ABSTRACT
During the final decades of Ottoman rule in Palestine, Jerusalem was the capital of an independent district (sanjak, sancak in Turkish) directly accountable to the government in Istanbul. This was an expression of its unique status and importance in the empire. The boundaries of the sanjak were wide and included the sub-districts of Bethlehem, Jaffa, Hebron, Beersheva, and Gaza; that is, the entire center of the country and southward. The privileged families in the city constituted the main source of leadership for the entire sanjak. The holiness of the city for members of the three monotheistic religions along with its regional political status led the British, who conquered the city in December 1917, to proclaim it Palestine’s capital. The boundaries of this new political entity – Palestine – were determined with the separation of the land east of the river Jordan from the land to its west in 1922 and the marking of the border between the British mandate and the French mandate in Lebanon in 1923. Jerusalem, the capital, became the nerve center of the British administration, and the Jews and Arabs living in the land also regarded it as their natural capital (despite the competing claims of other cities).
