fig. 7). The agricultural land was gentrified to accommodate the increased settlement facilitated by railway transport.

  • 86 Attilio Petruccioli, “Polarity and Antipolarity in the Formation of the xixth Century City,” op. c (...)
  • 87 Peter Hewitt Christensen, Architecture, Expertise and the German Construction of the Ottoman Railw (...)

43The railway station became a new urban node on the western margin of the city generating a major movement axis that linked with Manākha market at the town center.86 It also formed a tripartite system with the two major historical elements of the city, namely Manākha market and the Prophet’s Mosque. The architecture of the station building is an eclectic pastiche of European and Islamic architectural motifs, alluding to the early twentieth-century Ottoman proprietor’s desire to modernize without breaking away from heritage (fig. 10).87 In contrast, the adjacent station mosque, built simultaneously, is strictly in the Ottoman Rῡmī style with its central dome and thin Ottoman minarets affirming the identity of the central Ottoman power and its territorial presence in the holy city of Medina.

Figure 10. Ottoman Medina railway station in 1914, with the station mosque, on the right, displaying distinctly Ottoman Rmī style.

Figure 10. Ottoman Medina railway station in 1914, with the station mosque, on the right, displaying distinctly Ottoman Rῡmī style.

Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.

Figure 11 Moritz map of Medina in 1914.

Figure 11 Moritz map of Medina in 1914.

Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.

Conclusion

44The Ottoman administration of the Arab provinces provided the social and economic backdrop of Medina urban development throughout the four centuries of the Ottoman reign. The relationship between the center of power and its Arab provinces fluctuated in parallel with disputes and negotiations for power between the two sides. Although Medina was not immune to the setbacks of political rivalry, it still maintained a unique position as the second holiest shrine of Islam. It became part of the vast geographic network of the Ottoman Empire, which facilitated the flow of people, ideas and resources.

45The heart of the Ottoman urbanization process was its political, bureaucratic, and economic regimes, which were deployed into the Arab provinces starting from the sixteenth century. Although remote from the imperial center, Medina was an important stage for showcasing Ottoman power and vigor using icons of urbanization. They included military installations, ceremonial gates, and thoroughfares as well as a variety of public and religious institutions. Four centuries later, the Medina skyline and urban texture appeared to show a mix of subtle and elaborate features that were characteristically Ottoman in its mosques, buildings, streets and public spaces.

  • 88 Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: the Classical Age 1300-1600, London: Phoenix, 2000 [1st edition (...)

46The continuous Ottoman patronage of Medina functioned as a bridge between the pre-modern and modern urban identity of the city, which clearly represented significant value to Ottoman legitimacy. As a final act of foray, the Ottomans decided, against all practical odds, to bring the railway tracks across the Arabian desert all the way to Medina. It is this kind of implicit value of the place which sometimes transcends realities. A value which resonated, almost four centuries earlier, in the words of Sultan Süleyman I, “I am Süleyman, in whose name the hutbe (Friday sermon) is read in Mecca and Medina. In Baghdad I am the shah, in Byzantine realms the caesar, and in Egypt the sultan.”88

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Notes

1 André Raymond, “Urban Life and Middle Eastern Cities: The Traditional Arab City,” in Youssef M. Choueiri (ed.), A Companion to the History of the Middle East, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005 (Blackwell companions to world history), p. 207-226; Idem, “Islamic City, Arab City: Orientalist Myths and Recent Views,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 1994, p. 3-18.

2 Ottoman political history studies were foundational for later urban studies; see, for example, Peter Malcom Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 1516-1922: A Political History, Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 1966.

3 André Raymond, Grandes villes arabes à l’époque ottomane, Paris: Sindbad, 1985 (Bibliothèque arabe. Hommes et sociétés). See also Idem, The Great Arab Cities in the 16th-18th Centuries: An Introduction, New York, NY: New York University Press, 1984 (Hagop Kevorkian series on Near Eastern art and civilization).

4 See, for example, Stefan Weber, Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation (1808-1918), Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009 (Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus, 5); Heghnar Watenpaugh, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Leiden: Brill, 2004 (Ottoman Empire and its heritage, 33); Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp and Stefan Weber (eds.), The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire, Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2002 (Beiruter Texte und Studien, 88).

5 Robert Hillenbrand, “Traditional Architecture in the Arabian Peninsula,” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), vol. 16, no. 2, 1989, p. 186-192; Bernard Haykel, “Western Arabia and Yemen During the Ottoman Period ,” in Maribel Fierro (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 436-450.

6 Hasan Kayali, “The Ottoman Experience of World War I: Historiographical Problems and Trends,” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 89, no. 4, 2017, p. 875-907. URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/694391. Accessed 6 September 2018; Thomas Philipp, “Bilād al-Šām in the Modern Period: Integration into the Ottoman Empire and New Relations with Europe,” Arabica, vol. 51, no. 4, 2004, p. 401-418. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27667678. Accessed 6 September 2018.

7 Ehud R. Toledano, “The Arabic-Speaking World in the Ottoman Period,” in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World, London: Routledge, 2012 (Routledge worlds), p. 453-466; See also Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, Harlow; New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2008 (History of the Near East), p. 3.

8 William L. Ochsenwald, “Ottoman Arabia and the Holy Hijaz, 1516-1918,” Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective, vol. 10, no. 1, 2015, p. 23-34; Robert Hillenbrand, “Studying Islamic Architecture: Challenges and Perspectives,” Architectural History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, vol. 46, 2003, p. 1-18.

9 Jean Sauvaget, La Mosquée Omeyyade de Médine, Paris: Vanoest, 1947.

10 Rifaat Ali Abou-el-Haj, “The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 1982, p. 185-201. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/163203. Accessed 6 September 2018; Şuhnaz Yilmaz and İpek K. Yosmaoglu, “Fighting the Spectres of the Past: Dilemmas of Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans and the Middle East,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 44, no. 5, 2008, p. 677-693. DOI: 10.1080/00263200802285369.

11 See M. J. L. Young, “In Praise of the City of the Prophet: The ‘Kitāb Al-Jawharat Al-Thamīnah Fī Maḥāsin Al-Madīnah’ of Muḥammad Kibrīt Ibn ‘Abdallāh Al-Ḥusaynī Al-Madanī,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, vol. 16, 1986, p. 203-214; See also Asim H. A. Hamdan, The Literature of Medina in the Twelfth Century A.H. (Eighteenth Century A.D.) Examined from Contemporary Sources with a Critical Edition of One of These Sources: al-Akhbār al-gharība fī dhikr mā waqaa bi-ayba al-habība by Jafar Hāshim Al-usayni, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester, Manchester, 1986.

12 The catalogue was published as a series: Al-Madīnah Al-Munawwarah fī Al-Wathāʼiq Al-ʿuthmānīyah (3 vols.), Medina: Markaz Buḥūth wa-Dirāsāt al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah, 2001-2013.

13 Nikolai Ivanov, al-fat al-ʿuthmānī lil- aqār al-ʿarabiyyah 15161574, Yusuf ʿAtallah, trans., Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 2004, p. 70.

14 David Ayalon, “The End of the Mamlūk Sultanate: Why did the Ottomans Spare the Mamlūks of Egypt and Wipe out the Mamlūks of Syria?,” Studia Islamica, vol. 65, 1987, p. 125-148. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1595720.pdf. Accessed 4 September 2018.

15 Alan Mikhail and Christine M. Philliou, “The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol54, no. 4, 2012, p. 721-745.

16 Bruce Masters, “Institutions of Ottoman Rule,” The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918: A Social and Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 48-72.

17 Nikolai Ivanov, al-fat al-ʿuthmānī lil- aqār al-ʿarabiyyah 15161574, op. cit. (note 13), p. 93-94; Some sources suggest that Sultan Selim I intended to march his army to Hijaz in 1517. See, Andrew Peacock, “Jeddah and the India Trade in the Sixteenth Century: Arabian Contexts and Imperial Policy,” in Dionysius Agius, Emad Khalil, Eleanor Scerri and Alun Williams (eds.), Human Interaction with the Environment in the Red Sea, Leiden: Brill, 2017 (Selected papers of Red Sea Project, 6), p. 290-322.

18 Esther Peskes, “Western Arabia and Yemen (Fifth/Eleventh Century to the Ottoman Conquest),” in Maribel Fierro (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam. 2: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 285-298.

19 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, London: Tauris, 1994, p. 57; See also, Gerald DeGaury, Rulers of Mecca, London: George G. Harrap, 1951.

20 Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, op. cit. (note 7), p. 228.

21 Michael Winter, “Ottoman Egypt, 1525–1609,” in Martin W. Daly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 2, 1998, p. 1-33.

22 Benjamin Claude Brower, “The Hajj by Land,” in Eric Tagliacozzo and Shawkat M. Toorawa (eds.), The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 87–112; Thomas Philipp, “Bilād al-Šām in the Modern Period: Integration into the Ottoman Empire and New Relations with Europe,” op. cit. (note 6), p. 407.

23 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, op. cit. (note 19), p. 93.

24 Stanford Jay Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 250.

25 Thomas Philipp, “Bilād al-Šām in the Modern Period: Integration into the Ottoman Empire and New Relations with Europe,” op. cit. (note 6), p. 404.

26 Kamal S. Salibi, “Middle Eastern Parallels: Syria-Iraq-Arabia in Ottoman Times,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 1979, p. 70-81. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4282730. Accessed 6 September 2018.

27 Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library, 2010.

28 Frederick E. Anscombe, “Islam and the Age of Ottoman Reform,” Past & Present, no. 208, 2010, p. 159-189. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtq007.

29 Naim R. Farooqi, “Moguls, Ottomans, and Pilgrims: Protecting the Routes to Mecca in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” The International History Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 1988, p. 198-220. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40105867. Accessed 6 September 2018.

30 The Imperial surre was an annual gift in cash and kind from the Ottoman sultan and the members of his household, to be distributed to the residents of Makkah and Medina.

31 Syed Tanvir Wasti, “The Ottoman Ceremony of the Royal Purse,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2005, p. 193-200. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4284357. Accessed 6 September 2018.

32 ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh Al-Samhūdī, Qāsim al-Sāmarrā’ī (eds.), Wafāʼ al-Wafā bi-Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafá, London: al-Furqān, 2001; See also, Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Geschichte der Stadt Medina: Im Auszuge aus dem Arabischen des Samhûdi, Göttingen: Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1860.

33 Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Maarī, al-Taʿrīf bi-mā ānasat al-Hijrah min Maʿālim Dār al-Hijrah, Muḥammad Khayāl (ed.), Riyadh: Asʿad Darābzūnī al-Ḥusaynī, 1970.

34 Caesar Farah, “Ibn-al-Najjār: A Neglected Arabic Historian,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 84, no. 3, 1964, p. 220-230. DOI: 10.2307/596555.

35 Ibn al-Najjār, al-Durrah al-Thamīnah fī Akhbār al-Madīnah, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Shukr (ed.), Medina: Markaz Buḥūth wa-Dirāsāt al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah, 2003.

36 Donald Whitcomb, “Out of Arabia: Early Islamic Aqaba in its Regional Context,” in Roland-Pierre Gayraud (ed.), Colloque international d'archéologie islamique, Cairo: IFAO, 1998, p. 403-418.

37 Halil Inalcik, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest,” Studia Islamica, no. 2, 1954, p. 103-129. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1595144. Accessed on 4 September 2018.

38 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, op. cit. (note 19), p. 57.

39 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, 10. Mısır, Sudan, Habes̨, Istanbul: Ikdam Matbaası, 1938, p. 125, quoted in Stanford Jay Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, op. cit. (note 24), p. 253.

40 Stanford Jay Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798, op. cit. (note 24), p. 253.

41 Dina Khoury, “The Ottoman Centre Versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiography,” in Suraiya N. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 133-156.

42 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Ottoman Empire and the World around It, London: I. B. Tauris, 2004 (Library of Ottoman studies), p. 86.

43 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” New Perspectives on Turkey, vol6, 2015, p. 87-105. DOI: 10.15184/S0896634600000352.

44 Norman Itzkowitz, “Eighteenth Century Ottoman Realities,” Studia Islamica, vol. 16, 1962, p. 73-94.

45 William L. Ochsenwald, “Ottoman Subsidies to the Hijaz, 1877-1886,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 1975, p. 300-307. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162109. Accessed 6 September 2018.

46 Justin A. McCarthy, “Ottoman Sources on Arabian Population,” in Abdelgadir Abdalla, Sami Al-Sakkar and Richard Mortel (eds.), Studies in the History of Arabia, Riyadh: Riyadh University Press, 1979, vol. 1, p. 113-133.

47 Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 (Turkish and Ottoman studies), p. 27.

48 John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia: Comprehending an Account of Those Territories in Hedjaz Which the Mohammedans Regard as Sacred, London: H. Colburn, 1829; Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855, vol. 2.

49 William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: the Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1984, p. 17.

50 Michael Christopher Low, “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 57, no. 4, 2015, p. 942-974.

51 Mostafa Minawi, “Beyond Rhetoric: Reassessing Bedouin-Ottoman Relations Along the Route of the Hijaz Telegraph Line at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 58, nos. 1-2, October 2015, p. 75-104. DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341373.

52 Nile Green, “The Hajj as Its Own Undoing: Infrastructure and Integration on the Muslim Journey to Mecca,” Past & Present, vol. 226, no. 1, 2015, p. 193-226. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu041; Talha M. Çiçek, “Negotiating Power and Authority in the Desert: The Arab Bedouin and the Limits of the Ottoman State in Hijaz 1840‒1908,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 52, no. 2, 2016, p. 260-279. DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2015.1100994.

53 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” opcit. (note 43), p. 91.

54 Bernard Haykel, “Western Arabia and Yemen During the Ottoman Period,” op. cit. (note 5), p. 446.

55 C. A. Bayly, “The Consolidation and Failure of the East India Company’s State, 1818–57,” in The New Cambridge History of India. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 106-135.

56 Anam elkabashi, “ᵓAfāriqah fī Al-Madīnah,” Dirāsāt Afrīqīyyah, vol. 23, no. 38, 2007, p. 105-117.

57 Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, op. cit. (note 7), p. 230.

58 The Prophet’s Mosque is the first purpose-built Mosque in Islam, but Qubā Mosque takes precedence as the place of the first prayer lead by the Prophet Mohammed in Medina immediately upon his arrival from Makkah in 622 AD. Baqīʿ cemetery is the burial place of many of the Prophet’s family members and companions.

59 Sultan Süleyman Teşekkürname, circa 1540 AD, MS# E 7750, Topkapi Palace Museum Archives, Istanbul.

60 Guy Burak, “Between Istanbul and Gujarat: Descriptions of Mecca in the Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean,” Muqarnas, vol. 34, no. 1, 2017, p. 287-320. DOI: 10.1163/22118993_03401P012.

61 Madrid (Spain), Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, MS 1708; See also, Ḥamad Al-Jāsir, Rasāil fī Tarīkh Al-Madīnah, Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāmah, 1972.

62 Evliyā Çelebī in Medina: the Relevant Sections of the Seyāhatnāme, Nurettin Gemici (ed.) and Robert Dankoff (trans.), Leiden: Brill, 2012 (Evliya çelebi’s book of travels).

63 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, “Red Sea Trade and Communications as Observed by Evliya Çelebi (1671-72),” op. cit. (note 43), p. 91.

64 Suraiya N. Faroqhi, Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftspeople under the Ottomans, London: I. B. Tauris, 2012, p. 46.

65 Zeynep çelik, “New Approaches to the ‘Non-Western’ City,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 58, no. 3, 1999, p. 374-381. DOI: 10.2307/991531; Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800, op. cit. (note 7), p. 231.

66 Irene A. Bierman, “Franchising Ottoman Istanbul: The Case of Ottoman Crete,” in Nur Akin, Afife Batur and Selçuk Batur (eds.), 7 Centuries of Ottoman Architecture: A Supra-National Heritage, Istanbul: Yem Yayinlari, 1999, p. 199-204.

67 Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, op. cit. (note 48), p. 193; Çiǧdem Kafescioǧlu, “In the Image of Rūm: Ottoman Architectural Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Aleppo and Damascus,” Muqarnas, vol16, 1999, p. 70-96. DOI: 10.2307/1523266.

68 Mohammed A. AL-Hussayen, “Characteristics and Traits of the Majidi Building of the Eminent Prophet Mosque,” in Mohammad Eben Saleh and Abdelhafeez Alkokani (eds.), Proceedings of the Symposium on Mosque Architecture, Riyadh: King Saud University, 1999, vol. 1, p. 229-258.

69 Mohammed Hazza Alshehri, al-Masjid al-Nabawī al-Sharīf fī al-Ar al-Uthmānī 923-1344 AH, Cairo: Dār Al-Qāhirah, 2003, p. 99.

70 Robert Bertram Serjeant, “Haram and Hawtah, the Sacred Enclave in Arabia,” in Abdurrahman Badawi (ed.), Mélanges Taha Husain: offerts par ses amis et ses disciples à l’occasion de son 70e anniversaire, Cairo: Dar al-Maaref, 1962, p. 41-56.

71 ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh Al-Samhūdī, Wafāʼ al-Wafāʼ bi-Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafá, op. cit. (note 32), vol. 3, p. 82; Meir Jacob Kister, “The Market of the Prophet,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 8, no. 3, 1965, p. 272-276. URL: http://www.kister.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/The%20Market%20of%20the%20Prophet.pdf. Accessed 6 September 2018.

72 Attilio Petruccioli, “The Arab City neither Spontaneous nor Created,” Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Centre, vol. 1-2, 1997-1999, p. 22-34.

73 Attilio Petruccioli, “Polarity and Antipolarity in the Formation of the xixth Century City,” in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), Rethinking xixth Century City, Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1998 (Seminar proceedings (Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture). Series 1, v. 2), p. 83-94.

74 Jamel Akbar, “Gates as Signs of Autonomy in Muslim Towns,” Muqarnas, vol. 10, 1993, p. 141-147. DOI: 10.2307/1523180.

75 William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: the Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908, op. cit. (note 49), p. 83; Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: the Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683, op. cit. (note 19), p. 137.

76 Mohammed A. Al-Hussayen, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, Riyadh: Al-Turāth, 2010.

77 Ibid. (note 71), p. 125.

78 Juan E. Campo, “Visualizing the Hajj: Representations of a Changing Sacred Landscape Past and Present,” in Eric Tagliacozzo and Shawkat M. Toorawa (eds.), The Hajj: Pilgrimage in Islam, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 269-288.

79 Moritz visited Medina in 1914 accompanying the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan and later published a visual account of his journey; Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916; See also, Ali S. Asani and Carney E. S. Gavin, “Through the Lens of Mirza of Delhi: The Dabbas Album of Early Twentieth-Century Photographs of Pilgrimage Sites in Mecca and Medina,” Muqarnas, vol. 15, 1998, p. 178-199. DOI: 10.2307/1523282.

80 Map of Medina in 1852/1853 AD, in Ömer Faruk Yılmaz, İlhan Ovalıoğlu, Raşit Gündoğdu, Cevat Ekici and Ebul Faruk Önal, Belgelerle Osmanlı Devrinde Hicaz, İstanbul: Çamlıca, 2008.

81 Syed Tanvir Wasti, “Muhammad Inshaullah and the Hijaz Railway,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, 1998, p. 60-72.

82 William L. Ochsenwald, “The Financing of the Hijaz Railroad,” Die Welt des Islams, vol. 14, no. 1/4, 1973, p. 129-149. DOI: 10.2307/1570027.

83 Michael Christopher Low, “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz,” op. cit. (note 50), p. 952.

84 Philippe Pétriat, “For Pilgrims and for Trade,” Turkish Historical Review, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014, p. 200-220.

85 Saleḥ Lamʿī Mostafā, al-Madīnah al-Munauwwarah: Taauwwrhā al-ʿUmrānī wa Turathuhā al-Miʿmarī, Beirut: Dār Al-Nahḍah, 1981.

86 Attilio Petruccioli, “Polarity and Antipolarity in the Formation of the xixth Century City,” op. cit. (note 73), p. 92.

87 Peter Hewitt Christensen, Architecture, Expertise and the German Construction of the Ottoman Railway Network, 1868-1919, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2014.

88 Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: the Classical Age 1300-1600, London: Phoenix, 2000 [1st edition 1973], p. 41.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Medina in its regional context according to the Al-Balkhī school of land mapping in Baghdad, tenth century.
Crédits Source: Donald Whitcomb, “Out of Arabia: Early Islamic Aqaba in Its Regional Context,” in Roland-Pierre Gayraud(ed.), Colloque international d'archéologie islamique, Cairo: IFAO, 1998, p. 403-418.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 994k
Titre Figure 2: Sections of the Sultan Süleyman Tesekkurname scroll.
Crédits Source: Istanbul (Turkey), Topkapi Palace Museum Archive.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 80M
Titre Figure 3: The sixteenth-century Ottoman military fort on the northern side of the city wall in Medina.
Crédits Source: Mirza and Sons, Delhi, 1907.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 3,2M
Titre Figure 4: Musalla Mosque in Medina around the mid-nineteenth century with its typical Ottoman minaret and domes.
Crédits Source: Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855, vol. 2.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 3,0M
Titre Figure 5: Successive periods of Medina’s urban growth, until 1926.
Légende This map was created based on multiple cadastral and historical sources. It reveals that the market existed continually from the seventh century until the end of the Ottoman reign in 1919 AD.
Crédits Source: author, based on Egyptian Survey Authority, Medina [Map], 1:1000, 1952; Moḥammad al-Ḥuṣaiyyin, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, Riyadh: Al-Turāth, 2010 and Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1022k
Titre Figure 6: Map of intra-muros
Crédits Source: author, based on: Egyptian Survey Authority, Prophet’s Mosque and its Proximity [Map], 1:500, 1951; Moḥammad al-Ḥuṣaiyyin, al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah: Bunyatuhā wa Tarkībuhā al-͑Umrānī al-Taqlīdī, Riyadh: Al-Turāth, 2010; Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,6M
Titre Figure 7: Ottoman map of Medina, circa 1852/1853 AD.
Légende It indicates public institutions, city walls, and land-use designations. When comparing this map with the layered city plans in fig. 5, the footprint of the city’s core appears to have only slightly changed. Limited space and the city wall may have restrained horizontal expansion, but there was also an extra factor which provided stability to the built form: the waqf (the charitable endowment system), which reserved many properties for non-profit purposes, hence keeping them out of the real-estate market and prolonging their uninterrupted presence in the urban fabric.
Crédits Source: Ömer Faruk Yılmaz, Belgelerle Osmanlı devrinde Hicaz, İstanbul: Çamlıca, 2008.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 9,9M
Titre Figure 8: Medina: Procession of the Egyptian pilgrimage caravan through Manākha market in 1914.
Légende The imperial purse ‘surre’ funds would be distributed by the commander of the caravan in Medina.
Crédits Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 6,7M
Titre Figure 9: A view of the ʿAnbariyyah gate (in the background) and thoroughfare in 1914, which formed the beginning of a major avenue, linking the station (just outside the gate) with the Manākha market in the middle of the city.
Légende The multi-dome tekke (Ottoman traveler lodge) can be seen on the right, and the military barracks to the left.
Crédits Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 6,3M
Titre Figure 10. Ottoman Medina railway station in 1914, with the station mosque, on the right, displaying distinctly Ottoman Rmī style.
Crédits Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 7,1M
Titre Figure 11 Moritz map of Medina in 1914.
Crédits Source: Bernhard Moritz, Bilder aus Palästina, Nord-Arabien und dem Sinai: 100 Bilder nach Photographien mit erläuterndem Text, Berlin: Dietrich Riemer, 1916.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/4341/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 26M
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Atef Alshehri, « Ottoman Spatial Organization of the pre-modern City of Medina »ABE Journal [En ligne], 13 | 2018, mis en ligne le 15 octobre 2018, consulté le 22 janvier 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/4341 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.4341

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Atef Alshehri

Architect, consultant and academic, Saudi Arabia

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