Ever since the inception of large-scale road work projects in the 1880s, the question of 'to whom belong the streets?' had gained prominence in the network of urban power relations between the expanding bureaucracy, local elites, and the majority of the townspeople of Damascus. With the implementation of a tramway and electric lighting sheme from 1903 onwards, a foreign utility entered the ring as additional contender. It wasn't shy in appropriating newly established public places an (re)selling their use to the populace. While the utility and the municipality soon began their never-ending disputes over bills and contracts, popular critique focused on the impact of the new 'services' on their daily lives.
Against the backdrop of the tramway's history, from the first plans in the 1880s until the boycott of 1913, the talk will elaborate the changes in the production of urban public spaces and the very meaning of 'public' in the final decades of the Ottoman ancien régime.
Till Grallert: Currently a doctoral fellow at the OIB, Till Grallert works on the history of public places in late Ottoman Damascus at the 'Berlin Graduate School Muslim Culrutes and Societies', Freie Universität Berlin.