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The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, circa 1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Beshara B. Doumani
Beshara B. Doumani
Affiliation:
teaches at the Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 207 College Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A.
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Extract

New evidence, culled from the Nablus advisory council (majlis al-shūrā) records and based on an actual Ottoman population count taken in December 1849, indicates that the city's population at that time numbered at least 20,000 people, more than twice the frequently cited figure of 8,000–9,000. This revision raises serious doubts about the veracity of hitherto commonly accepted population figures, most of them based on contemporary estimates by Western observers, for the various regions of Palestine during the first three-quarters of the 19th century. Moreover, when compared to available data for Nablus from the 16th and the late 19th centuries, it seems that the pattern of Nablus's demographic development differs from what the proponents of Ottoman decline and modernization theses have argued.2 Instead of decreasing during the so-called dark ages of Ottoman decline in the 17th and 18th centuries, Nablus's population increased significantly; and instead of growing robustly during the so-called period of modernization in the second half of the 19th century, it appears to have leveled off.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This research was assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Lubna ʿAbd al-Hadi kindly facilitated my access to some of the documents on which this article is based.

1 In mid-March 1849, a firman from Istanbul outlined the duties of the Nablus council as overseeing administrative and fiscal matters in Jabal Nablus as a whole, carrying out the government's policies, maintaining law and order, and supervising public works; Nablus Islamic Court Records (hereafter NICR), 11:160–61. Its members normally included the deputy-governor (mutasallim), qadi, mufti, and leading notables. Between 1848 and 1852, all were owners of soap factories, the core of the manufacturing sector in Nablus. For a detailed history of the council and changes in the social composition of its members, see Doumani, Beshara, “Merchants, Socioeconomic Change, and the State in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus Region, 1800–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1990), 140–68.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, the conclusions by Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter and Abdulfattah, Kamal, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late Sixteenth Century (Erlangen, 1977), 56–63Google Scholar.

3 In 1850, Jabal Nablus occupied the central hill region of Palestine spanning, east to west, the Jordan valley to the Mediterranean coast, and north to south, the plains of Marj Ibn ʿAmir to the hills of Ramallah. Administratively, Jabal Nablus was composed of the districts (sanjaqs) of Nablus and Jenin along with their seven rural subdistricts. Each subdistrict (nāḥiya; pl. nawāḥi) was essentially a cluster of villages administered by a rurally based chief who headed the area's strongest clan.

4 For similar developments in Mount Lebanon and Aleppo, see Urquhart, David, The Lebanon (Mount Souria): A History and a Diary, 2 vols. (London, 1860), 1:187, 190–93, 206Google Scholar; and Masters, Bruce, “The 1850 Events in Aleppo: An Aftershock of Syria's Incorporation into the Capitalist Economy,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22 (02 1990): 5Google Scholar.

5 For the 16th century, see Hütteroth, and Abdulfattah, , Historical Geography of PalestineGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Amnon and Lewis, Bernard, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1978).Google Scholar For the 19th century, in chronological order of publication, see Ben-Arieh, Yehoshua, “The Population of the Large Towns in Palestine During the First Eighty Years of the Nineteenth Century, According to Western Sources,” in Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, ed. Ma'oz, Moshe (Jerusalem, 1975), 49–69Google Scholar; Gerber, Haim, “The Population of Syria and Palestine in the Nineteenth Century,” Asian and African Studies 17, 1 (03 1979): 58–80Google Scholar; Gottheil, Fred M., “The Population of Palestine, circa 1875,” Middle Eastern Studies 15 (10 1979): 310–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schölch, Alexander, “The Demographic Development of Palestine, 1850–1882,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (11 1985): 485–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also, by Schölch, , Palastina im Umbruch, 1856–1882: Untersuchungen zur wirtschaftlichen und sociopolitischen Entwicklung (Stuttgart, 1986)Google Scholar; McCarthy's, Justin exhaustive and well-documented study, The Population of Palestine: Population Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate, Institute for Palestine Studies Series (New York, 1990).Google Scholar For more general studies on the Ottoman census system and population counts, see Stanford Shaw, “The Ottoman Census System and Population, 1831–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (05 1978): 325–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCarthy, Justin, Muslims and Minorities (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Karpat, Kamal H., Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wisc, 1985).Google Scholar

6 Hütteroth, and Abdulfattah, , Historical Geography of Palestine, 60Google Scholar; Ben-Arieh, , “The Population of the Large Towns,” 49.Google Scholar

7 For example, see McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 15.Google Scholar

8 Lewis, Bernard and Cohen, Amnon argue that the population of Nablus decreased at the slowest rate of all other Palestinian cities after the mid-16th-century peak (Population and Revenue, 21)Google Scholar. Similarly, Hütteroth, and Abdulfattah, , in a comparative study of 16th-century and 19th-century population figures, argue that the density of population in the Nablus region was the most resistant to change (Historical Geography of Palestine, 61).Google ScholarAmiran, D. H. K. also notes that “with the mountain towns, the keynote is stability,” in “The Patterns of Settlement in Palestine,” Israel Exploration Journal 3 (1953): 193.Google Scholar

9 McCarthy, Justin, “The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, 1878–1914,” Asian and African Studies 15, 1 (03 1981): 4Google Scholar; Karpat, Kamal, Ottoman Population, xi, 4–5.Google Scholar For a discussion of the limitations of the Ottoman system of population registration see McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 2–5.Google Scholar

10 Ben-Arieh, , “Population of the Large Towns,” 49.Google Scholar

11 For a critical discussion of the decline thesis, see the introductory chapter in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. Islamoǧlu-Inan, Huri (Cambridge, Eng.,1987).Google Scholar

12 The infamous Zionist slogan “land without people, for a people without land” is but one indication of this political sensitivity. An example of the extreme lengths some scholars go to substantiate this phrase is Peters, Joan, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine (New York, 1984).Google Scholar This work was hailed by the major press in the United States (although not in Israel) as an authoritative revisionist account, despite the fact it has been thoroughly discredited. See articles by Said, Edward and Finkelstein, Norman in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, ed. Said, Edward and Hitchens, Christopher (London, 1988).Google Scholar

13 Ben-Arieh, , “Population of the Large Towns,” 49.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 64.

15 Mills, John, Three Months' Residence at Nablus and an Account of the Modern Samaritans (London, 1864), 94.Google Scholar Mills, unlike most of the Western observers cited by Ben-Arieh, actually lived in Nablus for an extended period of time. Mills's own impression, however, is that the Ottoman official was wrong, and that Nablus's population at that time was closer to 10,000 people.

16 Schölch, , “Demographic Development of Palestine,” 492, 505.Google Scholar The naqīb al-ashrāf (steward of the descendants of the Prophet) of Jerusalem was the chief executive official for the census bureaus in southern Syria and reported to officials based in Beirut.

17 Nablus majlis al-shūrā records (hereafter NMSR), 22.

18 Ibid., 22. This letter was signed by the eight members of the Nablus advisory council and thirteen tax collectors.

19 Ibid., 23.

20 Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 6Google Scholar; see also the discussion in McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 2.Google Scholar

21 Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 8.Google Scholar

22 See Rustum, Asad, The Royal Archives of Egypt and the Disturbances in Palestine in 1834 (Beirut, 1936).Google Scholar

23 NMSR, 225.

24 “I find considerable apprehensions respecting the draft for the army, recollecting as they do the administration of Mehemet Ali,” Urquhart, wrote about the fears unleashed by the 1849 population count (The Lebanon, 1:92)Google Scholar; and Masters, Bruce argues that these fears directly percipitated the 1850 riots in Aleppo (“The 1850 Events in Aleppo,” 5).Google Scholar

25 NMSR, 137, 180, 184, 185.

26 ʿIzzat Pasha, based in Beirut, was the commanding officer of Muhammad Pasha who conducted the population count in Jabal Nablus. He also personally approved the salaries of the census-bureau officials in Jerusalem who, in turn, supervised the work of their counterparts in Nablus (NMSR, 52; dated 6 September 1850).

27 Urquhart, , The Lebanon, 1:187, 190–92.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 206.

29 NMSR, 55.

30 Ibid., 15.

31 For example, and despite explicit instructions by the central authorities to the contrary, the council member not only made the naqīb al-ashrāf a member but also designated him head of this body to boot. For details, see Doumani, “Merchants, Socioeconomic Change and the State in Ottoman Palestine,” chap. 3.

32 Ibid., chap. 8.

33 NMSR, 255. Urquhart also mentions that each soul was to pay 20 piasters (Urquhart, , The Lebanon, 1:192Google Scholar).

34 Compromises, often facilitated through bribes and various forms of pressure, were regularly resorted to to resolve disagreements between local and central authorities. It is entirely possible that the number was further reduced to 4,513 by the time it was registered in the Jerusalem census office. This assumes, of course, that Consul Rosen was given accurate figures by the local officials in 1861.

35 NMSR, 25.

36 Ibid., 70.

37 NMSR, 255.

38 Ibid., 255.

39 Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 10.Google Scholar McCarthy argues that, due to lack of effective control, “satisfactory” registration of the Palestinian population did not begin until after 1860, and that the first published Ottoman registration appeared in the 1871–72 (1288) Syria yearbook (sālnāme). He mentions that only males were counted at that time, the implication being all males, regardless of age, were included (Population of Palestine, 5). This meaning of nafs, however, cannot be projected backwards. Moreover, the similarity of bureaucratic organization of the census offices in Palestine at mid-century to that discussed by McCarthy for the last quarter of the century suggests that serious Ottoman population counts in Greater Syria as a whole actually started in 1849.

40 Urquhart, , The Lebanon, 2:190Google Scholar; Masters, , “The 1850 Events in Aleppo,” 5.Google Scholar

41 It is generally agreed that males fifteen years of age and older constituted about one-third of preindustrialized populations; Russel, J. C., “Late Medieval Balkan and Asia Minor Population,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 3 (1960), 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, Schölch, , “The Demographic Development of Palestine,” 496Google Scholar; Gerber, , “The Population of Syria and Palestine,” 60.Google Scholar The latter cites contemporary observers—such as Bowring, Urquhart, and Volney—who used coefficients ranging from three to four per adult male.

42 McCarthy, , “Population of Ottoman Syria,” 7–11Google Scholar; idem, , Population of Palestine, 4–5Google Scholar; also Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 9.Google Scholar

43 Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 9–10.Google Scholar See also the correction factor discussed by McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 4–5.Google Scholar

44 McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 4.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 15, 48 (Table Al-5).

46 We can be certain that a second count was not taken before 1861, because that is the year Consul Rosen reports on the population of Palestine based on the 1849 census figures made available to him by the census official in Jerusalem.

47 McCarthy states that this number refers to males, but because no evidence is provided, this assumption and, consequently, his estimate of Nablus's population at that period must be reconsidered (Population of Palestine, 15).

48 Cohen, and Lewis, , Population and Revenue, 149.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 26.

50 For discussion of this term, see Barkan, O. L., “Research on the Ottoman Fiscal Surveys,” in Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. Cook, M. A. (London, 1970), 168Google Scholar; Cohen, and Lewis, , Population and Revenue, 15–16Google Scholar; Hutteroth, and Abdelfattah, , Historical Geography of Palestine, 36–46.Google Scholar

51 Karpat, , Ottoman Population, 9.Google Scholar

52 Gerber, also questions the notion of depopulation in Syria and Palestine during this period; see his article, “Population of Syria and Palestine,” 76–80.Google Scholar

53 See, for example, Shamir, Shimon, “Egyptian Rule (1832–1840) and the Beginning of the Modern Period in the History of Palestine,” in Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868–1948), ed. Cohen, Amnon and Baer, Gabriel (Jerusalem, 1984), 214–31.Google Scholar For a critical discussion of the historiography of Ottoman Palestine, see Doumani, Beshara, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21,2 (Winter 1992): 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Nimr, Ihsan, Tārīkh Jabal Nablus wa-al-Balqāʿ (History of Jabal Nablus and al-Balqāʿ), 4 vols. (Nablus, 1936–1975).Google ScholarSee esp. vol. 2, Aḥwal ʿahd al-iqtāʿ (Conditions in the Feudal Era), (Nablus, 1961).Google Scholar

55 ʿAwra, Ibrahim, Tārīkh wilāyat Sulaymān bāsha al-ʿādil (History of the reign of Sulayman Pasha the Just) (Sidon, 1936), 22.Google Scholar This book was written in 1853 by the head scribe of Sulayman Pasha who was Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar's successor.

56 See Tables Al–7, Al–9, Al–12, Al–13, and Al–14 in McCarthy, , Population of Palestine, 49–53.Google Scholar

57 The first three numbers are listed in Beirut province yearbooks for the years (Hijra) 1318, 1319, and 1322. The fourth number was cited by Tamimi and Bajat, two Ottoman officials who based their figures on census-bureau statistics of Beirut province; Tamimi, Muhammad Rafiq and Bahjat, Muhammad, Bajat, , Wilāyat Beirut (Beirut, 1916–1917), 113–14.Google Scholar

58 Schōlch, , “European Penetration and the Economic Development of Palestine, 1856–1882,” in Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Owen, Roger (London, 1982), 51.Google Scholar

59 Schlōch, “Demographic Development of Palestine,” 494, 503, 505.Google Scholar

60 NMSR, 55; dated 10 September 1850.