16th Century Nablus

During My PhD and postdoc studies I collected data on the population and production of villages in holy land during the 16th century. The data was gleaned from the fiscal surveys (tahrir defters) of the Gaza and Nablus districts. The 1548 record of the village of Duma is presented as an example of the data in these fiscal surveys.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

This webpage presents these historical data on Nablus (except the sub-dsitrict of Bani 'Amer/Lajun in contemporary Emek Yisrael)[1] and will be updated as new maps and tables become available. The first maps present the distribution of male taxpayers in villages in 1531 and 1548 together with the 1949 armistice lines. Evidently, very few and typically small 16th century villages were located inside the Israeli border in 1949, which may suggest that the results of the 1948 war had deep roots in history.

(Click on the maps to enlarge)

Note: the colors designate sub-districts (nahiyes)

and the size of the circles the number of taxpayers.

Also, the border between the sub-districts of Jabal Shami and Qaqun seems blurred. It may be a result of a wrong identification of the 16th century village names in modern maps. The identifications here is based on Abdulfatah and Hutteroth (1977) identification and it I identified some additional localities using British maps from the 1930s and 1940s.

Enclosed some tentative results on the population of rural tax payers, grain production and taxes on rural production in villages (excluding grain production in mezras). The number of villages in the map and in the table differ as the table includes villages whose location was not identified.

The grain production was calculated by dividing the in-kind taxes on grains by the village's tax rate and converting the production in gharira (sack in ottoman Turkish) to bushels. The tax rate in Nablus (Except the sub-district of Bani 'Amar which is not presented here) was typically 1/3 and the gharira of Nablus is equal to 103.9 bushels. Source: Lewis (1952:17, 1954: 491)

Notes:

• This table presents data on taxes collected on village production but not on small units such as mezras (uninhabited grain fields) and kita ard (piece of land)

• Grains: wheat, barley, and sorghum.

• Trees and summer crops: Olives, vines, almonds, nuts, carobs, unspecified "fruits trees" and summer crops (mal syafi).

• Animals: Goats, sheep, water buffalos, and beehives.

• Field crops: Cotton, feva bean, lentils, chickpeas, sesame, marrow, and onion.

Footnotes

[1] I do not publish here data on the sub-district of Bani 'Amer because the 1531 data was published by Bakhit (1989), while the 1548 defter (no. 258) does not contain data on this sub-district.

Bibliography

Tahrir defters no. 258 and 1038. Prime minister's archive Istanbul.

Bakhīt, M A. Daftar mufassal nāhiyat Marj Banī Āmir wa-tawābiihā wa-lawāhiqihā allatī kānat fī tasarruf al-Amīr Tarah Bāy sanat 945 H/1538 M = the mufassal defter of Marj Bani Amir and its dependents entrusted to Amir Tarabey 945 A.H./ 1538 A.D. Aman 1989.

Hütteroth, W. D. and K Abdulfattah. Historical geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the late 16th [sixteenth] century. Fränkische Geographische Ges., 1977

Lewis, B. 1952. Notes and Documents from the Turkish Archives. The Israel Oriental Society, Jerusalem.