ABSTRACT
The Irish adventurer Eliot Warburton, in his famous travel book, The Crescent and the Cross, declared that "the name of Mehemet Ali is familiar to every mind as one of the great powers that share the rule of this great world." Muhammad Ali's sudden conquest of Palestine, Syria, and much of Turkey itself in 1831 shook Jerusalem out of its stagnant isolation and thrust it into the vortex of world events. Far away from Jerusalem in Istanbul, Sultan Mahmoud struggled for internal reform while his empire declined militarily and politically. Shlomo Zalman and the Jerusalem Prushis renewed their efforts to rebuild the Hurva despite the continued opposition of Israel of Shklov in Safed and Rabbi Bordacki in Jerusalem. Shmariyahu Luria had been of immense service to the Jerusalem Prushis. Shlomo Zalman soon returned triumphantly to Jerusalem with several important declarations.
