Mahane Yehuda

1 · POSITION

Mahane Yehuda is Jerusalem’s market, more than 250 vendors of produce, spice, fish and nuts off Jaffa Road. It is entered here for what it became after dark: when the stalls close, chairs come out, and the market turns into the centre of the city’s nightlife, with more than twenty bars and at least ten restaurants among its shops. [1, 2]

2 · FROM AN EMPTY LOT

The neighbourhood of Mahane Yehuda was founded in 1887 on the north side of Jaffa Road and named for Yehuda, brother of Joseph Navon. A market grew on an empty lot nearby at the end of the nineteenth century, known as Shuk Beit Yaakov. In the late 1920s the British Mandate authorities cleared the traders and built permanent stalls and a roof; in 1931 twenty traders built a new section to the west, the Iraqi Market. [1]

3 · THE NIGHT MARKET

Major renovation came in the 2000s, and with it Ethiopian food sellers, cafés and design shops. Since 2010 about a fifth of the shops have become bars or restaurants, and by early 2017 more than four hundred businesses traded there. Thursday night, the start of the Israeli weekend, turns the lanes into one party. The Balabasta music festival began in the market in 2010. [1, 2]

4 · A MARKET THAT RECOVERED

The market was struck by suicide bombings on 30 July 1997 and 12 April 2002, and its trade fell in the decade that followed. The bars and restaurants are credited with its recovery. The same change is resented by some of its ultra-Orthodox neighbours, who object to the night crowd in the lanes — the two uses of the market have not been reconciled, only alternated. [1, 2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The British rebuilding is dated only to the late 1920s, and the 1931 Iraqi Market is a separate work; the two are not merged here. The vendor count of more than 250 and the business count of more than 400 come from different sources and count different things. The death toll of the two attacks is given inconsistently in the same source and is not totalled here. [1–2]