Ottoman Haifa

A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule

Alex Carmel

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781848855601
• eBook ISBN: 9780857731197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Under Ottoman rule, the city of Haifa, located at the southern point of the largest bay on the coast of what today is Israel, was transformed from a scarcely-inhabited fortress town to a major modern city. This book details the history of Haifa under the Ottomans during the period 1516-1918. Alex Carmel uses a variety of original sources 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. 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.

Alex Carmel (1931–2002) was an historian of the Middle East, specialising in nineteenth-century Palestine. He joined the faculty of the University of Haifa in 1968 and was a visiting professor at the universities of Basle, Bern, Fribourg and the Free University of Berlin.

Ottoman Haifa

A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule

By Alex Carmel

Translated into English by Elias Friedman

Preface by Jakob Eisler

This book is dedicated,

as wished for by its late author Alex Carmel,

to the memory of the beloved Cornelius Beilharz (1976–2002),

descendant of the Haifa Templers.

Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU

175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

www.ibtauris.com

Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

Copyright © 2011 The Estate of Alex Carmel

Preface copyright ©2011 Jakob Eisler

The right of Alex Carmel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, eletronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Middle East History, Vol 2

ISBN 978 1 84885 560 1

eISBN 978 0 85773 119 7

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, www.jcs-publishing.co.uk

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface by Jakob Eisler

Introduction

1 Ancient Haifa After the Ottoman Conquest

2 The Foundation of New Haifa

3 Days of Awakening

4 Haifa Thrives

5 Haifa at the End of Turkish Rule

Postscript: Haifa During the First World War

Notes

Select Bibliography and Abbreviations

Illustrations

1 The bay of Haifa about 1770

2 The bay of Haifa in the mid-seventeenth century

3 Old Haifa in April 1682 (painted by de Bruyn)

4 Mount Carmel

5 The Prosper Monastery

6 Drawing of the Prosper Monastery in the mid-seventeenth century

7 Haifa in 1801 (painted by Willyams Cooper)

8 Haifa in 1801 (painted by Willyams Cooper)

9 Haifa in 1880

10 Drawing of the city walls of Haifa, 1841

11 The house of the governor of Haifa, the Serail

12 The Grotto of Elijah on Mount Carmel

13 Agreement with the Carmelites from 1627

14 Proposed plans for the Carmelite monastery

15 The Carmelite monastery, 1840

16 Giambattista Cassini, architect of the present Carmelite monastery

17 The tower of Haifa – the Burj – in the nineteenth century

18 Haifa within its walls, 1841

19 The Carmelite monastery in the nineteenth century

20 The monument for the soldiers of Napoleon’s army

21 The city wall with the Acre Gate, 1870

22 The Austrian post office in Haifa, 1880

23 Christoph Hoffmann

24 Georg David Hardegg

25 The German Colony, 1877 (drawn by Jacob Schumacher)

26 Opening of a French school in Haifa

27 The walls around Mount Carmel, built by the Carmelites

28 Laurence Oliphant

29 The German vice-consul, Friedrich Keller

30 The monastery of the female Carmelites

31 The private house of Keller on Mount Carmel

32 The Luftkurhaus on Mount Carmel

33 The German quarter on Mount Carmel, Karmelheim

34 The Shemen oil factory in Haifa

35 The Technion college in Hadar

36 General view of Haifa, 1914

Credits

1: Vilnay, p. 55

2, 5, 6, 12, 13, 20, 27, 30: Marie-Bernard, pp. 36, 49, 45, 83, 37, 80, 9, 89 respectively

3: De Bruyn, opposite p. 225

4: Kopp, opposite p. 184

7, 8: Ludwig Meyer Collection, Jerusalem

9, 11, 22, 26, 34, 35: Jakob Eisler Collection, Stuttgart

10, 18: Alderson, Plate VIII, opposite p. 22

14, 16: Florencio, pp. 438, 445

15: Pelle, picture number 12

17: Wilson, Vol. 3, p. 83

19, 21, 25, 29, 31, 32, 33: Alex Carmel Collection, Haifa

23, 24: Brugger, frontispiece

28: Oliphant, frontispiece

36: Thevoz, picture number 36

Preface

This book – the first work of the historian and researcher Alex Carmel (1931–2002), who worked on the history of Palestine during the Ottoman Empire for over forty years – has come to be also his last published work, now in English.

In 1963, the Berlin-born Alex Carmel decided to write his Masters thesis on the history of Haifa, the city that had been his new home from 1939.1 Up to then, information about Haifa could only be found in reference works by Zeev Vilnay and Haim Aharonowitz.2 In the latter, Haifa was adjudged to be ‘a wretched, dirty fishing village, whose population amounted to no more than a few hundred’.3 Professor Uriel Heyd, Carmel’s teacher at the time, advised him not to go ahead with the thesis because there were hardly any historical sources and because he thought the topic was rather unimportant. Nevertheless, Carmel set out to work on the ‘History of Haifa in the Turkish Era, 1516–1918’. His sources for the history of the city – at least for the first two centuries of Ottoman rule – consisted mainly of travel literature, from which he carefully selected the more meaningful and historically accurate descriptions. Here, two fundamental qualities of Carmel the historian came to the fore, namely not only a desire to find all the relevant historical sources, but also an ability to evaluate them precisely. In his thesis he was able to reconstruct the city’s history and show that it experienced its first significant boom as early as 1761 under Dahar al-Umar (Zahir al-Umar).4 After the establishment of the Württemberg Templer colony in Haifa in 1868, the city began to flourish.5 Carmel’s ‘modest opus’ about Haifa – as he always called it – became the benchmark for the historiography of Israel’s third largest city, now with more than a quarter of a million inhabitants.6 Even though this book had its origin years ago, it is, to this day, the reference book on the history of Haifa during the Ottoman Empire.

For me, the book is a good deal more than just the history of the city of Haifa: this book connects me with Alex Carmel – the author and the man.

My first encounter with Professor Alex Carmel at Haifa University took place in 1988 when I was a young student. I was reading the present book on Haifa and was looking for the memoirs (cited in the book) of the German vice consul Friedrich Keller ‘Wie ich auf den Carmel kam’ (‘How I Came to Mount Carmel’), but could not find them anywhere. I mentioned this to Professor Carmel in his office on the twenty-seventh floor of Haifa University. Without further ado, Carmel opened one of the drawers of his desk and handed me Keller’s manuscript with the words: ‘Here are the memoirs of Friedrich Keller for your perusal. But if you are not back here in my office this time next week (with the originals), I will consider myself forced to have you hanged from Haifa’s tallest palm tree . . .’ Never before had I had such an encounter! I was especially intrigued by the phrase ‘the tallest palm tree’, because the groves of tall palms lining the Kison River had long since disappeared due to the industrialization of Haifa after the end of Ottoman rule and in the time of the British Mandate.

I did return the pages a week later and was subsequently privileged to study and work as Carmel’s assistant for a long period, starting from a year after this episode until his death in 2002.

I am happy that his wish to publish Die Geschichte Haifas in der Türkischen Zeit in English has now been fulfilled with the publication of this book.

I especially want to thank Professor Reinhold Würth of Künzelsau and Mr Jürgen Prockl of Stuttgart, whose support made it possible to publish this book. I am also indebted to Abigail Fielding-Smith and Joanna Godfrey for getting the book into print at I.B.Tauris.

Dr Jakob Eisler

Stuttgart

(Preface translated by Peter G. Hornung)

Introduction

Haifa is located at the southern point of the largest bay on the coast of Israel. The coastal plain, on the edge of which ancient Haifa spread out, is about 860 metres in length, facing Ras al-Kurum – today it is the area including Rambam Hospital, Quiet Beach and a portion of Bat-Galim. The width of the coastal strip on which the new town was established in the middle of the eighteenth century – nowadays part of Lower Haifa – was no more than 220 metres. The Haifa region served as an outlet to the sea for the Valley of Jezreel, the only one that cuts across the mountains of western Israel. The plain descends by easy stages to the valley of the Jordan and so offers a convenient connection through to the Lebanese Beq’a, the region of Damascus, Hauran and beyond. Haifa lies on the coastal road and serves as the junction for a network of roads running north, east and south. In addition to its advantage as a convenient outlet for an extensive hinterland, it is protected by Mount Carmel from the frequent southerly and south-westerly winds. The nearby seabed is smooth and devoid of natural obstacles that might be dangerous to shipping. In the light of these facts, it is surprising that for thousands of years it was Acre, at the northern edge of the bay, that predominated. It would appear that this was due, first and foremost, to reasons of security. The headland, which projected from that end of the bay and on which Acre was built, offered excellent opportunities for defence. Its port was excellent, though not as good as Haifa’s, and met the needs of maritime traffic in ancient times. In the absence of trains and motorized transport, the ease of access to the hinterland was not a decisive factor. The fundamental reason for the rise of Haifa was its transfer to a new site, where it could be defended. This occurred at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century. The far-reaching changes in maritime transport, such as the use of steamships, and inland transport, with the introduction of railroads, gave a decisive advantage to the southern part of the bay. Haifa, which had already begun to show signs of awakening, now rapidly overtook Acre.1

The origins of Haifa, even the meaning of the name, are still shrouded in obscurity.2 Some are of the opinion that a settlement by that name already existed in the Persian period.3 Others consider that it was founded four to five hundred years later. From the second century of the present era onwards, Haifa is mentioned in Talmudic sources and in the writings of the fathers of the Church. It was a small town by the seaside, stretching between Bat-Galim and the pres...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Ancient Haifa After the Ottoman Conquest
• 2 The Foundations of New Haifa
• 3 Days of Awakening
• 4 Haifa Thrives
• 5 Haifa at the End of Turkish Rule
• Postscript
• Notes
• Select Bibliography and Abbreviations