Suleiman the Magnificent (Ottoman)

Suleiman I, sultan from 1520 to 1566, ruled the Ottoman Empire at its height. His father Selim I had taken Jerusalem from the Mamluks in 1516–1517. Between 1537 and 1541 Suleiman rebuilt the city walls: some 4 kilometers of stone with 34 towers and gates including the Jaffa, Damascus, Lions' and Zion Gates. These are the walls that surround the Old City today. Two graves just inside the Jaffa Gate are said, in a popular legend, to belong to the architects, executed for leaving Mount Zion outside the walls. He also restored the water supply with public fountains and covered the Dome of the Rock with new tiles.

Under Suleiman the Ottoman Empire was a refuge for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. Jewish tradition remembers his reign as the time when the Western Wall became the recognized place of Jewish prayer. In the 1560s he granted Doña Gracia Nasi and her nephew Don Joseph Nasi a lease on Tiberias, which they began to rebuild as a Jewish town, an early attempt at Jewish resettlement in the land.