“Those Coveting the Sympathy of His Imperial Shadow”: Boundaries of the Ottoman Bureaucracy’s Imagination of Jewish Immigration to the Land of Palestine (1876-1904)

Abstract

This paper attempts to delve into the origin of the history of the Palestinian issue by examining the mentality of the central Ottoman bureaucracy through one of its most important representations. That is, the first political Jewish immigration to geographic land of Palestine in the period (1881-1904), as a political migration, it has multiple methods and backgrounds. This is done by studying the Ottoman archive documents received by the Ottoman administration at that time from the most important Jewish figures, regardless of their orientations, within the research period and its surroundings between the years 1876-1904. These documents and their context will be reviewed in the first section. In the second section, the most important measures taken by the aforementioned administration regarding these migrations will be discussed, and an attempt will be made to explore their nature. The third section will be devoted to discovering the “mental milieu” (l'univers mental) surrounding these procedures and trying to understand the formation stages of this awareness of the Palestinian issue and its gradual articulation over the period of study. © 2024, Muhammed Mustafa KULU. All rights reserved.