Petitioning the Sultan

The practice of petitioning the Ottoman Sultan was a well-known institution which existed in one form or another throughout Ottoman history and enabled Ottoman subjects far from the capital of Istanbul to convey their grievances directly to the supreme ruler. Here Yuval Ben-Bassat examines the petitions including many previously unpublished ones sent during the last decades of the Empire to the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II. The petitions enable Ben-Bassat to explore Palestine's history in this formative period from a unique perspective providing first-hand accounts of the dilemmas struggles acts concerns schisms and transformations Palestinian society experienced. Petitioning the Sultan will be of great interest to a broad audience of specialists studying the history of the Middle East the Ottoman Empire and Palestine's late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world.