The photograph above was taken by the famed French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in 1844, during the Ottoman-era, the reign of Ottoman Sultan and Sunni Caliph of Islam, Abdülmecid I.
This is a wonderful photograph (one of several, actually), and appear to be the earliest surviving photograph (s) of Jerusalem, but the first one to be taken was in 1839 …
“Nazareth”, by Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, December 1839 Engraving by Friedrich Salathé, 1840:
“View of Acre (Akka / Akko)”, photograph by Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, December 1839 Engraving by Friedrich Salathé, 1840:
There is a lot of scholarship discussing the fact that Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet and Horace Vernet took the earliest photographs of Jerusalem and Palestine, just that those photographs didn’t survive …
