In Search of Justice: Petitions Sent from Palestine to Istanbul from the 1870

This article examines petitions which were sent by the population of Palestine to the office of the Grand Vizier starting in the early 1870’s. Taking advantage of new means of communication and technology at their disposal, the petitioners — urbanites, villagers, and Bedouins alike — addressed their concerns to the central government and demanded justice. The article examines the identity of the petitioners, the mechanisms involved in sending the petitions, the concerns raised in them, and their treatment by the authorities. The petitions allow us to pursue a bottom-up examination of the history of Palestine at the end of the 19th century, one which is very different from the Zionist and the Palestinian national narratives. They reveal unknown information on the understudied rural population and shed new light on the relationships between the local population and the central government.