Les langues entre elles dans la Jérusalem ottomane (1880-1914)

This article analyses the multilingualism of Jerusalem schools during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Gradually becoming the political and administrative capital of Palestine at the end of the Ottoman period, Jerusalem is the stage, since the middle of the nineteenth century, for a confrontation between European powers and Christian missions rivalries, especially noticeable through the educative offer they propose. Within the schools, the links between languages shed light on the diversity of students, their communities, their teachers and the use of French in the Jerusalem society. French constitutes a key to social advancement; resulting of a linguistic policy, but it is progressively supplanted from the public and the educational spheres. These linguistic rivalries are also visible through the complexity of the curriculum, facing a “linguistic inflation”.