Political Economy of Population Census in Ottoman Palestine

8/14/2019 Political Economy of Population Census in Ottoman Palestine

1/18

The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, circa 1850Author(s): Beshara B. DoumaniSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 1-17Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164049

Accessed: 03/03/2009 11:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

International Journal of Middle East Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/164049?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/164049?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/18

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 26 (1994), 1-17. Printed in the United States of America

Beshara B. Doumani

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POPULATIONCOUNTS IN OTTOMAN PALESTINE:NABLUS, CIRCA 1850

New evidence, culled from the Nablus advisory council (majlis al-shiira) recordsand based on an actual Ottoman population count taken in December 1849, indi-cates that the city's population at that time numberedat least 20,000 people, morethan twice the frequently cited figure of 8,000-9,000.' This revision raises seriousdoubts about the veracity of hithertocommonly accepted population figures, mostof them based on contemporaryestimates by Western observers, for the variousregions of Palestine during the first three-quartersof the 19th century. Moreover,when compared to available data for Nablus from the 16th and the late 19th cen-turies, it seems that the patternof Nablus's demographicdevelopment differs fromwhat the proponents of Ottoman decline and modernization theses have argued.2Instead of decreasing duringthe so-called darkages of Ottoman decline in the 17thand 18th centuries, Nablus's population increased significantly; and instead ofgrowing robustly duringthe so-called period of modernizationin the second half ofthe 19th century, it appearsto have leveled off.This against-the-graindemographic patternreflects the fact that Nablus-an in-terior city whose economy was based on local and regional trade, manufacture,and the provision of services to the surroundinghinterland-enjoyed a fair mea-sure of economic prosperityand political stability duringthe middle Ottoman cen-turies when the power of the central government was weak. Conversely, Nablus'seconomy in the latter part of the 19th century, when compared to the efferves-cence of some other towns in GreaterSyria, seems to have become lethargic as aresult of Ottoman centralization and the deepening integrationof Palestine into theEuropean-dominatedworld economy. Just as Damascus was supersededby Beirut,a rapidly growing coastal city energized by the increasing volume of trade withEurope, so was Nablus negatively affected by the shifting of economic and poli-tical power toward the coastal trade cities of Jaffa and Haifa, and to Jerusalem.Furthercomparative study is needed to determine whether Nablus's demographicdevelopment duringthe Ottomanperiod is unique or typical of other interiorurbancenters in GreaterSyria characterizedby similar economic and social structures.

Beshara B. Doumani teaches at the Departmentof History, University of Pennsylvania, 207 CollegeHall, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A.? 1994 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/94 $5.00 + .00


3/18

2 Beshara B. DoumaniTABLE 1 Population according to Western sources

City 1800 1840 1860 1880 1922Nablus 7,500 8,000 9,500 12,500 16,000Jerusalem 9,000 13,000 19,000 30,000 62,500Jaffa 2,750 4,750 6,520 10,000 47,700Haifa 1,000 2,000 3,000 6,000 24,600Gaza 8,000 12,000 15,000 19,000 17,500Hebron 5,000 6,500 7,500 10,000 16,600Acre 8,000 10,000 10,000 8,500 6,400Source: Abridgedfrom summarytable in Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, "The Population of the Large Towns inPalestine During the First Eighty Years of the Nineteenth Century, According to Western Sources," inStudies on Palestine During the OttomanPeriod, ed. Moshe Ma'oz (Jerusalem, 1975), 68.

By using the label "political economy" to describe Ottomanpopulation counts,I am referringto the contested nature of a process usually assumed to be technicalin nature.In JabalNablus,3as elsewhere in GreaterSyria duringthe mid-19th cen-tury, counting people involved a struggle over taxation, conscription, control ofruralproduction, and the drawing of political and social boundaries during a tran-sitional and fluid stage of Ottoman rule. From this perspective, the events sur-roundingthe population count of 1849 were but partof a largerdiscourse betweenlocal and central authorities. The context and way in which the count was carriedout, and the subsequent disagreement about the final numbersbetween the Nabluscouncil and the central Ottoman authorities, illustrate the inherent contradictionsof Ottoman reform as applied to semiautonomous regions such as Jabal Nablus.The campaign of population counts in GreaterSyria during the mid-19th centuryalso heralded the slow, but sure, creation of new categories through which theOttoman state attemptedto redefine, manipulate,and extend its authorityover thepopulations within its territoriesduring the Tanzimat period.4

THE 1849 COUNTAlthough numerous studies on the demography of Ottoman Palestine have beenpublished in the past two decades, very large gaps in our knowledge about size andtrends still remain. Known official Ottoman population statistics cover only partsof the 16th century and the last quarterof the 19th century, and most researchefforts have been limited to these two periods.5We cannot even begin to guessabout the demographic changes in Palestine during the 17th and 18th centuries,although the prevalent assumption is that the population declined.6 The oppositeholds true for the first three-quartersof the 19th century:the proliferationof West-ern travelers' accounts and consular reportsgenerateda plethora of guesses, all ofwhich assumed a general rise in population.The Israeli scholar Yehoshua Ben-Arieh was the first to systematically inves-tigate Western sources for the population of Palestinian cities in the first three-quartersof the 19thcentury, and his conclusions (Table 1) have been widely cited.7


4/18

Population Counts in OttomanPalestine 3As these figures suggest, Nablus is estimated to have grown at a sluggish rate,especially when comparedto Jerusalemand Jaffa,whose population is said to havetripled. The sluggish response of Nablus and its hinterland to either increasing ordecreasing population levels as a whole is a recurrent theme in studies on demo-graphic change in Palestine and clearly reflects the stability of patterns of settle-ment in this region.8Yehoshua Ben-Arieh's conclusions cannot be accepted at face value. JustinMcCarthy and Kamal Karpathave shown that travelers' and consular reports arenot reliable, because the Ottoman government was the only one that did any sys-tematic counting.9All other estimates were simply guesses, and no contemporaryobservers could have known enough about such a large geographic area to reportnumbers accurately. Ben-Arieh's findings were also colored by an assumption,stated categorically and without evidence or elaboration,that Palestine in 1800 was"in a state of utter devastation,"10 n assumption based on an unrestrainedversionof the Ottoman-decline thesis.1'

Demographic studies on Palestine are also politically sensitive.'2 A few yearsafter the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, Ben-Arieh,acutely aware of the Palestiniandemographic "problem,"wrote that it was "highlyimportantto ... provide basic knowledge about the density of the population in thecountry before the beginning of modern Jewish settlement."'3In choosing fromamong the estimates made by various Europeantravelers, Ben-Arieh then usuallypicked the lower, rather han the higher, figures. In the case of Nablus, for example,he dismissed the estimates of 14,000 for mid-centuryby Orelli, and of 20,760 for1881 by Falsher, and settled on substantially lower figures (see Table 1).14He doesnot, moreover, cite Reverend John Mills's report of being told by an Ottomanofficial in Nablus, not long after the regional census office was established, that thecity's population ranged from 20,000 to 25,000 in the mid-1850s.15Ben-Arieh's estimate that 8,000-9,000 people lived in the city of Nablus at mid-century, however, does seem to be borne out by a report submitted in 1861 byRosen, the Prussian consul based in Jerusalem,to his superiors in Istanbul. Alex-ander Scholch published a table based on data that Consul Rosen claimed camefrom the 1849 register of souls (defter-i nufuis)in Jerusalem, and this shows afigure of 4,513 souls (nafs; pl. nufuis)for the city of Nablus.'6 Scholch, havingaccepted Rosen's claim that the registration unit nafs refers to males of all ages,concluded that a total of 9,026 people lived in Nablus, for the number had to bedoubled to include females.The above estimates run counter to information contained in the records of theNablus advisory council. According to these records, the Ottoman military com-mander Muhammad Pasha rode into the city of Nablus in late December 1849,accompanied by a large contingent of troops.17MuhammadPasha did not come tocollect taxes, punish rebels, or install a new deputy-governor (qda'immaqdm, alsocalled mutasallim). Rather,he came to count people in what, as far as we know, wasthe first serious attemptby the Ottomangovernment at people counting since the16th century. December was an appropriatemonth for it: most of the peasants andagriculturalworkers were huddled in their homes following the olive harvest sea-son, andthey were busy repairingtheirhouses and tools andfortifying the domestic


5/18

4 Beshara B. Doumanisphere in anticipation of the sowing of winter crops. For the vast majority of theurban male population-artisans, workers, shopkeepers, and itinerant merchants-December, with its rains and short days, was also a slow month with less than theusual work and travel.

The drama of Muhammad Pasha's arrival and the inconvenience of troops to bebilleted were no doubt regarded as intrusions by the local population. Nablus wasthe capital of a largely autonomous hill region, long ruled by native sons and infa-mous for being one of the most difficult areas for the central government to control,much less collect taxes on a systematic basis. There was no Ottoman garrison inthe city, and its population was characterized by a strong sense of regional iden-tification. The tensions generated by this operation can be detected in a letter fromthe council delivered to Muhammad Pasha in early January 1850, then sent to thegovernor of Sidon province. In a detailed summary of the undertaking, the councilmembers assured the higher authorities that the count proceeded peacefully andposed no undue burden on the people. The letter states, in part,A short while ago, the entourage of his eminence ... Muhammad Basha.. . arrived. . .with ... a firman. . . orderinga survey of souls of the city of Nablus and its hinterland sub-districts . . and Jenin and its subdistricts. The noble firman was read at the council[premises] in the presence of the city's notables, heads of the city quarters(mashayikhal-harat), and the tax collectors of the subdistricts.The populationcount of the city of Nabluswas carriedout, and immediately thereafter,the officials brought by his excellency departedto the subdistricts accompaniedby the tax collectors. Thus a survey of souls in all the partsof the districts of Nablus and Jenin was carried out without the least burden on the peopleby the officials, neither in terms of food nor drink. All the people have complete assuranceand peace of mind. . . . The officials'. . . mission was completed ... and all the expensesincurredby the Victorious Military .. during their stay . . . whether inside or outside [thecity] were paid by the council to the parties involved. All . .. were satisfied with his ... ex-cellency . . . and the officials in his entourage, for his eminence always has compassion forthe people of these two districts and, due to his wisdom, all enjoy comfort, security, andprosperity.... 18

Soon after Muhammad Pasha left, however, disagreements arose between theNablus council members and the central authorities over the actual number ofpeople living in the city of Nablus and its hinterland. On 9 January 1850, threedays after the letter cited earlier, the council members sent another communique tothe same Muhammad Pasha:We have put our seal on ... the (census) registers of the city of Nablus [the number]6,626nafs as decided by the officials who registered the souls in Nablus for your excellency. Afteryour excellency's entourage left these parts ... the council reviewed [the registers] . . . andfound that the numberof souls in the city of Nablus, including non-Muslims (dhimmiyyun),is exactly 5,626; so our sealed letter has a mistake of 1,000 extra nafs.... In this case webeg your indulgence ... to send us back the sealed report... so that it can be destroyedandanother one preparedwhich shows the correct number.... 19

Setting the disagreement aside for the moment, it must be immediately pointedout that the figures of 6,626 or 5,626 nafs are the most concrete and reliable popu-lation numbers available for Nablus during the mid-19th century: they were arrived


6/18

Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine 5at as a result of a joint and systematic count by both the central and the localauthorities and were recorded immediately after the census was carried out. Ac-cording to these numbers and again assuming that nafs referred only to malesregardless of age, the population of Nablus must have ranged between 11,252and 13,262 at mid-century, or 3,000-4,000 more than the figures put forwardbyBen-Arieh and Schilch.THE MEANINGS OF NUMBERSHow can it be explained that a single population count of the city of Nablus in1849 producedthree such widely different numbers: the one by Consul Rosen andthe two mentioned in the document above? And what are the meanings of thesenumbers?The answer has something to do with the political economy of popula-tion counts on the one hand, and the contradictions inherentin the process of Otto-man reform on the other. It is precisely the uncertain nature of demographic datathat is the most significant and intriguing point at this juncture, for it exposes thestruggle between local forces and the central government over power, labor, andsurplus.Karpat, in an evaluation of 19th-centuryOttoman population counts beginningin the 1830s, argued that taxation and conscription were the driving forces behindthem.20The military, in his words, "was the first to show keen interest in popula-tion records and to exert pressureon the Sultan."21t was not a coincidence, there-fore, that the 1849 census of Nablus was planned and carried out by a militaryunitheaded by Muhammad Pasha. After all, the head tax and conscription were veryunpopularmeasures, and, as MuhammadPasha must have known, the attempts ofthe Egyptian administrationto impose them precipitated the 1834 revolt, led bynone other than the sheikhs of Jabal Nablus.22Because the object of the census was to determine both the tax base and thenumberof young men eligible for conscription into the military, local notables hadpowerful incentives to undercount the population. For one thing, they could, andindeed tried to, pocket the difference between the amount of money collected andthe amount paid to the government by lowering their estimate of the number oftaxpayers.23Underreportingcould be used as a means of increasing the popularityof and patronage obligations (and profit) to a local notable if he demonstrated thepower to reduce the tax burden. Undercounting also meant that more peasantscould stay on the land and continue producing the agriculturalcommodities thatwere the most profitablesource of income for the urban elite. Finally, the very actof counting constituted an infringement on the notables' control over the localpopulation: it reaffirmedOttomanauthorityduringan aggressive period of central-ization, and it provided the government with valuable knowledge that could beused to manipulatethe local population directly.The general population, especially the poor, exerted pressure for undercountingfrom below, for they had equally powerful motivations. Even though a relativelysmall number of people were directly affected by conscription, its specter, raisedby population counts, haunted the general population and generateda great deal oftension, not just in Nablus but also in Mount Lebanon and Aleppo.24 Practically,


7/18

6 Beshara B. Doumaniconscription could mean the breakupof the family unit for long periods of time,impoverishment, and loss of land due to the absence, in some instances, of themale head of the family. Those who could avoided registration altogether. The un-fortunate who could not either accepted their fate or ran away. The well-to-do hada thirdoption: they could pay someone a large amountof money to be conscriptedin their place.25Registration also meant the possibility of an increased tax burden. More im-portant, perhaps, it reinforced the idea of individual responsibility in meeting taxobligations. This threatened to undermineone of the fundamental defense mecha-nisms of the urbanpoor and a peasantry dependent on rain-fed agriculture:collec-tive payment of taxes on the quarterand village levels. Moreover, Jabal Nablus atthis time was embroiled in a violent struggle between the Tuqanand CAbd l-Hadifamilies for control of this region. This struggle, in turn, was fueled by numerousdisputes and armed engagements between leading peasant clans, especially in thesubdistricts of Wadi al-Shcir and Jammacin. This volatile environment reducedeven furtherthe willingness of peasants to submit to a population count.In any case, the local authorities and the population as a whole certainly ex-perienced the count as more of a military and fiscal operation than a scientificundertaking. That same year, Urquhart,who accompanied the Ottoman militarycommander 'Izzat Pasha, during one of his population count sweeps in MountLebanon, wrote of the "greatcommotion"in which this operationwas conducted.26As in JabalNablus, dozens of local leaders were assembled, then occasional forayswere made that involved house-by-house searches.27The apprehensiveness of theleaders andof the general populationin Mount Lebanon was only surpassed by theirefforts to underestimatetheir true number-efforts that 'Izzat Pashawas well awareof. According to Urquhart,the local governor, Sacid Bey, was "sending man afterman to detect concealed persons, and each new pressure bringing more and moremen to light. It was like an oil press-another turn and anothersquirt. The chiefshelped the government to detect the men, the people to detect the property."28These apprehensionswere well founded. Shortly after the population count wascompleted in Jabal Nablus, the local census officials were instructed to submit allnames in triplicateand send copies to the centralgovernmentheadquarters n Istan-bul, to the regional military headquarters,and to Beirut, then the fiscal capital ofSidon province.29The military and economic aspects of Ottoman population counts fed into apolitical and administrative dilemma. The Tanzimatof 1839 heralded,among otherthings, the first stage of a concerted effort by the centralgovernmentto consolidateits hold on regions then only nominally under its control. The Nablus advisorycouncil and the newly created census bureauwere but two of the bureaucraticagen-cies through which this control was to be exercised. But herein lay one of theprimary contradictions of Ottoman reform efforts: these agencies could functioneffectively at the district and subdistrict levels only if they were staffed by localleaders who knew the area well and who exercised some measure of influence.In short, the very social elements who stood to lose from the extension of cen-tral control manned the officialbureaucraticposts chargedwith implementingthesereforms.


8/18

Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine 7This is not to say that all aspects of the Tanzimat were seen by influential mer-chants, ruling families, and religious leaders as potentially undermining their

power. On the contrary, many welcomed their cooptation in the hope of takingadvantageof new opportunities.This was especially true for the merchantsof JabalNablus because reforms, such as the establishment of a city council, gave themdirect access to official political positions for the first time in memory. Instead ofresisting the new arrangements,therefore, many competed over the new positions,then tried to use them for their own purposes. Membership in the council couldmean, for example, power over competitors in such vital arenas in awarding taxfarms; approvingbids for auctions on commodities collected as taxes in kind; andappointmentof relatives and friends to head newly established institutions.Thus, even though the impetus for establishing a census bureaucame from thecentral government, it was left up to the Nablus council members to appoint itsadministrators.Sulayman Beik Tuqan, the mutasallim of Nablus at the time, dulyappointed two of his relatives, 'Ali Beik Tuqan and Muhammad Amin Tuqan, tothe posts. Their assistants for the hinterland were picked by the rural leaders, allof whom headed clans that controlled the position of subdistrict chief for genera-tions.30These ruralappointees used their positions in the census bureauexactly asthe members of the council used theirs: to resist, alter, or only selectively imple-ment the responsibilities they were instructedto carryout.The Ottomanauthorities were well aware of this dilemma. In the late 1840s, forexample, they were involved in bitterdisputes with the Nablus council over seriousissues such as the composition of the council's membership,31 nd the solid supportof the council to soap manufacturerswho were currentlyon a tax strike, refusingto pay hundreds of thousands of piasters in export taxes.32All the members of thecouncil, one must immediately add, were involved in soap production.No wonder, therefore, that Muhammad Pasha personally supervised the 1849census in a military-style operationwhile the newly appointedlocal census officialswere in Beirut receiving instructions. Clearly, he wanted the first crucial step-counting people-to be executed under his direct control before these officials re-turned home. Otherwise, the basic numbers could have been easily manipulated.The process of people counting, therefore,progressedin stages: the initiative camefrom the central authorities; the actual census was a joint operation under clearhierarchicalcommand; and only the updating of records and day-to-day manage-ment was left to local officials.This calculated and well-coordinated arrangementfailed to prevent a confron-tation, however. When the local chief registrarreturned from Beirut, the councilmembers saw fit to review the census books and consequently "discovered" thatthe figure 6,626 was exactly 1,000 nafs over the "real" number. In the letter ask-ing that the numberbe reduced, no explanation was given for how this "mistake"was discovered. Not enough time had elapsed to have taken yet another count(MuhammadPasha had left three days earlier), and there is no reference in thecorrespondenceto a new count. Even if the new figure of 5,626 had been based ona recount, it is highly unlikely that the difference would amount to exactly 1,000nafs. At the same time, it is equally unlikely that such a large mistake could be asimple counting error, because all the parties concerned were certainly aware of


9/18

8 Beshara B. Doumanithe larger implications of a census and all the council members and thirteen taxcollectors put their seal of approval on the original document. The only explana-tion, it seems, is that the leaders of Jabal Nablus did what they had done on previ-ous occasions and were to do again: they simply asserted their local will.In short, Ottoman population counts were subject to political negotiations be-tween local and central authorities, and the bargaining over numbers led to a de-liberate undercount of the population by local forces that controlled the advisorycouncil. It is fairly safe to conclude, therefore, thatthe original figureof 6,626 nafsmore correctly correspondedto the actual size of the population.This conclusion is buttressed by another example of undercounting the popu-lation. In a petition dated 20 December 1851 and addressed to Hafiz Pasha, thegovernor (mutasarrif) of Jerusalem, the Nablus council argued that the centralgovernment'sclaim of 34,563 nafs in the hinterlandvillages of Nablus and Jenin iswrong and should be reduced by exactly 5,000 to 29,563. They noted quite bra-zenly that the taxes they were responsible for collecting, therefore, were 100,000piasters less than stated, as every nafs was to pay 20 piasters.33Their reasons were that their own census records showed only 31,302 nafs, or3,261 less than the central government's figures. They also claimed that a further722 bedouin and peasant nufufs egisteredhad since left their villages and pasturesbecause of civil strife (harakat al-fasad), and harassment by the Saqr bedouintribe. In addition, they continued, the chief registrarhad not had the time to deletethe names of those who had died in the intervening period (one year). Finally, theystatedthat when the count was taken, manytwelve-year-old children were counted,and now that they had reached fifteen years of age, they were added again to thecensus book preparedby the chief registrarof nufus.The major discrepancy, that of 3,126 nafs, was again asserted rather than ex-plained, very much in line with the 1,000-person "mistake." The other explana-tions drive home the point that the council membersknew theirpopulationbest andpossessed the means by which to manipulatenumbers. Unless the central govern-ment was willing to pay to investigate and retake the census, it would have nooption but to accept these assertions at face value.

The council's records yield no response to these petitions, so the final outcomeof this bargaining process is unknown. Either petition calling for reducing theofficial number of nufus may have been approvedor ignored; but it is more likelythat a compromise was reached.34What is clear is that the council members weremost anxious for a reply. Only eleven days after they sent the first letter calling forreducing the Nablus population count by 1,000 nafs, they drafted another memo-randum to the military commander, MuhammadPasha, reiterating their demandthat the "mistaken"census books be forwardedwithout delay so that they could bedestroyed and replaced with the "correct"ones. They generously offered that "nodoubt [someone] forgot to order that the [census] document be sent back," andnoted that the new census registrar,CAliBeik Tuqan, would personally accompanythis letter.35The council's own sense of urgency was deepened by pressures from rural andurban inhabitants worried about the possible consequences of this intrusion into


10/18

Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine 9their affairs. One note of resistance, for example, was sounded by a subdistrictchief, Mahmud al-Qasim, son of Qasim al-Ahmad (sheikh of the subdistrict ofJammacinand governor of Nablus until his execution by IbrahimPasha for leadingthe 1834 revolt). When al-Qasim received instructionsto appoint in each village ofhis subdistrict a local leader (Cumda) harged with recording every birthand deathand with submitting a monthly reportto the Nablus census office, he sent the mes-senger back with the cynical response that he could not carryout this duty becausehe did not have paper on which to write an answer.36THE MEANING OF NAFS

In addition to attemptsat deliberate undercounting by the Nablus council, anotherproblem interferes with an accurate count of the population of Nablus in the mid-19th century: the meaning of the registrationunit nafs. Consul Rosen-and, con-sequently, Alexander Sch6lch-assumed that the term nafs referred to all males.Yet, at the time of the 1849 census (although not necessarily afterwards),both thecentral government and the local employees of the Nablus census bureauused nafsto refer to males who reached their legal majority,not all males regardless of age.The correspondenceof the council clearly says that each nafs was subject to taxa-tion and conscription, and these only applied to adult males.37As mentioned pre-viously, one letter concerning the count noted that each nafs was subject to anannual head tax of twenty piasters and explicitly identified nafs as persons fifteenyears of age and older.38In his study of the Ottoman census systems, Karpatalso concludes that, "For the1831-1838 census the adult male, regardless of household status, became theofficial registrationunit; he remained so until the 1881/82-1883 census, at whichtime the basic unit became the individual regardless of age or sex."39Finally, thesimultaneous counts in Mount Lebanon, Beirut, and Aleppo all used adult males asthe unit of counting. In the case of Beirut, for example, Urquhartmultiplied thenumber of nufus by 3.5 to estimate the total population, the implication being thatit was clearly understood at the time of the counts that the official registrationunit,nafs, referred to adult males.40While the meaning of the term nafs might have changed in subsequent officialOttomancounts, all the available evidence for the mid-century population countsin GreaterSyria spells out that nafs refers to adult males. Therefore, one can onlyconclude that the population of Nablus, based on the figure of 6,626 nafs multi-plied by the conservative coefficient of 3, was approximately 19,878 people.4'This figuredoes not take into account the structuralproblemsin the way Ottomancensus surveys were conducted in the first place, which led to serious undercountsof the population, especially females and children in the countryside.42Karpat,forexample, estimates that the undercounthovered around 8 percentin urbanareas andup to 15 percent in outlying mountainregions.43Hence, it would be safe to estimatethat at least 20,000 people lived in the city of Nablus at mid-century;that is two tothree times the hitherto accepted number, and the same figure that John Millsreported being told him by an Ottoman official in 1855.


11/18


12/18

Population Counts in OttomanPalestine 1118th, precisely the time when the population of Palestine was supposed to be at itslowest because of "Ottoman decline" and "lack of security."Whereas it is unlikelythat the population grew in a smooth upwardcurve, it would have been impossiblefor all the growthto have occurredbetween the early 1830s and the mid-1850s, con-sidering the historically stable patternsof settlementin the hill regions and the slug-gish response of Jabal Nablus to either population increases or decreases.52(Thisdecade, one must emphasize, is the magic starting point for modernization theoristswho argue that the Egyptian invasion led to the slow reversal of Ottoman declinethrough the injection of Western modes of social and cultural organization and,more importantly,the establishment of "law and order."Consequently, prosperityfollowed and along with it population growth.53)Weaker central control does not necessarily mean a "lack of security," for re-gional alliances were established to ensure the safety of trade routes and to protectagriculturalproduction. Ihsan Nimr, a local historian of Jabal Nablus, gave ex-amples of these alliances and argued that the 18th century was a golden age interms of prosperity, peace, and self-rule.54Because he credited his own ancestorswith leading Nablus during this period, his conclusions were undoubtedly self-serving, but that does not mean they were completely untrue.Indeed, the weaken-ing of central control during the 17th and 18th centuries may have encouraged,instead of hindered, economic and demographicgrowth in Nablus. In part, the in-ability of the Ottomangovernmentto siphon off the surplusas efficiently as beforemeant that more of it stayed in Nablus. More importantly,the ruling and merchantfamilies of Nablus had the capital and entrepreneurialability to (1) take advantageof an enlarged regional trading area under the umbrella of Ottomanrule; (2) reapthe financial rewards associated with their proximity to the Damascus contingentof the pilgrimage caravan to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina-a massive an-nual event consistently supportedby the central Ottomanauthorities;and (3) man-age the local organization of commercial agricultural production fueled by theburgeoning trade with Europe.Jabal Nablus was also a refuge for both peasants and well-to-do merchantseagerto put some distance between themselves and the brutal confiscatory and exploit-ative policies of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar,governor of Sidon province, and ruler ofnorthernPalestine (1775-1804).55 In short, it seems that the demographicdevelop-ment of Nablus does not fit the theme of Ottoman decline or, more accurately, theidea that weakness in the center in comparison with growing European strengthnecessarily led to an economic and demographic decline in all the regions underOttoman control.

Third, not only did the population of Nablus grow when it was supposed to bedeclining, it seems to have stagnated when it was supposed to be increasing as aresult of Western penetrationstartingin the second half of the 19th century. True,many Palestinian cities did increase in population and showed significant eco-nomic growth during the 1850-1914 period, especially Jerusalem, Jaffa, andHaifa. But some others either declined (Acre) or stagnated (Nablus). Generaliza-tions about population growth or decline, therefore, need to be held in abeyanceuntil in-depth studies of the different regions of GreaterSyria can be undertakenon a case-by-case basis.


13/18

12 Beshara B. DoumaniThe task of assessing trends in the demographic patternsof Jabal Nablus during

the third and fourth quartersof the 19th century is complicated by shifting admin-istrative boundaries, changes in the definition of the registration unit, incom-pleteness of some counts, and the lack of information on when official Ottomanpopulation counts actually took place. The political, military, and administrativegoals of the Ottomangovernment, as well as changing local conditions, must alsobe taken into account. Nevertheless, published Ottoman statistics for the districtsof Nablus and Jenin, reproducedin detail by Justin McCarthyfor the years 1886-92, 1888-89, 1896, 1905-6, and 1911-12, show only a slow increase in line withthe historically sluggish response of this region to larger population trends.56Thesame holds true for the city's population. Official Ottoman figures for the years1900-1, 1901-2, 1904-5, and 1909-10, state that the number of people in Nablusamountedto, respectively, 17,472, 19,208, 19,202, and 21,072.57Keeping in mindthat these statistics are only approximationsand that they need to be corrected forundercounting, we are still left with the impression that there was no vigorouspopulation growth in Nablus and its hinterlandduring the second half of the 19thcentury.This conclusion is reinforced by a mixed assessment of Nablus's economicperformance during this period. Scholch, for example, convincingly argued for asteady expansion of Palestine's economy between 1856 and 1882.58Much of thisgrowth, however, was concentrated in the coastal areas, as well as in Jerusalemand Bethlehem; and, as Scholch also showed, economic prosperitydid not alwaystranslate into population increases, especially in the 1850s and 1860s. Jabal Nab-lus, for example, was wracked by violent internal strife (1853-59); an unknownnumber were recruited during the Crimean War; and a serious cholera epidemic(1865-66) broke out, in which 1,760 deaths were reportedin the city within eigh-teen days.59Moreover, the quickening integrationof Palestine into the world econ-omy during this period may have been a mixed blessing for a city deeply rooted inlocal and regional trade and manufacture. The soap industry grew in leaps andbounds, as did the production of various agricultural products for export. Atthe same time, a generally declining manufacturing base-especially in textiles,leather, dyes, pottery, and other products-combined with the growing attractionof Haifa, Jaffa,and Jerusalemto encourage shifts in populationto places outside ofthe central hill region. Hence, the seemingly static demographicpicture.Fourth,there is a possibility that the demographicdevelopment of Nablus mightbe typical of other interior urban centers with similar social, economic, and cul-tural characteristics-such as Homs, Hama, Zgharta, and Nabatiyya, to mentionbut a few. Because histories of GreaterSyria during the modern period are oftenwritten from the vantage points of the rising coastal cities such as Beirut or Jaffa,or the large centers of administration and international trade such as Aleppo andDamascus, a closer look at smaller interior cities and towns (not to mention cen-tral villages) might suggest a more complicated historical trajectoryfor the area asa whole. The black/white dichotomy of decline/modernization cannot account forthe fluctuating and contradictorypatternsof development taking place in variousregions of GreaterSyria during the same historical period.


14/18

Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine 13The final implication of the 1849 census has little to do with numbers,but rather

with how the very process of counting people affected the relationshipbetween theinhabitants of Jabal Nablus and the Ottoman government during this period. Thecentral authorities' use of population counts to pave the way for conscription andmore efficient collection of taxes met with far less local resistance than had Egyp-tian attempts to impose these two measures two decades earlier. Partly due to thecrushing defeat of the 1834 revolt but mostly as a result of changing economic andpolitical realities, the leading ruling and merchantfamilies of Jabal Nablus favoredguarded cooperation with the central authorities during this transitional phase ofOttoman reforms. Through their position in the advisory council, they sought toreduce the population count and to manipulate registration ratherthan oppose thecensus itself or reject the establishmentof the census bureau.Indeed, the chief reg-istrar(muqayyidawwal) of souls, CAliBeik Tuqan, and vice-registrar,MuhammadAmin Tuqan, complained of overwork, asked for extra forms, pleaded that moreemployees be hired, and demanded that their salaries be raised.The willingness of local leaders to cooperate stemmed also from their recogni-tion that the extension of central control throughpopulation-countcampaigns hadlarger repercussions than simply mobilizing adult males for fiscal and military pur-poses. People counting, essentially, was an exercise in hegemony that involved the(re)definitionof the individual's place in the Ottomanpolity and the use of knowl-edge to facilitate greater control. In this sense, population counts, perhaps morethan any other single administrativeaction of the Ottoman authorities during theTanzimatperiod, had a dramaticeffect in that they literally touched the majorityofthe local population in one brief, but comprehensive, sweep. For historically au-tonomous regions such as Jabal Nablus, this campaign signaled the moment whenOttoman rule became partof the daily consciousness, not only of local leaders butalso of the population as a whole.Perhaps no local officials in Jabal Nablus were more aware of people countingas a potentially powerful process of informationgathering and social control thanthe census registrars. In one of several petitions raised to the central authoritiesthroughthe Nablus council, they stated, in part,Yesterdaywe received a memorandumromthe venerableal-sayyidnaqibal-ashrafofJerusalem,hief executiveof thecensus . . relayingan ... order rom . . thegovernor fSidon province . . . that the census books of Muslims should be preparedin triplicate, onesent to Istanbul,anotherto the headquartersof the Victorious Military, and a thirdto census[bureau]of Beirut. As for the census books of the dhimiyyun, [they are to be preparedin]duplicates, one sent to Istanbul, and the other to Beirut.... These ... copies are to be pre-sented [to the naqib al-ashraf] between the beginning of March and August. Each of thesaid [census] books is to be signed by us and by ... the governor [of Nablus]. . .. They areto be annotatedin Turkish [and] written in red and black [ink] as necessary to highlight theannotations. It is not a secret to you, venerable sirs, that the following duties-recording ofnew names in the registers; notation of incoming (raft) and outgoing (amd) taxes [for eachname]; updatingold books; and issuing travel andexport (khardj)passes-are all partof thejurisdiction of this office, and perhaps other duties will be added in the future. Therefore,when considering the responsibilities of this office, it is clear that two or even three persons


15/18

14 Beshara B. Doumanido not have the capability to administer it.... Therefore we beg of the venerable sirs thatthey see it fit to write a memorandumto the governor of Sidon asking him ... to appointtwo (more) assistant registrars . . . and to provide a salary for them paid by the central trea-sury; [and] to either hire a salaried registrar for each subdistrict so we can depend onthem-as was arrangedduring the taking of the census . . under the supervision of...Muhammad Basha-or to add this responsibility to the duties of the tax collectors of thesesubdistricts.... We also beg your indulgence that an order be given to [increase] our sala-ries for ... this is a continuous process... 60

This petition clearly recognized the widening jurisdiction of the census bureauand the importance of the continuity of this work to effective conscription, taxation,and political manipulation. By the end of that century all individuals regardless ofsex and age would become the basic unit of counting, further facilitating the inte-gration of the local population into new administrative, cultural, and legal catego-ries aimed at undermining local affiliations and creating loyal Ottoman "citizens."

NOTESAuthor's note: This researchwas assisted by a grantfrom the Joint Committee on the Near and Mid-dle East of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies withfunds providedby the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. LubnaCAbd l-Hadi kindly facilitated myaccess to some of the documents on which this article is based.'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'spolicies,maintaining law and order, and supervising public works; Nablus Islamic Court Records (hereafterNICR), 11:160-61. Its members normally included the deputy-governor(mutasallim), qadi, mufti, andleading notables. Between 1848 and 1852, all were owners of soap factories, the core of the manufac-turing sector in Nablus. For a detailed history of the council and changes in the social composition of itsmembers, see Beshara Doumani, "Merchants,Socioeconomic Change, and the State in Ottoman Pales-tine: Nablus Region, 1800-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1990), 140-68.2See, for example, the conclusions by Wolf-Dieter Hutteroth and Kamal Abdulfattah, HistoricalGeography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late Sixteenth Century (Erlangen,1977), 56-63.3In 1850, Jabal Nablus occupied the centralhill region of Palestine spanning,east to west, the Jordanvalley to the Mediterraneancoast, and north to south, the plains of Marj Ibn 'Amir to the hills ofRamallah. Administratively, Jabal Nablus was composed of the districts (sanjaqs) of Nablus and Jeninalong with their seven rural subdistricts. Each subdistrict(nahiya; pl. nawahi) was essentially a clusterof villages administeredby a rurallybased chief who headed the area'sstrongest clan.4For similar developments in Mount Lebanon and Aleppo, see David Urquhart,The Lebanon (MountSouria): A History and a Diary, 2 vols. (London, 1860), 1:187, 190-93, 206; and Bruce Masters, "The1850 Events in Aleppo: An Aftershock of Syria's Incorporation nto the Capitalist Economy," Interna-tional Journal of Middle East Studies 22 (February1990): 5.5For the 16th century, see Hiitteroth and Abdulfattah, Historical Geography of Palestine; AmnonCohen and BernardLewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century(Princeton,N.J., 1978). For the 19thcentury, in chronological order of publication, see Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, "The Population of the LargeTowns in Palestine During the FirstEighty Years of the NineteenthCentury, According to WesternSources,"in Studies on Palestine duringthe OttomanPeriod, ed. MosheMa'oz (Jerusalem, 1975), 49-69; HaimGerber,"The Population of Syria and Palestine in the NineteenthCentury,"Asian and African Studies 17, 1 (March 1979): 58-80; Fred M. Gottheil, "The Population ofPalestine, circa 1875," Middle Eastern Studies 15 (October 1979): 310-21; Alexander Scholch, "TheDemographicDevelopment of Palestine, 1850-1882," International Journal of Middle East Studies 17(November 1985): 485-505; see also, by Scholch, Palastina im Umbruch,1856-1882: Untersuchungenzur wirtschaftlichen und sociopolitischen Entwicklung (Stuttgart, 1986); Justin McCarthy'sexhaustive


16/18


17/18

16 Beshara B. Doumani28Ibid.,206.29NMSR,55.30Ibid., 15.31Forexample, and despite explicit instructionsby the central authorities to the contrary,the councilmember not only made the naqib al-ashrdf a member but also designated him head of this body to boot.Fordetails, see Doumani, "Merchants,SocioeconomicChangeand the Statein OttomanPalestine,"chap.3.32Ibid.,chap. 8.33NMSR, 255. Urquhartalso mentions that each soul was to pay 20 piasters (Urquhart,The Leba-non, 1:192).34Compromises, often facilitated throughbribes and various forms of pressure, were regularly re-sorted to to resolve disagreementsbetween local and central authorities. It is entirely possible that thenumber was further reduced to 4,513 by the time it was registered in the Jerusalemcensus office. Thisassumes, of course, that Consul Rosen was given accuratefigures by the local officials in 1861.35NMSR,25.36Ibid.,70.37NMSR,255.38Ibid.,255.39Karpat,OttomanPopulation, 10. McCarthy argues that, due to lack of effective control, "satisfac-tory" registrationof the Palestinian population did not begin until after 1860, and that the first pub-lished Ottoman registration appearedin the 1871-72 (1288) Syria yearbook (sdlndme). He mentionsthat only males were counted at that time, the implication being all males, regardless of age, were in-cluded (Population of Palestine, 5). This meaning of nafs, however, cannot be projected backwards.Moreover, the similarity of bureaucraticorganization of the census offices in Palestine at mid-centuryto that discussed by McCarthyfor the last quarterof the century suggests that serious Ottomanpopula-tion counts in GreaterSyria as a whole actually started in 1849.40Urquhart,The Lebanon, 2:190; Masters, "The 1850 Events in Aleppo," 5.411Its generally agreed that males fifteen years of age and older constituted about one-third of pre-industrializedpopulations; J. C. Russel, "Late Medieval Balkan and Asia Minor Population," Journalof the Economic and Social History of the Orient 3 (1960), 265. See also, Scholch, "The DemographicDevelopment of Palestine," 496; Gerber, "The Population of Syria and Palestine," 60. The latter citescontemporaryobservers-such as Bowring, Urquhart,and Volney-who used coefficients ranging fromthree to four per adult male.42McCarthy,"Populationof OttomanSyria,"7-11; idem, Population of Palestine, 4-5; also Karpat,OttomanPopulation, 9.43Karpat,OttomanPopulation, 9-10. See also the correctionfactor discussed by McCarthy, Popula-tion of Palestine, 4-5.44McCarthy,Population of Palestine, 4.45Ibid.,15, 48 (Table A1-5).46We can be certain that a second count was not taken before 1861, because that is the year ConsulRosen reportson the population of Palestine based on the 1849 census figures made available to him bythe census official in Jerusalem.47McCarthy tates that this number refers to males, but because no evidence is provided,this assump-tion and, consequently, his estimate of Nablus's population at that period must be reconsidered(Popu-lation of Palestine, 15).48Cohenand Lewis, Population and Revenue, 149.49Ibid.,26.50For discussion of this term, see 0. L. Barkan, "Research on the Ottoman Fiscal Surveys," inStudies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. M. A. Cook (London, 1970), 168; Cohen andLewis, Population and Revenue, 15-16; Huiitterothnd Abdelfattah, Historical Geographyof Palestine,36-46.5 Karpat,OttomanPopulation, 9.52Gerberalso questions the notion of depopulation in Syria and Palestine duringthis period; see hisarticle, "Population of Syria and Palestine,"76-80.53See, for example, Shimon Shamir,"Egyptian Rule (1832-1840) and the Beginning of the ModernPeriod in the History of Palestine," in Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868-1948),


18/18

Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine 17ed. Amnon Cohen and Gabriel Baer (Jerusalem, 1984), 214-31. For a critical discussion of the histori-ography of Ottoman Palestine, see Beshara Doumani, "Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Pal-estinians into History,"Journal of Palestine Studies 21, 2 (Winter 1992): 5-28.54IhsanNimr, TarikhJabal Nablus wa-al-Balqd' (History of Jabal Nablus and al-Balqa'), 4 vols.(Nablus, 1936-1975). See esp. vol. 2, Ahwal cahd al-iqtdc (Conditions in the Feudal Era), (Nablus,1961).55Ibrahim Awra, Tarikhwilayat Sulayman bdsha al-cddil (History of the reign of Sulayman Pashathe Just) (Sidon, 1936), 22. This book was written in 1853 by the head scribe of Sulayman Pasha whowas Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar's successor.56See Tables A1-7, Al-9, A1-12, A1-13, and A1-14 in McCarthy,Population of Palestine, 49-53.57The 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 theirfigureson census-bureau statistics of Beirut province; MuhammadRafiq Tamimi and Muhammad Bah-jat, Bajat, WilayatBeirut (Beirut, 1916-17), 113-14.58Scholch, "European Penetration and the Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882," inStudies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies,ed.Roger Owen (London, 1982), 51.59Schijlch,"Demographic Development of Palestine,"494, 503, 505.60NMSR, 55; dated 10 September 1850.

Documents

Political Economy of Population Census in Ottoman Palestine