Building toward 1840, another note on population.
When last we left the issue in 1765, the Yishuv had about 40,000 people and had been growing since the late 1730s after a century of relative stagnation. Immigration was up, both because Zahir al-Umar was recruiting immigrants and because the Galilee’s incorporation into his empire brought increased security and stability, and natural increase was enough to balance losses from epidemics and from the two 1759 earthquakes.
It has now been another 75 years, so it’s worth looking at worldwide Jewish population trends and how the Yishuv might fit in.
1. Natural increase. Premodern population statistics are always hard to pin down, but Crystal and Leitenberg, the authors of
this IIJG project, have done their homework well and made a thorough study of the available archival material. One thing they note in
their summary is that, beginning in the late 18th century, the Jewish population of Europe began rising
really fast. There were about 716,000 Jews in Europe in 1700 and maybe double that at the time of the French Revolution, but 2.7 million in 1825 and 4.1 million in 1850. That last interval is a 52 percent increase in 25 years – basically a 43-year doubling time. To be sure, the European population in general was rising during this period, but the Jewish population was rising faster.
It’s tempting to credit this to emancipation, and some of it probably is due to the end of restrictions that were specifically aimed at keeping Jewish population down, like heavy marriage taxes and limits on the number of males in each family who could marry. Such restrictions existed in the Austrian empire and some other German states up to the late 18th century but were unknown after that, even in the states that backslid on emancipation after 1815. But Jewish population rose just as fast in the countries where emancipation came late or was revoked as in those where it prevailed, so most of the rise is probably down to better
material conditions – increases in wealth that made it possible to raise larger families.
Notably, this
wasn’t happening in the Jewish population
outside Europe (or even in peripheral Europe – the interactive maps in the IIJG study show that the number of Jews in Salonika and Constantinople, for instance, grew a lot more slowly between 1750 and 1850 than cities like Warsaw or London). The trends of the 18th and 19th centuries were part of a long-term shift away from the early modern Sephardi/Mizrahi majority to an Ashkenazi supermajority. Daniel Elazar
has noted that Sephardim (who he defines by their approach to halacha, and thus includes most of those who we would today describe as Mizrahi) outnumbered Ashkenazim three to two in the mid-17th century but that this ratio was flipped by 1800, and that the Ashkenazi percentage continued to increase until Jews in the MENA region experienced their own population explosion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Again, this was due to both social and material conditions – the social status of Jews in the Maghreb, Yemen, Iraq and Persia in the early 19th century was stagnant or even declining, and most Jews in these regions were still living in conditions of dire poverty.
So which model would the Yishuv ITTL follow? It probably won’t surprise you that I think its natural population growth will be similar to Europe. The social status of Jews in the Yishuv is pretty high – they have their own quasi-state in the Galilee, the Zaydani state looks favorably on them elsewhere, and the Napoleonic-era agreements mean that they also enjoy something close to equality in the Nabulsi territories. They’re also pretty well off by contemporary standards – Ottoman Palestine was underpopulated during this period, so they aren’t crammed into tenements or bare-subsistence-level plots of land. Their diet is good and the better roads built in the early 19th century help bring produce to urban markets. Epidemics can still be deadly, but improved sanitation – both the civil authorities and the Sanhedrin have taken the lead on this – has made them less so (given how many of rabbis in Ottoman Palestine were also doctors, I’d imagine that the Sanhedrin would also be ideally situated to carry out a smallpox vaccination program) and also improved infant mortality. Even earthquakes – there’s another one in 1837 – aren’t as catastrophic as before thanks to the lessons learned from 1759.
We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking conditions are too rosy; this is still a premodern society, very poor by our standards, and this is still a time when germ theory was just starting to be a thing. A more interconnected world will also pose challenges of its own – the Yishuv in the 1830s will have to deal with cholera, for instance (the Or Tamid’s decision to build a secular library will be
very helpful here) – but I’m thinking that natural increase between 1765 and 1840, and especially between 1815 and 1840, will be high.
This also means, given the Yishuv's Sephardi/Mizrahi majority, that the Ashkenazi proportion of world Jewry might not grow as fast or rise as high, with the Yishuv's growth partially offsetting that of the European Ashkenazim. But the effects of that probably won't be felt as early as 1840.
2. Immigration. My working assumption is that this will continue to ramp up gradually, with interruptions during pandemics or times of war. Both the Zaydani emirs and the Tuqans are welcoming, and the Yishuv is concentrated enough in the Galilee and recently-built-up coastal areas that most rank-and-file Muslims don’t feel threatened by it (the Muslims and Christians in the coastal cities, many of whom are immigrants themselves, tend to self-select for those who don’t mind sharing space with Jews). Push and pull factors are both increasing; the period between 1815 and 1830 wasn’t a happy one in many diaspora communities, and the Yishuv’s prosperity makes it a more attractive destination in its own right.
Again, there are limits. Ottoman Palestine is a long trip from most of the places where Jews live; London, Amsterdam, and even Vienna or Budapest (not to mention the Americas) are also available for those seeking an escape from the Pale; and diaspora Jews consider the Yishuv a bit strange in its ways, although increased pilgrimage and tourism (mentioned in the 1810 story) are helping to make it more familiar. But the Yishuv is drawing from a wide catchment area, and it’s small enough that a few tens of thousands of immigrants over a couple of generations can go a long way.
3. So, bottom-line numbers: my working assumption is that the Yishuv in 1799, at the time of the Napoleonic invasion, numbers 60,000 to 65,000 people, rising to 90,000 in 1815 and 175,000 in 1840. Of these, about 120,000 live in the Galilee, 20,000 in the cities of the coastal plain, 10,000 in the feudal moshavim, 10,000 in Acre and points north, and 15,000 in the Tuqan domains (Jerusalem has drawn some immigration – mitnagdim from the Pale, for instance, and maybe the Krimchaks as well, and others have been attracted by the economic growth in Nablus proper). Galilee thus still makes up a supermajority of the Yishuv but there has been increasing dispersion to other areas.
If this Yishuv were superimposed on the OTL population of Ottoman Palestine, which was
about 350,000 to 400,000 in 1840, they would be a 25 to 30 percent minority. But the non-Jewish population ITTL is also higher – the Zaydani state has recruited Muslim and Christian immigrants from Egypt and Syria, and Bedouin tribes along the Zaydani and Nabulsi peripheries have increasingly adopted settled ways – and the Zaydani and Nabulsi polities both include territories outside the boundaries of Ottoman Palestine (the Zaydani state in southern Lebanon and Nablus in the Transjordan). The number of Jewish immigrants is proportionally higher due to their larger catchment area, but not
overwhelmingly larger. So my assumption is that while Jews
are 20 to 25 percent of the Zaydani population, they’re a much smaller minority in the Tuqan domains and in Palestine as a whole.
4. In the scheme of things, 175,000 people isn’t that many. The nagidah is still less monarch than mayor (which isn’t a bad thing – it’s part of the reason she can do retail politics and consensus-building as she did when creating the Va’ad ha-Aretz), and the Yishuv still makes up only 4 to 5 percent of the world Jewish population. OTOH, the Yishuv’s location and intellectual output makes it punch above its weight – and also, on the urban level, Tzfat has become one of the world’s greatest Jewish cities. If you look at the IIJG’s 1800 and 1850 maps, there are only two European cities in 1800 that have more than 20,000 Jews, and in 1850 there are still just nine. The city with the highest Jewish population in 1850, Warsaw, had a community of about 43,000, and as far as I can tell, only one other city, Salonika/Thessaloniki, had more than 30,000. Jews in 1840-50 were still mostly a shtetl-based population – this changed dramatically in the second half of the 19th century, but at this point in the timeline, not yet. So Tzfat, with 32,000 Jews in a total urban population of 40,000, is the third-largest Jewish city on the planet, which is another reason why, at least for the moment, it wields outsized cultural influence.
The first 1840 story should be coming soon – I’d
like to say in time for Pesach, but that depends on my calendar.
