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Abstract

Eight sabīls—public fountains—stand along the main streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, and another one, on the road leading to Jaffa Gate, which crosses Sultān’s Pool. These testify to the grandiose urban investment on the part of Ottoman Sultān Sulaymān al-Qanūnī (the Magnificent) in the first half of the sixteenth century CE. These fountains have undergone scholarly research since the late nineteenth century, first concerning their inscriptions, which were published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum by the Islamist and epigraphist Max Van Berchem, and later, in the 1980s, Myriam Rosen-Ayalon conducted an architectural survey. In 2000, Yusuf Natsheh included the sabīls in his gazetteer of buildings in Robert Hillenbrand’s and Sylvia Auld’s Ottoman Jerusalem, and in 2006, Avi Sasson researched the water supply systems of Jerusalem from the Ayyūbid through the Ottoman periods, placing Sulaymān’s sabīls in a broader context. In 2009, the Israel Antiquities Authority Conservation Department set out to restore the fountains and putting them back to use in their original function, i.e., catering to the public on the road and along the city streets. This paper discusses the various Arabic terms used to describe public fountains, as well as the general development thereof, their respective architectural types and finally, the restoration works by the IAA and interesting findings regarding their architecture and function.

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