Jerusalem 1867: Mark Twain and the Holy City's American Gaze

In 1867, a young American writer named Samuel Clemens—better known as Mark Twain—arrived in Jerusalem as part of a grand tour of the Holy Land. His account of the city, published in 'The Innocents Abroad', is a sharp, skeptical, and often hilarious portrait of a place saturated in religious expectation but mired in poverty and neglect. This episode explores how Twain's Victorian American perspective clashed with the romanticised image of Jerusalem, what he actually saw at the Haram al-Sharif, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the recently built Mishkenot Sha'ananim, and how his reporting shaped Western perceptions for generations. We also touch on the condition of the Old City under late Ottoman rule, the impact of the Tanzimat reforms, the presence of European consuls, and the early stirrings of archaeological exploration by figures like Charles Warren of the Palestine Exploration Fund. This is the Jerusalem that the 19th-century tourist experienced—before the waves of immigration and conflict that would remake it.

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