Book by Vincent Lemire offering a social and urban history of Jerusalem around the turn of the 20th century, recovering a period of municipal reform, intercommunal cooperation, and urban dynamism that has been overshadowed by subsequent nationalist conflict. Drawing on Ottoman, French, and other archival sources, Lemire examines the city's water infrastructure, its pluralist municipal council, and the complex social relationships among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim residents before political fragmentation hardened in the Mandate period. Recommended for historians of the Middle East and urban scholars studying Jerusalem before the colonial and nationalist transformations of the British Mandate period, providing an important counter-narrative to retrospective accounts that project later conflict backward onto an earlier period of urban possibility.
