Sacred Law in the Holy City: The Khedival Challenge to the Ottomans as seen from Jerusalem, 1829-1841

The Muslim community's political and socio-economic role in Jerusalem under Ottoman administration during the 1830s is analyzed in this volume from a natural law perspective. A bitter political contest between Sultan Mahmud II and Muhammad Ali Pasha resulted in the military occupation of Syria and imposition of a brutal new political and legal regime which crushed the indigenous elites of southern Syria. Through a careful analysis of the archives of the Islamic law court of Jerusalem, the s...