ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Jerusalem’s wider urban fabric by considering some different periods of intense change where the city was physically redefined to reflect new masters and their motivations. In much of the world’s imagination, the city of Jerusalem has a very specific urban form, derived from its traditional location at the centre of the cosmos. The new routes were understood as the Jerusalem stational liturgy and together they offer a mobile and inclusive interpretation of ‘sacred space’ in an urban context. The combination of religious functions and everyday activities created the sort of quasi-sacred buildings generally typical of Mamluk urbanism, but in the streets of Jerusalem the structures took on added meaning mediating between the relatively secular city and one of Islam’s most important shrines. Perhaps the most obvious change to Jerusalem’s urban space began in the mid-nineteenth century with major settlement beyond the city wall.
