Different forms of charity, relief and humanitarian action can be jointly approached as a means of governance and social regulation. More precisely, in the Middle East the question of stability – social and political – can be considered as a central driver for local and international actors alike. This study adopts a broad historical framework, reaching from antiquity to the present day, with the aim of approaching the subject with an openness conducive to understanding the evolution of the actors, modes of action and representations underlying aid initiatives. The longue durée approach allows to show two main specificities of the modern and contemporary Middle East: firstly, the evolution of aid practices is directly linked to human mobility, since they are connected to religious practices, commerce or violence, which led to the need to take a census, to categorise and sometimes isolate populations in order to govern and control them. Secondly, in the absence of the welfare state as the most important provider of aid, the state has until today in the Middle East much less prominence among the multiplicity of aid providers, such as the family, non-governmental, religious and community organisations.
As a privileged site for individual and collective acts of charity, Jerusalem witnessed an important increase in charity and poor relief institutions in the nineteenth century, many of them European-backed and related to missionary ambitions. Partly in response to the perceived threat of the latter, the municipality of Jerusalem gradually became a crucial actor in poor relief, in the framework of an evolving legal framework defining the social responsibilities of municipalities and the rights of citizens. Drawing on the archives of the municipality, as well as diaries and memoirs of Jerusalemites, this article examines this transformation particularly in the realms of social welfare and health services.
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