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The Muslim migrations to Ottoman Palestine involved successive waves of settlement by Muslims of various ethnicities within the southern Syrian districts of the Ottoman Empire. This area, which encompasses modern-day Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza, was divided into different prefectures, such as the sanjaks of Nablus, Acre, and Lajjun and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem.

The migration process spanned several centuries, with migrants arriving from various regions, including surrounding areas in the Levant, Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, and even as far as the Balkans and North Africa. Immigrants who settled in Ottoman Palestine included Egyptians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Bedouins, and Arabs from neighboring areas.

Background

Muslim migrations to Palestine began with the Muslim conquest of the region in the 7th century and continued throughout centuries of Muslim rule, peaking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the early Ottoman period, around the late 16th century, the population of Palestine was estimated to be approximately 205,000 people, significantly less than the region's population during the Roman and Byzantine periods, believed to be around 1,000,000 people. Aware of the under-population, the Ottomans promoted a policy of settlement in sparsely inhabited regions. Zvi Ilan also notes that the Ottomans aimed to defend the ancient, international highways that crossed Palestine, including the Via Maris and the King's Highway.

16th century

The Turabays, a prominent family from the Bedouin Banu Haritha tribe, who claim descent from the Tayy tribe of the Arabian Desert, assisted Ottoman Sultan Selim I in his conquest of Egypt during Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517. As a reward, they were granted control over what became the Lajjun Sanjak, covering the Jezreel Valley, northern Samaria and Lower Galilee. They also oversaw Gaza and led pilgrim caravans to Mecca. The Turabay family controlled Lajjun until the late 17th century when they were replaced by the Ottoman administration.

According to Haim Gerber, "the problem of nomads in Syria and Palestine under Ottoman rule is well known and needs little elaboration. The vacuum left by the weakening of the government after the sixteenth century (if not before) was a function of the fact that the great bulk of the coastal plain was a roaming ground for bedouin tribes, and was almost totally devoid of permanent villages."

17th-18th centuries

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Bedouin clans migrated to Palestine from Hejaz, Syria, and Transjordan. The Ottomans encouraged this migration to populate certain areas, offering land and allowing freedom of movement. While the Bedouins were taxed when possible, their mobility made taxation rare and inconsistent. Even in the late 19th century, Bedouins were not conscripted for military service.

In the 1780s, a significant number of Egyptians migrated to Palestine in response to a severe famine in Egypt. It's estimated that about one-sixth of Egypt's population emigrated during this time, with many choosing to settle in Palestine. According to Walney, in January 1785, the streets of Sidon, Acre, and all the cities of Palestine—defined by him as the area governed by the governor of Gaza, from Khan Yunis to a line between the "Jaffa River" and Caesarea—were filled with Egyptian refugees.

19th century

Egyptian migrations (1830s)

Between 1831 and 1840, during Muhammad Ali's conquests and the reign of his son Ibrahim Pasha, Egyptian settlers and discharged soldiers migrated to Palestine. Ibrahim Pasha actively encouraged Egyptian immigration and facilitated the settlement of Bedouin clans in the region. According to Sabri, the total number of Egyptian migrants to Palestine in this period exceeded 6,000.

The Egyptian settlers predominantly established themselves in urban centers like Jaffa and Gaza, where they founded residental districts, and also integrated into nearby villages. Others settled in the Acre region, as well as the Jordan and Hula Valleys. At one time, 19 villages in the southern coastal plain were home to Egyptian families. Today, remnants of this migration can be found in the valley of Wadi Ara, Israel, where a significant population of Egyptian descent resides.

The withdrawal of Egyptian forces from Palestine increased Bedouin incursions to the region.

Algerian migrations (1850s)

Algerian refugees, commonly known as "Maghrebis," began immigrating to Palestine in the 1850s following Emir Abdelkader's surrender to French forces in 1847. They were transferred through northern Palestine into Syria and surrounding regions. Many eventually found homes in abandoned villages in the eastern Lower Galilee. Later, twelve settlements in the Galilee were populated by Algerians, such as Kafr Sabt, which became exclusively Algerian. Small numbers of Algerian Berber refugees also settled in Safed following Abdelkader's exile to Damascus in 1855.

Sources

1. Wolf-Dieter Hutteroth and Kamel Abdulfattah, pp.17-18, 43
2. Magen Broshi, The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 236 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 1–10
3. אילן, צבי, 'טורקמנים, צ'רקסים, ובוסנים בצפון השרון', עמ' 279-287
4. ^ Abu-Husayn 1985, p. 183.
5. ^ Ze'evi, Dror. An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s. State University of New York Press. pp. 42–43, 94–95.
6. Haim Gerber (1987), The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, Colorado. p. 60
7. ^ Krämer, Gudrun (2008). A history of Palestine: from the Ottoman conquest to the founding of the state of Israel. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. pp. 50–51, 134–135. ISBN 978-0-691-11897-0. OCLC 141484787.
8. Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 314-317, 345-385
9. גרוסמן, דוד; Grossman, David (1987). "Rural Settlement in the Southern Coastal Plain and the Shefelah, 1835-1945 / היישוב הכפרי במישור-פלשת ובשפלה הנמוכה, 1835-1945". Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv / קתדרה: לתולדות ארץ ישראל ויישובה (45): 57–86. ISSN 0334-4657.
10. ^ Grossman, David (2017-09-08). Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density during the Late Ottoman and Mandate Periods (1 ed.). Routledge. pp. 44–52. doi:10.4324/9781315128825. ISBN 978-1-315-12882-5.
11. M. Sabri (1930), L'Empire e'gyptien sous Mohamed-Ali et la question cf Orient (1811-1849), Paris, p. 181.
12. ^ Grossman, David (2004). Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density during the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magness Press, Jerusalem. p. 146. ISBN 978-965-493-184-7.
13. ^ Greene, Roberta R.; Hantman, Shira; Seltenreich, Yair; ʻAbbāsī, Muṣṭafá (2018). Living in Mandatory Palestine: personal narratives of resilience of the Galilee during the Mandate period 1918-1948. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-138-06898-8. In addition, there were 12 settlements in the Galilee of Algerian immigrants, who had come to the region during the second half of the nineteenth century after their emir, Abd al-Qader al-Jazairi, surrendered to the French in 1847.

Work cited

• Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim (1985). Provincial Leaderships in Syria, 1575-1650. Beirut. ISBN 9780815660729.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)