Jerusalem 1889: The Bicycle That Shocked the Holy City

In 1889, a British missionary named James Chalmers imported a penny-farthing bicycle into Jerusalem. The sight of a man hurtling through the narrow streets of the Old City on two giant wheels caused a sensation. Ottoman authorities, local clerics, and Bedouin tribesmen all reacted with suspicion, amusement, and sometimes outright hostility. This episode tells the story of the first bicycle in Jerusalem, using it as a lens to explore the city's encounter with modernity, the tensions between tradition and innovation, and the surprisingly early arrival of what we think of as a 20th-century invention. We discuss the reaction of the Muslim and Jewish communities, the Ottoman ban on bicycles inside the city walls, and how this odd episode foreshadowed the technological changes that would reshape Jerusalem in the decades to come. Along the way, we touch on the role of missionaries, the influence of European consuls, and the everyday life of Jerusalem's diverse population in the late Ottoman period.

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