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Jerusalem’s Wheat Market

Merchants gather at Damascus Gate with their camels to trade at the historical wheat market in the Old City of Jerusalem ca. 1898.

Credit: 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIG-matpc-11341]

At the end of the 19th century, around 1898, the wheat market at the Old City’s Damascus Gate was photographed in full action. This market landed in one of the most important streets in the Old City: al-Wad Street. It is the main pathway to al-Aqsa Mosque and contains markets from the northernmost point of the Old City, Damascus Gate, all the way to the southernmost point, the Western Wall. In the 19th century, this market was part of an essential network of wheat, barley, flour, rice, lentils, and fodder markets in the al-Musrara area just outside Damascus Gate, and the gate area itself.1

Jerusalem had 20 flour mills by the 1850s, some of which closed once the bigger flour mills’ output increased, reducing the need for smaller mills.2  Farmers from adjacent villages traded their products in Jerusalem, and merchants traveled throughout the Levant to obtain local or regional products and trade them in Jerusalem’s markets, particularly during religious festivals such as the Nabi Musa festival (see From Pilgrimage to Festival to Uprising: The Evolution of the Nabi Musa Tradition).3 The wheat market’s strategic location gave it a seat in the city’s steadily improving economic prospects in the late 19th century.

Conversely, the market’s strategic location in Damascus Gate, which is an extension of the important al-Wad Street, meant it was targeted by Israel following the city’s occupation in 1967. Along al-Wad Street sit several religious landmarks for both Christians and Muslims, which makes it a hotspot for settler takeovers and home seizures. Indeed, over the years, several Palestinian homes and businesses have been seized here, including the home claimed by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and turned over to settlers for use as residences and Jewish schools.4

Notes

1

Jerusalem’s Landmarks. Al-Wad Street” [in Arabic], Al Jazeera, August 16, 2016.

2

Rochelle Davis, “Ottoman Jerusalem” in Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War, ed. Salim Tamari (Institute for Palestine Studies in collaboration with Badil, 2002), 15-16.

3

Davis, “Ottoman Jerusalem,” 15–16.

4

Al-Wad Neighborhood One of the Muslim Quarter Neighborhoods in Jerusalem” [in Arabic],  Al Jazeera, September 15, 2024.

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