(Re)sounding Jerusalem: Power, Piety and Performance in Late-Ottoman Jerusalem (1850-1920)

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[T]he cannon [of Ramadan] was placed on the rooftop of David Castle in Jaffa Gate. When it was fired,particularly at night, it shook the entire city, and the sound could be heard anywhere because of the cannon'selevated location. (Tamari and Nassar, 2014:139)[W]e were all in the greatest dread of Wednesday, February 6th, which was the day appointed for the deed[Beiram] [...] Every knock at the door, or the firing of a cannon, made me think our time had come. (Barclay,1883:286)These two small excerpts offer readers contrasting reactions to the 'Ramadan cannon' of late-19thcentury Jerusalem.1 The first entry is from the diaries of Wasif Jawhariyyeh (Tamari and Nassar,2014), often called the 'the storyteller of Jerusalem' thanks to his prolific writings of life in lateOttoman Jerusalem. His accounts reveal the intimate sonic familiarity that he and many othersshared with the urban fabric of the city. Jawhariyyeh's diaries more generally provide anacoustemological constellation of late-Ottoman Jerusalem (Feld, 2016); a detailed insight intosonic events that constituted a form of cultural knowing for the city's residents. The second extractoffers another history - that of the colonial British presence in 19th century Jerusalem. Thisaccount is taken from the letters of Lucy Barclay, wife of Joseph Barclay, the missionary Bishopin Jerusalem for much of the late-19th century. Like Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan(2016:4), I see this extract as a way in which we might comprehend 'the narratives of modernwestern empires [...] in which audibility conspicuously involved [listening] interventions carryingreal consequence in social and cultural activity'. In the extracts quoted above the Barclayhousehold, unfamiliar with the practices of using gunfire at major religious feasts, hear the cannonas being indicative of an attack, when, in actuality, it was quite the opposite. I open with thisvignette to illustrate the audible histories and discrepant experiences (Said, 1994) that are madeapparent in combining colonial and native accounts. In other words, these two extracts, when readthrough a Saidian lens, contrapuntally (Said, 1994:66), illuminate an acoustically rich understandingof Late-Ottoman Ramadan practices: in one sense, a sonic marking of territorial power, in another,an acoustic instrument for regulating iftar