Standard accounts of the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem in 1516 have little to say about the event itself, largely because it occurred with little conflict or upheaval. The city was taken peacefully in the context of the Ottoman march south toward Cairo after the battle of Marj Dabik. Yet a closer examination of the first half-century of Ottoman rule reveals that the Ottomans invested enormous sums and energies in the conquest of Jerusalem, even in the absence of overt military opposition. These expenditures reflect the status of the city, which was disproportionate to the importance of its location, economy and population. As a holy city for Muslims, it drew Ottoman attention, yet its position as a spiritual center for Christians was no less crucial in determining its strategic importance. Ottoman investments in Jerusalem emphasized its new Ottoman affiliation, and aimed to create a deeper identification of Jerusalem with the Ottomans in the eyes of local residents (urban and rural) and foreigners alike. Thus the Ottomanizing of Jerusalem proceeded at several levels and through different mechanisms. This paper focuses on the impact of construction, endowment, and administrative changes on the city and its hinterlands, in order to explore a particular example of how the Ottomans invested in the process of reshaping identities among the peoples and places they conquered, and in advertising the changes. The Ottoman projects in Jerusalem were only one aspect of a larger process of identity transformation in individuals and places that resulted from the fact of becoming territorially Ottoman. By considering how identities shifted and were reconfigured under the Ottomans, the tensions inherent in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Ottoman empire become evident, and suggest new ways of understanding the larger changes affecting the empire over time. The discussions in this paper are based on Ottoman administrative and judicial archival sources, as well as on a careful examination of the early Ottoman building programme in the city of Jerusalem.