Abstract
Standard Arabic accounts of the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem from the Mamluks in 1516 have little to say about the event itself, largely because it occurred with minimal conflict or upheaval. The city was taken without a fight in the context of the Ottoman march south toward Cairo, after the battle of Marj Dabiq near Aleppo in August 1516. Other military confrontations took place only in Gaza and then in January 1517 at Raydaniyya, near Cairo. Yet a closer examination of the first half century of Ottoman rule after the conquest reveals that the Ottomans invested enormous sums and energy