Ottoman Haifa

A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule

Under Ottoman rule, the city of Haifa, located at the southern point of the largest bay on the coast of Israel, was transformed from a scarcely-inhabited fortress town to a major modern city. Today the city is the third-largest in Israel and has over 250,000 inhabitants.

This book details the history of Haifa under the Ottomans during the period 1516-1918. Alex Carmel uses a variety of original sources, including travel literature from the time, to uncover the realities of life in Haifa under Ottoman rule and paints a vivid picture of the development of the city in this era. He shows that it experienced its first significant boom as early as 1761 under Dahar el Omar and that after the establishment of the Württemberg Templer Haifa Colony in 1868, the city began to flourish. The final chapter of the book shows how the city coped with the devastating effects of the Great War and the subsequent fall of the Ottoman Empire and establishment of the British Mandate.

Carmel's work has become the benchmark of the historiography of Israel's third largest city and remains to this day, the best-known and most highly-regarded survey of Haifa under Ottoman rule. This, the first English edition of 'Ottoman Haifa', will be essential reading for all historians of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.