In contemporary public discourse, Gaza tends to be characterized solely as a theatre of the ongoing escalating conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. However, little is known about Gaza’s society, politics, economy, and culture during the Ottoman era. In their talk, Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Buessow will present the main finding of their decade-long research on late Ottoman Gaza, recently published in the book Late Ottoman Gaza: An Eastern Mediterranean Hub in Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Drawing on a range of previously unused local and imperial Ottoman sources and using new digital humanities methodologies, the book explores the city’s history from the mid-nineteenth century until WWI. It demonstrates that Gaza’s historical importance extended far beyond the territory of the ‘Strip’ as the city was an important hub for people, goods, and ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Yuval Ben-Bassat is a Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa where he teaches Ottoman and Turkish history since 2007. Ben-Bassat received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2007). Ben-Bassat is the author of Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine (I.B.TAURIS, 2013), and Late Ottoman Gaza: A Mediterranean Hub in Transformation, together with Johann Buessow (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Johann Buessow has been a Professor of Islamic Studies at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum since 2018. Buessow obtained his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2011. Buessow’s main publications include Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872 – 1908 (Brill, 2011); Damascus Affairs: Egyptian Rule in Syria through the Eyes of an Anonymous Damascene Chronicler, 1831 – 1841 (Ergon-Verlag, 2013, with Khalid Safi); and Arguing for Political Legitimacy in a Late Ottoman City: A Fictional Literary Dialogue from Gaza, c. 1895 (EB-Verlag, 2023, with Yuval Ben-Bassat).