The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout its history.
The following table shows the total population and that of the main ethno-religious groups living in the area from the First Century CE up until the last full calendar year of the British Mandate, 1947.
Note: Figures prior to the 1500s are all only estimates by researchers. For some periods, there are multiple researchers who have made differing estimates. None should be taken as exact numbers, and further context and detail is available by following links to the full description on Wikipedia as well as links to the original information sources.
conflicting: some estimates conflict among different researchers |
---|
Year | Source | Jewish | Pagan | Samar- itan [1] | Chris-tian | Muslim | Total | Driving events |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0–100 (1st c.) CE | Bachi [2] | Majority | ... | n/a | 1,000– 2,500 [3] |
| ||
140 CE† | Avi- Yohan [11] | conflicting; 700-800 | ... | conflicting; "far fewer than 300,000" | ... | n/a | conflicting; 2,500 | |
Broshi [11] | conflicting | conflicting | n/a | conflicting; <1,000 ("never more than 1 million") | ||||
Early 300s | Stem- berger [11] | Largest group | 2nd- largest | 3rd- largest | Smallest group | n/a | ... |
|
300s | Bachi | Majority | ... | ... | Minority | n/a | "More than in 1st c." [13] [14] | |
400s | Bachi | Minority | n/a | ... | Majority | n/a | ||
500s | n/a | ... | n/a | |||||
628 | Butler, Gil | >250 [15] | 30-80 | 520-570 | >950 | |||
630s | Parkes | 150– 400 | n/a | ... | ... | ... |
| |
700s | n/a | ... |
| |||||
800s | n/a | ... |
| |||||
900s | n/a | ... | ||||||
1095 | Ellen- blum, Della- Pergola Broshi | n/a | ... | 400– 560 |
| |||
End 1100s | Bachi | Minority | n/a | ... | Minority | Majority | >225 | |
1300s | Bachi | Minority | n/a | ... | Minority | Majority | 150 | |
1533-9 | Bachi | 5 | n/a | ... | 6 | 145 | 156 | |
1553-4 | Bachi | 7 | n/a | ... | 9 | 188 | 205 | |
1690-1 | Bachi | 2 | n/a | <0.2 | 11 | 219 | 232 | |
1800 | Bachi | 7 | n/a | <0.2 | 22 | 246 | 275 |
|
1890 | Bachi | conflicting; 43 | n/a | <0.2 | conflicting; 57 | conflicting; 432 | conflicting; 532 | |
1890-1 | Ottoman census | conflicting; 18 | n/a | <0.2 | conflicting; 52 | conflicting; 446 | conflicting; 516 | |
1914 | Bachi | 94 | n/a | <0.2 | 70 | 525 | 689 |
|
1914-5 | Ottoman census | 39 | n/a | <0.2 | 81 | 602 | 722 |
|
1922 | British census | 84 | n/a | <0.2 | 71 | 589 | 752 |
|
1931 | Bachi | 175 | n/a | <0.2 | 89 | 760 | 1,033 |
|
1947 | Bachi | 630 | n/a | <0.2 | 143 | 1,181 | 1,970 |
‡including what is today the Kingdom of Jordan
The history of Israel covers an area of the Southern Levant also known as Canaan, Palestine or the Holy Land, which is the geographical location of the modern states of Israel and Palestine. From a prehistory as part of the critical Levantine corridor, which witnessed waves of early humans out of Africa, to the emergence of Natufian culture c. 10th millennium BCE, the region entered the Bronze Age c. 2,000 BCE with the development of Canaanite civilization, before being vassalized by Egypt in the Late Bronze Age. In the Iron Age, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established, entities that were central to the origins of the Jewish and Samaritan peoples as well as the Abrahamic faith tradition. This has given rise to Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, Baha'ism, and a variety of other religious movements. Throughout the course of human history, the Land of Israel has seen many conflicts and come under the sway or control of various polities and, as a result, it has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups.
Palestinians or Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinian Arabs, are an Arab ethnonational group native to Palestine.
The Samaritans, often prefering to be called Israelite Samaritans, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of ancient Israel and Judah that comprises the northern half of today's West Bank. They are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion that developed alongside Judaism.
Samaria is the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron, used as a historical and biblical name for the central region of Israel, bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is known to the Palestinians in Arabic under two names, Samirah, and Mount Nablus.
The Israelites were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. They were also an ethnoreligious group.
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their nation, religion, and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions, and cultures.
The Jewish diaspora or exile is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland and their subsequent settlement in other parts of the globe.
The Bar Kokhba revolt was a large-scale armed rebellion initiated by the Jews of Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. Lasting until 135 or early 136, it was the third and final escalation of the Jewish–Roman wars. Like the First Jewish–Roman War and the Second Jewish–Roman War, the Bar Kokhba revolt resulted in a total Jewish defeat; Bar Kokhba himself was killed by Roman troops at Betar in 135 and the Jewish rebels who remained after his death were all killed or enslaved within the next year.
The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel and the Palestinian territories, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout the history of Palestine.
The region of Palestine, also known as Historic Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes modern-day Israel and the State of Palestine, as well as parts of northwestern Jordan in some definitions. Other names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land.
Jerusalem's population size and composition has shifted many times over its 5,000 year history.
The history of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel begins in the 2nd millennium BCE, when Israelites emerged as an outgrowth of southern Canaanites. During biblical times, a postulated United Kingdom of Israel existed but then split into two Israelite kingdoms occupying the highland zone: the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Judah by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Initially exiled to Babylon, upon the defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, many of the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem, building the Second Temple.
Palaestina Prima or Palaestina I was a Byzantine province that existed from the late 4th century until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, in the region of Palestine. It was temporarily lost to the Sassanid Empire in 614, but re-conquered in 628.
The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
Situated between three continents, Palestine has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region was among the earliest to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. In the Bronze Age, the Canaanites established city-states influenced by surrounding civilizations, among them Egypt, which ruled the area in the Late Bronze Age. During the Iron Age, two related Israelite kingdoms, Israel and Judah, controlled much of Palestine, while the Philistines occupied its southern coast. The Assyrians conquered the region in the 8th century BCE, then the Babylonians in c. 601 BCE, followed by the Persians who conquered the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late 330s BCE, beginning Hellenization.
Judea or Judaea is a mountainous region of the Levant. Traditionally dominated by the city of Jerusalem, it is now part of Palestine and Israel. The name's usage is historic, having been used in antiquity and still into the present day; it originates from Yehudah, a Hebrew name. Yehudah was a son of Jacob, who was later given the name "Israel" and whose sons collectively headed the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Yehudah's progeny among the Israelites formed the Tribe of Judah, with whom the Kingdom of Judah is associated. Related nomenclature continued to be used under the rule of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Under the Hasmoneans, the Herodians, and the Romans, the term was applied to an area larger than Judea of earlier periods. In 132 CE, the Roman province of Judaea was merged with Galilee to form the enlarged province of Syria Palaestina.
The timeline of the Palestine region is a timeline of major events in the history of Palestine. For more details on the history of Palestine see History of Palestine. In cases where the year or month is uncertain, it is marked with a slash, for example 636/7 and January/February.
Tzippora Sharett was the wife of the second prime minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett.
Khirbet Kurkush is an archeological site in the West Bank. It lies between the Israeli settlements of Bruchin and Ariel and near the Palestinian town of Bruqin, in the Salfit Governorate of the State of Palestine.
The study of the origins of the Palestinians, a population encompassing the Arab inhabitants of the former Mandatory Palestine and their descendants, is a subject approached through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from fields such as population genetics, demographic history, folklore, including oral traditions, linguistics, and other disciplines.
Table 2
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)The evidence concerning the Jewish community comes mainly from the Geniza documents, dating mainly from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where there is one famous event in which forced mass conversion of Jews and Christians took place: this is the persecution of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (1009). Apart from that, although there is evidence of numerous cases of individual conversions, as Goitein remarks: "conversion to Islam was not widespread during the classical Geniza period". (Drawing on Goltein (1971) A Mediterranean Society, vol. 2, p.300 and (1978) A Mediterranean Society, vol. 3, p. 290)