History of Jews in Palestine

1. The first Muslim Period (634-1099)

In general historiography, the period under discussion is called the first Muslim period, whereas in the context of Jewish history it is referred to as the gaonic period. The present survey will begin with a general overview and briefly clarify the significance of the gaonic period for the Jews of Palestine, the Land of Israel (Heb. Ereṣ Yisraʾel) . 

Interface between Islamic and Gaonic Periods 

      The first Muslim period extended from the Arab conquest of Byzantine Palestine (634–641) to the Crusader conquest (1099). Islamic rule during this period was not monolithic, for the Muslims were occupied not only with their sweeping conquests throughout and beyond the Middle East, but were also engaged in shaping the structure and canon of their new religion. Theological conflicts within Islam and struggles for political power brought about governmental changes inPalestine as in the other lands of Islam. During the course of this period Palestine was ruled by several Muslim dynasties. The Rightly Guided Caliphs reigned from 634 to 660. They were followed by the Umayyads from 660 to 750, the Abbasids from 750 to 878, the Tulunids from 878 to 905, the Abbasids again from 905 to 935, the Ikhshidids from 935–970, the Fatimid from 970 to 1071, the Seljuqs from 1071 to 1098, and finally the Fatimids again, briefly, from 1098 to 1099.

The lack of stability resulting from the frequent changes of government had a detrimental effect on the country. Each new government formulated its own Jewish policy, some making more changes than others. The Abbasids ruled Palestine for only 158 of the 465 years of the period, a fact that had major repercussions for the Jewish leaders and their relations with the provincial authorities, who had cut themselves off from the Baghdad caliphate, and thus also cut the Palestinian connection with the Jewish center in Babylonia/Iraq.

On the eve of the Muslim conquest, there were four institutions of Jewish authority in the Middle East. Three of these were in the Sasanian Empire in what is now Iran and adjacent regions. The secular leader of the community was the exilarch, purportedly a scion of the Davidic dynasty, who was responsible for relations with the government. The two great yeshivot of Sura and Pumbedita in Iraq were simultaneously academies of learning and institutions of governance. The Jews of the Byzantine Empire were led by the Palestinian yeshiva, located in Tiberias. During the initial phase of the Muslim conquest, Palestinian Jewry, the Jews in various formerly Byzantine territories, and the Jews of the defunct Sasanian Empire all found themselves living under the same Muslim administration. Since the new rulers did not demand any changes in the structure of Jewish leadership, the same four institutions continued to function. Jewish historiography designates this era as the gaonic period, from the title gaon, which designated the heads of the three yeshivot. In the case of Palestine, the gaonic period parallels the first Muslim period.

The Muslim conquests eliminated the borders that had long separated the Persian and Roman/Byzantine empires, thereby facilitating  Jewish migration, which was also stimulated by crises and wars in the Muslim lands. When Jews settled in a new place, they generally continued to place themselves under the authority of the same yeshiva as in their former residence. Thus migrants from Babylonia founded new communities of Babylonian Jews throughout the Middle East, and in most cities Babylonian and Palestinian communities lived side by side. There were also Babylonian communities in Palestine. All of these, whether Babylonian or Palestinian, were Rabbanite communities, because it was not until the mid-ninth century that the Karaite movement took hold in Persia and Babylonia, and somewhat later before Karaites moved westward. Much of what is known about Palestinian Jewry in this era comes from source materials in the Cairo Geniza. In fact it is only thanks to the Geniza that anything at all is known about the Palestinian yeshiva in the gaonic period. Most of the relevant Geniza documents date from the tenth century on, leaving the earlier period enshrouded in relative darkness.

The Arab Conquest

In light of the persecutions to which they were subjected by the Byzantines, it seems possible that some Palestinian Jews welcomed their liberation from the yoke of Christian rule. In certain places, Jews may have given aid to the Muslim invaders. Fragments of information about such assistance can be gleaned from Christian and Muslim sources. Sebeos, an Armenian chronicler in the seventh century, asserted that the Jews guided the army of Muḥammad when it set out for Palestine. A Christian source from the Crusader era maintains that Jews helped the Muslims to capture Hebron. There may be a kernel of truth in such information, but Christian sources commonly accused Jews of collaborating with Christianity’s enemies. Muslim historical narratives of the conquest were written long after the events, and scholars disagree as to their reliability. It is known, though, that there were Jewish converts to Islam in the conquering Muslim army. The ninth-century Arab historian al-Balādhurī reports in his Futūḥ al-Buldān(The Conquest of the Nations; trans. Hitti, pp. 216–218), that in 641 the Arabs penetrated the defenses of Caesarea, the capital of Palaestina Prima, with the help of a Jewish collaborator.

During the Middle Ages, the rise and fall of empires often stirred up Jewish messianic yearnings. Not surprisingly, the Muslim conquest of Palestine gave rise to that interpreted these momentous events as foreshadowing the messianic redemption. A messianic vision of this kind is found in Nistarot shel Rabbi Shimʿon Bar Yoḥay (The Secrets of Rabbi Simeon Bar Yoḥay). It recounts that when the angel Meṭaṭron revealed the fall of the Edomite kingdom (i.e., Byzantium) and the rise of the Ishmaelite kingdom (Islam) to him, the famous tanna lamented that the Jewish people would be enslaved by one nation after another. Whereupon Meṭaṭron assured him that the Ishmaelites, led by “the prophet according to His will,” would deliver the Jews from the evil empire.

Whatever their expectations of the Arab conquerors, there is no doubt that the Jews ofPalestine were now allowed to return to Jerusalem, from which they had been banned under the Romans and Byzantines. Rabbanite and Karaite sources from the gaonic period agree that the restoration of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem came after more than five hundred years during which Jews were banned from the city. The gratitude they felt is evident in a letter of the gaon of the Palestinian yeshiva, Daniel ben Azariah, written around 1057: “And it was by the hand of our Lord that grace was inclined toward us before the Kingdom of Ishmael at the time when they invaded and captured the Holy Land from the grasp of Edom and came to Jerusalem, and there were among them members of the Jewish nation who showed them the place of the Temple and dwelled with them from that time to this day.” This important description indicates that Jews guided the Muslims to the Temple Mount, which had been covered with mountains of refuse during the Byzantine era to symbolize Christianity’s triumph over Judaism.

According to Muslim sources, Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, surrendered to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb in 638. Although a clause of the surrender treaty stated that “no Jew will be allowed to live in Jerusalem with its inhabitants,” there is no doubt that Jews settled in the city soon thereafter. Goitein maintained that the treaty was a forgery, written long after the Muslim occupation of the city. Mann and Gil, on the other hand, believe that the Christians extracted a guarantee of the status quo, but the Muslims later decided that it did not serve their interests and opened the gates of Jerusalem to Jewish settlement.

An eleventh-century Geniza document recounts that the caliph sent a Jewish delegation to the Christian patriarch to negotiate the number of Jewish families allowed to live in the city. Soon thereafter seventy families from Tiberias took up residence in a neighborhood of their own in the southern part of the city. Some scholars dismiss this document, not only because it is of later vintage, but also because it wrongly asserts that ʿUmar was the caliph who built the Dome of the Rock. One might counter that the author’s not knowing the history of the Dome of the Rock has no bearing on the reliability of the sources available to him about Jewish settlement of the city. The involvement of the patriarch in determining the number of Jewish families may have been a reference to the treaty clause prohibiting Jewish settlement in Jerusalem.

Since no contemporary Jewish sources are available, the circumstances leading up to the Jewish return to the city cannot be fully understood, nor can the obligations and rights of the Jews at that time. Daniel ben Azariah claimed that the Jews were permitted to return to Jerusalem because they had shown the Muslims the location of the Temple. He went on to state: “they placed upon them conditions that they would clean the Temple from any refuse.” Muslim sources indicate that up to the era of the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 717–720), a limited number of Jews, who were exempt from paying the poll tax (jizya), did janitorial work in the Aqṣā mosque. The gaon’s statement may hint at this particular group of Jews.

According to Ben Azariah’s letter, the first Jewish settlers in Jerusalem obtained two other important concessions. They “bought” the Mount of Olives (i.e., were permitted to purchase a plot there), and the city was reopened to Jewish pilgrims. The Jewish community of Jerusalem paid a global poll tax, which meant that Jewish pilgrims did not have to pay the special tax levied on dhimmīs who entered the city but were not permanent residents. The tax exemption for Jewish pilgrims was still in effect in the eleventh century, as noted by both Daniel ben Azariah and Solomon ben Judah Gaon (1025–1051). Since Jerusalem was not the capital ofPalestine and did not have a flourishing economy, the exemption for pilgrims was invaluable, because it enabled many more Jews to enter the city and thus helped to support the local Jewish community.

In the eleventh century, however, what had been considered an advantage when the Jews began to renew their presence in Jerusalem turned into a disadvantage, for as Ben Azariah pointed out, the number of Jewish residents decreased in contrast to the tax levy, which remained constant. This caused serious problems for the community, with only the pilgrims benefiting. As a result, Daniel’s exhortations to the Diaspora communities to send contributions for the welfare of Jerusalem’s Jews became more urgent.

The Palestinian Yeshiva

As mentioned above, until the discovery of the Geniza, nothing whatsoever was known about the Palestinian yeshiva during the gaonic period. The  Geniza made available the correspondence between the heads of the yeshiva and their communities both within and outside Palestine, but there are no extant documents with a systematic and detailed record of the Palestinian geonim through the generations, such as the one found in the Epistle of Sherira Gaon (Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon), which lists the geonim of the yeshivot of Sura and Pumbedita up to his own time (r. 968–1006). Thus, the list of Palestinian geonim compiled by Moshe Gil cannot be complete or accurate. It only begins with the second half of the ninth century, and nothing is known about many of the early geonim aside from their names, which were preserved in a single fragmentary Geniza document. The known Palestinian geonim are: Ṣemaḥ ben Josiah (863–893), Aaron ben Moses (893–910) Isaac (910–912), Meʾir ben Aaron (912–926), Aaron ben Meʾir Abraham ben Aaron (926–933), Aaron ha-Kohen (933–?), Joseph ha-Kohen ben Ezron (two years?), Ezron ben Joseph (thirty years), Samuel ha-Kohen ben Joseph (989–1004?), Abraham Aaron ben Abraham Shemaiah (ca. 1010), Josiah ben Aaron (d. March 1025), Solomon ha-Kohen ben Joseph (1025), Solomon ben Judah (1025–1051), Daniel ben Azariah (1051–1062), Elijah ha-Kohen ben Solomon (1062–1083), and Abiathar ha-Kohen ben Elijah (1083–1112).

Organizational Structure of the Yeshiva

The members of the yeshiva, which according to an inscription was called Yeshivat Geʾon Yaʾaqov,  considered themselves the continuation of the Sanhedrin of Palestine. Thus the full forum had seventy-one members: seventy members who sat facing the head of the yeshiva in three rows, as described in Mishna Sanhedrin, facing the gaon, the sage who headed the yeshiva. He was aided by a core group  of six sages, each styled ḥaver , and collectively known as the ḥavura. The senior member of the ḥavura, called “the second of the ḥavura,” served as avbet din (president of the court). The next in line was “the third of the ḥavura,” and so on. When oneḥaver died, the others were promoted: the fourth became the third, the third second, and so on. The sons of the geonim were part of the yeshiva’s leadership and sometimes themselves became geonim. Thus a limited number of families supplied the leadership of the yeshiva. The heads of the most important communities under the authority of the Palestinian yeshiva—for example,Ephraim ben Shemariah, the head of the Jerusalemite community in Fustat (1025–1055)—were also honored with the title of ḥaver.

The Tiberian Period

From the third century, the Palestinian yeshiva was located in Tiberias, which according to the Talmud (Rosh ha-Shana 31a–b) was the final seat of the Sanhedrin after its exile from the Temple Mount, and according to Rabbi Yoḥanan, the place from where they would be redeemed. Although the Jews who renewed the Jewish presence in Jerusalem came from Tiberias, it would appear that the revival of the Jewish settlement in the Holy City was not seen as the beginning of the redemption, because the yeshiva remained in Tiberias until the end of the first quarter of the tenth century. The Muslim conquerors made Tiberias the capital of the region of Jund al-Urdun, which under the Byzantines had been called Palaestina Secunda.

Virtually nothing is known about the history of the geonim in Tiberias. If the author of Seder ʿOlam Zuṭa is correct, then Mar Zutra, a scion of the exilarchic family in Babylonia was appointed head of the yeshiva in Tiberias in 520. Some of his descendants evidently served as heads of the yeshiva but are known only by name. A eulogy in memory of a gaon who headed the yeshiva in the mid-eighth century indicates that he was a member of a priestly family, which means that the leaders of the Tiberias yeshiva were not all descendants of the exilarchic family.

The first gaon mentioned in the list compiled by Gil, Ṣemaḥ ben Josiah, held the titles of rosh yeshiva and nasi. The latter designation identifies him as a member of the exilarchic family of Babylonia. Ṣemaḥ was the great-grandson of Anan ben David, the putative founder of Karaism. In Karaite records, his brother  Jehoshaphat is also referred to as nasi and rosh yeshiva. It is possible that Jehoshaphat was gaon of Palestine before Ṣemaḥ. The fact that the great-grandsons of Anan ben David were leaders of the Palestinian yeshiva in the ninth century raises questions about the origins of the Karaite movement. The only known document that mentions Ṣemaḥ as gaon notes that “his sons were rejected.” In later years the offspring of both Ṣemaḥ and Jehoshaphat were leaders of the Karaite movement in Palestine and Egypt.

Tiberias was a center of scholarship and creativity during the Byzantine era. At the beginning of the gaonic period, the halakhot and prayers of the Palestinian yeshiva differed in certain respects from those of Babylonia. Until the eighth century, the payṭanim of Tiberias and the surrounding region continued to write piyyuṭim on the basis of a system developed in their city in the Byzantine era. Phinehas ha-Kohen ben Jacob of Kafrawas one of the last of thesepayṭanim. In the first quarter of the tenth century, Aaron ben Asher completed the Tiberian Masora—the complete text of the Hebrew Bible with vocalization and accents, and divided into lections according to the Tiberian method. Whether Aaron ben Asher was a Karaite or a Rabbanite, there is no doubt that down the generations some of the Tiberian masoretes were Rabbanites, and some of them held positions in the Tiberias yeshiva. Tiberian sages in the gaonic period were among the first Jews to  translate the Bible into Arabic. Saʿadya Gaon, who came from Egypt thirsting for knowledge, went to Tiberias before going on to Babylonia. According to the Muslim historian al-Masʿūdī (d. 956), Saʿadya’s teacher in Tiberias was  Abū Kathīr Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā’, who translated the Bible into Arabic. As far as we know, this translation has not been preserved; but there is no doubt that the knowledge Saʿadya acquired in Tiberias was extremely useful to him when he set began writing about language and translating books of the Bible.

Tiberias was also the center of Jewish leadership. In the first quarter of the sixth century, that is, during the Byzantine period, emissaries were sent from Tiberias to Ḥimyar, a Jewish kingdom in Yemen. In the early gaonic period, emissaries from the Palestinian yeshiva were sent to the Jewish communities of North Africa and Spain. Ben Baboy, a Babylonian, circulated an angry letter in opposition to their work. In the second half of the ninth century, the geonim of Tiberias attempted to impede the nascent Karaite settlement in Jerusalem.

      Most of what is known about the yeshiva in Tiberias pertains to its last gaon, Aaron ben Me’ir, because of his attempts to preserve the status of the Palestinian yeshiva vis-à-vis the Babylonian yeshivot with respect to  the calendar. On the basis of a letter written by an anonymous Babylonian exilarch regarding the arrangement of the calendar for the year 835, it is apparent that in his time the sages of Babylonia still accepted the authority of the Palestinian yeshiva in such matters. Aaron ben Meʾir and his father fought for the right of the Palestinian yeshiva to determine the calendar. In 921, the disagreement about the day on which Passover of 922 would occur had reverberations throughout the Jewish world. Saʿadya Gaon, who had by then settled in Iraq, headed the opposition to the Palestinians and led the Babylonians to victory. The calendar controversy split the Palestinian yeshiva and may have been a factor in its transfer from Tiberias to Jerusalem. If this was the case, then the move to Jerusalem was brought about by a crisis of leadership rather than a desire to make Jerusalem the center of Jewish authority.

The Jerusalem Period

The Palestinian yeshiva remained in Jerusalem until about 1076. Its geonim had to contend with the Karaite Mourners of Zion (aveleṣiyyon), and while doing battle with the Karaites also had to maintain their position in the Rabbanite world in the face of opposition from the Babylonian center. The attitude of the Babylonian geonim toward the Palestinian yeshiva is illustrated by the fact that Sherira Gaon, the head of the Pumbedita yeshiva, did not even mention the Palestinian yeshiva in his famous letter devoted to the history of Jewish leadership. Solomon ben Judah sent one of his sons to Pumbedita to study with Hayy Gaon, but in letters written at the time, he protested Hayy’s efforts to undermine his authority in Egypt. In 1006, at the beginning of his tenure, Hayy Gaon complained that Shemariah ben Elhanan, an inhabitant of Egypt who had been awarded the title of assistant (mishne) in his yeshiva, was neglecting the yeshiva of Pumbedita in favor of the Palestinian yeshiva: “His letters stopped coming because he has been attached to the ḥavura of the Land of Israel.” Shemariah transferred his loyalty to the Palestinian yeshiva because its leaders were engaged in a power struggle and one of the factions had promised him a major position within the yeshiva.

In a responsum, Hayy asserted that it was permissible to study the Jerusalem Talmud for the purpose of learning halakha, so long as the text in question was compatible with the Babylonian halakha, but if there was a contradiction between the two, only the Babylonian Talmud was to be relied on. Unfortunately, only fragments of the responsa written by Palestinian geonim have been preserved, although it is clear from their correspondence with their communities that they regularly answered queries sent to them. On the basis of what little is available to us, it appears that throughout the gaonic period the distinctions between the halakha of the Land of Israel and Babylonia were blurring, and the people of Land of Israel were accepting more of the Babylonian halakha as authoritative. Pages of halakhot from the post-talmudic era, compiled in collections called maʿasim li-vne ereṣ yisrʾael (halakhot of the people of the Land of Israel), were found in the Geniza; later versions of these collections make it plain that Babylonian halakhot were embedded in them. The decline of the halakha of the Land of Israel, even in the Palestinian yeshiva, may have been brought about by Palestinian geonim from the Diaspora who headed it in the eleventh century—mainly Daniel ben Azariah. Nevertheless, in 1211, many years after the destruction of the Palestinian yeshiva, the  Jerusalemite congregation in Fustatpetitioned for permission to continue to follow the Palestinian order of prayers and Torah reading. Joseph rosh ha-seder responded that they were to conduct their prayer services according to the Babylonian custom “as the geonim throughout Palestine had already done.” This indicates that the geonim of the Palestinehad already adopted the Babylonian halakha.

      The abundance of information about the Palestinian yeshiva in the eleventh century reveals that it was often torn apart by leadership struggles. At the turn of the eleventh century, as already noted, Shemariah ben Elhanan gave his support to the Palestinian yeshiva in one such power struggle. At the beginning of the century, Samuel ha-Kohen ben Joseph was head of the yeshiva. He was a scion of a Palestinian priestly family that had led the yeshiva for several generations until it was ousted in the eleventh century. The Spanish poet Joseph ibn Abītūr, who immigrated to Egypt, described  Samuel Gaon’s tenure as “like a bath of boiling water.” The same description aptly portrays other conflicts over the position of gaon that took place during the eleventh century. On the other hand, the power struggles are evidence of the importance of the gaonic office over which these battles were fought.

      Solomon ben Judah Gaon, who came from Fez in the Maghreb, was head of the Palestinian yeshiva from 1025 to 1051. His conflict with Nathan ben Abrahamin the years 1038 to 1042 is the subject of many surviving documents. Nathan, who had studied with Ḥushiel ben Elhanan inQayrawan, succeeded—by virtue of his scholarship, pedigree, and political skill—in attaining the office of avbet din at the yeshiva, which had previously been held by his uncle until his death, even though he was not a member of the institution’s leadership. Nathan went to Ramle, and on a Sabbath sometime in 1038 proclaimed himself gaon. Solomon ben Judah, whose supporters in Ramle had warned him about Nathan’s intentions, went to Ramle and tried unsuccessfully to prevent Nathan’s inauguration as gaon. The struggle between the two geonim divided the Palestinian communities in Palestine and the Diaspora. Letters written by backers and opponents of both contenders were sent far and wide.

The Fatimid authorities in Palestine eventually became involved in the struggle, and its reverberations were felt at the caliphal court. Karaites associated with the Fatimid government also became involved in the conflict. It was eventually resolved with an agreement whereby Solomon remained in office as gaon, while Nathan continued as avbet din and thus was the designated successor upon Solomon’s death. He never attained the office of gaon, however, because he predeceased Solomon.

Another leadership struggle continued to roil the yeshiva until just a few years before its final end. The contenders in this conflict were a priestly family from North Africa and an exilarchic (and thus Davidic) family from Iraq. In 1025 Solomon ha-Kohen ben Joseph served as gaon for less than one year. He was last gaon from the Palestinian priestly family whose members had held the gaonate for many generations. After his death, Solomon ben Judah became the Palestinian gaon. His last avbet din was Joseph ha-Kohen ben Solomon, the son of his predecessor. Joseph’s accession to the gaonate was blocked by a faction supporting the candidacy of Daniel ben Azariah, a member of the exilarchic family who had helped Solomon ben Judah against Nathan ben Abraham. For the next few months the yeshiva functioned without a gaon. Once again the government and the Karaites became involved in the conflict. In the end, the two sides agreed that Daniel ben Azariah would be gaon, and Joseph ha-Kohen ben Solomon would be av bet din, and therefore his successor. Daniel served as gaon from 1052 to 1061, and in his letters also refers to himself as nasi, because he was a member of the exilarchic family. Under the agreement, Joseph’s brother, Elijah, was appointed third in theḥavura. When Joseph died in 1053, his brother became avbet din, and when Daniel ben Azariah died in 1062, Elijah was appointed gaon and served until 1083.

The story of the conflict between Daniel ben Azariah and the North African priestly family is known from letters written by individuals involved in it, as well as by pilgrims who were in the city at its height, when the yeshiva had to function without a gaon. One of the most important sources is the Megillat Evyatar (Scroll of Abiathar), a work written by Abiathar, the son and successor of the Gaon Elijah. The scroll, which was found in the Cairo Geniza, details the struggle for the gaonate during the years 1082 to 1094 between Abiathar and David ben Daniel, the son of the gaon and nasi Daniel ben Azariah. It also gives a brief account of the conflict between his uncle and his father, and the father of his rival.

      The struggle that ensued between Abiathar, the last Palestinian gaon, and David ben Daniel was connected to political events in the Middle East on the eve of the Crusader invasion ofPalestine. Turkoman tribes under the command of Atsiz b. Uwaq gained control of most ofPalestine in 1071. In the aftermath, the status of its Jewish and Christian inhabitants declined. The request for help to Pope Urban II by the ruler of the Byzantine Empire was prompted, among other things, by the deterioration of the Christian holy places in Palestine and the danger that awaited Christian pilgrims who set out for the Holy Land. The Byzantine monarch’s description of conditions in Palestine after the Turkoman conquest is corroborated in Geniza documents. Conditions were so bad that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem had to leave the city. The Karaite nesi’im went to Egypt, while the leaders of the yeshiva, headed by Elijah Gaon, transferred their headquarters to Tyre (in present-day Lebanon), which, like other towns in the area, had been separated from the Fatimid caliphate with the assistance of Turkoman mercenaries. Without doubt, the fact that Tyre was an independent entity was problematic for the gaon residing there, because he needed to lead his communities, whether in Palestineunder Turkoman rule or in Fatimid Egypt.

David, the youngest son of Daniel ben Azariah, settled in Egypt and attempted to gain control of the Egyptian and Palestinian communities there. Abiathar recounts in his scroll that his father ordained him as gaon of the yeshiva two years before his death (i.e., in 1081). In 1092, Abiathar reiterated this declaration in Haifa. There can be no doubt that the appointment of a new gaon while the incumbent was still in office was intended to prevent David from taking control of the communities subordinate to the authority of the yeshiva, no matter where they were located.Elijah’s concern about his son Abiathar’s future as leader was not unfounded. The megillawritten by Abiathar and letters from the Geniza indicate that the Ashkelon, Caesarea, and Haifa communities had all accepted David ben Daniel’s leadership. In his letters David referred to himself as nasi and “the son of the exilarch.” His supporters dubbed him rosh gola (exilarch). Thus it looks as if David aspired to rule over the nation as exilarch and thus bring about the collapse of the yeshiva.

In 1094, David disappeared from the stage of history. Nothing is known of his fate, but it appears to have been connected to the change of governments in Cairo. Egypt was actually ruled by the vizier Badr al-Jamālī. Upon his death in 1094, he was succeeded by his son, al-Afdal. The new vizier apparently did not have a very favorable view of David ben Daniel. Abiathar, as mentioned, was the last gaon of the Palestinian yeshiva. He was unable to return to Palestineand the Crusader conquest forced him to flee to Damascus, where he died as a refugee in 1112.

Abiathar’s account of the leadership conflict between his priestly family, and the Davidic family was, of course, written from his own perspective. The exilarchic house in Babylonia saw the conflict differently. Daniel ben Ḥisdai, the Babylonian exilarch, stated in a letter in 1161 that since the death of “our nasi Daniel, the head of the Geon Ya‘aqov Yeshiva . . . the priests that came after him has been conducting themselves in a frivolous manner.”

The Fatimid Caliphate

Scholars differ on the question of whether the geonim of Palestine, whose seat was in Jerusalem during the Fatimid caliphate, were solely the leaders of the Palestinian communities, or whether they were officially recognized as the leaders of the entirety of Fatimid Jewry, including all of its factions. To some extent the status of the gaon in the Fatimid caliphate is closely connected with the history of the title nagid under the Fatimids. Moreover, even if the Palestinian geonim were the leaders of the Jewish community on behalf of the caliphate—as the vast majority of scholars are convinced—Geniza documents verify that the Babylonian communities in Egypt were autonomous and remained in direct contact with the yeshivot in Babylonia, which was under Abbasid rule. The Karaite communities were also autonomous.

If the geonim were indeed the leaders of the entire Jewish community of the Fatimid caliphate, their task was definitely not an easy one, because their seat was quite distant from Cairo, the capital, and also far from the Fatimid governor of Palestine, whose capital was Ramle. Elinoar Bareket, working with Geniza documents, has compiled a list of Rabbanite and Karaite Jewish notables who served, in her opinion, as liaisons between the geonim of Palestine and the Fatimid court. She believes that these courtiers were, in reality, the heads of the Jewish community in the Fatimid caliphate.

Jacob Mann’s view of this issue relied on later literary sources which maintained that the Shī‘ite Fatimids, as soon as they conquered Egypt, established the office of nagid—the head of the Jews, who was a scion of the exilarchic family—in order to distance the Jews of their domain from the influence of the Sunni Abbasid caliphate. The sources he used were found to be clear-cut forgeries.  Shulamit Sela attempted to prove that the Fatimids did in fact appoint a nagid from the early days of their rule in Egypt, that is, a leader of all the Jews in the caliphate. Karaites also among served in the office of nagid.

Abiathar Gaon’s scroll relates that when David ben Daniel was doing battle with him, the nagid in Egypt, Mevorakh ben Sa‘adya, was forced to flee from Fustat. Geniza documents confirm that Mevorakh’s brother Judah had borne the title nagid before him. The vast majority of researchers believe that thee two brothers were the first nagids to serve in Egypt, but Mevorakh and Judah did not receive the title of nagid from the Fatimids but rather from Elijah ha-Kohen ben Solomon, the gaon of Palestine, as a token of appreciation for their work on behalf of the yeshiva. In light of this opinion, the title nagid in Egypt did not at that time designate the bearer as head of the Jews in the caliphate but was an internal Jewish title that confirmed acceptance of the Palestinian yeshiva’s authority. It is, therefore, not surprising that David ben Daniel went out of his way to hurt Mevorakh, a supporter of the priestly family of geonim that was living in Tyre.

When David ben Daniel disappeared from the historical arena in 1094, the nagid Mevorakh ben Saʿadya returned to Fustat. In the aftermath of the Crusader conquests, Abiathar Gaon became a refugee and the Palestinian yeshiva ceased to function. Mevorakh, as nagid, filled the vacuum and became the head of the Jews in the Fatimid caliphate. Geniza documents establish that he led the efforts by the Jews of Egypt to aid their brethren in Palestine who had fled the terror of the Crusaders or were captured by them. From 1111 to 1126, Mevorakh’s son, Moses ben Mevorakh, also served as leader of the Jews in the Fatimid caliphate, and he too had the title nagid. Thus, in the opinion of most researchers, it was only the disappearance from Fatimid territory of the geonim of the Palestinian yeshiva, who had been the leaders of the Jews in the Fatimid caliphate, that brought about the situation whereby prominent individuals in Egypt became the leaders of the Jews under Fatimid rule and were given the title of nagid.

The Jewish Communities in Palestine

Very little information is available about the Jewish communities of Palestine in this period, and most of what is known relates to the eleventh century. The importance of Tiberias while it was home to the yeshiva cannot be exaggerated, but not much is known about the city and its Jewish populace after the yeshiva moved to Jerusalem. The following section is devoted to separate discussions of the Jewish inhabitants, both Rabbanite and Karaite, of Jerusalem and of Ramle, the capital of Palestine.

Size of the Jewish Community

During the Byzantine era, the Jewish population of Palestine, living in communities scattered throughout the land, was still sizable and significant. From this standpoint, no essential change occurred after the Muslim conquest. Geniza documents attest to the fact that Rabbanite communities dotted the length and breadth of the land. Archaeologists have found no signs of ruin and destruction resulting from the Arab victory. The Arab conquest apparently did not require much effort, since the Byzantine regime had not established itself effectively after it reconquered Palestine from the Persians. There is no doubt that the Jews of Palestine benefited from the relatively smooth transfer of power to the Muslims. The Jewish communities destroyed toward the end of the Byzantine period were rebuilt under Muslim rule, a case in point being Kiryat Ono.

From Megillat Evyatar it is apparent that the Jewish communities in Palestine just before the Crusader conquest were crushed under the weight of Turkoman oppression. Parallel to his portrayal of the power conflict between himself and David ben Daniel, Abiathar mentions the communities in Acre, Haifa, Tiberias, Caesarea, and Ashkelon. Contemporary documents from of Ashkelon indicate that its Jews were in contact with the Jews of Gaza. According to Abiathar, the Gaon Elijah ha-Kohen was buried in Dalton in the Galilee, where a Jewish community also existed. A surviving letter of support for Abiathar was written by the head of the Rabbanite community of Hebron, who bore the title ḥaver. Hebron is referred to as “the tombs of the forefathers” in Geniza documents. The letter writer tells Abiathar: “because we are praying for him every day in the Cave of Machpelah.” He may have been referring to the Jewish synagogue near the cave.

Some of the geonim who headed the Palestinian yeshiva were newly arrived in the Land of Israel, but before the Arab conquest it is safe to say that the vast majority of Palestine’s Rabbanite Jews had been living there from time immemorial. The Arab occupation did not give rise to a large influx of Rabbanites, in large part because of the stand taken by the heads of the Babylonian yeshivot. Karaites were the only organized group to immigrate to Palestine, as will be discussed below. Many Rabbanite pilgrims made their way to Palestine, but then returned to their native communities.

Natural Disasters and Governmental Pressure

The Jewish population of Palestine suffered from the same disasters that befell the populace as a whole. On the twenty-third day of Shevat in the year 748 or 749, the land was rocked by an earthquake so disastrous that this date was designated as a fast-day for many generations thereafter. The earthquake occurred just before the Abbasid conquest of Palestine. UnderAbbasid rule, the land naturally became a distant province, which meant that it was allotted a limited budget, and the funds required to revitalize it in the aftermath of the earthquake were never received. Archaeological excavations confirm that the disaster transformed Beit Shean from a city to a minor village. A detailed description of another earthquake, this one in 1033, in a letter written by a Jewish inhabitant of Ramle states that it affected the country from the Galilee to the Negev.

Like Palestine’s other inhabitants, the Jews enjoyed the bounties of nature, as well as its catastrophes. The area of Tiberias abounded in therapeutic mineral springs that had been famous since Roman times. An inscription in Greek states that the Ḥamat Gader baths were renovated in 622, during the reign of Muʿāwiya, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. Geniza documents refer to a Jewish clinic in Tiberias where lepers went to be healed in the region’s therapeutic waters.

The government of Palestine changed hands often during this period, and the transitions were frequently accompanied by warfare that brought much hardship on the populace. In 885, for instance, the Abbasids warred against the house of Ṭūlūn in hopes of regaining Egypt andPalestine from the Ṭūlūnids. The battle took place on the banks of the Yarkon River. TheFatimid conquest failed to bring stability. Throughout their rule, Bedouin tribes rebelled against them as a foreign element both in the ethnic sense and from the religious standpoint, since the Fatimids were Shī‘ites. The Qarmaṭīs, an Ismāʿīlī Shīʿite faction, raided cities in Palestine both before and after the Fatimid conquest. The Fatimid victory in Egypt and the weakening of the Abbasid caliphate prompted the Byzantines to try to regain the territories they had lost to the Muslims. Their campaign to reconquer the Holy Land, often referred to as the Byzantine Crusade, began  in 969 and continued until 975. The Bedouin Arabs were allied to the Byzantines in this war.

Aside from wars and natural disasters, the Jewish minority were subject to discriminatory edicts that did not affect Palestine’s Muslim inhabitants. Power struggles frequently impoverished the rulers who were fighting over the reins of government, and in order to fill their empty coffers, they increased the already heavy tax burden. Jews were often main victims. Geniza documents mention the special taxes levied on the Jews over and above the jizya (poll tax), referring to them as “punishments.”  Financial hardship was sometimes accompanied by religious persecution. The Fatimid regime was usually moderate toward the Jews, but Caliph al-Ḥākim(996–1021) issued a series of cruel edicts against Jews and Christians alike throughout the Fatimid realm. The news of al-Ḥākim’s edicts against the Christians spread through Europe because the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem was seriously damaged. Geniza documents mention that synagogues were also damaged and expropriated.

The Tripartite Relationship: Muslims, Christians, and Jews

The Christians of Palestine were often a party in the relations between the Muslim regime and the Jews. On the one hand, they enjoyed the support and protection of both Western Christianity and the Byzantine Empire; but on the other, their situation deteriorated in times of tension between Islam and Christianity. Christian sources emphasize the involvement of Jews in Muslim attacks on Christians, as in 966, when an anti-Christian insurrection occurred in Jerusalem. The Christian patriarch tried to torpedo Jewish efforts to settle in Jerusalem. Another attempt to expel Jews from Jerusalem was made during the joint campaign of the Byzantines and their Bedouin allies against the Fatimids in 975. The Karaite Japheth ben Eli, who was living in Jerusalem at the time, wrote that “the Byzantines do not want to expel us from all the territory of the Land of Israel but only from Jerusalem.” The fact that the al-Ḥākim edicts were directed against Jews and Christians alike did not prevent the outbreak of violent attacks against the Jews of Europe after news of the enormous damage to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was received.

Relations between Rabbanites and Karaites

While the Rabbanite Jews had to fight to retain their status in face of the Muslim regime and a hostile Christian population, Karaites began to settle in Palestine in the last quarter of the ninth century. Quarrels often broke out between these two communities, and sometimes the government was asked to intercede. The Karaites founded communities in Jerusalem and Ramle, but there is no information about a Karaite community in Tiberias, although some scholars are convinced that the Ben-Asher family, which is credited with finalizing the Masora project there, was Karaite.

In light of the Geniza documents, it may be stated that relations between Rabbanites and Karaites were more difficult and strained in Jerusalem than in Egypt. The geonim of Palestinetried to prevent the Karaites from settling in Palestine and took action in this regard in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate. The Ṭūlūnid takeover of Palestine worked to the advantage of the Karaites who settled there, because in the years following this victory, the influence accrued by wealthy Jews at the caliphal court in Baghdad no longer had any value. Extant Fatimid decrees guaranteed the rights of the Rabbanites and the Karaites in Jerusalem and Ramle after each faction lodged complaints against the other. Year after year, as part of theHoshana Rabba ceremonies on the Mount of Olives, the Rabbanites would conduct a rite of excommunication against the Karaites. Information about this practice has been preserved inAbraham Ibn Da’ud’s Sefer ha-Qabbala (ca. 1161). Geniza documents indicate that Solomon ben Judah once attempted to put a stop to the excommunication ceremony, but the sons of the previous gaon ascended the mountain and performed the rite anyway. They were arrested afterward.

One of the reasons for the strained relations between Rabbanites and Karaites in Jerusalem stemmed from the nature of the city’s Karaite community. The Karaite Mourners of Zion had come to Palestine for messianist reasons and viewed the Rabbanites as the main obstacle standing in the way of the redemption. The Mourners of Zion referred to themselves asshoshanim (lilies), and according to one of Solomon ben Judah’s letters, corroborated by Karaite polemical writings, they called the Rabbanites thorns. Solomon attempted to tone down the tense relations between the two factions. In one of his letters, he wrote that the Karaites were brothers, and Rabbanites should behave toward them as was the custom in biblical times, when the tribe of Judah married with the tribes of Israel. His policy should be understood in light of the political standing of the Karaites at the Fatimid court in Egypt, and consequently with the Muslim administration in Palestine.

The Tustarī brothers gained prominence at the caliphal court around this time, Abraham between 1036 and 1047, and  Ḥesed from 1040 to 1049, and in consequence Rabbanite leaders throughout the Middle East relied on their intervention. Daniel ben Azariah stated in a letter he wrote about Ḥesed: “God grant him long life . . . and safeguard his wealth for the good of the general public.” Geniza documents establish that the two brothers did sometimes act on behalf of Rabbanites. It was with their help that Rabbanite synagogues expropriated under the edicts issued by al-Ḥākim were returned to their rightful owners.  Solomon ben Judah had no choice but to take their political power into account during his tenure as gaon of the Palestinian yeshiva.

Around 1060, the governor of Jerusalem was a Karaite. Cooperation between Karaite and Rabbanite leaders in Jerusalem is illustrated by the colophon of the Aleppo Codex, which was then in the possession of the Karaites in Jerusalem. The Karaite nesi’im, Josiah and Hezekiah ben Solomon, promised that the Rabbanites could study the Codex whenever they wanted, any day of the year.

The Rabbanites of Jerusalem

From a letter of Daniel ben Azariah written in 1057, it appears that Jewish habitation in Jerusalem was continuous from the time the first seventy families settled there during the reign of ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb until his own day. The Byzantine attempt to expel the city’s Jews did not succeed. The Jewish population remained in the city until it was massacred by the Crusaders. There is no doubt that the transfer of the Palestinian yeshiva to Jerusalem at the end of the first quarter of the tenth century reinforced the status of Jerusalem with Jews everywhere.Diaspora congregations subordinate to the authority of Palestine were also called Jerusalemite communities. The geonim of Palestine, when soliciting donations for the community and the yeshiva, stressed the responsibility of all Jews, no matter where they lived, to ensure a Jewish presence in the Holy City.

According to a Geniza document, the Rabbanite quarter was in the southern part of the city, near the Temple Mount, a location with easy access to the Pool of Siloam. This was evidently the area of Rabbanite habitation until the Crusader conquest. Letters from the Geniza report that the Rabbanite community lived in the area near “the Priests' Gate,” but its precise location remains a matter of contention. The sources refer to the synagogue where the Rabbanites prayed as “the cave.” 

During the month of Tishri, pilgrims thronged Jerusalem and assembled on the Mount of Olives. The most important assemblage took place on Hoshana Rabba. The heads of the yeshiva would proclaim the order of the calendar for the coming year and would also conduct the ceremony excommunicating the Karaites. Letters written during the conflict over the leadership of the Palestinian yeshiva point out the importance of the Tishri assemblies on the Mount of Olives. While locked in conflict with the Gaon Solomon ben Judah, Nathan ben Abrahamwrote to his supporters in one of the communities asking them to make sure that the pilgrims going to Jerusalem from their congregation would support of his cause. In Tishri 1052, during the conflict between Daniel ben Azariah and Joseph ha-Kohen ben Solomon, when the yeshiva had no leader, fights broke out among pilgrims. One pilgrim recounted in a letter that after Daniel ben Azariah was appointed gaon, everyone went up to the Mount of Olives and prayed there during the holidays of Tishri.

Along with the assemblies on the Mount of Olives, the Muslim authorities permitted the Jews to walk around the city from one gate to another. Fragments of guidebooks for pilgrims found in the Geniza identify the various gates for those undertaking such a tour. Copies of the prayers and laments the pilgrims would recite at these times have also been discovered in the Geniza. While standing on the Mount of Olives and touring the gates of the city, Rabbanites and Karaites alike would lament the destruction of the Temple, making no effort to hide their sorrow about the presence of Muslim holy buildings and a cemetery on the Temple Mount. They referred to the sound of the prayers emanating from the mosques as kol margizim (Heb. the irritating voice), a term inspired by the Arabic poetic meter of rajaz.

When the Crusaders entered Jerusalem, they found a diminished Rabbanite community, because its leaders had fled at the time of the Turkoman conquest. Muslim sources briefly describe the bitter fate of the Jews of Jerusalem at the hands of the Crusaders, but do not differentiate between Rabbanites and Karaites. According to the Muslim accounts, theCrusaders herded the city’s Jews into their synagogue and set it on fire with everyone inside. Geniza documents indicate that the Crusaders took some Jews captive and seized many holy texts when they despoiled the city. Egyptian Jewry, under the energetic leadership of the nagidMevorakh ben Sa‘adya, raised funds to redeem the captives and the sacred texts. Many of the Jews who were redeemed, as well as some who had fled before Jerusalem fell, took refuge in Ashkelon. Other Jerusalem refugees, fearful that Ashkelon might also be taken by the Crusaders (as, in fact, it was in 1053) continued on to Egypt, and quite a few of them fell victim to the hardships of the road.

The Mourners of Zion

In the twelfth century, the Karaites began to claim that Anan ben David, a member of the exilarchic house and thus of Davidic descent, had founded the Karaite sect in Babylonia and Persia in the second half of the eighth century. They said that he had then gone to  Palestineand established a Karaite community in Jerusalem. Anan ben David was indeed a member of the exilarchic family, but the founding of the Karaite movement cannot be attributed to him, and what is more, he never went to Jerusalem. The Karaite movement began in Babylonia and Persia, but only in the second half of the ninth century. Later in that century, a Karaite faction known as the Mourners of Zion went to Palestine and established  a community in Jerusalem, and in the years that followed their relations with the Rabbanites were often marked by friction and hostility.

The Karaites of Jerusalem came to the same end as the Rabbanites. There is no doubt that the Karaite population dwindled during the Turkoman era. Many of the remaining Karaites were killed by the Crusaders, and others were taken captive. The Geniza bears witness to the rescue efforts carried out on their behalf by their brethren in Egypt. The Crusader conquest marked the tragic end of the most important Karaite center in the movement’s entire history. The prohibition of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem during the period of Crusader domination included the Karaites.

The Jewish Community in Ramle

The Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ‘Abd al-Malik(715–717) founded Ramle even before he became caliph and made it the capital of the province of Filastīn. Because it was a major administrative and economic center, it attracted many Jews. In fact its Jewish community was larger than the one in Jerusalem. Alongside its Palestinian Rabbanite community, it also had a Babylonian Rabbanite community. Ya‘qūb ibn Killis, a Jew from Baghdad who settled in Ramle and eventually converted to Islam, was later an official of the Fatimid administration in Egypt when Caliph al-Mu‘izz founded Cairo. The Rabbanites of Ramle lived side by side with Karaites, some of whom were apparently Mourners of Zion. In Ramle as in Jerusalem, the two communities were often at odds, and here, too, they sometimes had to ask the authorities to intervene.

      The Arabic meaning of Ramle is “sand,” and in Geniza documents the city is sometimes called “the sands of the district” and sometimes Filastīn, following the Arab custom of referring to the capital of a province and the province itself by the same name. The political instability inPalestine naturally affected Ramle. Because of its importance as the provincial capital, it was the scene of many battles.

      During the Fatimid period, the Palestinian yeshiva conducted most of its activities in Ramle, attracted by the town’s bustling economy and the presence of the Muslim government, even though the set of the yeshiva was formally based in Jerusalem. The importance of Ramle for the yeshiva was demonstrated during the struggle between Solomon ben Judah and Nathan ben Abraham. Nathan’s supporters appointed him gaon in Ramle, and Solomon ben Judah was actually in the city at the same time. The Jewish merchants in Ramle often assisted the Jews of Jerusalem. Some of the shops in Ramle served the Heqdesh, and their rents helped to finance the Jerusalem community.

      In summary, under Muslim rule, there were Jewish communities throughout Palestine and a significant Jewish population. Two important new communities were added in this period. One was in Jerusalem, where the Muslims permitted Jews to settle, after they had been prohibited from doing so for several hundred years. The second was in Ramle, a new city founded by the Muslims. Rabbanites lived alongside Karaites in both cities. The authority of the Palestinian geonim extended not only to Palestine but to all Palestinian or Jerusalemite communities in the Diaspora. Cultural activity was never suspended in Palestine, as shown by the completion of the Tiberian Masora project. In the last quarter of the ninth century, Karaites immigrated toPalestine and in Jerusalem founded the Mourners of Zion community.

      The end of the period was tragic from the standpoint of the Jewish population. First the Jews were hard hit by the Turkoman conquest, and many Rabbanite and Karaite leaders fled. TheCrusader conquest was a turning point in the history of the Jews of Palestine, marking a serious turn for the worse. In its aftermath, the number of Jews living in Palestine declined dramatically. Many communities were destroyed and never restored. The Palestinian yeshiva never returned to the Land of Israel and lost its status as the center of Diaspora Jewry.

                    Yoram Erder

2. Crusader Period

Political Contours

In July 1099, following a trek of more than two years from Europe through the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Syria, the Crusader battalions finally conquered Jerusalem. The campaign brought together knights and other soldiers, merchants motivated by prospects of profit, ordinary people hoping to better their social and legal status in a new land with an aura of holiness, and salvation-seekers. The conquest of Jerusalem, the culmination of a papal campaign to restore the cradle of Christianity and the burial ground of its savior to his followers, created a new political and demographic reality which persisted, albeit unevenly, for some two hundred years.

The conquest of Jerusalem was preceded by a series of military engagements, such as the Battle of Antioch, and the sieges of Jaffa (Yafo) and Ramle. The former rulers, the Fatimids of Egypt and the Seljuqs in Damascus and Baghdad, made little effort to change the new political map. Within a decade, the Crusaders had extended their dominion over the rest of Palestine. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem encompassed territories on the east bank of the Jordan, including the Ḥawran down to Eilat, as well as Beirut (north of which was the border with the neighboring political entity, centered around Tripoli), Sidon, and eventually Tyre; and it had suzerainty over Crusader polities in Syria (the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch) and east of the Euphrates (the County of Edessa). The acceptance of the Crusader states by the local peoples has been explained in various ways: the minor real, as opposed to symbolic, importance of Palestine from a Muslim perspective; the belief that the European presence would only be temporary; the intra-Islamic rivalry and religious differences (Shīʿī vs. Sunnī) between the Cairo and Baghdad regimes which impeded, and even prevented, cooperative efforts.

The period of Crusader rule in Palestine and the Levant is customarily divided into two subperiods: the First Kingdom, from the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 to 1187, when the Crusader forces were defeated at Hittin and Jerusalem was retaken by the Muslims; and theSecond Kingdom, from 1192, following the accord between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, to 1291, when Acre (Akko) was captured. The earlier kingdom took in a wider area, which in the east reached the eastern bank of the Jordan, while the latter kingdom was significant only on the coastal strip. The first was headed by kings with powers and duties recognized by the Syrian Crusader states, while the rulers of the second kingdom were lackluster, ineffectual figures who often did not even reside in Palestine. The first kingdom had a clear impact on the landscape, enlarging cities and building urban facilities, villages, fortresses, and palaces. The imprint of the second kingdom was far more modest (although impressive relics remain in Safed, Caesarea, Athlit, and in churches in Jerusalem). Moreover, while the Crusaders of the first kingdom were perceived as a menacing and formidable enemy that could only be defeated by a concerted Muslim effort, the might of the second kingdom had dwindled, but its neighbors accepted its presence, and were even willing to enlist Crusader aid for their own purposes, paying in territorial assets.

Notion of Palestine

The Crusader occupation considerably promoted the Muslim awareness of Palestine. A region that until then had been viewed by its Muslim (Fatimid Seljuq) overlords as a remote province was transformed into a political center over which European princes vied for power and commanding the compliance of other notables in the Levant; an independent kingdom whose ruler, enthroned and residing in Jerusalem, decided its fate; whose crown was coveted and fought over even from a great distance. Palestine became the destination for masses of pilgrims who came to pray at its shrines and even settled permanently. The Crusader conquest restored to Palestine the religious national distinction it had lost under Muslim rule. It revived biblical toponyms which fueled Christian aspirations and imagery. The land was once again governed by “Israel of the Spirit”; Jerusalem was again the capital (instead of Ramle), and the state was called the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Lat. Regnum Hierosolimitanum). The Umayyad edifices on the Temple Mount were renamed Temple of the Lord (Templum Domini) and Solomon’s Temple (Templum Salomonis); and in their obituaries of Crusader kings, chroniclers referred to them as “King Saul,” “King David,” or “Joshua son of Nun.”

Under the rule of foreigners, Palestine gradually took on greater importance in the Muslim world as well, especially as Frankish rule persisted and turned out to be a long-term affair. The new awareness was first manifested in propagandist writings and later in military moves with far-reaching reverberations in both the East and the West. In the course of this period, CrusaderPalestine became more and more frequently the battleground for conflicts between Christian and Islamic forces.

Demographic Features

The Crusader occupation of Jerusalem changed the demographic map of the city. ManyEuropeans who took part in the campaign settled there, while its former inhabitants were massacred or exiled. Surviving members of the  Jewish community were either enslaved or exiled to Ascalon or Egypt. Non-Christians were not permitted to spend the night in the city. Even outside Jerusalem, the Crusader occupation created a new demographic and legal reality. The land attracted European settlers who enjoyed influence, property, residential opportunities, legal rights, and privileges, whereas the indigenous population was marginalized into an oppressed status with curtailed liberties and prospects. They were taxed for the right to be protected by the Crusader authorities and for freedom of worship. Mixed marriages and adopting Frankish attire and the Christian faith were strictly forbidden. The rationale for this prohibition was the need to preserve the gap between the Catholic European occupiers and the locals destined to serve them. The lack of interest and of desire to reach out and befriend the locals also excluded the Eastern Christians for whose sake the Europeans had supposedly embarked on their Crusade in the first place.

Despite the colonial reality, there is almost no mention of conflicts between native inhabitants and their new rulers. Several factors may explain this. The local peoples were given autonomy and (at least in the inland towns) the possibility of remaining in their former residences. No effort was made to force them to accept the Crusaders’ faith, culture, and customs. And finally, a period of economic prosperity followed in the wake of the occupation.

Over the years, the Europeans discovered the material advantages of life in the Levant and adopted certain residential styles (use of stone, glazed windows, flat roofs), warfare techniques, clothes and fabrics, and foods (citrus, bananas, olives and their produce, Levantine condiments, figs, pomegranates, sugar juice, and honey molasses). But other than adapting to the material aspects of the local culture—more specifically, those determined by climate and natural resources—Crusader society tended to be isolationist and conservative, perhaps from fear of losing its privileged identity, and thus missed out on a potentially fruitful cultural encounter with the learning, art, and customs of the local peoples.

The Latin Impact

The Crusader occupation brought another novelty. For the first time, Palestine was ruled by Catholic Christians from Western Europe. Their worship (in Latin), hierarchical subordination (to Rome), and model of government (with a supreme court of justice reining in the power of the sovereign, delegating judiciary powers to knights, and providing judicial instances for special needs) were all new and unheard of. So too were their agricultural and commercial practices, as well as their military tactics and fortifications.

The affluence of the local inhabitants, which increased with the Crusader occupation, had various manifestations. Agricultural produce from the villages was marketed in larger quantities and distributed over wider areas. The cities of Palestine were now on the map of international trade: their populations grew, and there was a great deal of new construction both civil and military. The influx of pilgrims grew steadily as European Catholic devotees were offered more inviting opportunities to visit important sites and holy places, such as Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem and Hebron, Jericho, Magdala, Capernaum, Canna (Kefar Kana), and Mount Tabor.

Palestine under Catholic rule was now a territorial extension of European civilization, a friendly  “overseas outpost” known in Latin as Outremer, where its languages were spoken, its foods consumed, and its currencies in regular use. In the nearly two hundred years of the Crusader presence, the country’s marketplaces and ports, streets, and plazas echoed the sounds of northern French dialects. The preponderance of the French elementamong the warriors and settlers is mirrored by the name ifranj (Franks) assigned to the Crusaders by the local Arabs. Frankish fortresses bore French names, some of which persisted after their demise, such as Montfort, Belvoir, Chastelet, Mirabel, Toron des Chevaliers (Latrun); so too villages and rural areas such as Castina (from Med. Fr. gastina, a desolate place), St. Gilles (Sinjil), Caymont, and Aqua Bella.

The international maritime trade with Palestine increased steadily, thanks to improved shipbuilding techniques and fewer risks at sea. Along with the warriors, the kings, and their entourages, and the flow of pilgrims, many merchants arrived, importing wine from Italy, textiles from Flanders, smoked ham, and metals such as copper, tin, and mercury, and exporting indigenous goods, such as Tyrian glass, olive oil, wine, and sugar from the vicinity of Acre and Tyre, Tiberias and the Jordan basin; indigo from the Jordan basin; spices, woolens, and cotton fabrics. The improved and regular transportation links with Europe during the spring and summer facilitated the arrival of more pilgrims than ever before, and gradually contributed to the diversification of the permanent residential population.

The mark left by the Crusaders is even more conspicuous in the  Palestinian landscape. They converted many Muslim buildings for their purposes, but more often they redesigned the cities in which they settled, adding walls (Jerusalem, Acre, Tiberias), marketplaces, hospitals (in Ramle), churches built in the European style (in Nazareth, Bethlehem, Samaria, Ramle, Gaza, Acre and Jerusalem); palaces and residential quarters (Acre), stables (Solomon’s Stables beneath the al-Aqsa Mosque); hostels (Jerusalem), public baths, harbor facilities, and bakeries. In military construction, in which they incorporated the existing achievements of local fortification craft, the Franks built fortresses whose remains still stand in Belvoir (in the eastern part of lower Galilee), Monfort (western Galilee), Athlit, and Safed; and knights’ quarters and ceremonial halls (the Knights’ Halls in Acre). They augmented the rural areas with new villages, such as Cafarlet (ha-Bonim), Beit Nuba (east of Ramle), Casal Imbert (Akhziv), el-Bireh (near Ramallah), Beit Guvrin, and al-Qubeiba (identified as Emmaus, northwest of Jerusalem).

The first Crusader state was constantly engaged in military campaigns. At first it initiated attacks on Egypt and east of the Jordan, but eventually the Muslim threats to its territorial integrity increased from northern Iraq and Syria. Islamic forces, led by Nūr al-Dīn ben Zangī of Aleppo and Saladin (from Egypt and central Syrian cities) finally overpowered the Crusader state with the defeat at Hittin, in lower Galilee, in 1187.

The Second Kingdom

The second Crusader kingdom managed to last another century (1192–1291) despite the fact that its territory had shrunk to include only the coastal plain (the interior was now governed by Saladin and his successors, the Ayyubids) and its kings were impotent. Compounding its weakness, its separate constituencies (merchant communes from European port cities, military orders) encroached on the authority of its rulers and acted in accordance with their own partisan interests. The Ayyubids were willing to cooperate with the Christian kings. They courted their military support and handed over some desirable territories (including Jerusalem in 1229), and thus the second kingdom was in some ways more integrated into the Levant than its predecessor. Its demise resulted from a variety of factors. Europe was more critical of its policies, less interested in  the Levant, and less willing to make an effort to save the kingdom. Pilgrimages dwindled. The kingdom was further weakened by the emergence of defiant local forces, such as the native nobility, seigneurs empowered with feudal jurisdiction; the Haute Cour, the feudal council in Jerusalem, assumed ever greater authority over taxing, political accords, and legal arrangements among its members. The new Mamluk regime, which ruled both Syria and Egypt, brought an end to the political divisions in the Near East that had weakened the Muslim resistance. Its armies gradually captured the Crusader outposts. Finally, the month-long siege of Acre in the spring of 1291 marked the downfall of the second Crusader kingdom.

Jewish Settlements and Occupations

There is very little information about the Jews in the Crusader state. Jews were banned from residing in Jerusalem after the Crusader conquest in 1099, and again in 1229 when it was returned to the Crusaders. The 1099 capture was followed by a massacre of local Jews who had sought shelter in the synagogue. Others were taken captive and deported as far as the cities of southern Italy. Egyptian congregations in Cairo and Alexandria raised funds for their redemption. Refugees and fugitives from Jerusalem moved to Ascalon or to Egypt.

Jews were, however, permitted to visit Jerusalem (as Maimonides did on his way from Morocco to Egypt), and were also allowed to purchase the lease on the dyeing trade. Thus a handful of Jewswere allowed, by virtue of their occupations, to reside in the city permanently. While the Jewish settlements in several coastal cities were massacred during the Crusader takeover (such as Haifa, where Jews actively participated in defense activities), other coastal communities in Acre, Tyre, Caesarea, and Ascalonthrived. The latter preserved its community even after its capture in 1153, surviving until the destruction of the city’s walls in 1191. The congregations (Heb.qehalim) in these cities maintained occasional organizational, business, and intellectual contacts with Egypt. Each of them apparently had its own leaders and elders. Acre even had a court (bet din), along with the wherewithal to pay communal officials. A relatively large concentration of Jews resided in urban settlements in the Galilee region, in Tiberias, Safed, and dispersed villages north of Safed, such as Nabarta, Gischala (Ar. Jish), Ein Zeitim, Firim, Kfar Baram, Biriyya, Alma, Meiron, and Dalton (Ar. Dalāta).

The twelfth-century traveler Benjamin of Tudela provides the richest contemporaneous Jewish description of the Jewish collective in Palestine. His population estimates include two hundred Jews in Haifa, two hundred Jews and two hundred Samaritans in Caesarea, a single Jewish dyer in Lydda (Lod), a thousand Samaritans in Nablus, four Jewish dyers in Jerusalem, three Jews in Bet Jibrin, three hundred Jews in Ramle, a single Jewish dyer in Jaffa, two hundred Rabbanites, forty Karaites, and three hundred Samaritans in Ashkelon, fifty Jews in Tiberias, and another fifty in Alma. Among their main occupations, Benjamin cited dyeing and glass manufacture (in Tyre). Other vocations were trade, banking, and moneylending (in Acre), and possibly some agriculture and itinerant crafts (in the Galilee). Petahiah of Regensburg, who visited Palestine a few years after Benjamin, gives very few statistics and simply mentions that in addition to Tiberias, “there are also congregations in the land of Israel, numbering, however, only one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred families.”

The Frankish princes and their subjects held Eastern medicine in high regard, and Jews were legal practitioners. The regulations forbidding Christians to seek medical care from either Muslims or Jews are evidence of their actual preferences. The regulations may also have been a reaction to the lack of mutuality, since the indigenous population refrained from using Christian physicians.

Jews were granted communal autonomy with their own internal laws and institutions. Like the rest of the non-Frankish population, however, they were not entitled to own real estate and acquire title deeds. Although they were considered inferior by the Latin populace, pogroms of the kind prevalent in Christian Europe did not take place in Palestine.

During the Second Kingdom, after 1191, the Jews fared much better. The Muslim Ayyubid regime, controlling the interior regions, permitted them to return to Jerusalem, as described in embellished language in Judah al-Ḥarīzī’s Taḥkemoni, and utilized their professional skills as merchants and physicians. But the existence of a Jewish community in Jerusalem, made possible by the Crusaders’ evacuation of the city after 1187 and again in 1244, could not be properly sustained, mainly because of invasions and threats of incursion from the east, which undermined personal security and jeopardized the stability of daily life.

Under Crusader rule, the capital city was  Acre, which became an international trading hub. It absorbed hordes of European pilgrims, who gradually changed the composition of the Jewish communities in Palestine. Acre also emerged as a center of rabbinical teaching, divided during the Maimonidean controversy on the question of the legitimacy of Maimonides’s tenets and doctrine. The exilarch David ben Daniel in Mosul wrote a letter in 1288 against Solomon Petit ben Samuel, the leading anti-Maimonidean in Acre, who disputed the Guide of the Perplexed.

Jewish Scholarly Output 

Around 1211, the so-called immigration of the three hundred rabbis brought a large group ofrabbinical scholars from France to Acre. Their number included some of the greatest tosafists (Heb. baʿale ha-tosafot), such as R. Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel, R. Samson of Sens, and R. Joseph ben Baruch of Clisson. From around 1257, the yeshiva of the disciples of Rabbi Yeḥiel of Paris resided in Acre. Among the many other noted rabbinic figures in Acre was Moses ben Naḥman Gerondi (Naḥmanides), who arrived in 1268 and died there. Prior to his arrival in Acre, Naḥmanides visited Jerusalem, where he wrote his famous epistle (1267) which recounts how the Jews of Jerusalem escaped before the catastrophic Mongol invasion, taking their Torah scrolls to Nablus. He notes their meager numbers and the limited prospects for  normal community life and religious practices. Naḥmanides is credited with reviving the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, but there are grave scholarly reservations about both the practical impact and the longevity of his contribution.

The writings of Jewish travelers who visited Palestine in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Jacob ben Nethanel, Petahiah of Regensburg, Samuel ben Samson, Menaḥem the Hebronite) are replete with references to places they visited, distances, grave sites and the miracles they bestow on visitors, and the punishments in store for potential desecrators. As a source of useful information about Jewish life in Crusader Palestine, none of these is of much value in comparison to Benjamin of Tudela, who provides much better data.

The Jews of the Crusader kingdom failed to produce any local scholarly or literary luminaries. Even in secular disciplines (civil service, medicine, trade), no local figures stand out. Instead, Palestinian Jewry during the Crusader era may be described as a loose network of congregations, lacking a central national representative leadership, divided into ethnic subcommunities with separate leaders and worship practices, deprived of power and means, and preoccupied with survival in the face of hostile external political forces. The ongoing Muslim-Christian conflict and the recurrent changes of power in Palestine and in Jerusalem led to a reassessment of the Land of Israel’s place in Jewish thought. It was Naḥmanides who articulated the comforting notion that explained away the vicissitudes of foreign rule overPalestine: “Our land does not bow to our enemies—as from the time we left it, it has never [permanently] accepted any nation or language, and they all endeavor to settle it but to no avail.”

                    Joseph Drory

3. Mamluk Period

In 1250, the Mamluks came into power in Egypt. A decade later, in 1260, they annexed Syria, which then encompassed present-day Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. Based in Cairo, the Mamluk regime introduced significant administrative changes in the Palestinian interior (Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron) and on the coast (Jaffa, Caesarea, Athlit, Acre). The country ceased to be a sovereign entity and was subordinated, as during the earlier period of Muslim rule, to a government in a faraway capital and to rulers who appointed foreigners as governors, officials, and magistrates. The Mamluks, originally slaves brought to Islamic countries from the Asian steppes to serve in their armies, cultivated a military ethos, and their civic endeavors (passage routes, construction, defense, selection of regional centers) were all subject to military considerations. Having accepted Islam during their military training, the Mamluks frequently displayed their commitment to Islam, which in turn consolidated their identity and provided their status and property. On taking over Palestine, which up until a few decades before had been the object of a struggle between Islam and Latin Christendom, the Mamluks felt obliged to accentuate its Islamic aspects and promote its sanctity. Mamluk control over the entire area of Egypt, even south of Aswan, along with Greater Syria, with its urban centers (Tripoli, Homs, Damascus, Aleppo) and its threatened border with Anatolia and the Euphrates, east of which the Mongol enemy lurked, made Palestine less important to the Mamluks from a geopolitical perspective. Even so, during their long suzerainty (more than 250 years), they managed to ensure its security, repress assailants from within, stabilize its administrative systems, and nurture a diverse culture. The Crusader legacy inherited by the Mamluks contoured their achievements in various dimensions.

The Mamluks erected conspicuous edifices and Muslim sacred facilities in Ramle, Safed, Hebron, Gaza, and especially in Jerusalem—one of the three traditional holy cities for Muslims and the final destination of the Latin Christian Crusaders—all of which was designed to signify the Islamic ownership and character of the region. Out of fear of a Crusader invasion from the sea, the Mamluks took special care to destroy the coastal cities of Jaffa (Yafo), Arsuf, Caesarea, Athlit, Haifa, and Acre (Akko), flattening their ports and leaving them in ruins during the period of their sway. Despite the fear of an invasion, the Mamluks did not expropriate the assets oflocal Christians and refrained from infringing their rights of ownership and worship. In return for payment of a regular fee, members of the Christian congregations were allowed to retain their property as before and continued to enjoy the legal protection of the state and its officials, which was partly motivated, perhaps, by an awareness of the economic and diplomatic benefits of links with the European centers backing their brethren in the Levant.

Mamluk Palestine suffered only a few military conflicts. In the thirteenth century it was the site of battles against Mongols and Crusaders, after which the next foreign battalions to cross its highways were the armies of Selim I, the Ottoman sultan, in 1516. The absence of war and the security guaranteed by the Mamluks—fearless and able warriors—ensured a peaceful and comfortable existence for the land’s inhabitants.

This era of calm was achieved after major campaigns in Palestine with long-ranging political consequences. In August 1260, Sultan Qutuz and his chief commander, Baybars, faced the formidable Mongols, who had captured Baghdad and eliminated the Abbasid caliphate, thereby dealing a blow to the entire Islamic world. Although the Mongols apparently never reached Jerusalem, and Baybars defeated them in the Battle of Ayn Jalut (identified as Harod Fountain, in the Plain of Jezreel, known also as Esdraelon), the inhabitants of the Holy City fled, as recorded by the Jewish Bible exegete Naḥmanides. Later Mongol invasions by Abaqa in 1281, Ghazan in 1299, and Timur Leng (Tamerlane) in 1400 never penetrated Palestine, but they too wrought panic among the inhabitants.

The Crusaders were another enemy of the Mamluks. Unlike their predecessors the Ayyubids, who found ways to integrate the Crusaders into the political and local fabric and occasionally even enabled them to expand their territory, the Mamluks mounted continuous military campaigns against them, gradually shrank their territory, and finally ousted them from the entire Levant. There were two major phases in the erosion of the Crusader grip on Palestine. The first was between 1265 and 1272 in the time of Baybars, when Caesarea, Arsuf, Safed, and Jaffa were captured, along with Montfort Castle, held by the Teutonic Order. The second was during the reign of Qalāwūn, who began the siege of Acre, successfully completed by his son, al-Ashraf Khalīl, in the spring of 1291. The conquest of Acre, the last Crusader stronghold in the Levant, brought the Crusaders’ presence and domination of Palestine to an end. In the areas captured in the Sharon region of the coastal plain, Baybars distributed land holdings to his senior officers in towns such as Baqa, Tulkarm, Qalansuwa, Jaljulya, and Umm Al-Fahm.

Administration

In contrast to the neglected coastal plain, the Mamluks made a distinctly positive contribution to other areas in Palestine. To improve accessibility between its various districts, ward off highway robbers, and enhance a sense of security and trust in the state and its institutions, they established a postal network (Ar. barīd). This project, which necessitated the erection of postal stations at specified distances, the building of convenient connecting roads, and the provision of a permanent force of riders and horses, was a reflection of the imperial needs of a state based in Cairo, whose ruler had to keep abreast of affairs in distant dominions. Postal routes inPalestine stretched from al-Arish via Khan Yunis, which was built as a postal khān in the late fourteenth century, through to Gaza, and from there to the coastal plain south of Lydda (Lod), eastern Sharon, Fahma, Jenin, and the Jezreel Valley, cutting across the bridge over the Yarmuk and Jordan River junction, making its way to Damascus, and farther up to Homs and Aleppo in northern Syria. The central route forked into secondary roads leading to other state centers: one going to Hebron and the Dead Sea region, terminating in Karak on the east bank of the Jordan, and the other from Jenin, northbound to the vicinity of Tiberias and Safed. The postal route instituted in the time of Baybars (who built the bridge north of Lydda in 1273) was maintained throughout the period of Mamluk rule and improved by additional new khāns (as in Jaljulya in 1325 and Lower Galilee in 1440).

Administratively, Palestine was subordinated to Syria, and divided into mamlakas(administrative units): Gaza in the south and the coastal plain, and Safed in the Galilee and northern valleys. The territory around Jerusalem, which included Nablus and Hebron, was part of the Damascus mamlaka. Even when the status of Jerusalem was officially upgraded in the later fourteenth century, it was not promoted to an independent mamlaka. The depreciation of Palestine’s administrative status was reflected in the middling level of the governors assigned to it and of their subordinate officials and their duties, as well as their position in the state hierarchy. Rarely did a local governor of any Palestinian city rise to a higher position in the capital in Egypt. Appointments by Cairo to government service in Palestine were considered a demotion and aroused anger, shock, and disappointment among appointees.

Each mamlaka had a host of officials. Most important were the nāʾib, the senior official appointed by the sultan to oversee the mamlaka (referred to in Hebrew sources as nayeppo); thewāli, in charge of the police and public order; the qāḍī ʾl-quḍāt, the supreme justice in charge of each of the jurisprudential schools, with a subordinate body of minor magistrates entrusted with deciding individual disputes and criminal matters such as theft and murder, personal status, liberation of slaves, and custodianship of orphans; the nāẓir, the financial overseer in charge of tax collection, supervision of endowment properties, bequests, and levies on the belongings of deceased persons with no beneficiaries; the muḥtasib, who supervised the markets and was responsible for announcing state decrees to the public.

General Demographic Overview 

There were several important centers of economic and other activity. Gaza was the regional capital of the south and the seat of the nāʾib. Its livelihood was derived mainly from its function as a central service station—hostel, hospital, food market—for travelers and caravans crossing to and from Egypt. Ramle was a transit station for those arriving from the deserted coastal plain on the way to Jerusalem—mainly Christian pilgrims. Jerusalem, the focus of much Islamic and European interest, offered teaching opportunities, pilgrim facilities (moneychangers, food supply, medical services, foreign language instruction), and prayer and religious ceremonies (on the Temple Mount, at the Holy Sepulchre, and in the monasteries of various congregations: Holy Cross, the Armenians’ St. James). Nablus produced specialty condiments and olive oil. The Jordan River basin produced sugar and indigo. The Galilee abounded with fertile villages, agricultural produce (cotton, rice, oil, honey, cheeses, watermelons, apples, figs), and attractions for Christians (Mount Tabor, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee) as well as Jews (Meron, the tombs of the tannaim). Safed, the northern regional center, with a grand citadel, was an administrative center and the seat of the nāʾib. Noted for its marketplace, baths, mosques, and synagogues, it was the hub of agricultural trade with Damascus and an attractive location thanks to its fine air, beautiful landscapes, and relative distance, all amenable to a pleasant retreat.

The majority of the population in this period were Sunni Muslims. Druzes resided in Jarmaq (nowadays Mount Meron) in the Galilee. In the Galilee villages, the ancient division between Qays and Yemen tribesmen was still current. In addition to the Eastern Orthodox Christians who resided in Nazareth and in separate and mixed villages in the Galilee, Palestine had congregational representations of the Armenian Church (headed by a local patriarch). TheFranciscan order of monks, based on Mount Zion, held separate property, worship, and legal rights. Its members protected European pilgrims, regularly escorting them from Jaffa port to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Dead Sea. The country’s Georgian Christians were guaranteed the security of their center in the Monastery of the Holy Cross and the protection of their assets in other villages because the rulers of Georgia in the Caucasus cultivated diplomatic ties with the Mamluks in Egypt. The monastery served as a hostel for pilgrims from Georgia.

Jewish Demography and Prominent Individuals

Jewish settlements in the Mamluk region persisted in Jerusalem, Hebron, Gaza, Safed, and the Galilee villages, as well as Acre, until the fall of the Crusaders. → Naḥmanides, the noted exegete and scholar from Christian Spain, who arrived in Palestine in 1267, recorded the evacuation of Jerusalem when its inhabitants fled upon hearing rumors about the Mongol advance. During his short stay, Naḥmanides established a prayer house in a deserted building to serve Jewish visitors, mainly from Syria. It is difficult to regard him as the reviver of the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, as he is often represented, because his endeavor had no demonstrable continuity. From Jerusalem Naḥmanides moved to Acre, probably because it was ruled by Europeans and he was more familiar with their language, currency, and customs. In the last decades of Acre’s Jewish community, the congregation was divided with regard to the acceptance of →Maimonides’s doctrines and Aristotelian philosophy.

Estori ha-Parḥi arrived in Palestine from France or Spain in the early fourteenth century. In his writings he sought to demonstrate the feasibility in the current Palestinian reality of Jewish observance in accordance with Torah law on a host of issues related, for instance, to foods and cookery, agricultural produce (Sabbatical year, interbreeding of plant species), regional borders, holy sites, and weights and measurements. From his domicile in Jerusalem, he moved to Beth Shean in order to demonstrate to those in doubt about its halakhic status that it belonged to the Land of Israel—and hence that its residents were required to comply with land-related observances. His Kaftor va-Feraḥ(Venice, 1549) should be regarded as an original work of halakha, consolidating his legal decisions while meticulously examining conditions inPalestine, the climate, relative distances, and the names of places he researched and identified in his explorations of the country. Thus he was the first Jewish topographer of the Land of Israel. He is also important for his identification of small Jewish communities. 

In the early fifteenth century, the Franciscan friars, who held part of the traditional Tomb of David on Mount Zion, accused the Jews, who also held part of it, of appropriating their share of the property. In retaliation, the pope issued an order banning Italian vessels from transporting Jews to Palestine. The dispute continued for decades, with periodic renewals of the ban complicating Jewish sea travel to the Holy Land. Perhaps because of these difficulties, R. Isaac ben Solomon Ṣarfati, in a public epistle to the Diaspora written sometime in the second half of the century, advised Jews to come to Palestine overland via the Ottoman Empire. A German pilgrim in 1489 described the overland route taken by Central European Jews as related to him by a Jew in Jerusalem who had himself come that way.

Throughout the Mamluk period, Jews continued to arrive in Palestine from Italy, Germany, and North Africa. New arrivals were counterbalanced by departures, so that the modest size of the local Jewish population remained constant throughout the period. It was only the massive immigration resulting from the Spanish expulsion in the late fifteenth century that brought about a significant demographic uptick in the number of Jews, mainly in the Galilee (see alsoSephardi Impact on Islamicate Jewry). Even before the expulsion, Jews from Iberia had been coming to Palestine as a result of the outbreaks of violence in 1391 and the early fifteenth century. 

The Tuscan Jewish merchant Meshullam of Volterra, who visited Gaza in 1481, reported that its Jews were engaged in viticulture and wine production. He also described the soup kitchen for pilgrims maintained by the Jewish community of Hebron. His account of Jerusalemcalls attention to its fine fruit and solid buildings, its notables, and the similarity between certain local Jewish customs and Muslim customs. Meshullam’s contemporary Joseph da Montagna notes that Safed already had a large Jewish community of three hundred households more than a decade before the Spanish expulsion. The community was led by Perez Colombo and Joseph Saraqosti.

The most prominent figure and the greatest leader of Palestinian Jewry in Mamluk Palestinewas Obadiah da Bertinoro, who in 1488 arrived in Palestine from Emilia-Romagna in Italy via Sicily and Egypt. Having visited Gaza and Hebron, he settled in Jerusalem, where his religious eminence was promptly recognized. Obadiah earned a senior position in the community and in the scholarly activity in the synagogue. He reports that there were about seventy Jewish families out of some four thousand people in the city and that they were overwhelmingly poor. There had been three hundred Jewish families not long before, but most were driven away by the oppressive taxation. While in Jerusalem, Obadiah completed his famous commentary on the Mishna. His social observations, recorded in his epistles concerning the state of the Jews inPalestine and in Jerusalem, included comments about the scarcity of men in the congregation and the large number of widows, the low intellectual level of the local Jews, their rejection of the philosophical ideas prevalent in his country of origin, the corruption associated with tax collection that led Jewish notables to act as informers and forced others to leave the city, the change in tax collection arrangements from an oppressive collective levy to individual taxing, the low profit margin in the city, and the fine relationship between Jews and non-Jews, including the authorities. Obadiah also described the row that had taken place in 1474 regarding the government’s expropriation of the Jerusalem synagogue. The dispute was adjudicated in favor of the Jews by Sultan Qāʾit Bāy (r. 1468–1496) despite objections from his senior officials. According to an anonymous disciple of Obadiah, his master greatly improved Jewish life in Jerusalem. 

The swift Ottoman conquest of Palestine in 1516, which took place without battles and destruction, created a new cultural and political reality. Egyptian hegemony and dependence on Egypt were replaced by affiliation to Istanbul, its sultans and their officials. The official language, currency, and administrative style were now reshaped in the Ottoman spirit.

                Joseph Drory

4. Ottoman Empire

The Sixteenth Century

From the beginning of the sixteenth century, and especially after the Ottoman conquest in 1516, the face of the Jewish settlement in Palestine underwent a complete change. After more than two centuries of Mamluk rule centered in Cairo, Palestine became part of province of Syria (iyālatal-Shām or wiyālatal-Shām), with its administrative center in Damascus. The Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine for the next four hundred years. Living conditions improved after the conquest, law and order were restored, and it was again safe to travel by sea and land. Jews from Turkey, the Balkans, Italy, North Africa, Egypt, and other areas, taking advantage of Ottoman immigration and development policies, headed for Palestine. They were motivated by the hope of a new and productive life in a new land as well as by messianic anticipation of approaching salvation, especially in the case of those who were exiles from Spain ( Megorashim). Families and young people settled mostly in the cities of Jerusalem, Safed, and Gaza, where they met the native Jewish residents of the land, the Mustaʿribim, Arabic speakers who dressed and acted much like Arabs. In contrast to the newcomers, a significant segment of the Mustaʿribim lived in mixed villages in the Galilee and southern Lebanon.

Ottoman census data and tax lists show that the population of Palestine as a whole, and the Jewish population in particular, grew steadily in the sixteenth century. Toward mid-century, there were about 350 Jewish families in Jerusalem. In Safed, the main hub of new settlement, the Jewish population grew fourfold, totaling about 800 families. Another 120 Jewish families resided in Gaza, between thirty and seventy families in Nablus, while in Hebron the Jewish settlement was limited to just ten or twenty families. There was no Jewish community inTiberias, but in the 1560s, Doña Gracia Nasi (Mendes) took out a lease on the area’s taxes and promised to develop it. Her plan aroused great hopes and expectations among Jews in the country and abroad, but after her death in 1569, her son-in-law, Don Joseph Nasi, showed no interest in the project, nor did other investment attempts succeed. The settlement in Tiberias failed to gain any support, and there were practically no Jews left there at the dawn of the seventeenth century.

In the mid-sixteenth century, the Jewish population in Palestine reached its peak, numbering between ten and fifteen thousand out of an estimated general population of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand. The majority of the new immigrants toPalestine came from the Iberian Peninsula. Their numerical superiority, economic experience, and knowledge of languages, added to the fact that most of the scholars who immigrated toPalestine were of Sephardic descent, meant that within a few decades they became the dominant group in the Jewish settlement. Not without a fight the congregations of Mustaʿribim, Maghrebis, Italians, and others were annexed to the Sephardim in a process of “Sephardization” familiar in other regions of the Ottoman Empire. In the course of time, these congregations accepted the leadership of the Sephardim and also adopted their language and customs. Only the smaller Ashkenazi community preserved its uniqueness and was not assimilated into the Sephardic congregations.

Compared to its counterparts in Christian countries in the same period, the Ottoman government was relatively tolerant to members of other religions and nationalities throughout the empire, but differential treatmentof Muslims and dhimmis (see Dhimma  ) was a matter of course. Nevertheless, it was not unusual for Jews and Muslims to have dealings with one another in everyday life. At least until the end of the sixteenth century, the Jews of Jerusalem dwelled in mixed neighborhoods, and rented properties and houses to and from Muslims. Bathhouses, markets, adjacent stores, merchant caravans, were routine places of gathering. More than once, Muslims took advantage of their status to bully and humiliate, but as long as the harassment did not escalate beyond mere humiliations, the Jews preferred to restrain themselves and keep quiet. When harassment became a tool for extortion, complaints were sent to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul.

Hundreds of Ottoman documents, especially from the sharīʿa court in Jerusalem, as well as diverse Hebrew sources, attest that the Jews of Palestine did not hesitate to appeal to the highest authorities when they felt they had been wronged. They expected to be treated with justice, and complained not only against local Muslims, neighbors, or business partners, but also against extortionist governors. The sizable presence of Jewish litigants in Muslim courts, and the very fact that they repeatedly sent messages to the palace, indicates that many of the appeals reached their destination, and to all outward appearances were dealt with impartially. However, the distance between the center in Istanbul and officials in the far-off provinces made efficient supervision very difficult. As the security and political stability that characterized the early Ottoman period weakened, the power of wealthy entrepreneurs was enhanced. Governors and functionaries—many of them heads of powerful local families who had bought their posts—often dared to act independently and ignore instructions sent from Istanbul.

During the accelerated process of development that characterized the early Ottoman period, local Jews and new immigrants, both men and women, integrated into every area of the economy. This was not a rich society, but a working and productive one that, as long as conditions allowed, was self-supporting and almost never needed help from the Diaspora. Many Jews were craftsmen, artisans, farmers, merchants, and brokers. Others were involved infinancial dealings as moneychangers and moneylenders, others were tax farmers and collectors.

Above all, the sixteenth-century economy was characterized by the thriving wool industry that developed in Safed following the arrival of expert craftsmen from the Iberian Peninsula. This industry provided the Jewish population in Safed and its environs with a decent living as craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and suppliers of products and services. In this prosperous period, lasting about sixty years, Safed accommodated at least fifteen congregations, organized by country or city of origin (among them five Iberian congregations), and about twenty synagogues, seminaries, and educational institutions, together with associated lodging places and mutual help organizations.

Alongside, and to a great extent as a result of, the economic and demographic development, important sages and rabbis began to arrive in Palestine, particularly Safed. They drew many students and left their mark on the spiritual and everyday life of both Palestine and the Diaspora. Worthy of mention are Jacob Berab, a Spanish deportee who settled in Safed in 1524, where he initiated the idea of reestablishing the Sanhedrin in Palestine (1538); Joseph Caro, who arrived in 1536 and headed a large group whose members were Spaniards or of Spanish origin; and Moses ben Joseph di Ṭrani, who as of 1525 headed the Bet Yaʿaqov congregation established by Jews of Castilian origin. These three men and other sages headed schools in the study of halakha and Kabbala, compiled important books on halakha and ethics which enlightened subsequent generations, and produced outstanding disciples. Notwithstanding their scholarly activities, they did not wash their hands of public affairs, and some were even involved in the city’s commercial and economic life.

The city’s Jewish populace also included devout pietistic groups made up mostly of formeranusim (conversos). The pietists were very strict in their practices, fasting frequently and engaging in penitential acts to atone for their past sins. The atmosphere of Safed was saturated with intense messianic tension, and most of its sages were engaged in studying and practicing kabbalistic rituals as a means of hastening salvation. Even before the arrival of Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (Ari) and the spread of his doctrine of Lurianic Kabbala, purification and kabbalistic prayer customs were prevalent, while various penitential groups and strict teachers tried to persuade the populace at large in Palestine and the Diaspora to accept their customs.

Jerusalem also attained cultural prosperity. After the Ottoman conquest, Levi Ibn Ḥabib (1483– 1550), Jacob Berab’s adversary, settled there. In the second half of the century, the famous decisor (poseq) David Ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) came to Jerusalem from Cairo and became head of the community. Like the aforementioned sages, they too were of Spanish descent.

The trend of demographic growth and economic development changed in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, following an economic and political crisis in the Ottoman Empire that left its mark on Palestine. The Galilee and southern Lebanon became an arena of conflict between local forces and the central government. Security on the roads was undermined, the civilian population suffered greatly, and the Jews, especially in Safed, which was located in the midst of the area of political turmoil, were between the hammer and the anvil. In addition, a grave crisis befell the wool industry, the main source of subsistence for the Jews of the city and its environs. The Jewish populace, overpowered by the burden of heavy debts and subsequent social and personal crisis, dwindled considerably. The majority of Safed’s Jews left, and its sages were scattered to Jerusalem and other cities, both in Palestine and elsewhere. It was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that Jews began slowly to return, aided by generous support from the communities of the Diaspora. However, Safed was never restored to its former glory.

The last two decades of the sixteenth century were also a lamentable period for Jerusalem. TheJewish community, oppressed by an extortionate governor, was forced to spread a great deal of money among senior functionaries and officials. The synagogue named after Moses Naḥmanides (Ramban) was confiscated despite a century-long fight by the city’s Jews to keep it. Conflicts between Jews and Muslims broke out regarding the right of possession of the tomb of the prophet Samuel near Jerusalem, which was a place of pilgrimage and thus a source of income. Here, too, the Jewish community was subjected to shameless extortion. The community held on to the site intermittently during the seventeenth century, but in the end it was confiscated.

The Seventeenth Century

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the political situation in the district (sancak) of Jerusalem became even more unstable. Control of the city regularly alternated between cruel, greedy governors and others, more conscientious, who enabled periods of calm and temporary recovery. The calm intervals, however, were never very prolonged. In 1624, following upon the achievement of a coalition by the local emirs, a particularly savage governor, Muḥammad Ibn Farukh, rose to power. The years of his rule were among the gloomiest in Jerusalem’s history, as is echoed in various sources chronicling the events. The Jews of Jerusalem were repeatedly subjected to extortion and threats, forced to work at hard labor in construction and maintenance projects, and had to pay huge amounts as bribes and gifts. The leaders of the community and its wealthiest members were arrested and tortured. The community faced extermination, and its leaders were forced to take loans at usurious rates of interest and to sell communal property to survive. Desperate letters were sent to Istanbul, but the removal of the governor was delayed for close to three years, by which time it was too late for the Jewish community to recover, and many left the city. In a letter sent to the Diaspora in 1670, more than forty years after these events, the people of Jerusalem described Ibn Farukh’s governorship as a devastating earthquake and the source of all their woes.

The community soon found itself in conflict with its Muslim creditors because of the many debts accumulated in the preceding years. Muslims held the Jews responsible for the severe drought that occurred in 1637 and made them pay an indemnity on penalty of banishment; the burden of the poll tax (jizya) was particularly heavy because there had been no formal census, and the governors demanded arbitrary amounts based on inflated figures that included people who had died or fled the city. In this time of need, financial assistance from Europe diminished radically because of the destruction wrought by the pogroms in Eastern Europe in 1648 and 1649.

Unlike Safed, and despite all the hardships, Jerusalem was never abandoned. Between 150 and 200 Jewish families, most of them poor and desperately needing help, continued to live there throughout the seventeenth century. Because of the city’s holiness and historical and religious importance, immigration to Jerusalem was not an occasional event resulting from special circumstances and economic opportunities, but a permanent phenomenon. The rate of immigration was reduced by the economic recession and the chaotic security and political situation, but nonetheless new immigrants continued to arrive and settle in Jerusalem. In addition, some of the residents who had fled to Ramla, Gaza, Egypt, and other places returned to Jerusalem whenever it was possible. Most of the new immigrants during this period lived on allowances sent them from abroad. Well-to-do immigrants avoided investing in Jerusalem so as not to be a target for extortion by the city’s governors and other officials. Various sources, including the 1690 Ottoman census, the only one carried out in the seventeenth century, make it clear that there were Jewish craftsmen and merchants in the city. But there is no doubt that the majority were Mustaʿrabim or Jews whose families had been living in Palestine for generations. Most of them had incomes barely sufficient to provide a living, and certainly not adequate to satisfy the demands of tyrannical governors or pay off the community’s debts, which greatly increased because of the high interest rates.

The hardships of life increased the community’s dependence on support from the Jews of the Diaspora, with whom the Jews of Palestine had a deep ideological, emotional, and religious connection. Special emissaries (shadarim) were regularly dispatched to Europe, Turkey, North Africa, and the East to raise funds. The letters the emissaries brought with them, as well as their public orations and private statements, reiterated the religious virtue of settling in the Land of Israel and especially in Jerusalem. They preached that the suffering of the Jews of Palestineunder the cruel regime was an atonement for the sins of the entire nation, and that the prayers of the Jews of Palestine brought salvation closer for everyone. They appealed to  Jews who could not give up the pleasures of the Diaspora to assist in annulling the enormous debts that threatened the very existence of the Jewish settlement. Thus, the continued settlement of Jews in Jerusalem was made possible to a large degree by donations from the Jews of the Diaspora and the philanthropists who provided for the community’s sages and their families.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the “ Sephardization” of the Jews of Jerusalem was completed, and their various congregations were assimilated into the Sephardic congregation, accepting its language and the authority of sages and public figures of Sephardic-Portuguese descent. Only the Ashkenazi Jews kept themselves segregated, managing their own yeshiva, and sending their own separate emissaries overseas to Ashkenazi communities. In the matter of finances and taxes, disagreements between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim dated back to the end of the sixteenth century, when the Ashkenazim refused to help shoulder the economic burden, and the leaders of the Sephardic community were forced to pay the taxes and levies demanded by the authorities. When the economic situation worsened and harassment by despotic governors increased, the Sephardim appealed to Jewish law against the Ashkenazi congregation, demanding that they participate in the communal expenses and debts in proportion to their numbers. During the course of the century, several compromise agreements were worked out, but the Ashkenazim were unable to meet their obligations. With the amount of interest steadily increasing, the Muslim creditors repeatedly threatened to seize the Ashkenazi synagogue and turn it into a mosque. More and more emissaries were sent to raise funds, but their efforts were to no avail, and by the end of the century, the Ashkenazi congregation was completely destitute. Although the Ashkenazi community was relatively small, its debt to Muslim creditors at the end of the century was three times as much as the combined debt of all the other congregations.

Despite the ongoing tension between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, there are reports ofcommunal cooperation in some limited spheres. Jerusalem had its Sephardized Ashkenazi Jews, and Ashkenazi scholars studied in Sephardic yeshivas. Intercommunal marriages were not uncommon,  and in mid-century, when donations from Europe dropped off, Sephardim extended financial aid to the Ashkenazim. There is also evidence of Ashkenazim, influenced by local customs, appealing to Sephardi sages for permission to practice polygyny.

The seminaries in Jerusalem provided income for scholars, students, and teachers. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the main yeshiva in Jerusalem was the Sephardic Yeshivat ha-Torah, whose scholars served also as the community’s court of law (bet din). The yeshiva was open to everyone who wished to learn. The student body was so large that the yeshiva’s budget was barely adequate for their subsistence, and most of them were dependent on donation distributions from the Diaspora. At the same time, there were also several small private seminaries, but many of them were short-lived because of insufficient support from their benefactors. Yeshivat ha-Torah lost its prominent status in the 1650s, and, due to internal conflicts, the community failed to appoint an acceptable sage to head it.

A change for the better occurred with the arrival of Jacob Ḥagiz (1620–1674/77), a Sephardi, probably born in Morocco, who had served for an extended period as a rabbi in Italy. In 1658, he established the Bet Yaʿaqov seminary, named after a patron in Livorno, and turned it into a modern center of study and teaching that attracted famous scholars. After his death, the yeshiva was headed by Moses Galante, one of the great scholars of Palestine, who directed it until his demise in 1689. The Bet Yaʿaqov seminary became a religious, social, and economic center, directly supported by outside philanthropy. Its scholars served as leaders of the congregation. Their methods and activities were known throughout the Jewish world, and they were frequently consulted for their opinions and expertise, in the same way as the scholars ofSafed had been in the previous century. After Galante’s death, the Bet Yaʿaqov yeshiva gradually declined until, in the wake of personal conflict and dwindling funds, it eventually closed.

Another great yeshiva, also named Bet Yaʿaqov, was established in 1691 with the support of a Portuguese benefactor in Amsterdam. It was headed by Hezekiah da Silva (1656–1695/96), a prodigy, interpreter, and famous fundraiser. Although he died a short time after it opened, the second Bet Yaʿaqov became the most stable religious institution that had ever existed in Jerusalem. It continued to operate for more than two hundred years. Among its pupils were great scholars who later become famous in Palestine and the Diaspora, the most important of them being Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulay (known as Rav Ḥida).

Despite the severe economic and demographic decline, the spiritual life of the Jerusalem community continued at a high level. The leaders and members of the city’s yeshivas were devoted to traditional halakhic study and also to the pursuit of Kabbala and efforts to hasten salvation. The spiritual life of Palestine in the second half of the seventeenth century, cannot be discussed without mentioning Shabbetay Ṣevi. He arrived in Jerusalem in the summer of 1662, after being expelled from his hometown of Izmir (Smyrna), and studied at first in Yeshivat ha-Torah together with the rest of the city’s scholars. After a short while, he joined the kabbalists and ascetics who were trying in various ways to bring salvation nearer, and became a known figure. Two years later he was sent as a fund-raising emissary to Egypt on behalf of the Jerusalem community. He attracted followers all along his route to Cairo, and their enthusiasm culminated in his being declared messiah in Gaza in 1665.

When Shabbetay Ṣevi and his entourage returned to Jerusalem, they encountered strongopposition from Ḥagiz and his colleagues. They excommunicated him and made him leave the city, but his reputation preceded him. Following his expulsion from Jerusalem, a community agreement ( haskama ) forbade any affinity to, or discussion of, his teachings. Recent studies show, however, that Shabbetay Ṣevi’s messianic status was accepted almost incontrovertibly not only in Safed, Hebron, and Gaza, but also in Jerusalem. Many of his followers went into hiding, and many others sympathized with his movement and kept up strong connections with his followers in Turkey, Greece, Poland, and Lithuania. At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, the Sabbatean movement was one of the major elements promoting immigration to Palestine.

The Eighteenth Century

The immigrants who arrived in Palestine in the early eighteenth century fell upon a difficult period. The Ottoman administration in the district of Damascus had grow weaker, and the security situation, in consequence, was much worse. Bedouin attacks on villages and towns were an everyday event, with gangs of hooligans and private armies fighting each other. Ottoman attempts to improve the situation were to no avail. With the encouragement of local dignitaries, the popular uprising reached Jerusalem, and the rabble ran wild in the streets. It was not until the end of 1705 that the Ottoman authorities succeeded in subduing the rebels after bloody battles, and two more years passed before minimal quiet and security were secured for the residents. The rebellion and the riots were hard on all of the city’s residents, Muslims and dhimmis alike, but were especially destructive for the Jewish community, whose very existence was in real danger for a while.

Notwithstanding the difficult economic and social reality, new immigrants continued to arrive in Palestine. For many, living in the Holy Land was a way to express and discharge the messianic tension that had accumulated following the affair of Shabbetay Ṣevi. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, organized groups with a Sabbatean messianic shade were among the new arrivals in Palestine. One group, led by  Judah Ḥasid, arrived from Poland in 1700. Abraham Rovigo’s group from Italy followed two years later, and a group from Izmir led by Rabbi Ḥayyim Abulafia revitalized the Jewish settlement in Tiberias in 1740.

The most prominent of these groups was the immigrant band organized around Judah Ḥasid. After enduring many hardships on the way, it numbered, upon its arrival in Palestine, between two and three hundred people. Rabbi Judah himself died a few days after they reached Jerusalem, leaving them leaderless, with no concrete plan, no source of income, starving, and entirely dependent on material support from overseas. Muslim creditors demanded that they repay all their debts, both those incurred before their departure, and those that accumulated after their arrival. Food, drink, and accommodation were needed for the scores of men who had arrived with their wives and children. The funds promised by communities abroad failed to arrive. Many despaired and returned to Europe destitute. Others died of starvation and disease, or dispersed to adjacent communities. Since the creditors realized that they could not extract anything from the group, they demanded payment from the Sephardic community and imprisoned some of its leaders. Others, tired of the ongoing exactions and of paying the debts of others, fled the city. As the crisis developed, urgent messengers were sent abroad to describe the situation and raise funds. The funds they obtained appeased the Muslim creditors for a short while, but in no way sufficed to cover all the debts. Every effort to save the rest of theAshkenazi community in Jerusalem failed, and at the beginning of 1720, the frustrated creditors fell upon the Ashkenazi court, destroyed it, and burned down the synagogue. The few Ashkenazi Jews who remained in Jerusalem were forced to masquerade as Sephardim and prayed in the Sephardic synagogue.

The situation of the Sephardim, however, was not much better, since they had to pay the debts of the fleeing Ashkenazim, in addition to the poll tax and other taxes levied upon all of the city’s Jews. Following the disintegration of the Ashkenazi community, and the rumors of the poor social and economic situation in Jerusalem, immigration to Palestine declined. As a result, no new blood arrived to revitalize the desperate community.

In the light of this reality, the leaders of the Istanbul community took concerted action, and in 1726 established the Istanbul (Constantinople) Committee of Officials of Jerusalem. The committee worked out a payment and debt rescheduling arrangement that received the approval of the Ottoman authorities, and sent emissaries throughout the Diaspora to collect emergency funds. The committee took over the administration of the Jerusalem community, reorganizing its financial arrangements and the distribution of resources. The ruination of the community was averted, but it became a satellite of Istanbul for many years. Similar reorganization activities took place in the other Jewish communities of Palestine, and a parent body was established, the Istanbul (Constantinople) Committee of Officials of Eretz Israel, which was responsible for coordinating the local committees and dealing with common matters affecting all Palestinian Jews. Among other things, the committee supervisedimmigration to Palestine and sought to prevent the immigration of penniless individuals who would become a financial burden.

Toward the end of the 1730s, about ten years after the committee of Istanbul officials initiated its activities, and following a relative improvement in the security situation, immigration toPalestine resumed, and with it the immigration of the remnants of the Sabbatean movement. Some of them captured key positions in the local leadership. In 1741, Rabbi Ḥayyim ben ʿAttarand his followers immigrated from Morocco and Italy, and established a yeshiva in Jerusalem. The population recovered and grew, and the seminaries and rabbis resumed their activities. From the 1760s, individual Ashkenazim began to return to Jerusalem, but the majority of the Ashkenazi immigrants now went to Hebron and Safed.

In the late eighteenth century, the Jewish population in Palestine was about six thousand. It quadrupled during the nineteenth century, a period, starting with the failure of Napoleon Bonaparte to conquer Acre (1799), that was characterized by political changes and natural disasters, but also by the penetration of Western modernization and the intensive involvement of foreign consulates. Despite many hardships, immigrants from Eastern Europe and North Africa continued to arrive. These were relatively meager migrations from the standpoint of their economic ability, but they changed the face of the demographic and social stratification of the Jewish community. The density of the Jewish population in nineteenth-century Jerusalem, which reached fifteen thousand, brought about the founding of the first residential neighborhoods outside the city walls.