Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans 9781463225605

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Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans

Analecta Isisiana: Ottoman and Turkish Studies

62

A co-publication with The Isis Press, Istanbul, the series consists of collections of thematic essays focused on specific themes of Ottoman and Turkish studies are brought together in Analecta Isisiana. These scholarly volumes address important issues throughout Turkish history, offering in a single volume the accumulated insights of a single author over a career of research on the subject.

Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans

Justin McCarthy

The Isis Press, Istanbul

gOÎ^ÎaS pre** 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by The Isis Press, Istanbul Originally published in 2002 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of The Isis Press, Istanbul. 2010

o

ISBN 978-1-61719-105-3

Printed in the United States of America

Justin McCarthy received a Ph.D. in Near Eastern history from U.C.L.A. in 1978 and a Certificate in Demography from Princeton University in 1980. He is presently Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville, where he served as Chairman of the Department of History from 1986 to 1992. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, and Bogazi$i University in Istanbul. From 1967 to 1969 he taught at Middle East Technical University and Ankara University in Turkey. Professor McCarthy specializes in the social and demographic history of the Modern Middle East. His books include Muslims and Minorities (New York, 1983) — a study of the population of Ottoman Anatolia in the period of World War I, Death and Exile (Princeton, NJ. 1995) — on the expulsion and mortality of the Muslims of the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea, and Anatolia, The Population of Palestine, a textbook, The Ottoman Turks, and teachers' manuals on Turkey. He has also written a number of articles on Middle Eastern, Balkan, Turkish, and Ottoman topics. His most recent book, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, was published by Arnold in 2001. Professor McCarthy was awarded the Turkish Order of Merit in 1998. He has been voted a Corresponding Member of the Turkish Historical Association. He has received the Chairman's Education Award from the Turkish American Friendship Council and awards from Turkish-American organizations, including the first §tikrii Elekdag Award, presented by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from Bogazicji University, and in 2000 an honorary doctorate from Demirel University. He has held a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a National Needs Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, and other grants and awards.

To Stanford Shaw

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction "Population Change and the Creation of the Turkish Republic", in Atatürk and Modern Turkey, Ankara Üniversitesi, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, Ankara, 1998 "The Upheavals of 1912-1924," to appear in Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta, vol. 5 "Muslim Refugees in Turkey: The Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence," in Scholar and Humanist: essays in honor of Andreas Tietze, Washington and Istanbul, Isis 1993 "Age, Family, and Migration in Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Provinces of the Ottoman Empire," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, X, 1979 "Factors in the Analysis of the Population of Anatolia, 1800-1878," Asian and African Studies, 21 (March, 1987) "The Population of Ottoman Europe Before and After the Fall of the Empire," Proceedings of the Third International Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Istanbul, Isis, 1990 "Muslims in Ottoman Europe: Population from 1800 to 1912," Nationalities Papers, vol. 28, no. 1, 2000 "Ottoman Bosnia, 1800 to 1878" in Mark Pinson, ed., The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Harvard, 1994 "The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, 1878 to 1914," Asian and African Studies, vol. 15, no. 1 "Demographic and Social Comparisons — Ottoman and Mandatory Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine" "Greek Statistics on Ottoman Greek Population," International Journal of Turkish Studies, I, no. 2 "Jewish Population in the Late Ottoman Period," in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, Avigdor Levy, ed., Princeton, Darwin, 1994 "The Population of the Middle Eastern Jews, 1800-1939" "The Population of the Ottoman Armenians," in The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, Türkkaya Ataöv, ed., Turkish Historical Society, Ankara, 2001 "Palestinian Population," in Encyclopedia of the Palestinians (forthcoming) "Middle Eastern Population," in The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East, vol. 3, New York, Columbia, 1998

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13 27

41

69 85

113 135 153 173 211 233 243 265

279 297 313

INTRODUCTION All modern study of population is based on one principle—the only accurate way to know the numbers of people is to count them. There is simply no better way to know the population. Any kind of estimate that does not, or cannot, rely on an actual census or registration system is necessarily more deficient than an actual count. This principle is as true for the Middle East and the Balkans as for Europe or America. Yet it was once common practice to accept all sorts of estimates for Middle Eastern and Balkan population, ignoring the population registration systems of the Ottoman Empire and successor states. Travellers' accounts were a particularly fertile source for population estimations: the guesses of visitors were assumed to have been roughly accurate, even though those estimates varied greatly among themselves. When population estimates agreed with each other it was because the estimators "borrowed" their estimates from each other, usually without attribution. Most travellers simply did not know that anyone had counted the population of what they saw as backward, though picturesque, regions. Others knew, but did not like what the statistics told them, so they lied. Population statistics were falsified for political reasons. To give the spurious data authority, they were often given false provenance, such as the "Greek Patriarchate Statistics" that had never been seen in a patriarchate. They had been constructed by one Professor Soteriadis, paid for his efforts by the Greek Government. He took a fairly accurate set of figures from the 1870s, added multitudes of Greeks, and avowed the result was the Greek Patriarch's record of the population in 1914. There were "Ottoman Official Statistics" that were neither Ottoman nor official, but were pure inventions. In their quest to claim Ottoman Macedonia, for example, both Greeks and Bulgarians gave population figures allegedly taken from an enumeration made by the Ottomans in 1905. Although supposedly from the same source, the figures were strangely different—more Bulgarians in the one, more Greeks in the other. Both were fraudulent. Statistics published by Europeans as propaganda tools were equally untrustworthy. Archival reports from consuls and ambassadors often quoted Ottoman data as the best available, but published European materials were a different story. Lloyd George, for example, quoted the spurious "Gireek Patriarch Statistics" at the Versailles Peace Conference as justification for the Greek occupation of Western Anatolia. At the same time, the British Government privately provided its agents in Anatolia with detailed Ottoman population statistics, stating that these were the most reliable.

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Even scholars who avowedly used Ottoman population statistics delivered unreliable results. Sometimes this was simply due to a lack of understanding of the nature of those statistics. Authors such as Ubicini and the German statisticians of the late nineteenth century had never seen raw Ottoman census records, so they had no idea that women and children had been undercounted. They erred by accepting Ottoman statistics at face value. Nevertheless, their results were better than those who used Ottoman statistics deceptively. Vital Cuinet, for example, made fairly good use of Ottoman statistics for Anatolia, but used nothing but his imagination when he laid forth the population of Syria and Palestine. Nowhere did he indicate which figures were taken from a real source and which were invented. All were presented in impressive tables. If one wants the best information on population, one must look to the records of those who counted it. Ottoman population data were far from perfect. The first tentative steps toward a registration system in the nineteenth century missed large numbers of the population. Registration later improved, but women were not enumerated. The Ottomans eventually instituted registration of both males and females by age, a modern system. Still, women and children were always undercounted. This should be no surprise. All censuses and population registers leave out some persons. The United States census has a significant undercount of the poor and homeless. Modern censuses in poorer countries usually show the same deficiencies present in the Ottoman counts. Fortunately, when one has age-specific data undercounts can be adjusted. The methods used are standard demographic analyses. Briefly stated, the techniques take the population that is known, such as the number of adult males, and find what the undercounted portions of the population, usually women and children, must have been for the population to have existed as it was, given a certain mortality and fertility. The demographic techniques do not give flawless estimates, but within a certain variance they do provide an accurate picture of population numbers. Accuracy in Middle Eastern and Balkan statistics was directly related to the power of the State. In the Ottoman Empire, those provinces that were most under the control of the central government provided the best statistics. Thus the most complete data came from the provinces closest to Istanbul and on the sea routes, the Black Sea and the Aegean, that allowed close governmental control of maritime regions. Correspondingly, provinces such as Iraq, distant both physically and politically from the center, produced deficient statistics. Troubled provinces, such as Manastir, were also statistically poor.

INTRODUCTION

11

Statepower and interest in accurate population data translated into the Ottoman successor states. Bulgaria and Romania quickly developed census bureaus.While their data was understandably imperfect, it was superior to anything that had been registered previously. Serbia and Greece were less successful. Best in all regions taken from the Ottoman Empire were the Austrian statistics from Bosnia. In the Arab World, the British created a strong census tradition in Palestine, but made very little effort in that direction in Iraq and even less in Transjordan. In both the British had limited control. The French in Syria and Lebanon aspired to strong political control, but never achieved it. The deficiency of their population statistics demonstrates this. The articles in this book are analyses of governmental statistics, adjusted for undercounting. For dates before the population was properly counted, projections have been made from what is known to what is not, using standard demographic techniques. Most of these articles were published in journals or as book chapters. They are reprinted as they appeared. I thank the editors and publishers for including me in their publications. Two new articles have been added, one of Ottoman and Mandatory Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, the other on the population of the Middle Eastern Jews. Many have assisted my research and writing. They cannot all be named here. I do want to specifically thank the staffs of the Prime Minister's Archives, the Belediye Library (now the Atatiirk Library), and Turkish Historical Association Library in Turkey, the British Library, the Public Record Office, the U.S. Archives, and the Library of Congress. I especially thank the staff of the History Department of the University of Louisville and, as always, my wife, Beth. This volume is dedicated to my professor, Stanford Shaw. When I began to consider a topic for my doctoral dissertation Middle Eastern population history was virtually nonexistent. Professor Shaw encouraged me to apply computer analysis and demographic techniques to the study of Ottoman population. At the time, neither of us knew that it could be done, but he supported my research and allowed me to take the chance. This dedication is my thanks for his kindness and understanding.

POPULATION CHANGE AND THE CREATION OF THE TURKISH REPUBLIC

In terms of both mortality and physical destruction, the events that overtook the Turkish people between 1912 and 1922 were among the most disastrous in history. But that time is remarkable for more than the brutality visited on the Turks. It is also remarkable that after World War I, at a time when Europeans and Americans provided massive amounts of aid to other peoples, no one cared about Turkish suffering. It is remarkable, in a world that readily catalogues human suffering and easily assigns blame, that very few have ever recognized Turkish suffering. And it is remarkable that the Turks managed to survive their losses and create a nation. It is possible to describe Turkish suffering statistically. Even though statistics do not portray the depth of human misery, they can help us grasp the extent of suffering. The data are drawn from archival and published material of the Ottoman and Turkish Republican governments. Where possible, tables and figures are given here by Republican provincial boundaries. However, due to the nature of the statistics, it is sometimes necessary to give data for the larger Ottoman provinces {vilayets). Figures on mortality offer the most meaningful picture of the suffering of the Turks. In Anatolia, what today is Turkey in Asia, nearly three million Muslims 1 were lost in World War I and the Turkish War of Independence that followed (Figure One). The mortality in some provinces was staggering: In Van Province, 62% of the Muslims who were present before the wars were gone by the end of 1922. In Erzurum Province, 31% were gone; in Bitlis, 31% in Hiidavendigar (Bursa), 10%; in Aydin (Izmir), 10%. By comparison, in what became the U.S.S.R., 8% of the population disappeared in World War I and the Russian Revolution. France lost 1 % of its population in the war. The populations of Germany and Great Britain did not decline during the war.

ht is impossible to identity ethnic or linguistic groups in Ottoman statistics, because the Ottomans kept population records only by religions. Figure One is drawn by subtracting the Muslim population in 1922 from the population in 1912. It does not include immigrants from the Balkan Wars, although the figure of almost 3 million lost does so.

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Mortality alone does not describe adequately the situation in Turkey. Those who remained in the Turkish provinces were not only the natives of Anatolia and eastern Thrace who had survived the wars. Waves of immigrants had come to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, adding more misery to regions where there was not enough food for those already there. 414,000 Turks had been expelled to Turkey (i.e., what was to become the area of the Turkish Republic) from the Balkan countries during the Balkan Wars. Nearly 300,000 fled from the Southern Caucasus primarily from Armenia, during World Ward I and the Independence War. 431,000 more came to Turkey after the wars, primarily from Greece. After the wars approximately 10% of the population of Turkey had come from other lands. They had arrived as refugees, without possessions, dependent on the charity of a destitute land and people. Table One indicates the scale of the "international immigration" (i.e., from regions that had been part of the Ottoman Empire until conquered) to those Turkish Republican provinces that accepted the greatest number of refugees from the Balkans. The actual proportions in 1922 were somewhat smaller, because some of the migrants had died, especially in the Independence War. The population of the area of the Ottoman Edirne Province, occupied in both the Balkan Wars and the Independence War, must have died in great numbers. Nevertheless, in-migration assured that Edirne actually gained population in the wartime period —the only Turkish region to do so. It became a province in which half the inhabitants were newcomers. Newcomers also made up for some of the population loss in the Western Anatolian provinces. Large number of internal migrants added to the international refugees in the Anatolian provinces. During the Independence War, more than 1.2 million Turkish refugees fled from the Greek invasion. In the East, there were more than one million Muslim refugees from the Russians and Armenians. When the wars were over, many of these refugees returned to their home provinces, but many did not. Many, of course, had died while exiled. Figure Two, which records the percentage of Turks who were living in their district (kaza) of birth, indicates that the greatest proportions of immigrants were found in the provinces that had been occupied by Russians and Armenians (the East), the French and the Armenians (Cilicia), and the Greeks (the West). Most of the migrants in the Turkish provinces had come to their new homes from some distance. This is demonstrated by the numbers who had come from other provinces or other countries (Table Two). The figures in the table are for 1935, because Turkey did not include data on birth district in the earlier 1927 census. If earlier data had been available, they would have shown even higher proportions of residents born elsewhere, because of deaths of migrants and new births from 1927 to 1935. This has the effect of adding

P O P U L A T I O N

C H A N G E

15

numbers born in the districts and subtracted some migrants. Had 1922 figures been available, the percentage of migrants in the populations might have increased by 25% or more. (For example, the proportion of migrants in Edirne Province in 1922 was probably at least 50%). Prior to the wars, the Anatolian Turks had primarily been a settled people. Despite often temporary migration for work and military service, most Anatolian Turks continued to live in the same regions as their fore-fathers. This was especially true of women. Now masses of people had moved permanently. For many, as will be seen below, their old homes and villages were destroyed, so living in new regions was to be expected and perhaps welcomed. The mortality and migration of the Muslims changed the relative demographic importance of the Turkish provinces. Figure Three indicates a shift in importance from the East to the West. While Northern and Western Anatolia had for centuries been more densely settled and more economically developed than Eastern Anatolia, the comparatively greater destruction in the East and migration to the Western provinces exacerbated this condition after the wars. This undoubtedly contributed to the much more rapid advancement of the West in Republican times. Where population is more dense, education and economy are more easily developed. Many Turkish cities lost population in the wars (Figure Four). They were reduced in size and changed in character. The Christian populations of most were gone. Van and Izmir were largely destroyed. In Izmir, however, the natural attractiveness of the region seems to have drawn thousands who rebuilt quickly. This was not true of Van, which had become a small city in a ravaged province. 1 Judged by its population, Anatolia was a much changed land in 1922. The Turks had experienced great mortality and they lived in different places. Demographic relationships between provinces, between regions, and between the rural and the urban had all changed.

^Note that it was only possible to enumerate the populations of central districts (kazas) not cities themselves, because Ottoman statistics recorded kaza population only. Figures on cities in the Ottoman period are usually lacking.

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Figure Four does not accurately reflect the scope of the changes that faced the Turks. In numbers the city populations do not appear much different. There were still significant populations in the Anatolian cities. Those populations, though, were often living in ruins. Wartime destruction (Table Three 1 ) of Western Anatolian cities meant that many city populations lived in rough housing, in tents, or without roofs on dwellings. Careful statistics compiled for the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne Peace Conference listed 54,300 buildings destroyed by the Greeks in the cities, 88,000 in the countryside. There were no comparable statistics for the war zone of Eastern Anatolia, but the figures collected by the American observers, Niles and Sutherland, leave no doubt that destruction was as bad in the East as the West. The Americans stated that in the city of Van only 3 of the 3.400 pre-war Muslim homes remained at war's end. In the Van Province, three-fourths of the Muslim homes had been destroyed. No Muslim houses remained in the city of Bitlis. It is difficult to estimate the extent of agrarian loss in Anatolia. Statistics are non-existent for much of the East, and changing borders make it impossible to accurately compare Ottoman and Republican statistics even in some provinces for which data exists. Table Four is indicative, however, of widespread destruction of livestock. When one considers the need of horses, donkeys, and mules for sowing and taking crops to market, the loss of so many animals must have put an incredible burden on agriculture. Moreover, the figures do not consider the lack of seed grain or other factors such as the almost complete destruction of olive trees in many provinces. Such loss would have contributed greatly to agricultural disaster. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious: Not only were the Turks without homes to live in, they were without food to eat. Economic loss in Turkey matched other losses. Indeed, losses of farms, city buildings, animals, and human beings were all economic loss. Industrial loss was also great, as exemplified by Izmir. Prior to the wars, as enumerated in 1910, Izmir had contained 27% of the grain mills in Anatolia—30% of the grain milling capacity. It was a major textile manufacturing centre, the main centre of box making, a major centre of production of food commodities, printing, and publishing, and contained all four of the biggest Ottoman oil companies (petroleum and vegetable oils). Aydin Province, of which Izmir was the centre, paid more taxes than any other province in Anatolia. It was the centre of the latest technology, housing, for example, almost half of the steam-powered mills in Anatolia. In most areas of manufacturing, Izmir was second only to Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire. Now it was all destroyed, burnt to the ground. ^The names of cities in Table Three are listed as they appeared in the source. See Sources.

POPULATION

CHANGE

17

Other Western Anatolian cities naturally showed less destruction of manufacturing potential—there was less to destroy. However, it can be noted that 42% of the grain mills in Anatolia were situated in cities destroyed by the Greeks, as were a similar percentage of other industries. The most difficult of the Turkish loses to understand and explain is personal-psychological and social loss. It is impossible to quantify sorrow for the dead, the anguish of seeing villages and homes destroyed, or the fear that you and your children will soon die of starvation. Yet next to death itself, it was most likely the worst of all the losses. One simple statistic (Table Five) can help explain part of the Turk's social loss. The table illustrates the proportion of adult women to men in three war-torn provinces (Ottoman boundaries), as recorded in the first Republican census. In a normal population, the numbers of men and women would be similar. Both because they were fighters and because their enemies singled them out for detail, Turkish males died at a greater rate than Turkish females. This left behind women without husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons—women alone in a traditional society in which this had been largely unknown. The social burden and psychological state of these women can only be guessed. This is not, however, the worst of the "psychological" anguish suffered by the Turks. That must have been the sorrow of children without parents, and of parents who watched their children die. Strangely, the destruction of Anatolia is seldom considered as part of the history of the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The perilous state of the Turks whom he led surely had a great effect on his leadership. Those Turks were in many ways a different people than they had been in Ottoman times. They were living in new places, with new neighbours, often f r o m different lands. Not only the old political system was gone, but the old buildings, the old businesses, the old farms, even the old families. People who have suffered so much are likely to either withdraw almost catatonically into their old ways, hugging to themselves what little is left of their old happiness, or with the right leadership they can become open to change, knowing that change is needed if the disasters are not to be repeated. Indeed, they are likely to welcome change if they trust the author of change. Atatiirk's leadership meant that the Turks accepted necessary change. It is impossible to properly appreciate the real difficulties facing Ataturk and his success in meeting them unless one understands the desolate state of Turkey at the beginning of the Turkish Republic. The task that faced the survivors of the wars was immense. The success of the Turkish people and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is thus all the more impressive. Ataturk did not simply take a land and change its politics, nor did he only take a poor land and make it richer. He took a destroyed land and built it anew. He took a broken Jand and made it whole. Knowing the terrible state of the land he rebuilt can only lead to an amazed respect for Mustafa Kemal.

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It can be said, of course, that others suffered during the war years. Greeks, Armenians and others also suffered. They also went on to rejuvenation. But they did not do it alone. The world assisted them. Americans alone gave more than $100 million to Armenians, creating orphanages, schools, agricultural programs, and industries. The Greeks, who accepted great numbers of refugees, but whose land had not been destroyed in the wars, received donations from America, Switzerland, Holland, Britain and other countries. Loans to Greece at very favourable terms (one for $60 million, another for $45 million) built water works, drained swamps and reclaimed land. A further $95 million in American governmental and private business funding aided Greece and its industrial development. Europe and America were willing to aid the Greeks and the Armenians and it was right to do so. Who was willing to help the Turks, who suffered as much and more? No one. The Turks were on their own. Nevertheless, Atatiirk succeeded. The Turks succeeded and survived, on their own.

SOURCES Ismet Paga (Inonii), "Memorandum Respecting Turkish Claims Against Greece", Lausanne, 20 January 1923, Public Record Office, F.O. 371-9061, no. E969. Justin McCarthy, "American Commissions to Anatolia and the Report of Niles and Sutherland', Proceedings of the Eleventh Congress of the Turk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1994. —, Death and Exile, Princeton, New Jersey, 1995. —, Muslims and Minorities, New York, 1983. —, "The Population of Ottoman Europe", Illrd Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Istanbul, 1990, pp. 275-298. Tiirkiye Cumhuriyeti, Bag Vekalet, istatistik Umum Miidiirlugti, 28 te§rinievel 1927 Umumi Nufus Tahriri, Ankara, 1929. Tiirkiye Cumhuriyeti, Bagbakanhk, Devlet istatistik Enstitiisti, Osmanli Donemi Tarim istatistikleri, 1909, 1913 ve 1914, hz. Prof. Tevfik Giiran, Ankara, 1997. —, Osmanli Sanayii 1913, 1915 Yillari Sanayi istatistik, hz. Prof. A. Giindtiz Ok§iin, Ankara, 1997.

POPULATION

CHANGE

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POPULATION

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TABLE 1 In-Migrants to Turkey, 1912-1927

Edirne V. Ankara V. Aydm V. Biga S. Hiidav. V. Izmit S. Istanbul V. Sivas V. Konya V.

1912-20 Refugees 132,500 16,148 146,723 4,033 66,041 6,771 11,109 10,805 8,512

1921-27 Migrants 125,420 8,150 56,912 10,856 79,482 20,470 35,487 37,195 30,207

1922 Population 476,069 1,158,376 1,400,949 140,715 1,437,971 259,712 510,648 1,015,887 1,123,889

Proportion .54 .15 .15 .11 .10 .10 .09 .05 .03

TABLE2 Resident Population Born in Other Districts and Provinces, 1935 Province Edirne Kirklareli Tekirdag Agri Kars Izmir Bursa

Percent Not Born In Same District 41 50 48 39 24 39 29

Percent Not Born In Same Province 40 48 46 33 17 35 26

TABLE3 Buildings Destroyed During the Greek Invasion of Anatolia Buildings Buildings Cities Destroyed Cities Destroyed Manisa 13,633 of 14,773 Boziiyuk 748 All Alaçehir 4,350 of 4,500 Pazarcik 644 All Salihli 2,000 of 2,200 Iznik 615 648 Kasaba 6,126 of 6,326 Karamiirsel 830 847 Gemdens 431 All Yalova 232 286 Aydin 6,243 All Eski§ehir 1,867 Part Nazili 2,121 All Mihali$9ik 905 All Senhe 1,731 Most §u§ak 1,971 Most Mihaliççik 1,965 All Kedos 694 All Pazow Keuy 408 All Cevril 405 All Bilecik 2,245 All E§me 307 All Sogut 948 All Pandirma 1,305 Most Yenigehir 1,187 Half Afyon K.H. 394 Part Total 54,205

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TABLE4

Animals Lost in the War of Independence Sancaks for which data is available

HORSES Izmir Aydm Denizli Bursa Afyon Manisa Eskisehir

1913 42,711 24,008 12,013 17,015 14,223 21,893 —

LOST 40,774 7,126 1,832 3,730 528 24,502 28,202

DONKEYS & MULES LOST 1913 25,068 13,962 18,186 4,830 31,210 3,314 21,815 630 40,711 954 28,079 13,170 — 15,796

SHEEP 1913 429,752 188,424 191,046 322,989 621,157 394,101 —

LOST 156,031 29,581 28,249 39,916 28,260 86,137 1,120,009

POPULATION

25

CHANGE

TABLE 5

Turkey in 1927 Excess of Females Aged 20 +

m a 1 e s

Aydin Vilâyeti

23%

Hiidavendigâr Vilâyeti

30%

Erzurum Vilâyeti

40%

f e m a 1 e s

Aydin

Hiidavendigâr

Erzurum

THE UPHEAVALS OF 1912-1924

The wars fought almost continuously by the Ottomans and Turks from 1912 to 1923 — the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence — were among the most horrible ever fought. In the Middle East, only the Mongol invasions can compare in mortality. In European history, only the 30 Years War saw similar rates of death. While this volume is primarily concerned with Turks, it is important to recognize that for this period no history confined solely to Turks can be written. This is not simply due to the intertwining of the fates of the various peoples of the Ottoman Empire in the age of World War I. It is also statistically impossible to separate the various Muslim linguistic or ethnic group. Moreover, most contemporary Ottoman reports from war zones did not differentiate the ethnic groups of the Muslims, but spoke only of "the Muslims". Finally, in most cases the peoples of the Ottoman Empire fought, suffered, and identified themselves by religious groups. It must also be recognized that all ethnic and religious groups in the Ottoman Empire suffered during the awful years from 1912 to 1922. While Muslim suffering is primarily considered here, all groups suffered. The two factors that led to disaster for the Ottoman Muslims in the period of World War I were nationalism and Russian imperial expansion. At the beginning of the period of wars, Muslims predominated in what remained of the Ottoman Empire (Table One). The previous loss of majority Christian regions such as Bulgaria and Serbia had left the Empire with a greater proportion of Muslims, and refugees from the lost regions had swelled the Muslim population in what remained. In 1911, each large region of the Empire had a Muslim majority. Of all the Ottoman provinces, only Selanik, Yanya and Manastir did not have Muslim majorities, and Muslims were a large plurality in Selanik and Manastir.

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Percentage of Population by Religion {millet), ca. 1912 Muslim Ottoman Balkans Istanbul Region Western Anatolia Northern Anatolia Central Anatolia Southern Anatolia Eastern Anatolia All Anatolia

51 63 80 87 87 86 76 83

Greek* Armenianf Jewish Bulgarian 25 1 1 19 23 7 4 14 10 6 2 7

4 3 7 11 19 9

Other

1

3 3 1

1 5 1

less than 1 % not included *Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic fGregorian, Armenian Catholic, and Protestant

Ottoman Europe and Anatolia had always been a polyglot mixture of cultures. The Ottoman Empire was not a collection of geographically separate peoples, each living in their own country. It was an intertwining of peoples. Encouraged by the millet system and Ottoman tolerance of religious diversity, the Empire was a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups. Some regions of northern and western Anatolia were almost exclusively Turkish Muslim. For example, Kastamonu Vilayeti and Bolu, A f y o n and Kiitahya independent sancaks were all more than 95% Muslim in population. More often, however, ethnic and religious groups were mixed in the Ottoman provinces. In Western Anatolia, 70% of the population of izmit Sancagi was Muslim, 12% was Greek and 18% Armenian. Van Vilayeti, in the Southeast, was 61% Muslim, 2 6 % Armenian, and 12% other Christian groups. In Ottoman Europe, religious and ethnic groups were even more thoroughly mixed. Christian and Muslim villages were in close proximity, and many villages and most towns were inhabited by more than one ethnic group. In a province such as Edirne, a day's walk could bring one to Bulgarian villages, Greek villages, Turkish villages, and villages of non-Turkish Muslims such as Georgians or Circassians. If the walk ended in a large town, Muslims, Greeks, and Bulgarians would be joined by Armenians, Jews, and others.

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1912-1924

29

Such a mosaic of religions and ethnic cultures was a handicap to the nationalism that arose among the Ottoman minorities in the nineteenth century. Unlike the compact linguistic groups of Western and Southern Europe, the Ottoman Christian minorities were scattered. Exponents of nationalism among the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Armenians faced a daunting task. The lands they claimed as their own were often populated by others. If the lands were to become part of new ethnically-unified nation states, the others would have to be "converted" to a new ethnic identity or driven out. The process of making unified nations out of ethnic diversity was played out in the Balkans and Anatolia. It was easiest and most successful in the Balkans, where Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia could each expand their borders, adding new areas to countries where their ethnic groups were already large majorities. Once Muslims were ejected, members of the conqueror's ethnic group could migrate into the new territory, creating a larger ethnic state. It was most difficult and least successful in Anatolia, where large Muslim majorities were not easily conquered. The other factor in the Ottoman tragedy was Russian imperialism. In 1914, Russia had already been expanding south at the expense of Muslim peoples for centuries. When the Russians conquered the regions on their southern borders in the nineteenth century they put into effect what is today called "ethnic cleansing". While the forced migrations of the Crimean Tatars in the 1850s and of the Circassians in the 1860s are best known, the Russians also had forced Laz, Abhazians, Turks, and other Muslim peoples from their native lands in what today are southern Russia, southern Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. Mortality among these refugees was high. In 1878, Russia had seized the Kars-Ardahan district of north-west Anatolia, causing another refugee migration. Russians openly proclaimed, and no one in Anatolia doubted, that Russian expansion to the south would continue. Throughout the wars of 1912-1922, the methods of those who would create or expand nations at Muslim expense were very similar. How much this was planned by governments is not known. However, the reason for the expulsion of Muslims must have been obvious — a land with a Muslim majority or large minority was by nature insecure for its new Christian rulers. A succession of Muslim revolts against Russian rulers f r o m the early nineteenth century to 1996 prove the point. A secure conquest demanded expulsion or death of the Muslims. The procedures of forced migration followed closely those perfected by the Russians in their expulsions of Muslim peoples f r o m the Caucasus Region and later applied in the 1877-78 expulsion of Muslims from Bulgaria and from lands taken by Serbia and Montenegro. It is difficult to study the events of 1912-1922 and not think that the expulsion of Muslims was a concerted application of a proven course of action. In each wartime expulsion of Muslims, the same methods were followed:

30

THE M I D D L E

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AND

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BALKANS

• Regions with a Muslim majority were occupied by outside forces, often aided by an internal "fifth column". • Symbols of Ottoman administrative authority and Muslim religion were destroyed. Ottoman officials and Muslim religious leaders were killed or, if lucky, exiled. • Ottoman gendarmes were disarmed, often killed. Local members of the occupiers' millet were armed. • Muslims were driven from their villages through a process of what today would be called "terror", that is, they were made to rightly feel that they would die if they remained. Irregular forces from both within and without the Empire were prominent in these attacks. Villages were destroyed, their inhabitants killed brutally, and word got out. The people of the remaining villages fled. • Those lands and buildings which could be occupied by the occupier's group were taken. Unoccupied Muslim properties, including mosques and other religious buildings, were destroyed. Muslim quarters in towns were often burned down. In this way, even if Muslim refugees did manage to return they would have no way to live. There were some distinctions in the way these methods were applied in the West and the East, but they were applied ruthlessly in all the wars. The result was the largely homogenous ethnic structures of the lands carved from the Ottoman Empire. The methods were successful until Turkish resistance in the War of Independence saved Anatolia and Eastern Thrace as the last refuge of the Ottoman Muslims. Ironically, the Christian minorities of Anatolia, in whose name nationalist wars had been fought, also became forced migrants, leaving Muslims as the inhabitants of the Turkish Republic.

The Balkan Wars 1912-13 Ottoman forces were quickly defeated in the First Balkan War. Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria attacked on a wide front. Geography was a major factor in the defeat. In Europe, the Ottoman frontiers were so long and threats came from so many directions that it was difficult for the Ottomans to concentrate their forces, a situation exacerbated by administrative confusion. Significant forces from the Russian frontier or the Arab Province could not arrive in Europe before defeat was already sealed. Lack of military preparedness contributed greatly to the Ottoman debacle. The Young Turks had committed resources to building the army and navy, but it would take time to remedy Abdiilhamid IT's parsimony with the military. Lack of military preparedness was particularly noticeable in the navy, which was completely unable to threaten Greek supremacy in the Aegean or to resupply troops by sea.

THE

UPHEAVALS

OF

1912-1924

31

The rapidity of the Ottoman defeat contributed greatly to high mortality among the Balkan Muslims. Forced to flee their villages and towns, the Muslims often were cut off from paths of escape. Refugees from Macedonia, for example, might encounter Serbian, Bulgarian, then Greek armies in their attempt to reach the sea, their only avenue of escape. They were harried on the roads by armies and especially by komitaji guerrilla bands. Many incidents of mass murder were recorded by European observers. The main cause of death, however, was starvation and exposure. Their flight had been so precipitous that refugees had been unable to take necessary food and clothing. What they had was often taken from them by their enemies. The regions of highest Muslim mortality was Albania, even though European pressure ultimately kept the Serbs and Montenegrins from retaining most of their conquests there. In Albania, Serbian and Montenegrin troops invaded and destroyed everything in their path. The extent of the destruction indicates a deliberate plan. Not only were inhabitants murdered, but the roofs were taken from houses and holes were driven through the walls. All seed and stores were taken, as were all the sheep. British and Italian observers estimated that the Serbians alone had carried off 700,000 sheep. Those who returned to their villages after the war found nothing, not even shelter from the Albanian winter. The worst destruction visited by the Bulgarians came in Thrace. Because of the vast numbers of refugees who had come into the Thracian cities, figures of mortality are inexact, but contemporaries estimated Bulgarians had killed 2,000 Muslims in Serres, 7,000 in the Cavalla region, and 3,000 in Dedcagag. Judging by the overall death rate, mortality in rural regions of Thrace must have been at least as great. Muslims Remaining in Conquered Regions of the Balkans Region Taken By Greece Bulgaria Serbia All Regions

Percentage Remaining 17 45 46 38

Source: McCarthy "The Population of Ottoman Europe".

32

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THE

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By war's end, hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees had already escaped to Anatolia. Others waited in coastal cities on the Aegean. The Greek government organized mass forced migrations of these remaining refugees. The refugees were not allowed to return to their homes. Only refugees from Eastern Thrace were able to return, when the Ottoman retook that region during the Second Balkan War. The Ottoman Government resettled 414,000 refugees in Anatolia and the portion of Thrace (the Edirne Region) that remained in the Empire. The Table indicates the population change as a result of the Balkan Wars. Because no censuses were taken in the conquered regions until after World War I, the figures in the table include some migrants who left after the Balkan War period. This is only a significant factor for Greece. Slightly more than 300,000 1 of the Turkish emigrants from areas conquered by Greece left during the population exchange that followed the Turkish War of Independence. When this is taken into account, half the Muslims of the conquered areas died or emigrated during and immediately after the Balkan Wars. Excepting Albania, 27% of the Muslims of the Ottoman Balkans died during the Balkan Wars. 2 35% were refugees who would never return. Diplomatic sources indicate that mortality in Albania was probably higher than 27 %, but lack of post-war censuses makes estimation of Albanian mortality impossible. The numbers do not include most of the mortality of Ottoman regular soldiers.3 These suffered greatly. For example, it is known that more than one-half of the Ottoman soldiers (40-50,000) captured in Edirne by the Bulgarians died while prisoners of war. Each of the regions taken by the Balkan Allies now had a large Christian majority.

Eastern Anatolia Muslim mortality in Eastern Anatolia was the result of international war between the Russian and Ottoman empires and intercommunal war between the Armenians and Muslims of the East. Both were the final result of Russian imperialism in the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia, begun more than 100 years before. During the previous century, the Muslims of the East had learned that Russian victory resulted in the expulsion and deaths of Muslims *398,849 migrants came to Turkey between 1921 and 1926. Most were part of the Population Exchange. This number includes migrants from areas not included in the table. Detailed figures on place of origin are not available. 2 What are called "deaths" here are statistically "population loss," not "mortality". To find true mortality rates, the number of dead must be counted, which was never done. One must therefore subtract the post-war population from the pre-war population to arrive at population loss, a surrogate for mortality. 3 Only the mortality of soldiers from conquered territories in Europe is included.

THE

UPHEAVALS

OF

1912-1924

33

and that Armenians had allied themselves with the Russians. The Russians had encouraged Armenian immigration into their newly won territories and had supported Armenian nationalist aspirations when it suited Russian intentions. By 1914, the inhabitants of the East on both sides of the border expected that Armenians would be partisans of the Russians, Muslims partisans of the Ottomans. No quarter had been given to civilians during the previous Russian conquests. None was expected in the future. This created a situation in which each side expected to be killed by the other if they did not kill first, a selffulfilling expectation. The Ottomans lost the first battles on the northern border in December, 1914 and January, 1915. Heavy Ottoman casualties meant that the border was only lightly defended. The Russians advanced south in Spring of 1915. Beaten back, they returned in force in January of 1916, eventually occupying a front that stretched from Mu§ to Trabzon and beyond. Even before major battles began, the Russians were aided by Armenian guerrilla bands operating behind Ottoman lines. In addition to classic guerrilla actions in assistance of an advancing army (cutting telegraph lines, attacking the army's communications and transport lines, striking gendarmerie posts and government offices, etc.), Armenian revolutionary groups attempted to take cities such as Kara Hisar-i §arki and Urfa. They succeeded in taking and holding the city of Van (April, 1915) until the Russian Army arrived to relieve them. The guerrillas attacked Muslim villages and the Muslims of towns and cities. In Van, for example, all the Muslims either fled or were killed. In Zeve, outside of Van, Kurdish villagers f r o m surrounding villages were gathered and killed en masse. Muslims, particularly Kurdish tribes, responded by attacking Armenian villages and killing their inhabitants. It is probable that neither the village Armenians nor the Muslims were anxious for intercommunal war, but the raids and counter-raids made everyone a combatant. Forced migration was a tool of both sides in the war in the East. In the region occupied by the Russians and Armenians, perhaps one-half of the Muslim became refugees. The Ottoman commission of Refugees counted 868,962 Muslim refugees from Russian and Armenian attacks, and of course many refugees were not counted. The Ottomans organized the well-known deportation of Anatolian Armenians after the initial guerrilla attacks in the East, but many more Armenians fled advancing Ottoman armies than were deported. The Muslims of south-eastern Anatolia suffered worst in the first two years of the war. The Russians, who had some interest in civil order in areas they had conquered, only had the manpower to effectively control north-eastern Anatolia. Armenian bands and Kurdish tribes had virtually free rein in the south-east. The result was a death rate among the highest ever known in war. In Van Province, 62% of the Muslims died in the war. In Bitlis Province, 42% of the Muslims died.

34

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MIDDLE

EAST

AND

THE

BALKANS

The worst Muslim suffering in the Northeast came after the Russian Revolution. When the Russian armies disbanded they were replaced by units loyal to the new Armenian Republic. These were rather easily defeated by the Ottoman army. As they retreated the Armenians destroyed all the towns and villages in their paths, killing all the inhabitants who could not escape. Cities such as Erzincan and Bayburt were largely destroyed. Other cities, such as Erzurum, though ruined, were saved from complete destruction by the swift arrival of Ottoman troops. 31% of the Muslim population of Erzurum Province died. Conflict between Muslims and Armenians continued after the Ottoman Empire had sued for peace. The new Armenian Republic attempted to retake areas held by the Ottomans at the end of the war, but ultimately could not master land beyond the borders of today's Armenian Republic. Turkish Nationalist troops under Kazim Karabekir defeated the Armenians. The worst suffering during this last phase of the Eastern War came in the territory the Russians called "Transcaucasia"—the Kars-Ardahan Region (the area of Anatolia that had been ceded to Russian in 1878), Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Approximately 15% of the Muslims of Transcaucasia died. Migration during and after the wars makes it impossible to judge which regions had the highest mortality, but combat areas such as Kars, where Turkish Nationalists battled soldiers of the Armenian Republic, and the Armenian-Azerbaijan border, where the Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan fought, probably suffered a much higher death rate than interior regions of Armenia and Azerbaijan. While outright murder was a significant cause of death in the East, mortality among all groups must have primarily come f r o m starvation and disease. In Eastern Anatolia, where arable land was scarce and climate was intemperate, life was always precarious. T h e normal system of animal husbandry and agriculture provided subsistence, but not much more. When that system was broken by war, crops were not put in the ground and starvation resulted. With famine came typhus, typhoid, and cholera. Suffering was exacerbated by the back and forth war fought in the East—Russian invasion, Ottoman repulse of the Russians, renewed Russian invasion, Russian retreat, Ottoman-Armenian War, and Turkish Nationalist-Armenian war. Refugees attempted to return home, only to be driven out once again, with new casualties. There was little assistance f o r the vast numbers of Muslim refugees; the Ottomans had little to give. While a great relief effort for starving Armenians was funded by Americans, very few knew or cared about starving Turks and Kurds.

THE

UPHEAVALS

OF

1912-1924

35

Cilicia Cilicia (the Ottoman vilayet of Adana, northern Haleb Vilayeti, and adjoining regions) was not invaded during World War I. The Muslim population suffered during the Armenian uprisings at the beginning of the war, but the worst mortality came after World War I had ended. The victorious Allies awarded Cilicia to the French. However, French forces were primarily occupied in Syria and were too few to take effective control of Cilicia. Instead, they sent the Armenian Legion, Armenians who had enlisted with the Allies to fight the Ottomans, along with some French officers and French colonial troops. Attacks on Muslims began as soon as the Armenian Legion arrived and expanded as the French conveyed Armenian refugees from Syria to Cilicia. Memories of war in the East had made peaceful post-war reconciliation impossible. At first, the Turks of Cilicia fell back from the invasion. Armed units took to the hills, were supplied and aided by Ottoman soldiers and came together under the Turkish Nationalist banner. Soon both Armenian and Turkish bands were fighting intercommunal war, with no quarter given to their enemies. The French realized their mistake too late. They attempted to disband the Armenian Legion, only to have many of its members desert and continue the fight. Only when the Turks had developed a force large enough to defeat the French and Armenians at Maras (March, 1920) did the war begin to end. As in the Northeast, the worst Muslim mortality came as the French and Armenian forces withdrew from Mara§ and other interior towns to port cities and Syria. Most of the Turkish villages on their route of retreat were destroyed. Turks on the route were killed, as were many Armenians who fell behind the retreating columns. However, French and British observers reported that Armenians who fell to regular armed forces of the Turkish Nationalists were protected. Nevertheless, mortality was high. Only the swift organization of the Turkish Nationalist forces kept the Muslim death rate from approaching that of the East. 7% of the Muslims of Adana Vilayeti and 9% of the Muslims of Northern Haleb Vilayeti died.

Western Anatolia The effects of the Turkish War of Independence on Western Anatolia can be viewed as a continuation of the Balkan Wars. The system of forced migration to attain nationalistic ends that caused high mortality in the Balkan Wars was put into effect once again when the Greek Army landed in izmir on May 15,1919. The Greeks came as agents of the Versailles Peace Conference, ostensibly to secure peace in the region. However, the Greek intent was the same as it had been in the Balkan Wars — to expand the Greek national state by forcibly evicting the Turks who lived in the desired territory. The methods were also the same as those seen in the Balkan Wars. Attacks on Turks in Izmir and surrounding villages began on the first day of the occupation. As was unquestionably intended, the attacks caused Turks to flee.

36

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The methods of expulsion detailed above were followed closely in Western Anatolia. In cities such as Aydin, Menemen, Nazilli, and Kasaba Turkish gendarmes were first disarmed. The weapons taken from the gendarmes and weapons supplied by the Greek Army were then distributed to local Greeks. Ottoman officials were killed. Turkish houses were pillaged and destroyed, with attendant mortality. In some districts, columns of Turks were led from cities and butchered. Many, perhaps most, of the Turkish civilian casualties in the first stage of the war came from attacks by partisan bands. These were armed by the Greek government and given free hand. In the guerrilla bands, Greeks who resided in Anatolia were joined by former Anatolian Greeks who had fled to Greek islands after the Balkan Wars and by Armenians. They preyed on Muslim villagers within the region occupied by the Greeks. Once they had organized, Turkish bands also attacked Greeks, until much of rural Western Anatolia was in near anarchy. The actions of the Greek regulars and partisans had the expected result. Turks fled from the occupied zone to safe areas or to Turkish partisans in the hills. British accounts of massacres in Aydin City, for example, reported that after Greek actions only a few families remained of the 30,000 Turks who had formerly lived in the city. Large sections of the countryside were emptied. The Ottoman Refugee Commission estimated that by the spring of 1921 between 200,000 and 300,000 Turks were refugees in Anatolia. Italian and British diplomatic and military reports indicate that the Ottoman figures were if anything underestimates. The Italian High Commission stated that there were 475,000 refugees already in September of 1920. The British accounted for 65,000 refugees in Istanbul alone in 1922. When the masses of refugees from the latter days of the war (see below) are included, it is possible that more than a million Turks had become refugees during the Independence War. Refugee numbers and mortality both swelled considerably when the Greek Army expanded beyond the borders originally assigned to the Greeks by the Versailles Conference. Most of Western Anatolia came under Greek control. The British who had taken control of the izmit Peninsula and surrounding region, turned it over to the Greek Army. The process of slaughter, destruction, and expulsion that had characterized the earlier occupation then was repeated. Horrified British officers reported to London and protested, to no avail. An Inter-Allied Commission reported, "in the part of the kazas of Yalova and Guemlek [Gemlik] occupied by the Greek army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and destruction of Turkish villages." Again, London did nothing but suppress the report, just as it had suppressed an earlier Allied Commission report from izmir that documented the same occurrences there.

THE U P H E A V A L S

OF

1912

1924

37

As in Eastern Anatolia, awful destruction and mortality accompanied the Greek retreat from Anatolia. Previously, only those Turkish properties that were of no use to the conquerors had been destroyed; now all that could be burned was burned. Unable to keep the land themselves, Greek troops and irregulars cut down trees, killed livestock, and destroyed buildings. Although most Turks had already fled or died, those who remained and were found by the Greeks were killed. American reporters and diplomatic representatives catalogued some of the destruction. For example: Manisa, 90% destroyed; Kasaba, 90% destroyed; Ala§ehir, 70% destroyed; Salihli, 65% destroyed. At the end of the Independence War, the population of the Western Anatolian provinces invaded by the Greeks had decreased by 1.25 million. The actual number of deaths was greater. (To find the post-war population one must project the population back from figures of the 1927 Turkish Census. By 1927 many Turks from other parts of Anatolia had migrated to Western Anatolia, making it appear that fewer had died). In the areas of greatest mortality, such as Aydin Vilayeti, more than one-fourth of the Muslims had died.

Other Regions Space considerations make it impossible to consider other Ottoman regions at length. In any case, the effects of the wars on the Muslim populations of the Arab Provinces are more difficult to analyze than the effects on the populations of Anatolia and the Balkans. Analysis of the consequences of war depends on knowledge of population numbers before and after conflict. In Iraq, the population was poorly recorded throughout the Ottoman period and well after 1918. The first reasonably accurate census in Iraq did not occur until 1947. The population of Northern Syria, the region that was to become the mandate states of Lebanon and Syria, was poorly recorded by the French Mandate Government after the war, in some areas not recorded at all, even though the Ottomans had counted the population earlier. Thus it is difficult to accurately judge the demographic effects of war on Northern Syria and impossible for Iraq. Only for Palestine are reliable pre- and post-war figures available. Because it was a war zone, Palestine suffered from mortality of war and both internal and international migration. In addition, a locust plague damaged crops and caused some starvation in spring of 1915. At war's end, the Muslim population of Palestine had decreased by 6%.

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Conclusion Mortality was not the only evil visited on the Ottoman Muslims. In Anatolia, returning refugees found their homes, farm animals, and trees gone. The destruction was too systematic to have been the random result of war. The Turkish Delegation to the Lausanne Conference presented a census of loss in Western Anatolia to the Conference: 141,874 buildings destroyed, 134,040 horses lost, 228,230 buffalo, 1770,316 sheep, etc. Nearly all the olive trees, other fruit trees, and grape arbours had been cut down. Even allowing for possible exaggeration, the toll of buildings and animals lost in Western Anatolia is incredible. N o counts were taken in Eastern Anatolia, but it is known that devastation was widespread. The Muslim quarter of Van was destroyed; all but three of the Muslim houses were gone. Americans who toured the East after the wars reported that all the Muslim houses of Bitlis City had been demolished and that three-fourths of the Muslim villages of Van Vilayeti and half the Muslim villages of Bayezit Sancagi had been destroyed by Armenians. Other areas undoubtedly suffered similar destruction.

Muslim Population Loss in War zones, 1912-1922 Balkan Wars Eastern Anatolia* 'Transcaucasia"* Cilicia* Western Anatolia* Northern Syria Iraq Palestine* Total

632,000 1,096,000

410,000 93,000 1,246,000 unknown unknown 39,000 3,516,000 *includes military and civilians Note: Population loss from Central and North-western Anatolia not included.

THE

UPHEAVALS

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1912-1924

39

The table lists the Muslim population lost in war zones from 1912 to 1922. Many of the Muslim dead are not included. These include those who lived in provinces such as Sivas who were not in international war zones, but who suffered during the period of guerrilla war in 1914-15. Mortality among Ottoman soldiers who came from Central Anatolian provinces is not included, nor is mortality from wartime disease and starvation in those provinces. As mentioned above, migration clouds the mortality picture. Konya Vilayeti, for example, lost 27% of its population during the period, but many of these probably were migrants to Western Anatolia after the wars and before the Turkish census of 1927, upon which post-war population numbers are based. This means that the mortality in war zones was actually higher than listed in the table. The entirety of Ottoman Anatolia lost nearly 3 million Muslims during the war period. If estimates of mortality in Iraq and Syria are included, Muslim mortality due to war must have been well over 4 million.

MUSLIM REFUGEES IN TURKEY: THE BALKAN WARS, WORLD WAR I AND THE TURKISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

In 1912 the Ottomans entered ten years of war that destroyed the Ottoman Empire. More than three million Muslims died in the Balkan Wars, World War I and the Turkish War of Independence. 1 Almost two million Muslims became refugees. While the great political changes of the period have often been described and analyzed, little attention has been paid to the five million Muslims who suffered the effects of those changes. Beginning in 1912, Muslims from the conquered lands of the Ottoman Empire escaped in great numbers into what lands remained to them in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. They joined other refugees who had been fleeing from Russia and the Balkans since the beginning of the nineteenth century, a long migration that was to continue past World War II. 2 The lands that the Muslims fled were as much their homeland as was Turkey. In many of the regions from which they fled, Muslims had been an absolute majority. In others, they had been the largest religious group in the population. 3 Yet Western and Balkan historians have traditionally considered them to have been interlopers, non-native elements who were driven back to their homeland in Anatolia. This was not, in fact, the case. Turks had indeed entered the Balkans and the Caucasus as conquerors who supplanted some of those originally there, just as they had in Anatolia. In this they were the same as the Slavs, themselves earlier conquerors and occupiers of the same lands, and the Greeks, who had also come to the Balkans as conquerors, albeit very early ones. By 1911, Turks had been settled in the Balkans for more than 500 years, longer in the Caucasus territories. After 500 years, they were surely to be considered

See Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities: the Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York, New York University Press, 1983, and Justin McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe Before and After the Fall of the Empire," in HIrd Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, ed. H. W. Lowry and R. S. Hattox, IstanbulWashington, The Isis Press, 1990 pp. 275-288. ^The migration of Muslims actually began with the exodus of Muslims after the Ottoman loss of Hungary. However, the more modern refugee phenomena began with the end of the 1828-29 war with Russia. 3 See Table 1.

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natives. It was these native Turks, along with other Muslim peoples, who were driven from their homes and became the refugees of 1912-22.1

Muslim Refugees from the Balkans The first wave of Muslim refugees in the period being considered came into Turkey as a result of the Balkan Wars. Although the population of the Ottoman Balkan provinces was ethnically and religiously mixed, Muslims were the largest single religious community (millet). 2 They were, like the other native inhabitants of the Balkans, scattered throughout the area (Table 1), with sizeable Muslim communities in every area. 3 In many districts and three entire provinces—Edirne, l§kodra, and Kosova—Muslims were an absolute majority, not only a plurality. The process by which the Balkan nations became overwhelming Christian majorities was one of death or migration for the Balkan Muslims. Table 1. The population of Ottoman Europe, 1911, by Province and Millet.* Province Edirne Selanik Yanya Manastir l§kodra Kosova Total

Greek

Bulgarian

Total**

(53%) (45%) (44%) (43%) (62%) (60%)

396.000 398.000 311.000 350.000 11.000 93.000

171.000 271.000

1.427.000 1.348.000 561.000 1.065.000

3.242.000 (51%)

1.558.000

1.220.000

Muslim 760.000 605.000 245.000 456.000 218.000 959.000

—

246.000 349.000 531.000

1.603.000 6.353.000

* rounded to the thousands place, with some rounding error. ** includes all millets. (Source: McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe")

t'rhe overwhelming majority of the Muslim refugees in the World War I period were Turks (defined as those who spoke Turkish as their mother tongue), but Ottoman records did not differentiate between one group of Muslims and another. Some Slavic-speaking Muslims, especially Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks, Albanians, and Caucasian peoples are included in the counts of Muslim refugees. ^Strictly speaking, the Muslim community might not be considered to have been a millet, but it is convenient to use that term here. •'for a detailed consideration of the population of Ottoman Europe, see McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe."

M U S L I M S

R E F U G E E S

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T U R K E Y

43

T h e B a l k a n W a r s w e r e a t i m e of high mortality f o r the M u s l i m s of O t t o m a n E u r o p e , a n d f e a r w a s t h e m a i n c a u s e of M u s l i m e m i g r a t i o n . M o s t of t h e B a l k a n M u s l i m s s i m p l y f l e d t h e a d v a n c i n g a r m i e s of t h e C h r i s t i a n s t a t e s , d e t e r - m i n e d t o a v o i d t h e f a t e of t h o s e w h o h a d r e m a i n e d i n t h e i r v i l l a g e s a n d died 1 : S i n c e t h e p o p u l a t i o n of t h e c o u n t r i e s a b o u t t o b e o c c u p i e d k n e w , by tradition, instinct, and experience, what they had to expect f r o m the armies of t h e e n e m y and f r o m n e i g h b o u r i n g c o u n t r i e s t o w h i c h t h e s e a r m i e s b e l o n g e d , t h e y did n o t a w a i t their a r r i v a l , b u t f l e d . T h u s , g e n e r a l l y speaking, the army of the e n e m y f o u n d o n its way nothing but villages that w e r e half d e s e r t e d or t o t a l l y a b a n d o n e d . T o e x e c u t e t h e o r d e r s f o r extermination, it w a s only n e c e s s a r y t o set f i r e t o t h e m . T h e population, warned by the g l o w f r o m t h e s e f i r e s , f l e d in all haste. T h e r e f o l l o w e d a veritable migration of peoples, f o r in M a c e d o n i a , as in T h r a c e , there w a s hardly a spot w h i c h was not, at a given m o m e n t , o n t h e line of m a r c h of s o m e army or other. 2 T h e M u s l i m r e f u g e e s h a d g o o d r e a s o n f o r t h e i r f e a r s . It is i m p o s s i b l e t o a s c e r t a i n w h i c h of t h e M u s l i m s of O t t o m a n E u r o p e w e r e killed b y

the

i n v a d i n g a r m i e s a n d w h i c h d i e d of d i s e a s e a n d s t a r v a t i o n d u r i n g t h e i r f l i g h t . H o w e v e r , t h e g e n e r a l m o r t a l i t y of t h e E u r o p e a n M u s l i m s in t h e p e r i o d w a s m o r e t h a n 2 5 % , 3 a n d m u c h impartial e v i d e n c e exists of t h e m u r d e r

of

M u s l i m s , t h e d e s t r u c t i o n of t h e i r v i l l a g e s , a n d d e l i b e r a t e p o l i c i e s o f G r e e c e , B u l g a r i a , a n d S e r b i a t o f o r c e t h e m f r o m t h e i r h o m e s . 4 E a c h of t h e

Christian

' i n the second Balkan War, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs treated each other with the same callous inhumanity they had shown to the Turks in the first war. It should in no way be assumed that Muslims were the only sufferers in the Balkan Wars, nor that Turks were never guilty of outrages. All sides in the Balkan Wars acted with inhumanity. The important factor concerning refugees, however, is that the Ottomans were attacked and defeated, and that they were in retreat from the beginning of the first Balkan War. This meant that the Ottoman army, whatever its intentions might have been, did not have the opportunity to carry out against Christians the sort of atrocities that Christian armies carried out against the Turks. There is no profit in speculation on what Turkish actions would have been had they won. It is, nevertheless, important to point out the fact that atrocities committed by Turks in the Balkans and later in western Anatolia were almost entirely committed after prior Christian massacres. This in no way excuses inhuman acts by Turks, but it does contradict the popular image of the bloodthirsty Turk and the suffering Christian. ^Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, Washington, DC., 1914, p. 151. ^McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe." 4

to

Human suffering is an inherent part of refugee migrations. In a study such as this there is a temptation to offer lists and descriptions of atrocities, and it is true that atrocities were a motive force behind the movements of refugees, who justifiably feared that the same would happen to them and ran before it did. Despite this, I see no need to retell the stories of burning, rape, and murder. I have decided only to state that there were awful atrocities committed upon innocent Muslims, and to refer those who wish corroboration to the following: The Carnegie report lists many examples of mass slaughter of Muslims. See especially chapter 2.1, chapter 4.1-3, and Appendix A. See also the extensive documentation in F.O. 371-1762 (entire class), especially the series of documents F.O. 371-1762-50000 to 54000, and F.O. 424-3-4853. The Ottoman government published "atrocity books" at the end of the Balkan Wars, as did the other belligerents, but the above American and British reports will be given more credence by many.

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Balkan nations adopted a policy of "demographic warfare" 1 intended to make their own people an absolute majority in the areas they had conquered, a policy that was applied by Bulgars, Greeks, and Serbs to Christian groups other than their own, as well as to Muslims. 2 In addition, Muslims, particularly the Pomaks of Bulgaria, emigrated to avoid forced conversion to Christianity. 3 During the first Balkan War, Muslims fled in great waves to three gathering points of refugees—Albania and the cities of Salonica and Edirne. Ethnically Albanian Muslims were forcibly driven from the Ottoman vildyet of Kosova into Albania by Serbian troops, joining other Muslims who had fled ahead of the armies. 4 Some Muslims of Yanya Vildyeti, taken by Greece, also fled to Albania. However, the number of refugees to Albania remained small, a much smaller group than those who fled elsewhere, because Albania was too poor to support refugees. Refugees to Albania had few places to go. Some few probably became part of the population of the truncated Albanian state. However, given the generally poor conditions in Albania, most of them probably perished. 5 The refugees in Salonica fared better than those in Albania. Salonica became the depot for Muslim refugees from areas taken by all three Christian powers—Muslims of the vilayets of Kosova, Monastir, and Selanik. In Salonica, there were no organized assistance programs for Muslim refugees and disease and starvation claimed many, but groups such as the Salonica Islamic Committee did arrange for ships to take many to Anatolia. Immediately after the wars, the Greek government organized convoys of the remaining refugees and sent them to Turkey.

!To borrow a phrase applied by Marc Pinson. ^Although it would appear to be a wasteful destruction of their own future assets, the invading armies systematically destroyed Muslim villages so as to leave nothing to which the Muslims could return if the Ottoman armies had been victorious. Speaking of Muslim villages near Giimiilcine the British representative Young stated, "The track of the invading [Bulgarian] army is marked by 80 miles of ruined villages." (Young to Bax-Ironside, Philippopoli, January 2, 1913-F.O. 371-1762). 3 See Carnegie, pp. 77, 78, 155-158. Evidence of forced conversions by Bulgarians is welldocumented. See the many mentions in the British archival reports, especially F.O. 424-242 (numerous mentions throughout the class) and F.O. 424-113-5970, F.O. 424-248-7327, F.O. 424405-8508, F.O. 424-351-8124, F.O. 424-248-7327, F.O. 424-466-5. 4 F.O. 371-1762-50886 gives detailed statistics of Muslim houses destroyed, murders, rapes, etc. in Monastir Vildyeti. The British observers also reported 60,000 refugees from Monastir in Albania. "The state of these people is most desperate." (Consul-General Lamb at Valona, November 21, 1913, F.O. 371-1762-53682. See also F.O. 371-1762-55161). ^Carnegie, pp. 177-185.

M U S L I M S

R E F U G E E S

IN

45

T U R K E Y

Table 2. Muslim Population Before and A f t e r the Wars. Areas which were taken f r o m the O t t o m a n Empire after 1911 by Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. 1911

1920s

Greece

746.485

124.460 (1923)

Bulgaria

327.485

179.176 (1920)

Yugoslavia

1.241.076

566.478

(1921)

(Source: M c C a r t h y , "Ottoman Europe")

Edirne received the refugees of eastern Selanik Vildyeti (eastern Macedonia) and Edirne Vilayeti (Thrace). The refugees who escaped to Edirne were forced to flee once again when the Bulgarian armies conquered Edirne Vildyeti. They went to Istanbul and Anatolia, some returning with the Ottoman armies when much of Edirne Vildyeti was reconquered in the second Balkan War. Incredibly, many Muslims seem to have remained on their lands during the first Balkan War, or to have returned to them soon after the war, only to be finally driven out in the second war. When the A m e r i c a n Carnegie Commission of Inquiry visited Salonica during the second Balkan War they found that 135,000 Muslims had already come to the city during the second war alone, and that more were arriving. 1 Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire signed a convention (October, 1913) for the exchange of Thracian Bulgarian Christians and Bulgarian Muslims, after which more Muslim refugees entered the Ottoman Empire. 2 At the same time, Greece and Turkey entered into a de facto partial population exchange in which Muslims f r o m Greece replaced Greek migrants f r o m Thrace and Anatolia.

^Carnegie, p. 151. See Stephen P. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, New York, 1932, pp. 16 and 17, and France, Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Economiques, Les Transferts Internationaux de Populations, p. 76 and Annex Ilia. 2

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BALKANS

Table 3. Muslim Refugees from the Balkans, 1912-1920, with Areas of Settlement. Vilâyets Istanbul

Independent 3,609

Edirne

132,500

Adana

9,059

Ankara

10,008

Aydm

145,868

Haleb 1

10,504

Hiidavendigâr

20,853

Suriye Kastamonu Konya Mamuretiilaziz

3,187 257 8,512 242 Total

Sandjaks

Izmit

6,771

Eski§iehir

9,088

Bolu

258

Canik

3,875

Çatalca

7,500

Karasi

14,687

Biga

4,033

Kayseri

14,687

Karahisar

280

Mentege

855

Mara§

5,0

413,922

(Source: Turkish Ministry of Interior Statistics) 2

' Some of these refugees to Haleb may not have ultimately come to the Turkish Republic, although most probably did so. To their number should be added an indeterminate number of Muslims who came to Haleb from Libya after the Italian conquest, at least 1500 by May of 1914 (Report by U.S. Consul J. B. Jackson at Aleppo, May 21, 1914, U.S. Archives 867.55/26). 2 I accept these statistics as authentic, even though they have only appeared in secondary sources. Antoniadès (Le développement économique de la Thrace, Athens, 1922, p. 217), Ladas (The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, New York, 1932, p. 16), and Toynbee (The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, London, 1922, p. 138) all give the same figures, listed in the same source—the Ottoman Ministry of Refugees. Moreover, Toynbee and Antoniadès gave the figures in a different form (Toynbee by year, Antoniadès by province of settlement), but the same total figures. The figures printed by Antoniadès also have the proper form for a typical Ottoman governmental statistical table. Therefore, it is most likely that these are real Ottoman statistics which, like most of the Ottoman records of the period, have not yet been found in their original form. Toynbee's figures of refugees by year: 1912-13 1914-15 1916-17 1918-19 1919-20 Total

177.352 120.566 18.912 22.244 74.848 413.922

Antoniadès estimated 500,000 refugees who were not counted in the above totals, whereas Toynbee and Ladas did not. However, Antoniadès indicated that these were "les personnes aisées et les employés du Gouvernement avec leurs familles." One can, 1 think, assume that the "personnes aisées" were few and that most of the number were government employees and their families. As such, the latter were not included in Ottoman population registers of natives of the Balkan provinces and thus have not been considered to be refugees here. Even so, the figure of 500,000 seems ludicrously high, unless Antoniadès included soldiers, who could be called "government employees."

M U S L I M S

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

47

With few exceptions, the Muslim refugees from the Balkans were supported by the Ottoman Refugee Commission. 1 The Commission oversaw the settlement of the emigrants all over Thrace and Anatolia (Table 3), although the greatest number were settled in eastern Thrace and western Anatolia. 413,922 refugees were recorded. The final emigration of the Balkan Muslims came as a result of the Greco-Turkish compulsory population exchange. 354,647 Muslims from Greek territory were officially exchanged for 192,356 Anatolian and Thracian Greeks. Table 4. Immigrants to Turkey, 1921-1927, as recorded. Male

Female

Total

1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927

5,488 5,189 25,552 120,322 28,353 18,481 15,557

5,591 4,904 25,136 115,092 28,170 16,570 16,656

11,079 10,093 50,689 235,414 56,523 35,051 32,213

Totals

218,943

212,119

431,062

(Source:

ístatistik

Yilligi

III)

Turkish immigration statistics for the period of the Greco-Turkish population exchange were similar to those kept by the Ottomans after the Balkan Wars. They listed the refugees for each year by the province in which the refugees were settled. Since the recorded number of refugees corresponded closely to the numbers of Turkish refugees officially recorded by the Mixed Commission of the Population Exchange (388,146), it appears that almost all the refugees listed in Table 4 came from Greece in that exchange. The third Turkish Statistical Yearbook listed immigrants (Table 4) for each year from 1921 to 1929. Because of the extensive use made of the 1927 Turkish census in this study and the need for comparable figures to the 1927 data, only the figures from 1921 to 1927 have been listed in the table. Detailed figures for immigration by province are given in Appendix Two.

The Refugee Commission (Muhacirin Komisyonu) was the Ottoman agency directly in charge of assistance to refugees. In areas in which Ottoman governmental control was strong, the Commission took detailed, family-by-family and person-by-person counts of refugees, including refugees back to the period of the Crimean War.

48

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Refugees in the East The Turkish Eastern Front in World War I and the later TurcoArmenian War was such a mass of moving peoples that contemporary accounts give the impression that the peoples of eastern Anatolia and the southern Caucasus were all refugees. While this is an exaggeration, it is not a gross exaggeration. The majority of eastern Anatolians, both Muslims and Christians, either died or left their homes. 1 The Muslims who had come from the Russian Caucasus were part of the last act of a bloody and unregulated population exchange between Armenians and Muslims that had gone on for a century. 2 The plight of the Armenian refugees has been reconstructed, often in a polemic spirit, in numerous monographs and has acquired an almost mythic aspect. The corresponding plight of Muslim refugees has gone unnoticed. Reading the events of the time in standard histories, one might assume that no Muslims had been affected by the eastern Anatolian wars. An unknown number of the Muslims of Russian Transcaucasia must have left the area during World War I to join the Ottoman armies or simply to escape the Russians. It is known that the Russians attempted to clear frontier districts at the beginning of the war and some Muslims must have fled south at that time. However, the main Muslim migration came after the Revolution had destroyed Imperial Russia. Muslims fled as a result of Armenian-Turkish conflicts in the Caucasus and conflicts among the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijan Republics. Few of the Muslim refugees were soldiers; most were Turkish/Tatar refugees who had not participated in the wars. An example of the cause of the Muslim migration may be found in the activities of Armenian guerrilla bands and armies: The routes south were blocked by regular Turkish divisions. Backtracking, (the Armenian guerrilla leader and general) Andranik then pushed over Nakhichevan into Zangezur, the southernmost uezd guberniia.

of the Elisavetpol

Remaining there for the duration of the world war, Andranik's

forces crushed one Tatar village after another.^

1

Sec Muslims and Minorities, Chapter 7. See p. 43, n. 1. ^Richard G. Hovannissian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, Los Angeles, 1967, p. 194.

2

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

49

When the Turco-Armenian, inter-Caucasian, and Bolshevik-Armenian wars ended, the ethnic groups of the Caucasus had been forcibly separated. Muslims from Armenia and, to a lesser extent, Georgia had fled south to Turkey and east to Azerbaijan. 1 The procedures necessary to ascertain the number of Muslim refugees f r o m the Russian Empire 2 are more complicated and their answers more tentative than those employed to find the number of Balkan Muslim refugees. Unless Muslim refugees from Russia passed through Istanbul, as few did, they were not enumerated. The refugees from the Russian Caucasus travelled during wartime, across unchecked borders, and settled where they could. There were no governmental agencies able to count them or to assist them. Because the enumeration of the refugees in eastern Anatolia is such a matter of conjecture, and because many will perceive their numbers as unexpectedly large, the following evaluation consciously underestimates the number of Muslim refugees. Whenever a choice between a high or a low number of refugee numbers has been available, the lower has been chosen. Therefore, the results of the following should be understood to be the lower limit of the numbers of Muslim refugees from the Russian Empire. The actual numbers of refugees were surely greater. Also, in most cases one can only estimate surviving refugees who settled in Turkey—a much smaller number than those who set out. The majority of the Muslim refugees from Russia settled in the area of the Turkish Republic that had been part of Russia from 1878 to 1921. This area, the Russian guberniia of Kars, 3 was the Turkish-ruled area closest to the refugees' original homes and had much available land, due to wartime mortality and Armenian emigration. In 1897, the Russian Census 4 listed 76,521 Muslim males in Kars Province, a corrected 5 population of 153,042 number of articles and books, including those of Hovanissian and McCarthy, cited above, partially treat this phenomena. See also W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields, Cambridge, 1953. 2 The Russian Empire took a census in 1897 but the next census was not taken until the Soviet census of 1926. While the Empire registered population by religion, the Soviets did not. The Empire only used the broad ethnic category "Turco-Tatar," whereas the Soviets divided this category into many separate ethnic divisions. Such problems add to the difficulties of comparative analysis. 3 Often called "Kars and Ardahan," the area was ceded to Russia in 1878. Most of the land was then returned to Turkey after the Turkish victories over the Armenian Republic and the treaty with the Soviet Union. The area was divided into the Republican provinces of Artvin Vilâyeti (less Yusufeli Kazasi), Oltu Kazasi of Erzuram Vilâyeti, Igdir and Kulp kazas of Bayazit Vilâyeti, and all of Kars Vilâyeti. ^The 1897 Russian census was published in various forms in Russian and French. The version used here is the detailed, bilingual Premier Recensement Général de la Population de l'Empire de Russie, 1897, Relevé Général, "rédigé par Nicolas Troinitsky," St. Petersburg, 1905. ^Females were greatly undercounted, so male population has been doubled to approximate total population. The resulting figure is inexact, but superior to the uncorrected population numbers.

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Muslims. Projected to 1914, at the beginning of World War I, the Muslim population was 194,62s. 1 It is impossible, because of massive migration, to find the exact number of Kars Muslims who died in the 1915-1921 wars. However, one can safely assume that the mortality in Kars was as bad as anywhere in the war zone, since Kars was on the invasion lines of both the Russians and the Ottomans. 2 If one assumes that mortality of native Muslims in Kars was as bad as that seen in Van Vildyeti, where the wartime experience was similar, 3 73,959 native Muslims survived to 1922. In 1927, there were 340,399 Muslims in the area that had been the Russian Kars Guberniia. Projected back to 1922, this means that 317,703 Muslims were in the area in 1922. 4 Only 73,959 of these were natives, leaving 243,744 to be counted as in-migrants. These 243,744 could theoretically have been migrants from areas other than Russia. However, the relative undesirability of Kars and the presence of abundant land in the rest of Anatolia makes such internal migration extremely unlikely. In fact, many of the refugees from Russia did not remain in Kars, but went on to other regions in Anatolia themselves. Table 5. Refugees in the Kars Area*. Muslim in Kars* in 1922

317,703

Native Muslim Survivors from 1914 to 192273.959 Refugees

243,744

*The Provinces of Kars, Artvin (less Yusufeli), and the kazas of Oltu, Kulp, and Igdir.

^The Kavkasya Kalendarii (Tiflis) of 1916, the official government publication of the Russian Caucasus, gave higher figures, but they were not based on actual enumerations. 2 At the beginning of World War I, the Ottomans invaded Kars, were driven out by the Russians, then returned in 1917. Kars Province was the centre of warfare between the Ottomans and the Russians and between the Turkish armies of Kazim Karabekir and the armies of the Armenian Republic, as well as intercommunal warfare between Turks and Armenians, and Kurdish attacks on everyone. •'in Van Vilayeti, 62% of the Muslim population was lost between 1912 and 1922 (Muslims and Minorities, p. 134). ^The number 73,959 is an estimate, but has not been rounded so that readers may check the calculations. This has been done for other estimates, below, as well.

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

51

Only approximately one-half of the Muslim refugees labelled themselves as born in Russia, 127,988. These must be assumed to be part of the group of refugees from areas that remained in Russia in 1927. The vast majority of the 1927 inhabitants of the Kars region actually must have been born in Russia, since the area was in the Russian Empire from 1878 to 1922. Yet 212,512 of the 341,254 recorded inhabitants of the area listed themselves as having been born in Turkey. As seen above, most of those who registered themselves as being born in Turkey were in fact born in the Russian Empire, outside of even the larger 1927 Turkish borders. The Muslim refugees from Russia did not all remain in the Kars area. They migrated and settled in a region bounded by the Turkish republican provinces of Samsun on the west and Van and Bitlis on the south. In these provinces, 14,480 were registered in 1927 as having been born in Russia. Based on the experience of underregistration of the foreign-born in other provinces, it seems likely that those who were registered were only half of the actual refugees. That admittedly inexact standard has been applied to these figures, doubling the recorded Muslim refugees from Russia to the Kars area to 28,960. Table 6. Surviving Muslim Refugees from the Russian Empire in Northeastern and Eastern Anatolia in 1922. In the Kars region In other provinces 1 Total

243.744 (33)28.960 272.704

*The following provinces of republican Turkey are close enough to Kars that refugees could have gone there, even on foot.

Province Amasya Artvin (Yusufeli kazasi) Bayazit (-Igdir & Kulp kazasi) Bitlis Erzincan Erzurum (Oltu kazasi) Giimii§hane Rize Samsun §ebin Karahisar Tokat Trabzon Van Total

Males Born in Russia 839 1 790 938 150 4.257 15 80 2.142 13 2.298 223 2.734 14.480

* Only those areas that were in the Ottoman Empire after 1878. The areas that the Turkish Republic took from Russia listed only 41 Russian citizens in the 1927 census. So those listed as born in Russia must be considered to have been refugees.

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It is important to note that the type of enumeration of refugees in Table Six is different than the estimates of refugees in other areas of Turkey. The figures here are of refugees who survived the period of the wars, i.e., those who lived to be counted in the census. If the refugees from Russia had been counted when they arrived, their numbers would have been considerably greater. The extremely conservative assumption that one-third of the Muslim refugees from the Caucasus, approximately 135,000, died 1 would leave an initial refugee migration of more than 400,000.

Refugees from the Arab World The condition of potential refugees f r o m the A r a b world was considerably different than that in other areas. While a number of Ottoman citizens who were ethnically Turkish lived in Greater Syria and Iraq, there was little pressure on them to emigrate, surely not the murderous force applied to the Turks of the Balkans and the Caucasus. Therefore, there was relatively little migration from the Arab world to Turkey. Most of those who did leave are more properly labelled as returning Ottoman soldiers and bureaucrats than refugees. Table 7. South-eastern Anatolian Provinces. Population by Place of Birth in Syria and Iraq, as recorded, 1927. Provinces

Adana Cebelibereket Gaziantep Urfa Mardin Hakkâri

Born in Iraq

Born in Syria

6 6 1 0 9 9

318 135 392 18 10 0

(Source: 1927 Turkish Census) If there had been significant mass migration from the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire, it should have appeared in the 1927 Turkish census under the Place of Birth category in the provinces bordering Syria and Iraq. It did not. Even allowing for the large underenumeration common in the Place of Birth statistics, the numbers recorded were small (Table 7). '(liven the overall death rate of (a) the other Muslims in the eastern Anatolian area and (b) the Armenians in the same area, an estimated mortality of one-third is by no means excessive.

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

53

INTERNAL REFUGEES The numbers of the largest group of Muslim refugees cannot be properly estimated. They were the Anatolian refugees who fled from the Greek and Russian armies that invaded Anatolia and Eastern Thrace and from the intercommunal wars that accompanied the invasions.

Eastern Anatolia In the East there were Muslim refugees in two periods. The first period began in April, 1915, with the Armenian revolt in Van, continued with the Russian invasion of May, 1915, 1 and ended when the Russians retreated in the summer of 1915. The second came with the more successful Russian invasion of 1916, which ultimately led to the Russian occupation of the Ottoman province of Erzurum and of much of the provinces of Van, Diyarlbakir, Mamuretiilaziz, and Trabzon. The result of the Russian invasions was naturally a great exodus of the pacific, farming element of the population, both Muslims and Christians. The intercommunal war between Armenians and Turks also forced many to leave their homes, even in areas that were not on the line of march of either army. Equally disastrous was the complete breakdown of civil order in all of eastern Anatolia. Engaged in a losing struggle for survival, the Ottoman army and gendarmerie provided none of the protection from Kurdish tribes and others that was always needed by the settled populations of the east. A s a result, cities and provinces to the south and west that were under more firm Ottoman control swelled with Turkish refugees. Of these, the refugees from northern Trabzon Vildyeti and north-eastern Erzurum Vilayeti were the most fortunate. They were transported to Black Sea provinces of Anatolia— relatively stable areas under close central government control. 2 From there, some were sent to central Anatolia, as were refugees from southern Trabzon and Erzurum. Those who fled from more eastern areas were less fortunate. They fled south into the provinces of Mamuretiilaziz, Diyarbakir, and Van. Many of these refugees were forced to flee in stages, leaving their homes, settling in one area until the Russians advanced, then fleeing once again. Often refugees from Erzurum were forced to escape to areas as far from their homes as Mara§ and Adana, travels of more than 600 kilometres on foot.

^Spearheaded by Russian Armenian units. Ordu, Giresun, Unye, Samsun, Bafra, and Kastamonu.

2

54

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EAST

AND

THE

B A L K A N S

No completely accurate count of the internal refugees in eastern Anatolia was ever taken. Given the situation of the region, no census would have been possible. However, the relief agency of the Ottoman Interior Ministry did estimate the numbers of refugees who had been given assistance, transportation, or housing by the government. In the document from which the data in Table 8 has been taken 1 it is impossible to know if the Interior Ministry statistics were drawn from actual enumerations or from estimates made by local officials. 2 Most probably it was both. It must be noted that the figures in Table 8 are only of officially noted refugees; the document indicates that many refugees were not included in the numbers.

Table 8. Eastern Anatolian Muslim Refugees Receiving Assistance, to October, 1916.

From

Trabzon E. Erzurum Erzurum E.&S.Erzurum Van Van Bitlis Other

To*

Refugees

Samsun

79.100

Sivas

300.000** 80.000

Mamuretiilaziz 200.000 Diyarbâkir Total

43.800 659.100

* Many went on further into Anatolia. * * "exceeding 300,000" (Source: Ottoman Interior Ministry)

!#l-2, 361-1445, 15-22, 15-23, "To the Office of the Prime Minister, 4 December, 1916," quoted in Military History and Strategic Studies Department of the Turkish General Staff, Documents (circulated by the Turkish Directorate General of Press and Information), 1982, pp. 118-124. 2 It is obvious from the documents that some areas were much better enumerated than others. For example: "The number of people who took refuge in Diyarbakir is 16,901 at the central district and 16,162 at the district of Mardin. So far 40,000 refugees have been sent to Urfa." Obviously, more was known of the refugees in Mardin and Diyarbaki r than of those "sent to Urfa."

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

55

Since the pre-war Muslim population of the area taken by the Russians was 2.3 million, 1 a figure of 660,000 indicates that more than one-fourth of the pre-war population had become refugees by 1916. A later report of the Ministry of Refugees gave a figure of 868,962 refugees by the end of World War I. 2 If one considers that these data only include officially recorded 3 refugees and that great numbers of Muslims were killed before the refugee movements even began, the proportion of refugees becomes much higher. More than one-half of those who survived the first battles and massacres must have become refugees. Judged on the basis of the general wartime mortality of the Ottoman eastern provinces, more than one-half of the internal refugees in eastern Anatolia must have died. 4

Western Anatolia In the west, Muslim refugees also (led from invaders, the Greek army, and from the Greek-Turkish intercommunal war. Once again, as in eastern Anatolia, Muslims suffered from the lack of civil security. There were no marauding Kurdish tribes in the west, but local Greeks, capitalizing on the advance of the Greek army and the lack of security forces, attacked Turkish villagers and forced them to flee. The Greek army, aided by the victorious Allies, landed in Izmir on May 14, 1919. It met with little initial resistance as it advanced into Anatolia. Following the principles of the Mudros Armistice, Ottoman soldiers and police in western Anatolia had been ordered not to resist, and the Allies had seized the Turks' weapons. By the end of the summer of 1919, the Greek army had seized most of the Ottoman vilayet of Aydin. Greek forces advanced farther the next summer, reaching Izmit and Adapazan, then, in October, moving east. By January of 1921, all of western Anatolia was in Greek hands. In the region seized by the Greeks, Muslim villagers were indiscriminately slaughtered. At first, Allied observers felt that the murderous actions were those of local Greeks in quest of revenge for real or fancied wrongs. However, even the British observers, who so wanted to find in the Greeks a positive force for "Christian Civilization in the East," were forced to admit the character of the Greek atrocities: 1 See Muslims and Minorities, Chapter Six, especially pp. 110 and 111. ^Toynbee, p. 191. 3 The author of the Ottoman document on these refugees spoke of "an exodus of about 8(50,000 people," but even this may have been too low an estimate of the refugees as of 1916. ^This assumes that refugees suffered higher mortality than Muslims of the area in general. For the general mortality, see Muslims and Minorities, pp. 133-137.

56

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A distinct and regular method seems to have been followed in the destruction of [Turkish] villages, group by group, for the last two months, which destruction has even reached the neighborhood of the Greek headquarters. The members of the [Inter-Allied] Commission consider that, in the part of the kazas of Yalova and Guemlek occupied by the Greek army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Moslem population. The plan is being carried out by Greek and Armenian bands, which appear to operate under Greek instructions and sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops. *

Professor Toynbee, who had come to Anatolia expecting a far different situation than he found, realized the Greek intentions after viewing the massacres at Yalova and Gemlik and investigating the continuing depredations around izmir. He, like the Inter-Allied Investigation Committee quoted above, concluded that massacres and expulsions of Turks were planned by the Greek government. 2 The situation was the same Turks had seen in the Balkans—a Christian national army and local Christian forces killing them and forcing them out, and the intention was the same—to create a majority Christian state by murder or forced migration of the majority Muslims. To that end, a policy of State Terror was employed, beginning with massacres of Turks upon the Greek landing at Izmir and rising in intensity to a high point in 1920-21. Turks not personally attacked in the Terror were intended to hear of the massacres that accompanied the Greek army and flee to other areas. As the Greeks advanced, the policy bore results. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims fled. There is little doubt that had the Greek army been as successful in Anatolia as in Ottoman Europe, a majority Greek state on all sides of the Aegean would have resulted.

^Toynbee, p. 284. ^Toynbee, p. 367. Professor Toynbee's reporting on the Greek-Turkish conflict was more reliable than that of many others for two reasons: First, he actually saw much of what he wrote. Because of his long-standing pro-Greek credentials, Toynbee was actually writing against his own prejudices and preconceptions. It hurt him to speak against the Greeks and show sympathy for the Turks, whom he had so often damned, but Toynbee was an honest scholar. In his earlier work on the Armenian Question, however, Toynbee had relied only on the reports reaching him from pro-Armenian sources, especially information provided by U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau. Turkey was Britain's enemy and no reports from the other side were available. Unfortunately, Toynbee was not on the spot in Eastern Anatolia. However, this does not diminish his value as an eye-witness in Western Anatolia.

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

57

The numbers of refugees from the Greek invasion can never be known exactly. With the virtual collapse of the Ottoman government, the only agency that had effectively aided Muslim refugees, the Ottoman Refugee Commission, ceased practical operations. European observers were impressed and astounded by the magnitude of the Muslim migration, but they could only estimate the r e f u g e e numbers. British reports often spoke of Greek atrocitiesand Turkish refugees from areas such as Izmir, Aydin, or Yalova saying "there must be 100,000 refugees" 1 in that area alone. The Refugee Commission estimated that there were between 200,000 and 350,000 refugees. 2 Of all the estimates of refugee numbers, those presented by ismet Pa§a at the Lausanne Conference seem most accurate. He estimated that 1.5 million Anatolian Turks had been exiled or had died in the area of Greek occupation. 3 This figure appears high, but it was presented to the Conference with detailed statistics of destruction in the occupied region, and these statistics make the estimate seem probable, ismet Pa§a quoted from a census made after the war which demonstrated that 160,739 buildings had been destroyed in the region. The destroyed homes alone would account for many hundreds of thousands of refugees, 4 and not all refugees' homes were destroyed. European accounts of refugees were necessarily fragmented, but when considered they support Ismet Pasa's estimate. The British agent at Aydin, Blair Fish, reported 177,000 refugees in Aydin Vilayeti by September 30, 1 9 1 9 , 5 only f o u r months after the Greek landing. The Italian High Commissioner at Istanbul accepted an Ottoman estimate that there were 457,000 refugees by September of 1920, 6 and this figure did not include the new refugees of fall and winter of 1920-21. Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, the League of Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, stated that 75,000 Turks had come to the Istanbul area alone 7 since November of 1920. Such figures make ismet ^ . O . 371-5140-1448. ^Toynbee, p. 169. 3 F.O. 371-9061-969, Ismet Pasa to the President of the Third Commission, Lausanne, January 20, 1923, "Memorandum respecting Turkish Claims against Greece." This record contains village by village figures for many areas and includes costs of property and animals destroyed, as well as buildings. Toynbee, p. 169. 4 800 ,000 at five to a building. Of course, many of the buildings destroyed may have belonged to Greeks, who made up approximately 14% of the pre-war population of the area. However, by no means were all of the houses of the Muslims destroyed. 5 F.O. 371^1429-146296. 6 F.O. 371-5824-12031. n 'League of Nations, Report of the Work of the High Commission for Refugees presented by Dr. Fridtjof Nansen to the Fourth Assembly, Geneva, September 4, 1923.

58

THE

M I D D L E

EAST

AND

THE

B A L K A N S

Papa's estimate all the more credible. Since more than 600,000 Muslims died 1 in the invaded area, one can estimate that 900,000 were refugees. A number of Muslims left Eastern Thrace during the Greek occupation of 1918 to 1923. It is known that more than 9,000 of these escaped into Bulgaria. 2 The Greek government took a census of Eastern Thrace in 1920, 3 but only counted total population, not religion or ethnic group. In 1920, the Ottomans estimated that 200,000 refugees from "Rumelia" 4 were in the Istanbul area. Of these, at least 30,000 came from Eastern Thrace. 5 Muslim refugees who went from Eastern Thrace to Anatolia remain uncounted.

CONCLUSION By the time of the 1927 Turkish census, almost three million Muslims, one-fourth of the Turkish population, 6 had been refugees. Mortality in the provinces occupied by Greek forces: Ottoman Province Aydin Htidavendigar Biga Ìzmid Total (Source: Muslims and Minorities, p. 134)

Loss 333.230 160.612 24.793 12.039 530.674

The figures above are actually of "population loss," not mortality. That is, they are the remainder when the population of each province in 1922 is subtracted from the population in 1912. Since the four provinces were affected by in-migration and some areas of Ankara and Konya vilâyets were also occupied by the Greeks, an estimate of 600,000 dead is reasonable. 2 Consul Keel in Sofia stated (Nov. 2, 1920) that 9,000 had been counted, but that the numbers were probably greater. (F.O. 371-5253-613950.) 3 The 1920 Greek census was inferior to all the other Greek censuses both in collection and publication. The statistics by religion and mother tongue for the region taken from Turkey have not, to my knowledge, ever been published. Only general figures of total population were printed and these often appear to be large undercounts. The census was published in various forms from 1921 to 1928. See especially Greece, Ministère de l'Économie Nationale, Direction de la Statistique, Population du Royaume de Grèce d'après le Recensement du 19 Décembre 1920, Athens, 1921, and Greece, Ministère de l'Économie Nationale, Statistique Générale de la Grèce, Recensement de la Population de la Grèce au 19 Décembre 1920, Athens, 1928. The former included statistics from the areas in Eastern Thrace occupied by Greece, but later returned to Turkey; the latter did not. 4F.O. 371-5284-12031. 5 This is a very speculative figure. The British estimated 65,000 'destitute Muslim refugees' (F.O. 371-6561-14164 and F.O. 371-7931) in Istanbul in 1921 and 1922, 75,000 by 1923 (F.O. 3719098-7663). Since most of the refugees from Anatolia did not go to Istanbul, but rather went to areas held by the Nationalists, 30,000 is a reasonable number. The British general Harrington reported to the War Office that "these [65,000] unfortunate Moslems have fled from Greek rule in eastern Thrace and the southern shores of the Marmara." (F.O. 371-7931, January 31, 1922). 6 It is not strictly accurate to say that these refugees were one-fourth of the Turkish population, but rather that this number (2,925,650) was almost one-fourth of the number of the Turkish population. This is because many of the refugees included in Table 9 had died before the Turkish census was taken.

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

59

TURKEY

Table 9. Muslim Refugees.

International Refugees

From the Balkans

1912-1920

413.922

From the Balkans

1921-1927

431,062

From the Caucasus

272.704 Total

1,117.688

Internal Refugees Eastern Anatolia

868.962

Western Anatolia

900.000*

Thrace

39.000** Total

1.807.962

*includes some who were first International Refugees, then later Internal Refugees. **including a minimum of 9,000 refugees from Eastern Thrace to Bulgaria.

The final word in a paper on refugees should be on the condition of those who fled to Turkey and what awaited them there. Unlike the Greek and Armenian refugees, the Muslim refugees were forgotten by the world. The League of Nations and western countries made extensive gifts and loans to assist Greek refugees. 1 For the settlement of the Greek refugees from Turkey in the 1920s, for example, loans of £13 million were made by western countries. The Greek government itself was able to contribute £6,3 million to settlement and assistance of refugees. Together, these amounts, which do not include extensive private charity donations, amount to approximately £16 per refugee. By contrast, the Turkish government was able to spend less than £1 million on its refugees, 2 an average of less than £2 per person. 3

^Ladas, pp. 686-689. Ladas, p. 709. ^Counting only post-1920 refugees. Had others been counted in the refugee numbers, the amount per capita would have been much less. 2

60

THE M I D D L E E A S T A N D THE

BALKANS

During the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire, although wounded, remained intact, and some public monies were available for refugee support and settlement. As the Ottoman wars continued, however, resources dwindled until refugee assistance disappeared. There had never been much for refugees. By the time of the Turkish War of Independence, there was virtually nothing. The situation of the Muslim refugees to Anatolia was often abysmal. "The practical difficulties of distribution [of refugees] seems to be very great. The immigrants are greeted on arrival with tea and cakes, speeches and flags, and then sent up country, very often to starve." 1 The assumption, one often stated by Europeans remote from the scene, was that incoming Turkish refugees would simply take over the houses and farms of departed Greeks and dead Turks. This reasoning neglected the fact that the homes had been destroyed and the fields burned. The Turkish government had little to spend and "what is spent will not go far when even the old inhabitants are in urgent need of seed, animals, tools, and often homes." 2 Thus the Muslim refugee migrations ended in great suffering and great mortality, as they had begun.

Appendix One Later Refugees The Turkish-Greek Population Exchange and closed Soviet borders effectively ended refugee migration from Greece and Russia after the middle 1920s. Migration from Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia continued well past 1927. These were "deferred refugees," Muslims who had remained in Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia after their fellows had left. However, they can properly be viewed as refugees, since it was the lasting effects of the Balkan Wars and World War I and later discrimination that drove them to Turkey. The numbers in Table A1 include some who were not proper refugees (e.g., elderly Turks who "retired" to Turkey, students, etc.), but not many. A complete study of the continuing refugee exodus from the Balkan Christian countries would demand more detailed statistics than are presently available. The only available source for data on migration to Turkey are the limited tables published in the Turkish statistical yearbooks. Immigration statistics for the period 1921-1929, printed in the third Statistical Yearbook, were not listed by country of origin and no figures at all were printed for 19291

F.O. 371-10184-2119. 1924 report of W. S. Edmonds, consul-general at Izmir. Ibid. Mr. Henderson, sent to Izmir to report, gave a slightly better picture of Turkish efforts for the refugees, but still said that "housing is desperately needed and many died before the first harvest came in". (F.O. 371-10184-7688.) 2

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN T U R K E Y

61

1933. The data in Table Al. are probably indicative of the general period 19271940 (immigration dropped significantly in 1941), but there is at present no way to know how indicative. The continuing significance of the immigration from Balkan countries is demonstrated by the fact that migrants from Bulgaria and Romania were 92% of the recorded 1934-1940 migrants to Turkey, 99% of the 1936-1929 migrants. Table Al. Immigrants to Turkey, 1934 to 1940. Bulgaria

Romania

Yugoslavia

1934 8.682 16.092 1935 21.162 24.968 20.962 1936 11.730 1937 13.490 13.110 1938 20.542 8.832 1939 17.777 3.375 1940 7.004 3.021 (Sources: Turkish Statistical Yearbooks)

A p p e n d i x Two. I m m i g r a n t s to T u r k e y , Settlement. Vilâyets Adana Afyon K.H. Aksaray Amasya

1921

1922

1921

3.219 3.489 250 65 71 154 1.060

to

1927,

Other

Totals

6.084 1.100 402 87 233 152 131

34.057 50.719 33.074 26.752 29.678 21,458 11,216

by

1923

1924

1925

-

-

_

-

-

-

Province

1926

1927

1.200 236

407 94

497 264

-

-

897 223 639

597 381 662

-

-

-

-

Ankara Antalya Artvin Aydin

38 11

65

260 19

-

-

5.524 451 3.286 1.859 162 2.781

-

46

-

-

-

-

-

-

179 136

264 -

-

6.322 15.903 609

88 3.510 2.111

14

Balikesir Bayazit

35 13.725

-

-

-

2.178

437

-

-

-

1.379 33

-

-

-

85

-

Bilecik Bitlis Bolu

-

of

1.575 -

569 1.139 12

-

527 610

_ 25 1.932 -

720 97

62

THE

Burdur Bursa Cebelibereket Çanakkale Çankin Çorum Denizli Diyârbekir Edirne Elâziz Erzincan Erzurum Eski§ehir Giresun Giimu§ane Gaziaymtap Hakâri Içel Izmir Ìsparta Istanbul Kars Kastamonu Kayseri Kirklareli Kirgehir Kocaeli Konya Kiitahya Malatya Manisa Mardin Mara§ Mersin Mugla Nigde Ordu Rize Samsun Siirt

MIDDLE

EAST

AND

THE

-

-

-

747

54

219

383 22.636 454 7.866

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

269

-

-

-

-

-

310

231

6.701

-

-

-

-

44

7.593

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

13 -

777 10

35 -

-

-

625

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

1.682

4.644

2.301

-

-

-

-

458

711

-

-

13 -

-

316

-

3.647 1.314 127 192 135

-

679 4.653 -

28.106 -

336 253 18.718

-

-

-

-

2.665

3.273

-

-

-

-

-

-

10.043 2.767 485

-

-

-

51

399

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

20 2.738 1.822 1.778 -

-

2 827 116 -

1.524 2.190 127 75 20.224 12.224 1.220 35 514 296 530 516 70 134 -

220

26

BALKANS

-

16 7 8.011 838 1.020 -

192 -

1.067 172 2.222 380 744 -

-

-

-

16 5.314 232 62 581 324 -

27 1.196 129 295 2.566 56 302 29 75 -

3.965 -

755 1.097 553 76 923

1.395

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

1.375

-

-

-

-

-

1.028

1.132 2.992 621 15.668 44

-

-

-

-

-

2.952 -

415 -

-

-

2.411

8.795

5.071

-

-

-

-

-

-

51

10.477

-

27 705 326 192

128 1.462 3 36 -

80 3.937 -

466 -

15 91 -

19 6.238 202 2.412 -

39 245 3.053 21 1.292 776 73 -

553 -

210 172 -

15 -

3.350 -

MUSLIMS Sinop Sivas §ebin K.H. Tekirdag Trabzon Tokat Urfa Van

REFUGEES 310

6.540

215

Yozgat Zonguldak Total

4.828

137 11.079

63

IN

TURKEY

873 2.356 5.779 17.315 45 -

6 701

1.835

90 329 3.200

527 29 2.987

680

13 379

13 45

10.093 50.689 235.414

728 1 2.022 275 6

56.523 35.051 32.213

(Source: Annuaire Statistique III)

Appendix Three: Muslim Refugees in Istanbul It must be assumed that the Muslim refugees in Istanbul were included in the figures given above for refugees f r o m the Balkans. Because of incomplete statistics, it is impossible to satisfactorily unravel the refugees in Istanbul f r o m the masses of non-refugee foreign-born residents of the city. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate on the numbers of refugees in the city and its environs (Istanbul Vil&yeti). Table A-3 lists the recorded, uncorrected 1927 population of Istanbul Vilayeti in three categories—Place of Birth, Nationality, and Mother Tongue. Considering the fact that by 1927 transient refugees—Russians, Greeks, Armenians, and others—had already gone off to other lands, Table A3 gives a limited indication of the number of Istanbul dwellers who were refugees from the 1912-22 wars. Those born in the Arab world, most of whom were citizens of Arab countries, were not refugees. Approximately 6,000 claimed Iranian nationality, but only 4,000 claimed Iranian birth, and only 1,000 spoke Farsi as their native language. This demonstrates once again the undercounting in the Place of Birth category, as well as the presence of long-term (many generations) Iranian residents of Istanbul. The individuals of Iranian nationality or birth seem to have been mainly Azeri Turks who cannot be considered to have been refugees.

64

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AND

THE

BALKANS

Table A3. Istanbul Vilayeti. Population by various categories, 1927, as recorded.

Place of Birth

Mother Nationality

Turkey Egypt Iraq Syria Iran Albania Bulgaria Greece Romania Russia Serbia

731.873 430 61 230 4.222 1.352 12.189 16.283 4.863 9.929 3.796

727.696 217 97 158 6.179 1.434 3.545 25.666 1.113 5.708 3.129

Total Population

794.444

Tongue

574.592 3.092* 1.069 6.148 4.985 91.902 ** ** **

* Arabic-speaking ** Listed as part of 13,704 in "Other Languages" (Source: 1927 Turkish Census)

Few of those listed as born in Albania in the census were refugees, since more were listed as Albanian in nationality than were born in Albania. The large number of Albanian speakers in Istanbul were most likely a remnant of the Ottoman Albanians living in Istanbul before the wars. As was the case in the rest of Turkey, the refugees living in Istanbul and born in Ottoman territory later conquered by the Balkan nations usually listed themselves as born in Turkey. Nothing else would explain the low figures for those born in Greece. The excess in Istanbul of those born in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Russia over those claiming those nationalities can probably be assumed to be the lowest possible limit of refugees from those countries (i.e., those refugees actually born in those countries, not those born in the Ottoman Empire): Bulgaria, 9,344; Serbia, 667; Romania, 3,750; Russia, 4,221. Of those, a certain percentage were not Muslim refugees, but rather Russian "Whites" and others living in the city. Some were political

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

65

refugees from earlier period. However, comparison of those who spoke Bulgarian to those who claimed Bulgarian birth 1 indicates that most of the refugees from the Balkans were Muslim Turks. The Muslim refugees listed above as having lived in Istanbul in 1927 must be assumed to have been emigrants escaping the Balkan Wars. 2 Anatolian refugees were not discernible in the statistics, since they were all born in Turkey. Moreover, most of the refugees from Anatolia had left Istanbul after the ultimate victory of Turkish forces over the Greeks.

Appendix Four: Sources The analyses in this paper are based on statistics from a variety of sources. Numbers have been reproduced as they appear, but all figures given here, whether given to the single digit (e.g., 1,234,876) or rounded (e.g., 1,200,000) are to one degree or another estimates. They should be taken for the picture of the refugee phenomena they afford, not as absolutely correct numbers. The only truly reliable sources for the demographic evaluation of the Muslim refugees were published by the governments and agencies that actually counted the refugee populations. There is a great amount of other material, primarily "eye-witness estimates," that was contradictory, unverifiable, and unusable. Such evidence was, in fact, never actually based solely on eyewitness enumeration, for who could have personally seen the hundreds of thousands of refugees? The accounts were, instead, made up of second-hand reports, of varying accuracy, on parts of the great migration, collected together. Often they were pure guesswork. Whenever possible, an accurate analysis of the number of Muslim refugees should consider actual counts of the Muslim population, although reliance on official statistics presents its own problems. One is forced to consider the numbers of Muslims as recorded before and after the migrations in order to find how many migrated. With few exceptions no one carefully enumerated the refugees as they were migrating. The warring countries were ^4,985 listed Bulgarian as their mother tongue, 3,545 were Bulgarian nationals. Subtracting the 4,985 from 12,889 listed as born in Bulgaria leaves 7,904 almost all Turkish-speakers. Although Romanian, Russian, and Serbo-Croat speakers were too few to be entered separately in the census tables, their small numbers indicate that what was true for those bom in Bulgaria rnusX have been true for them, also. Some Muslim refugees from Russia, arriving via Anatolia or the Black Sea, perhaps 3,000, are not included.

66

THE

MIDDLE

EAST

AND

THE

B A L K A N S

too occupied with battle and survival to hold censuses. The exception came when refugees crossed borders, passed properly-manned customs posts, and were counted or when agencies such as the Mixed Commission for the GreekTurkish Population Exchange or the Ottoman Refugee Commission actually enumerated their charges. It is often necessary to base analysis of refugee numbers on official and unofficial estimates. Of these, the best were those made by the Ottoman Refugee Commission, which, even when it had not formally counted the refugees, at least had the advantage of having seen many of them, fed them, and ministered to them. Next in importance come the estimates of the Allied officials who operated refugee camps in Istanbul and elsewhere. Finally, consular reports on refugees provide useful estimates, but they can be used only when they are consistent and support each others' figures. In theory, it should have been relatively easy to count the numbers of immigrants to Turkey. The 1927 census contained a category—Place of Birth—which should have identified the immigrants. This was not the case, as was seen above for refugees from Russia. Muslims tended to list Turkey as their place of birth, no matter where they were born. 1 This may have meant that the area in which an individual was born was in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) when he or she was born, although not in 1927, or it may have been wishful thinking (e.g., a person born in southern Bulgaria who states "I am a Turk. I come from Turkey.") It also was an easy answer a naturally suspicious refugee could give to nosy census-takers. When answering the Place of Birth question Muslims in the Kars-Ardahan region faced the extra problem of deciding whether their province was in Turkey or in Russia when they were born. It had been in Turkey when their parents were born and it was again. Confusion was inevitable. In any case, the 1927 category Place of Birth is unreliable.

ÏThe census question was a simple "Country of Birth?" There was no instruction for census takers to ask more detailed questions, such as "City of Birth?" or "Province of Birth?", which would have helped reduce the error.

MUSLIMS

REFUGEES

IN

TURKEY

67

Table A4. Turkish Population Born in Balkan Countries, as recorded in 1927. Born in

Population

Albania Bulgaria Greece Romania Serbia Born in Turkey Born elsewhere

2.245 101.163 75.435 19.331 23.750 13.189.514 458.756

(Source: 1927 Turkish Census) Table A 4 shows the magnitude of the problem. The numbers of those listed as born in Greece, for example, were a small proportion of those who had come to Turkey in the Population Exchange, much less the total number of those who had actually come from Greece.

AGE, FAMILY, AND MIGRATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACK SEA PROVINCES OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE* Although contemporary Europeans often stated that the Ottoman government kept no population statistics, the Ottomans in fact often kept very detailed population records. The Ottoman 'censuses' recently used in scholarly research are only general summaries of population. 1 More exact demographic research demands information on demographic structure, such as age, sex, and family affiliation. Since general 'censuses' are useless for such analysis, population registers (ntifus defterleri) must be used. This study considers data found in population registers of three areas on the Black Sea — Rize in Trabzon Vilayet, Hisar Ôzii in Bolu, and Azdavay in Kastamonu (figure I). Since the three population registers or defters were kept as conscription records, ca. 1263 (1846/47), 2 they were only concerned with those who were or would be draftable — male Muslims — and with information that would affect their military status age, disability or death, and migration. The absence of females limits the demographic usefulness of the defters, but they still provide much information on population and on family and household structure. Nineteenth-Century

Population

Registers

Because of the needs of conscription, the entries in population registers were obviously intended to be a means of keeping close watch on male Muslims. Since the Muslims had no surnames, a system of lakabs (family names of the Oglu form, e.g., Pasvan Oglu Ahmet), 3 grandfathers' and fathers' names, and physical descriptions was used to identify each male household head. 4 For example, a household in Softa Karyesi, Azdavay, had seven members described as follows: I wish to thank the archivists of the Ba§bakanlik Arjivi for their assistance and particularly Tevfik Giiran for bringing two of the defters to my attention and helping me translate the code of the Ottoman scribes. I also wish to thank Professors Georges Sabagh and Nancy Gallagher who read the text and made valuable comments.

Especially Vedat Eldem, Osmanli imparatorlugu Îktisadi Sartlari Hakkmda Bir Tetkik

(Istanbul, 1970). T h e three defters are to be found in the Kepeci Tasnifi of the Ba§bakanlik Arçivi in Istanbul: Hisar Ôzii Kepeci # 6346 Rize Kepeci # 6462 Azdavay Kepeci # 6477 ^Either the grandfather's name, e.g., 'Ahmet Oglu,' where Ahmet is the grandfather, of the lakab name, e.g., 'Pasvan Oglu,' appears in the Oglu position. ^Physical description often includes stature, beard, moustache, colour of hair, and physical defects. 2

70

THE

MIDDLE

EAST

AND

THE

BALKANS

'Black Sea

Figure I Azdavay, Hisar Ozii, and Rize 1. Of small stature, white bearded, Softa Oglu farmer §aban bin Halil, aged 85. 2. His son, of middle stature, light brown bearded Omer, 40. 3. His other son, of middle stature, large moustached Osman, 28. 4. The aforementioned Omer's son, young Mehmed Emin, 10. 5. His (Omer's) other son, Ahmed, 8. 6. The aforementioned Osman's son, Ali, 8. 7. His (Osman's) other son, Hiiseyin, I. A household in Karacalar Koyii, Azdavay, had ten male members: 1. Of large stature, large moustached Kedisera Oglu farmer Ismail bin Mustafa, 22. 2. His brother, of middle stature, young and beardless Siileyman, 18. 3. His other brother, of middle stature, young and beardless Ahmed, 15. 4. The aforementioned (Ismail's) mother's brother's son, of middle stature, large moustached Hasan bin Siileyman, 22. 5. The aforementioned Hasan's son, Abu Bakr, 8. 6. His (Hasan's) other son, Salattin, 4. 7. The aforementioned Hasan's brother's son, Siileyman bin Mustafa, 9. 8. His (Hasan's brother Mustafa's) other son, Mehmed, 7. 9. Another son of Ismail's mother's brother, of middle stature, farmer tlyas bin Siileyman, 15. 10. the son of another of ismail's mother's brothers, Yakub bin Mehmed, 22.

AGE,

FAMILY,

AND

MIGRATION

71

Mustafa (d.)

Mehmed (60) Hasan (40)

Osman(35)

Hasan (25)

Amr (15)

S-

-(29)

Mehmet (8)

AbuBakr(18)

Mustafa (2)

Mahmut(8)

Ömer(d.)

Mehmet (2)

Omer (22)

Halil (I)

Figure 2 Family of Mustafa Unfortunately, this type of data allows very little analysis of the 'parish record' type. In European countries, where complete sets of birth (or baptism), death, and marriage records were kept, long time series analyses of families, fertility, and mortality are possible. The data in the defters do not support such study. Since each defter reflects a discrete point in time, it is possible to consider only (1) the family and persons in the household as they existed at the time of the register's compilation; (2) those males already dead or migrated who left sons behind and who appear in the defters as 'bin ' (as in item 7 in the Karacalar Köyü household above), 'The aforementioned Hasan's brother's son, Siileyman bin Mustafa.' From this we know that Hasan had a brother Mustafa, not now in the village, who was either dead or had migrated at the time the defter was compiled. The registration system permits the construction of only very incomplete and tentative family trees. T w o representative families are outlined in figures 2 and 3. They illustrate some of the problems of demographic analysis of Ottoman population registers. In the family of San Ahmet, for example, a mention of the death of an Ahmed, aged 40, could mean two men of the same lakab or family name; both men would be 40, but of different generations. There are four Ahmets mentioned in San Ahmet's family, three Hasans, three Mehmeds and so on. Since, as shown below, the male reproductive life continues over a long span, it is often impossible to identify the father of an individual. It is especially true of large kinship groups, such as the Softa Oglus. A boy listed as 'Young Softa Oglu Hasan bin Hiiseyin, aged 2' could have had any of a number of Hiiseyins, aged 16 to 85, for a father. Sometimes, in the 'lakab position' in the name (i.e., Oglu) the name of the grandfather is written instead of that of a kinship group. For example, Ahmed (40) in figure 3 is listed in the defter as 'Ahmed Oglu Ahmed bin Ali, aged 40.' A listing of this type does not lend itself to analysis, owing to the same problem — picking the right Ahmed and the right Ali.

72

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THE

BALKANS

San Ahmed (d.) Ali (d.)

Hasan (d.)

Mehmed (70)

Ahmed (40)

Hüseyin (50)

Ahmed (40)

Musa (50)

Hasan (25)

Halil(lO) Ismail (8) Mehmed (2)

Mustafa (40)

Ali (10)

Mehmed (35)

Ahmed (6)

Hasan (2)

Salih (22) Süleyman (15) Abu Bakr (10)

Figure 3 Family of Sari Ahmed

§aban Omer

Mehmed Emin

Osman

Ahmed

Ali

Hiiseyin

Figure 4 Household of§aban bin Halil Analysis of long-term trends in family structure is thus not feasible. Defters do, however, allow analysis of family and age structure on the household (hane) level. The defters give complete information on the family relationships within each hane. We can accurately see the structure of each living unit as demonstrated in the two Azdavay households listed above. The household of §aban bin Halil is a 'patrilinear' extended family, three generations living in one household (figure 4). The household structures are much more straightforward than the last, some more complicated. Approximately 3,000 of these households have been included in this study.

AGE,

FAMILY,

Hisar Özü Rize Azdavay

AND

MIGRATION

73

Population (males) 892 3,810 5,644

Households 301 1,300 1,754

10,346

3,355

The results of analyses of them indicate a society in which the extended family is prevalent and polygamy, military conscription, and migration are causative factors in demographic change. Ismail's maternal

Mustafa

Siileyman (d.) Ismail

Siileyman

uncles Mehmed (d.)

I

Yakub

Ahmed

Hasan

Mustafa (d.)

ilyas

\ Abu Bakr

Salattin

Siileyman

Mehmed

Figure 5 Household of Ismail bin Mustafa Households Since many Ottoman population figures are presented by hane (household) rather than by individual, determining the mean number of persons per hane is of considerable importance to Ottoman historical demography. This study arrives at a figure higher than the 'five persons per hane', for example, in the works of Omer Liitfi Barkan. The number of males per household in each of the three geographical areas of the study comes to an average of 3 per household:

Hisar Özü Rize Azdavay

Males per household 3.0 2.9 3.2

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It is demonstrated below that in the villages considered here, especially in Rize and Hisar Ozii, there were more women than men owing to migration and military conscription. One can assume, therefore, that there were approximately 6.5 persons in the average household in the three areas. The hane was a dwelling unit, not an administrative device for registering males. This is proven by the fact that brothers, cousins, and other men, are counted sometimes as being in separate hanes, sometimes as being in the same hane. In addition, members of the same families are often grouped together in the same section of a defter, but separated by living groups into separate hanes. Of three brothers, two may be listed as living in one household, the other in a separate household. Supplementing this evidence are the Sicil-i Ntifus Nizamnameleri 1 (Population Register Regulations) printed later in the century and various other archival documents. 2 These regulations instruct registrars to consider hane to be a dwelling unit or household. Households registered in the defters were relatively large, as large as those in the same areas today, owing partly to the presence of the extended family. 3 (This study considers as 'extended' any household unit that contained relatives other than father and sons, not including servants, who, in any case, do not appear in these registers). Since only males are entered in the defters, the number of extended households is necessarily undercounted. For example, a household in which a father, his son, and a brother of the father lived is counted in the defter as extended, but a household in which a father, his son, and a sister of the father lived is counted as nuclear, or unextended, because the sister is not entered in the defter. The three areas studied here differ in the degree to which their households are extended.

Issued at various times in the late nineteenth century. The most detailed of the nizamnames appears to be Dahiliye Nezareti, Sicil-i Ntifus idare-i Umumiyesi Mudiriyeti, Sicil-i Ntifus Nizamnamesi (Istanbul, 1300 A.H.). The nizamname instructs all 'ntifus memurlari' to register the hane as a dwelling unit, not as a kinship group living in different houses. 2 Ba§bakanhk Ar§ivi, Yildiz Tasnifi # 113-47-52, a Sicil-i Niifus Nizamnamesi which repeats the same instructions concerning hanes as the one mentioned in the preceding note, dated 1318 and probably only distributed to bureaucrats. Two hand-written codes of rules for population officials: irade Dahiliye #22856 (1280 A.H.) Irade Meclis-i Mahsus #2089 (1290 A.H.) •'The Turkish Demographic Survey reported that rural households in the Black Sea Area had an average household size of 6.0 (Turkiye Ntifus Ara§tirmasindan Elde Edilen Hayati ¡statistikler, 1966-1967 (Ankara: Hacettepe Basimevi, 1970), p. 11 (cited here-after as Turkish Demographic Survey)).

AGE,

FAMILY,

Hisar Ozii Rize Azdavay

AND

MIGRATION

75

Percent of extended households 34 25 33

Rize is the least extended, whereas the other two are approximately equal. 1 The difference arises from the relative lack of patrilinear, that is, fatherson-grandson extended families in Rize: Percent of households in which grandsons of Hisar Özü Rize Azdavay

household head are present 12 5 13

A son in Rize who married and fathered a son himself was much less likely to stay in the paternal household than was a son in Hisar Ozii or Azdavay. The most common form of extended household was not the patrilinear, but the joint extended family — a family that included the brothers of the household head:

Hisar Özü Rize Azdavay

Percentage of households in which brothers of household head are present 17 17 16

These figures are slightly deceptive as many of the households in which brothers of the hane head are present are those led by women, the hive liane. These households do not appear as such because women are not entered in the population registers but they can be seen in the number of households listed as having a (male) household head under 15 years of age:

Serira Timur in Turkiye'de Aile Yapisi (Hacettepe U. Yaymlan D-5 [Ankara, 1972], pp. 3234), reported that, for the Black Sea area, extended families of the type considered here came to 31.4 percent. (Comparisons are inexact, due to the presence of females in Timur's survey and not in the defters.)

76

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Hisar Ozii Rize Azdavay

EAST

AND

THE

BALKANS

Percentage of households with male household head under 15 years of age 7 5 3

As might be expected, most hanes were led by older men. Given the system of registration, the older age of hane heads demonstrates that younger males very often remained with the household, rather than setting up their own households. If they had done so, the number of hane heads in younger age groups would have been greater (table I). Rize has a lower incidence of older men heading households. This corroborates the evidence above that young men in Rize were more likely to move from their fathers' houses than were their counterparts in Azdavay. Table 1 Proportion of household heads and male population in age groups Hisar Òzii

Age group 0-14 15-44 45-59 60+

Rize

Household Male heads population .0299 .4885 .2425 .2392

.4350 .3857 .0930 .0863

Azdavay

Household Male Household Male heads population heads population .0500 .4908 .2500 .2092

.4837 .3569 .0878 .0717

.0200 .4025 .2725 .3050

.3995 .4002 .1015 .0987

Age Structure In a society in which there is a stable health and fertility situation and no migration the proportions of the population in each age group will always be the same, a 'stale population'. Whereas the absolute number of persons in any age group may go up, the percentage of the whole population that is accounted for by an age group will always be stable (i.e., if an age group has 5 percent of the total population, the numbers in that age group may increase, but that age group will always have 5 per cent of the total population). No population is ever truly stable, but it is useful to compare populations, even though not stable themselves, to model stable populations. The comparison between the population as it was and as it would have been were it not undergoing changes tells us much about the population that might not otherwise be known. Such is the case with the populations of Hisar Ozii, Rize, and Azdavay.

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AGE,

F A M I L Y ,

AND

M I G R A T I O N

83

If a man took one wife of approximately his own age and married no other, their reproductive lives would have been alike. A woman's reproductive life runs from approximately 15 to 45 years of age, as would a man's, under conditions of equal age at marriage and one wife. Table 3 shows that these conditions were not met in the areas considered here. The first column, 'Male births by age of mother,' shows approximately what might be expected to be the age of a father too at the birth of his sons, should both father and mother be the same age. Since the column is drawn from modern Turkish data, it does not strictly represent the situation ca. 1846. The percentage of male births by age of mother at the upper ages would then have been lower, owing to maternal mortality. Data from the 1846 period, were it available would thus have made the male/female fertility differential even greater. The second group of column shows the male fertility situation, as well as it can be known, as it was in Hisar Ozii, Rize, and Azdavay. The fertility peak comes five years later than that of women and extends far longer. A significant percentage of male fertility comes after age 45, 19 percent in Hisar Ozii, 22 per cent in Rize, 28 percent in Azdavay. The tradition in Turkish villages is for every woman to marry, if possible. Spinsterhood is socially unacceptable. 1 Coupled with the long male reproductive life and religious and societal acceptance of polygamy, universal marriage means that, if fewer men are available, polygamy and the marriage of older men to younger women increase. The populations studied here demonstrate that this is true. Such a system allows for great variations in male mortality and migration, variations that were the rule in nineteenth-century Anatolia. Despite changes in the male population, the number of children remained stable. The number of children born depended on the number of young adult women, which was fairly constant, not the number of men, w hich fluctuated owing to war and migration. The 1927 Census of the Turkish Republic contains evidence to support this idea. The area of Rize suffered from the wars of 1877-1922 more than did the Azdavay area and showed, consequently, many more women than men in its population. The marital situation of both provinces shows the same effect as that mentioned above, that is, polygamy as a demographic remedy for a lack of males (table 4). In Rize in 1927 polygamous marriage seems to have been following a tradition seen in the defter of 1846.

!See Paul Stirling, Turkish Village (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966), pp. 107-123, 178221, on marriage, and Ibrahim Yasa, Hasanoglan Koyti (Ankara, 1955), pp. 60-64, 138-144.

84

THE M I D D L E

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BALKANS

Table 4 Marital status in 1927 Azdavay (Daday)a

Rize Married Males Females

Number 11,551 18,990

Percentage 38 b 62 b

Number 7,919 9,789

Source: Ba§ Vekalet, istatistik Umum Mudurliigu, 28 Te§riniewel Niifus Tahriri, Fasikiil II (Ankara, 1929).

Percentage 45 b 55b 1927 Umumi

a I n 1927, Azdavay was in the Daday Kaza of Kastamonu. The data given is for Daday.

''Percentage of those married.

The Benefit of Polygamy The marriage and family customs of Black Sea Turkey in the nineteenth century formed a social system that was well adapted to its environment. It was a flexible system whose two main features, polygamy and the extended family, allowed the populations of Rize and Hisar Ôzii to replenish themselves, in spite of great demographic pressures. In a society in which wars, migration, and epidemic and endemic disease caused high mortality, it was necessary that all fertile women marry and give birth, if population numbers were not to drop. Population decreases would have meant less land tilled, fewer soldiers for the army, and a great disruption of a social system in which the young were needed to care for the old. In addition, for a Muslim society in which the concept of sexual honour is important, it was morally necessary that young women marry. Polygamy supported the societal and religious ideal. During the late nineteenth century, certain analysts, even European observers with the Ottoman Empire, asserted that polygamy was detrimental to the Turkish population. 1 Supposed population decrease was said to have been caused by the 'moral' defects of polygamy. This study has given evidence that the opposite was probably true. The polygamous marriage pattern of Black Sea Anatolia was well suited to the migration pressures and demographic situation of the time.

' For example, Dr Pardo, 'Causes de la décroissance de la population en Turquie,' Gazette Médicale d'Orient ('Constantinople') XII (5) (August, 1868), pp. 65-68, who declares that the medical climate of Turkey is fine and healthful, but that the immoral effects of polygamy, abortion, and quack medicine are killing off the people. Pardo, of course, gives no evidence for any of his assertions.

FACTORS IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE POPULATION OF ANATOLIA, 1800-1878

At the present stage of research, no one can estimate with confidence the population of Anatolia before 1878. Unlike the period after 1878, for which rich and definitive data sources are available, 1 the earlier period is poor in readily available sources for population study. Sources exist, but because of archival cataloguing delays, the inherent difficulty and tediousness of historical demographic research and scholarly indifference to the study of Ottoman population, they have not been exploited. I propose to list the main factors that must be considered in studying nineteenth-century Ottoman population. I will attempt to give general estimates of the Anatolian population in the period, but it must be remembered that these will be the roughest of rough estimates, based more on enlightened guesses than on sound statistics. Sources Ottoman Figures The only sources of accurate population numbers for any country are those that arise from an actual count of the population — a census or a registration system. Since no one but the Ottomans ever conducted a systematic enumeration of the Anatolian population, Ottoman figures are, by default, the only ones on which to base an analysis of the Anatolian population. The Ottoman system was in essence a registration system in which the male population was recorded for purposes of taxation and conscription. 2 Beginning in the reign of Mahmut II, Ottoman ntifus memurlari (population officials) collected the names, ages, and physical characteristics of the Anatolian males by households and village. These records were collected at the sancak and eyalet levels into tahrir-i ntifus (population register), and forwarded

' Sec Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities, the Population of Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York and London 1983. 2 This changed at the end of the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman government became more concerned with population data for other reasons.

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BALKANS

to Istanbul for bureaucratic use and inclusion into what have erroneously 1 been called 'censuses' — lists of the population of the empire. These records have been described in detail elsewhere. 2 The Ottomans updated their tahrir-i nttfus in local areas with yoklama (military registration) or vukuat (vital events) registers. These were summary records, compiled by village every four or six months, of each birth, death, military conscription and migration. Events were usually recorded by household, name, age (or birthdate) 3 and physical description. Christians and Jews were generally recorded in separate tahrirs. As was the case for Muslims, registration of non-Muslims reflected their place in the Ottoman system. Muslim males were expected to be soldiers, and so their age, family status and physical characteristics — factors that affected their potential suitability for military service — were carefully recorded. Non-Muslims were seen as sources of revenue, so they were classified by their wealth into three categories of cizye (capitation tax) payers. Because non-Muslims did not serve in the military, the tahrirs often did not list their ages or family status, making the non-Muslim tahrirs less valuable as demographic sources. The vital-events registers, yoklama and vukuat, are of great importance: they are the stuff of historical demography, analogous to, though not quite as potentially valuable as, the parish registers of Western Europe. By collecting the vital-events registers for a district and linking them with a summary tahrir that lists the entire male population, one can carry out intricate studies of fertility, mortality, household structure, family, etc. In fact, we will never know the social and economic status of the Ottoman peasantry until studies of these registers have been made. Yet scholars have avoided considering these registers, mainly because of the overwhelming work involved in using them properly. Most population registers, especially the tahrir-i ntifus registers, have never been catalogued by the Ba§bakanlik Ar§ivi in Istanbul, and remain unavailable until they are catalogued. One must assume that they are considered to be of much less importance than political documents, or even registers from the fifteenth and sixteenth-centuries. Nevertheless, thousands of nineteenth-century vukuat and yoklama defters are catalogued and available in the Bagbakanlik Ar§ivi. 4 These have seldom been consulted. A census must be completed over the entire country or region at approximately the same time and must enumerate the population as observed at that time. The Ottoman 'censuses' were a collection of registers, each of which was updated separately. When a census was collated, some of the registers had been updated recently, some had not been updated for years, and some were new enumerations. The concept of a modern census cannot be said to have even been considered by the Ottoman bureaucracy until the end of the nineteenth century (see Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities and idem, 'Age, Family, and Migration in Nineteenth Century Black Sea Provinces of the Ottoman Empire,' International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979): 309-323. See McCarthy, 'Age, Family.' 3 Not only were births registered by birthdates, but occasionally deaths, as well. ^Many are catalogued in the Maliyeden Miidevver and Cevdet Dahiliye collections of the Rasbakanlik Ar§ivi.

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8

87

When using population registers certain difficulties must be surmounted. First, ages were not properly recorded since most Anatolians knew their own ages only approximately (e.g., '30' rather than 33, '60' rather than 58). Moreover, the status that comes with age in a traditional society also furnished men with the incentive to list their ages as older. A detailed study of many registers, such as those mentioned above, would alleviate much of the problem of false age-registration, since ages could be compared in various registers and males could be followed in various registers from birth to death. Second, only males were included in the early registers. Not until the reign of Abdiilhamid II were females recorded, and even then they were never enumerated as completely as males. Third, migration makes it difficult to trace individuals in the registers. Population registers often listed only 'gone' or 'gone to Istanbul', and tracing migrants is impossible. Fourth, the Muslim naming system can make identification of individuals difficult. Muslims used few personal names — Mehmet Ali, Hasan, Htiseyin, etc. In parts of the Black Sea, for example, the patronymic 'Softaoglu' was common; therefore tracing 'Softaoglu Mehmet bin Ali' from one register to another can be difficult. Fifth, mortality among new-born children was often unrecorded: and, when recorded, grossly undercounted. If recorded, infant mortality was often entered by simply writing fevt (fatality) over the birth record, so that the death was not entered with other fatalities at all. The Ottomans made three compilations of registration data prior to 1878: (i) the 1831 census, transliterated and published by Enver Ziya Karal 1 and Fazila Akbal; 2 (ii) the 1844 census, no copy of which has to date been found by researchers; and (iii) population material published in the 1284 Devlet Salname (the 1877-78 government yearbook). Of the three, the 1831 census is the most accessible and potentially the most valuable. It gives extensive lists of population down to the local level (kaza and nahiyet) for many areas, rudimentary data on age (usually 'old' or 'of military age' or 'too young'), statistics on enrolment in the military, and some data on minorities. Its contents are analyzed in Appendix 1 (see p. 62). Not much can be said of the 1844 census until the archives yield it up. The 1294 salname contains total population figures for most Anatolian sancaks. Its data are very difficult to analyze, however, since no breakdown by kaza or religious group was given and many of the figures are obviously approximations, as is shown for the provinces of Diyarbakir and Aydin in table 1. The data for Diyarbakir and Aydin are representative of the type of data recorded for all the provinces.

'Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanli Imparatorlugunda Ilk Nufus Sayimi, 1831, Ankara 1943. 2

Fazila Akbal, "1831 Tarihinde Osmanli Imparatorlugunda Idari Taksimat ve Nufus", Belleten 15 (October, 1951): 627-628.

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Table 1 Examples of population figures in the 1294 Devlet Salname Sancak s Diyarbakir Vilâyeti Diyarbakir Mardin Siirt Malatya Total Aydin Vilâyeti îzmir Aydin Saruhan Mente§e Total

Males

120,000 249,000 15,000 25,000 409,000

155,000

110,000 84,522 32,500 382,022

For the purposes of demographic research there are no adequate documents summarizing the pre-1878 Ottoman population available at present. Accurate estimates of the population of the period will only come from a detailed investigation of the population registers themselves.

European Estimates Although European observers had no statistical knowledge of the Ottoman population, most of them did not refrain f r o m making demographic assertions. For example, C. B. Elliott stated in 1838 that depopulation in the Ottoman Empire was obvious ('as is universally accepted'), because he saw so many cemeteries. 1 W. Eaton estimated the Istanbul population in ca. 1800 by asking the kasap basi how many sheep were slaughtered in the city and multiplying their number by the figure of per capita consumption of sheep in Paris, so arriving at a total of 230,000 inhabitants. 2 In 1847, the British consul at Samsun, R. W. Stevens, ascertained the population of Mosul by accepting the figure of 14,388 for male population given him by 'an informant.' To find the total population, 'My information added that two 1 Travels in the Three Great Empires of Austria, Russia, and Turkey, London 1838, vol. 2, pp. 67 and 68. 2 W . Eton, A Survey of the Turkish Empire, 3rd ed., London 1801. This and other imaginative estimates are found on pp. 265-274. A generation later, Count Andreossy made better use of consumption figures. He deduced the population of Istanbul to be 630,000 (including 'les faubourgs') by analyzing the consumption of water and flour {Constantinople et le Bosphore de Thrace, pendant les années 1812,1813, et 1814, Paris 1828).

THE

P O P U L A T I O N

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8

89

females might be calculated for each male, which would give a total of 43,164 souls'. 1 A collection of estimates such as these would fill many large volumes, and be of little use. 2 Every traveller, geographer, consul, and adventurer who came to Anatolia in the nineteenth century felt obliged to include in his memoirs a set of population statistics derived from an unmentioned source. It was an age in which footnotes and bibliographies were seldom needed. After the middle of the nineteenth century, European estimates of the Empire's population improved somewhat, because Europeans began to be aware of Ottoman statistics. Before 1878, the figures on Ottoman population most often quoted were those of A. Ubicini (Table 2). 3 Ubicini's figures were avowedly based on the Ottoman 'census' of 1844, 4 and analysis tends to support this assertion. When compared to later reliable statistics, the 1844 figures seem plausible, though evaluation of the figures is much hampered by the fact that no actual copy of the 1844 Ottoman census has ever come to light. In 1878 there were approximately 11 million inhabitants in Anatolia. 5 Table 2 The population of Ottoman Asia ca. 1844 Asia Minor Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan 1 Arabia (Mecca, Medina, Ethiopia)

10,700,000 4,450,000 900,000

Source: Ubicini, pp. 18-19. 1'Kurdistan' is undefined, but it is perhaps the area of the later V a n Vilâyeti Van and Hakkari).

(i.e.,

If one postulates only à slight increase in population from 1844 to 1878, and allows for the loss of Kars and Ardahan not included in the 1878 figures, then Ubicini's figures are reasonable. They are so superior to the unfounded estimates that preceded them that they must indeed have been totals drawn from the 1844 Ottoman enumeration. Unfortunately, they are no more than totals. Ubicini obviously did not have access to actual Ottoman data but *See the many volumes of N. Michoff, La Population de la Turquie et de la Bulgarie, 4 vols. Sofia 1915-1935. FO 195-304, May 16, 1847, 'Report on Moussul, Diarbekir, etc.' 3 The figures here are taken from Ubicini's Letters on Turkey (trans, by Lady Easthope), London 1856, pp. 18 and 19, though the French editions were published earlier. The figures can also be seen in Eugène Bore, Almanack de l'Empire Ottoman pour l'Année 1849/J850, Constantinople, which Ubicini quotes. 4 Ubicini, p. 24. •^McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities. Non-Muslim populations have been projected from 19Y\1912 back to 1878, with the assumption that the non-Muslim population increased at the same rate as the Muslim — a satisfactory procedure when only an approximation of that population is needed. 2

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was given only total numbers. 1 This forced him to publish only general figures and to guess at the religious make-up of the Empire, so that his figures on population by religion are useless. Until the document for the 1844 census is actually found Ubicini's population table, despite its limited usefulness, will remain the only available summary of the results of the 1844 enumeration. 2 Ubicini's figures were copied, and often arbitrarily changed, by a great many European commentators on the Ottoman Empire. They were the basis of the population estimates of von Reden, 3 Morel, 4 Viguesnel, 5 and many others, 6 and, due to sheer repetition, Ubicini-based population figures were accepted in Europe long after the Ottoman population had changed. Even the Ottomans paid tribute to Ubicini. When they needed information on the Empire for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867 they did not look to their own archives but to the Europeans. The semi-official Ottoman guide, Selaheddin Bey's La Turquie a /'Exposition universelle de 1867,7 appeared to be the official word, but was actually warmed-over Ubicini (Table 3). Table 3 Population figures of Selaheddin Bey and Ubicini

Asia Minor Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan Arabia Totals

Selaheddin 1867

Ubicini 1844

10,907,000 4,656,000 900,000 16,463,000

10,700,000 4,450,000 900,000 16,050,000

Ubicini was a good scholar who cited his references and gave complete data whenever possible. For example, in his Letters he gave more complete data on the population of the city of Istanbul because the data were available to him. Much later, he published a complete list of Ottoman population figures when these became available to him. See L'Economiste français, July 1877. 2 S o m e tahrirs that were obviously drawn up for the 1844 census have been seen. See McCarthy, 'Age, Family'. 3 Die Türkei und Griechenland, Frankfurt am Main 1856 ('Die ejalets von Kleinasien oder Anadofi... 10,700,000.') 4 La Turquie et ses réformes, Paris 1866. Morel added a bit to Ubicini's figures to allow for the intervening years. Voyage dans la Turquie d'Europe, Paris 1868. 6 Th. G. Horton, Turkey: the People, Country, and Government, London 1854, p. 52; Horton took Ubicini's figures and said they were 'according to the best authorities.' For a multitude of other estimates, see Michoffs volumes. 7 Paris 1867.

THE

P O P U L A T I O N

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7

8

91

Disease The factors that held back the natural increase of the Anatolian population were disease, starvation, and war and civil unrest. Very few of those born into nineteenth-century Anatolia died of old age. Of the three factors, disease was responsible for the greatest mortality. A high rate of endemic disease was a part of the basic demographic system of Anatolia — a high birth rate balanced by a high death rate. Epidemics, especially cholera and plague, were an occasional disaster to the population, but they were no match for the toll taken by endemic diseases.

Mortality as Recorded Vital-events registers are the only source of information on the number of deaths in Anatolian villages. Though the registers analyzed below are too few to be a statistically valid representation of even a section of the Anatolian population, they do give some insight into the level of mortality that was common. The registers have been selected at random from the Ottoman Archives, with no attempt at scientific sampling. The record of 1,098 deaths listed in Table 4 was compiled from eight registers from western Anatolia. Mortality records from the vital-events records show an expected pattern of underregistration of the young and overstatement of age by the old. As mentioned above, such inaccuracies are standard and may be observed in almost all enumerations of nineteenth-century Ottoman population. Judging from the pattern of mortality among adults, deaths in the 0-4 age group must actually have been twice the number recorded.1 An unusual pattern is seen in the mortality of males 15 to 34 years of age. In that age group, recorded mortality was much higher than expected. Figure 1 demonstrates that the mortality for males 15 to 19 was especially high, approximately twice the expected number of deaths. 2 The reasons for this are at present unknown.

^ h e figure for percentage of total deaths adds up to more than 1.000, due to errors in rounding out the figures. 2 See Appendix 2, p. ???.

92

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EAST

AND

THE

BALKANS

observed observed

observed & expected

15-19

20-24

25-29

Figure 1 Observed and expected deaths in vital-events registers Table 4 Male deaths by age group Age group

Male deaths

0-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80+

307 68 57 69 56 39 37 44 49 45 62 58 79 35 42 15 36

Total

L0981

(.280) (.062) (.052) (.063) (.051) (.036) (.034) (.040) (.045) (.041) (.056) (.053) (.072) (.032) (.038) (.014) (.033)

Sources: Data f r o m defters found in the Kepeci Tasnifi of the Basbakanlik Ar§ivi. All defters are four-months records, except 6485, which is f o r six months: ^See the Age-at-death table that corresponds to any of the Coale and Demeny mortality levels (GRR=3.0) mentioned in Appendix 2 below (e.g., Level = 4, GRR 3.0:.6063 of all deaths occurred before age five.)

THE P O P U L A T I O N

OF A N A T O L I A ,

Number 6513 6510 6489 6485 6479 6536 6480 6485

Area Kara Hisar-i Sahib Kemer Edremit Beypazar Bandirma Kasabasi Karesi Kazasi Denizli Kazasi Fatsa Kazasi Virancik Nahiyesi

1800-1878

93

Year 1267 1263 1258 1262 1265 1257 1261

The number of deaths in the 15-24 age group may only seem to be high since older males had emigrated or been drafted, hence reducing the older population and correspondingly reducing the number of deaths recorded for the older groups. This would make the mortality among the younger males appear proportionately higher. But since the prime draft-ages were from 15 to 24, as were the prime migration-age, this explanation is weak. Some dead were certainly entered in the wrong age groups. It seems unlikely, however, that such an explanation would account for the high rate of mortality, especially as recorded for the 15-19 age group. A more likely explanation for the mortality rate would seem to be death resulting from civil unrest and, perhaps, from tuberculosis, which will be discussed presently. The mortality pattern in the registers indicates a high mortality among the general population, with a life expectancy at birth of 25 to 30 years. Most of the mortality however, came at the very early years. If a person lived past age five, he or she could expect more than 40 more years of life, on the average.1

Endemic Disease There is no known contemporary source of reliable evidence concerning Anatolian endemic diseases in the early nineteenth century, and there will probably never be any. There were no medical observers in the Anatolian interior and therefore no evidence. As late as 1895 Sivas Province had only 12 1 Mortality

Txvels

e

o

e

5

4 24.9 44.8 5 27.4 46.1 6 29.9 47.4 7 32.3 48.7 8 34.8 49.9 Judging from the vital-events registers and other evidence (See McCarthy, 'Age, Family,1 and Muslims and minorities), it is very unlikely that the mortality level would go beyond 8, and 4 to 6 is more likely (see Appendix 1, below).

94

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beds for the sick in its two 'hospitals' and two physicians. Ankara had 61 beds and five physicians. 1 Conditions in the other Anatolian provinces were similar. The only available hard evidence on endemic disease was collected in the major cities of the Empire, especially in Istanbul. Even this evidence was only a record of the causes of recorded deaths, 2 not a record of all the deaths in the population as a whole. The majority of early childhood deaths, for example, were never recorded by the medical officials of Istanbul. 3 Death records f r o m Istanbul indicate that tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments were the chief cause of death, accounting for 35 percent of the recorded mortality in the city (1911). Circulatory diseases took 15 percent, dysentery and other intestinal disorders 6 percent. Despite attempts at vaccination smallpox victims still made up 1 percent of deaths, as did scarletfever victims. 4 Although statistics from Istanbul are not strictly applicable to inner Anatolia, the prevalence of certain diseases there does indicate the general types of mortality common in the region. Tuberculosis must have been a major cause of death in the 1800s, as it remained into the time of the Turkish Republic. Since tuberculosis strikes most heavily at young adults, this may explain some of the excess mortality observed among these age groups in the vital-events registers discussed earlier. Dysenteric infections would have been a greater problem than the Istanbul registers indicate, since the Istanbul figures slight the very young age-groups among whom such diseases took the greatest tool. 1 Justin McCarthy, International Historical Statistics: the Late Ottoman Empire, Boston 1982, Table IV.l. 2 The Ottoman Sanitary service recorded the following death per thousand rates in Istanbul: 142 1901 147 1902 141 1903 1904 158 157 1905 159 1906 157 1907 167 1908 166 1909 152 1910 164 1911 180 1912 In actuality mortality in the city must have been higher, perhaps more than double the recorded numbers (Direction Sanitaire de la Ville de Constantinople, Statistique sanitaire de la Ville de Constantinople de l'année 1912, Constantinople 1913, p. 4). 3 The death rate for ages 0-1 (ages 0 and 1, not only 0) was recorded as 3.23/thousand, or 20 percent of the total recorded deaths — figures which, given the general level of mortality, must at least be doubled. 4 Statistique sanitaire, p. 6. The statistics quoted are for 1911, but apply with little variation for any year. See, for example, 'Ûç yiiz on uç senesi Marti ibtidasindan §ubati nihayetine kadar Der Saadet ve Bilad-i Selasi vefiyat cedvelidir,' Der Saadet, 1313 Mali (in the Atatiirk Library in Istanbul) or the monthly death statistics and articles in the Gazette médicale d'Orient.)

THE P O P U L A T I O N

OF A N A T O L I A ,

1800-1878

95

Judging by the smallpox mortality rate in Istanbul, where 104,043 citizens had been vaccinated by 1912, smallpox deaths must have been significantly high in the hinterlands in the 1800s, where few vaccinations had been performed. The greatest number of deaths in Anatolia were, of course, among infants. Approximately 50 percent of the population died before reaching the age of five. 1 Infants were especially struck by respiratory and intestinal problems, and diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever, measles and whooping cough. 2 Epidemic

Disease

The great epidemic disease of the nineteenth century was cholera. It struck in five 'pandemics' during the century, as shown in Table 5. Table 5 Cholera epidemics world and Istanbul, 1817-1923 World 1817-23 1826-37 1846-62 1864-75 1883-96 1902-23

Istanbul 1830 1847 1848 1865 1872 1890 1892 1907-14

*See Appendix 2, below. ^Percentage of deaths in 1912 due to various causes (partial): Measles 5.6 Smallpox 5.5 Wooping cough 1.0 Infantile gastro-enteritis 6.3 'Atrepsie infantile' 9.1 Infantile convulsions 12.9 Intestinal diseases .3 Respiratory illness 26.8 'Born Dead,' included in the Ottoman figures, has not been included in the divisor used in calculating the above percentages. Twenty percent of those who died before age 2 were listed as dying of 'congenital weakness.' (Statistique sanitaire, tables).

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In each epidemic, cholera was reported in many of the Anatolian seacoast cities, and some of the interior cities as well. For Anatolian cities, the epidemic of 1847-48 seems to have been the cause of the highest mortality. Cholera 'of the worst type' was reported at Erzurum, as well as at Mu§ and Trabzon.1 Trabzon was especially hard hit: Cholera... broke out here, and raged to such an alarming extent throughout September and October, that almost the w h o l e of the population f l e d to the mountains and commerce was suspended for three months. 2

Qf those who remained in the city one in ten reportedly perished so that all told there were more than 800 deaths. 3 Yet the population of Samsun, another Black Sea port, suffered few deaths.4 In 1865 — which was the year of the worst epidemics world-wide — most of Anatolia was spared from the cholera that raged throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Diyarbakir was at the northern end of the great epidemic in Syria. Samsun and Trabzon received a few cases when the contagion arrived by ship. However, there was 'no epidemic'5 in Samsun, and there were only 28 deaths in Trabzon. Erzurum suffered more; 224 recorded deaths resulted from cholera reportedly brought to the city by a migrant. In Sinop and other Black Sea cities, the only deaths were of voyagers in cholera lazarettos. In 1865, the disease was demographically insignificant in Anatolia proper. 6 In Istanbul, however, cholera reportedly claimed 30,000 victims, perhaps an inflated figure.7 Deaths from the epidemics after 1865 were demographically insignificant, and there is little evidence on the 1830 epidemic.8 The difference between the 1865 cholera mortality in Istanbul and in Anatolia proper is an important consideration. Standard works on cholera have long extrapolated from the large mortality in Istanbul and other Ottoman cities to conclude that cholera was epidemic in all parts of Anatolia: 'By October I f O 195-284, 1847 nos. 27, 30, 34, 38 and 1848, no. 1 Brant to Wellesley, et al. ^Enclosure in FO 195-284, 1848, no. 6, 'J. Stevents Report from Trebizond,' 31 December 1847. 3 Dr. M.-P. Verrollot, Du Cholera morbus en 1845, 1846, et 1847, Constantinople 1848, extracted from the Journal de Constantinople, pp. 170-175. 4 FO 195-304,1848, nos. 13,15,19, 21, Stevens to various. ^Conférence sanitaire international, Rapport, Constantinople 1866, pp. 22 and 23. 6 Ibid„ pp. 19-25. 7 Pr. Mavrogeni, Epidémie cholérique de 1893, Constantinople 1894, seen in a reprint from the Gazette médicale d'Orient. ®H.-C. Lombard, Notes historique sur le choléra morbus, Geneva 1832, pp. 19, 20 and map. FO 78-204, no. 22, Brand to Bidwell, Smyrna, 18 November 1831, and no. 25, 20 December 1831.

THE

P O P U L A T I O N

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8 9 7

[1847] it had covered the greater part of Russia and Turkey.' 1 '[July 1868] it was dispersed over the whole of Persia and Asiatic Turkey.' 2 If the type of mortality registered in Istanbul had been true of the whole of Anatolia, the demographic impact of the cholera epidemics would have been immense. Three to 4 percent of Istanbul's population is said to have died in the 1865 cholera epidemic. Projected onto Anatolia as a whole, this would mean that more than 400,000 had died of the disease in 1865. 3 But, as we have seen, this was not the case. In fact, despite numerous references to cholera in Anatolian cities, it would be a mistake to assume that the high mortality recorded in urban areas was necessarily representative of the effect of the disease on the whole population. Rural mortality was lower. There are also indications that mortality in non coastal areas was much less than in the coastal cities. First, European consuls and Ottoman archival sources have little to report on cholera in inner Anatolia. Cities such as Ankara, Sivas and Konya, which were populous enough and sufficiently weak in sanitation to be vulnerable to cholera attacks, were not mentioned as cholera areas. Of course, lack of evidence is no proof, but the absence of evidence of cholera in these cities at least suggests that the incidence of cholera was low in the interior. Second, cholera epidemics were almost entirely a product of contaminated water supplies. The disease spread through fecally contaminated water. Cholera was most likely to be present in areas in which a large population used the same water supply. Thus cholera was prevalent in cities and in regions such as India, Egypt, and Iraq where major rivers were the source of water, and of contamination, to millions. Such river systems did not exist in Anatolia. Most Anatolian peasants depended on localized sources of water — on streams or wells. Even the larger rivers, such as the Kizil Irmak, did not flow near the urban areas that were the sources of cholera contamination, and therefore would not have taken on the cholera pollution of the cities; nor did these rivers support the type of dense human settlement that made the areas of the Nile, Ganges or Tigris and Euphrates such reservoirs of cholera. Third, there is an inverse relationship between the strength of cholera epidemics and temperature. Central Anatolia, which has cold winters, would have been less likely to be subject to outbreaks of cholera than would the milder coastal areas, and cholera epidemics would subside more rapidly in the cold interior than on the climatically milder coasts. Fourth, cholera is secondarily spread by certain types of foods, and these were more likely to be found in the coastal cities

' n . C. MacNamara, Asiatic Cholera, London 1892, p. 9. Ibid„ p. 25. Assuming the figure of 30,000 deaths to have been correct, and assuming 11 million Anatolians, and ca. 800,000 in Istanbul. 2

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than in the interior. The foods in question — fruits, fish, shellfish, salads, jellies, etc. — were not usually seen in central Anatolia, where people subsisted on grains and dairy products. Finally, cholera traditionally struck cities harder than rural areas in all parts of the world. In Russia — an area with available statistics and an environment closest to that of Anatolia — authorities registered nine times as many deaths in urban areas as in rural ones during the 1847-48 cholera epidemics. 1 Though some of this differential was perhaps in part due to rural underregistraiton of deaths, underregistration alone could not have accounted for a factor of nine. In interior regions, cholera may have been a problem only in the cities of Eastern Anatolia. Contemporary records indicate that cholera epidemics extended to the east of a line drawn from Trabzon through Erzurum to Diyarbakir. 2 Cholera seems to have appeared at Diyarbakir in 1823, and at Erzurum, Kars, Oltu, Bitlis, Diyarbakir and other Eastern cities in 1847-48. However, of these cities only Kars and Oltu suffered high mortality (349 deaths reported in Kars, 280 in Oltu). 3 To put Anatolia cholera in perspective, it should be understood that cholera deaths would have had very little effect on the Anatolian population as a whole. On the basis of the death reports seen above, a cholera mortality of 10,000 in an Anatolian epidemic (not including Istanbul) would seem reasonable. The natural rate of increase of the Anatolian population would have replaced these 10,000 dead in little over one month. 4 The effect would have naturally been felt to a greater degree in the areas where cholera was prevalent than among the population as a whole. In Anatolia plague was more common than cholera, and seems to have been epidemic generally throughout Anatolia, rather than being mainly confined to the cities. 5 In western Anatolia there were twelve epidemics reported between 1771 and 1839. In eastern Anatolia plague occurred in 1805, 1807-8, 1811 1824-25,1827-28,1839 and 1841. 6 Unfortunately, there are few contemporary accounts of plague in the Ottoman Empire. The few reports that ' [ or information on cholera, see R. Pollitzer, Cholera, Geneva 1959. Verrollot, p. 17. 3 Ibid., pp. 181-195; Cevdet Maliye 28024; FO 195-284, nos 27,30, 34, 38 (1847); FO 195-285, no. 1 (1848). 4 I n the Coale and Demeny Tables (Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, Princeton 1966): East, mortality level four, GRR=3.0, birth rate=.05092, death rate=.04222. Other assumptions would only slightly change the effect. 5 Hirsch, Handbook of Geographic and Historical Pathology, London 1883-1886, p. 507. Ibid., pp. 506 and 507, and J. D. Tholozon, Histoire de la peste bubonique en Mesopotamie, Paris 1874, pp. 14-29. 2

THE

P O P U L A T I O N

OF

A N A T O L I A ,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8

99

exist came from Istanbul, where it appears the poor suffered more than the rich. 1 Since the agent of plague is the rat flea, and the poor were more likely to be infested than the rich, the greater suffering of the poor from plague was inevitable. The lack of water that made a cholera epidemic in inner Anatolia unlikely probably had the opposite effect on plague. Clothes were seldom washed and the Anatolian villager shared the infestation of his urban brother. J. D. Thozolon, the only researcher to attempt to investigate Middle Eastern plague in detail, wrote only of eastern Anatolia. But every mention of plague in his work indicates that it was widespread among Armenia and Muslim villages, and among nomadic Kurdish tribes. 2 No statistics were kept on Ottoman plague-victims. It is known that the disease peaked in the 1830s, perhaps reaching its greatest modern ferocity at that time. Then in the 1840s, it died out all over the Middle East. After 1841 it was never a significant demographic factor in Anatolia. For the analyst, the difficulty lies in analyzing the impact of plague on the population. How can we know how many died of the plague? The answer is that we cannot, since there is no evidence. Anatolian plague must be treated as a quasi-endemic disease; that is, plague mortality must be considered as a part of general mortality, as if it were an endemic disease. Actually, plague appeared so often in Anatolia that its effects would have been similar to those of an endemic disease. Plague deaths would have appeared with great regularity. 3 Conscription and War Mortality A system of military conscription as onerous 4 as that of the Ottomans must have had demographic implications, not only because of wartime mortality, but also because of the effect on fertility that the absence of males from their villages would have had.

F. Cholet, Mémoire sur la peste, Paris 1836, pp. 14 and 15. For more on the plague in Istanbul, see Miss Pardoe, The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks, London 1837, especially pp. 285-333. ^Tholozon, Mésopotamie and 'Histoire de la peste bubonique en Perse,' in Gazette medicale d'Orient, 22 August 1873. 3 The disappearance of plague in Anatolia in the 1840s may partly explain why, in the absence of sanitary or medical advances, underlying mortality in the early nineteenth century was wotse than at its end. Military deaths would be another factor. 4 S e e Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Cambridge 1977, vol. 2, p. 100.

100

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At the time of the Crimean War an estimated 250,000 men were enrolled in the Nizam, (regular army), 1 i.e., 5 percent of the Anatolian Muslim population, from which most Ottoman soldiers were drawn. 2 250,000 men of marriageable age being taken from a monogamous population would have meant 250,000 women without husbands and — since Turkish rural society had little illegitimacy — fewer children. Thus approximately 10 percent of the women would have gone childless for want of a mate. 3 In fact, Anatolian society was not monogamous. Though the incidence of polygamy is a debated issue, its presence surely lessened the demographic effect of conscription. Two other factors also helped keep Anatolian fertility high. First, serial polygamy and the practice of older men marrying young women meant that men who returned from military service continued to have reproductive lives. It also meant that a man could marry when he was young, and then marry a young female again in his old age, in this way accounting for two (or more) female reproductive lives. A fairly extensive body of evidence attests to this being the practice. 4 Second, despite military rules, men may have often returned to their home villages briefly, but long enough to beget children. Children in the tahrirs are recorded whose fathers are listed as being in the Nizam, and villages show households with a large number of 'cousins' and 'nephews' whose fathers may have been dead or in the military. 5 Such factors mitigate against the decline of fertility that one would normally expect to accompany conscription. Still, conscription must have had an effect on fertility. 6 Calculation of the effect of military conscription on the Anatolian population is confused by the differential nature of Ottoman conscription. For military manpower the Ottomans drew heavily on areas that were firmly under their control. Other areas contributed few, if any, men to the military. When

E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields, Cambridge, 1953, p. 58. Ubicini placed the figure far lower, at 150,000; but his figures appear to be too low, considering the number of Turks in the war (Ubicini, La Turquie actuelle, Paris 1855, p. xxiii). On the war, see Allen and Muratoff, chaps. 4-6. ^Actually, they were primarily drawn from the Turkish population of Anatolia and Rumeli, since few Kurds were enrolled. 3|f o n e assumes a mortality level of East 4 and a GRR of 3.0, then 46 percent of females would have been at chiidbearing age, 15 to 45. Assuming 5,000,000 women in the total population, 2,300,000 would have been 15-45 and 10 percent of those would have been excluded from fertility. These of course are broad assumptions, intended to illucidate, rather than be definitive. 4 See McCarthy, Age, Family,' pp. 320-323. 5 Ibid„ pp. 313-320. % o r example, a woman who lost a prospective husband to the army and was forced to wait one year for him, or for another suitor, would have lost a year of her reproductive life. Over an entire country, such losses can multiply into major losses in fertility.

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8

101

modern conscription began, under Mahmud II, very little attempt was made to distribute evenly the burden of military service, and complaints were registered of villages that were denuded of men by Ottoman 'press gangs.' An example of the conscription differential can be seen in Table 6, which lists the proportion of men taken from the pool of available manpower in the kazas of Kayseri sancak of Ankara vilayeti in 1267 (1850-51). 1 From the percentages in Table 6, it is obvious that the central kaza (Kayseri) provided a disproportionate percentage of soldiers from its pool of available manpower. The disproportion in actual numbers of men is even greater. The numbers of men recorded in the other kazas is far lower than in Kayseri, due to large-scale underregistration of population. The result is that Kayseri Kazasi provided 80 percent of the sancak's military conscription totals. Table 6 Muslim males enrolled in the nizam Kayseri sancak 1267

Kayseri Develi Kara Hisar-Develi Samadaniyeti (?) 2 Sarioglan Incesu Total

In nizam-i gahane

% of total

Total available adult males

2,217 116 160 35 37 45 2,610

10.6 4.3 7.9 4.9 6.0 3.1

20,985 2,696 2,028 716 619 1,467 28,511

Source: Cevdet Dahiliye 13023.

The wars fought by the Ottomans in the nineteenth century were the source of much of the high mortality in nineteenth-century Anatolia. Since there was no effective medical attention for the Turkish soldier, injuries and disease killed many more men than did enemy fire. In May 1854, for example, the Turkish army fighting in north-eastern Anatolia had an effective strength of 120,000. One year later, its effective strength was 70,000. No more than 15,000 had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. However, wintertime

^Cevdet Dahiliye 13023. This source indicates that the information was taken from the tahrir of 1262 and it is doubtful if the basic population figures were updated. The listed population of adult Muslims (25,901 plus 2,610 in the Nizam-i §ahane) is too low, indicating thai the Ottomans probably did not have the proper number of males in the hinterlands listed, much less have them enrolled for military service. ^Title difficult to read. This title is not found in later lists of administrative subdivisions.

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epidemics of diseases such as typhus had 'earned off twice that number.' 1 The Turkish army was racked by diseases like plague, cholera, and malaria, which also attacked the general populace. But its worst enemy was typhus, which came about when soldiers huddled together in cold, close quarters unwashed and infested with typhus-bearing fleas. In the wars with the Russians in the east the Turkish army was regularly thrown back to strongly-held defensive positions such as the fortifications of Kars and Erzurum, which were exceedingly unhealthy. Water and food were poor and disease common. 2 The Turkish soldier was poorly equipped and housed while fighting in a hard climate. A doctor at Erzurum in December 1877 observed: The cold is intense, the thermometer reporting at night 40 below freezing point. Every night five or six soldiers are found frozen to death on outpost duty. There are at present 5,050 sick and wounded at Erzurum, and I believe that about 150 to 200 sick come in daily, not more than 50 going out. 3

Doctors observing the Turkish army in Europe in 1877-78 said that the greatest cause of death to the wounded was exposure, from being left to lie without care. 4 On August 25 Dr. Atwood left Adrianople for Shipka. He reached Kesanlik, five miles from the camp, on August 27. He found the town literally full of wounded, to the number of over 4,000. It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the terrible condition of things. Many badly wounded men were lying in the streets, in the extremity of torture; others were seen at the windows of houses, imploring assistance for themselves, and the still worse cases within. 5

Combat surgery was practically non-existent. What few surgeons there were had no anaesthetics or medicines. Most patients who were operated on died of their operations, or of gangrene afterwards. 6 Doctors came into contact with diseases even more than did soldiers, and observers reported that in many places 50 percent of the medical men were themselves incapacitated by typhus, typhoid, and other diseases. 7 There had been few doctors in the Turkish army even before the attacks of typhus; the result now was no medical assistance whatever: Allen and Muratoff, p. 81. The best general account of the sanitary and medical situation in the Ottoman forces is the Report and Record of the Operations of the Stafford House Committee for the Relief of Sick and Wounded Turkish Soldiers, London 1879. See also, Allen and Muratoff, pp. 71-288. 3 Stafford House, p. 101. 4 Ibid„ pp. 58-90, especially pp. 80 and 81. 5 Ibid., p. 66. 6 Le Docteur Lebovicz du 'Croisant Rouge1 (sic), Coup d'œil rétrospectif sur le service médical militaire ottoman dans la guerre turco-serbe, Constantinople 1878, pp. 24-29. 1 Stafford House, p. 101 (December 22). 2

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8 103

I have learned within the last few days the truth, which I had for some time suspected, as to the utter want of medical organization at the front beyond Kars. It appears that, with an army of 30,000 men, there are actually four doctors. 1 The estimate by a Red Cross doctor in the 1877-78 war of a 20 percent fatality rate in the Turkish army in Europe was probably correct. 2 In northeastern Anatolia during the 1877-78 and earlier wars, the death tool would have been even greater. 3 Migrations T w o great migrations affected the population of nineteenth-century Anatolia, both of them products of war. These were the migrations of Muslim inhabitants of the Crimea and the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and the Armenian migrations from Anatolia to the Russian-held Caucasus.

Muslim

Migrations

Muslim migrations into Anatolia came as a result of Russian conquests. Crimean and Caucasian Muslims either fled or were expelled from their homelands beginning in the late eighteenth century, and the process accelerated during and after the Crimean War. Sympathizing with the plight of the refugees and desiring to increase the Muslim population of the Empire, the Ottoman government offered land and assistance to the refugees. Marc Pinson has estimated that approximately 200,000 Nogay and Crimean Tatars migrated to the Ottoman Empire before 1860 as a result of the Crimean War. His estimate is based on the issuance of 192,364 exit permits by the Russian government. 4 This would tend to indicate that his estimate is too low, since it allows for only 7,636 'illegal' migrants f r o m Russia. 5 Alan Fisher agrees with Pinson that 100,000 Tatars left f r o m Crimea alone by I860. 6 Ethem Feyzi Gozaydin, on the other hand, thought that 300,000 Tatars had left for the Ottoman Empire by I860. 7 Because Pinson's estimates leave ^Ibid., p. 113 (Dr. Kasson). oLebovicz, p. 55. Little is known of the civilian casualties of the wars. They would have been great (see McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities) in the East, but perhaps less severe in the Syria-to-Kiitahya line of Ibrahim Pa§a's march, since the element of inter-millet warfare was missing in the latter. Climatic conditions were also better, due to the shortness and the region of the wars with Muhammad 'Ali. 2

^Marc Pinson, 'Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854-1862,' Giiney-Dogu Avrupa Ara§ttrmalan I, pp. 46, 47, and 43, and II, pp. 107 and 108. ^Pinson states that 10-11,000 migrants returned to Russia (ibid.). 6 A l a n Fisher, The Crimean Tatars, Stanford 1978, p. 89. 7 'Ethem Feyzi Gözaydin, Kirim, Istanbul 1943, p. 84.

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no room for Russian undercounts and illegal emigration, Gôzaydin's figure is perhaps closer to the truth. Gôzaydin also states that after 1859 other Muslims joined the emigration, so that by 1864 7-800,000 Muslims had emigrated. 1 Of the approximately 800,000 who left roughly 600,000 were Circassians, 2 with the remaining 200,000 being Tatars and other Muslims. 3 Approximately 200,000 more came into the Empire between 1864 and 1875, 4 and the Ottomans recorded 474,389 refugees entering in the period 1876-77. 5 Table 7 lists the results of these very approximate calculations. On the basis of Stanford Shaw's estimation, 6 I have assumed that one-third of the migrants went to Rumeli. Of the remaining two-thirds, I have assigned onesixth to Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, leaving one-half of the refugees in Anatolia. The assignment of one-half the refugees to Anatolia is obviously fairly arbitrary. Table 7 Muslim migrants to the Ottoman Empire, Total

To Anatolia

300,000 800,000 200,000 500,000 1,800,000

150,000 400,000 100,000 250,000 900,000

Years 1854-60 1860-64 1864-75 1876-77 Total

1854-1877

Source: See data and calculations in text.

Many of those who left the Russian-occupied territory did not survive to settle in the Ottoman Empire. The emigrants contracted all the diseases they could be expected to in the crowded holds of Black Sea freighters and in makeshift housing in port cities. In 1863, the British consul at Trabzon reported that the 7,000 Circassian migrants in his city had typhus, smallpox,

^On the basis of transport records and passports from Kefe, which arc subject to many bureaucratic errors; Gôzaydin, p. 85. 2 Allen and Muratoff, p. 108. Other estimates are higher or lower. The only spokesmen for the Caucasians themselves estimated 550,000 (Comité de bienfaisance des Emigrés Politiques de la Ciscaucasie en Turquie, Aperçu historique sur les Ciscaucasiens pendant la guerre mondiale, Constantinople 1918, pp. 9 and 10. On the refugees, see Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1985. Alan Fisher is to publish an analysis of the number of refugees. 3 For example, Abkhazians, of whom British consul Halgrave estimated that 10,000 had arrived at Trabzon, 20,000 at Sinope, and that 6,000 more were expected. (FO 97-424, no. 9, April 26, 1867). 4 S. J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, p. 116. ^1313 istatistik-i Vmumi, p. 27. 6 S. J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, p. 116.

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1800-187 8

105

and scurvy. 'For the last ten days the mortality among them has been considerable, say from twenty to thirty every twenty-four hours.' 1 Ottoman records are full of reports on diseases among migrants 2 and on efforts to contain and cure them. 3 But the Ottoman government's resources were not equal to the task of caring for refugees who arrived in the Empire in ill health, near starvation, and literally with only the clothes on their backs. 4 The actual mortality among refugees is a matter of conjecture. Some contemporaries advanced figures of up to 50 percent, 5 but such estimates were flights of fancy prompted by the suffering the authors had witnessed. When statistics of actual refugee movements are available, they show a much lower mortality. A British consular report on one group illustrates the refugee movement and mortality. On the 20th of September [18641, 74,206 Circassian emigrants had passed through the Bosphorus on their way to their final destination. They came principally from the encampments stationed at Trebizond and Samsun. In this amount are included 3,494 slaves, 499 orphans, 1,568 military recruits= 5,511. 1,393 deaths occurred during the voyage. The remainder were distributed to the following places, viz.: To Pandemia 13,630 Mudania 10,498 Gallipoli 4,463 Gemlik 2,377 Rodosto 13,188 Chanderli 2,881 Salonica 2,134 Silivri 1,600 Chai-Aghzy 3,981 Ismid 6,034 Smyrna 4,895 Dardanelles 1.300 In All 66,981 5,551 see above + 1,393 deaths +321 arising from want of precision in statements 74,206 Out of this number, 3724 persons were suffering from ill health on their arrival at Constantinople.® ^FO 195-792, no. 18. Stevens to Bulwer, 21 December 1863. On 26 December Stevens wrote that disease among the Circassians continued as bad as ever (no. 19). 2 See, for example, irade Meclis-i Vala 24898, 3 Safer 1283. 3 See, for example, irade Meclis-i Vala 24004, 18 Safer 1282. 4 F O 97-424, no. 19, Cumberbatch to Russel, Smyrna, 23 September 1864. Of 4,000 Circassians, Russell stated 160 had died 'in the last fortnight' and he expected 'many hundreds more' to die of starvation. ^Consul Stevens in Trabzon said that 220,000 Circassians had come to Trabzon and Samsun 10,000 had been sold as slaves(!) and that 60,000 had died in Samsun and 40 000 in Tr&bzoti. (FO 97-424, no. 20, Stevens to Russel). Other consular evidence completely contradicts this contention. 6 F O 97-424, no. 41.

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On the basis of the above and similar evidence, it seems probable that a mortality of 30 percent among the refugees was average. 1 Those who died in transit in the example above were 1.9 percent of the total. If all the 3,724 who were in ill health died as well, they would account for an additional 5 percent mortality. Mortality of refugees who received an unkind welcome from those already settled in the new areas might have added slightly to the number of deaths. At least 20 percent should also be added for deaths in the refugee camps at Trabzon, Samsun and elsewhere. 2 The general mortality, then, was approximately 30 percent. From the above estimations and calculations it should be obvious that the figures in Table 8 can be easily overturned by someone with the proper statistical sources. The Ottomans kept detailed records of incoming migrants, from which the British consuls' report quoted above drew its data. Some of these records are available in fragments, 3 though complete summary documents have not yet been found. 4 Table 8 Muslim settlers in Anatolia,

1854-60 1860-64 1864-75 1876-77 Totals

1854-1877

Migrants

Deaths

Settlers

150,000 400,000 100,000 250,000 900,000

45,000 120,000 30,000 75,000 270,000

105,000 280,000 70,000 175,000 630,000

Source: See data and calculations in text.

*Their journeys may have weakened them to such an extent that they died earlier than they might have otherwise, but this would be figured as part of the general mortality of the areas in which they had been settled. 2 Perhaps a low figure. If 7,000 immigrants in Trabzon were dying at a rate of 20 a day, and they remained in the camps for two to three months, the figure of 20 percent is reasonable. 3 See, for example, Yildiz 553/151 for a record of migrants to Istanbul by month, household, population, and identification of which were Nogays, which Qerkes; and Yildiz 553/27/1-93-33 for a record by kaza of 24,000 Kuban Kazaks settled in Konya, Adana, and Ankara. 4 Cevdet Dahiliye 8100 actually shows migrants by kaza of settlement, but many of its pages are missing and the figures are not totalled.

THE Eastern

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1800-1878

107

Anatolia

As a result of the Ottoman-Russian wars, the ethnic make-up of eastern Anatolia underwent a radical change during the nineteenth century. The wars brought about an emigration of Ottoman Armenians to Russian Transcaucasia and a corresponding immigration of Caucasian Muslims to the Ottoman Empire. In the nineteenth century three wars were fought between the Ottomans and the Russians in north-eastern Anatolia — the war of 1828-29, the Crimean War and the war of 1877-78. In each of these wars the perceived position of the Armenian minority in eastern Anatolia was the same — sympathy and co-operation with the Russians. Whether or not this was a majority view among the Armenian peasantry is irrelevant here. The important consideration is that both Armenians and Muslims believed that the Armenians were allied with the Russians, and that the Muslims considered the Armenians, as allies of the Russians, to be their enemies. The results of this perception, or fear of what those results might lead to, caused the Armenians to emigrate from areas of Muslim power. The refugee migrations usually came in two waves: First, at the beginning of the war, Armenian partisans would join the Russians and fearful Armenian peasants would flee from the Ottoman army. Second, Armenians would join Russian troops withdrawing from occupied areas after a Russian setback or a peace treaty. No records were kept of the actual numbers of Armenians who emigrated, but references to large numbers of Armenian refugees f r o m Anatolia are found in consular reports of the time: Innumerable Armenian families emigrated from Passin with the Russian Army [in 1829]; most of the villages are but half inhabited and wide tracts of land lie waste. ^ [Armenian villages] were scattered over the plain of Arishkert '.sic], extending from Diadin to beyond Mollah Soleiman, and many of them contained three to four hundred houses — now there are very few.^ The Russians changed the ethnic character of the Erivan Province, which they had won in the 1828-29 war, by peopling it with Armenian refugees. Armenians were in part settled in the place of departed Muslims. Previously, Erivan had been a predominantly Muslim area, but it was transformed into the centre of Caucasian Armenian by the migration of ^FO 195-112, 1 June 1836, enclosure in Grant to Ponsonby, 'Report on a journey through a part of Armenia and Asia Minor.'

o

FO 195-112, 14 March 1839, enclosure in Brandt to Ponsonby, 'Report on a tour through Koordistan.'

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Anatolian Armenians. 1 In the 1877-78 war, observers reported that Russian troops who were retreating f r o m Ele§kirt were accompanied by 3,000 Armenian families. 2 Two or three thousand Armenian families were reported to have followed the Russians over the border near Beyazid alone. 3 Interestingly, the Armenians who left the Ottoman Empire came from rural areas, and were not inhabitants of the cities, who probably felt more secure. 4 Though it is impossible at present to find the exact number of people involved in the Armenian migrations, the evidence of contemporary witnesses indicates that wherever observed, the migrations were sizeable. The migrations were limited to the areas that were in or near Ottoman territory that was occupied by Ottoman troops, i.e., the theatre of war. The ethnic map of Anatolia reflected the Armenian population movements. A f t e r the nineteenth century Armenians were found in large numbers in those provinces that were outside the conflict zones of the Ottoman-Russian wars, but in fewer numbers in the war zones, despite the fact that the latter were the heartland of 'Greater Armenia.' Erzurum, the chief city and province of the Armenian plateau, should have been the centre of the Armenian population. Yet Table 9 shows that the Armenians of Erzurum were a relatively small segment of the population. However, the peripheral provinces of Bitlis and Van to the south, which were removed from the zone of war, were the real centres of eastern Anatolia Armenian, the provinces with the greatest proportion of Armenians. In fact, A r m e n i a n s were f o u n d in greater concentration to the north (Russian Transcaucasia) and south of Erzurum Province. Both the logic of population settlement and the history of the area indicate that Erzurum should have been the result of Armenian migrations. Table 9 Armenians in eastern Anatolia Percentage of total population Province

%

Adana Bitlis Mamuretülaziz Diyarbakir Van Erzurum Sivas

11 31 16 12 26 17 12

Source: McCarthy, Muslims and minorities, p. 111. 1 Allen and Muratoff, p. 43. The Igdir area was settled by Armenian agriculturalists, all of them migrants (p. 161).

2

lbid„ p. 149.

3

F O 195-1211, no. 2, Trotter to Salisbury, Erzurum, 13 November 1878. Trotter reported that 250 of the families who had left Eleskirt had returned. 4 | ' h i s did not apply, of course, to besieged cities such as Kars.

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8

109

The Armenian migration can only be roughly estimated. Refugees were never actually counted alid contemporary estimates were poor. Lynch held that 10,000 families (50-70,000 persons) had migrated from Erzuram province to the Russian Caucasus in 1829. 1 Richard Hovannisian estimated that by the end of 1830, approximately 100,000 Armenians f r o m the plains of Erzurum and Alashkert followed the example of those who had emigrated from North Persia to Transcaucasia. Most of these Turkish Armenians settled in the abandoned Moslem areas of Akhalkala. 2

Hovannisian also stated that approximately 25,000 Turkish Armenians emigrated after the 1878 peace treaty. 3 Hovannisian's figures are perhaps too low, but they demonstrate the demographic base of the Armenian migration. Mortality among Armenian refugees must also be considered. Deaths from war, intercommunal warfare in villages, starvation, and from typhus and other diseases would have reduced the refugee population by perhaps 25 percent. A 25 percent mortality is a conservative estimate in the light of the level of wartime mortality mentioned above, and that witnessed in eastern Anatolia in the First World War. 4 Probably at no time in the nineteenth century was there ever a nonMuslim majority in an Anatolian province, but there was surely a greater percentage of Armenians in Anatolia in 1800 than in 1878. As the proportion of non-Muslims decreased, that of Muslims increased even more rapidly. The tremendous inmigration of Tatars and Caucasian Muslims into Anatolia gave the region six Muslims for each Christian lost.

The Population In total numbers, the resident population of Anatolia from 1800 to 1878 was stable. Gains or losses in the total number of Anatolians was the result of migration. If one accepts that Ubicini gave the proper totals from the Ottoman 1844 census, then the population of Anatolia must have remained approximately the same in 1844 as it was in 1878. The exception to this was the inmigration of Tatars and Caucasian Muslims and the emigration of Armenians. When the migration factors are taken into account, the population ' h . F. B. Lynch, Armenia, Travels and Studies, 1965 Khayats Reprint, vol. I, p. 455. ^Richard Hovannisian, Armenia on the Road to Independence, Los Angeles 1969, p. 9. 3 Ibid„ p. 12. 4 See McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities, pp. 117-139.

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simply could not have grown. Judging f r o m the figures in Table 10, the resident population must indeed have been reduced in numbers, because the gain shown in the table is greater than the loss. However, neither the gain nor the loss figures are sufficiently exact for one to be able to say more than that the population numbers remained relatively unchanged. Table 10 Population and migration, Recorded population 1844 1854-60 1860-64 1864 1876-77 1878

1844-1877

Gain

Loss

105,000 280,000 70,000 175,000

205,000 3

11,000,000!

10,700,000

2

Sources: Ubicini, pp. 18-19; McCarthy, Muslims 116.

and minorities,

pp. 109-

Numerical stability can be tentatively assumed for the pre-1844 population as well. This assumption is based more on political and military events than on statistics. It is difficult to believe that the population could have increased in the period of Selim Ill's wars, the Greek W a r of Independence, the wars with Muhammad 'All in Anatolia, wars with the Russians, the emigration of 100,000 Armenians, and the various local conflicts that arose with the transition f r o m Ayan rule in Anatolia to the centralization of Mahmud II and the Tanzimat. However, while the population was numerically stable, it was not geographically stable. The nineteenth century saw a shifting of the centre of Anatolian population westward, as Muslims and Armenians were killed in the wars of eastern Anatolia, and as Armenians emigrated to Russia as well as to safer areas in western Anatolia. 2 The numbers of Muslims migrating into the *The 10,700,000 who Ubicini states were in Asia Minor, and an assumed 300,000 from his figure for 'Kurdistan'. 2 Taken from 1912 totals for the Muslims and non-Muslims, and from 1878 figures for Muslims. The increase of the Muslim population from 1878 to 1912 was assumed to be the same for the minorities. 3 180,000 lost in Kars and Ardahan. This figure is the result of projecting the Muslim and Armenian populations of the Kars Province of Russia back to 1878 from the figures in the 1897 Russian census, and subtracting 20,000 Armenians from the total, assuming that of the 25,000 migrant Armenians 20,000 went to the Kars province. 25,000 Armenian emigrants. 2 Ibid„ pp. 124-130.

THE

POPULATION

OF

ANATOLIA,

1 8 0 0 - 1 8 7 8 111

Empire more than matched the numbers of Armenian emigrants, but the Muslim refugees were settled throughout Anatolia, especially in the west, south, and central areas, while the north-east lost population both proportionately and in total numbers.

Appendix 1 The Census of 1831 The Census of 1831 was taken as a record of Muslim males for the purpose of conscription, and of non-Muslims for taxation. It is incomplete for Anatolia, and did not record the population of Bolu Livasi, or of any of the provinces in eastern Anatolia. Nevertheless, the census might have been a valuable source for the total population numbers of western, central, and northern Anatolia, were it not for the fact that it significantly undercounts the population, two examples of this undercount are shown in Table 11. Yearly rates of increase of .010 and .015 are beyond possibility. There is no need here to repeat the various events that adversely affected the Anatolian population. It is sufficient to say that these events would have kept the population from reproducing at such a rate, as has been asserted above. For the sake of comparison, the population of the Turkish republic only increased by .017 a year between 1935 and 1940, and by .011 between 1940 and 1945. To expect a similar increase amid the war and disease of the middle of the nineteenth century would be a mistake. Table 11 Kastamonu and Trabzon, rates of increase

Kastamonu 1 Trabzon 3

Census

Males

Census

Males

Rate of increase

1831: 1831:

338,610 384,590

1892: 1902:

641,817 2 1,129,928 4

.OlOperyear .OlOperyear

Source: Kastamonu Viläyeti Salnamesi, 1312\ Trabzon Vilayeti Salnamesi, 1321.

' in order to have comparative geographic areas, the 1831 statistics are for Kastamonu and Viran§ehir and the 1310 statistics are for Kastamonu Vilayeti without Bolu sancak. 2 The populations are listed as being for the year 1310 (1892/93). •'1831: Trabzon and Canik. 1902: Trabzon Vilayeti less Giimughane sancak. ^ h e data are for 1320 (1902/03).

112

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The true value of the 1831 census will be seen only when detailed studies of the census, kaza by kaza, are undertaken. The census should prove to be accurate and valuable for some kazas but not for others. Its materials on minority economic status, conscription figures, etc. should be of assistance to military and economic historians. 1 One odd feature of the 1831 census that needs careful examination is the large number of male children registered in most kazas. I have only investigated a few kazas, but in each an impossibly high number of children are registered: 41 percent in Kastamonu Kazasi, 45 percent in Canik Kazasi, 40 percent in Kiitahya Kazasi, 42 percent in Mente§e Kazasj, etc. 'Children' are defined as either under 12 or under 15, but the percentages listed are too high, whatever the age. 2 Some sort of extensive misreporting of age is involved, but of what type is unknown at present. 3 Appendix 2 Analysis of the Vital-Events registers When we exclude the under-30 age groups, the mortality in the vitalevents registers presents a coherent picture. The registers have the type of misreporting of age usually found in Turkish population records (e.g., 59 males reported as having died at age 60, 1 at age 59, and 4 at age 61). In finding the level of mortality, however, this problem can be largely eliminated by the use of cumulative proportions, which give a fairly accurate picture of mortality, although the effect of misreporting can never be washed out. By comparing the cumulative proportions of dying at each five-year age interval over the age of 30 with the tables of Coale and Demeny, I found that the observed mortality best fit the tables with a mortality level of from 3 to 5 and a GRR of 3.0. Figure 1 compares the expected number of deaths from the table with the observed number of deaths.

'Daniel Panzac, has analyzed the 1831 census in La peste dans ¡'Empire Ottoman, 1700-1850, Louvain 1985, pp. 240-268. Although Professor Panzac and I disagree somewhat on the accuracy of the 1831 figures, his work is undoubtedly the best analysis on the census's statistics. 2 The definition of what military age and what 'youth' are changes, depending on the province. 3 At a GRR of 3.0, the mortality level would have to be 8 in order to have 40 percent of the population be under 15, much less 15. If a GRR of 3.5 is taken, a mortality level of 4 would suffice, but such a level has never been observed for a Turkish or an Anatolian population.

THE POPULATION OF OTTOMAN EUROPE BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

After Ottoman losses in the war of 1877-78, what remained of Ottoman Europe was a band of land that stretched from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. 1 The area included Macedonia, coveted by every Balkan Christian country, and other provinces that lay in the intended paths of expansion of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Each Balkan Christian power claimed the majority of the Ottoman European lands as its own by right, since each assumed that the people of Ottoman Europe were rightfully, despite protective colouring, their own nationals. In attempting to prove their cases, the Balkan nations made the Eastern Question very much a demographic problem. Despite the years which have passed since the first and second Balkan Wars, two questions on the population of Ottoman Europe remain—who were the inhabitants of the area, and what happened to the Balkan Muslims? The first question has never died; Bulgarians, Greeks, and Yugoslavs still hotly debate the ethnic character of the Balkan population. 2 The second question has never really lived. Although the world has long been concerned with the character and fate of the Christians of the Ottoman Balkans, few have bothered themselves with the Balkan Muslims or their fate. Due to this neglect, one of Europe's worst demographic disasters has never been uncovered. In evaluating the population of Ottoman Europe, two sets of statistics must be considered, those of the Balkan Christian nations and those of the Ottomans. No other observers had the interest or the opportunity to count the Balkan peoples properly. Despite the obvious ability of a government, including the Ottoman government, to best count its own people, the statistics of the Christians have traditionally been the only ones quoted and will be analyzed first. ^The Vilayets of Edirne, Selanik, Yanya, Kosova, Manastir, and fskodra. Tables 4-9 list sancaks (sub-provinces) in each vilâyet. 2 For a number of examples of various claims see: Fikret Adamr, Die Makedonische Frage (Wiesbaden, 1979), especially pp. 5-11; Donation Carnegie pour la Paix Internationale, Enquête dans les Balkans (Paris, 1914), pp. 8-12 and 184-185; J. Ivanoff, Les Bulgares devant le Congrès de la Paix, pp. 47,144, Stilpon P. Kyriakides, The Northern Ethnological Boundaries of Hellenism (Thessaloniki, 1955); Gustav Weigand, Ethnographie von Makedonien (Leipzig, 1924); A. Antoniades, Le développement économique de la Thrace (Athens, 1922); A. A. Pallis, "Racial Migrations in the Balkans during the years 1922-1924," The Geographic Journal, 66 (no! 4, October, 1925): 315-331, and others cited below. The amazing thing about the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek claims is that they did not mention the Muslim population at all or did not count it in their analyses. The Greek and Bulgarian populations of an area were often compared to find which was larger (and thus should rule), ignoring the fact that the Muslim population was in the majority.

114

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GREEK, BULGARIAN AND SERBIAN POPULATION ESTIMATES The national aspirations of the Balkan countries led them to create population statistics that greatly differed. In Selanik Vilayeti, for example, the primary apologist for the Bulgars, Brancoff, 1 claimed that there were 500,000 Bulgarians, 400,000 Muslims and 150,000 Greeks. The Greeks, 2 on the other hand, claimed that there were 400,000 Greeks, 450,000 Muslims, and less than 200,000 Bulgarians in the vilayet. Thus, the Bulgarians claimed 2 1/2 times as many Bulgarians as did the Greeks. The potential for such differences was facilitated by the fact that neither the Greeks nor the Bulgars had ever counted the population. For them, citing population numbers was a political, not a scientific, exercise. The first obstacle to sorting through the various claims by Balkan governments is the weight of statistics. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Eastern and Western Europeans and Americans produced thousands of estimates of Balkan population. Nicholas Michoffs 3 collected five large volumes of contemporary estimates for Macedonia, Thrace, and Bulgaria alone. Thousands more were made for what today is Albania, northern Greece, and southern Yugoslavia. With the rare exception of estimates based on Ottoman population records, none of these estimates were reliable. Many were deliberate frauds. Most of those who estimated Balkan population were infected by the intellectual disease of their time, racism. In later days, the term "racism" has been distorted and has lost much of its descriptive power. However, Balkan nationalists were often classical racists who believed that "people" or "nation" was defined by blood or a putative mark on the soul. A person was what he was because of some quality of his spirit, a quality that he shared with all others of his nation. Thus the Pomaks, Slavic-speaking Muslims, were always counted as Bulgarian by the Bulgarian apologists. 4 They were considered to be racially Bulgarian, and so were counted as Bulgarians in Bulgarian statistics. Greeks claimed that anyone whose ancestors had been Greek were Greeks themselves, regardless of their present status of selfidentification. Slavic-speaking Muslims of Macedonia were therefore counted as Greek because "their blood and their heart is entirely Greek." 5 ' D. M. Brancoff, La Macédoine et sa population chrétienne (Paris, 1905), p. 17. The actual figures: 501,110 Bulgarians, 147,097 Greeks, 393,612 Muslims, 25,421 "Koutzovalaques," 234 "Albanais (chrétiens)." 2 Justice for Greece Committee, The Hellenic Character of Northern Epirus (Washington, no date), from which these statistics have been taken, is one example of the type of propaganda published. See also, Christ. Christides, Le Camouflage Macédonien à la lumière des faits et des chiffres (Athens, 1949), pp. 32-36. 3 La population de la Turquie et de la Bulgarie au XVIIIe et XIXe siècles : recherches bibliographico-statistiques (Sofia, 1915-1935). 4 See Brankoff and the numerous sources in Michoff. ^Kyriakides, The Northern Ethnological Boundaries of Hellenism, p. 52.

THE

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OF

OTTOMAN

E U R O P E

115

Not only are racist beliefs muddle-headed, but they are disastrous for demographic calculations. When an apologist for one or another Balkan nation estimated the numbers of his "nation" he often included all those who possessed the requisite type of soul. It made no difference if those persons did not speak his language, were of another religion, or had sworn to fight him and his kind to the death. They were Bulgarians (or Greeks or Serbs) whether they liked it or not. The natural corollary was that all these people belonged in the same state with their racial brothers. This type of logic was applied extensively to the question of what group was dominant in Macedonia. Since Macedonia was the area of Ottoman Europe most hotly contested by Greeks, Bulgars, and Serbs, it was the area for which the most widely divergent statistics were presented. 1 The statistics in Table 1 indicate not only a difference in whom the national groups considered to be Serbs, Greeks, or Bulgars, but also differing opinions on how many Macedonians were Turks. They also show the kind of confusion concomitant upon viewing anyone by their "racial group." Once the decision had been made to count blood or soul as a proper classification for people, population could be divided in any way the racist saw fit. Table 1. Bulgarian, Serbian and Greek Statistics on the Population of Macedonia. Bulgarian Statistics Turks Bulgars Greeks Serbs

499,204 1,181,336 228,702 700

Serbian Statistics 231,400 57,600 201,140 2,048,320

Sources: Carnegie Endowment, Enquête dans les Balkans,

Greek Statistics 634,017 332,162 652,795 not given

pp. 9-10

The philosophical confusion over ethnic identity was not the only confusion into which the nationalistic apologists fell. Some writers realized that Ottoman statistics would carry more weight as propaganda than would their own estimates, since the Ottoman government was the only possible source for statistics that were based on actual counts of the population. Greek apologists, especially, quoted from the so-called "Hilmi Pasha Statistics." These were supposedly drawn from an Ottoman Census taken in 1905. 2

^See Adanir, Carnegie, and others mentioned below. ^Actually, this must have been the Ottoman administrator Hiiseyin Hilmi Pa§a, who undoubtedly took up the collection of population statistics as part of the 1904-5 general collection of the population statistics of the entire empire. See the description of this collection in the "AvantPropos" of the Tableau indiquant le nombre des divers éléments de la population dans l'Empire Ottoman au 1er Mars 1330 (14 Mars 1914). (Istanbul, 1919).

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H o w e v e r , t h e s e " O t t o m a n statistics" w e r e n e v e r u n i f o r m l y r e p o r t e d . T h e f i g u r e s in table 2 w e r e s u p p o s e d l y all d r a w n f r o m t h e s a m e c e n s u s . T h e variances in the table indicate that f o r honest O t t o m a n statistics one m u s t go to O t t o m a n publications.

Table 2. The "Hilmi Pasha Statistics" according to Three Sources. Selanik and Manastir Vilayets.

Selanik Greek Bulgarian Manastir Greek Bulgarian

Justice Committee

Kyriakides

Colocotronis

362,000 195,000

373,227 207,317

303,610 159,835

280,000 143,000

261,283 178,412

217,690 128,915

Sources : Justice for Greece Committee, The Hellenic Character of Northern Epirus (Washington, n.d.); Stilpon P. Kyriakides, The Northern Ethnological Boundaries of Hellenism (Thessaloniki, 1955); V. Colocotronis, La Macédoine et l'Hellénisme (Paris, 1919). D e s p i t e their errors, the H i l m i P a s h a statistics w e r e , in f a c t , m u c h closer than others to the n u m b e r s given in actual O t t o m a n population records f o r the s a m e areas. 1 M o s t other E u r o p e a n statistical o f f e r i n g were f a r w i d e of the m a r k , and Ottoman statistics w e r e often falsified or spuriously created to f i t nationalistic aspirations. B o t h t h e G r e e k s and t h e B u l g a r s i n v e n t e d or altered O t t o m a n statistics to fit their ends. T h e extensive falsification f r o m the G r e e k side has been elaborated e l s e w h e r e . 2 T a b l e 3 demonstrates Bulgarian d e c e p t i o n s . T h e statistics in t h e t a b l e w e r e r e p r e s e n t e d as "la statistique officielle turque." Actually, the statistics were taken f r o m a pro-Bulgarian

'For example, the Ottoman figures for Selanik Vilâyeti (uncorrected), as given in the 1322

(1904) Selanik Vilâyeti Salnamesi were:

Greeks 313,709 Bulgarians 213,999 Obviously, the number of Greeks was increased in the "Hilmi Pasha" statistics, the number of Bulgarians decreased, as might be expected, since the "Hilmi Pasha" statistics were always quoted by Greek sources. 2 See Justin McCarthy, "Greek Statistics on Ottoman Greek Population," International Journal of Turkish Studies 1(2), 1980, pp. 66-76, and Dimitri Kitsikis, Propagande et pressions en politique internationale: la Grèce et ses revendications à la Conférence de la Paix (1919-1920) (Paris,

1963), especially pp. 163-178. Professor Kitsikis demonstrates conclusively the nature of the statistical falsifications. I wish to thank him for calling his book to my attention.

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newspaper article printed in Istanbul, 1 but they were presented to the Paris Peace Conference as official Ottoman statistics, 2 in the hope of convincing the Allies that a Greater Bulgaria was an ethnographic necessity. In reality, Ottoman statistics showed very different figures than the "official" numbers. The falsified statistics more than doubled the actual Bulgarian population of Edirne Vilayeti, halved the Greek population, and only included approximately one-tenth of the Muslim population. The count of Tekirdag Sancagi, which listed no Muslims, was particularly ludicrous, since Muslims actually outnumbered Bulgarians in Tekirdag by more than twelve to one. 3

Table 3. "Official Turkish Statistics," according to Bulgarian Sources. Vilayet of Edirne Sancak

Muslims

Bulgarians

Greeks

60,991

181,396

58,319

Tekirdag

0

16,205

10,476

Gelibolu

0

21,647

5,819

60,991

219, 198

74,614

Edirne

Total

(Source: J. Ivanoff, Les Bulgares devant le Congrès de la Paix, p. 74).

European misinformation on the Ottoman statistical system was great, as was seen even in scholarly studies that aimed at neutrality. For example, authors routinely stated that "les registres officiels turcs ne portaient que les hommes, sans mentionner les femmes, puisqu'ils ne servaient qu'à contrôler le service militaire ou le paiement de l'impôt." 4 The Ottomans did, of course, record women in their late nineteenth and twentieth-century population registers, 5 and looking at any published Ottoman population record would I have seen the article as abstracted from the Courrier d'Orient and separately published as Ethnographie des vilayets d'Adrirwple [sic], de Monastir, et Salonique (Constantinople, 1878). The article did not itself declare that its statistics were official. The Ivanoff volume also lists a great number of French, German, etc. population estimates which support the Bulgarian cause. The only Ottoman statistics presented were falsifications. Since the book was intended for use in the Paris Peace Conference deliberations, it reflects the official Bulgarian government view. ^The apologists of each Christian "side" invented population statistics for the Congress. As an example of Bulgarian presentations, see Great Britain, F.O. 608/118/7199, which gives very detailled (and false) statistics supposedly provided by the Bulgarian Exarchate. ^81,673 Muslims, 6,224 Bulgarians. Muslim numbers were probably less before 1876. ^Carnegie, p. 9. 5 See any of the Ottoman population sources listed below. For a technical description of the Ottoman registration of women see Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities: the Population of Ottoman Anatolia at the End of the Empire (New York, 1983), pp. 4, 5,163, and 164.

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have disproved the assertion, but no one looked. From such statements and from the absence of any Turkish sources in bibliographies it is obvious that European writers never consulted the prime source of population statistics on Ottoman Europe, Ottoman governmental statistics. After careful analysis, one finds that all the European statistics on Ottoman Europe are valueless as estimates of general population numbers. 1 This is partly due to the prejudices that Europeans brought to their analyses, but it is even more due to a basic principle of demography—only those who count a population can truly know its numbers. The Ottomans were the only ones to actually count the population of Ottoman Europe. Therefore, only the Ottomans could give an accurate evaluation of their own population.

OTTOMAN GOVERNMENTAL STATISTICS Ottoman statistics on Ottoman European population were kept as part of the on-going population registration system begun by Sultan Mahmud II. The system, which has been extensively described elsewhere, 2 was based on the creation of population registers (tahrir-i niifus or defter) containing the inhabitants of each village in their district. The registers originally only ' No consideration has been given here to Western European estimates of Ottoman population. European population estimates were almost always wrong. There is reason, moreover, to avoid all European statistics on the population of large areas of the Ottoman Empire, even statistics that might approach accuracy. Western Europeans and Americans were necessarily dependent on the figures compiled (or invented) by those "on the spot" — the Ottomans, Bulgarians, or Greeks. They had no way to evaluate the accuracy of the statistics they received from various sources. Therefore, Western European estimates of Balkan population can only be as reliable as or less reliable than the original enumerations on which they are based. It is far preferable to take original figures. Those interested in European estimates of Ottoman population should consult Michoff's many entries or the various issues of "Die Bevölkerung der Erde" in Petermann's Geographischen Mitteilungen (Gotha, especially the 1880 and 1901 issues). One type of European population estimate can be valuable, because it reflects actual population counts made by Europeans — consular and military intelligence reports of small areas. However, even these should be used with great care, because Europeans seldom indicated whether their statistics were based on their own counts or other, perhaps unreliable, sources. For the area of the Ottoman Empire, see Great Britain, Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division, A Handbook of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Adjacent Parts of Greece, (I.D. 1096) (London, 1916), and A Handbook of Macedonia and Surrounding Territories (I.D. 1114) (London, 1920). The worst of Western European and American commentators were the foreign proponents of Balkan Christian countries, who were quick to adopt the propaganda of their favourites as unquestioned truth. Because of a lack of historical association and sympathy, few westerners took the side of the Bulgars or Turks, but Hellenophiles were, and are, prominent in their defence of Greek interests. The numerous publications of the American-Hellenic Society are examples. Even otherwise competent and recognized historians such as Douglas Dakin lost their objectivity when writing on the Balkan peoples. In The Greek Struggle for Macedonia, 18971913 (Thessaloniki, 1966), Dakin adopted Greek statistical assertions wholesale. He dismissed all Ottoman statistics with one phrase—"The Turkish figures were inaccurate," but offered no roof. It is doubtful that he ever actually saw an Ottoman population statistic. See McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities, Appendix Four; Kemal Karpat, "Ottoman Population Records and the Census of 1881/2-1893," IJMES 9(2), May, 1978, and Stanford J. Shaw, "The Ottoman Census System and Population," IJMES, 9(3), August, 1978.

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included males, but by the reign of Abdiilhamid II (1876-1909) had been expanded to include, at least in theory, all Ottoman citizens, male and female. (However, females and children were never completely registered and Ottoman population counts must be adjusted to account for them.) Local population registers were periodically updated and sent to provincial capitals and to Istanbul. In Istanbul they were compiled into what have been called "censuses," 1 summary registers of the population of the entire Empire. Unlike European Christian apologists, the Ottomans made no use of "racial" criteria in their population statistics. Citizens were classified only by their religious group (millet or "religious nation"), following an Islamic tradition older then the Ottoman Empire. One could wish for more detailed categories than religion, but in questions of Balkan nationalism religion is perhaps the best substitute for the elusive concept of nationality. Race is never acceptable as a concept or population classification, but there are indeed criteria that can be used to identify a people—criteria such as common language and folk customs. However, when one is engaged in creating states the only criterion that should ethically mean anything is self-determination. A person is a Bulgarian, a Turk, a Greek, or a Serb because he thinks he is one. When asked, "What are you?" he answers, "I am a Greek." He may speak Albanian and all his ancestors may have viewed Serbia as home, but he is a Greek. Historians cannot fathom the minds of long-dead Balkan natives. They cannot ask "What are you?" We do, however, have a close approximation in the Ottoman religious categories. Unquestionably, the most important part of selfidentification in the Ottoman Empire was one's religion. When asked "What are you?" an Ottoman citizen would probably have responded by identifying his religious group. Religion in the Ottoman Empire was a matter of selfidentification, and self-identification is the only real criterion for "peoplehood." In the Ottoman Balkans, this was especially true after the creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870. Using the criterion of religion, it is still statistically impossible to separate Serbian Christians from Greek Christians, both of whom were listed as Greek (i.e., Greek Orthodox), but one could tell who were Bulgarians and who were not. Indeed, the most important question *To be a proper census an enumeration must be taken anew and the entire country enumerated at one time. Neither of these conditions fit the Ottoman "censuses." For a list of the late Ottoman "censuses," see McCarthy, Muslim and Minorities, Appendix One.

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in the Balkans seems to have been who were Bulgars and who were not, so identifying Bulgarians is essential. 1 Ottoman population statistics were published in the yearbooks (salname s) of the individual Ottoman provinces 2 and in other official publications. 3 In addition, various archival collections of Ottoman population statistics have been published by myself, Professor Kemal Karpat, and Professor Stanford J. Shaw. 4 No matter where published, all these Ottoman population statistics were drawn from the same source, the Ottoman population registers. A number of scholarly analyses have demonstrated the consistency and reliability of Ottoman population data. 5 The figures in tables 4 to 10 are Ottoman statistics, corrected for underregistration of women and children and projected to 1911. 6 Derivation of the numbers is explained in appendix one. T a b l e 4. Edirne Vilaycli in 1911. Population b y Sancak and Millet. Dedeagaç Total Edirne K i r k k i l i s e Giimulcine G e l i b o l u Tekirdag Muslim 200,000 90,724 277,225 45,980 81,673 63,496 759,706 Greek 121,208 58,181 18,895 101,115 60,672 35,801 395,872 Armenian 13,755 58 565 1,841 16,120 1,311 33,650 Bulgarian 44,071 58,252 35,198 24,422 171,055 2,888 6,224 Catholic 11,452 1,217 114 12,783 Jewish 1,510 1,758 1,478 9,034 2,995 1,123 170 "Non-Muslim" - 35,648 127 563 36,338 2,437 344 "Foreigner"* - 1,987 106 5,757 1,293 Other 4,464 125,314 1,426,632 Total 392,604246,608 338,058 155,163 168,885 * Tabbi-yi

ecnebi

^What cannot be answered is how many were forced by guerrilla bands or their neighbours to register themselves as something other than their own religious choice. In Macedonia, coercion seems to have been applied by both Greeks and Bulgarians. Histories of the Macedonian crisis all mention these activities. For archival references, see Great Britain F.O. 371/202 and other documents on Macedonia in the 371 class—some listed in G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, British Documents on the Origins of the War, vol. 5 (1928). See also, F. R. Bridge, AustroHungarian Documents Relating to the Macedonian Struggle, 1896-1912 (Thessaloniki, 1976). However, one can be reasonably certain that those registered as Bulgarian were Slavicspeaking. A certain percentage of those who were Greek in religion would have been Slavicspeaking, as well. 2

See Justin McCarthy and J. Dennis Hyde "Ottoman Imperial and Provincial Salnames," MESA Bulletin, 13 (2, Dec., 1979): 10-20. 3 F o r example, see Maliye Nezáreti, ihsaiyat-i Maliye, 1326 (Istanbul, 1328) or Nezaret-i Umur-i Nafia, Devlet-i Aliye-yi Osmaniye'nin 1313 Senesinde Mahsus istatistik-i Umumisi (Istanbul, 1315). 4 Karpat op. cit.\ Justin McCarthy, The Arab World, Turkey and the Balkans (Boston, G.K. Hall, 1983), pp. 60-88; and Stanford J. Shaw, "The Population of Istanbul in the Nineteenth Century," IJMES 10(2), May, 1979, pp. 265-277. 5 For the most detailed examples, see Muslims and Minorities, especially Chapter Two and Appendix One. ^See Appendix One for the methodology of correction and projection.

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Table 5. Selanik Vilâyeti in 1911. Population by Sancak and Millet. Selanik

Serez

Drama

Total

Muslim 282,649 Greek 279,930 Bulgarian 87,075 Jewish 60,252 Armenian 87 Other 7,631

179,573 97,124 178,957 1,905

142,558 20,741 5,327 133

-

-

3,973

-

604,780 397,795 271,359 62,290 87 11,604

Total

461,532

168,759

1,347,915

717,624

Table 6. Yanya Vilâyeti in 1911 . Population by Sancak and Millet. Yanya

Ergiri

Preveze

Berat

Total

Muslim 26,989 Greek 147,421 Greek Catholic Jewish 3,666 "Foreigner"* 279

73,032 81,235

18,627 38,129

125,990 44,247 92 39 -

244,638 311,032 92 3,990 1,083

170,368

560,835

Total

178,355

-

-

23 413

262 391

154,703

57,409

* tabii-yi ecnebi

Table 7. Manastir Vilâyeti in 1911. Population by Sancak and Millet. Manastir

Serfice

Dibre

Elbasan

Muslim Greek Armenian Protestant Jewish Bulgarian Gypsy* Foreigners

113,879 91,961 103,340 141,466 2 2 29 5,454 4,059 205,311 2,051 640 851 37 26

77,652

Total

428,663 240,445

102,851 73,222

*gayri Muslim (non-Muslim)

-

69,454 2,790 -

-

-

-

-

25,199

978

-

-

-

-

Göricc

Total

102,774 101,945 5 5 1,048 12,805 1,026

455,720 349,541 9 34 10,561 246,344 2,517 63

-

219,608 1,064,789

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Table 8. Iskodra Vilayeti in 1911. Population by Sancak and Millet. ¡jkodra

Diraj

Total

Muslim Catholic Greek

122,128 119,202 2,176

95,961 1,409 8,579

218,089 120,611 10,755

Total

243,506

105,949

349,455

Table 9. Kosova Vilayeti in 1911. Population by Sancak and Millet Yenipazar Tallica Muslim Greek Bulgarian Jewish Protestant Catholic Gypsy* Total

98,093 67,578 316 167,987

* gayri

38,872 32,450 -

ipek

Uskiip

Prigtina

95,789 215,498 27,942 13,271 - 272,228 2,394 195 5,043 66 1,411

7 1 , 3 2 2 128,774

505,063

Prizrin

Total

239,616 271,307 18,878 127,599 64,048 577 6,146 3,632 373,938

959,175 92,541 531,453 3,287 195 14,887 1,411

3 5 7 , 8 6 5 1,602,949

Muslim

Table 10. Ottoman Europe* in 1911. Population by Vilayet and Millet Edirne Muslim 7 5 9 , 7 0 6 Greek 395,872 Bulgarian 171,055 Armenian 3 3 , 6 5 0 Catholic 12,783 Jewish 9,034 Other** 44,532 Total

1,426,632

t§kodra Selanik Yanya Manastir 604,780 244,638 455,720 218,089 3 9 7 , 7 9 5 3 1 1 , 0 3 2 3 4 9 , 5 4 1 10,755 — 246,344 — 271,359 87 — 9 — — — 120,611 — 10,651 62,290 3,990 11,604 1,175 2,614

Kosova 959,175 92,541 531,453 14,887 3,287 1606

Total 3,242,108 1,557,536 1,220,211 33,746 148,281 89,162 61,531

1,347,915 5 6 0 , 8 3 5 1 , 0 6 4 , 7 8 9 3 4 9 , 4 5 5 1 , 6 0 2 , 9 4 9

6,352,575

—

*Vilayets of Edirne, Selanik, Manastir, Kosova, ijkodra, and Yanya; not including Istanbul Vilayeti **Includes "non-Muslim", "foreigners", etc.

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Table 11 T h e Population of M a c e d o n i a in 1911 b y Millet 1,011,809

(42%)

Greek

514,406

(22%)

Bulgarian

774,097

(32%)

Other

84,180

(4%)

Total

2,384,492

Muslim

THE ISSUE OF MACEDONIA Since in 1911 Macedonia had not existed as a country with recognized boundaries since ancient times, it is impossible to define exactly its pre-1911 borders. Greek apologists tended to include southern (more Greek in population) areas in their definition of Macedonia and to exclude northern (more Bulgarian) areas, Bulgarians the opposite. 1 1 have defined Macedonia here as the Ottoman vilayet of Selanik, plus the sancaks of Manastir, Dibre and Uskiip.2 Had I drawn the boundaries differently, the percentages of Greeks and Bulgarians would have changed, but the largest group would still have been the Muslims. Despite the bloody guerrilla wars fought between Greeks and Bulgars over Macedonia and despite the fact that historians and politicians have traditionally considered Macedonia a purely Christian dilemma, the Macedonian people were actually more than 40% Muslim. 3

POPULATION SETTLEMENT AND POPULATION EXCHANGE Population exchanges between Greece and Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey changed the demographic character of what had been the Ottoman Balkans. 4 As seen in tables 4 to 10, the population of the Balkans were so scattered that there existed few contiguous areas of settlement by any one ^For the Greeks, see the fold-out maps in Carnegie and Colocotronis. For the Bulgarians, see the fold-out maps at the rear of Ivanoff, as well as the Carnegie maps. "Thus excluding areas of Yanya Vilâyeti which were often included in Macedonia by Greek apologists and including more northern areas ^Bulgarians were the largest Christian group. Only the most egregious gerrymandering could have created a Macedonia in which there were more Greek Orthodox than Bulgarian Orthodox Christians. Muslims would, in any case, have been the largest single group. 4 For material on the population exchanges, see Stephen P. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey (New York, 1932), and André Wurfbain, L'Echange Gre'coBulgare des minorités ethniques (Lausanne, 1930). I have found no objective account of the exchanges.

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ethnic group. Modern nationalism, however, demanded a compact mass of homogenous settlement for each national group. After the bloodshed of the 1912-22 wars, only the radical solution of forced relocation of peoples was acceptable to the nationalistic Greeks, Bulgars, and Turks. The shame is that the population exchanges were seen as unacceptable until wars forced politicians to see their necessity. Prior to the Balkan Wars, no Balkan Christian country was willing to admit that there were many people who might not welcome their rule living in areas they coveted. At the same time, the Ottomans were trying to conserve a multi-national empire while, in fact, Balkan nationalism and, especially, the Macedonian guerrilla war had doomed the chances of the disparate nationalities ever living together peacefully in one state. In the Balkans, the losers in the creation of new national borders were the Muslims. Had states been created according to self-determination and populations exchanged in 1911, the majority of Ottoman Europe would rightfully have been a Muslim homeland. In considering the population and settlement patterns of Ottoman Europe in 1911 it must be remembered that a de facto population exchange had already taken place there. Beginning as far in the past as the Christian reconquest of Hungary, Muslim migrants had been leaving outposts of the empire and coming to other Ottoman lands. Prior to 1911, Muslims had left Bulgaria in 1877-78 and after, and Bulgarians had gone to their new state. 1 Thus Muslims were a greater percentage of the population of Ottoman Europe in 1911 than before 1877. Partly because of this migration, Muslims were an absolute, if slight, majority (table 12).

Table 12. Ottoman Europe in 1911. Percentage Population by Millet. Muslim Greek Bulgarian Other

51% 25% 19% 5%

^The 1313 Istatistik-i Umumi (p. 27) lists 276,389 immigrants into the Ottoman Empire in 1293 (1876) and 198,000 in 1294 (1877). Given the confusion of the time, these are surely undercounts.

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Nevertheless, the Balkan Muslims became dispossessed. If the principle of self-determination had actually been applied in the Balkans, a Muslim state (or states) might properly have been created from Albania to the Black Sea, incorporating all of Edirne and I§kodra viläyets, ipek and Prizrin sancaks of Kosova Viläyeti, Berat Sancagi of Yanya Vilayet, Dibre, Elbasan and Manastir sancaks of Manastir Viläyeti, and all but the south-west of Selanik Viläyeti. Such a state would have been more than 55% Muslim even before a population exchange. 1 Even a partial exchange would have greatly increased the Muslim percentage. For example, only exchanging the Bulgare of Manastir Sancagi for the Muslims of Üsküp and Prigtina sancaks would have increased the Muslim proportion in the new state to 65%. 2 In reality, self-determination never came to the Balkans. To the Balkan Christian nations, and to opinion in the West, self-determination and statehood were matters that only applied to Christians. The basic injustice done to the Muslims of the Balkans was ignored.

POPULATION AND NEW NATIONAL BOUNDARIES Population numbers shed some light on the national divisions into which generals and diplomats carved the Balkans in 1913. No Balkan country seriously considered the wishes of peoples in its geographic calculations. As can only be expected in that time and place, they relied exclusively on the "right of conquest" in setting their borders. Nevertheless, as seen above, each group justified its territorial desires with self-serving population estimates. The areas taken by Greece in 1913 and 1919 were declared to have been Greek in population before in the Greek conquest; Bulgaria's conquests were avowedly a reuniting of ethnic Bulgarians with their motherland. To Serbia, its new land had always been "Serbian" in spirit. The only question for the Balkan Christian countries was how to incorporate more lands, also supposedly inhabited by the ethnic brothers, into their countries. It is interesting to see how these conquests and justifications matched statistical reality. Tables 13 to 15 show the population in 1911 of the Ottoman European areas that later became part of Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.3 ^2.3 million Muslims of 4.1 million total population, or 56%. ^2.8 million Muslims of 4.4 million total population, or 64%. 3 Due to the lack of comparative post-war statistics, I have not attempted to analyze the population of Albania. Anyone with the strength to attempt this task might begin with: M. R. Almagia, "Il territorio d'occupazione italiana in Albania e l'opera dell'Italia," Rivista Coloniale XIII, no. 5 (1918) ; M. R. Almagia, "La popolazione della zona d'occupazione italiana dell'Albania meridionale," Rivista Geographica Italiana XXV, nos. 6,8 (1918), J. Bourcart, "La population de l'Albanie," La Géographie XXXVI and XXXVII (1922); 3. Bourcart, "Tableau des villages administrés par la France dans les confins Albanais," Revue de Géographie X (1922); Haxhi Bardhi, "Recensamintele populatiei in Republica Populara Albania," Revista de Statistica, VII (1957), pp. 3-20. All these articles give incomplete population figures.

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Greece The Greeks indeed had a slight plurality in the entire area they took from the Ottoman Empire. In terms of the wishes of the inhabitants, it is probable that the Greeks of the region desired enosis with Greece and that the Muslims and most likely the Jews would have preferred to remain with the Ottoman Empire. Whether the Bulgars would have chosen Greece, is questionable. 1 The Greek predominance is, in fact, deceptive. Certain of the districts taken by Greece, such as those from Yanya Vilayeti, were indeed Greek. Others were overwhelmingly Muslim. In the areas originally in Edirne Vilayeti, Muslim numbers were almost three times those of Greeks. Drama Sancagi of Selanik, taken by Greece, had seven times as many Muslims as Greeks. In fact, the Greek population was centred in the western section of the area taken from the Ottomans. If a north-south line were drawn west of the city of Salonica, the area to the west of the line would have been heavily Greek, the area to the east heavily Muslim. 2

Table 13. Ottoman Areas taken by Greece. Population in 1911. Original

Vilâyets

Edirne

Selanik

Manastir

Yanya

Total

181,406

395,722

126,634

42,723

746,485

Greek

77,952

348,665

196,966

173,535

797,118

Bulgarian

40,926

84,031

20,229

Jewish

2,658

60,832

5,107

3,925

72,522

Other

2,150

4,691

908

670

8,419

305,092

893,941

349,844

220,853

1,769,730

Muslim

Totals

145,186

^ Some indication comes from the exodus of Bulgarians from the areas taken by Greece after World War I. Those who remained were exchanged in the Greek-Bulgar Population Exchange. 2 See Tables 4 and 5. Some areas that ultimately went to Greece were administered by the Allies immediately after the war, and censuses were taken. They resulted, however, in very large undercounts. See J. Bourcart, "La Thrace Occidentale administrée par la France," Revue Politique et Parlementaire CVI (1921), pp. 442-456.

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Bulgaria The Ottoman areas taken by Bulgaria were 56% Muslim. In the section taken from Edirne Vildyeti only one small kaza, Tirnova, had a Bulgarian majority (72%). 1 On the other hand, the areas taken from Selanik Vilayeti— the northern kazas of Siroz Vilayeti—had a true Bulgarian majority (54%). (These statistics include a large amount of out-migration of Bulgarians and inmigration of Muslims after the troubles of 1876-78.)

Table 14. Ottoman Areas Taken by Bulgaria. Population in 1911.

Original Vilayets Muslim

Edirne

Selanik

Total

218,596

109,136

Greek

23,783

5,472

29,255

Bulgarian

136,951

204,701

Jewish

67,750 587

333

920

Other

15,959*

3,085

19,044

Total

326,675

254,977

581,652

327,732

•"includes 15,768 "non-Muslim."

Yugoslavia Muslims were 53% of the population of the region taken by Yugoslavia. Only in Manastir Sancagi of Manastir Vildyeti was there a Christian majority and, by religious identification at least, most of the Christians of Manastir Sancagi identified themselves as Bulgarian. 2 Despite this, the areas taken from Manastir Vildyeti were indeed Christian (65%), whereas the other areas taken by Yugoslavia were overwhelmingly Muslim (59%).

Another, Ahtabolu Kazasi, was 65% Greek. All the rest had large Muslim majorities. It must be stressed that these "Bulgarians" were members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Their language group is not known. ^57%. Whether Manastir Vilayeti natives felt themselves to be Macedonians or Bulgarians will never be known. Religiously, they were Bulgarian, but the area today [1983] is part of Yugoslavian Macedonia. In addition to the Greek and Bulgarian apologists mentioned above, see the article by Kiselinovski, "National Structure of the Population in Aegean Macedonia (1900-1193)," Macedonian Review, vol. 8, no. 2, 1978, pp. 145-152, which advocates the Macedonian position.

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Table 15. Ottoman Areas Taken by Yugoslavia. Population in 1911. Original Kosova

Vilayets Manastir

Selanik

Totals 1,241,076

959,175

181,980

99,921

92,541

149,785

43,659

285,985

531,453

199,938

50,378

781,769

Jewish

3,287

5,454

1,125

9,866

Other

16,493

1,715

3,914

22,122

Total

1,602,949

538,872

198,997

2,340,818

Muslim Greek Bulgarian

The

Fate of the Balkan

Muslims

F i n a l l y , a s h o r t statistical p r e s e n t a t i o n of a d i s a s t e r : t a b l e 16 d r a w s o n t h e p u b l i s h e d c e n s u s e s of G r e e c e , B u l g a r i a , a n d Y u g o s l a v i a t o p r e s e n t t h e p o s t - w a r M u s l i m p o p u l a t i o n of t h e r e g i o n s w h i c h t h o s e c o u n t r i e s h a d t a k e n f r o m the O t t o m a n E m p i r e . Like the O t t o m a n statistics earlier, t h e census figures have been corrected f o r undercounting.1

Table 16. Population After the Wars. Areas of Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia Taken f r o m the Ottoman Empire Greece 1923

Bulgaria 1920

Muslim Greek Bulgarian Jewish Other

124,460 1,773,964*

179,176

Total

1,971,460

-

65,569 7,467

-

192,552* 704 898 373,330

Yugoslavia^ 1921 566,478 949,366* -

6,103 18,277 1,540,224

• O r t h o d o x . Sources: Greek, Bulgarian and Y u g o s l a v i a n censuses f o r the years listed. 1 See appendix 1. The statistics in table 16, as well as information on national boundaries, have been drawn from the censuses and statistical yearbooks of Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. For information on statistical sources of the Balkan nations, see the standard sources, such as the Texas census bibliographies. Two articles by Leszek A. Kosinski are good summaries and introductions to the materials: "Population Censuses in East-Central Europe in the Twentieth Century," East European Quarterly, V, no. 3 (1971), pp. 279-301, and "Statistical Yearbooks in East Central Europe," Zeitschrift fur Ostforschung, vol. 23 (1974), pp. 137-147. ^Vardarska Banovina. The borders are approximately the same and small-scale statistics for the area are unavailable.

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Seventeen percent of the 1911 Muslim population of the area taken by Greece remained there in 1923. Less than 150,000 of the 750,000 Muslims who had lived in the region in 1911 were in areas subject to the population exchange, so the vast majority cannot be said to have left peacefully. By 1923, however, the Christian population of the same region had doubled. Muslim population in the districts taken by Bulgaria and Yugoslavia also greatly declined. In the lands conquered by Serbia/Yugoslavia, 46% of the pre-war Muslims remained, in the Bulgarian conquests, 55%. (Both areas also showed decline in the Christian population—11% in the lands conquered by Yugoslavia, 17% in the lands conquered by Bulgaria—both partly due to wartime deaths and partly to migration. 1 ) Overall, 62% of the Muslims were gone from the region.

Table 17. M u s l i m in Ottoman Areas T a k e n by Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia and M u s l i m R e m a i n i n g in those Countries. Muslims

Muslims

in 1911

Remaining

Difference

Greece

746,485

124,460

622,025

Bulgaria^

327,732

179,176

148,556

1,241,076

566,478

674,598

2,315,293

870,114

1,445,179

Yugoslavia

Totals

Of the 1,445,179 Muslims who no longer lived in conquered Ottoman Europe, 413,922 were reported as migrants to Turkey during and after the Balkan Wars. 3 Between 1921 and 1926, 398,849 came to Turkey, most as part

' i t is impossible to tell which was migration, which death. ^The Muslim population of what had been the Ottoman kazas of Ahtabolu and Tirnova has been estimated, since breakdowns of population by religion and by district were not available for 1920. Muslims have been assumed to have the same percentage there as in the province (Burgas) as a whole. Ladas (p. 16) quotes "official statistics of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior" as giving the figure 413,922. I have not seen these statistics elsewhere, but there is no reason to doubt their authenticity, especially since they do not seem to aid any "side" in the statistical battle over the Balkans. For more on this migration, from one point of view, see Ath. Angelopoulos, "Population Distribution of Greece Today According to Language, National Consciousness, and Religion," Balkan Studies 20(1), 1979, pp. 123-132, and G. Zotiades, The Macedonian Controversy, Thessaloniki, 1961, pp. 39 and 40 (quoted in Angelopoulos).

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of the Population Exchange. 1 Some 632,408 were what demographers style "population loss." 2 Twenty-seven percent of the Muslim population of conquered Ottoman Europe had died. During World War I, a war whose awful mortality is forever remembered in the West, the combatant nations suffered terribly, but during the war the French population declined by only 1%; the British population did not decline. The Muslims of Ottoman Europe lost 27%. This is, I submit, a significant loss, and it is not overstatement to label it a disaster.

APPENDIX 1 METHODOLOGY AND CALCULATIONS The methodology followed in this paper makes use of model stable populations to evaluate and correct undercounts in Ottoman population figures. I have described these methods in detail elsewhere 3 and will only summarize them here. All Ottoman population registers undercounted women and children. This phenomenon, which is also common in most modern developing countries and in Muslim countries in particular, is easily observable in age pyramids constructed from Ottoman data. In this study, the population data by age group has been taken from the 1313 istatistik-i Umumi, which gives such data for each Ottoman province. To correct the undercount of children, I have

^These are official figures, which might be expected to conceal a certain amount of unregistered migration. However, since these refugees came across the well-policed TurkishGreek border unregistered migrants should have been few. See also the following, which contain the same figures on refugees: Antoniades, Le développement économique de la Thrace, Athens, 1922, p. 217, and A. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, London, 1922, p. 138. All give the same figures, listed the same source—the Ottoman Ministry of Refugees. Antoniades estimated 500,000 refugees who were not counted in the above totals, whereas Toynbee and Ladas did not. However, Antoniades indicated that these were "les personnes aisées et les employés du Gouvernement avec leurs familles." One can, I think, assume that the "personnes aisées" were few and that most of the number were government employees and their families. As such, the latter were not included in Ottoman population registers of natives of the Balkan provinces and thus have not been considered to be refugees here. Even so, the figure of 500.000 seems ludicrously high, unless Antoniades included soldiers, who could be called "government employees." ^That is, the number left at the end of the period, subtracted from the number present at the beginning of the period. Children were born in the period and many persons died natural deaths; these were not counted in the figure of Population Loss. I have not included in any of the analyses of refugee numbers the possibility of a large group of Muslim refugees from Yugoslavia surviving in Albania. All indications are that the survival of such refugees was minimal. (For evidence of this, see F.O. 371-1762-50886, 371-1762-53682, and 371-176255161.) 3 See Muslims and Minorities, appendix 4.

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taken the Coale and Demeny 1 Model Stable Population ("East," Mortality Levels 5 to 8) which most closely corresponds to the proportion aged 15 and above and have assumed that the proportion under 15 in the actual population was the same as that in the model population. 2 The female population is then estimated to have been numerically the same as the male population (i.e., Total Population is Male Population doubled.) This is not a completely satisfactory procedure, since it surely underestimates female population. 3 However, no remedy is presently available. In general, I have erred on the side of undercounting, rather than over-counting. Since my figures often are higher than those previously accepted, particularly for Muslims, a policy of undercounting seems best. The same methods have been applied to the population statistics published by the Balkan Christian countries as to those of the Ottomans. No differential correction factor has been applied to any sub-group of the Ottoman population, so Muslim-Christian ratios always appear exactly as they are in the original Ottoman statistics, although the absolute numbers have been corrected and increased. The correction factors listed below and in Table A1 are the factors by which total recorded populations have been multiplied to gain the corrected populations. The following indicates the general procedures used in deriving the 1911 population of the Ottoman European provinces. The process was, of course, more complicated than it appears here, and detailed analyses of the calculations is available, if desired.

^ n s l e y J. Coale and Paul Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (Princeton, 1966). The Gross Reproduction Rate in the Balkans seems, according to my analyses, to have been between 2.5 and 3.0. The former would typify many Christian populations, the latter Muslims. A GRR of 3.0 was common in the same period among Anatolians (Muslims and Minorities, appendix 4). For information on the fertility of the Balkan countries, see the volumes sponsored by CICRED for the 1974 International Population Year: D. Trichopolus and G. Papaevangelou, The Population of Greece, Athens, 1978?, especially pp. 9-33; Yugoslavia, Demographic Research Center, Institute of Social Sciences, The Population of Yugoslavia, 1974, especially pp. 8-25, Nicolas Nacumov, Ivan Stefanov, and Zdravco Sougarev, La Population de la Bulearie, Sofia, 1974. J Muslims and Minorities, appendix 4.

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Corrections by Province Edirne: Population figures from the 1317M 1 Edirne saíname2 were corrected by 1.2196 and projected to 1911. Deriving a rate of increase with which to project the figures was difficult, due to boundary changes in Edirne. A rate of increase of .012 per year was taken, based on the rate observed between the figures published in the 1310 and 1317 saínames (.01184).3 Manastir: The figures given in the 1324M Manastir saíname were taken, corrected for undercouting by 1.1465. They were projected from the year in which the 1324M saíname figures were collected, 1908, to 1911 using the rate of increase (.01418 per year) observed between figures published in 1313H and 1326H. Selanik: The figures for the 1322 Selanik saíname were taken, 4 corrected by 1.1589. They were projected to 1911 by the rate observed between figures published in 1313 and 1322, .00942 per year. I§kodra: The population figures from l§kodra were the least reliable of all those in Ottoman Europe. Only the 1312 saíname approached accuracy. Due to errors, the 1313 istatistik-i Umumt age groups could not be used, so a correction factor of 1.2 and a rate of increase of .01 were assumed. 5 The estimates for 1911 that result are a definite undercount. Yanya: The figures from the 1326 ihsaiyat-i Maliye6 were taken, corrected by 1.0283 and projected to 1911 at a rate of increase of .00505 per year. Kosova: While relatively reliable for the male population, the Ottoman registration of Kosova was very deficient for females, who were greatly undercounted. The Kosova population has been advanced from the figures of the 1311 saíname1 (correction factor 1.5056) to 1911 by a rate of increase of .01414 per year.8

^Salnames listing mail financial years as publication dates are styled M here (e.g. 1317M). Hiera dates are simply printed (e.g. 1317). ^Provincial salnames printed population figures for periods two, three, or occasionally more years before the date of publication. Given the time needed for compilation and publication, this is to be expected. The 1317M salname was printed in the mali year 1317 (1901-2), but I have assumed its population data was registered in 1899. (See Muslims and Minorities, chapter 2 for an explanation of the compilation and publication processes.) ^Gtimiilcine Sancagi has not been counted in the analysis of the rate of increase due to irregularities in the calculation or printing of the 1310 figures. ^Assumed to be 1902. 5 This assumes a typical "Muslim Fertility" of approximately 3.0 GRR, as observed in other Muslim populations in the Balkans and Anatolia, and relatively high mortality. Given the low standard of development in ¡skodra, such an assumption seems reasonable. 6 Op. cit. ^Assumed to be 1890. ^See the descriptions in the Bulgarian Statistical Yearbooks.

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Table Al. Model Populations and Correction Factors. Mortality Levels Edirne l§kodra Kosova Manastir Selanik Yanya Yugoslavia Greece Bulgaria

GRR

6

3.0

6 7 7 5

3.0 3.0 2.5 2.5

6 8

3.0 2.5 No Correction Needed

Correction Factors 1.2196 1.2000* 1.4056 1.1465 1.1589 1.0283 1.1112 1.0602

^estimated

APPENDIX 2 O T T O M A N D I S T R I C T S W I T H I N T H E N E W B O R D E R S OF BALKAN STATES The following table lists the Ottoman kazas that made up the areas carved from the Ottoman Empire in Europe. In most cases, the new borders of the Balkan states followed kaza borders, but in a few cases the borders varied slightly. Since Ottoman statistics for populations below the kaza level are not presently available, kaza borders were the ones used for tables in the text. In the table, kazas included in the particular country are listed after the name of their sancak. "All" means the entire sancak or vilayet was included.

Ottoman Administrative Divisions vilayet (vilayeti) = province sancak (sancagi) = sub-province kaza (kazasi) = district

Ottoman Districts Taken by Greece Manastir Vilayeti Manastir Sancagi: Florya kazasi Gorise Sancagi: Kesriye kazasi Serfiije Sancagi: All

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Selanik Viläyeti Selanik Sancagi: Selanik, Kesendire, Karaferya, Yenice-i Vardar, Vodine, Langada, Avrethisar, Katrin, and Ineroz kazas Seres Sancagi: Seres, Zihne, and Demirhisar kazas Drama Sancagi: All Yanya Viläyeti Yanya Sancagi: Yanya, Konica, Aydonat, Filat, and Meco kazas Preveze Sancagi: All Edirne Viläyeti Edirne Sancagi: Dimetoka kazasi also Mustafa Paga Gümülcine Sancagi: Gümülcine and Eskice kazas Dedeagag Sancagi: Dedeaga9 and Sofolu kazas Ottoman

Districts

Taken

by

Yugoslavia

Manastir Viläyeti Manastir Sancagi: Manastir, Derlice, Kir9ova, and Ohri kazas Dibre Sancagi: Dibre, Dibre-i Zir and Rakalar kazas Selanik Viläyeti Selanik Sancagi: Gevgeli, Doyran, Istrumca, and Tikvc§ kazas Kosova Viläyeti All Ottoman

Districts

Taken

by

Albania

Manastir Viläyeti Dibre Sancagi: Mat kazasi Elbasan Sancagi: All Göri9e Sancagi: Göriije, Istarova, and Kolonya kazas Yanya Viläyeti Yanya Sancagi: Leskovik kazasi Ergiri Sancagi: All Berat Sancagi: All I§kodra Viläyeti All Ottoman

Districts

Taken

by

Bulgaria

Selanik Viläyeti Seres Sancagi: Menlik, Razlik, Petri?, Cemaa-i Bala and Nevrokop kazas Edirne Viläyeti Edirne Sancagi: Orta Köy and Cisr-i Mustafa Pa§a kazas Kirk Kilise Sancagi: Altabolu and Tirnova kazas Gümülcine Sancagi: Dandere, Egridere, Ku§ Kavak, and Ahi Qelebi kazas

MUSLIMS IN OTTOMAN EUROPE: POPULATION FROM 1800 TO 1912

Investigating the Muslim population of Ottoman Europe is the stuff of a demographer's nightmare. There is no lack of material to study; thousands of estimates of Balkan population were made throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Unfortunately, almost all of them were nonsense, the prejudiced guesses of nationalistic advocates or estimates made by travellers who felt a journey through a land provided enough information for accurate estimates of population numbers. The statistics of Balkan population that are most often seen are those prepared by Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian nationalists, each wielding population data as a weapon to prove their right to claim territory. The most famous of these are the so-called "Hilmi Pa§a statistics." Recognizing that Ottoman population records were most likely to be accurate, both Greek and Bulgarian apologists quoted from 1905 data that were supposedly recorded in Macedonia by Hiiseyin Hilmi Pa§a. These Hilmi Pa§a statistics are remarkable in that they contradict themselves wildly in different publications. Greek apologists published one set of Hilmi Pa§a statistics; Bulgarian apologists published another. Not surprisingly, the Greek statistics showed more Greeks, the Bulgarian statistics more Bulgarians, even though the data were supposedly from the same source. In fact, both groups were lying; each had made up its own data, then claimed they were Ottoman statistics. The real statistics published by the Ottoman government were completely different, but the nationalists could hope that no one would ever look at them. 1 Because the Hilmi Pa§a statistics still appear in books and articles, it appears that they were right. Other nationalist population statistics are just as unreliable. 2 In one way, the authors of the Hilmi Pasa statistics were correct — they knew that Ottoman data were more likely to be accurate than any others. It is a sound principle of demography that the only ones who can truly know the size of a population are those who have actually counted it. The most ' See Justin McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe Before and After the Fall of the Empire", in Heath W. Lowry and Ralph S. Hattox, eds, Third Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Istanbul, 1990, (Isis), pp. 277-280. The real statistics were part of a general compilation the Ottomans produced in 1905. Hilmi Pa§a, the Inspector General in Macedonia, was only one of the officials all over the Empire who oversaw the compilation. O» Macedonia, see Daniel Panzac, "La Population de la Macédoine au XIXe Siècle (1820-1912) " REMMM, Vol. 66, No. 4, 1992, pp. 113-134. 2 See the Appendix.

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accurate population numbers are either counts (census and registration data) or demographic projections from such counts. In south-eastern Europe, as elsewhere, it was the governments that counted the population. In 1831, the Ottoman government produced the first modern compilation of records of the population. 1 The Ottomans continued to update and improve their population registration throughout the final century of their rule. Once independent, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece undertook censuses. But the earliest of these enumerations were themselves deficient. Many left out large sections of the population. Worse, they were not systematic undercounts. Systematic undercounts, such as those in which women and children are always undercounted, can be corrected using the techniques of demographic analysis. Counts in which entire villages and districts are sometimes omitted, different districts in different counts, are of limited use. The early nineteenth-century Ottoman population registration system, while often useful for smaller regions in which registration was good, cannot be used to find the population of larger areas. The first Ottoman "census" provides an example. The government of Sultan Mahmud II ordered that population registration be undertaken throughout the Ottoman Empire, primarily to provide records for military conscription. Only 490,000 Muslim males were recorded in all of Ottoman Europe, approximately one-half of the actual number of Muslim males of military age. 2 Not until the second half of the nineteenth century did any Ottoman province produce population data that could be used to estimate its population accurately, and most provinces did not produce such data until after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War. Bulgaria was an exception. As he did in other areas, the reforming governor Midhat Paga seems to have improved the bureaucratic efficiency of the population registrars of Tuna Vilayeti (Danube Province, in northern Bulgaria). The compilations of the northern Bulgarian population immediately before the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War were thus remarkably accurate and valuable. 3 In other provinces, Ottoman population records improved greatly at the end of the nineteenth century, providing the only data that can serve as a base for accurate analysis of the population of the Ottoman Balkans.

These Ottoman counts are often wrongly called "censuses". They were actually summaries of population registrations, which were theoretically kept and updated for each village in a province. The difference is significant. A census, which is taken in an entire area at one time, would almost surely have been more accurate than registrations, which depended on the records of a great number of bureaucrats, not all of whom took their job seriously. 2 Many areas, such as Bosnia, were not included in the 1831 data. The estimate of underregistration is drawn by comparison to and projection from later data. 3 For an extensive discussion of the Midhat Pa§a statistics and analysis of urban data from those statistics, see Nicolaw (Nicolai) Todorov, "The Balkan Town in the second half of the 19th Century," Balkan Studies, Vol. 2,1969, pp. 31-50.

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137

Religion and Ethnic Group The Muslim population of the Balkans 1 was formed through a process of migration and conversion. The in-migrants, primarily Turks, entered the Balkans in large groups in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in smaller numbers thereafter. During the Ottoman period, many Balkan Christians converted to Islam. Many of these retained their languages; others not only converted to Islam but became linguistically and culturally Turks. Although many tried, by the nineteenth century it was impossible to tell the ancestry of Balkan Muslim groups. Although the Balkan Turkish population was centered in Thrace and Bulgaria, there were also sizeable Turkish-speaking communities in Macedonia, Greece, and elsewhere. The majority of Albanian speakers were Muslims. Of the Slavic-speaking Muslims, the main groups were the Bosnians, who spoke Serbo-Croatian, and the Pomaks, who spoke Bulgarian. Greek-speaking Muslims, who identified themselves as Turks, were primarily located in south and central Greece and Crete. For many Turkish, Albanian, Slavic, and Greek speaking Muslims, the language they spoke was not that of their ancestors. 2 None of this stopped the champions of Balkan nationalism from attempting to categorize Balkan Muslims and Christians by "nation", a term that sometimes was defined by culture or religion, sometimes by language, and sometimes by outright racism. There is little space here to consider these nationalist assertions, nor the dubious population statistics that accompanied them. 3 It is enough to state that Ottoman records divided the population only by religion, not ethnic group or language. No one ever actually registered the Ottoman population by any other criteria. No attempt has been made here to identify the linguistic or "ethnic" groups of the Balkan Muslims. While the successor states did avowedly record language groups their data were confused by ideology. For example, the 1890 Serbian census listed all Muslims as being either Turks or "Bohemians" (Gypsies), neglecting all other groups. Moreover, the successor state data come for periods after extensive migration changed the linguistic picture forever. The important identification throughout the Ottoman Empire was not linguistic; it was religious. All indications are that the primary selfidentification of the Balkan Muslims was "Muslim", not identification by any 'national" group. ^Romania and the north-west Black Sea littoral, whose Muslim population was not entered in nineteenth-century Ottoman statistics, are not considered here. 2 For a more complete and descriptive list of the various Muslim groups, see Alexandre Toumarkine, Les migrations des Populations Musulmanes Balkaniques en Anatolie (1876-1913), (Istanbul, 1995). See the Appendix.

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Boundary changes, both international and internal, present considerable difficulties in evaluating Balkan populations. They necessitate much recourse to maps and lists of administrative subdivisions. Unless otherwise stated, the populations of province (vilayets) and subprovinces (sancaks) given here are for late Ottoman boundaries as they were in 1911. This facilitates comparisons over time. Muslim Population to 1876 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Muslims were spread throughout Ottoman Europe. Only a few extremely isolated districts, such as interior Montenegro, had no Muslims. This meant that Muslims, while the single largest religious group in Ottoman Europe, were usually a minority in individual districts. The Muslims were scattered in small and large communities, living alongside Christian majorities. There were major exceptions — Albania and large sections of Bosnia and north-eastern Bulgaria. 1 Some regions that are traditionally thought of as mainly Muslim, such as Edirne Vilayeti, did not have a Muslim majority until after the 18771878 war. Bosnia When the province of Bosnia was lost to the Ottomans in 1878, Muslims were the largest religious group in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were not, however, a majority in 1800. Migration to and from Serbia by Muslims and Serbs during the wars and rebellions of the century slightly increased the predominance of Muslims. By 1870, Muslims were a distinct majority in most of the sancaks of the Ottoman Bosna Vilayeti, which included all of what is today called Bosnia-Herzegovina and the sancak of Yenipazar (Novi Bazar). Exceptions were the northernmost district of Banaluka (Banja Luka), in which the Serbian Orthodox were a majority, and in Hersek and Travnik sancaks, in which Muslims were still a plurality. Muslims made up almost exactly 50% of the Bosna Vilayeti population. 2

should be noted, however, that accurate statistics do not exist for the period before major inmigration raised the Muslim population in both Bosnia and north-east Bulgaria. It may well be that Christians somewhat outnumbered Muslims in both north-east Bulgaria and Bosnia at the start of the nineteenth century, although Muslims were surely a plurality among the various religious groups in Bosnia and in parts of northern Bulgaria. 2 If Yenipazar Sancagi were not included, as it was not in earlier years, Muslim proportions would have declined to 48%. Figures are from Justin McCarthy, "Ottoman Bosnia, 1800 to 1878", in The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1994), pp. 54-83.

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TABLE 1 M u s l i m s in Ottoman Bosnia, c. 1870

Muslims

Total Population

Bosnia proper*

611,000

Hersek Sancagi

111,000

230,000

Yenipazar Sancagi

148,000

236,000

Total

870,000

1,746,000

*i.e„ Saray, Izvornik, Travnik, Bihke and B a n a l u k a

1,280,000

sancaks.

No accurate data for the Bosnian population exist for the period before 1870. One can speculate that the indigenous population of the region did not much increase from 1800 to 1870. Civil war and a standard of living that was close to the lowest in Ottoman Europe would have balanced a slight natural increase. Allowing for in-migration of Muslims from Serbia (see below), the Muslim population of Bosnia in 1800 would have been approximately 800,000. Serbia The Serbian rebellion against the Ottomans in 1804 caused a mass exodus of Muslims from Serbia. It has been estimated that 15,000-20,000 Muslims left Serbia up to the 1820s. 1 A dwindling number of Muslims remained, estimated at 15,000 in 1834, mainly in Belgrade and Uzice, and 6,000 in 1874. 2 Greece The Greek revolution that began in 1821 ended all Muslim settlement in southern Greece (The Peloponnesus or Morea and regions directly north). For the period immediately before the revolution, various sources have estimated between 60,000 and 90,000 Muslims in southern Greece, the region

^See Ahmet Cevdet Eren, Türkiye'de Gög ve Gögmen Meselesi (Istanbul: Nurgök Mat. 1966) pp. 31-34. Alexandre Popovic, L'Jslam Balkanique (Berlin: Freien Universität, 1986) pp. 262-265. I'Vic figures for 1874 have the appearance of a detailed enumeration. They fit well with later data, and seem reliable. The earlier data are more an estimate, but conform to a number of other estimates.

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that would become independent in 1831. A least 25,000 Muslims were killed; others migrated north and to Anatolia. The latter figure of 90,000 seems the more likely. 1 Few Muslims remained after the creation of the Greek state. The Muslim population of the Thessaly region, taken by Greece in 1881, was at least 40,000 2 before the conquest. After that, it dropped precipitously. Fewer than 3,000 Muslims remained in 1911. Bulgaria In the early and middle nineteenth century, the Muslim population of Ottoman Bulgaria fluctuated due to migration. Statistics are sparse, as no one really counted the early migrants, but it seems that more than 100,000 Muslims were made refugees by the 1806-1812 Russo-Turkish War. A number of the refugees settled in the Eski§ehir region of Anatolia, while a number returned to their homes after the war. Crimean Tatars were numerous Muslim in-migrants to Bulgaria. 3 Numbers are once again imprecise. The Ottoman Refugee Commission recorded 255,000 Tatars settled in the Ottoman Empire. 4 This is an undercount, as many were surely not counted. 5 Nevertheless, the Ottoman figures make it obvious that the greatest number of the refugees were settled in Bulgaria, the Ottoman territories nearest to the Crimea. 143,000 were listed as settling on the "shores of the Danube." Another 10,000 came to Edirne Eyaleti (province 6 ), the northern part of which was in Bulgaria. Given the undercount, more than 150,000 Crimean Tatars must have settled in Bulgaria.

^It is from a nearly contemporary Greek source that surely had no cause to inflate Muslim numbers. Popovic lists the estimates in detail (p. 111). He has carefully compared sources and taken those that appeared most reasonable. It must be remembered, however, that these are estimates only. ^Estimates range to "above 50,000", but it seems best to take the lower figure here. See Popovic, pp. 119-121. ^Bulgaria is considered here to include the region south of Danube delta, the Dobrudja. The region eventually went to Romania in 1876, expanded slightly in 1913, but the Ottomans considered it part of Bulgaria, in the Silistre Eyaleti. Austin McCarthy, "An Ottoman Document on the Refugees of the Crimean Period", Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 6, No, 2. pp. 29-30. 5 For other estimates see Mark Pinson, "Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire," Güney-Dogu Avrupa Arajtirmalari Dergisi, Vols I and II; Ethem Feyzi Gözaydin, Kirim (Istanbul Vakit Mat., 1943), pp. 40-41, 83-86, 95-98; Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 65. The most comprehensive consideration of the figures is in Alan Fisher, "Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years After the Crimean War," Jahrbücher fir Geschichte Osteuropas, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 356-371. Nedim Ipek gives estimates for the Tatar and other migrations before 1877; Rumeli'den Anadolu^a Türk Gögleri (Ankara: Ipek TTK, 1994), pp. 1-10. 6 Eyalets were the Ottoman provinces before vilayets were created in the reform in 1864. They conformed more to historic regions but were often administratively unwieldy.

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141

Refugees from the Caucasus, 1 forced from their lands by the Russians, were also settled in Bulgaria, mainly in the same regions in which the Tatars had been settled — south of the Danube and in Edirne province. No detailed list of those settled has yet been discovered. Archival records do indicate large numbers, however. They were landed at Varna and Kcistence (Constanta) then moved inland: 60,000 before September of 1864, a further 40,000-50,000 during September, then 90,000 later. Ottoman officials estimated that in the environs of Kostence alone there were 150,000 refugees from the Caucasus in 1864. More came later in the decade. 2 These are obviously estimates; the Ottomans may never have been able actually to count the migrants. Such great numbers of refugees obviously changed demographic conditions in Bulgaria considerably. In the later period of Ottoman rule, the region of what was later to become the Kingdom of Bulgaria was made up of the Tuna ("Danube") province and the northern section of Edirne province. The largest portion of the migrants was settled in the Dobruja, which went to Romania in 1878. 3 Nevertheless, the Tatars and Caucasians and their descendants were still a very significant portion of the Muslim population of the area that was to become the Bulgarian state, perhaps one-third of the total Muslim population there. In 1877, the Muslim population in Bulgaria was not evenly distributed. After the Tatar and Circassian migrations, Muslims were a majority (nearly 60%) in the north-east of the region — an area bordered by the Black Sea, the Danube river, and a line drawn southward from immediately west of Rus§uk (Ruse), meeting a line drawn westward from immediately south of Varna. In the rest of Bulgaria, though, Muslims were a strong presence. They were present in large numbers in almost all districts, living in both separate and mixed Bulgarian-Muslim villages. Settlement patterns indicated that the Bulgarian Muslims, both Turks and Pomaks, were a longestablished and integral part of Ottoman Bulgaria to which the recent inmigrants from Crimea and the Caucasus had been added.

*The largest group were Circassians, but Abhazians, Chechens, and smaller groups were also settled. These figures are taken from Ottoman reports, mainly of the Refugee Commission. They are given in the very valuable doctoral dissertation of Bedri Habi^oglu, "Kafkasya'dan Osmanli Imparalorlugu'na Go9ler ve Iskanlari," Istanbul University, 1983. For statistics, se pp. 46 47, 94, 95, and 119-121. My thanks to Paul Henze for bringing the work to my attention. See also Eren, pp. 74-75. Karpat, pp. 65-70, gives estimates of the total migration from the Caucasus and tke Crimea, as does Justin McCarthy in Death and Exile (Princeton: Darwin, 1995), pp. 32-39. 3 On the statistics of the Muslims in the Dobrudja, see Miistecib Ulkusal, Dobruca ve Turkler (Ankara, 1966), pp. 24-49.

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TABLE2 Muslims in Ottoman Bulgaria, c. 1877 Muslims In Tuna province *

Total Population

432,000

1,194,000

In Edirne province 2

1,070,000

2,869,000

Total

1,502,000

4,063,000

*The region to become the Kingdom of Bulgaria after 1908,

Other Regions In the other areas of Ottoman Europe, the Muslim population was likely much the same in earlier decades of the nineteenth century as it was in 1876 (Table 3.) Slightly more were born than died from natural causes each year, but natural population growth could only have compensated for losses due to civil disorder and warfare. Along with their fellows in Anatolia, the Turks and other Muslims of the Balkans were the foundation of the Ottoman army. Long military service and high wartime mortality had a significant effect on the survival of Muslim males, and his in turn affected population numbers. Polygamy would have helped somewhat to keep Muslim numbers up, but it is doubtful if it did more than keep the population numbers stable. The primary effects of in-migration of Muslims before 1876 were on the regions discussed above — Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Thessaly. A relatively small number of migrants from Greece must also have gone to Yanya. Outside of the Danube region and Edirne, the Ottoman Refugee Commission recorded only 4,000 Tatar refugees settled in the rest of Ottoman Europe, all in Selanik Eyaleti. Some Caucasian in-migrants went to Kosova, although in small numbers. 3 Forced Migration and mortality, 1875-1878 Two disastrous event shaped the demography of the Balkan Muslims — the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the Balkan Wars. Both had the same effect — massive mortality and forced migration.

^Tuna Vilàyeti less Tulfa Sancagi and Cuma Kazasi. 2«I7,I1 A gag and Pinar Hisar kazas of Edirne Sancagi, Filibe Sancagi less Ahi felebi and Sultan Yeri kazas, and Islimiye Sancagi. 3 Habisoglu, pp. 95-121.

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143

Disaster struck the M u s l i m population in the 1870s. B e g i n n i n g with the Serbian rebellion in Bosnia in 1875, and continuing with the O t t o m a n Serbian W a r , the 1876 troubles in Bulgaria, and the R u s s o - T u r k i s h W a r of 1877-1878, E u r o p e a n M u s l i m s suffered i m m e n s e losses. From 1876 to 1882, nearly 6 0 0 , 0 0 0 M u s l i m s (Table 3). either died or l e f t E u r o p e , m a i n l y f o r A n a t o l i a . O n l y t h e m o r t a l i t y in B u l g a r i a h a s b e e n p r o p e r l y e v a l u a t e d . 1 Seventeen per cent, 2 6 2 , 0 0 0 of the Bulgarian M u s l i m s died. A n o t h e r 3 4 %, 515,000 were refugees w h o never returned to their homes. (This migration w a s m a t c h e d s o m e w h a t by a large n u m b e r of Bulgarians w h o l e f t the O t t o m a n s d o m a i n s - 1 8 7 , 0 0 0 . 2 ) A l t h o u g h exact n u m b e r s h a v e not b e e n calculated, contemporary evidence f r o m European consuls indicated that the death rate in the Ni§ region taken b y Serbia m a y h a v e b e e n as high as the mortality in Serbia. 3 TABLE3 Muslim Population in 1876 and 1882* Remaining in Ottoman Empire in in in in in in

1876

Edirne Vil. 434,000 Manastir Vil. 143,000 Selanik Vil. 367,000 Ijkodra Vil. 151,000 Yanya Vil. 171,000 Kosova Vil. 360,000 Taken from Ottoman Empire in 1878 and 1881 by Austria:): 755,000 by Bulgaria 1,501,000 by Serbia§ 131,000 by Montenegro® 32,000 by Greeceft 40,000 Totals 4,085,000

1882 539,000 302,000 460,000 163,000 211,000 637,000 450,000 715,000 12,000

**

5,000 3,494,000

* Vilayet borders are as in 1911. f l 8 7 5 for Bosna vilayeti figures. iMost of Bosna vilayeti. §Ni§ region. ^Southern Bosna Vilayeti (Southern Hersek Sancagi) and north-west I§kodra Vilayeti. ** Uncounted, but minute. tfThessaly. ^McCarthy, Death and Exile, pp. 88-91, 341-343. ^The 1905 Bulgarian census listed 37,000 who had come to Bulgaria from Edirne vilfiyeti, 38,000 from Manastir and Selanik Vilayets, and 13,000 from "other parts of Ottoman Europe" (assumed to be Yanya and Kosova Vilayets). Comparison to the 1881 census of Bulgaria (which did not include Eastern Rumelia and so gave only partial migration statistics — 32,000 "born in Thrace and Macedonia") indicated that almost all of those recorded in 1905 had come before 1881. Since a majority of the migrants had died by 1905, the population of original migrants was assumed to correspond to the Coale and Demeny Life Table values East-6 and projection made to 1876, yielding 187,000 total Bulgarian migrants from Ottoman Europe. 3 See McCarthy, Death and Exile, p. 104.

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As Table 4 indicates, Muslim departed in great numbers from territories conquered in the 1877-1878 Russo-turkish war. As a result of that war, the Ni§ region was lost to Serbia, southern Hersek (Herzegovina) and parts of l§kodra Vilayeti to Montenegro, Thessaly to Greece (in 1881), and an independent Bulgaria was created. Eastern Rumelia (southern Bulgaria) was later added to Bulgaria. Austria seized most of the Bosna Vilayeti. 1 The Muslims who left Bosnia seem to have been motivated primarily by a desire to live in an Islamic land, as were some of the Muslims of Thessaly. In both regions, hocas preached that this was the proper course for good Muslims. However, past experience of the Muslims must have aided in their decision. Bosnian Muslims had been persecuted and murdered by Serbs in the recent 1875 Serbian rebellion there. 2 They would have feared similar treatment under new Christian control, although this did not transpire. Those who remembered the harsh treatment afforded Muslims in the Greek revolution would also have feared for their lives under the new government. TABLE4 Muslim Migrants to Ottoman Europe from Conquered territories Migrants from Serbia & Migrants to

Bulgaria

Edirne Vil.

Bosnia

Montenegro

Greece

Total

105,000

10,000

115,000

Manastir Vil.

70,000

70,000

140,000

Selanik Vil.

60,000

10,000

i§kodra Vil.

70,000 3,000

Yanya Vil. K o s o v a Vil. Totals

3,000 35,000

70,000

70,000

95,000

305,000

160,000

98,000

35,000 235,000

35,000

598,000

^The numbers in Table 4, drawn primarily from McCarthy, Death and Exile and "Ottoman Bosnia", did not always fit neatly into provincial boundaries. For example, all that is known of the Bosnia migrants is the total number leaving Bosnia, which has been divided artificially among provinces in the table. Such divisions are naturally open to question. 2 See McCarthy, "Ottoman Bosnia".

MUSLIMS

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145

EUROPE

The Muslim Population from. 1878 to 1923 The waves of refugees who escaped the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek conquests increased the proportion of Muslims in the European provinces. After 1878, for the first time, Ottoman Europe had a Muslim majority, F.dirne and Kosova Vilayets were particularly affected. Both became majority Muslim in population. TABLE5 Muslim and Total Population and Proportion Muslim, 1876 and 1911 1876

Muslim Province Edirne Selanik Yanya Manastir i§kodra Kosova Total

Total Population 434,000 (45%) 367,000 (39%) 171,000 (38%) 143,000 (26%) 151,000 (62%) 360,000 (47%) 1,626,000 (42%)

1911

Muslim Population 955,000 941,000 450,000 554,000 243,000 766,065 3,909,000

Total Population 760,000 (53%) 605,000 (45%) 245,000 (44%) 456,000 (43%) 218,000 (62%) 959,000 (60%) 3,242,000 (51%)

Population 1,427,000 1,348,000 561,000 1,065,000 349,000 1,603,000 6,35:2,000

TABLE 6 The Balkan Wars: Muslims of the Conquered Regions Region Conquered by

Greece Bulgaria Yugoslavia Total

Muslims Resident in 1911

Muslims Remaining After Wars

Difference {i.e., Dead or Migrated)

746,000 328,000 1,241,000

124,000 179,000 566,000

622,000 (83%)* 149,000 (45%) 675,000 (54%)

2,315,000

879,000

1,445,000 (58%)

*Note that the figures for Greece include the post-war population exchange.

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In-migration was not the only cause of increased Muslim population in Ottoman Europe after 1878. There were no major Ottoman wars fought in Europe between 1878 and 1912. 1 Conditions of civil order greatly improved. Thus the population, which under peaceful circumstances showed an excess of births over deaths, grew. The same phenomenon was seen in Anatolia and coastal Syria at the same time. All religious groups shared in the demographic growth. This occurred even in Macedonia, despite ongoing rebellion. In 1912, the demographic expansion ended as peace and civil order collapsed in a final disaster for the Muslims of Ottoman Europe, the Balkan Wars. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece invaded Ottoman Europe, forcing before them hundreds of thousand of Muslim refugees. By the wars' end in 1913, a majority of the Muslims of the Ottoman Balkans had been either killed or exiled. From 1912 to 1920, 414,000 Muslims migrated to Anatolia and eastern Thrace (the regions that were to become the Turkish Republic), another 399,000 arrived between 1921 and 1926, mainly as part of the Turkish-Greek Population Exchange. 632,000, 27% of the Muslim population of the Ottoman Balkans, had died. 2 The Ottoman Empire came to an end in 1923, but the traditional Ottoman Balkans ended with the Balkan Wars. Regions that had Muslim pluralities and even majorities were now overwhelmingly non-Muslim. Only in Albania (including much of what had been Ottoman Kosova, taken by Serbia) were Muslims a majority.

i'l hc 1897 war with Greece cannot be considered major, nor was mortality high. The war in Yemen was a drain of soldiers' lives, but it was fought far away from Europe and was not a cause of civilian population loss there. 2 For the derivation of these figures, see McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe", which also contains more detailed data, and Death and. Exile, pp. 156-164. The statistics are drawn from Ottoman population records, corrected for undercounts of women and children. See also the various estimates and registration statistics for various areas in Ahmet Halafoglu, Rumelfden Turk Gogleri (1912-1913) (Ankara: TTK, 1995), pp. 41-63, 72-79. The mortality statistics do not include much of Ottoman Albania, because of a lack of post-war statistics for comparison. Montenegrin troops ravaged northern Albania during the Balkan Wars, so mortality must have been high. For the post-war enumerations of the European forces that occupied Albania see Jacques Bourcart, "La population de l'Albanie ", La Geographie, Vol. 37, 1922, pp. 281-283.

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Appendix Underlying Fertility and Mortality Deaths and births were recorded in the Ottoman population registers, but the painstaking work necessary to compile these has not been done for most of Ottoman Europe. 1 It is possible, however, to derive estimates of fertility and mortality from what limited age-specific data are available. The Muslim population of the Balkans generally had the sort of fertility and mortality regimen one might expect. Both fertility and mortality were high: the average woman who lived through her reproductive years (approximately 15-45 years of age) had six children. Slightly more than half of those children died before the age of five. If a child survived to age five, he or she could expect to live on average to almost 50 years of age. 2 Mortality levels seem to have been marginally better in Selanik and Manastir Vilayets and fertility somewhat lower in Selanik and Yanya Vilayets. 3 TABLE7 Muslims of Austrian Bosnia*

1885 1895 1910

Muslims 493,000 549,000 612,000

Total Population 1,335,000 1,568,000 1,899,000

*Not including Yenipazar or areas taken b y M o n t e n e g r o in 1878. Source: Austrian c e n s u s e s . 4

There is a great deal of demographic information in the Ottoman registers, but it also takes a great deal of information to collect and analyze the statistics. For an excellent use of the registers, see Maria N. Todorova, Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern (Lanham, MD: American University Press, 1993), especially Chapter 2. ^Evidence for this is very limited, however. See "Population of Ottoman Europe", pp. 294-297. ^Austrian censuses of 1895 and 1910. See also Popovic, pp. 271. 4 Based on the East family of tables, Mortality Level 6, GRR=3.0 in Ansley J. Coale and Pavi Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, 2nd edn (New York, 1983). For explanations of the process involved in estimating, see Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities (New York, 1983), Appendix 4, and "The Population of Ottoman Europe".

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TABLE8 Muslims of Serbia

1890 1900 1921

Muslims

Total Population

17,000 15,000 1,345,000

2,162,000 2,493,000 11,985,000

Source: Serbian censuses. 1

TABLE9 Muslims of Greece

1821 1828 1907 1920 1928

Muslims

Total Population

64,000 11,000 4,000 5,000 126,000

939,000 753,000 2,632,000 2,865,000* 6,205,000

*Not including areas taken in the Balkan Wars. Source: Greek census of 1928.

'The Serbian census of 1921 and statistical yearbooks of 1893 and 1905.

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149

TABLE 10 Muslims of Bulgaria

1881 1887 1892 1900 1905 1910 1920 1926

Muslims

Total Population

578,000 676,000 643,000 643,000 604,000 602,000 691,000 789,000

1,404,000* 3,154,000 3,311,000 3,744,000 4,036,000 4,338,000 4,847,000 5,479,000

*Bulgarian state only, not including Eastern Rumelia. Source: Bulgarian censuses. ^

Statistics of the Successor States Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, and Bulgaria all took censuses that recorded population by religion. They did not, however, always report their findings. Summaries of available data are given in Tables 7-10 as they appear in the sources (rounded), uncorrected for undernumeration. Statistical Note The population figures in this article have primarily been drawn from the sources indicated. Data in the tables have been analyzed demographieally for undercounts of women and children, present in all Ottoman population counts, and other statistical factors. It is not possible to include these calculations here without considerably lengthening the article. However, reference is made to the books and articles in which the calculations appear. Mortality due to war and conquest has been calculated by subtracting the surviving population (including out-migrants) of an area after the war/conquest from the population before. Strictly speaking, this is "population loss," a surrogate for mortality where actual deaths were not counted, as they never were in the midst of war and invasion.

^The Bulgarian census of 1881 and statistical yearbook of 1923-1924.

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The figures for the population in 1878 and 1882 (Table 3 and elsewhere) have been calculated by projecting the populations back from the 1911 figures at the observed rates, allowing for in-migration and out-migration in the calculations.1 Figures in some tables include rounding error. Statistical Sources There are numerous unreliable estimates of Balkan population in the Ottoman period. Indeed, Nicholas Michoff (Mikhov) filled four thick volumes with thousands of guesses, rude estimations, and figures enlightened only by a nationalist fervour to prove the estimator's ethnic group was demographically dominant. 2 Such data are useful only in the study of nationalist propaganda. 3 On this, see H. R. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics.4 Many of these sources are analyzed in Justin McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe before and After the Fall of the Empire." Standard contemporary statistical sources, such as Bevölkerung der Erde,5 were only as good as their sources. When they quoted from the Ottoman salnam.es (yearbooks) they became more reliable, but it is obviously better to use the Ottoman sources themselves. The most reliable statistical sources on Balkan Muslims are the enumerations made by the Ottoman government and the governments of the successor states. The Ottoman data were published in the salnames of the provinces. Compilations of the Ottoman registration statistics were also made by the government, although not usually published. The best collections of these are Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914, and Cem Behar, Osmanh imparatorlugu'nun ve Türkiye'nin Niifiisu.6 Two books by HansJürgen Kornrumpf, Die Territorialverwaltung im östlichen Teil der europäischen Türkei vom Erlass der Vilayetsordnung (1864) bis zum. Berliner Kongress (1878) nach amtlichen osmanischen Veröffentlichungerp and Die Territorialverwaltung im östlichen Teil der europäischen Türkei vom Erlass Berliner Kongress (1878) bis zu den Balkankriegen (1912/13) nach amlitchen osmanischen Veröffentlichungen8 contain both Ottoman and European statistics, but are particularly valuable for their information on geography and boundaries. ' i hc rates and calculations are in McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe. La population de la Turquie et de la Bulgarie au XVIII et XIXe siècle: recherches bibliographicostatistiques (Sofia: Tsarska pridvorna pechatnitsa, 1915-1935). 3 A good example of this, easily accessible, is the estimates of Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks quoted in Donation Carnegie pour la Paix Internationale, Enquête dans les Balkans (Paris: Carnegie Endowment, 1914), pp. 8-12, 184-185. ^Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1951. \ i o t h a : J. Herthes, various years. ®Ankara: T.C. Ba§bakanhk Devlet Istatistik Enstitusii, 1996. ^Freiburg: Schwarz, 1976. ^Munich: J. Trojenik, 1983. 2

MUSLIMS

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151

The best compilation of estimates of the Muslim population is in Alexandre Popovic, L'Islam balkanique. Popovic offers clear-headed analysis of the figures. Peter Bartl efficiently lists numerous examples of estimations of the population of Albania for each vilâyet, sancak, and kaza of the three provinces that contained Albanians. 1 The estimates are remarkable for their variety, not their reliability.

' Die Albanischen

Muslime

zur Zeit der nationaler

(Wiesbaden Harrasowitz, 1968), pp. 37-86.

Unabhängigkeitsbewegung

(1878-1912)

A U S T R I A - H U N G A R Y Bihke > I \\W , L H ¡sii IK E ^ B.indljkj

Tu/1,1 I '

I tvivnik ,

• si

ÜI-WNlS.

R BI

- • Sjru\ Mostar '""n •

HERSEK

ADRIA SEA

r-

\

•

:

Se..„

YENIPAZAR

Yenipazar Prigtine •

TIC l§KODRA W

Ottoman Bosnia

^

• l§kodra

ÜSKÜP \

üsküp

Ottoman Bosnia, Borders in 1870

Bosnia: Relative Proportion of Main Religious Groups, 1870

OTTOMAN BOSNIA, 1800 to 1878

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bosnia 1 was one of the least developed and most autonomous provinces of the Ottoman empire, an extreme example of the effects of two centuries of administrative decay and decentralization on the Ottoman provinces. The political history of Bosnia in the nineteenth century, at least until its occupation by Austria in 1878, was shaped by the reclamation of Ottoman authority over the province. CHARACTERISTICS O F O T T O M A N BOSNIA

The mountainous character of Bosnia has defined its political and economic life. The Bosnian range has fourteen mountains over 2,000 meters high, and the province is mountainous or hilly throughout. Human habitation is centred in river valleys and passes between mountains and high hills. The altitudes of settlements vary considerably. Sarajevo is over 2,000 feet above sea level, Mostar less than 200 feet izvornik and Bihke 550 and 750 feet, respectively. Although western Herzegovina is slightly warmer than the rest, most of Bosnia is cold in winter and hot in summer. Temperatures can drop to 0 degrees Fahrenheit in winter and rise to near 90 in summer (as in the northeastern United States). Precipitation is approximately 1000 mm. in most of the province (also about the same as the eastern and middle western United States), 1500 mm. in western Herzegovina (as in Florida or Louisiana). Throughout the year, humidity averages 50-75 percent in western Herzegovina and 70-90 percent in the rest of the province. Sarajevo and Banaluka average 150 days of rainfall, Mostar 130 days, izvornik 110, and Bihke 120. Snow covers most of the land throughout the winter. The altitude and relatively high precipitation gives Bosnia a geographical character very different from most of the rest of the Ottoman empire. Unlike Anatolia or the Arab Middle East, Bosnia has a wealth of timber. Mountains are heavily forested, lumber abundant.

' T h e name Bosnia is used here to signify the Ottoman Bosna vilayet, which included Herzegovina and the sanjak of Yenipazar (Novi-pazar) in addition to Bosnia proper.

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Divisions

Bosnia (Bosna in Ottoman Turkish) was organized as a separate Ottoman province under a governor in 1580 (for more on Bosnia province, see Birken, 1976). Until 1639, its capital was Banaluka. After 1700, the capital alternated between Travnik and Sarajevo. Hersek (Herzegovina), originally a separate province, was made part of Bosnia province in 1833. Early in the nineteenth century, Yenipazar was sometimes attached to Bosnia, sometimes not. It was part of Bosnia province from 1850 to 1875. A small portion of the province in the east was detached in 1833 and given to Serbia. In 1875 a Hersek province was created from the Hersek and Yenipazar sanjaks. In 1878, when Bosnia and Herzegovina were taken by the Austrians, Yenipazar was left to the Ottoman Empire. 1 It was made part of the province of Kosova. Although Yenipazar was under Ottoman administration, Austria stationed garrisons in the sanjak (Birken, 1976). Bosnia reached its greatest extent after 1830 (see the map of Bosnia in 1870). The vilayet (province) of Bosnia was divided into seven sanjaks, and each sanjak into kazas (districts) (see table 1). (Note that kaza n a m e s sometimes changed and kazas names in the table may differ slightly over the years.) The names of the administrative units commonly reflected the history and ethnic makeup of the province. Most of the names were Slavic, transliterated into Ottoman Turkish. However, some were distinctively Turkish: Saray (palace), Yenipazar (new market), Akhisar (white castle), etc. Table 1. Administrative Divisions of Bosnia in 1870 Saray

Izvornik

Travnik

Bihke

Nefs-i Saray (Sarajevo) Visoka (Visoko) Koniçe (Konjic)

Tuzla

Travnik

Bihke (Bihaò)

Balna Izvornik (Zvornik) Sireberniçe (Srebrenice) Berça (Brcka)

Yayçe (Jajce) Akhisar (Prozor) Glamoç (Glamoc) Ahlovna (Livno)

Novasil (Novi) U§tro§9a (Trzac)

Çayniçe (CajniÊe) Viçcgrad (V isegrad) Çelebi Pazar (Rogatica) Kaladina (Kladani)

Maglay (Maglai) Gradaçaç (Gradacac)

Konstanice (Konstajnica) Maden (Stari Majdan) Priodr (Prijedor) Krupa

1 Yenipazar was originally divided between Serbia and Montenegro in the treaty of San Stephano, but the Congress of Berlin overthrew the award.

O T T O M A N

B O S N I A ,

1 8 0 0

to

1 8 7 8

Yenipazar

Banaluka

Hersek (Herzegovina)

Seni§e (Sjenica)

Banaluke (Banja Luka) Gradigka (GradiSka??) Te§ne (Tesanj) Derbend (Derventa)

Mostar

Yenipazar (Novi Bazar) Tallica (Pljevlja) Yenivaro§ (Nova VaroS) Akova (Bijelo Polje) Mi trovile (Mitrovica) Pirepol (Prijepolje) Tirgovisle (TirgoviSte) Kolasin (KolaSin) Vasevik Source: Bosna Vildyeti

Salnamesi

155

Tirebin (Trebinje) I Aibuska (LjubuSka) Istoi§a (Stolac) Foynige (Fojnice) Gacka (Gaòko) Nevasin (Nevesinje) Foga(FoSa) Niksik (Niksic) Bileke (Bileca)

and Birken (1976)

Population The population of Bosnia in Ottoman times was divided by religious affiliation, and it remains so to this day. The Ottoman millet system encouraged this division by organizing the population by religion. Each religious group traditionally provided its own schools, welfare system, courts, and other structures that in the West are usually provided by the government. Ethnic groups were not officially recognized by the Ottomans; population figures listed people by religion: "Islam" (Muslim), "Rum" (Greek Orthodox), "Latin" (Catholic), and so on. Fairly accurate statistics on the numbers of each religious group only appeared at the end of the Ottoman period, because only then did the government have the power and administrative ability to keep population registers. The populations in table 2 have been adjusted for the undercount of women and young children always seen in Ottoman population statistics. They should be taken as reasonable approximations. 1 Figures are for Ottoman subjects resident in the province; they do not include non-residents, such as Austrian, Serbian, or Montenegrin subjects who were working or even living for extended periods in Bosnia.

The process of correction normally used for an Ottoman population depends on the availability of data by age group and over a number of years. Because neither of these are available for Bosnia, J have assumed that the Bosnian population was under-counted as much as was tine case in the closest Ottoman province, Kosova (see McCarthy, 1990). Note that the seemingly precise numbers in the table are a product of the correction process, not an indication of precision to the last person.

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Table 2. The Population of Bosnia Province ca. 1870 Non-Muslim Gypsy

Muslim

Orthodox

Catholic

Jewish

Total

Saray tzvornik Travnik Bihke Yenipazar Banaluka Hersek

98,921 178,964 122,251 127,027 147,942 84,061 110,964

51,566 131,471 70,547 104,343 85,952 126,288 66,041

24,590 32,787 65,110 5,898 0 40,554 51,414

2,696 354 441 0 112 65 0

1,903 5,521 1,850 1,124 2,086 1,656 1,900

179,675 349,098 260,199 238,393 236,093 252,623 230,319

Total

870,128

636,208

220,353

3,669

16,041

1,746,399

Source: 1287 Bosna Vilâyeti Salnamesi

As indicated on the map of the relative proportions of main religious groups in 1870, religious groups were scattered. The provinces with the highest proportion of Orthodox Serbs were not those along the Serbian border, as one might expect, but along the border with Croatia. Correspondingly, the Bihke sanjak, which was in north-west Bosnia and bordered Croatia on the north and west, had a smaller proportion of Catholics than any other Bosnian sanjak except Yenipazar, which had none. Muslims, the largest of the major groups, comprised just under 50 percent of the total population. Population was most dense in the northern districts of the province. Bihke sanjak had almost twice as many people per square mile as were in Yenipazar in the far south-east. The density of population in the central and southern sanjaks was on average more than one-third less than that of Bihke, Banaluka, and izvornik in the north. In the absence of accurate population statistics it is not possible to tell how migration might have affected population density. However, it is likely that some Bosnians moved to the northern provinces in the course of the nineteenth century, drawn by the increase in trade that came with proximity to Austria-Hungary. Cities The typical Bosnian city is situated in a river valley, stretching along both sides of a river and up the sides of hills. Populations of the cities in the nineteenth century are difficult to ascertain because official Ottoman data on city size have not yet been found and because of confusion over what

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constituted a city. Travellers' accounts give widely varying estimates, which indicates that some included only the closest settlements while others included nearby villages that interacted economically and socially with the city. Nevertheless, it is obvious that urbanization was not far advanced in Ottoman Bosnia. The only large urban area in Bosnia was Saray (Sarajevo), the capital, with slightly more than 30,000 inhabitants in the period just before the end of Ottoman rule. It was a flourishing Muslim city; the city and surroundings (kaza) contained 101 congregational mosques and smaller neighbourhood mosques (mescid), 7 religious schools (medrese), 9 lodges (tekke), for Muslim mystic orders or Sufis, and 17 tombs or shrines of holy men ( t u r b e ) . Economically, the city was considerably better developed than any other in the province. It had more than 30 hans (caravanserais, or inns with warehouses and shops), more than 1,600 shops, and a large number of mills and bakeries. The inhabitants could refresh themselves at any one of 56 coffee houses. Sarajevo's position as main city was not based on its status as capital. It was rather the reverse: the capital was moved to Sarajevo from much smaller and less developed Travnik because Sarajevo was less traditional and more at the economic centre of the province. The form of Sarajevo was distinctly that of an Ottoman city, reflecting the culture of Islam. Streets were relatively narrow and winding. The design of houses turned inward, with gardens and outdoor living space enclosed by walls and not seen from the street. The next two largest cities, Mostar and Banaluka, each had nearly 15,000 inhabitants. Mostar, like Sarajevo, was built on what contemporary Europeans called the "Oriental design". Streets were narrow and winding. Houses were surrounded by compounds. No other city had more than 15,000 inhabitants. In the other sanjaks, economic life was spread over a number of small towns, each with a few stores and hans, reflecting the limited commerce of the province. Crops and handicrafts were brought to small local centres to be processed. There was no economic need for large regional centres. One European traveller (Arbuthnot, 1862, 41) described the administrative centres of the Bosnian sanjaks, the largest cities in their areas, as "nothing more than large villages, with a bazaar." Most of the sanjak centres had less than 5,000 inhabitants. The proportion of non-Muslims in cities seems to have increased beginning at least by the middle of the century. The phenomenon was observed by contemporaries and continued into the Austrian period, when the proportion of Muslims in most urban populations fell each year. In Herzegovina, for example, the Muslims comprised 59 percent of the population of Mostar in 1879, 54 percent in 1885, and 48 percent in 1895 (Danes, 1903, 60-70). The Muslim population of the cities increased slowly, at roughly the rate of natural

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increase, but the Christian populations were migrating to cities and so increasing their proportion of the urban population. Contemporary European observers, when they remarked on this phenomenon, attributed it to increasing international trade and commerce, which was much more a Christian than a Muslim preserve. Rural Areas To those familiar with housing in the Ottoman Middle East, the feature that most set Bosnian rural houses apart was the use of wood. Where elsewhere mud (unfired) brick would have been used, for example, to construct compound or stable walls, in Bosnia wood was common. Logs and stone formed the foundations for houses, even houses that were largely constructed of mud brick. Whereas the walls of mud-brick houses elsewhere were made entirely of the brick, Bosnian mud-brick walls were made of alternating layers of brick and wood. Wooden houses, constructed of cut boards, were common. Wooden shingles or, occasionally straw, placed over beams covered pitched roofs. The hilly terrain allowed peasants to construct houses that were partially built into hillsides. Cellars are often cut into hillsides and the house constructed above them. Stables and other farm buildings were built as well as, and sometimes better than, the peasants' houses. They were constructed of the same materials as the houses and in the same fashion. Corrals were built of poles and boards. Two-story wooden houses of a type seen in wooded areas of Anatolia and elsewhere in the Balkans were seen in Bosnia as well. As elsewhere, the ground floor often functioned as a stable or storage area and often as a kitchen. The upper stories often protruded over the lower, with wide eaves providing protection from rain and snow. While the building materials may have been different than in other areas of the rural Ottoman empire, the arrangement and use of living space within the houses were similar. Larger houses consisted of central halls from which private rooms or sitting rooms opened. The traditional separation between public rooms where friends and visitors were received and private or family rooms was retained. The main difference between Bosnian and other Ottoman houses was the presence of a kitchen in the center of the house, often in the main hall, not outside the dwelling proper, undoubtedly an innovation inspired by the cold winters. As in the Ottoman Middle East, houses were often extended to accommodate additions to the extended family. Married couples had private rooms, but other rooms were used in common.

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There seems to have been little difference between Christian and Muslim housing in Bosnia. Of the structures described here, only the twostory wooden houses were almost exclusively Muslim. Muslims do seem to have constructed more walls and higher fences. Christians, of course, were the only ones to build pigsties (see Cvijic, 1956; Thurnher, 1956). 1 The type of crops and animals on Bosnian farms varied considerably from those usually grown in the Ottoman empire. The most common cereal grain was corn (maize), an unusual primary crop anywhere in Eurasia. In the Ottoman empire as a whole, wheat production was approximately seven times corn production, but in Bosnia almost twice as much corn was produced as wheat. Barley and oats were also grown. Cattle were also more prevalent in Bosnia than elsewhere in the empire. There were almost as many head of cattle as sheep in Bosnia. In the empire as a whole, sheep outnumbered cows ten to one. The large number of cows was especially unusual in Ottoman Europe. For example, in Kosova and Manastir provinces, geographically close to Bosnia, sheep outnumbered cows twenty to one. The mountainous terrain was not the reason; other mountainous provinces of the empire also had far more sheep than cows. Therefore, the prevalence of beef in Bosnia may be a sign of a cultural difference. Goats were also plentiful, especially in the wooded highlands, where they wreaked havoc on young trees. The main export crop of Bosnia was plums and of Herzegovina, tobacco. W e know relatively little about the lives of peasants in Ottoman Bosnia, and it is difficult to describe with certainty their situation. Approximately half seem to have been freeholders — peasants who owned their own land. Their lands most often consisted of scattered small holdings that would together support an extended family. As in the rest of the Ottoman empire, the peasants did not normally own consolidated plots in which all their holdings were together. Generations of inheritance and buying and selling had left peasant families with scattered plots. Early in the nineteenth century, freehold peasants were taxed locally, and little of their payment made its way to the central government in Istanbul. As Ottoman power in the province increased, their payments went to the provincial capital and then on to Istanbul. The other group of Bosnian cultivators were sharecroppers and serfs (kmets). Many of these were peasants who lived on lands owned by the sultan (.miri lands). Some of these lands had been given by early sultans to landlords who enjoyed part of the proceeds from the harvest in return for military service and policing their districts, a system that remained in force in Bosnia long after *The material on housing here has been drawn from those sources and from various works on Ottoman housing, particularly the writings of Vedat Eldem.

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it had virtually disappeared in the rest of the empire. Other imperial lands were distributed to tax farmers, who collected rents for the government and kept a portion for themselves. Legally, both types of landholder could be replaced at the will of the sultan when the old holder died or when a fixed term as tax farmer was over. In fact, the sultan's land often remained in the same family for many generations. Many of the holders transferred the lands into de facto private ownership in the eighteenth century, when the government was too weak to prevent them doing so. Cultivators on the imperial lands were usually tied to the land. This was partly due to imperial laws designed to protect both the cultivator and tax base, which denied the landlord the right to evict tenant farmers. In some periods, laws were passed that correspondingly denied the renters the right to leave. A primary reason cultivators remained on the land, however, must have been that there was nowhere else to go. 1 While the majority of Muslim peasants were freeholders, the majority of Orthodox Serbian peasants were sharecroppers. The kmet system in Bosnia was a combination of the older pre-Ottoman system of serfdom and the Ottoman system of land tenure. Before the Ottoman conquest, Bosnian serfdom was relatively relaxed, allowing some freedom of movement of the serf. Along with feudal obligations, peasants inherited family lands and had specific rights on those lands. This fit into the Ottoman system well. Serfdom, as such, did not exist in Ottoman law, but landlords did exert considerable power over the villagers on their lands. Therefore, the traditional system of land tenure could largely continue. Many nobles converted to Islam and continued to exercise their traditional rights, which were only somewhat affected by the change to the Ottoman legal system. Other lands passed into the hands of Ottoman notables and tax farmers from elsewhere, who held the lands under Ottoman law as well, in practice becoming indistinguishable from the native Bosnian landlords who had converted to Islam. The one radical change in land tenure came with the mass conversion of many Bosnians to Islam soon after the Ottoman conquest. Most of the new Muslims seem to have been allowed to convert their holdings into what in fact were freehold farms. Only a small percentage of Muslims were kmets. The land tenure system in Bosnia was very unfavourable to the central government. During and after the Tanzimat the Ottoman government wished to increase the taxes collected from Bosnia (see the section on Ottoman reform, below). The illegal conversion of imperial lands to private ownership and the reluctance of Bosnian landowners to forward the "sultan's share" robbed the imperial treasury. Therefore, one of the first intentions of nineteenth-century ^Most authors call the Bosnian charecropper system serfdom and the relationship between peasant and landlord feudal. However, few of the circumstances and laws that characterized European feudalism applied in the Ottoman Empire.

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Ottoman reformers was to regularize land tenure and taxation from crops. This proved to be almost impossible. Kmet peasants, while they received the right to leave state-owned lands in 1848, did not receive similar rights on private lands until 1876, along with limited rights to buy their plots from landowners. The Austrians also felt this difficulty. After taking the province, they too found it impossible to abolish the kmet system, which remained essentially intact until after World War I. Education The education to be had in Bosnia was meagre. Although the Ottoman empire had begun to modernize its educational system by the middle of the nineteenth century, Bosnia had taken little part in the changes. Elementary education in Bosnia was almost entirely parochial — religious schools operated by the millets. In 1875 there were only ten small modern secondary schools in the province. Students in Muslim elementary schools numbered 23,000 males and 11,000 females, in Christian and Jewish elementary schools, 3,000 males and 1,000 females, for 38,000 in total. 1 This meant that only 10 percent of the children received any schooling, and of these, an even smaller number finished the elementary course of study, which was in any case heavily weighted toward religious training. The educational situation in the province demonstrates how peripheral Bosnia was in the Ottoman empire. The level of education in Bosnia was on a par with, or below that, of provinces in eastern Anatolia, which are usually considered very underdeveloped. The Anatolian and Balkan provinces that lay closest to Istanbul enjoyed a much higher standard of education. Student numbers at elementary schools of the type seen in Bosnia would be four times as high as in Bosnia and secondary schools much more numerous. Transportation and Economy Bosnia traditionally produced few manufactured goods. Only handwoven items such as blankets and carpets had a small export trade through Dalmatia and Trieste. Manufacturing was surely not impossible. There were throughout the nineteenth century workshops that manufactured guns for the province, and other manufactured goods could obviously have been made. All of the economic problems of the Ottoman empire — such as lack of capital, low education levels, and high taxation — stood in the way of export and encouraged economic stagnation.

^Hersek sanjak is not included in these figures.

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In addition, Bosnia manufactures and trade had a particular predicament in transportation (see map of routes in 1875). Transportation to Bosnia f r o m other Ottoman territories was poor. There were no direct rail connections to Bosnia f r o m Istanbul. The only rail connection to the province was the Selanik-Uskup line. Construction on this line had begun only in 1872, and by the time Austria occupied Bosnia, the line had extended to Mitrovige on the border of Yenipazar sanjak. Transportation f r o m that point was by horse or donkey. An indication of the speed of travel is seen in the time it took Ottoman post horses to travel from town to town (see table 3). Their speed can be considered an upper maximum. As Sarajevo (Saray) is only approximately 140 miles from Mitrovige as the crow flies, it is obvious that transportation was not rapid. Of course, roads did not follow a straight line; mountainous terrain meant winding roads and they were not well developed. The Ottomans had begun a program of constructing improved trunk roads through the Balkans, but they had not reached Bosnia by 1877. Carts were often impractical, and roads were sometimes closed in winter. Pack animals were a more usual form of conveyance. Transport of bulk cargoes to the rest of the Ottoman empire was thus uneconomical. The transportation situation was much worse through most of the nineteenth century, when there was no railhead at Mitrovige. Then all longdistance travel within and f r o m Bosnia was by slow road. In all but the last years of Ottoman rule, transportation from anywhere else in the empire to Bosnia was by road or through Austria Dalmatian ports.

Table 3. Travel in Bosnia Hours by Horse Mitroviçe to Yenipazar Yenipazar to Seniçe Seniçe to Yenivarog Yenivaros to Pirepol Pirepol to Vigegrad Vigegrad to Çelebipazar Çelebipazar to Saray Total Source: 1296 Devlet Saíname.

8 10 6 8 8 8 8

hours hours hours hours hours hours hours

56 hours

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Long before the Austrian occupation of the province in 1878, Bosnia was in the Austro-Hungarian economic sphere. From antiquity, the natural outlet for Bosnian trade had been the Adriatic coast ports. The SarajevoMostar-Ragusa/Dubrovnik road, connecting up by sea to Venice and elsewhere, was the terminus of the classical Ottoman trade route that stretched f r o m the Bosporus to the Adriatic. In the nineteenth century the Adriatic ports were all in Austrian hands. Road building, especially to the north, began in earnest under governors Omer Pasha and Osman Pasha in the 1860s. The improved transportation routes all went from south to north or from the province's center to Dalmatia. Roads to Serbia were poorly developed. This may have partly been a political decision because connection between the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia was not in the best interest of the government. However, the main reasons must have been economic. Lucrative markets were in Austrian lands and beyond, not in Serbia. As European industry developed, raw materials naturally went from the less advanced economy, Bosnia, to the more advanced economy, Austria. Physical proximity made economic exchange between Bosnia and the Austrian domains inevitable, aided considerably by the difficulty of transporting goods to the rest of the Ottoman empire. Cargoes travelled to Austrian ports on the Adriatic coast or north to Croatia. During the latter half of the century the northern sanjak of Banaluka in particular became integrated into the Austrian economy. In 1872 a railroad was constructed from Banaluka to Novi, on the Austrian border. From the 1860s on, Ottoman governors built improved roads that connected interior cities with routes to the north, not notably to the south. The most obvious candidate for export from Bosnia was lumber, but merchants could not transport lumber in bulk until roads had been improved. Thus, even through Herzegovina had abundant forests, throughout the Ottoman period its exports were primarily animal products — hides, fur, sheep — and some tobacco and other corps, not wood. In the north, on the other hand, Banaluka began to prosper because of improved transportation. European ships on the Sava River brought goods, which were transshipped by land to Banaluka. Lumber became the principal export north. Small private industries — especially those based on wood, such as sawmills and woodworking — sprang up. As elsewhere, most of the new commerce was in the hands of Christian merchants, who were the preferred partners of the European Christians. All was tied into the Austrian economy.

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HISTORY An Ottoman official looking at a map of Bosnia in 1800 might have despaired. Bosnia was in such a dismal geographic position that any Ottoman leader would have thought twice before committing resources to it that could be spent on more secure places. Geographically, it was far removed from the center of Ottoman authority. Sarajevo was almost twice as far from Istanbul as it was f r o m Vienna, the Austro-Hungarian capital; Belgrade, the Serbian capital, was four times closer than Istanbul; Bosnia's northern districts were closer to Berlin than Istanbul; Bosnia's northern districts were closer to Berlin than they were to Istanbul. This might have had little effect on Ottoman rule of the province if the Ottoman empire had had adequate military power and modern transportation, but it had neither. The Austrian empire, on the other hand, surrounded Bosnia on two sides. If Austria claimed Bosnia, the Ottomans could not save it. Like Albania and Montenegro, Bosnia was an inherently difficult region to rule. Its mountainous terrain made it possible for small groups to resist large armies. The Ottomans had early developed a policy of rule that allowed Bosnian leaders a great degree of autonomy. As long as a satisfactory sum was sent to the central treasury each year, it was less expensive for the government to accept the status quo than to mount a major pacification campaign. This became more and more true as the Ottoman central authority declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By 1800, political authority in Bosnia had for some time been held by hereditary Muslim notables, called kapudans (captains). The kapudan system had evolved from the Ottoman timar system that involved giving military leaders control of conquered lands and allowing them to use the proceeds from the lands to support their soldiers. The soldiers were to keep the peace in the region and make themselves available when the sultan called them to war. Because they were on the military marches with Austria, the kapudans were organized into local military units whose main purpose was the defence of Bosnia. They became an integrated part of the Bosnian political and military system. When the Ottoman central government was strong, abuses of the kapudan system were kept in check. The kapudans and other Muslim notables were subject to Ottoman laws designed to secure central government control and to ensure just treatment of peasants so that they would stay on the land to support the economy and maintain the tax base. In the eighteenth century, however, the kapudans and lesser notables largely succeeded in keeping their control over their lands while ignoring the legal rights both of the peasants and of the sultan. Because the sultan's government was too weak to assert its

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prerogatives, Bosnian notables were able illegally to convert crown lands into private holdings. Acting as a corporation,1 the kapudans ruled Bosnia for their personal benefit. Both the central government and the peasantry suffered. Abuses were ubiquitous. Laws that limited the amount of taxes that could be collected from peasants or the amount of corvée labour demanded of them did not function in the absence of central authority. Bosnia remained a part of the Ottoman empire, but in reality Ottoman law no longer applied. In many ways the Bosnians remained loyal subjects of the sultan. They never relinquished their duties as defenders of the Ottoman borders, and they continued to provide soldiers for the sultan's wars. Ironically, this made it all the more difficult for the central government to assert its control over the province, because the Ottomans depended on the military contribution of the autonomous Bosnians. As the strength of the Janissaries and other military units declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the government counted more and more on local forces of Albanians, Bosnians, and Crimean Tatars to fight its wars: it was Bosnians and Albanians, for example, who went to Egypt with Muhammed Ali to fight the French invaders. An Ottoman expedition to bring Bosnia back to central control would not only have been horrendously expensive, it would also have cost the empire some of its best troops. Better, from the Ottoman perspective, to leave them alone, and in essence the Ottomans did leave Bosnia alone until the nineteenth century. Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro Bosnia's history is intimately involved with that of Serbia and Montenegro. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Serbs of Montenegro and Serbia rebelled repeatedly to gain first autonomy within the Ottoman empire and then independence. As those two Ottoman provinces rebelled, they drew Bosnia into their conflicts with the central government. Serbs claimed Bosnia because it had been part of ancient Serbian kingdoms and because they saw it as an essential link in the geography of a greater Serbia, trying together Serbia and Montenegro and perhaps even extending to ports on the Adriatic. The large minority of Serbs in Bosnia were viewed as "unredeemed" — Serbs who still had to be drawn into the national fold. Together with the Bosnian notables, ethnic Serbian rebels were the other force that stood in the way of Ottoman rule in Bosnia. Montenegrin raids into Bosnia and raids into Montenegro were so common in the first half of the nineteenth century they amounted to a continuous war. As it strove for its own ^Some sources claim there were 39 kapudan families, others say 36.

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independence, Serbia sent agitators into Bosnia to encourage Serbs there to join in the fight. Intercommunal warfare sometimes resulted. When Serbs rebelled in the early nineteenth century, for example, they attacked Muslim villages. The Bosnian Muslims then joined Sultan Mahmud II's army in putting down the Serbian revolt. In the Serbian revolts that extended into the 1820s the 15,000 to 20.000 Muslims resident in Serbia fled or were expelled, replaced by Serbs f r o m Bosnia. When the European powers forced the Ottomans to accept Serbian autonomy in 1833 Bosnian lands were given to Serbia. The greatest danger posed by Serbian unrest was the threat of European intervention that always accompanied it. Through-out the nineteenth century, rebellions by Christians were the first step in the loss of Ottoman provinces, always through European intervention. While the Ottomans could and did hold off both Serbia and Montenegro militarily, experience had taught them that the European powers might take Bosnia away from the Ottomans, no matter what the outcome on the battle-field. Austria always presented the greatest danger. It was a European power with greater economic ties to Bosnia than the Ottomans had. Moreover, Austria had no desire to see Serbia seize Bosnia and to avoid it might make a pre-emptive strike. Only the European balance of power kept the Austrians from taking the province. Should that balance of power change, Ottoman Bosnia was at risk. Ultimately, however, it was rebellion of Serbs in Bosnia and war with Serbia that led the Ottomans to lose Bosnia. Ottoman Reform and Reassertion of Ottoman Power in Bosnia When the Ottoman empire set firmly on a course of reform in the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-39), Bosnian notables wanted no part of it. The primary purpose of the reforms was to increase the power of the central government and to turn the Ottoman state into a centralized state similar to those in Europe. It was in their interest to oppose that since ultimately there was no place in a reformed empire for independent lords who withheld tax monies and did not wish their men to be drafted into the imperial forces. Reform meant the end of their power and independence, and the notables realized this. During his reign, Mahmud II had destroyed the power of independent notables in Bulgaria, southern Albania, and Anatolia whose positions had been analogous to that of the lords. There were also emotional reasons for the Bosnians to reject reform. The Muslims of Bosnia were religiously conservative. Since the exile of Muslims after the Austrian conquests at the end of the seventeenth century, the European Christians had been the enemy. Like others in such a position, they held fast to their own religious traditions. The reforms proclaimed in Istanbul were by nature "infidel" reforms because their intent was to copy European ways to strengthen the empire. This was seen as a threat to Islam.

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The first attempts at reform in Bosnia came in 1826. In that year Mahmud II disbanded the Janissaries in Istanbul and throughout the empire. But in Bosnia the notables protected the Janissaries from the sultan and refused to cooperate with reform. When the sultan attempted to conscript Bosnians for his new European-style army, the notables revolted. The sultan first tried to conciliate the notables but was then forced to send an army to the province. The Bosnian notables were crushed in 1831. The victory allowed Mahmud to extend imperial control and to abolish the kapudan system in 1835; the Bosnian soldiers were gradually integrated into the Ottoman army. The taxes once collected by the notables were now collected by the government. Angered by their continued loss of power, the notables revolted in 1849 and again in 1850, bringing another intervention by the Ottoman military. The system of Europeanizing reforms known as the Tanzimat had begun in Istanbul. The Ottoman forces that put down the rebels came to Bosnia with imperial orders to apply the new reforms, which regularized the judiciary under the central authority of Istanbul and organized the administrative districts. Authority was put into the hands of administrators from the Ottoman civil service, not, as in the past, local Bosnian notables. The bureaucrats would run each sanjak and answer to Istanbul. As was the case all over the empire during the Tanzimat period, a written set of administrative regulations took the place of ad hoc rules. The new rules included the appointment of an administrative council on which sat both Muslims and Christians who would advise the governor, and bureaucrats had to go by the book. After a rebellion by Christian peasants in 1858, the Porte put into place further, primarily centralizing, reforms. In particular, new Ottoman laws on land tenure and provincial organization that had heretofore not been applied in Bosnia were now put into place. Another revolt, in Herzegovina, which had festered since 1852, was put down in 1861. In 1862, the privileges of Bosnian Christians were extended to match those long enjoyed by non-Muslims in the rest of the empire, including the right openly to operate Christian schools and to open new churches. These reforms alleviated somewhat the hard life of the Christian peasantry. Some Tanzimat economic reforms were put in place, including government-run "banks" that made loans to villagers. The situation in Bosnia was slowly brought into line with that of the rest of the empire. Contributing to Ottoman difficulties in reforming Bosnia was continuing civil unrest. Montenegrin revolts against the Ottomans disrupted life and government in Bosnia as well as Montenegro. Montenegrin troops invaded Herzegovina in 1860, slaughtering Muslim villagers until they were defeated by the Ottomans. Unrest, especially among Bosnian Serbs, persisted throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Notwithstanding the disruption f r o m Montenegrin and Serbian actions, the revolts were ultimately beneficial to

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Ottoman control. In Bosnia, where both notables and ordinary Muslims were hostile to Ottoman reform, a significant military force was needed to implement them. The soldiers were sent to defeat the revolt of the notables, then to defeat Montenegro, but they also provided the military back-bone for reform. Omer Pasha and Osmaft Pasha, in particular, made use of the force at their command to bring about change. Ottoman reform took firm hold in the 1860s. During the short governorship of Omer Liitfi Pasha (1860-61), the last vestiges of the landlords finally disappeared, allowing the introduction of the Tanzimat reforms. Topal Osman Pasha, who followed Omer Pasha as governor from 1861-69, was able to reorganize the administration of the province and generally improve central government control. The provincial capital was shifted from Travnik — considered to be the center of the traditionalist opposition to reform — to Sarajevo. The governorships of the pashas Omer and Osman marked the end of the traditionalists' active opposition to the authority of the central government and to reform. This did not mean that great changes were immediately introduced. It proved impossible, for example, for the Ottomans completely to end the traditional system of land tenure — a system that robbed both the peasants of Bosnia and the central government. Tentative attempts to introduce reform in the landlord-tenant relationship were insignificant, and the attempt to abolish tax-farming was a complete failure, as it proved immensely difficult to alter a centuries-old system. Tax farms could not be abolished until detailed registers of cultivators had been drawn up and basic decisions made as of who would own the land. The traditional system was too engrained to be reformed quickly. Government undertakings to improve manufacturing in Bosnia also had little success. Rug factories and the like that the government sponsored were actually little more than substitutes for traditional crafts. Merchants were aided by government loans, but in general manufacturing in Bosnia fell afoul of the same problems that afflicted business throughout the Ottoman empire: local goods could not compete with less expensive merchandise made in Europe, and taxation was weighted against local businessmen. Because of the Capitulations and internal duties on goods passing between provinces, European merchants bringing in goods from abroad paid lower customs duty than Ottoman merchants bringing goods from another Ottoman province. The combination of a low level of technology and education and high internal taxation made industrialization all but impossible. Despite failures, however, the Ottomans did effect real reform, and some of the reforms significantly improved the province's economic life. In 1860, Sarajevo was connected to the Ottoman and European telegraph systems. The city's first printing press was put in operation in 1865. The road system was

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improved in much of the province. These were the first steps toward bringing Bosnia into the modern transportation and communication systems of Europe. Trade, particularly trade with Austria, increased markedly. While the old system of land tenure remained, it was regularized throughout the province in 1848 and further codified in 1859, to the benefit of both peasants and the government. Peasants on crown lands were guaranteed the right to leave the land, and landlords were given greater security of tenure (these reforms did not affect privately owned land). Administratively, the entire operation of the province was revolutionized. The Ottoman provincial law of 1864 was put into place in Bosnia, ordering the province into small, governable units with a regulated chain of authority among officials. Advisory councils of local leaders of the various religious communities were established. In short, reform was proceeding, if slowly, when the Austrians took the province in 1878. Bosnia in 1878 was very different from Bosnia in 1880. The End of Ottoman

Bosnia

The 1875 Serbian rebellion in Bosnia spelled the end to Ottoman rule. The rebellion began as a protest against landlords in Herzegovina and soon spread to the rest of Bosnia province. The first actions of the Serbian rebels were against tax collectors, landlords, and Ottoman officials, and they found sympathy even among Muslim peasants. However, the character of the rebellion soon changed with attacks on Muslim villages and counter attacks on Serbs. The rebellion turned into a large-scale guerrilla and intercommunal war between Muslims and Serbs. The rebels were at first supported by Montenegro and by pan-Slavist elements in Russia. Guns came f r o m Montenegro and through AustriaHungary. The Ottoman response to the rebellion was tempered by this European intervention. In December 1875, Austria, Germany, and Russia ("the League of the Three Emperors") demanded that the Ottomans conciliate the rebels by abolishing tax farming, lowering taxes, and making other reforms. The Ottomans agreed to the demands and issued a pardon for the rebels. This had little effect. The rebellion continued. At that point the Ottoman government sent Ahmet Muhtar Pasha with an army and put down the rebellion by force. Distressed by accounts of Christian refugees fleeing to surrounding countries (and ignoring, as they had throughout the rebellion, any Muslim suffering), the European powers made a new set of demands on the Ottomans in May of 1876. Meanwhile, events in Bulgaria had altered the situation. The Bulgarian revolution of 1876 and the subsequent Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 decided the fate of Ottoman Bosnia. The Ottoman suppression of Bulgarians, who rebelled in May 1876, inflamed European public opinion

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against the Ottomans. Prince Milan of Serbia, influenced both by Russia and by popular anti-Turkish sentiment in Serbia, allied with Montenegro and attacked the Ottoman empire. In August of 1876 the Ottomans defeated the Serbs. The Ottomans had thus been successful in defeating rebellions in both Bosnia and Bulgaria and in defeating Serbia and Montenegro. Russia was unwilling to accept such a setback to its plans for independent Slavic states in the Balkans. After diplomatic efforts to avoid war failed, Russia declared war on the Ottoman empire on 24 April 1877. Bosnia was a bargaining chip in the war. In order to ensure AustriaHungary's neutrality in the war, the Russians agreed that the Austrian could occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Ottomans were defeated in 1878 and forced to sign the Treaty of San Stephano, but because Austria and other European powers decided that the terms of the treaty were against their interests, they forced Russia to accept new terms at the Congress of Berlin (13 June - 1 3 July 1878). The congress awarded Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria, less a part of Herzegovina, which went to Montenegro. In theory, Austria was only to occupy the province, which would still remain technically under Ottoman sovereignty. In fact, Bosnia became an Austrian colony. On 21 April 1879, Sultan Abdiilhamid II formally accepted the status of Bosnia as an Austrian protectorate. Bosnian Muslim uprisings against the Austrian occupation were unsuccessful. The inhabitants of Bosnia paid a heavy price for the events of 1875 to 1878. The death rate among the Serbs and especially the Muslims was very high. That, combined with emigration, changed the ethnic makeup of Bosnia forever. Comparisons between the populations of Ottoman and Austriancontrolled Bosnia cannot be exact because the provincial boundaries were not the same. Austrian Bosnia was smaller than Ottoman Bosnia. Parts of the Hersek sanjak had been awarded to Montenegro in 1878, and the Yenipazar sanjak remained in the Ottoman empire. Nevertheless, a close approximation is possible. Subtracting a quarter of the Hersek Muslim population and all of the Yenipazar Muslim population from the Muslim population figures in table 2 leaves a Muslim population of the area of Austrian-controlled Bosnia of approximately 695,000 in 1870 (see table 4). The Austrian census of 1879 recorded only 449,000 Muslims in Bosnia. A great number of the Muslims had gone.

OTTOMAN

BOSNIA,

1 8 0 0 to

1878

171

Table 4 The Population of Bosnia* in 1870 and 1879

Muslim Orthodox Catholic

1870 694,000 534,000 208,000

1879 449,000 496,485 209,000

Source: Table 2 and Austrian Census of 1895. T h e area of Bosnia controlled by Austria after 1878. As table 4 indicates, Bosnia must have suffered greatly in the rebellion that began in 1875. The Serbian population declined appreciably (7 percent is the estimate in table 4). The Muslim population suffered a far worse decline, a loss of more than one third. Many Muslims migrated to the Ottoman empire after the Austrian occupation, and many must have died in the 1875 revolt. The figures for 1870, which are approximations, may be somewhat high or the Austrian enumeration somewhat low but in either case have small effect on the magnitude of the population loss. The Bosnia captured by the Austrians was significantly different than Ottoman Bosnia in 1800. Ottoman reform efforts had changed civil authority in the province, removing power from the hands of local notables, although the government had not been able to remove economic power from the traditional landlords. A slight start had been made in bringing modern education to the province. Transportation by road was improved, and a start, had even been made on railroad transport. Bosnia in 1878 was more integrated into the European economic system than would have been conceivable in 1800. Despite changes and reforms, however, Bosnia still remained one of the least developed Ottoman provinces. In Ottoman Europe, only Albania could compare in lack of development. The most significant difference in Bosnia before and after the troubles of 1875-78 was demographic. In 1870 the Muslims of Ottoman Bosnia had been the largest group in the population, making up only slightly less than 50 percent of the total. In 1879 the Orthodox Serbs were the largest religious group: the province that had been almost 50 percent Muslim in 1870 was now more than 60 percent Christian. This constituted the most significant change in Bosnia since the Ottoman conquest four hundred years earlier.

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REFERENCES Arbuthnot, Lieut. G. (1862). Herzegovina: or Omer Pasha and the Christian Rebels, London. Birken, Andreas. (1976). Die Provinzen des Osmanischen Reiches. Wiesbaden. Cvijic, Jovan. (1918). La Péninsule balkanique: géographie humaine. Paris. Danes, Georg V. (1903). Bevölkerungsdichtigkeit der Hercegovina. Prague. McCarthy, Justin. (1990). "The Population of Ottoman Europe Before and After the Fall of the Empire". In Heath W. Lowry and Ralph S. Hattox, Third Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey. Istanbul. Thurnher, Majda. (1956). "A Survey of Balkan Houses and Farm Buildings." Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 14 (Spring), 19-92.

Bosnia: Main Transportation Routes, 1875

THE POPULATION OF OTTOMAN SYRIA AND IRAQ, 1878-1914*

The Ottoman Fertile Crescent was divided into the three provinces of Iraq — Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul and six provinces of Greater Syria — Suriye (capital, Damascus), Haleb, Beyrut, Quds-i §erif (capital, Jerusalem), Zor, and Jabal Lubnan. 1 The amount of Ottoman involvement and control in the Arab Provinces varied greatly, and following a general pattern throughout the Ottoman empire 2 the provinces most closely controlled by Istanbul were those in which population records were most accurately kept. Thus the Ottomans recorded the populations of Greater Syria fairly well but had a very imperfect idea of their numbers in Iraq. What follows is a broad analysis of the populations of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, based mainly on published Ottoman sources. In the absence of detailed archival investigations into Ottoman population registers, a researcher must be content with the examination of total population numbers, rather than detailed studies of fertility, mortality, and migration. The material for more detailed studies exists, however, both catalogued and uncatalogued, and it awaits researchers in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul. The Sources There is no need to consider at length the multitude of estimates of the population of the Ottoman Empire made by nineteenth-century European travellers, diplomats, geographers, journalist, and politicians. They have been extensively criticized elsewhere. 3 Quite simply, no population statistics other than Ottoman governmental statistics were in any way reliable. Demographers have established 4 that the only accurate way to know a population's size is to *

This study was done while I was a Visiting Fellow at the Office of Population Research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I wish to thank Dunning Wilson, John Eilts, J. Dennis Hyde, and the staff at the Office of Population Research for their assistance. have used both Turkish and Arabic names and transliterations in this study, choosing whichever best suits in context and is most easily recognizable. For example, the Ottoman provinces are Suriye and Quds-i §erif, but Wadi al-'Ajm seems more fitting than Vadiiilacem. 2 Justin McCarthy, 'The Muslim Population of Anatolia, 1878-1927,' unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles 1978, has examples of this for each of the Anatolian provinces. 3 Ibid., pp. 34-40. 4 See H. Shryock and J. Siegel, The Methods and Materials of Demography, Washington 1973, ch. 2.

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count the people, and the Ottomans were the only ones in the position to count their own population. No journalist, consul, or traveller, however astute could have known enough of any large geographic area to be able to estimate population accurately. Some European commentators did, however, provide fairly accurate estimates of the Ottoman population. They did this by quoting, with or without citation, from Ottoman records or publications. The best known and most reliable European author on Ottoman population was Vital Cuinet, 1 who based most of his statistical tables on Ottoman sources. The use of data such as these, however, can only be justified when Ottoman statistics are unavailable. European sources are at best second-hand and often are 'corrected' for real or imagined errors in enumeration without any mention of how or why the 'correction' was made. 2 As sources of accurate population information, Ottoman atlases and geographers' works are little better than European sources. While many Ottoman geographers had access to official population figures, they had no idea of population dynamics, so, for example, they published population figures (without date or citation) many years after the population had been counted, on the assumption that population numbers did not change over time. One partial exception is the Qamus al-A'lam of §emsuddin Sami (Frascri). 3 §emsuddin Sami did his best to publish population figures that were relatively current at the time of publication and he made many surprisingly accurate estimates, based on official Ottoman observations and partial registration for areas where complete figures were not available. The Ottoman population registration system has been described by Professors Shaw and Karpat. 4 It was not a system of censuses in the modern sense, in which the entire population is counted over a short period of time. Instead, the Ottomans developed a system of registration in which officials recorded each member of a village or town in a population register (Niifus defter or tahrir). The registers were periodically updated by records of births, deaths, and migration. 5 The updating, however, was often not complete, as will be seen below, and occasionally Istanbul ordered the creation of new

1

defters.6

La Turquie d'Asie, 4 vols., Paris 1890-94, and Syrie, Liban et Palestine, Paris 1896. See, for example, Cuinet's estimates of the population of Jabal Lubnan, mentioned below. 3 6 vols., Istanbul 1888-99. 4 Kemal Karpat, 'Ottoman Population Records and the Census of 1881/2-1893', International Journal of Middle East Studies 9/2 (1978); Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Ottoman Census System and Population,' International Journal of Middle East Studies 9/3 (1978). 5 See Justin McCarthy, 'Age, Family, and Migration in Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Provinces of the Ottoman Empire,'International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (1979): 309-323. ^See Karpat, 'Ottoman Population Records'. 2

T H E P O P U L A T I O N OF O T T O M A N S Y R I A AND I R A Q

175

Defters were compiled into what are often called 'censuses', lists of population for each province, usually broken down by religious community (millet) and often by sex. A number of these have been used in this study: The Census of 1311 (1893-94), first analyzed and published by Professor Kemal Karpat; 1 The Census of 1324, found by Professor Stanford Shaw in the Istanbul University Library; 2 The 1313 (1895-96) Istatistik (Devlet-i aliye i Osmaniye'nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus ¡statistik-i Umumisi)3 and the 1326 M. (1910-11) and 1327 M. (1911-127 volumes of the ihsaiyat-i Maliye,4 all of which contain population statistics as part of general statistical coverage of the Empire. The 1330 Nüfus (Memalik-i Osmaniye'nin 1330 Senesi Nüfus istatistigi),5 the 1330 Nüfus and the ihsaiyat-i Maliye were published in both Ottoman and French, the 1313 istatistik only in Ottoman. The 1311 and 1324 censuses were probably internal government documents, not meant for publication. The dates on the censuses are those of their compilation. The actual dates when the population registers were made varied by province, and sometimes the population was counted as much as ten years before the figures were published. 6 The same population registers used in the censuses were compiled and published by the Ottoman provincial governments in saínames (provincial yearbooks). All of the fertile crescent provinces except Zor and Quds-i §erif published salnames, most of which contained population information. The most complete of them listed population by province (vilayet), sub-province (sancak) and district (haza) and gave the population of major cities and the number of households, shops, caravansarays, etc., in each local area. Though population registers for Ottoman Arab provinces had been taken as early as the sixteenth century, 7 none were actually published and generally available until the reign of Abdülhamid II (1878-1908). At present, archival copies of the extensive population registers for the Arab provinces are unavailable. 8 In any case, record-keeping in the Arab provinces was radically improving around the turn of the century and population registers of the period l

lbid.

^Istanbul University ms. TY 947. ^Istanbul 1316. ^ W i s h e d in both Ottoman and French, Istanbul 1329 and 1330. ^Published in two forms in 1918. The first, a detailed Ottoman version, was followed by a summary in French. 6 See McCarthy, 'Muslim Population', pp. 15-18. 7 S e e the many articles of Ômer Lutfi Barkan (e.g., 'Essai sur les données statistiques des registres de recensement dans l'Empire Ottoman au XV e et XVI e siècles' Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1 (1957): 9-36). ^Actually, a few are catalogued in the Ottoman Archives, though most are uncatalogued.

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before 1878 would have been much inferior to those drawn up later. 1 This means that we can analyze the population for the later period fairly accurately but can only make informed speculations about earlier populations. Accurate analysis of the region's population can be based only on Ottoman population statistics, but these cannot be used indiscriminately. Like those compiled in the developing world today, they range from high quality to non-existent, depending on the part of the Empire covered. The reliability of the Ottoman population enumerations is therefore not uniform; the figures must be analyzed province by province. In evaluating Ottoman population data, three standards must be applied: 1. Internal consistency. In the period prior the First World War, a time of relative civil tranquillity and no major epidemics, population figures from the Arab world should have shown a consistent, though small, increase over time. The proportion of minority groups in the total population should be about the same in various enumerations, indicating that population records were not altered to suit political ends or to enlarge the numbers of groups currently in favour. 2. Consistency with the later, more precise, enumerations made by the governments of modern states. If the Ottoman population for an area was recorded at 200,000 in 1900 and a census of 1930 revealed a population of 2,000,000 for the same area, something is wrong. 2 3. Consistency with demographic regularities. The observed population should conform to the regularities of age structure, possible rates of increase, and sex ratios (i.e., percentage male and female). However, as no population has ever been perfectly counted or recorded, errors in published population documents should be consistent with those usually seen in developing countries. An example of the absence of such consistency will be seen below in the case of Zor Sancak. The population data from the Ottoman Syrian provinces in most cases satisfy these three criteria. Ottoman registrars in Greater Syria did their best to compile accurate statistics on population, and in their published form these statistics are consistent both internally and with later statistics of modern Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Data from the provinces of Ottoman Iraq are in every sense inferior to those of Syria. ' See, for example, the 'census' published by Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanli imparatorlugunda ilk Niifus Sayimi, Ankara 1940, and the population tables in the Salname-i Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye, 1295. ^Unless of course, there had been large-scale in-migration.

THE P O P U L A T I O N OF OTTOMAN S Y R I A AND I R A Q

177

Undercounting and Precision The population in every Ottoman province was undercounted, as is the case in most countries. In the Ottoman Empire there were usually any or all of three causes for this: (1) undercounting of children; (2) undercounting of women; (3) omission of entire groups, usually nomads or foreign residents in an area. Undercounting of children is an almost universal phenomenon in traditional societies. Births often go unregistered and household heads who fill out official forms either do not consider a young child to be a full member of the household or they withhold the child's name in the hope that he will not be conscripted or taxed. The sanctity of the harem, never entered by government census takers, and the relative position of women in traditional Muslim society explain the undercount of women. In many population tables the Ottomans simply did not enter the female population, since it was unknown. In others, females were entered 'as recorded'. Thus the 1313 istatistik listed only 14 females in the Basra Vilayet, equal to .00017 of the total recorded population. Underrecording of population by sex occurred to some extent in most but not all of the provinces of the Ottoman central control. 1 This was true of undercounting of children also. Figure 1 shows the extent of the undercounting of young males in three provinces of Greater Syria — Suriye, Beyrut and Quds-i §erif. The three age pyramids record the proportion of the total population recorded in each fiveyear age interval (0-5, 5-10, 10-15,... 75-80, 80+). The dark line indicates the age structure as it should have been, the dots the age structure as recorded. 2

Figure 1 Male and female populations

by page group

1 Syrian provinces sometimes provide exceptions in which more women are enumerated than men, as is seen below. ''The model age structures have been taken from the Coale and Demeny model stable populations (Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, Princeton 1966) of the 'East' family.

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T w o phenomena are obvious f r o m Figure 1. First, ages were often misreported, men often giving their ages as older than they actually were. This was a function of both the status given to the elderly and lack of knowledge of actual age. There seems, for example, to have been a general tendency in the three provinces to record a large group of males in the 40-45 age group. This is probably an indication of adult males who gave their age as ' 4 0 ' , because they did not know their actual age and 40 was a representative age for a male beyond his youth. The type of age-misreporting seen in Figure 1 has been seen throughout the Middle East and much of the developing world in modern times. Age-misreporting obviously did not affect total population numbers. However, the second phenomenon, undercounting of children, means that figures of total population were diminished by the number of children not enumerated. To remedy this and correct the numbers of total males, the number of young males actually in the population has to be estimated. This is done by assuming that the proportion of children appearing in the model (dotted lines in Figure 1) is correct. Assuming the population above 15 is well recorded, possible error in this procedure is small. 1

^This is due to the fact that the mechanics of human populations are circumscribed by a set of relatively inflexible parameters. In a population with stable fertility and mortality (the case in Ottoman Syria, if anywhere), the proportions in each age group have a fixed relation to one another. This can be most easily understood by considering the population in the 5-10 age group as the remainder of the 0-5 age group after five years' mortality, the 10-15 year age group as the remainder of the 5-10 group, etc. If the mortality of those 0-5 over five year is 40 per cent, then those 0-5 must be 40 per cent greater than those 5-10. This principle is applied in the 'correction factor' which adjusts the number of youths for underregistration. In a sense, the presence of large numbers of population in the age groups above 15 demands that there be an even larger number in the age groups below 15 (for a more precise, and much more technical, explanation, see Ansley Coale, The Growth and Structure of Human Populations, a Mathematical Investigation, Princeton 1972, chps. 1 and 2). The particular model populations selected to best represent each province have been chosen by visual comparison of the model population over 15 to the recorded population over 15. The Gross Reproduction Rate was assumed to be approximately 3.0, somewhat less than that recorded in modern Syria, because fertility conditions would have been much less optimal in Ottoman times. Models were chosen from the 'East' family of tables and the best fit selected. As can be seen in Figure 1 for provinces like Quds-i §erif the fit is very good. Correction factors have been calculated as follows:

p Correction Factor =

R

tot

/ 1+MP=R

15).

{

\

M^

where

P is the corrected total male population. Riot is the observed total male population. R1S+ is the observed male population aged 15+. M15+ is the model population aged 15+. M-15+ is the model population under 15 (0-15). If male population is given, the total population is assumed to be the male population times two times the correction factor. Another correction factor is applied for sources which, like the 1330 Nufus, only give total population, not males and females: Correction Factor= P x 2 where East is the observed total population. Rm+f In provinces such as Syria, where the female population is seemingly well-recorded, the first procedure is applied to the total population.

THE POPULATION

OF O T T O M A N

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AND IRAQ

179

If tables that separate the population by age and sex are available, true population numbers can be estimated from deficient data. Simply stated, one can see how many children there should have been by comparing the number recorded with the number in demographic tables that indicate the proportion of a model population that should be children (i.e., 0-15 years of age); the difference is the undercount. Unfortunately, only one printed Ottoman population source gave the population by age group — the 1313 istatistik — even though Ottoman population records were kept by age. 1 Nevertheless, the existence of population numbers broken down by age groups in the 1313 istatistik permits a great deal of demographic analysis that would never be possible were total populations alone available. Table 1 Undercount

of total male population

Province Beyrut Suriye Quds Haleb Source:

1313

in Syrian

provinces

Undercount of total population .1877 .1077 .0751 .1722

istatistik.

In provinces in which women were not properly counted, the undercount has been corrected by not counting women, but instead doubling the recorded male population to obtain the total population. 2 This is obviously not a completely satisfactory procedure, since it ignores real differences in the numbers of the two sexes. Yet without detailed village by village analyses of the Ottoman population no other solution is possible. The Ottomans were not concerned with absolute precision but rather with a general picture of their population, and historical demographers of the Ottoman Empire must follow their lead. Registration data came in from various areas at different times and were compiled and published. Table 2 gives an example of the result. The population for two of the kazas were obviously compiled at approximately the same time, two at different times. The effects of migration, small border changes, and enumeration and clerical errors make it impossible to analyze these populations with absolute precision. The best one can hope for is a very good approximation of population size. 'See McCarthy, 'Age, Family.' ^Except for the 1330 Niifiis and some others which only give total population.

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Table 2 Nablus

EAST

AND

THE

(Belak) Sancak in two Ottoman

B A L K A N S publications^

Population

Kaza Näblus Bani-Sa'ab Jenin Jamâ'ïn

1311 M. Salname 33,439 31,295 33,514 21,251

Census of 1311 32,030 31,283 30,718 21,283

Note: 1. A s recorded, uncorrected.

SYRIA A N D PALESTINE

Suriye Vilayet In Suriye Vilayet, population records for the sancaks of §am and Hama were being published by A. H. 1300 (1882-83).1 The Ottomans collected data on Syrian population much earlier in the century, but the earlier Syrian salnames only published the numbers of hanes (households), not population as such. The populations of the sancaks of Hawran and Kerak were not published until the 1330 Nufus, and it is doubtful if they were counted in a systematic way before 1912. The Selimiye Kaza of Hama Sancak was also uncounted or grossly undercounted until 1912. Despite these omissions, Ottoman sources often listed as the total population of Suriye province what was in fact only the population of §am Sancak and part of Hama Sancak. Because of this practice, Ottoman statements such as 'The population of Suriye is...' must be discounted and detailed lists consulted. Such lists show themselves to be consistent records of population change (see Table 3).

1 Hi era dates will often appear here unmarked, but they will be obviously hicra (hijra) from the context. Where dates are mail (or Rumi) financial years, an M. will follow the date (e.g., 1330M.). One important distinction to remember is that the 1330 Nufus was prepared and compiled in 1330M. By coincidence, many of the populations in the 1330 Nufus, however, were registered in 1330 A.H.

T H E P O P U L A T I O N OF O T T O M A N S Y R I A A N D I R A Q

181

Table 3 Syria: populations of$am and Hama Sancaks1 as recorded in salnames^ Publication year 1305 (1887-88) 1311M. (1895-96) 1315(1897-98) 1316(1898-99) 1317(1899-00) 1318(1900-01)

Males 199,222 222,130 228,948 232,435 233,204 234,342

Females 206,430 236,100 245,228 250,651 252,507 257,099

Total 405,652 458,230 474,116 483,086 485,711 491,411

Notes: 1. Not including Selimiye Kaza. 2. Uncorrected for age misreporting.

Consistency, while essential for population statistics, does not of course imply absolute accuracy of these Ottoman statistics. The figures from the Syrian salnames were actually undercounts. However, consistency indicates that errors in recording population were uniform in the various sources at various dates and that a correction factor applicable to a set of population figures for one date will probably be applicable to others. Thus the correction factor (recorded population x 1.1077) for undercounting the young, as found from the data of the 1313 istatistik, can be applied to the other population records for the vilayet. Females were obviously not undercounted in Suriye Vilayet. One possible reason for the excess of females in Ottoman population records for Suriye is that in some semi-sedentary groups females, who were more likely to remain in villages, were more completely enumerated than males. This is complete conjecture. It does not seem possible, however, that the Syrian population actually had such an excess of females. 1 Though the southern and desert areas of Suriye Vilayet were not enumerated with any accuracy until 1912, the sancaks of §am and Hama (exception, Selimiye Kaza) were counted with a high degree of accuracy from 1296 (1878-79). Table 4 gives representative population records of the two sancaks combined. The figures are consistent over time and the rates of increase are those expected, i.e., approximately .011 a year natural increase plus .005 a year for in-migration to Damascus.

The modern Syrian censuses have listed an excess of males over females, (e.g., 2,344,224 males; 2,220,897 females; Syrian census of 1960, p. 3). For more on modern Syrian population, see Mouna Liliane Samman, La Population de la Syrie, Paris 1978.

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Table 4 ¡am and Hama Sancaks^: representative figures of total population, combined, corrected for undercounting^ Source

Date

Population

1298 1305 1312 1318 1330

1296 1303 1310 1316 1330

399,284 449,261 507,443 544,157 652,830

Saíname Saíname Saíname Saíname Nüfus3

Increase per year .0168 .0174 .0116 .0130

^Not including Selimiye Kaza. 2 The 1298 Salname gave only males, so the proportion of females is assumed to have been the same in the 1298 Salname as in the 1305 Salname. All figures have been corrected by the correction factors for Suriye Province (males 1.1159; females 1.0994; total 1.1077). 3 Using the earlier boundaries of the sancak for uniformity. Attempts were made to count the other sections of Syria — Hawran and Kerak Sancaks and Selimiye Kaza — before 1912, but they foundered. The 'census of 1311', for example, listed only 330 inhabitants of Selimiye Kaza, roughly 2 per cent of the actual figure, and gave no figures for Kerak or Hawran. The Suriye salnames made an attempt to list the males of Hawran Sancak and gave almost 70 per cent of the proper totals. 1 Table 5 approximate population of Suriye Vilayet, 1878-1914 Year 1295 1296 1297 1298 1299 1300 1301 1302 1303 1304 1305 1306 1307 1308 1309 1310 1311 1312 1313

(1878) (1878-79) (1879-80) (1880-81) (1881-82) (1882-83) (1883-84) (1884-85) (1885-86) (1886-87) (1887-88) (1888-89) (1889-90) (1890-91) (1891-92) (1892-93) (1893-94) (1894-95) (1895-96)

Total population 666,063 674,988 684,046 693,236 702,563 712,029 721,635 731,383 741,276 751,568 762,018 772,629 783,404 794,344 805,453 816,734 825,226 833,810 842,484

Year 1314 1315 1316 1317 1318 1319 1320 1321 1322 1323 1324 1325 1326 1327 1328 1329 1330 1331 1332

^See, for example, the 1316 Suriye Salname, p. 368.

(1896-97) (1897-98) (1898-99) (1899-00) (1900-01) (1901-02) (1902-03) (1903-04) (1904-05) (1905-06) (1906-07) (1907-08) (1908-09) (1909-10) (1910-11) (1911) (1911-12) (1912-13) (1913-14)

Total population 851,251 860,113 869,068 878,869 888,787 898,822 908,974 919,245 929,639 940,155 950,794 961,560 972,451 983,472 994,623 1,005,906 1,017,322 1,028,873 1,040,561

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AND IRAQ

183

To find the population of the missing areas, one must project their populations back from the one accurate record — the 1330 Niifus. This has been done with the assumption that the populations of Hawran and Kerak increased at the same rate as the rest of the province except for the city of Damascus (Nefs-i §am), where the rate was higher. 1 The results were then added to the populations of §am and Hama Sancaks projected for each year. 2 Table 5 lists the approximate population of Suriye Vilayet for each year from A. H. 1295 (1878) to A. H. 1332 (1913-14). Population by Kaza The populations in Table 6 are from the 1330 Niifus and corrected for the undercounting of children. They are for the year A. H. 1330 (1911-12) and represent the final and best results of the Ottoman registration system in Suriye Vilayet. Each of the kaza populations in Table 6 has been adjusted by the same correction factor used to find the total population of the province. The assumption is that the underregistration in each kaza will be the same as that in the entire province. This is obviously not the case, but the absence of agespecific data by kaza makes such an operation necessary. In Table 6 the populations of the more urban areas and those more under Ottoman administrative control are necessarily given as slightly greater than they actually were, the rural areas slightly smaller. 3

^The rate was .0082 a year from the population in the 1305 Salname to that in the 1330 Nujus. Damascus increased at three times that rate. The population has been projected between the five populations represented in Table 4, assuming that the population increased at the same rate yearly between each two points. For example: (

^ 544157 ' ' 1 4 = - 0 1 3 0 0 5 6 3 9 3

)

Each successive population between 1316 and 1330 was multiplied by e-0i30056393 t 0 ^ next year's population. This number was added to the previously projected population of Kerak, Hawran, and Selimiye to obtain the total population for that year. 3 The correction factor is drawn for the entire vilayet, so it may be imprecise for smaller areas. For example, in a hypothetical population:

Rural Urban Total

Recorded 82,000 18,000 100.000

Actual 100,000 20,000 120.000

Correction

LI

The 1.2 correction factor is true for the total provincial population, but not for either the urban or rural populations. When applied to the rural, it produced a population too low (82,000 x 1,2 = 98,400), When applied to the urban, the resulting population is too high (18,000 x 1,2 = 21,600).

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Table 6 Population of Suriye Vilayet by kaza, 1911-12 Kaza

Population

Sam Sancak §am Biqâ' Wàdï al-'Ajm Duma Nabk Hasbiyah Rashiyâ Ba'albak Qunaytra Zabadânl

246,601 32,499 18,053 42,489 51,335 16,897 10,666 27,800 38,676 17,774

Total

502,761

Hawran Sancak Hawran Busra Eski §am 'Ajlùn Izra' Mismlyah Sawaydâ Total Kerak Sancak Kerak Salt Ma'an Tafillah

Hama Sancak Hama Homs

81,225 95,925

'Imraniye Selimiye

29,340 21,998

Total

Kaza

Total

Population

30,694 29,193 68,641 32,757 15,239 27,360 203,884

22,732 44,302 6,659 8,495 82,189

228,487

Source: 1330 Nufus

Population by Millet All Ottoman registration data were kept by millet, or religious community. In most cases data for each community in the population were published, although occasionally the published population statistics differentiated only between 'Muslim' and 'Non-Muslim'. The figures in Table 7 were drawn from the 1330 Nufus} which gave very detailed listings of population by millet.

'The Ottoman version. The French language version only lists Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, and 'Others'.

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185

Muslims, Greek Orthodox, and various Catholic groups were found in each of the sancaks of Suriye Vilayet. Syrian Catholics and Maronites were only in §am and Hama Sancaks. The Druze were divided, 60 per cent of them in Sam and 40 per cent in Hawran sancaks, but care must be taken in evaluating the populations of the non-Sunni Muslim groups and Druze, Alawi and Yezidi populations. The Ottomans hardly ever registered Shii Muslims as such, 1 refusing to accept their existence statistically as anything but 'Muslims'. Some groups, such as Druzes and Yezidis, which were sometimes afforded their own category, surely had many of their numbers recorded as Muslims. Table 7 Population of Suriye Vilayet by millet, 1911-12

Millet Muslim Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Jewish Greek Catholic Armenian Catholic Protestant Roman Catholic Syrian Catholic Chaldean Jacobite Maronite Yezidi Druze Total

Population 876,835 67,545 457 11,232 30,641 274 2,075 3,313 3,411 389 6,178 6,769 22 8,180 1,017,322

Source: 1330 Niifus.

City of Damascus The population records in the Suriye salnames and the 'censuses' show a consistent record of extraordinary growth in the city of Damascus. Between the first detailed record of the Damascus population in the 1298 Suriye Salname and the final Ottoman population records published in the 1330 Niifus, the Damascus population increased at an average rate of .029 a year, more than twice the rate of increase of the province of Suriye as a whole. In addition, the rate of increase was itself increasing, from approximately, .02 a year at the beginning of the period to over .03 a year at the end.

1

Except in Jabal Lubnan; see below.

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Tabic 8 Uncorrected population of the City of Damascus by millet, 1303 (1885-86), 1316 (1898-99), 1330 (1911-12)

Population Millet Muslim Greek Orthodox Greek Catholic Syrian Catholic Old Catholic Armenian Apostolic Armenian Catholic Protestant Maronite Roman Catholic Chaldean Jacobite Jewish Total

1303

1316

1330

97,431 4,139 3,951 369 9 184 170 61 202 87

125,909 4,730 4,294 446 69 257 179 90 246 86

5,239

6,985

413 237 131 300 122 63 112 10,129

111,851

143,221

222,624

197,507 6,569 6,282 739

Sources: 1305 Suriye Saíname; 1318 Suriye Saíname; 1330 Nüfus.

The populations in Table 8 are as they were printed, uncorrected for undercounting by age. If the correction factor for Suriye Vilayet is applied, the totals are: 1303 - 123,897; 1316 - 158,757; 1330 - 246,601, An interesting fact about the Damascus population is that women were consistently listed as constituting 55 per cent of the Muslim population of the city, whereas in the other major millets the number of males and females was approximately equal or there were more males. Beyrut

Vilayet

The populations of Beyrut Province, as registered at various times, are listed in Table 9. The five sources shown are representative of a series of published records that extend back to the first salname of Suriye Vilayet in 1285 (1868-69), when Beyrut was a part of Suriye Vilayet. The 1298 Suriye Salname was the first to include population figures instead of household counts and the 1304 Suriye Salname the last to include Beyrut before it was

THE POPULATION

OF OTTOMAN

SYRIA

AND IRAQ

187

made a separate province. The area covered in Table 10 is uniformly that of post-1304 (1886-87) Beyrut vilayet. 1 Table 9 Beyrut Vilayet: representative

Source 1298 1304 1310 1327 1330

Saíname1 Saíname1 M. Saíname Ihsaiyat Nüfus

figures

of total

population

Year

Population

Increase per year

1296 1302 1310 1327 1330

544,666 610,148 726,062 944,923 979,702

.0189 .0217 .0155 .0120

Note: 1. Suriye Vilayeti

Table 10 Population

Year 1295 (1878) 1296 (1878-79) 1297 (1879-80) 1298 (1880-81) 1299(1881-82) 1300(1882-83) 1301 (1883-84) 1302(1884-85) 1303 (1885-86) 1304(1886-87) 1305 (1887-88) 1306 (1888-89) 1307 (1889-90) 1308 (1890-91) 1309(1891-92) 1310(1892-93) 1311 (1893-94) 1312(1894-95) 1313 (1895-96)

of Beyrut Province,

Population 534,457 544,666 555,070 565,673 576,478 587,490 598,712 610,148 623,559 637,265 651,272 665,586 680,216 695,167 710,447 726,062 737,402 748,920 760,617

1878-1914

Year 1314(1896-97) 1315 (1897-98) 1316(1898-99) 1317(1899-00) 1318(1900-01) 1319(1901-02) 1320(1902-03) 1321 (1903-04) 1322(1904-05) 1323 (1905-06) 1324(1906-07) 1325 (1907-08) 1326 (1908-09) 1327(1909-10) 1328(1910-11) 1329(1911) 1330(1911-12) 1331 (1912-13) 1332(1913-14)

Population 772,497 784,562 796,816 809,262 821,901 834,738 847,746 861,017 874,446 888,124 901,995 916,083 930,391 944,923 956,377 967,969 979,702 991,577 1,003,596

^See the section on Jabal Lubnan for a comparison of French colonial and Ottoman population figures for the area of modem Lebanon.

188

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The figures in Table 9 indicate that was a centre of in-migration, which accounts for a rather high rate of increase. Population by Millet The population in Table 11 has been taken f r o m the 1330 Niifus, as corrected. There was considerable geographic variation in the population by millet. While Greeks and Muslims were distributed throughout all sancaks, Maronites were mainly (91 per cent) resident in the northern sancaks of Beyrut and Tarabulus. 99 per cent of the Jews in the province lived in the Beyrut and Akka Sancaks, but it must be remembered that major-Jewish in-migrations of 1912-14 are not recorded in the table. Table 11 Population of Beyrut Vilayet by millet, 1330 (1911-12) Millet

Population

Muslim Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Jewish Greek Catholic Armenian Catholic Protestant Roman Catholic Syrian Catholic Chaldean Maronite Samaritan Bulgarian Orthodox

770,002 10,620 1,411 17,877 28,754 329 4,541 3,999 583 23 48,367 195 1

Total

979,702

Source: 1330 Niifus

City of Beyrut The settlement of the Lebanon Crisis that was imposed on the Ottomans created a geographic and administrative anomaly in that the city of Beyrut, the capital of the Beyrut Province, was completely surrounded (on land) by the Jabal Lubnan Province. For this reason, the City of Beyrut and Beyrut Kaza were coterminous, since the suburbs had been administratively cut off and made part of another province. Table 13 gives the population as

THE P O P U L A T I O N OF O T T O M A N S Y R I A AND I R A Q

189

recorded in the 1319 Saíname and the 1330 Nüfus. According to the 1319 Saíname, the city suburbs which were part of Jabal Lubnán should actually have been included in the count for an accurate idea of the population. The saíname estimated an actual Beyrut population of 120,000 to 130,000 around the year 1900.

Table 12 Population of Beyrut Vilayet by ham, 1911-12 BeyrutSancak Beyrut Zor Sayda Marj 'Uyun

105,876 46,996 63,616 37,527

Total

254,015

'Akkâ Sancak 'Akkä Hayfa Tabariyya Safad al-Näsira

Total Taräbulus Sancak Taräbulus Sáñta 'Akkär Hisn al-Akräd Total

80,014 44,439 49,750 35,344 209,547

Lädhiqiyya Lädhiqiyya Marqab Jablah Sahyün Total

Nablus Sancak Nablus Beni Sa'ab Jenin Total

48,520 35,856 14,284 26,297 24,049

159,006

Sancak 59,979 40,616 34,076 38,889 173,560

91,208 42,699 49,667 183,574

Comparison of the population of Beyrut City as published in the Salname and the 1300 Nufus seems to indicate that the latter figure might have included some of the suburbs, since its total is so much higher than the earlier figure, but there is no indication in the sources that this is true. The difference between the two sets of figures is most probably the result of rapid urban growth of the type seen above for Damascus.

190

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Table 13 Uncorrected population of the City ofBeyrut by millet, 1317 (1889-1900) and 1330 (1911-12)

Population Millet 1317 Muslims Greek Orthodox Greek Catholic Maronite Protestant Roman Catholic Armenian Catholic Armenian Apostolic Syrian Catholic Chaldean Jewish Gypsy Foreign Nationals Total

14,430 12,824 2,277 6,524 215 190 352 21 190 19 908 6 1,102 38,954

1330 45,063 22,018 3,718 13,446 314 250 270 123 491 3,431

89,144

Sources: 1319 Saíname and 1330 Nüfus.

JabalLubnan Independent Sancak The independent sancak of Mount Lebanon published few salnames} and judging by the lack of statistics on the sancak in the 'censuses', it did not forward population statistics to Istanbul for publication. Since the censuses contain no data on Mount Lebanon, the only published source on the population is the 1308 Cebel-i Liibnan Salname, which listed male population by kaza and millet (see Tables 4 and 15).2 No age pyramids of the Mount Lebanon population have been found and thus exact estimation of the undercount at the younger ages is impossible. A fairly good approximation can be made, however, by applying the same index of undercounting as that compiled for Beyrut Vilayet.3 This index has been applied in Table 14. 1 1305, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1309.1 have not seen the first three of these. ^The 1309 Salname repeats the same figures and the earlier, unseen salnames, may possibly do so as well. 3 1.1778 times the recorded male population.

T H E P O P U L A T I O N OF O T T O M A N S Y R I A A N D I R A Q Table 14 Recorded and corrected population ofJabal Lubnan, ca. 1888 Kaza Shüf Jazzïn Matin Zahle Kisrawän Batrün Kürah Dayr al-Qamar Total

Recorded*

Corrected

47,966 10,864 46,390 8,292 39,680 31,770 11,994 2,712 199,668

56,494 12,796 54,638 9,766 46,735 37,419 14,127 3,294 235,169

Source: 1308 Saíname. Note: 1. Males x 2.

Table 15 Population of Jabal Lubnan by millet, ca. 1888 Millet Muslim Maronite Druze Greek Orthodox Greek Catholic Shii Protestant 'Armenian and Syrian' Total Source: 1308 Saíname.

Population 7,995 135,259 29,367 31,923 20,298 9,922 393 12 235,169

191

192

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Table 16 Population according to the borders of modern Lebanon

Enumeration Ottoman Beyrut Sancak Part of Taräbulus Sancak1 Part of Damascus Sancak2 Jabal Lubnän Sancak Total, 1911-12

Population

254,015 129,764 87,862 306,220 777,861

French

1922 1932 1943

710,562 785,543 1,046,428

Source: France, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Rapport sur la situation de la Syrie et du Liban, July 1922 — July 1923, Paris 1923, pp. 45 and 46. Notes: 1. Tarâbulus and 'Akkà kazas 2. Rashaya, Hasbiya, Biqa and Baalbek kazas.

The Ottoman population figures for Mount Lebanon, both as recorded and as corrected, are in considerable disagreement with contemporary European estimates of the province's population. The European estimates, usually made by French authors, gave considerably higher numbers for the Mount Lebanon population (ca. 400,000) than had the Ottomans.1 No sources were given by the Europeans,2 and their estimates were merely guesses or modifications of Ottoman data. As demographic sources they simply cannot be trusted. For example, Vital Cuinet, on whose statistics may other estimates depend, 3 had seen the 1308 Cebel-i Ltibnan Salname figures on population. Without indicating either his source or his calculations, he simply doubled the Ottoman figures as found in the salname, presumably because he felt them to be too low. 4

' See. Y. Courtage and F. Fargues, La situation démographique au Liban, vol. 2,1974, pp. 14-16, for various estimates. 2 It is doubtful whether anyone but Cuinet ever saw actual Ottoman population documents before making his estimates. 3 See Courbage and Fargues, pp. 16 and 18. 4 More precisely, Cuinet took the Ottoman figures for male population and multiplied by four. For example, Muslims in the salname: 3,394 males, in Cuinet: 13,576 (i.e., 3,394 x 4). Maronites in the salname. 57,420 males, in Cuinet: 229,680 (i.e., 57,420 x 4).

THE

POPULATION

OF

OTTOMAN

SYRIA

AND

IRAQ

193

The Ottoman figures, especially after the slight correction made in Table 14, prove to be reliable when compared to the population enumerations made by the French in 1922 and after. Table 16 adds population figures derived above from three Ottoman provinces — Beyrut, Suriye, and Cebel-i Ltibnan — to approximate the population in A. H. 1330 (1911-12) of the area that would become modern Lebanon. It should be remembered that the Ottoman figures in the table have been corrected for undercounting whereas the French figures have not, and that the French statistics of 1922 and 1932 have long been known to be undercounts. 1 The French undercount explains the apparently greater population in 1912 than in 1922, but it also shows that the Ottoman figures were as good as the French. Slightly corrected, the Ottoman figures give an extremely accurate estimate of the size of the Mount Lebanon population. Quds-i §erif (Jerusalem) Independent Sancak There were no salnames published for the Quds-i §erif Sancak, so very little published evidence on the population is available. 2 Until archival research on the actual Ottoman population registers has been done, only the 'census' enumerations exist as population records. With one exception, these various enumerations were consistent. Possibly because it was a focus of European attention, Quds Sancak was closely watched by the Ottomans and the settled population was accurately enumerated. Indeed, the total population was only 7.5 per cent too low 3 due to sex and age under counting, the lowest rate of undercounting in the Arab provinces. Table 17 Quds-i §erif Sancak:

Source Government document ' C e n s u s of 1311' Istatistik 1313 1330 Nufus

total

population

Year

Population

Increase per year

ca. 1 3 0 2 ca. 1303 1311 1330

253,860 258,848 284,148 352,813

.0195 .0117 .0114

^Courbage and Fargues, pp. 20-24. The article by Fred M. Gottheil 'The Population of Palestine, Circa 1875' (Middle Eastern Studies 15/3 (1979): 310-321) unfortunately does not provide more than a 'missionary's eye view' of the population. Gottheil uses no Ottoman sources and gives credence only to European observers, mainly missionaries and explorers. He does not even include Cuinet in his bibliography. Yehoshua Ben Arieh has made better use of Western sources in 'The Population of the Large Towns in Palestine during the First Eighty Years of the Nineteenth Century, According to Western Sources' in Moshe Ma'oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period, Jerusalem 1975, pp. 49-69, but his study would obviously be greatly enhanced by the use of Ottoman sources. •3 J A s recorded in the 1313 Istatistik. 2

194

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The sole problem is nomads. The Ottomans appear to have attempted to include a count of nomads once in their 'censuses', in the 1326 ihsaiyat (repeating the figures exactly in the 1327 Ihsaiyat), as the 1326 ihsaiyat gave a much higher figure for the total population of Quds Sancak than any of the other censuses. If it had been consistent with the other sources, the 1327 ihsaiyat would have listed approximately 312,000 inhabitants rather than the (uncorrected) figure of 382,061 — 60,000 more than would have been suspected. One can only surmize that these 60,000 were an estimate of the nomadic population. The 1922 census of Palestine listed 84,971 nomads living in the geographic area that had been Quds Sancak, 1 18 per cent of the total population recorded in 1922. Therefore, an Ottoman estimate of 60,000 nomads (16 per cent of the total) was not completely unreasonable. This conclusion is, however, extremely speculative, and the 1326 ihsaiyat figures have been excluded from Table 18 which is a projection of the Quds-i §erif settled population based on the records of the 1313 istatistik and 1330 Niifus. In Table 18 the populations for the years 1331 (1912-13) and 1332 (1913-14) have been increased by 2,500 in each of the two years to allow for Jewish in-migration. 2 The figures in Table 18 do not include nomads. By comparing the Ottoman figures for the sancak with data from the British colonial Palestine Censuses of 1922 and 1931 (see Table 19)3 one can see that the Ottoman figures for total population were somewhat deficient. For the Ottoman figures to have been correct, a rate of increase of .0217 a year from 1912 to 1922 would have been necessary. In wartime, such a rate would have been impossible. The 1931 British census 4 mentions, however, a 1914 Ottoman estimate of 55,000 nomads in 'Bersheba', and if these are added to the Ottoman 1912 figures, the resulting total (408,813) is a very good estimate of the total population, including nomads. 5

1 A small section of the area of the Negev, was actually in Suriye province, but it is impossible to separate the area out statistically. 2 See Robert Bachi, The Population of Israel, Jerusalem 1976, p. 79. Bachi estimates 3,500 a year for the whole of Palestine. •'The figures for 1922 are reproduced in the Census of 1931. 4 Ibid. 5'1'hc figure mentioned above for the probable estimate of nomads in the 1326 and 1327 Ihsaiyat (60,000) would also result in a reasonable estimate of total population.

THE P O P U L A T I O N OF O T T O M A N S Y R I A A N D I R A Q Table 18 Settled population

Year 1295(1878) 1296 (1878-79) 1297 (1879-80) 1298 (1880-81) 1299 (1881-82) 1300(1882-83) 1301 (1883-84) 1302(1884-85) 1303 (1885-86) 1304(1886-87) 1305 (1887-88) 1306(1888-89) 1307 (1889-90) 1308 (1890-91) 1309(1891-92) 1310(1892-93) 1311 (1893-94) 1312(1894-95) 1313 (1895-96)

of Quds Province,

195

1878-1914

Population

Year

Population

236,803 239,516 242,260 245,035 247,843 250,682 253,554 256,459 259,397 262,369 265,375 268,416 271,491 274,601 277,147 280,924 284,148 287,403 290,696

1314(1896-97) 1315(1897-98) 1316(1898-99) 1317(1899-00) 1318(1900-01) 1319(1901-02) 1320(1902-03) 1321 (1903-04) 1322 (1904-05) 1323 (1905-06) 1324 (1906-07) 1325 (1907-08) 1326(1908-09) 1327(1909-10) 1328(1910-11) 1329(1911) 1330(1911-12) 1331 (1912-13) 1332(1913-14)

294,027 297,395 300,802 304,249 307,734 311,260 314,826 318,433 322,081 325,771 329,504 333,279 337,097 340,959 344,866 348,817 352,813 359,355 363,444

Table 19 Population of the area of the Ottoman Quds Sancak in Ottoman and British enumerations

Source

Year

Population

1330 Nufus1 Palestine Census Palestine Census

1912 1922 1931

352,813 438,179 611,311

Note: 1. As corrected

196

THE M I D D L E

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Table 20 Corrected population

Kam

AND THE

BALKANS

of Quels Sancak by kaza, 1330

(1911-12)

Population

Quds Jaffa Gaza Khalil

130,002 77,629 84,500 60,683

Total

352,813

Source: 1330 Niifus.

Population by Kaza The population by kaza in Table 20 are corrected statistics from the 1330 Nufus. Though they are not included in the table, the approximately 55,000 nomads mentioned above were found in the Gaza and Khalil al-Rahman Kazas, and probably moved between them and the Kerak Kaza of Suriye Vilayet. Population by Millet The non-Muslim millets were centered in Quds and Jaffa Kazas, which had 42 per cent and 13 per cent non-Muslims, respectively. Gaza (2 per cent) and Khalil al-Rahmaan (1 per cent) had few non-Muslims. 1 The non-Muslim population of Quds Sancak was rapidly changing at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Though the figures in Table 21 do not take into account major Jewish immigration in the years 1913 and 1914, they do show changes in the ethnic structure of the sancak from 1893 to 1912. Despite its symbolic importance to Christians and its being the focus of Jewish immigration, Quds Sancak was a Muslim province with the same percentage Muslim population (81 per cent) as that of the Empire as a whole. 2

'None of the 'censuses' give population on a local level and there were no Quds salnames published. Consequently, I have not been able to find printed Ottoman figures on the population of the city of Jerusalem. Cuinet (p. 628) gave 51,000 as the population of the city in 1895. He also quoted Lievin, who gave 39,160 as the population in 1887. The best source for Western estimates of Palestine city sizes is Yehoshua Ben-Arieh's 'The Population of the Large Towns.' 2 As recorded in the 1330 Nufus; not all provinces are included in the totals.

THE P O P U L A T I O N OF OTTOMAN S Y R I A AND I R A Q

197

Table 21 Population of Quds Sancak by millet, 1330

1330 Population Proportion

Millet

Muslim Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Jewish Greek Catholic Protestant Roman Catholic Syrian Catholic Chaldean Maronite Gypsy (non-Muslim)

286,024 27,990 1,408 22,856 1,168 1,863 10,622 459 12 290 121

.08107 .0793 .0040 .0648 .0033 .0053 .0301 .0013 *2 .0008 .0003

1311 Proportion

Average yearly increase 1311-1330

.8428 .0751 .0030 .0409 *1

.0104 .0154 .0276 .0367

.0033 .0326 *l *l *l

.0376 .0086

.0004

*2

Sources: 1313 istatistik; 1330 Nufus Notes: 1. All counted together as 'Katolik' (.0019). 2. Les than .0000. Zor Independent

Sancak

The independent sancak of Zor was never properly enumerated. In Zor the kaza of Abu Kemal, in the desert bordering Baghdad Vilayet seems never to have been counted at all, 1 the other kazas appear only partially counted. Much of the deficiency can be attributed to the nomadic character of much of the Zor population. Cuinet listed only one city in the sancak — Deir el-Zor, the capital — as having more than 2,000 inhabitants, and agriculture was very limited. Of all the Ottoman provinces, only Medina paid less in agricultural tax than Zor. 3 The Ottomans seem to have counted the sedentary and semi-sedentary population of Zor in the 'censuses' fairly consistently. The age structure reported for this population, however, is so deficient as to make accurate correction of the figures almost impossible. It appears that the male population was approximately 25 per cent undercounted due to the undercount ' It does not appear in any of the 'censuses'. Deir el-Zor 20,000; Ashara 1,700; Ras ul-Ain 1,500; Bessireh 6,800; Al-Bu-Kemal (Cuinet, vol. 2, pp. 297-313. Spellings are Cuinet's).

2

1326 ihsaiyat, pp. 44-60.

1,000

198

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of children alone. 1 Women were not significantly undercounted, perhaps, as in Syria, because some women in the semi-sedentary category were counted, whereas their husbands were not. 2 As the Ottoman registration system improved slightly the percentage of women in Zor fell. This is not really anomalous, since the new areas brought in by registrars were probably those in which women were most likely to be poorly reported. 3 In 1895 the Ottomans themselves estimated that they had missed 100,000 in their statistics of the Zor population, but this was probably an overstatement. Cuinet estimated 100,000 as the entire Zor population. Only two Ottoman sources seem to have attempted to enumerate the entire sedentary and semi-sedentary Zor population — the 1326 and 1327 editions of the Ihsaiyat-i Maliye — and it is conjectural that they may have simply added an estimate of the Abu Kemal population to the totals from the other kazas. Nevertheless, the 1327 ihsaiyat population figure for Zor is the best of a poor lot. Its figure for the Zor population — 83,120 — has been corrected by the 25 per cent noted above to 103,900 as the sedentary and semisedentary population of Zor in 1327 A. H. (1909-10); this appears to be a reasonable, though by no means properly verifiable, estimate. The population estimate and correction factor for Zor Sancak are not precise enough to attempt to estimate population by kaza or to project the population estimates for yearly population figures. Table 22 Christians and Jews in Zor Sancak, as recorded (uncorrected),

Millet Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Jewish Greek Catholic Armenian Catholic Protestant Syrian Catholic Chaldean Jacobite

ca. 1910

Population 18 67 2 27 215 1 141 51 1

Source: 1330 Niifus

'Based on the 1313 istatistik. For example, Census of 1311, 50.92 per cent female; 1313 istatistik, 50.39 female. 3 As the years passed and perhaps more areas where women were not well reported were included in the registers, males occupied a great proportion of the census figures: Census of 1324, 46.57 per cent female; 1326 ihsaiyat, 48.6 per cent female. 2

T H E P O P U L A T I O N O F O T T O M A N S Y R I A A N D I R A Q : 199 Population by Millet Zor Sancak was more than 99 per cent Muslim. The few Christian inhabitants of the sancak lived in the capital, with the exception of one Jacobite, one Syrian Catholic, and two Jews, who were recorded in the 1330 Ntifus as living in R a ' a s al-'Ayn Kaza. These may have actually have been transient merchants. There seems to have been an increase in the Greek population from the data in the 1313 Istatistik to that in the 1330 Niifus, from 2 to 18 recorded, and decrease in Armenians, from 488 to 282. The population records for Zor, however, were so imprecise as to leave the possibility that more Jews and Christians lived in Zor than were recorded. Table 22 does not include Abu Kemal Kaza, but there were probably no non-Muslims residents in the kaza. Haleb

Vilayet

Haleb Vilayet had one of the best salname publication records in the Ottoman Empire. 1 Each salname contained population tables and all the 'censuses' gave population figures for Haleb, so there is no lack of consistent and reliable source material. Since the Haleb records are so accessible, rather than project the Haleb population from 1878 to 1914, Table 23 simply lists the corrected total populations from salnames, archival documents, and the 1330 Niifus, presenting a picture of population change over time as recorded by the Ottomans themselves. 2

^Thirty-one volumes were published between 1284 and 1326. For a more detailed estimate of the Muslim population of Haleb, including the dating of the salname records as four years earlier than their publication, see McCarthy, 'Muslim Population", pp. 136-141. 2

200

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Table 23 Haleb Vilayet: total population, as recorded and various years,

Source Government document1 Government document2 Government document3 Census of 1311 1312 Saíname 1313 Saíname 1315 Saíname 1316 Saíname 1317 Saíname 1318 Saíname 1319 Saíname Census of 1324 1321 Saíname 1322 Saíname 1323 Saíname4 1326 Saíname 1330 Nüfus5 1330 Nüfus6

corrected,

1880-1912

Approximate year

Population

1880 1886 1887 1889 1890 1891 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1908 1912 1912

813,976 884,141 895,177 923,358 927,072 927,276 952,863 955,722 973,362 904,799 997,799 1,028,819 1,045,036 1,049,827 1,032,611 1,058,812 782,783 1,208,928

Notes: 1. Istanbul University no. 80872. 2. Ibid. 3. Ba§bakanlik Argivi, Yildiz Tasnifi 18-553/49-93-33. 4. Only Muslims were undercounted in this saíname; non-Muslim millets show the normal rate of increase. The reason for the smaller than expected increase in the Muslim population may simply be a compiling error. 5. New boundaries. 6. Mara§ and Urfa added.

When considering population change in Haleb Vilayet, one must keep in mind that the provincial boundaries changed fairly often. In 1302 (1884-85) Zor Sancak was taken from Haleb, as was Meskeni Kaza in 1306 (1888-89). Raqqa Sancak was added in 1306. In 1328 (1909-10) Urfa was made a separate, independent Sancak, as was Mara§ in 1330 (1911-12).

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The figures in Table 23 do not always show a smooth transition from year to year, the population increase being much greater in some years than in others. This is a function of the Ottoman registration system. It appears that the registers were only updated every two or three years, 1 and partially updated in other years. The overall rate of growth was slightly higher than expected (.0136 instead of .0116 2 ), perhaps indicating in-migration or gradual improvements in registration. The Haleb saínames mention that a certain number of nomads were not enumerated i the registers and some of these may have been gradually included in the totals as registration improved. In the list in Table 23, only the 1323 Saíname significantly deviates f r o m the series, giving an inexplicable low figure. Population by Millet and Kaza In the Haleb Sancak (approximately the area of Haleb Province that was to remain in mandatory Syria) the Christians were fairly evenly scattered in all but the more remote kaz.as of Cebel Semaan, Maara, and Miinbi§ (Memibij). The 'mix' of Christian millets in Haleb Sancak was typical of Ottoman Syria — 86 per cent Muslim, 5 per cent Greeks, 3 6 per cent Armenians, 4 2 per cent Jews, and communities of Syrian Catholics, Chaldeans, Jacobites, and Maronites. In the northern three sancaks (Urfa, Mara§ and Ayntab), the millet structure of the population was more typical of Anatolia — 85 per cent Muslim, 14 per cent Armenian, less than 1 per cent Syrian Catholic, and no Chaldeans, Jacobites, or Maronites. 5 Table 24 Population, of Haleb Vilayet by kaza, 1911-12

Kaza

Population

Haleb Sancak Haleb iskenderun Edlib Antakya Bab Baylan Cesir-Sor Harem i See the

Kaza Mara§ Independent Sancak

148,490 22,125

61,826 107,300 29,775 15,023 41,151 35,218

Mara§ Pazarcik Elbistan Zeytun Göksun Total

1313 and 1319 Salnames in Table 23. Coale and Demeny 'East,' Model 5, GRR=3.0. •'Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics. 4, ^Armenian Apostolic, Armenian Catholic, and Protestant. ^Percentages based on 1330 Niijus statistics. 2

Population

86,594 28,021 58,155 22,022 30,920 225,713

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Cebel-Semaan Maara Miinbiç Total

EAST AND

THE

BALKANS

29,467 23,794 3,282 517,451 ' Urfa Independent Sancak

Ayntab Ayntab Kilis Rum Kale

129,891 99,419 36,022 265,332

Total

'Urfa Birecik Raqqa Suruc Harran Total Vilayet total

104,778 33,666 17,175 31,554 13,259 200,432 782,783

City of Aleppo The City of Aleppo does not seem to have shared in the rapid urbanization of Damascus and Beirut. Its population only increased at the same rate as the surrounding province (about .01 year). The number of Jews increased at a somewhat faster rate, as did numbers in smaller communities. Table 25 Population

ofHaleb

Millet Muslim Greek Orthodox Greek Catholic Armenian Apostolic Armenian Catholic Syrian Catholic Maronite Chaldean Protestant Roman Catholic Gypsy Jewish Foreign national Ottoman national (foreigner) Total Source: 1319 Haleb Salname.

Vilayet by millet, 1315

Population 870,663 9,705 9,809 58,591 13,158 3,062 2,219 192 12,429 911 668 11,293 2,511 2,433 997,644

(1897-98)

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IRAQ N o one, including the Ottoman government, knew the number of inhabitants of the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. Ottoman administrative control was never strong enough to allow registration of the majority of the populations of the three Iraq vilayets. The population figures given for the provinces in salnames and 'censuses' were listed by the Ottomans as 'those registered in the tahrir' and the Ottomans themselves estimated that the actual total male population was almost three times as great as the recorded population. Females were sometimes listed, but statistics on females were extremely deficient. 1 Since Ottoman registration data on Iraqi population cannot be used to find total population numbers, one must resort to estimates. As will be seen below, the estimates made by the Ottomans themselves were superior to those made by Europeans. The best example of this comes from the Province of Baghdad. Table 26 Population of the City of Aleppo by millet, 1315 (1897-98) and 1330 (1911-12j1 Population Millet

Muslim Greek Orthodox Greek Catholic Armenian Catholic Syrian Catholic Jacobite Maronite Armenian Apostolic Chaldean Protestant Roman Catholic Gypsy Jewish Foreign national Ottoman national (foreigner) Total

1315

1330

86,329 979 8,095 4,113 2,612

93,976 1,173 7,772 3,952 2,874 144 1,956 2 3,603 262 385 606

1,893 1,652 164 71 411 381 7,306 2,061 2,076 108,143

9,973 126,676

Sources: 1319 Haleb Salname; 1330 Niifus. 1.The figures have not been adjusted for age-undercounting. 2.Mistakenly printed in the 1330 Niifus as 'Bulgars'. ^For example, the 1313 istatistik listed as registered in the tahrir 80,557 males and 14 females. See note 81??? below.

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The population estimate most often quoted by Europeans for the Baghdad Vilayet was 800-850,000 inhabitants, an estimate that probably originated with Vital Cuinet, usually the best of the European analyzers of Ottoman population (he estimated 400,000 in Baghdad Sancak, 250,000 in Hille Sancak, and 200,000 in Kerbala Sancak). 1 Cuinet's figures were quoted by Ottoman and European sources and, as is often the case, they gained respectability by repeated use. In the only modern article on Ottoman Iraqi population, for example, M. S. Hasan 2 made the Cuinet figures one of the bases for his projections. Cuinet, however, was only guessing. 3 The Ottoman government itself made a much better guess of the total Iraqi population — 1.3 million, considerably greater than the other estimate — and published it in the 1319 Baghdad Salname Table 27 Baghdad

Vilayet: total population

Source Ottoman estimate (1898) European estimate (1890) 1 Iraqi census 1947

(Ottoman

(1) Population 1,300,000 850,000 2,421,127 2

and European

estimates)

(2) Projected to 1921 1,550,169 1,106,809

Notes: 1 Cuinet gives no date f o r his population figures, but internal evidence such as dated figures he provides f o r financial matters indicates that the date of his figures is approximately 1890. Hasan accepts the 1890 date f o r Cuinet's figures. ^Population of area of Ottoman Baghdad Province.

From evidence of the registered Baghdad population, 5 the rates of increase of the other Ottoman Arab provinces, 6 and knowledge of the general health conditions of Baghdad Province, 7 we know that the population of Ottoman Baghdad Province could not have increased at a rate greater than approximately .011 a year, and probably, given general lack of security, V o l . 3, p. 17. ^'Growth and Structure of Iraq's Population, 1867-1947,' Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics 20 (1958): 339-352, reprinted in Charles Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of the Middle East, Chicago 1966, pp. 155-162. Hasan also accepts absolutely unsubstantiated guesses on Iraq's population in 1867 made by British Consul A. B. Kambell. 3 Cuinet may have been basing his figures on a very rough estimate given in the 1313 Istatistik. ^Also published in following years 5 This evidence indicates a level (5—GRR=3.0) that would have the population increase at .01155 a year. ®See the section on Syria above, where a .01155 rate is usual. ^Relatively poor. In 1313 the Ottomans listed five physicians and 20 hospital beds for the sick in the entire Baghdad Vilayet.

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increased at a slower rate. Since Baghdad was in effect a war zone from 1914 to 1920 1 the population cannot have grown during that time. Indeed, it almost surely declined. 2 If the population estimates of the Ottomans and Europeans are projected to 1921 (at a rate of .011 a year until 1914 and no increase from 1915 to 1921), the results are the two figures in column (2) of Table 27. Compared with the figures of the Iraqi census of 1947, these show that the Ottoman estimate was by far the more realistic. Were the European estimate correct, the population of the area of the Ottoman Baghdad Province would have had to increase at a rate of .030 per year — an impossibly high rate. The Ottoman figures, on the other hand, require an increase of only .017 per year, which conforms both to the rate expected in such a population and to the rate recorded by Iraqi statistical authorities between 1927 and 1947. 3 The Ottoman estimate of 1.3 million in 1898 therefore appears to be the more feasible. The type of analyses made for Ottoman estimates of the Baghdad population reveals that Ottoman estimates of the populations of Mosul and Basra Provinces were also realistic. For Mosul Province, the Ottomans estimated 828,000 in 1909, which is consistent with the 1,347,371 recorded for the same area in the 1947 Iraqi census. 4 The Ottoman estimates of the Basra population included both Najd and Kuwait, which were nominally part of the Province. The Ottomans estimated 934,894 as the population of Basra Vilayet around 1894. 5 This figure, however, was almost certainly too low, perhaps by 20 per cent, and the later Ottoman estimate of 1,150,000 around 1908 is preferable. 6

^The First World War and the Iraqi Revolution. For evidence of major population decline in Middle Eastern areas in wartime, see McCarthy, 'Muslim Population', ch. 8. Wartime conditions and areas of battle are described in Ghassan R. Atiyyah, Iraq, 1908-1921, a Socio-Political Study, Beirut 1973, and S. H. Longrigg, 'Iraq, 1900 to 1950, London 1953, pp. 41-126, and other works. ^See K. C. Zachariah, 'Use of Census Data for Estimating Demographic Measures of Iraq' in Cairo Demographic Centre, Demographic Measures and Population Growth in Arab Countries, Cairo 1970, especially pp. 29 and 30. 4 1330 Mosul Salname, pp. 330-333 (population assumed to have been drawn for 1327, c. 1909). This salname lists 224,626 males as recorded, 53,374 males as non-tribal, unrecorded population, and 135,000 as tribal, unrecorded population — totalling 414,000 males. The number is doubled in the salname to include females, making 828,000. Projected by .011 a year to 1914 and assuming no growth between 1914 and 1921, the population would have increased at .0166 a year from 1921 to 1947, a very reasonable rate and, once again, consistent with other population figures from modern Iraq (see Zachariah, 'Use of Census Data'.) 1314 Basra Salname (assumed date of population, 1894), p. 163. Cuinet estimated approximately the same population — 950,000 (vol. 3, p. 221). 6 1326 ihsaiyat-i Maliye. The Ottoman figures from the 1314 Basra Salname oddly listed a much diminished number as being registered in the tahrir — only 11,177. The 1313 istatistik listed 80,071. The 1326 ihsaiyat figure has been chosen here. 2

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Table 28 Population of Ottoman Iraq (Ottoman estimates)

Year ca. 1898 ca. 1908 ca. 1909

Vilayet

Population

Baghdad Basra Mosul

1,300,000 1,150,000 828,000

It must be stressed that the Ottoman figures for Basra, Mosul and Baghdad are only the best of available estimates. They are in no way comparable to the demographic statistics found for most other provinces of the Empire. Tested against the fairly accurate census statistics taken in modern Iraq, however, the Ottoman statistics prove to be reasonable estimates of the total population of Ottoman Iraq. In Table 28 the populations of the three vilayets are not strictly comparable, since their dates vary considerably; but if we assume a .011 a year growth rate for all three, the total population of Ottoman Iraq in 1914 can be: estimated very approximately at 3,650,000 (including Kuwait and Najd). 1 Population in the Tahrir Registers While the populations registered in the tahrir were only a portion of the actual population of any province of Ottoman Iraq, a brief listing of them can be valuable for study of the Iraqis who were actually under Ottoman administrative control. The figures given in Table 29 are for the population of each province by millet, as printed in the 1313 istatistik. Since the agespecific statistics for the Iraq provinces in the 1313 istatistik are very deficient, no attempt has been made to correct the data for underenumeration of children. Underenumeration of the Muslim children (whose fathers were entered in the tahrirs) probably approached 30 per cent. The group best recorded in the tahrir seems to have been foreign nationals, who were subject to passport and border controls, but even here many Persian nationals in Baghdad and Basra probably escaped enumeration. In those two provinces the distinction between Persian and Ottoman nationals was probably blurred in any case. The designation 'Syrian' in the table is deceptive. The term used in the 1313 istatistik was 'Siiryani' or Syrian Catholic, but "Siiryani-yi Qadim' or Old Syriac was not included in the headings and both types of Siiryanis were probably included under the heading. i'l hc population of each province has been projected by .011 a year to 1914, then summed. The result is 3,653,446.

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207

The groups most poorly represented in the tahrir were the 'rural millets' — Muslims, Armenians, Syrians, and Chaldeans. Urban Jews and a number of the rural Jews (especially in Mosul) seem to have been counted. 1 Very few women, perhaps only those who were self-supporting heads of households (bive) were counted in the Iraqi Tahrir registers — 7,292 in Baghdad, 14 in Basra, 6,988 in Mosul — though in Baghdad and Mosul some urban, dependent females may have been included in the count. 2 No females have been included in Table 29. Table 29 Portion of the Iraqi male population (as published

in

enrolled in the tahrir

1313/1895-96)

Millet

Baghdad

Basra

Mosul

Muslim Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Uniate Catholic Jewish Protestant Roman Catholic Chaldean Syrian

165,249

79,248 5 33 341 440

179,831 13 74 4,355 4,568 109

Total

179,993

80,067

33,270

559

213,263

80,626

Foreign nationals Grand total

255 458 13,440 29 45 517

1,158 1,192 191,300

191,300

Source: 1313 Istatistik

^For comparison, see the impressions of Cuitiet: Mosul — vol. 2, p. 764; Baghdad — vol. 3 p 14; Basra - vol. 3, p. r 221. Actually, women were occasionally registered, as mentioned above. The breakdown by sex was: Vilayet MalfiS Females Baghdad 179,993 7,292 Basra 80,057 14 Mosul 191,300 6,988

9

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Cities Males in the capital cities of Mosul and Baghdad Vilayets seem to have been fairly well counted whereas the population of Basra City was only poorly known. The 1318 Basra Salname gave the city population as 'approximately 25,000.' The populations in Table 30 have been taken from salnames and have not been corrected for undercounting, which was perhaps 20 per cent. Table 30 Male population of the Cities of Baghdad and Mosul by millet, uncorrected

Baghdad 1318 (1900-01)

Mosul 1330(1911-12)

Muslim Greek Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Armenian Catholic Protestant Jewish Roman Catholic Chaldean Old Syriac Syrian and Greek Catholic

56.725

29,165 42 93

297

2,185 1,877 1,848

Total

69,879

36,655

Millet

284 139 34 11,706 53 641

142 1,303

Sources: Baghdad and Mosul Salnames. Epilogue: Population Prior to 1878 The population of the Arab provinces prior to 1878 will probably never be precisely known. Archival records of population in the coastal and metropolitan areas of Greater Syria may exist, but for most of the area there never were accurate population records. In considering early Iraqi and Syrian populations, one is thrown back on theory. It is certain that the relatively high rate of increase seen in the years 1878 to 1914 was a new phenomenon in the Ottoman Empire. Simple mathematics demonstrates that this must be true. If the population of Greater Syria had been increasing before 1878 at a rate of .01 a year, as observed after 1878, the population would have been only 426,883 in 1700, 57,772 in 1500, and 7,818 in 1300. Without considering the absurdity of the 1300 and 1500

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209

population, even the 1700 number of 426,883 is impossible. 1 Had it been true, the area would have had a density of .6 persons per square kilometer ( 1 . 5 / m i l e 2 ) — lower than the population densities of many deserts. By comparison, the present-day density of Saudi Arabia is 4 / k m 2 , of Libya 1.3/km 2 , of western Sahara 1/km 2 . 2 A glance at any physical map will show how doubtful it is that the population density of Greater Syria and Iraq could have been much below that of western Sahara. It seems far more probable that a figure only slightly below the estimated 2.5 million inhabitants of the area in 1878, 3 perhaps two million, was the average population of Greater Syria and Iraq from time of the Ottoman conquest, and possibly earlier. This does not mean that there were not large fluctuations in population size: quite the contrary. The population would have grown until it was cut down by 'Malthusian crises' of famine, war, and epidemic disease, then grown, only to be cut down again, repeating the cycle. Two million is an average number. It is thus doubtful that the population of Greater Syria and Iraq was much smaller in 1700 or 1800 than it was in 1878. The population began to grow fairly rapidly at that date. What caused the change? The probable causes for the population increase at the end of the nineteenth century were civil order and cessation of epidemic disease. Again resorting to theory, one can fairly confidently assert that peaceful conditions were a prerequisite for population growth. 4 In addition to the increased mortality of combatants in wars and local disorders, in uncertain times men ^Carried to its logical (and absurd) conclusion, if the population were increasing at .01 a year, in 473 A.D. there would have been only 2 people in the area of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. United Nations Demographic Yearbook for 1977. Administrative unit Suriye Beyrut Jabal Lubnan Quds-i §erif Zor Haleb Total

Population 666,063 534,457 212,790 236,803 83,382 797,858 2,531,353

The Suriye, Beyrut and Quds-i §erif figures were taken from projections made above for those provinces. Jabal Lubnan was projected from the 1888 population (235,169), Zor from the 1909 population (103,900), and Haleb from 1880 population (813,976). Rates: Haleb and Jabal Lubnan, .010 a year; Zor, .007 a year. 4 Any number of works demonstrate this, but it was first and perhaps best stated by MaltVras, -who saw war and its concomitants as a primary check to expanding populations. For statistical information see B. Urlanis, Wars and Population, Moscow 1971, and J. David Singer and Melvin Small, The Wages of War, 1816-1965, a Statistical Handbook, New York 1972.

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were often away fighting, not home fathering sons. Peasants fled from bandits, nomadic tribes, and invading armies and did not plant necessary crops. Draft animals and stocks of seed grain were confiscated and people died of starvation. Women who were close to starvation were unlikely to conceive or, having conceived, were likely to miscarry. 1 In short, civil disorder increased mortality and decreased fertility. Epidemic diseases caused great disruption of population both directly and indirectly. Directly, plague, cholera, and typhus killed in great numbers. Indirectly, those who died had no children and fertility of those who survived was often reduced by the disease. 2 Taking only the early nineteenth century as an example, the Ottoman Arab provinces suffered enough from epidemic disease and civil disorder to explain a static population. Bubonic plague was frequently epidemic, especially in Greater Syria, where it appeared thirteen times from 1773 to 1843. 3 Major epidemics of cholera came to the area in 1821, 1830, 1846, 1859 and 1865. 4 As regards civil order, in the early 1800s in Syria and Iraq there was little. Internal conflicts between local notables, Mamluks, and the Ottomans continued until the 1860s. 5 In the 1820s Iran raided Iraq. Muhammad 'All's army invaded Syria in 1831, as had Napoleon earlier. Lebanon experienced inter-communal war. It is not within the scope of this study to detail the epidemiological or political problems of Syria and Iraq. Nevertheless, it does seem that the combination of civil unrest and epidemic disease kept the population in check until the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, By that time the epidemics had ended 6 and the Ottoman government had asserted new control. From 1878 to 1912 the Empire fought no major wars 7 and gradually brought civil order to many places where it had been absent. Under the new conditions the population grew.

' Sec Rose Frisch, 'Demographic Implications of the Biological Determinants of Female Fecundity,' Social Biology (Spring 1975): 17-22. 2 See Ron Gray, 'Biological Factors Other than Nutrition and Lactation which May Affect Fertility: a Review,' paper presented at the IUSSP Conference on natural fertility. ^August Hirsch, Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology, vol. 1, London 1883, p. 506. 4 Ibid„ pp. 394-423. 5 The assertion of Ottoman control can be considered to date from the governorship of Midhat Pasa in Baghdad, which began in 1869. last major cholera epidemic ended ca. 1870. Plague subsided in Syria in 1843 and in Iraq in 1877 (Hirsch, pp. 427, 506, 513). 7 The war with Greece in 1897 had little effect on Syria or Iraq.

DEMOGRAPHIC AND SOCIAL COMPARISONS: OTTOMAN AND MANDATORY SYRIA, LEBANON, AND PALESTINE

An assumption of many analysts of colonial history is that, whatever the faults of imperialism, at least the imperial powers brought the benefits of European technological civilization to the colonized. I have set out here to consider whether or not this was true in Greater Syria. Commentators on the relative successes of the Mandates in Greater Syria present mixed opinions. For example, in two standard texts on Mandate Syria opposite views have been given: Stephen Helmsley Longrigg maintained that, on the whole, the French Mandate was beneficial to the Syrians, greatly improving the social and economic order. 1 A. L. Tibawi, on the other hand, stated that most of Syria was untouched by development during the French rule. 2 Such opinions could easily be held, because neither author refers to any data to support his view. Analysis of available statistical data should go some way in deciding which view is more correct. A number of indicators can be utilized in studying comparative development. Education is an excellent standard of development. Trade is often analyzed. I have chosen to compare demographic developments in the Empire and the Mandates, in part because of my own scholarly inclination, but primarily because population statistics are not only surrogates that indicate development. Ideally, they indicate whether conditions actually improved for the individuals in a country by describing the life and death of those individuals. Economic indicators, which could range from per capita income to gross national product, do describe development, but they do not have the force of life and death. As will be seen below, demographic statistics for much of Greater Syria were less than ideal. However, the statistics do broadly represent real trends in relative development in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.

1

Syria and Lebanon Under French Mandate, London, 1958. See especiaHy pp. 364 and 365. Modern History of Syria, including Lebanon and Palestine, London, 1969. See especially pp. 355-357.

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Comparison of population trends between Ottoman and Mandate times in fact provides one of the potentially best evaluations of the status of the inhabitants of Greater Syria. With few exceptions, before World War II population increase was directly correlated to better conditions for the inhabitants of non-European regions. When war was in abeyance and governments properly patrolled areas the resulting civil peace allowed more adults to live and more children to grow to adulthood and raise families themselves. In addition, in traditional societies medical and sanitary conditions were at such a low state that even small improvements, such as providing a few doctors in district capitals or improving the supply of drinking water, caused an improvement in survival. Most importantly, good government and civil order allowed more crops to be grown and to reach markets, necessarily improving health and survival. Population increase is thus a good index of the well-being of peoples. The use of population increase as an index of regional improvement is relatively rare. It does not come to the researcher's mind primarily because population growth does not correlate with economic well-being in the modern world. After World War II, medical advances in the third world made such inroads on traditionally high mortality that very poor countries could still have high population growth. Bangladesh is a good example of modern high fertility and low development. Indeed, as birth rates fell in the developed world high fertility became correlated with low incomes. It is therefore difficult to consider that this was not the case in the 1890s or the 1920s. Yet in the traditional Middle East growth in human numbers was a result of stable conditions, more food, better markets, the other factors that make up economic improvement and, insofar as demographers can define such things, happiness. Unfortunately, the desirability of an Index does not affect its availability. Middle Eastern historical population data is deficient. It demands careful and detailed evaluation. The data is sometimes so deficient that analysis is impossible. In Greater Syria, population statistics were barely sufficient for tentative analyses to be made. The availability and accuracy of population statistics is in itself an indication of the condition of the government. Censuses and population registration must be preceded by government control. If the government does not adequately control an area, it cannot count the people. Moreover, a government that has little concern for the status of its people will not be concerned to find their social and economic situation. There is no need to discover high child mortality, for example, if you plan to do nothing to improve the situation. Thus adequate population data indicates a certain level of government control and improving data indicates a concerned government (although not necessarily a benevolent one).

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213

The question of advancement under the Mandates is straightforward. Although the Ottomans did Successfully begin the reform of their Empire, they were beset with external enemies and internal resistance that damaged their efforts. Frequent nineteenth century wars with Russia drained the Empire's treasury and added millions of Muslim refugees from conquered lands who had to be fed. Little was left to support reform. In addition, traditional forces within the Ottoman Empire often opposed Europeanizing reforms. While the resisters were ultimately unsuccessful, they undoubtedly slowed the pace of reform. It must be expected, therefore, that the European Powers who conquered Ottoman territories would have been in a far better position to reform the basic conditions of life. They were incomparably richer and by nature not bothered, at least in their own hearts, by questions of losing their culture and perhaps their souls to Europeanizing innovators. Did they take advantage of their position to allow the inhabitants of Greater Syria to live longer, healthier lives? In comparing the Mandates of the French and British and the Ottoman State, a simple model applies: 1. Demographic development in the Ottoman Empire can be assumed to be the base. In the late 1800s the Ottomans built a system which worked to improve the life expectancy of the people of Greater Syria and allowed the population to increase. The development success of those who followed the Ottomans should be judged in relation to what went before. 2. Mortality and Fertility, as represented by population increase should have improved more markedly in the Mandates than in the Empire. The avowed purpose of the Mandates was to provide "administrative advise and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they [the nations] are able to stand alone," 1 which, one must assume, meant improving conditions in the affected states. Leaving aside social and cultural factors, the British and French governments were economically and militarily more able to govern than had been the Ottomans, so they should have done better. 3. Ottoman demographic development cannot be judged by "one-to-one" comparisons to conditions in the Mandates. Instead, the relative rates of increase in the two periods should be compared. The Mandatory governments cannot be considered a success if they merely matched the Ottoman rates of growth. Unless explained by extraneous circumstances such as wars, conditions should be expected to have been better in 1930 than in 1890. Ideally, demographic improvements should have followed a constant pattern of development, begun in late Ottoman times and continuing into the Mandates, Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant.

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interrupted only by World War I. There should be a "development curve" of almost constant improvement, i.e., conditions should have improved as rapidly in the Mandates as they did in the Empire, which means that demographic indicators such as life expectancy and rate of increase should have been higher. Downward deviations can be taken as failures, notable improvements as successes. Population

Statistics

From the time of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) until the end of the Empire, the Ottoman showed considerable concern over the population of their state. Early modern population registration, which dated from the time of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-39) did not include Greater Syria. However, as Ottoman control over Syria improved in the latter half of the nineteenth century, population registration improved, as well. The Ottomans kept registers of the inhabitants of Greater Syria villages and periodically updated the registers, publishing summaries of the data in salnames (provincial yearbooks) and in summary lists of population. Population was listed by millet (religious community), sex, and age for various years and by vilayet (province), sanjak (sub-province), and kaza (district). In addition, information was provided on household numbers and other statistical factors that affected population. While the Ottoman statistics were imperfect, always undercounting women and children (a pattern seen even in the most modern Middle Eastern censuses), they were valuable and useful demographic statistics. The Ottoman data have been discussed at length elsewhere. 1 French statistics on the population of Syria and Lebanon benefited little from the long tradition of accurate French demographic statistics, which stretched back to the Revolution. Unlike the Ottomans, the French published data on total population only at irregular intervals. 2 Only for 1925 and 1938 were the French data collected and broken down by sub-province and religious group. Information on recorded births and deaths was only published in two years. The most serious deficiency of the French statistics was the lack of material by age and sex. Not only is such information essential for the orderly running of functions of State such as education, but absence of such data makes most forms of demographic analysis impossible. In the early years of the Mandate, the French evaluated their population by asking village leaders, tribal chiefs, etc. for the numbers of those in their village or tribe. In a political climate where all fear the tax-collector, such a system is naturally doomed to undercount the population. It is also a system that makes any collection of pertinent demographic information on age and sex impossible.

' See Justin McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, 1878-1914" Asian and African Studies, vol. 15, number 1, March, 1981, for discussion and further citations. ^France, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Rapport sur la situation de la Syrie et du Liban. Issued in various years, these volumes were published by the French, themselves, and by the League of Nations. (Hereafter cited as Rapport, [year].

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The British demographic statistics on Mandate Palestine are among the best published before World War II for a developing country. Most countries have not today reached the standard of the British data on Palestine in the 1930s. As part of application program of detailed statistics on most aspects of governmental concern (i.e., health, education, cadastral survey, trade, housing, employment, etc.), the British provided data on total population, births, deaths, migration. Censuses were taken in 1922 and 1931 and, unlike the French censuses, they included information on the most important criteria for demographic research-aggregated data by age, sex, religious group, nationality, conjugal condition, etc. The Blue Books printed by the Mandate government each year updated the information whenever possible. 1 Not until the troubles of the late 1930s did the British statistical system in Palestine falter. In terms of reliability and usefulness, the British statistics of Palestine were unquestionably the best. They were followed by Ottoman statistics. French statistics were a distant third. Remarkably, neither the British nor the French mandate governments built on the statistical strengths of the Ottoman past. In Jerusalem, for example, Ottoman population records were stored for later use by scholars, but never referred to by the officers of the statistical service. By the criteria discussed above, the British did very significantly improve the gathering of population data in the area of their mandate. The French did not. The British records were not simply what might have been expected if the Ottoman statistical system had continued to improve; they were a great leap forward in quality and quantity.

Some of the British Mandate publications which contained statistical data on population are: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922 (compiled by J. B. Barron, Superintendent of the Census, Jerusalem, 1923. Census of Palestine, 1931, Population of Villages, Towns, and Administrative Areas (by E. Mills, Superintendent of Census, Jerusalem, 1932. Census of Palestine, 1931, Volume I, Report (by E. Mills, Superintendent of Census) Alexandria, 1933. Census of Palestine, 1931, Volume II, Tables (by E. Mills, Superintendent of Census), Alexandria, 1933. Department of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Palestine, Jerusalem. Blue Book, Jerusalem, yearly for 1926-7 to 1945. Office of Statistics, Jerusalem, Vital Statistics Bulletin (Annual from 1939, various titles). Department of Health, Annual Report for the Year..., Jerusalem. Department of Migration, Annual report (to 1939) and The Statistics of Migration and Naturalization for the Year... (after 1939), Jerusalem.

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Statistical Base - Ottoman Greater Syria Due to a lack of data, it is difficult to chart the course of population change in the Ottoman Empire from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. It is believed that in those two hundred years the population of Greater Syria essentially stagnated. In some areas the population most probably decreased. Average life expectancy was less than 25 years, perhaps as low as 20 years. Nearly half of all children died before the age of one. Such numbers were not unusual in Asia before modern times. It is surely no coincidence that low demographic indicators accompanied a lack of central government control, nor that distinct improvements came with a resurgence of control. Drawing on early reforms and relying on new railroads, roads, steamships, and telegraph lines, the Ottoman government under Abdiilhamid II extended its control over Greater Syria to the point that all normal activities of government were under the supervision of Istanbul. Warfare and civil unrest of the type that had existed earlier in the nineteenth century essentially disappeared. Moreover, improvements in civil order and technology meant gains in industry and agriculture. Demographic indicators improved with governmental control and concomitant economic changes. Data on Ottoman population do not indicate a steady improvement of conditions of life. There was not the constant lowering of mortality that was seen, for example, after World War II. Instead, mortality seems to have improved rather quickly until it reached a plateau. Average life expectancy rose to 30 years, in some areas such as Haleb Vilayet to over 35 years. These conditions came about before 1900 and essentially remained the same until the onset of World War I. One can theorize that the demographic plateau represented the level that could be achieved without medical improvements and great investment and change in the economic infrastructure, neither of which could be provided by the Ottoman government. 1 Rising above the demographic plateau could be expected to be the business of the successor states to the Ottoman Empire. In Greater Syria, the successor states were the British and French Mandates, who were expected at the time of their creation to improve the very conditions that would most likely improve the demographic conditions in Greater Syria.

' O n Ottoman statistics, see Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities, New York, 1983, "The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq," and The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate.

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The French Mandates — Lebanon and Syria The French divided their conquests in Greater Syria into smaller "states", which included Aleppo, Damascus, the State of the Alouites, Jebel Druze, and Lebanon. While some claim can be made for ethnic or religious composition of the population as a basis for some of the states, the main purpose of the divisions were political and they can safely be demographically ignored. All the states except Lebanon are considered here simply as Syria, reflecting the continuation of the French division of Northern Syria into the two states. Analysis of the population of French Syria and Lebanon is made difficult by the poor nature of the French statistics and by the rather arbitrary nature of the borders imposed by the Mandatory Regime. Because the western kazas of the Ottoman Suriye Vilayet were detached from Syria and given to Lebanon and the southern kazas given to Trans-Jordan, comparisons between Ottoman and Mandate Syria demand a good deal of calculation. The statistical analyses that follow are, I believe, satisfactory to easily prove the points made concerning relative demographic development. However, the population estimates should not be taken to be absolute statements of population numbers. Lebanon In order to evaluate demographic criteria in Lebanon one must first establish actual population numbers. The French censuses are of little help. The French authorities published three somewhat detailed lists of the population of Lebanon, for the years 1922, 1925, and 1932 (Table One). In addition, estimates of the population in 1942 and 1947 were compiled, drawn from the 1932 figures and updated by adding recorded births and in-migrants and subtracting recorded deaths and out-migrants. The 1922 figures were preliminary estimates, drawn up by asking village leaders and officials how many people lived in their areas. As such, they were not an actual population enumeration and do not repay much study. (They proved, in any case, to be as unreliable as the 1925 census). Table One. Official Figures on the Population of Lebanon Total Year Population 1922 559,529 1925 597,789 1932 785,543 1947 1,186,145 (Sources: Rapport, 1926, Haddad, pp. 10-13) 1 ^George Haddad, Fifty Years of Modern Syria and Lebanon, Beirut.

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The figures for 1922 and 1925 are obviously too low. Compared to the 1932 count, they yield an impossible rate of increase, .039 per year from 1925 to 1932, which would put Lebanon's population increase at one of the highest rates in world history. 1 In fact, the statistics were much worse than that, because the 1932 figures were themselves a considerable undercount, almost 20% too low. If the more precise figures given below were substituted, the rate of increase from 1925 to 1932 would have been .069 per year. At that rate, the population of Lebanon would have doubled every ten years, which no country's population has ever done. As this is impossible, the figures must be discarded. The only possible approach to ascertaining the population of Lebanon in the 1920s is to relate the 1932 statistics to the only fairly accurate data from a prior period, the Ottoman statistics of 1912, which provide a figure of 777,861 for the area that would become Mandate Lebanon. 2 The population of Lebanon rose until World War I, in which Lebanon's population reputedly suffered from starvation and declined by 5-10%, then rose again from refugee immigration, especially immediately after the war. 3 The population of Lebanon at the end of 1918 thus should have been approximately 780,000. However, it must be recognized that this estimate, like all population statistics for Lebanon is very tentative. Its main virtue is that, unlike the French statistics, it is reasonable and fits into an orderly and understandable progression of population.

' For comparison, the following rates of national increase by country for 1975 were published by the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia: Bahrain (38.4), Egypt (23.1), Iraq (31.5), Jordan (35.0), Kuwait (45.0), Lebanon (25.0), Oman (31.0), Yemen (P.D.R.) (22.3), Qatar (30.0), Saudi Arabia (29.7), Syria (32.7), Yemen (A.R.) (23.9), (Source: UNECWA, Demographic and Related Socio-Economic Data Sheets for Countries of the Economic Commission for Western Asia, Beirut, 1978. ^Corrected figures, see McCarthy "Ottoman Syria and Iraq". The boundaries of Mandate Syria and Lebanon were not Ottoman boundaries, so the Ottoman population figures given here are constructed by taking corrected figures for each kaza in 1912 and rearranging them to fit the new borders of Syria and Lebanon. 3 T h e French estimated 35,000 Armenian and other Christian refugees from Anatolia in Lebanon. For purposes of calculation, I have placed 17,500 of these refugees as arriving in 1918 or before and 17,500 in 1922. This is fairly arbitrary, but the figures on Christian refugees have not yet been satisfactorily studied. In 1912, according to Ottoman figures, there were a maximum of 3,000 Armenians in the area that was to become Mandate Syria and Lebanon. Early Mandate statistics of the Christian refugees in the two states are as unreliable as the population statistics for other groups, but in 1938 there were approximately 100,000 Armenians registered in Syria alone. Thus the numbers of Christian refugees in Syria and Lebanon in the first years of the Mandates might have been higher than the French estimated. The numbers above and those given below for Christian refugees in Syria are those the French identified as staying, not those who moved on to Europe, the Americas, etc. Estimates of those who originally came rise to 110-120,000 and more (See. U.S. Archives, 890D.4016Armenians/2, J. H. Keeley to Secretary of State, Beirut, February 17, 1931, and Richard G. Hovannisian, "The Ebb and Flow of the Armenian Minority in the Arab Middle East," Middle East Journal 28. no. 1, Winter, 1974, p. 20. The calculations here would be only slightly affected if the numbers of refugee were greater or the arrival years were different. The difference would have the statistical effect of decreasing the growth rate in Syria and Lebanon and would more prove my points. Rather than do so, I have taken the lower figures, working against the case I attempt to make.

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The figure of 780,000 in 1918 can be projected forward to obtain a more accurate picture of the population of Lebanon than that afforded by the deficient French figures. In theory, once a beginning and ending population are known a reasonably accurate estimate of the population of each year can be calculated. 1 T w o peculiarities of the Lebanon data make such projections difficult. First, an endpoint is needed, a fairly accurate figure for a later date so that the population can be projected between 1918 and that date, and, almost uniquely in the modern world, Lebanon has never taken an accurate census. Second, allowance must be made for migration, which was a large demographic factor in Greater Syria. I have assumed a Lebanon population of 1,050,000 for the year 1938. When there is no accurate enumeration one is forced to rely on the estimates of reliable observers and demographers. In this case, the best figures for modern Lebanon, those of Youssef Courbage and Philippe Fargues 2 have been taken and an estimate projected back to 1938. The figures are higher than those that would result, for example, from taking the 1947 Lebanese figures as a base, but Courbages and Fargues make a good case for their estimations. Beginning in 1926, international migration seems to have been accurately registered by the Mandate government. The French also estimated that 35,000 Christian refugees, mainly Armenians, came to Lebanon during and immediately after World War I and remained. 3 The migration figures have been factored into a computer program that projects the Lebanon population by

' X Jsing the standard formula p2 = pl= ert and its derivatives. Youssef Courbages and Philippe Fargues, La Situation démographique au Liban, two volumes, Beirut, 1973 and 1974. See especially vol. I, p. 10, which quotes a Lebanese government estimate of 2,126,325 in 1970. Courbage and Fargues adjusted the figure for 1970 to 2,265,000 (vol. I, p. 68 and 69). other estimates are given in vol. II, p. 24. Various years of Rapport. Because it is impossible to know exactly when these Christian refugees arrived, I have artificially divided the 35,000 into two groups of 17,500. The first 17,500 have been included in the wartime population and thus appear in the figure of 780,000 in 1918. For purposes of calculation, the second 17,500 are assumed to have arrived in 1922. 2

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year from 1918 to 1938. 1 The resulting figures for Lebanon in 1925 and 1932 have the virtue of possibility — 883,000 in 1925 and 966,000 in 1932. Even allowing for some possible imprecision in estimation, the more accurate figures for the population are considerably different than the French figures. The quality of French demographic statistics on Lebanon was significantly worse than the quality of Ottoman statistics for the same area. Like the French, the Ottomans undercounted the population. However, the Ottoman undercount was approximately 13% of the population, 2 whereas the French undercounted the 1925 population by more than 30% and the 1932 population by almost 20%. 3 The Ottoman Government had a much better idea of the numbers of the population of Lebanon. In the area of birth and death registration the French efforts were also more deficient than Ottoman registration, although the records of both were extremely deficient. French registration is difficult to analyze, because the French only published birth and death figures for two years, 1926 and 1927, and archival records on population, if they exist, have not yet been utilized. The Ottomans published many sets of birth and death figures. Table Two lists the published French figures for 1927 (the 1926 birth figures were less IREAL: 1050000 CALCULATED: 1051517.54 RATE 1.0148 YEAR PlxR MIGR. POP. 780000 1918 791544 0 791544 1919 803259 0 803,259 1920 815147 815147 0 1921 844711 827211 +17500 1922 0 857213 857213 1923 869900 0 869900 1924 882774 882774 0 1925 -5163 890676 895839 1926 -188 903670 903858 1927 -3557 917045 913488 1928 927007 -2476 924531 1929 -1797 936417 938214 1930 +974 950276 951250 1931 +773 966102 965329 1932 -94 980306 980400 1933 -399 994416 994815 1934 -991 1008142 1009133 1935 -896 1022166 1023062 1936 -1481 1035814 1037295 1937 +374 1051144 1051518 1938 "Real" is the population as recorded in the census. The program begins with a low estimate of the rate of increase, projects the population each year, adding in-migration and subtracting outmigration, then checks to see if the result is more than the "real" population. The process iterates, adding .0001 to the rate until a close (not exact) fit is reached. A more exact figure could have been used, but given the data high precision would have been spurious. (No figures were available for the years 1919-1925.) ^Because Ottoman boundaries did not correspond to those of Mandate Lebanon, various administrative units must be considered here — Cebel-i Ltibnan Sanjak, and parts of Suriye Vilayet and Beyrut Vilayet — each of which had a different undercount. The 13% rate is an extrapolation from the data for each. See McCarthy "Ottoman Syria and Iraq", p. 10. 3 1925: (882774-597789)/882774=.3229 1932: (936417-785543)/936417=. 1869

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complete) and the best published Ottoman data. Obviously, the Ottoman birth and death registers were considerably better than the French. 1

Table Two. Ottoman and Mandate Recorded Vital Rates for Lebanon

Area

Year

Ot. Beyrut Vilayet Mandate Lebanon Expected*

1895-6 1927

Birth Rate

Death Rate

.016 .008 .050

.009 .003 .032

*rough approximation based on Coale and D e m e n y ^ (Sources: 1927 Rapport and 1313 istatistik

Syria The first French figures on the population of Syria, those of the 1925 census, were as bad as those taken in Lebanon. However, as French control increased the mandatory government was able to take one fairly reliable census, that of 1938. Other estimates were issued after 1938, based on additions and subtractions from the 1938 numbers for recorded births, deaths, and migration. (The Sanjak of Alexandretta [Hatay] has not been included in the following analysis, as it did not appear in the 1938 census. While the 1938 French figures were undoubtedly undercounts, it is impossible to estimate the degree of underenumeration, because the French did not publish the detailed figures by age sex that are essential for analysis of such undercounts.)

Lebanese registration of vital events remained poor through the 1970s, after which it effectively disappeared. See Huda Zurayk, "Sources of Demographic Data in Lebanon", Population Bulletin of the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia, no. 12, January, 1977, and Courbages and Fargues, p. 29. ^Ansley Coale and Paul Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, Princeton, 1966. The estimates of average life expectancy (e°) and other demographic comparisons given here are drawn from this standard text, using the "East" tables. Use of the "South" tables, which is favoured by some, would result in slightly different figures, but no altered conclusions. 3 Ottoman Empire, Nezaret-i Umur-i Ticaret ve Nafia Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye'nin 1313 Senesi Mahsus istatistik-i Umumisi, Istanbul, 1315.

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Table Three. Official Figures on the Population of Syria.* Total Year

Population

1925

1,324,026

1938

2,487,027

1942

2,807,645

1947

3,082,257

*not including nomads (Sources: Rapport, 1926, Rapport, diverses, Thavarajah)'

1938,

Statistiques

The early population statistics for Mandate Syria, the ones which should best compare with Ottoman data, were seriously deficient. If they were correct, the Syrian population would have increased at a rate of .048 per year (higher than any ever recorded in the Arab World), a clear impossibility. When one considers that the 1925 figures included the sancak of Alexandretta and the 1938 figures did not the 1925 data becomes all the more suspect. The same procedure applied to the Lebanon population above can be used for the Syrian population. The population in 1912 of the area that would become Mandate Syria (without Alexandretta) was approximately 1.63 million. 2 One can assume that the population was approximately 1.7 million in 1918. This figure includes normal increase until ca. 1915, no increase in the years from 1915 to 1918, and an influx of Armenian and Assyrian Christians. 3 Using 1,700,000 in 1918 as a base figure, the population of Syria between 1918 and 1938 can be calculated through the computer program, which adjusts

^République Syrienne, Ministère de l'Economie Nationale, Direction Générale des Services Fonciers et des Domaines de l'Etat, Statistiques Diverses, 1945. A. Thavarajah, "Fertility, Mortality, and Population Growth in Syria", in Demographic Measures and Population Growth in Arab Countries, Cairo, 1970, pp. 196. 2 The estimate for the area of Syria, not including Alexandretta (Hatay), was given as approximately 1,532,000 in POP. ART., but the population of Zor Sanjak was seriously undercounted in the article (mea culpa). By comparison to the 1938 figures it becomes obvious that the Zor Sanjak population must have been closer to 200,000 than to the 103,900 given in the article. 3 See notes 10? and 13?, above.

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for recorded in - and out-migration. 1 The adjusted population in 1925 is 1,960,000 (not including Alexandretta), a much more reasonable figure. 2 There can be no question but that the Ottomans enumerated the population of Syria much better than did the French. Not until 1938, 26 years after the last published Ottoman enumeration, did a French census improve on the Ottoman record. The 1925 census undercounted the population by one third, whereas the Ottoman counts understated the population by less than 10%. 3 (If the undercount of the 1938 census were known, the 1925 census undercount would look even worse.)

^See Courbage and Fargues, vol. II, chapter 1, for information on recorded rates of increase. The program yields the following figures (see the explanation above, note 14?). REAL: 2487027 CALCULATED: 2489164.29 RATE: 1.0192 YEAR PlxR MIGR. POP. 1918 170000 1919 1732640 0 1732640 1920 1765907 -1000 1764907 1921 1798793 -1000 1797793 1922 1832311 +25800 1858111 1923 1893786 -1000 1892786 1924 1929128 -1000 1928128 1925 1965148 -1000 1964148 1926 2001859 -5693 1996166 1927 2034493 -3883 2030610 1928 2069597 -6323 2063274 1929 2102889 -1950 2100939 1930 2141277 -1571 2139706 1931 2180789 -204 2180585 1932 2222452 +331 2222783 1933 2265460 -231 2265229 1934 2308722 -134 2308856 1935 2353186 -1118 2352068 1936 2397228 -375 2396853 1937 2442872 -466 2442406 1938 2489300 -136 2489164 The calculated rate of increase, 1.0192, is perhaps a bit high, which may indicate an underestimation of the Ottoman population or unrecorded in-migration in the Mandate period. If either is true, the adjustment in the 1925 population would be small and would not affect the conclusions drawn from the figure. It must be stressed that these figures are only rough estimates. 3 .3258 (Mandate, (1964148-1324026)/1964148) as opposed to .0972 (Ottoman Suriye VilSyet, as calculated in McCarthy "Ottoman Syria and Iraq"). 2

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Table Four. Ottoman and Mandate Recorded Vital Rates for Syria

Area

Year

Ot. Haleb Vilâyet Ot. Suriye Vilâyet Mandate Syria** Expected***

1895-6 1895-6 1927

Birth Rate

Death Rate

.013 .025 .005 .050

.010 .013 .005 .032

*not including Kuneytra or Zebdani. **not including Euphrates, Jezireh, Jebel Druze, or Alexandretta. ***rough approximation, based on Coale and Demeny (Sources: 1927 Rapport and 1313 Istatistik) French figures on fertility and mortality in Syria were fully as bad as those for Lebanon. They were published only for 1926 and 1927 and indicate that the French had little understanding of vital events in Syria. Ottoman statistics on births and deaths were considerably better, particularly for the Syria Vilayet. (Neither the Ottomans nor the French made serious attempts to count births and deaths in certain areas of Syria, which have been excluded from Table Four). Syrian vital statistics were far from complete even in the first years of the Syrian Republic. In 1948 they registered a birth rate of .005 and a death rate of .015. 1 Population Increase According to the theory advanced above, development in Mandate Syria and Lebanon should have led to population increase. If life improved under the mandatory regime, the population should have grown at a more rapid rate than under the Ottomans, especially since there were no foreign invasions or major epidemics. Yet the population did not grow at an appreciably greater rate than it had before World War I. 2

' Syria, Mudiriyat al-Ihsa', Al-majmu'at al-ihsa'iyat as-Suriya, Damascus, 1948, p. 17. For improvements, see the lists in the various Statistical Abstracts of Syria, e.g., Syria, Ministry of National Economy, Directorate of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Syria, 1955, Damascus, 1956, pp. 21 and 26. On underregistration, see Mouna Liliane Samman, La Population de la Syrie: Etude Géo-Démographique, Paris, 1978, pp. 136-142, and Thavarajah, pp. 197-204. ^These rates are approximations, as stated above. However, they can be taken to be accurate with one or two thousands and allow accurate comparisons.

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Table Five. Rates of Increase Time Period

Yearly Rate

Ottoman Suriye Vilayet 1878-1914 Ottoman Beyrut Vilayet 1978-1914 Mandate Lebanon* 1922-1938 Mandate Syria* 1922-1938 ^adjusted for migration

.012 .018 .015 .019

Region

If the status of the people is reflected in the growth of their numbers, then the French Mandates in Syria and Lebanon were no better than the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, one might expect that with European influence would have come some of the technology and practices that had made Europe a more hygienic place than the Middle East, but the numbers indicate no such improvement. Because French statistics were so deficient, it is impossible to speak with complete confidence of the life expectancy of the people of Lebanon and Syria. However, the growth rates indicate that life expectancy was approximately the same under the French as it had been in the late Ottoman period, an average of approximately 30-32 years of life from birth. 1 In the most important aspects of existence, life and death, things remained just about the same as under the Ottomans. Palestine Palestine under the British Mandate, while it was unable to satisfy anyone politically (even the British, themselves), was a relative success demographically. In all demographic criteria, the people of Mandate Palestine enjoyed a distinct betterment of life over Ottoman times. In short, things were demographically as they should have been. One should assume that a strong European power would have been able to improve the conditions of health and civil order that led to population increase. British resources were greater than Ottoman resources and, perhaps most important, the British in Palestine were not forced, as the Ottomans had been, to spend money needed for development on defence from external enemies. Therefore, demographic improvement should be expected, and it was indeed present.

The reasoning is as follows: births rates in Mandate Syria and Lebanon must have been at least as high as they were in Ottoman times. Birth rates in Syria did not go down even after World War II and remain at one of the highest levels in the world. (See Samman, pp. 239-253, and Thavarajah, especially p. 214). Birth Rates in Lebanon did decrease markedly, but not until after the Mandate. (See Courbages and Fargues, volume I, especially p. 38). If fertility remained relatively constant, then a necessary corollary of similar rates of increase is similar mortality. (Migration has been controlled in the equation.)

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The figures in Table Six are the official population numbers from the two censuses taken by the British in 1922 and 1931, as recorded and as corrected for slightly undercounting. Whereas the data given above for Syria did not include nomads, these figures incorporate a provisional count of nomads in Palestine. Table Six. Official Figures of the Population of Palestine Census Year

Total* Population

Corrected* Population

1922 1931

757,182 1,035,821

816,123 1,054,189

•including nomads (Sources: 1931 Palestine Census and McCarthy, Palestine

The figures in the 1922 census, were comparable in accuracy to those published by the Ottoman government. In 1922, the census only undercounted the population by 7%, almost exactly the same as the Ottoman undercount for Kuds Sanjak and better than the undercount for the portions of Palestine in the Beyrut Vilayet.2 By 1931 the undercount had improved considerably, to less than 2%. Thus the Palestine statistical service showed the pattern that should be expected —at first, similarity with the Ottoman statistics, then improvement. Vital rates showed a similar pattern, at first registration was similar to Ottoman data collecting, then it began to improve until by the time of the second census it was close to correct. The correctness is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of Middle Eastern demography. With the exception of Israel, which should be expected to have kept up the British tradition, no country in the Middle East today has vital registration as good as that of Palestine in 1931.

1 Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine. Most of the statistical analyses for the section on the British Mandate have been taken from this book. 2 For the Beyrut Vilâyet undercount, see Table Two. Due to limited information, it is impossible to separate the undercount of the sanjaks which became part of Palestine from the undercount in those which became part of Lebanon.

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Table Seven. Ottoman and Mandate Recorded Vital Rates for Palestine

Area

Year

Ot. Kuds Sanjak Expected* Mandate Palestine Mandate Palestine Mandate Palestine Expected*

1895-6 1922 1925 1931

Birth Rate

Death Rate

.036 .045 .034 .039 .044 .045

.016 .032 .015 .021 .020 .023

•rough approximation based on Coale and Demeny (Sources: McCarthy, Palestine and 1313 istatistik) The excellent registration system in Mandate Palestine says much about the degree of governmental control in Palestine, at least up to the time of the troubles in the late 1930s, when the standard naturally declined. Whether the British could have built their system de novo cannot be judged, but the presence of a population which was accustomed to fairly complete registration before World War I must have aided the British registrars. Another factor, which aided both the Ottomans and the British, was the geography of Palestine. Registration was naturally easier in areas like Palestine in which most of the population was close to centres of government control and thus easy for government registrars (and soldiers) to reach. Also there were no regions of Palestine as remote and difficult to access as were the mountain and desert areas of Syria and Lebanon. Finally, judged by the rate of population increase, the people of Palestine were demographically more well off under the British than under the Ottomans. Table Eight indicates a considerable improvement in the rate of population growth. The rate of increase in Ottoman Palestine was part of the "Greater Syrian demographic system" that held during the Empire and continued in Mandate Syria and Lebanon. Under the British, mortality declined greatly. Average life expectancy in Ottoman Palestine had been approximately 30 years, as opposed to approximately 37 years under the Mandate in Palestine.

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Table Eight. Rates of Increase of the Palestine Population

Region Ottoman Palestine* Mandate Palestine Mandate without migration 1

Time

Total Yearly

Muslim Yearly

Period 1878-1914 1922-1931 1922-1931

Rate .013 .028 .022

Rate .012 .022 unavailable

*Kuds, Akka. and Nablus Sanjaks

Conclusion and Speculations The

Statistics

The statistical development of Greater Syria was an integral part of the general development of statistical data and procedures in the Ottoman Empire. The patterns of development in Greater Syria were typical of other areas in the Empire: Urban areas were first and best recorded and registration gradually improved in rural areas, as well. With an increase in government power came an improvement in population registration. This system applied in Anatolia and the Balkans, as it did in Greater Syria. One of the most interesting facets of the Ottoman registration system was its integration into the political and social situation of the area registered. For example, the Ottomans realized that registration of females was difficult, perhaps impossible, unless their power to enforce enumeration of women was strong. Therefore, they began by counting only males.

^Officially recorded migratory increase was as follows: Year Migration 1923 +1,451 1924 +13,053 1925 +3,453 1927 -6,767 1928 -3,195 1929 +1,349 1930 +2,996 1931 +4,472 (Sources: Statistical Abstract, 1942 Health, 1946) Because the censuses were taken at the end of the year, the entire year's migration has been figured in 1931 and none figured in 1922. While legal migrants ("immigrants" and "travellers registered as immigrants" and emigrants; illegal migration was small in these years) can be easily excluded from the projections, their children born in Palestine cannot. This produces a slightly higher rate than would pertain if they were excluded.

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Furthermore, the manpower available to the Ottomans was too meagre to allow for a modern census, in which the population was enumerated all at once over a short period, so the Ottomans created a registration system in which available skilled manpower could be used to update registers periodically. In effect, the Ottomans took small censuses in different villages at different times. Their system allowed them to take best advantage of what political power and manpower they had. The Europeans who conquered the Ottoman domain in Greater Syria chose to bring with them the European idea of a census and updates of population numbers through birth and death registration. In the case of the French, the system was a failure until their last days in Syria and never worked properly in Lebanon. Yet the French kept on with their European system; they updated bad census figures each year by subtracting registered deaths and adding registered births when even they must have known that their figures were meaningless. (Could the French have actually believed that the birth rate in Syria was significantly lower than the birth rate in France? If so, that alone says much about the state of their knowledge.) It was a dogged persistence of ideal overreality that was contrary in practice and spirit to the Ottoman methods. Of the two, one must think that the Ottoman approach was superior. The British, on the other hand, made the European system work. Their statistical yearbooks and other governmental statistical reports closely resemble like volumes published each year by Western European governments. How did they do it? I have suggested one factor above — Palestine was simply an easier place in which to take a count. Geography made their job easier. (Indeed, the Ottomans had registered the population in Palestine much better than the population in most of Syria. It is instructive that neither the Ottomans nor the British did very well in counting the population of Iraq.) Other factors must be matters of speculation. I suspect that the British simply put much more into the collection of data than the French were willing or the Ottomans able to do. They surely put more into the publication of the data they collected - for every page of data printed by the French the British printed a hundred. It would be surprising if the expenditure in collecting the data was not correspondingly greater, as well. Comparative population data may also indicate a difference in the quality of government and governmental power in the two Mandates. However, that question must await other studies.

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The Population Under the Ottomans there was some demographic difference between Northern and Southern Greater Syria (Haleb Vilayet seems to have had the lowest mortality), 1 but birth rates, death rates, and the rate of population increase showed little variance throughout the area. With the demise of the Empire, the population in the French Mandates continued approximately as it had before, perhaps with very slightly improvement. The rate of population growth in the British Mandate began to increase. 2 One can speculate as to the causes of this increase. Beyond considerations of civil order, the most likely cause for betterment was an improvement in sanitary standards and medical care. The economic effects of European, primarily Jewish, immigration and financial support may also have had an effect. Statistics indicate the demographic success of the British Mandatory and the failure of the French. This is not to say that they also indicate a failure of the Ottomans, due to the relatively worse statistics in Ottoman times. It should be remembered that prior to ca. 1880 the Ottoman population had not increased—mortality was high and civil order was poor. However, in their final period of rule the Ottomans had begun to create improved conditions that allowed the population to grow. In a demographic sense, conditions had much improved. The British success was a continuation and acceleration of the Ottoman success, as should be expected. The French situation in their Mandates was a stagnation.

^ Haleb Vilayet contained large sections of Anatolia, which affect its statistics. Haleb also benefited demographically from containing coastal and urban areas that were under firm government control and from a lack of areas in eastern and southern Syria which were poorer economically and less well registered. 2 The rates have been controlled for migration, but not for the effect that migrants into Palestine may have had on creating an improved economic climate. The question of the effect of that inmigration on the economic situation of the original inhabitants has, to my mind, not been answered.

Ottoman Greater Syria, 1912

GREEK STATISTICS ON OTTOMAN GREEK POPULATION

In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been paid to the population statistics registered by the Ottoman government. Detailed research has revealed that these statistics, while not always completely accurate, are the most reliable records of Ottoman population. 1 In fact, Ottoman population data from the nineteenth century has often proved to be of comparable calibre to the census and registration statistics taken in developing countries today. 2 Unfortunately, it has required a "revolution of consciousness" before most Western scholars have been willing even to investigate the uses of Ottoman population statistics. From the late nineteenth century until today, scholars and politicians have often stated that Ottoman population statistics were either non-existent or fabrications. Many historians and other analysts have been far more willing to accept unsubstantiated estimates of Ottoman population written in European languages than to examine Ottoman records. This has not necessarily been from ill-will, but rather from a natural tendency to accept the work of other, earlier experts as given. Thus, in areas of population history, Europeans and Americans, assuming that the earlier scholars were honest and capable students of their subject, have traditionally taken their figures from earlier European and American, not from Ottoman records. Non-Ottoman statistics have been especially prominent in the study of the minority populations of the Ottoman Empire. From the early nineteenth century to modern times, Western scholars have made much use of estimates of Ottoman Greek and Armenian populations in histories, ethnic studies, and polemics. The Armenians, the major part of whose population live in Eastern Anatolia far from Western observers, have been the subject of widely varying ^For information on Ottoman population records in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Kemal Karpat, "Ottoman Population records and the Census of 1881/82-1893," International Journal of Middle East Studies (hereafter UMES) 9, no. 2 (1978): 237-74; Justin McCarthy, "Age, Family, and Migration in Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Provinces of the Ottoman Empire," IJMES 10, no. 4 (1979): 309-323, and The Population of Ottoman Anatolia, 1878-1927, doctoral dissertation, UCLA, 1978 (hereafter Population); Stanford J. Shaw, "The Ottoman Census System and Population, 1831-1914," IJMES 9, no. 3 (1978): 325-38. ^Ottoman population numbers were recorded, on the average, 20% low, due to undercounting of women and children — a situation found in developing countries today. See McCarthy, Population, Ch. I.

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statements on their numbers; 1 but the Greek population, living in more wellknown areas of Western Anatolia and Ottoman Europe, has been reported with surprising unanimity. This has been due to the general acceptance of population figures provided by Greek sources immediately following the First World War. These figures have always seemed to offer the "best of both worlds", as they appear to be the result of an unexpected agreement of both the Ottoman government and the Greek Patriarchate on the number of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. T w o sets of figures on the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire have appeared often in Greek and Western publications — the so-called "Greek Patriarchate Statistics of 1912" and the "Turkish Official Statistics of 1910", drawn from the "Ottoman Census of 1910". These two sets of figures, broken down by province and ethnic group, did not agree on the size of the Muslim population, but they were in general agreement on Greek population. According to the Greek Patriarchate Statistics, there were in 1912, for example, 1,782,582 Greeks in Anatolia (including the Asiatic shore of Constantinople); the "Turkish Official Statistics of 1910" listed 1,777,146 in the same area. The two were in almost perfect agreement (Table One, following text of this article). The two sets of figures seem to have been first published together by "Polybius" (D. Kalopothakes) in Greece Before the ConferenceThe Greek Patriarchate Statistics had been published a year before by George Soteriadis. 3 Since 1919, various authors and politicians have used the number of Greeks given in these two records as evidence that there were 1.7 to 1.8 million Greeks in Asia Minor before World War One. The British and Greeks used the figures at the Versailles Peace Conference, and various authors (Table Two) have quoted them since, up to the latest detailed and scholarly book on the subject — Dimitri Pentzopoulos' The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact upon Greece — which presents the figures in detailed tables, drawn from Polybius, and states: Both tables (Patriarchate and Turkish Official) are substantially in agreement on the figures of minorities in Asiatic Turkey... The fact remains that the Turkish government estimated that the Greek population of Anatolia exceeded 1,700,000 people. 4 I A good summary of Western and Armenian statements on Armenian population appears in Richard G. Hovannisian, Armenian on the Road to Independence (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 9-15, 34-37. The Armenian Patriarchate Statistics are reproduced in Justin McCarthy, International Historical Statistics: The Late Ottoman Empire (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., in press; hereafter, The Late Ottoman Empire). ^London, 1919. 3 AH Ethnological Map Illustrating Hellenism in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor (London, 1918). 4 (Paris, Mouton, 1962), p. 30.

OTTOMAN

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235

Since both sides were apparently in agreement, the 1.7 million figure has been used and accepted by scholars as correct. Some have published the figures directly, almost always in the Greek Patriarchate form, as they appeared in Polybius. Others have quoted the populations of certain areas from the tables or from the works of others who, in turn, had used the tables. A selection of these authors appears in Table Two. Most of the authors who have written on the Greeks in Anatolia after World War One are listed in Table Two. In some cases, such as in the Jelavich volume, the figures were used as part of general descriptive histories. More often, they appeared in specific works on the Greco-Turkish war in Anatolia or on the Exchange of Populations. Their initial use was definitely partisan, as evidence for Greek claims in the post-war period. The statistics provided a demographic base for the annexation of Western Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace to Greece by demonstrating that a numerous and compact Greek population lived in those areas. 1 Such a population would support a Greek government. After the Greek defeat in Anatolia and the loss of Eastern Thrace, the figures were used to count "tremendous" Greek losses in the period. Articles and books, including League of Nations official publications, 2 subtracted the number of refugees who had reached Greece from the Greek Patriarchate figures and counted the result as those who had died — "by conservative estimate the slaughter of at least a million people." 3 This was considered to be an absolutely reasonable analysis, as both the number of refugees and the number of Greeks who had lived in the Ottoman Empire were known, the latter figure having been verified by Greek and Ottoman sources. The results portrayed the Ottomans in a bad light, but how could they complain? Their own figures condemned them. There is one difficulty, unremarked by the scholars and the polemicists: The "Turkish Official Statistics" and the "Greek Patriarchate Statistics" were frauds. As with many such deceptions, repeated usage and the passage of years (plus a desire on the party of many scholars to believe) have lent a reliability to what are, in reality, statistical lies. There was no Ottoman Census of 1910, although those who read Polybius' book in 1919 and most of those who have used the "1910 Census" figures, having no knowledge of real Ottoman figures, would have no way of knowing that. The figures were a deliberate deception on the part of Polybius, The figures were used skilfully by Venizelos at the Versailles, London, and Lausanne Conferences. See esp. Smith, Ionian Vision-, Pallis, Greece's Anatolian Venture; and Venizelos, Documents. For the full reference for these works and others subsequently cited in abbreviated fashion in the footnotes to the text, see Table Two. 9 Greek Refugee Settlement, p. 12. ^Doulis, Disaster and Fiction, p. 22.

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who must have realized that the "Greek Patriarchate Statistics" would appear invincible if they were supported by population data from those most likely to question them, namely the Ottomans. For the 1914 edition of the Almanack de Gotha, the Ottoman government had provided the editors with population totals drawn from registration data of the Ottoman population. This data was first published under the title "notice statistique, superficie et population (1910)" 1 and, with small corrections for boundary changes, was used until the 1923 edition of the Almanach. The Almanach de Gotha published only the total population of each Ottoman province, not the population by ethnic or religious groups. Polybius took these figures and divided them himself into ethnic groups, always keeping the totals the same as the totals for each province as they appeared in the Almanach de Gotha. His ethnic groups reflected roughly the number of Greeks as they appeared in the Greek Patriarchate statistics, not in any Ottoman official statistics. The figures of Greek population in each province were carefully made to be close to, but not exactly the same as, the Patriarchate data. The result was then published under the heading: Turkish Official Statistics, 1910 (See totals in Almanach de Gotha, 1915) 2 It thus was made to appear that Polybius was publishing the details of what he called the "Turkish Census of 1910", whereas the Almanach de Gotha had published only the totals. The proof that Polybius' figures were not actually Ottoman official statistics can be had by comparing the "Turkish Official Statistics of 1910" with actual Ottoman population registration data for any province. The example of the province of Aydm is given in Table Three. Any other province could have been chosen with the same results. From the table it is obvious that the totals, i.e., the only section of the "1910 Official" figures in Polybius that was truly official, indeed came from Ottoman sources, although they were perhaps compiled for a period a few years earlier than indicated in the Almanach de Gotha. In order to keep the totals correct, Polybius in effect made Turks into Greeks, by under-counting the one and overcounting the other. In Table Four the real Greek population figure for each province as recorded by the Ottomans is compared with Polybius' false figures.

1

Almanach de Gotha (Gotha, 1914), p. 1187. Greece before the Conference, p. 44.

2

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237

Polybius' statistical sleight-of-hand was intended to support the statements on Greek population made in the "Greek Patriarchate Statistics." By demonstrating that the Patriarchate statistics were essentially the same as the Ottoman government statistics, he quieted any complains that the Greeks might be overstating their population numbers. As stated above, the Patriarchate figures seem to have first appeared in 1918, published by Professor George Soteriadis. They were copied exactly, though without citation, in an early and influential work by Léon Maccas 1 as well as by "Polybius". While Polybius only listed figures by ethnic group and province, Soteriadis and Maccas offered complete-looking statistics by vilayet, sancak, and kaza, as well as by ethnic/religious group. Unlike the usual population estimates for the Ottoman Empire (e.g., the Armenian Patriarchate Statistics), the Greek Patriarchate Statistics were not rounded off to the thousands' place but were detailed population statements, appearing as if they had been taken from actual census or registration data. Neither Soteriadis nor Maccas identified the figures as patriarchal or otherwise alluded to their origins; but Polybius stated that they were the result of a "Greek census (which) was carried out because of the general complains made against the Young Turk Government that in the official census of 1910 the returns of Turks had been enormously exaggerated." 2 Polybius said that the census had been carried out by the Patriarchate, as did Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, who stated that the figures were made by the Patriarch for him. 3 Following Polybius, others such as Pentzopoulos, have cited the figures as "Greek Patriarchate Statistics." 4 In fact, even the census-like appearance of the Patriarchate Statistics is once again illusory. Professor Soteriadis, or another unknown source from which he took his material, created the "Patriarchate Statistics" by altering the population figures of Vital Cuinet. Cuinet's La Turquie d'Asie,5 published in four large volumes in the 1890s, was the best European source on Ottoman governmental statistics, including population. Cuinet had taken official Ottoman population records, making small corrections when he felt they were in error, and published them in great detail. La Turquie d'Asie, although of course almost thirty years out of date by 1918, was the most commonly available source on Ottoman population for analysts who could not read Ottoman Turkish. The author of the "Patriarchate Statistics" used Cuinet's figures as his base, then arbitrarily added more Greeks to the figures, kaza by kaza. For some districts the Greek population was simply increased; but for 1L'Hellénisme de l'Asie Mineure. Greece before the Conference, p. 45. 3 Documents, pp. 64, 65. ^The Balkan Exchange of Minorities, pp. 29-32. -'(Paris, 1890-94).

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others, population was taken from Cuinet's Muslim columns and added to the Greek columns. The figures were pains-taking reworking of Cuinet's data on Muslims and Greeks. If the author of the "census" had extended the same effort to other segments of the population, his source would never have been discovered. However, he made the mistake of changing only the Greek and Muslim population figures. For most kazas he made no changes in Cuinet's figures for Jews, Bulgarians, "Etrangers", et al. publishing them exactly as they appeared in Cuinet. Table Five gives, as an example, figures for the kaza of izmir, the centre of the area claimed as Hellenic Anatolia. For izmir Kazasi the author quadrupled Cuinet's Greek population and left the others as written. He seems to have given no thought to adjusting Cuinet's figures for possible population changes between 1894 and 1912. The figures for Izmir Kazasi are only one example of a general phenomenon. One can look, for example, at the Jews registered by Cuinet in each of the twelve kazas of Izmir Sancagi and find exactly those numbers listed in the Patriarchate Statistics; for areas like Mudanya of Bigadi§, one finds Cuinet's exact totals, but with the Turkish and G r e e k populations redistributed, population having been subtracted from the Turks and given to the Greeks. Hundreds of exact copies f r o m Cuinet make the source of the "Patriarchate Statistics" obvious. Analysis of the f o r m of the statistics confirms the statistical evidence. Cuinet listed the sub-provinces and districts (sancaks and kazas) of each province in his tables in an idiosyncratic fashion, alphabetized in neither Ottoman nor French. No other list of kazas and sancaks giving the same list of names in his order, has been found — except the Patriarchate Statistics, which exactly repeat Cuinet's order of administrative sub-divisions. 1 In addition, the Patriarchate Statistics were not given for the Ottoman provinces as they existed in 1912, but for the earlier, very different, boundaries given in Cuinet. Therefore, despite the word of Polybius, Venizelos, and others, the Patriarchate Statistics were in no sense a Greek Census. They were a deliberate deception, drawn without citation from the most readily available source of true Ottoman statistics — Vital Cuinet — and altered to fit political purposes. There is in addition, no evidence that the "Patriarchate Statistics" were ever seen by anyone from the Patriarchate.

' For example, cf. the kazas Statistics:

of Hiidavcndigar Sancagi, in Cuinet and in the Patriarchate

Cuinet Patriarchate Brousse Brussa Ghemlek Kios Mikhalitch Mihalitsi Moudania Mudania Kermasti Kremasti Atarnos Adranos The selection of any other kaza would have yielded the same pattern.

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The Patriarchate Statistics and the "Turkish Official Statistics of 1910" were not the only examples of statistical deception on the issue of Greek population. On M a y 9, 1919, a letter f r o m Chrysanthos, the Greek Metropolitan of Trabzon, reached the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. In the letter the Metropolitan stated that there were more Greeks in the Pontus than there were "real Turks". To prove his point, he quoted from an "official" Ottoman source: The 'Salname,' or official annual for the Vilayet of Trebizonde for the year 1908, returned the Greek population at 500,000 for the Vilayet of Trebizonde alone. 1 The Trabzon salnames were indeed an excellent source of population information, and a listing of a Greek population of 500,000 in Trabzon Province in a 1908 Salname would have been a strong support for the Metropolita's position. Unfortunately, there was no 1908 Salname. The Trabzon salnames ceased publication in 1905 (A.H. 1322 was the last). No published Trabzon salname ever listed a Greek population of more than 200,000. The Metropolitan must have trusted that no one at the conference in 1919 was likely to have a knowledge of, or access to, Trabzon salnames.2 Why were these statistics and all others like them 3 not rejected earlier? They were rejected — by the Ottoman and Turkish governments and their representatives at the Peace Conferences. 4 The Ottomans did not know the sources of the false statistics, but they did know that they were not accurate representations of the Ottoman population. They stated their case, publishing documents such as a French version of the 1330 Nufus-i Umumi t o demonstrate what actual Ottoman population records were. The delegates of the European Powers, convinced that the Ottomans were liars and worse, refused to give any credence to the Ottoman complaints. The complete Ottoman statistical records, both published and archival, were in the hands of the British who controlled Istanbul from 1920 to 1922, but no use was made of them. Perhaps the British never thought to look.

^Great Britain, Foreign Office, 608-82, 342/8/1. ^See Justin McCarthy and J. Dennis Hyde, "Ottoman Imperial and Provincial Salnames " in the MESA Bulletin, 1979. See the many volumes of N. Mikhov, La Population de la Turquie et de Bulgarie (Sofia) and Bibliographie sur la Turquie et Bulgarie, for thousands of examples. 4 Documents Diplomatiques, p. 180, gives one example; others are given throughout the reports of the Versailles and Lausanne Conferences.

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There never was a Greek Census in the Ottoman Empire. Common sense should indicate to any researcher the unlikelihood of an army of Greek census-takers fanning out across Anatolia and Thrace, counting all the inhabitants; yet, that is, by implication, what all those who have accepted the Greek Patriarchate Statistics have been accepting. The "Turkish Official Statistics of 1910," which provided effective support for the Patriarchate Statistics, were trusted because no one took the simple step of comparing them to actual Ottoman records. There were, in fact, no usable population records for the Ottoman Empire other than Ottoman records. Some Ottoman population records are very good, some deficient; but the question of population always revolves around the essential question: "Who counted the people?" In the Ottoman Empire, as in most other states, it was the government that counted the people. Scholarly problems such as those discussed here have arisen from the refusal to analyze — not blindly accept but analyze — Ottoman population records. Table One. Greek Population of Anatolia in "Greek Patriarchate" and "Turkish Official" Statistics Provinces

Istanbul (Asia) îzmit Aydin (Izmir) Bursa Konya Ankara Trabzon Sivas Kastamonu Adana Biga Total

Greek Patriarchate

Turkish Official

74,457 73,134 622,810 278,421 87,021 45,873 353,533 99,376 24,919 90,208 32,830

70,906 78,564 629,002 274,530 85,320 54,280 351,104 98,270 18,160

1,782,582

1,777,146

88,010 29,000

OTTOMAN GREEK POPULATION

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Table T w o . A u t h o r s and W o r k s which H a v e Accepted the Statistics on Greek Population* Soteriadis Polybius Greece 1 Venizelos 2 Maccas 3 "Unredeemed Greeks 4 Botzaris 5 Dufayard 6 Venizelos 7 Allie8 Curzon 9 Antoniades 1 0 Venizelos 1 1

1918 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1919 1920 1920 1922 1922 1922

L e a g u e of N a t i o n s 1 2 Andreades (Pallis) 1 3 Mergenthau14 Eddy 1 5 Ladas 1 6 Macartney 1 7 Pallis18 France 1 9 Pentzopoulos20 Bryer 2 1 Smith22 Jelavich 2 3 Doulis24

1926 1928 1929 1931 1932 1934 1937 1946 1962 1965 1973 1977 1977

*The authors in this table reproduced the Greek population statistics in many form. Some, such as Petzopoulos, copied them exactly and completely. Others copied only part of the statistics or gave only the totals for Asia Minor or for the entire Empire. Jelavich, for example, gave the population figures only for the "Smyrna Enclave". His figures, though no citation is given, are perhaps based on the figures given for the Smyrna (Izmir) area by Venizelos in 1920 (Great Britain, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 1st Series, v. VII, p. 67; hereafter Documents), which were summarized from the Patriarchate Statistics. This type of transmission was common for these figures.

^Greece, Bureau of Foreign Information, Statistics of the Population of Thrace and Asia Minor (London, 1919 f?J). The same statistics as the Patriarchate Statistics are given, with no mention of the Patriarchate or any other source. 2 E. Venizelos, Greece Before the Peace Conference of 1919 (New York, 1919). This work contains a variation for the population of Adana Vilâyeti and a miscopy of the Patriarchate figures for Biga (38,830 instead of 32,830); otherwise its figures are the same as the Patriarchate Statistics. o Léon Maccas, L'Héllenisme de l'Asie Mineure (Paris, 1919), tables. 4 Great Britain, Foreign Office, 608-88, 357/1/1, "Memo by Representatives of Unredeemed Greeks." 5 D. N. Botzaris, Les Hellènes et l'Asie Mineure (Paris, 1919), p. 79. ^Charles Dufayard, L'Asie Mineure et l'Hellénisme (Paris, 1919), pp. 11-16. Parts of the Patriarchate Statistics are copied exactly. 7Documents, pp. 64-66, 226. o Report to the Allied Powers by their "Smyrna Committee," Documents, pp. 244-46. 9 At the Lausanne Conference, quoted in Pentzopoulos, p. 30. ^Alexandre Antoniades, Le Dévelopement Economique de la Thrace (Athens, 1922), pp. 197205. Exact copies of the Patriarchate Statistics for Edirne and Istanbul are reproduced. ^France, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Documents diplomatiques, Conférence de Lausanne, vol. I (Paris, 1923), p. 102. Venizelos offered a figure approximately the same as the Patriarchate's, not including Istanbul, but stated that it was from "les Statistiques Américaines."

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Table Three. Greek and Muslim Population as Recorded in Actual and False Ottoman Statistics* Aydm Vilâyeti Muslims 1890-91 1894-95 1898-99 1902-03 1905-06 "1910 Official" 1914

1,118,496 1,175,637 1,221,946 1,270,356 1,314,989 974,225 1,437,983

Greeks 195,431 219,373 227,076 298,493 267,997 629,002 319,020

Totals 1,408,387 1,495,482 1,561,968 1,634,078 1,728,391 1,702,911 1,891,616

*The actual figures are drawn from Aydm Province salnames, respectively the 1308, 1312, 1316, 1320, and 1325 Salname-yi Vilûyet-i Aydm, published in 1330 Niifus-i Umumî (Istanbul, 1920). A summarized version was published in French under the title Tableau Indiquant le Nombre des divers éléments de la Population (Constantinople, 1919). Figures from the 1330 Niifus-i Umumi are reprinted in McCarthy, The Late Ottoman Empire. The "1910 Official" figures are, of course, from Polybius. Table Four. Greek Population in Anatolian Provinces: Actual and False Ottoman Statistics* Provinces

Real

False

45,202 40,048 319,020 183,974 95,847 45,760 260,313 76,394 11,481 8,550 1,112,698

Istanbul (Asia) Izmit Aydm Bursa Konya Ankara Trabzon Sivas Kastamonu Biga Total

70,906 78,564 629,002 274,530 85,320 54,280 351,104 98,270 88,010 29,000 1,777,146

*The figures for the provinces, taken from the 1330 Niifus-i Umumi, are for the provinces as they were listed in Polybius, i.e., with the Independent Sancaks replaced as part of their "mother" provinces (e.g., the figure for Trabzon is a combination of the 1330 figures for Trabzon Vilayeti and Canik Independent Sancak, which had been detached from Trabzon). Table Five. Population of Izmir kazasi, by Religious Groups, According to Cuinet and "Patriarchate Statistics" Muslims Cuinet (1894) Patr. (1912)

Greeks Armenians

96,250 57,000 96,250 243,879

Jews Foreigners Bulgarians

7,628 16,450 7,628 16,450

51,872 51,872

Totals

415 229,615 415 416,494

JEWISH POPULATION IN THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD

Jews were part of the population of the Middle East and the Balkans long before the advent of the Turks into the region. Though not numerous when compared to other religions and ethnic communities, their presence was always significant in cities and towns, with small numbers of Jews living in villages; some were even nomads. Their numbers were considerably swelled by the influx of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth century and, later, f r o m Eastern Europe. This paper does not attempt to trace Jewish numbers before the end of the nineteenth century, when the Jewish community had for centuries been settled as a primarily urban and well-integrated part of the Ottoman state system. Sources Accurate sources on the population of the Ottoman Jews are essentially the same as those on the other groups in the Ottoman Empire, i.e., the population records of the Ottoman government. However, the Jewish population was also of particular interest to some Europeans who made independent estimates of their numbers. The most commonly known estimates of the population of the Ottoman Jews were the figures published by either travellers and consular officials or statisticians who compiled the works of travellers and consuls. It has been established elsewhere 1 that such European estimates were generally unreliable. Some Europeans, such as Ubicini 2 or Abbreviations used in the notes: 1313 Ìstatistik: Nezaret-i Umur-i Ticaret ve Natia, Devlet-i aliye Osmariiye'nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus Ìstatistik Umumisi (General statistics for the Ottoman Empire in 1313/1891-96), Istanbul, 1315/1897-98. 1326 ihsaiyat-i Maliye: Maliye Nezareti, ihsaiyat-i Maliye, 1326 (Enumerations of the Ottoman Finance Ministry for 1326M/1910-11), Istanbul 1329M/1913-14. 1330 Niifus: Dahiliye Nezareti, Sicill-i Niifus ldare-i Umumiyesi Mudiiriyeti, Memalik-i Osmaniye'nin 1330 Senesi Niifus Istatistigi (Statistics of the Ottoman Empire for the Year 1330 M/1914-15), Istanbul, 1330 M. 1927 Turkish census: Tiirkiye Cumhuriyeti, Ba§ Vekalet, Ìstatistik Umum Mudurliigu, 28 Te§riniewel 1927 Umumt Niijus Tahriri, 3 vols., Ankara: Husniitabiat Matbaasi, 1929. IJMES: International Journal of Middle East Studies. FO: British Foreign Office Archives. ' See my Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman and the End of the Empire (New York, 1983), pp. 181-85. 2 See, especially, A. Ubicini and Pavel de Courteille, Eat present de l'Empire Ottoman (Paris, 1876). Ubicini's earlier work, such as Lettres sur la Turquie, Paris, 1851, used deficient statistics and are of much less value.

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Cuinet, 1 published general treatises on Ottoman statistics, which included data on Jewish population and were based on Ottoman population statistics. These were more reliable than other European statistics, because they were drawn from relatively accurate Ottoman records and, with few exceptions, 2 only the Ottomans had actually counted their own population. The most detailed European statistics on Jewish population are to be found in articles and books on the Ottoman Jews. Examples of these are found in Table 1. Table 1. European Estimates of the Ottoman Jewish Population, 1902-13

Ottoman Europe Palestine Arabia Ottoman Asia, Othcrf Total Ottoman Empire

Glogau 1902

Harris 1902

279,472* 65,000 20,000

82,277 60,000 15,000

188,896 85,000 40,000

77,500

77,729

115,000

441,972 235,006

Barnett 1902

Zeller 1903

350,000 650,000

*Including Eastern Rumelia. t Anatolia, Syria, Iraq. Sources: Judische Statistik, 1903 and The Jews of Today,

Ruppin 1913

428,896

1913. 3

^Vital Cuinet, La Turquie d'Asie, 4 vols. (Paris, 1890-1894); and Syrie, Liban et Palestine (Paris, 1896). ^Although any number of enumerations were claimed to have been made by Ottoman minority groups, the only actual count ever discovered is the Jewish census of Palestine, undertaken during World War I. The others were guesses or pure fabrications. See Justin McCarthy, "Greek Statistics on Ottoman Greek Population," International Journal of Turkish Studies, vol. 1 (2), 1980, pp. 66-76, and Muslims and Minorities, pp. 45-57 and 89-95. 3 Jüdische Statistik, "herausgegeben vom 'Verein für Jüdische Statistik' unter der redaktion von Dr. Albert Nossig," Berlin, 1903. This collection, which contains a useful bibliography of sources on Jewish population statistics, compiled articles on population from various sources. Those cited in the table are Otto Glogau, "Zur jüdischen Volkskunde und Statistik," from Ost und West, 1902; Dr. George E. Barnett, The American Jewish Yearbook, Philadelphia, 1902; Rev. Isadore Harris, The Jewish Yearbook, London, 1912; and Hermann Zeller, "Vergleichende Religionsstatistik," in Warneck's Allegemeiner Missionszeitschrift, 1903. Dr. Arthur Ruppin, The Jews of Today, London, 1913, "translated from the German by Margery Bentwich." I have not seen the original German edition. Ruppin made use of the statistics of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, among other sources. There does not now appear to be any indication that the Alliance statistics were of any better quality than other European statistics, because they did not actually count the Jews. See the excellent article by Paul Dumont, "Jewish Communities in Turkey during the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle," in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, editors (New York and London, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 209-42.

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245

Unfortunately, the standard of European knowledge on the number of Jews in the Ottoman Empire was equivalent to European knowledge of Ottoman population in general. Most European analysts either did not know of Ottoman statistics or ignored them. Consequently, their estimates were usually no more than guesses. The basic principle that one cannot know population numbers unless one counts the people was as true for Ottoman Jews as it was for the population of any other group or region. Therefore, for relatively accurate figures on the Ottoman Jews, one must consult Ottoman statistics.

Ottoman Population Records Ottoman records of Jewish population possessed the same good points and defects as Ottoman records on other religious groups. Jews were in fact somewhat better recorded than Muslims and Armenians, and approximately as well recorded as Greeks. This was due to the essentially urban character of the Jewish population. Greater administrative control in cities insured that urban population were better recorded. Moreover, the Jews of Anatolia and the Balkans were primarily concentrated in more advanced regions, such as the Aydin and Salonica provinces {vilayets), where statistics were better kept than in less developed areas. The statistical data used in this study were drawn from the Ottoman system of population registration, which has been discussed in detail in works by Karpat, Shaw, and McCarthy. 1 It should be noted that the Ottomans always undercounted women and young children, making statistical correction procedures necessary, and the procedures used in correcting Ottoman population figures result in a slight overcount of Jewish numbers. The Ottomans undoubtedly undercounted Jewish populations, as they did all populations, but it is difficult to estimate the degree of the undercount. In order to do so one would have to analyze age-specific data on Jews to ascertain to what degree the typical Ottoman pattern of underregistration of young children was true of the Jews. Although they were collected, such age-specific figures for the Ottoman provinces are for the population as a whole, not for specific religious groups. These data were heavily weighted by the preponderance of Muslim population, which was overwhelming rural and thus less accurately recorded. Applying correction factors based on total population thus results in an overestimation of Jewish numbers, because the Jews were an Stanford J. Shaw, "The Ottoman Census System and Population," IJMES, vol. 9 (3), August, 1978. Kemal Karpat, "Ottoman Population Records and the Census of 1881/2-1893," IJMES, vol. 9 (2), May, 1978, and Ottoman Population, 1830-1914, Madison, Wisconsin, 1985. Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities.

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urban community and thus better-recorded.1 The only alternative to this overestimation would be not correcting the Jewish population for undercounting, and this would undoubtedly result in a greater discrepancy. Readers should consider that the estimates of Jewish population given here are the upper limits of Jewish population numbers. Many of the basic calculations of Jewish numbers have been made and explained in detail in other studies of the population of the Ottoman Empire.2 Jewish

Population

Ottoman Europe The Jewish population of the Ottoman Balkans at the end of the empire was a mixture of an older settled community and recent immigrants. The older community, which was numerically predominant, shared characteristics of demography and urbanization with the newcomers. This is to be expected, since the immigrants were mainly from areas of the Ottoman Balkans that had been recently lost to the empire. They thus shared general cultural factors with their brothers who had not been forced to migrate. As has long been assumed, throughout Ottoman Europe Jews were almost exclusively dwellers. More than 90 percent of the Jews of Salonica province lived in the central district (kaza) of Salonica. The rest were scattered in small groups throughout the province. The situation was similar in Yanya province, where 91 percent were in the central district. In Manastir province, 84 percent were in Manastir district, 15 percent in Kesriye district. Only in Edirne province were the Jews somewhat better distributed, and even there 62 percent of the Jews lived in the central district.3

have applied such a correction factor to Jewish population in three previous works: "The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, 1878-1914," Asian and African Studies, vol. 15 (1), March, 1981, pp. 3-44; "The Population of Ottoman Europe before and after the Fall of the Empire," to appear in the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Social and Economic History of Turkey; and Muslims and Minorities. The nature of the analyses made it necessary to do so. The entire population of each province was corrected by a factor drawn from age-specific figures in the 1313 Istatistik. The total population was then divided into ethnic and religious groups according to the percentage of each group in the original, uncorrected figures. This resulted in a slight understatement of the population of Muslims and Armenians (particularly the Muslims) and an overstatement of the Jews and Greeks, because the latter two religious groups were better enumerated than the former. 2 Cf. "Ottoman Europe," "Ottoman Syria and Iraq", and Muslims and Minorities, cited in no. 7.? 3 The geographical distribution of the Jews is roughly the same in all the demographic sources. These figures have been drawn from the census published by Professor Kemal Karpat (see note 6?), the 1305 Manastir saíname, the 1330 Nttfus, and the Edirne saínames of 1313 and 1314. Kosova had few Jews, but 72% of them were centred in the kazas of Üsküb and I§tip.

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247

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Table 2 lists the Jewish population of the Ottoman Balkans as it was in A.H. 1330 (1911-12), just before the great demographic effects of the Balkan Wars. Table 2. Jewish Population of Ottoman Europe, 1911- 12l

Province Edirne Salonica Yanya Manastir i§kodra Kosova Total

Jewish

Total

Population

Population

9,034

1,426,632 1,347,915 560,835 1,064,789 349,455 1,602,949 6,352,575

62,290 3,990 10,651 —

3,287 89,162

Source: McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe". Almost all the Jewish residents of Ottoman Europe, outside of Istanbul, were Ottoman citizens. While tens of thousands of resident foreigners were present in Istanbul, Izmir, and other areas, few lived

in

Ottoman

Europe. Even the great cities of Salonica and Edirne attracted few foreigners as

Not including the population of the Aegean Islands province (Cezair-i Bahr-i Sefid Vilâyeti), which has not yet been properly analyzed. Some figures for Jewish population in Ottoman sources: Males Females Total 1310 (1892-1993) Salname" 1,518 1,434 2,952 1318(1900-1901) Salname* 1,532 1,441 2,973 Census of 1906/7f 2,439 2,323 4,762 *Salname-i Vilâyet-i Cezair-i Bahr-i Sefid tPublished by Prof. Kemal Karpat in Ottoman Population, 1830-1914. The differences between the figures seem odd. They may indicate a combination of infrequent compilations and in-migration.

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residents. 1 Jews from other areas of the Ottoman Empire were also rare in the Ottoman Balkans. In Edirne province, for example, the 1313 (1895-96) provincial yearbook (saíname) listed only 4 percent of the resident Jews as being "foreigners" (yabanci) from other provinces, 2 and less than 1 percent of the Jews of Manastir province were Ottoman citizen "foreigners".3 (Foreigners in this case would primarily be those who were working or for some other reason living in the province, but were natives of other provinces who could be expected to return there, not newly-settled refugees). These figures indicate that the Jews of Ottoman Europe were members of settled communities. Most of these communities were of long standing, but some had come recently, after the loss of Ottoman Bulgaria. This reflects the nature of the population of the Ottoman Balkans — both the Jews and the Muslims were either recent refugees from Bulgaria or members of communities that had been settled for centuries. Earlier Periods Accurate statistical evidence for Ottoman Europe in the period before 1878 is almost non-existent. There is much secondary evidence to indicate that Jews from Bulgaria followed the Muslim exodus from that country during and after the Russo-turkish War of 1877-78.4 The migration of Jews from Bulgaria into the Ottoman Empire may have continued well past 1878. Unfortunately, available Ottoman data on immigration do not indicate the ethnic groups of the migrants, who were simply listed as immigrants without further identification. Most were obviously Muslims, but the number of Jews is unknown.

'The 1313 Istatistik listed all resident foreigners in the Ottoman provinces. For Ottoman Europe the figures were: Foreigners Province Resident Selanik 1,265 Edirne 484 iskodra 55 Cezair 582 Manastir 56 Yanya 593 *tabii-yi-ecnebi. By way of comparison, the Istanbul Municipality (Der Saadet) listed 126,752 resident foreigners (1313 Istatistik). There were 656 out of 15,507 recorded Jews. ^There were 17 out of 5,048 (Manastir Viläyeti Salnamesi, 1305 M.) 4()n the sufferings of the Jews during the 1877-78 war, see the British consular reports in FO 195/1137, 1153, and 1184. For example, "in some instances the Jews |of Kyzanhk] suffered even more than the Mahommedans from the savagery of the Bulgarians." (From an article in the Jewish Chronicle of 5 October, 1877, reprinted from the Standard. FO 195/1184).

JEWISH

249

POPULATION

In the period from 1878 to 1911, the Jewish population of Ottoman Europe (not including Istanbul) appears to have increased at a rate of approximately .011 per year, a not unusual rate of increase.1 Istanbul The Jews of Istanbul province made up 15 % of the Jewish population of the empire. The area of Istanbul province in Table 3 is that of the Istanbul vilayet and Catalca sancak in 1911-12, the same area as the Istanbul vilayet in Republican Turkey. In the table, Istanbul city is a smaller area, which included only the main European and Asiatic urban centre — Stambul, Beyoglu, and Usktidar. By the end of the empire, Jews were present in all the kazas of Istanbul vilayet, except §ile, but their main concentration was still in Beyoglu (31,080 in 1911-12). The population figures for Istanbul have been assumed to be relatively correct, so they have not been corrected for an undercount.2 Table 3. Jews in Istanbul, 1890-1912

Year 1890-1891 1893-1894 1911-1912

Istanbul Province

Istanbul City

45,393 46,440 53,606

44,361 45,369 51,721

Sources: "Census of 1893," 1313 istatistik,

1330 Nüfus

Anatolia The figures in Table 4 indicate the changes in the Anatolian Jewish population during the last decades of the empire. The provincial boundaries are those of 1893. Haleb province, which was partially in Anatolia and partially in Northern Syria, is listed here under Anatolia.

^This is based on scanty data, drawn from figures for the Salonica province in the 1313 istatistik. Because of deficient data, drawing rates for the other European provinces may not be. possible. In any case, the large-scale migration in and out of Istanbul makes the correction process used for the other provinces impossible.

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Table 4. Recorded (uncorrected) Jewish Population of Ottoman Anatolia, 1893 and 1912

Province Aydm Erzurum Adana Ankara izmid Bitlis Biga Haleb Hiidavendigâr Diyarbakir Sivas Trabzon Kastamonu Konya Mamuretulaziz Van Total

Jewish Population ca. 1893

Jewish Population ca. 1912

Rate of Increase per Year

27,701 6 0 693 199

36.656 10 76 1,560 428 0 3.642 13,309 4,689 2,085 344 35 28 254 0 1,383 64,499

.0147 .0243

0 2.373 10,761 3,393 1,381 253 1 0 258 1 0 47,020

*Rates insignificant or incalculable. Sources: "Census of 1893," 1313 istatistik, 1330 Niifus.

*

.0451 .0425 *

.0238 .0106 .0190 .0206 .0154 * *

* *

*

.0166

JEWISH

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251

Overall, the recorded increase of Anatolian Jewish population in the late nineteenth century is not unusual. The rate of increase of the Anatolian Jews was somewhat greater than that experienced by the Muslims in the same period, 1 but this can be explained by certain anomalies in the statistics. The Jews in the Van province, for example, could not have sprung into existence in 1912. There were probably approximately as many Jews in Van in 1893 as in 1912, but they were not recorded. Statistics for Van were the worst in Anatolia, and the Jews recorded in 1912 were rural, probably the northern most remnant of the Jews of Iraq. All were residents of the Hakkari sancak, which bordered the Mosul province. They may have existed in the Van region for millennia, unregistered until the Ottomans made their last and best effort at enumeration of the population of the East. This may also have been true of some of the Jews of Diyarbakir province, most of whom were also in the rural regions in the south of the province. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire were obviously expanding into new regions of Anatolia in the last decades of the empire. As Table 4 indicates, the Jewish population of a number of Anatolian provinces was increasing at a greater rate than could be explained through natural increase (which could be, on average, only .01 to 0.15 per year). The populations of provinces such as Trabzon, Kastamonu, and Izmid were relatively well counted throughout the period, so the Jews who appear in 1912 must have been migrants who had recently settled in the provinces. The statistics give no indication of whether these immigrant Jews were Ottoman natives or from other lands; perhaps they were both. The migration of Jews into Anatolia may, along with international emigration, partially explain the low rate of increase of the Istanbul Jewish community (although a lower birth rate would seem a more reasonable explanation).

There were Anatolian provinces in which the Muslim population increased at a rate near that recorded for the Jews, but most did not. See Muslims and Minorities. The actual years in which the population was recorded in each vilayet vary slightly. Rates of increase have been calculated on the basis of the actual Muslim years, not 1893 and 1912. The Muslim years in which the populations were recorded: Hiidavendigar 1313 1330 Aydin 1312 1331 Kastamonu 1308 1332 Trabzon 1313 1332 Sivas 1310 1330 Ankara 1313 1331 Konya 1312 1330 Adana 1310 1330 Haleb 1310 1330 Bitlis 1311 1330 Mamuretülaziz 1311 1330 Diyarbakir 1310 1330 — Van 1330 Erzurum 1309 1330 Izmid 1313 1331 Biga 1313 1331

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Like their counterparts in Ottoman Europe, the Anatolian Jews were primarily urban. One-third of the Anatolian Jews (Haleb province excluded) lived in the city of izmir; 6 percent lived in the city of Bursa. The Jews of the cities of Izmir, Bursa, Biga, Kiitahya, Manisa, and Akhisar made up one-half of the Jews in Anatolia. Moreover, izmir's population included approximately 50,000 noncitizen residents who were not included in the above figures, a reasonable proportion of whom would have been Jews. In interior provinces such as Ankara almost all of the Jews lived in the capital city. Only in the provinces that bordered Iraq were there sizeable bodies of rural Jews. Table 5 lists the total population and Jewish population of Anatolia, corrected for undercounting, as they were before the great demographic disaster that began in 1912 with the first Balkan War. (Due to administrative subdivision, the table lists more provinces than in Table 4.) Table 5. Jewish Population of Ottoman Anatolia, 1911-12 (corrected for undercounting)

Province Hüdavendigär Aydin Kastamonu Trabzon Sivas Ankara Konya Adana Haleb Bitlis Mamuretiilaziz Diyarbakir Van Erzurum Bolu Canik Izmid Biga Karahisar Karasi Kiitahya Urfa Total

Jewish Population

Total Population

4,881 44,206 8 8 407 1,822 323 85 14,416 0 0 2,538 1,798 10 19 26 512 4,021 7 409 0 1,002 76,498

704,481 2,194,419 881,092 1,114,979 1,472,838 1,444,139 1,690,388 666,578 991,599 611,391 680,241 754,451 509,797 974,196 469,298 390,511 389,490 183,077 322,919 534,362 358,027 198,079 17,536,352

Source: McCarthy, Muslims and

Minorities.

JEWISH

253

POPULATION

Greater Syria The Jewish population of the area of today's Syria was almost entirely settled in the cities of Aleppo and Damascus. Three-fourths of the Jews in what today is Lebanon were in Beirut, the rest living primarily in smaller coastal cities. It is likely that most of the Jews in Beirut city at the end of the empire were fairly recent immigrants, because the Jewish population of the city increased from 908 in 1900 to 3,431 in 1912. 1 Damascus, which grew from fewer than 7,000 Jews around 1890 to more than 10,000 in 1912, also experienced Jewish immigration, although at a much lesser rate. 2 Table 6. Jewish Population of Ottoman Syria,* 1911-12 (corrected) Jewish Province Suriye Beyrut Zor Cebel-i Liibnan Kuds-i §erif (Jerusalem) Total

Total

Population

Population

11,232 17,877

1,017,322

2f 0 22,856$ 51,967

979,702 103,900 235,169 352,813 2,688,906

*Haleb Vilayet included in Anatolia above. f V e r y imprecise. :fNot including a sizeable group of resident aliens. Source: McCarthy, "Syria and Iraq".

The most dynamic demographic change among the Ottoman Jews took place in the Greater Syrian area. This was the immigration of Zionist Jews to Palestine from Europe and, to a much lesser extent, from other areas of the Middle East. Little is known of the number of Jews who arrived in the period around 1882, known as the "Lovers of Zion" aliyah, except that their number

3 Statistics from the 1319 Beyrut Vilayeti Salnamesi and the 1330Nups. ^Provincial totals (almost all of which were in the city of Damascus): 6,897 in the 1313 Istatistik, 10,140 in the 1330 Nufus.

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must have been small. 1 Between 1895 and 1914, 33,000 Jewish permanent immigrants (i.e., not including those who left once again 2 ) arrived in Ottoman Palestine (defined here as the sancaks of Akka, Nablus, and Kuds-i §erif). 3 As a percentage of the base population, this immigration was the largest in late Ottoman history, more than doubling the established Jewish population of Ottoman Palestine. 4 Another factor unique to Jews of Palestine was the presence of large numbers of Jewish residents who were not Ottoman citizens. The majority of these arrived in the twentieth century. 5 By 1914 there were approximately 20,000 of these in Ottoman Palestine, primarily drawn from the 33,000 immigrants mentioned a b o v e . 6 The total number of Jews in Ottoman Palestine around 1914, citizens and non citizens included, was thus approximately 60,000. 7 Iraq Judging by the evidence of the 1947 Iraqi census, the first fairly accurate enumeration ever made in Iraq, Jews were much undercounted in the provinces of Ottoman Iraq — the Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul vilayets. For example, the 1947 census recorded 43,524 male Jews in the area of what had been the Ottoman Baghdad vilayet, 8 whereas the Ottomans in 1325 (19071908) recorded only 15,785 male Jews. 9 These two figures imply a rate of increase of 29 per thousand per year, which is impossibly high. There was no substantial in-migration of Jews to Iraq between 1907 and 1947. Quite the ^They are included in the figures for Jewish population in the text, since the figures are for a later period. 2 Assuming the rates of reemigration were the same as in the early years of Mandatory Palestine, approximately 25%. •'Based on calculations of Roberto Bachi (The Population of Israel, Jerusalem, 1976), deducting 25% for re-emigration. 4 Of course, much greater numbers of Crimean Tatars, Circassians, and other Muslim peoples of the regions conquered by the Russians entered the Ottoman Empire as refugee immigrants. However, they were not settled in such a small region, nor were they as large a percentage of the settled Muslim population of the provinces in which they were settled. 5 The 1313 istatistik listed only 5,457 resident foreign citizens in the sancak of Jerusalem (Kudsi §erif) ca. 1893 and only 2,742 in the entire Beirut vilSyet, of which Jews would have only been a part. ^Based on a calculation of the number of immigrants, minus the number of excess (i.e., not accounted for by natural increase) Jews in the population. ^This figure is considerably lower than the one usually given, ca. 85,000. For justification, see my The Population of Palestine, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. 8 Iraq, Ministry of Economics, Principal Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, 1952, pp. 57 and 58. 9 Bagdad Vilayeti Salnamesi, 1325.

JEWISH

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255

contrary, more than 5,000 Jews had already left Iraq for Palestine by 1947, 1 and the 1947 figures were themselves probably undercounts.2 The Ottomans recognized that the population of Iraq was much undercounted and provided their own estimates for the Iraqi population. These estimates are the best available for Ottoman Iraq. They yield a total population of 3,650,000 in the combined provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra (including Kuwait and Najd) in 1914. 3 Unfortunately, the Ottoman government only estimated total population, not the population of religious groups. However, if one assumes that Jews in Ottoman Iraq in 1911-12 were approximately the same proportion of the total population as Jews in Iraq in 1947 (2.5%), one can estimate that there were 85,000 Jews in Iraq (not including Kuwait and Najd) in 1911-12. 4 This is by no means a statistically satisfactory procedure, but the result probably approximates the true numbers. What statistics exist for Iraq indicate that the Jewish population of the Baghdad and Mosul provinces was more widely distributed than in the other regions of the empire. In the most complete record of the Mosul province population made, the 330 Mosul Salnamesi,5 only one district, §ehir Pazar, showed no Jews. Many had more than a thousand. The city of Mosul was listed as having less than one-fifth of the total Jews in the province, which proportion would have been much lower had the other regions of the vilayet been better recorded. The Jews of Baghdad province were naturally more concentrated in the capital city, but all but two districts, Badra and Kazimiye, had Jewish populations. 6

The major emigration to Palestine was later, of course. However, 5,724 were recorded as Jewish immigrants to Palestine between 1926 and 1945. Some of these (less than 100) would have left again, but probably not to return to Iraq. Data from the Palestine Blue Books (Government of Palestine, Jerusalem, yearly from 1926-1927 to 1945) and Migration Reports (Government of Palestine, Department of Migration, Annual Report and 'I%e Statistics of Migration and Naturalization for the Year..., Jerusalem, various dates). 2 The 1947 Iraq census listed only 118,000 Jews in Iraq, but Israel recorded, between 1948 and 1953, 124,646 Jewish immigrants who had been born in Iraq and 122,765 who called Iraq their "Country of Residence." A small number of Jews also stayed behind in Iraq. These numbers indicate a small undercount in the 1947 Iraqi census figures for Jews. (Iraq, Ministry of Economics, Principal Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, 1952, p. 58; Israel, Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1953/54, migration tables 5 and 6.) ^Drawn from estimates in the 1314 Basra Vilayeti Salnamesi, the 1330 Mosul Vilayeti Salnamesi, and the 1326 ihsaiyat-i Maliye. For calculations, see McCarthy, "Syria and Iraq", pp. 37-39. ^Subtracting Kuwait and Nejd from the totals, .0245 of 3.5 million total population yields approximately 85,000. The implied rate of yearly increase between 1912 and 1947, i.e., .009, is reasonable. ^There were 1,303 male Jews recorded in the city of Mosul, and 6,946 male Jews in the rovince (1330 Mosul Vilayeti Salnamesi). See the 1325 Bagdad Vilayeti Salnamesi. Some of the kazas had very low Jewish populations, but the undercount must be kept in mind. Naturally, the Jews of the less urban areas would have been much less well-documented than those in the city of Baghdad.

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Table 7. Jews (Ottoman Subjects) in the Ottoman Empire,* 1911-12 (corrected for undercounting)

Ottoman Europe Istanbul vilàyetf Western Anatolia Southern Anatolia^ Remainder of Anatolia Greater Syria Iraq Total

Jews

Percentage of Total

89,000 54,000 54,000 15,000 8,000 52,000 85,000 357,000

25 15 15 4 2 15 24 100

*Not including Ottoman Arabia or non citizens, especially significant in Istanbul, Palestine and Izmir. 1 •("Including Qatalca sancak. ^Primarily in the Haleb vilayet.

Conclusion The Debacle — Jews and the Last Ottoman Wars The Jews of the Ottoman Empire suffered heavily from the long period of Ottoman wars that began in 1912 and extended to 1923. Like the Ottoman Muslims of the same period, little has been known of their suffering. Only the losses of the Ottoman Christians have caught the popular and scholarly imaginations. Nevertheless, Jewish losses in the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence were proportionately among the most significant in modern Jewish history. The Balkans The Jews of the Ottoman Balkans were demographically closely tied to the Muslims. When Muslims were forced out of their homes, Jews soon followed, just as they had in the 1877-78 War in Bulgaria. Judging from contemporary accounts, the Jews and Muslims both fled the advancing armies of the Balkan Christian governments and suffered great losses from murder and The number of Jews in Ottoman Yemen is not known. They were probably never counted. More than 40,000 Jews came from Yemen to Israel in between 1948 and 1950, according to various Israeli Statistical Yearbooks, and more than 14,000 during the Palestine Mandate period. These 50,000 + migrants indicate that there might have been 35,000 — 40,000 Jews in Yemen in 1911-12.

JEWISH

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257

from the diseases and starvation that always accompanied the refugee state in the Balkans and the Middle East. A summary of the reports of the Union des Associations Israélites stated: The wars were fought with wanton brutality. Though not so ruthlessly massacred as the Mohammedans, the Jews went through all the horrors of war. Plundering, burning of houses and shops were common accompaniments of the occupation of cities. Extortion and murder were not infrequent. 1 As did the Muslims, the Jews fled to the sea and to Istanbul and other areas still held by the Ottoman government. A great portion of the Jewish population died. Table 8 lists the pre-war Jewish population of the Ottoman areas taken by Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria, 2 the populations after the war, and the percentage of the Jewish population loss. 3 T a b l e 8. Jewish Population of the Areas of Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (Serbia), which were taken f r o m the Ottoman E m p i r e in the Balkan W a r s Jewish Population in 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 2 Greek Conquest Bulgarian C o n q u e s t Serbian C o n q u e s t Total

Jewish Population ca. 1921

75,522 920 9,866 86,308

65,569 704 6,103 72,376

Percentage Loss 13% 13% 38% 16%

Source: M c C a r t h y , "Ottoman E u r o p e . " 4

Quoted in The American Jewish Year Book, 5674 (Philadelphia, 1913), pp. 188-89. The article contains other materials on atrocities against the Jews. It is very difficult to find material on the situation of the Jews in the Balkan Wars (though not as difficult as for the Turkish War of Independence). The Carnegie Endowment's Report of the International Commisison to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington, 1914), for example, does not mention the Jews, except for a few references to individuals. Reading it, one would think there were no Jews in the Balkans. The pre-and post-war populations are both corrected for underenumeration. See McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe". ^"Population loss" cannot be taken to be synonymous with "death". Population loss is simply the difference between the pre-war and post War Jewish population. Some of the difference was made up by emigration to what remained of Ottoman Europe — the vilayets of Edirne and Istanbul and f a t a l c a sancak. The numbers could not have been high enough to significantly reduce the mortality indicated in the table. ^The figures for the period 1921 are drawn from the Greek census of 1923, the Bulgarian census of 1920, and the Yugoslavian census of 1921. All figures have been corrected in the same fashion as the Ottoman figures, so data are uniform and percentages are relatively precise. For the exact correction figures and method, see McCarthy, "Ottoman Europe."

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Greater Syria and Iraq Due to the lack of accurate population statistics for the Jews of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq immediately after World War I, it is impossible to estimate Jewish population loss in those areas. One can conjecture that the Jews of Lebanon must have suffered from the great famine experienced there during the war years. Mandatory Syria was not a war zone, so the loss of life would have been much less than in other areas. For Iraq, any estimate of Jewish wartime losses would be baseline guesswork. Only for Palestine can one reasonably estimate Jewish losses. The relatively excellent statistics of the British mandatory government allow comparison of the Jewish population before and after the war. There were approximately 1,300 fewer Jews resident in Palestine in 1918 than in 1914, a decrease of slightly more than 2 percent. However, this figure is drawn from projections both before (from 1911) and after (from 1922) World War I, and small discrepancies in the estimates would have a great effect on the estimated number of Jews lost. 1 The 2 percent is thus a very rough estimate. The most extraordinary loss of Jewish population occurred in Anatolia. The recorded loss was so great that one's initial temptation is simply not to believe it, no matter what the figures say. If the figures are correct, half the Jewish population of Anatolia migrated or died in the First World War and the Turkish War of Independence. Table 9 details the Jewish population of western Thrace, Istanbul province, and Anatolia (not including the Kars-Ardahan region ruled by Russia before the war or the sections of the Haleb vilayet which became part of the Syrian Mandate). The figures for European Turkey and the Istanbul vilayet are what one might expect. All of the change in the populations of European Turkey might be explained by internal and international migrations of Jews. For example, the numbers of Jews in Turkish Thrace were probably swelled by Jewish refugees in the Balkan Wars. However, such factors do not explain the loss in Anatolia. Migration from Anatolia was significant, but not significant enough to explain such great loss. The two main centres of Jewish immigration received only

^This is obviously true for the other sections of the empire, as well. However, the percentages of loss were so great in the other provinces that any statistical discrepancy would have but a minor effect. These figures are explained with extensive discussion in The Population of Palestine. See note 26?.

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approximately 6,000 Jews f r o m Anatolia before 1927. Between 1914 and 1926, 5,124 Jews from "Turkey in Asia" emigrated to the United States. 1 Turkish Jews emigrating to Palestine from 1919 to 1926, 2 numbered 1,492, not all of them Anatolians, surely. Jews also went to countries all over the globe, including South America, Europe, and Asia. Table 9. Jewish Population of the Area of Republican Turkey, 1911-12 and 1927

Region Western Thrace Istanbul Anatolia* Total

1911-1912

1927

5,789 52,153 64,323 122,265

9,310 47,035 25,527 81,872

Population Change 61% 10% 60% 33%

increase loss loss loss

*Not including the sections of Haleb, which went to Syria, nor the KarsArdahan region, which was Russian in 1912. Sources: Table 5 and the 1927 Turkish census. The picture of Jewish loss is complicated by the statistics themselves. The corrected statistics on Jewish population in Ottoman Anatolia do, as explained above, overestimate the number of Jews by perhaps 5 percent. 3 Also, during and after the wars many of the Jews of western Anatolia may have moved to Istanbul and western Thrace, thus accounting for part of the increase in the Jewish population of western Thrace. They may even have taken the place of Jews from European Turkey who emigrated (5,154 Jews from "Turkey in Europe" emigrated to the United States from 1914 to 1926 4 ).

^Figures from the U.S. Commissioner General's Report as listed in The American Jewish Year Book, years 5676 to 5688, Philadelphia, various years. ^Figures taken from Jewish Agency statistics in David Gurevich, 15 Years of Jewish Immigration into Palestine, 1919-1934, Thé Jewish Agency for Palestine Statistical Bulletin no. 24,1935, Jerusalem, 1935. o The figures from the 1927 census have not been adjusted for under-enumeration, which must have been present, but it would have been slight, compared to the approximately 7% underestimation of the Turkish Muslims (see Muslims and Minorities). One can assume that the figures for 1927 in Table 9 approximate the number of Jews present immediately after the wars (not including emigrants). The natural increase between 1923 and 1927 would balance the undercount of Jews in the 1927 census. ^As listed in The American Jewish Year Book, yearly immigration figures in the volumes from 1915 to 1927.

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All this leaves an unexplained loss of half the Anatolian Jews. Unless another explanation surfaces, one must assume that great numbers of Anatolian Jews died. Anatolia suffered more in the World War I era than any other combat region — more than France, Germany, and even Russia — and the Jews may have suffered as badly as, or worse than, the Muslim, Armenian, and Greek communities. The historic Jewish communities of western Anatolia, centred on the cities of izmir and Bursa, were little more than onethird of their pre-war size after the wars, 1 and it is significant that both the Bursa and Izmir regions were centres of destruction and mortality in the GrecoTurkish War. The smaller Jewish communities of eastern Anatolia, where total mortality was much greater than in the west, almost disappeared. For example, only 10 percent of the Jews of Van remained after the wars. The losses of the Jewish community of the Ottoman Empire can be seen as part of the political and demographic destruction of the empire in the period of World War I. From the pattern of loss of the Jewish population of the Balkans, the Jews appear to have shared the fate of the Muslims in the Balkan Wars. Thirty-three percent of the Jews in the areas conquered by Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia fled or died, as did 62 percent of the Muslims. 2 From the great number of Jews gone from Anatolia, it is obvious that they were caught up in the great debacle of the Russo-Turkish War and the intercommunal wars between Muslims and Armenians and Muslims and Greeks, in which approximately 2.5 million Muslims, 300,000 Greeks, and 600,000 Armenians were also lost. 3 It cannot be said that the events of the World War I era destroyed the Jewish community. In the Balkans, the final destruction was to come in the later, far darker days of World War II. The Jewish community of Turkey still exists today, primarily in Istanbul. Yet, it can be said that the losses of the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence ended the dynamism of the Ottoman Jews. Before the disaster, the Anatolian Jews in particular were growing in population strength and moving into new regions. After the wars, only 40 percent of the Jews in Anatolia remained, and two-thirds of these were in the city of Izmir. 4 Expansion and growth of the Jewish community had ended, finished by mortality and migration that left but a remnant of the Ottoman Jews.

' The numbers of Jews in the area of the Ottoman Aydin vilayet (capital-Izmir) decreased by 58 percent, those in the area of Hiidavendigar vilayet by 60 percent. Justin McCarthy, "The Population of Ottoman Europe before and After the Fall of the Empire," to appear in the proceedings of the Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey. ^See Muslims and Minorities, especially pp. 121-34. 4 1927 Turkish census. 2

JEWISH

POPULATION

Graph 1: Jews and Non-Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 1912

Jews (1.14%)

Graph 2: Distribution of the Jewish Population in the Ottoman Empire, 1912

Europe (25.27%) Iraq (23.88%) Anatolia. Other (2.25%) West Anatolia (15.17%) Greater Syria (14.61%)

South Anatolia (4.21%) Istanbul (14.61%)

Graph 3: Ottoman Citizen Jews, 1890-1912 (Thousands)

• Istanbul

0 Palestine

• W. Anatolia

• Selanik Prov.

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Graph 4 : Jewish Population Decrease, 1912-23 (Thousands)

Ottoman Europe Pre-War

Anatolia 1 Post-War

JEWISH

POPULATION

Jewish Population in the Late Ottoman Period

263

THE POPULATION OF THE MIDDLE EASTERN JEWS, 1800 TO 1939 By demographic characteristics, the Jews of the historical Middle East broadly divided into two groups. The Jews of the Mediterranean-AegeanMarmara region primarily were urban dwellers, with their greatest numbers in major cities such as Istanbul, Salonica, and Cairo. In that region, three-quarters or more of a province's Jews might live in the capital city. The Jews of Iran, Iraq, and Southern Arabia, however, were widely distributed geographically, many living in small towns and even villages. Demographic variables such as fertility and mortality also differed by region. The Mediterranean-Aegean Jews lived longer and had fewer children than did the Jews of Arabia, Iran and Iraq. While the population of much of the Ottoman Empire was relatively well enumerated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, earlier records taken in Egypt in the 1820s and Anatolia and the Balkans in the 1830s were extremely deficient. To estimate the population for the early nineteenth century it is necessary to project back from dates in which the population is known to those for which it is not known. This results in estimates that are broadly reliable, but ignores changes due to migration. Migration during the early periods was usually slight, but there is a possibility of error. It can be assumed that most Middle Eastern and Balkan populations changed little from 1800 until the 1870s, a period in which there were great epidemics of both plague and cholera, as well as extensive wars and civil unrest. In the 1870s, improvements in civil order, transportation, and economy allowed population to begin a long period of growth. In addition, Jewish migration, which would have affected the figures, was primarily a factor only in the latter part of the century. It must be noted that the Ottoman Empire kept records of de jure population. Only Ottoman subjects were recorded. Foreign nationals, numerous in cities such as Istanbul and Izmir, were recorded by nationality. For that reason, it is impossible to know precisely how many non-Ottoman Jews lived in the Empire, even though many of these Jews were, in fact, permanent residents who held foreign passports.

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The years 1800, 1878, 1912 and 1939 have been chosen for the population tables given below. The last three years are significant demographic watersheds: 1878 marks the end of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 a cause of much Jewish migration, as were the wars from 1912 to 1922. In 1939 the demographic effects of World War II began to take effect. Ottoman

Europe

While not geographically part of the Middle East, the Jews of Ottoman Europe were politically and culturally an integral part of the Jewish community of a Middle Eastern empire. They should be included in the study of Middle Eastern Jewry. Table 1 lists the numbers of Jews in Ottoman Europe after the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War and before the Balkan Wars. The population is not projected to 1800 because of major border changes and migration. Outside of the city of Istanbul, with its extensive community of foreign Jews, and to a lesser extent Salonica, the Jews of Ottoman Europe were almost exclusively Ottoman subjects. An unknown but fairly large number, had migrated from other regions of Ottoman Europe as they were lost to the Empire, or were their descendants. In general, the Jews of the Ottoman Balkans were migrating to the south and east throughout the nineteenth century. Table 1. Jews in Ottoman Europe By Province, 1912 Jews 1878 73,900 1912 164,700 Edirne 28,900 Salonica 62,300 Yanya 4,000 Manastir 10,700 l§kodra none Kosova 3,300 Cezair 1,900 Istanbul 53,600 some rounding error

Ottoman

Anatolia

Because it stretched from the borders of Europe into the Middle East, Anatolia contained some Jews who were culturally tied to the Jewish communities of the Arab World. Nevertheless, most of the Anatolian Jews are part of the integrated Jewish community of the Balkans and Anatolia that

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JEWS

centred on the Aegean and Marmara Seas. In 1912, 83% of Anatolia's Jews lived in those provinces. One-third of the Anatolian Jews lived in the city of Izmir, 6 percent in the city of Bursa. In addition, Jews, many of them Ashkenazi Jews f r o m Europe, made up a large proportion of the 56,000 foreign residents of the city of Izmir (1895 figures), who are not included in the figures in Table 2. While the Anatolia Jewish population largely lived in Western cities, there was movement of Jews into the interior for commercial reasons. The proportion of Anatolian Jews in the Aegean-Marmara region dropped from 84% in 1895 to 83% in 1912—a small change, but interesting in that Jews of Greater Syria, Iran, and Iraq were at that time centralizing in cities, not moving into the interior. In the twenty years before 1912, the Jewish populations of interior regions such as the Ankara Province doubled. Before that time, Jews had been almost exclusively in cities on or near the coasts. Truly rural Jews only lived in the provinces (Diyarbakir and Van Provinces) that bordered Northern Iraq (Mosul Province), an extension into Anatolia of the Jews of Iraq. Table 2. Jews Jews 1800 1878 1912

in Ottoman Anatolia By Province, 1912 45,000 46,800 65,300

Hiidavendigar Aydm Kastamonu Trabzon Sivas Ankara Konya Adana Haleb (north) Bitlis Mamurettilaziz Diyarbakir Van Erzurum Bolu Canik izmit Biga Karahisar Karasi Kiitahya Urfa *less than 100

4,900 44,200 * *

400 1,800 300 *

3,200 none none 2,500 1,800 * * *

500 4,000 *

400 none 1,000

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Cities

The centres of population for the Jews of Ottoman Europe and Western Anatolia were the great cities of Istanbul, Izmir, Salonica, and Edirne. The number of Ottoman subject Jews in Istanbul was slowly increasing: 44,000 in 1890, 52,000 in 1912, but probably had been fairly stable at approximately 35-40,000 before 1878, when there had been an influx of Jews from Bulgaria. Contemporaries often estimated larger Jewish populations for the major cities. Such estimates are notoriously unreliable, but they also reflect the existence of foreign Jews not recorded by religion in Ottoman statistics. In 1895, foreigners numbered 128,500 in Istanbul Province, 500 in Edirne Province, 1,300 in Salonica Province, and 55,800 in Aydin Province (Izmir), an unknown number of whom were Jews. Table 3. Main Centres Jewry, City Istanbul Salonica Izmir Edime *Ottoman subjects only

of Northern Ottoman 1895* Jews 46,000 44,000 17,000 15,000

The Wars of 1912 to 1922 The Jewish population of the regions invaded by the Balkan enemies of the Ottomans suffered greatly in the wars that stretched from 1912 to 1922, the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Turkish War of Independence. Their loss was comparable to that of the Muslims of Anatolia and Ottoman Europe. Anti-semitism was surely a factor in the Jewish loss. However, another cause was the close association between Turks and Jews, who had long been supporters of the Ottoman government. "Turks and Jews Out" was a popular slogan of Balkan nationalism. Jews were killed and expelled from their homes particularly during the Balkan Wars and the Greek invasion of Anatolia. As indicated in Table 4, the worst losses came in the regions of heaviest fighting—Eastern Thrace and Western Anatolia. It is impossible to tell what proportion of the Jews died and what proportion emigrated, but mortality must have been great.

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269

Table 4. Population Loss Among the Ottoman Jews, 1912 to 1922 Region Population Post-War Percentage in 1912 Population* Lost 75,527 Greek Conquest 65,569 -13% 1,127 704 Bulgarian Conquest -38% 9,866 6,103 Serbian Conquest -38% Western Thrace 25,499 9,310 -63% Istanbul 52,153 47,035 -10% 25,527 Anatolia 64,323 -60% -32% Total 228,495 154,248 'For the conquered areas in Europe, ca. 1921; for the others, the 1927 Turkish census The Jewish population of the Balkans and Western Anatolia never recovered from the period of wars. The surviving Salonica Jews, once inhabitants of the largest Jewish city in the world, remained a minor population until their almost complete loss in the Holocaust. The Turkish Republic The Jews of Republican Turkey largely remained in the same AegeanMarmara region that had been the centre of Jewish settlement for 400 years. In 1935,82% of the Jews of Turkey lived in the Istanbul and Izmir Provinces. However, the population distribution had much changed. The wars of 1912-22 had the effect of concentrating the surviving Jewish population of what was now the Turkish Republic in the major cities. In the area of what had been the Ottoman Aydin Province, encompassing south-western Anatolia, 95% of the Jews outside of Izmir were gone. Jewish numbers in Turkey continued to decline slowly from the 1920s. From 19191 to 1945, 6,600 migrated to Palestine. Migration left an unusual demographic picture (Table 5) in which significantly more female than male Jews resided in Turkey. At first glance, statistics seem to indicate that the Jews of Istanbul and Izmir did not suffer greatly from 1912 to 1922, because the recorded numbers of Jews in those cities had changed little. However, it must be remembered that the figures given for the Jews of Ottoman Istanbul and izmir were for Ottoman subjects only, and did not include foreign national Jews. The figures for the Turkish republic (Table 6) are de facto counts, which include both citizens and aliens. The total Jewish populations of Izmir and Istanbul actually decreased by approximately the same number as the number of the foreign Jews in Ottoman times, and in-migrants from other regions somewhat balanced the number of Jewish out-migrants.

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Table 5. Jews in the Turkish Republic Male Female Total 38,103 43,769 81,872 36,813 41,417 78,730

Table 6. Turkish Republic, Provinces of Largest Jewish Population, 1935, as recorded Province Jews Percentage of Total Jews 47,434 Istanbul 60% Izmir 22% 16,969 4,071 Edirne 5% Bursa 2,000 3% Canakkale 1,583 2% 1,221 2% Tekirdag 999 1% Ankara 680 1% Kirklareli 78,730 All Turkey Syria The Ottoman province of Syria included only the region of Damascus, roughly the southern half of present-day Syria. Greater Syria is considered here to include the region that would become the French and British Mandates. The Jews of Syria were urban dwellers. Three-fourths of the Jews of what would become Mandate Lebanon lived in Beirut, with almost all of the remainder living in other coastal cities. Most of the Jews of Beirut were fairly recent in-migrants. The Jewish population of Beirut swelled from 900 in 1900 to 3,400 in 1912. Other Syrian cities also grew through in-migration, although at a slower rate. Damascus' Jews, for example, grew from 7,000 in 1890 to 10,000 in 1912. An unknown but sizeable number of these were migrants from Europe. This was especially the case in Palestine, discussed below. In light of the figures for 1912, the population given for 1878 in Table 7 may appear low. It is affected, however, by the large amount of migration into Greater Syrian, particularly into Palestine, after 1878.

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JEWS

Table 7. Jews in Ottoman Syria Jews By Province, 1912 30,000 32,800 63,200 Suriye Beyrut Haleb (south) Zor Cebel-i Liibnan Kuds-i Serif

271

11,200 17,900 11,200 none none 22,900

French statistics for their Syria and Lebanon Mandate were remarkably deficient. For example, French 1923 statistical publications gave no indication that any Jews lived in Lebanon, listing neither Jews nor "various", only listing Muslims and Christians as part of the total population. When data on Jews became available, for 1925, the enumeration of Jews (and other groups) was still deficient. In 1912, there were 5,500 Jews in the area of what would become Mandate Lebanon, and 24,800 Jews in what would become Mandate Syria, well above the French figures for 1925. There is no historical indication of anything that would have caused such a precipitous drop in population in wartime Syria. Lebanon did suffer in the war, but not to such an extent. The early Mandate figures are simply erroneous. Later Mandate figures on Jewish population, on the other hand, were much improved. They were fairly consistent with pre-Mandate population counts, more so than counts of Muslims. This is undoubtedly due to the Jews' status as an urban population for which enumerations were more accurate. 92% of the Jews in Mandate Syria and Lebanon lived in the three main districts of Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut. Statistics of urban population do not exist, but most of these undoubtedly lived within the boundaries of the three cities. The French did not at any time keep accurate migration records by religion, so further analysis of these factors is not possible. Table 8. Jews in Mandate Lebanon and Syria Year Syria Lebanon 1925, recorded 13,100 3,400 1925, adjusted 23,000 4,300 1939, recorded 26,900 5,000 Palestine Palestine did not exist as an administrative entity in the Ottoman Empire. The area that was to become British Mandate Palestine was in Kuds-\ §erif independent sancak (sub-province) and the Acre and Nablus sancaks of

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Beyrut Province. Palestine suffered a considerable loss of more than two percent of its Ottoman Jewish subject population during World War I. This was the result of both out-migration and mortality, due especially to malnutrition. The loss was quickly made up immediately after the war by the in-migration of 27,000 Jews between 1918 and 1922. Table 9. Jewish Population 1939 Ottoman 1800 13,000 1882 15,300 1905 27,900 1914 38,800 1914* 61,000 1918* 58,700 "including non-citizen Jews

of Palestine, 1800 to Mandate 1922* 94,800 1931* 176,500 1939* 457,900

The Ottomans counted the population of the provinces that made up the region of Palestine in detail, but they only published the data in summary form. For this reason, details of urban-rural settlement must wait for research in archives. It is known that the Ottoman Jews in Palestine were primarily an urban population. In the final years of the Empire, Jerusalem District (kaza) contained nearly one-third of the Ottoman subject Jews of Palestine. The other well known centres of Jewish life (Table 10) held most of the remaining Jews. Although new settlement patterns altered the proportion of Jews in the Palestine Districts, the five districts of highest Jewish concentration remained highest in 1931. By the end of the Mandate, other districts (Ramie and Tulkarm in particular) had increased their Jewish populations greatly and had supplanted Safad and Tiberias in the list of most populace districts. Table 10. Districts of Palestine With the Greatest Jewish Population District 1912 1931 56% 31% Jerusalem 16% 2% Safad 11% 4% Tiberias 8% 14% Haifa 6% 40% Jaffa From 1800 to 1939, the most sizeable Jewish migration into the Middle East came from Europe to Palestine. There was also a much less significant migration from other regions of the Middle East into Palestine,

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273

particularly during the British Mandate. While some Middle Eastern Jews came to Palestine in Ottoman times, the number was insignificant, because most of these early in-migrants seem to have been the old, who only temporarily added to population numbers. The Jewish Agency published the most accurate statistics on Jewish migration into Palestine during the Mandate. These indicate that of the Middle Eastern inmigrants only those from Yemen were a significant part of the Palestine population. Table 11. Jewish In-migrants to Palestine, 1919 to 1945: Migration from the Middle East and Selected European Countries Country Migrants Percentage of Origin* of Total Iran 1,729 0.5 Iraq 3,539 1.0 Turkey 6,610 2.0 Yemen 14,454 4.2 Germany 39,131 11.7 Poland 137,225 40.9 Romania 21,165 6.3 U.S.S.R. 30,836 9.2 Total 335,066 *migrations from other Middle Eastern countries was insignificant. Egypt For a Middle Eastern population, the Jews of Egypt were particularly well recorded. The censuses taken in Egypt after 1897 were the best population records in the Middle East. The 1882 census, not as accurate as the later ones, did not record the population by religion. The estimate in Table 12 of the number of Jews in Egypt in 1800 might appear to be too low. It is not likely that Jewish numbers would have increased f r o m 15,000 to 39,000 in 100 years through natural increase. However, Egypt seems to have received Jewish in-migrants in many periods of the nineteenth century. Contemporary estimates, which are not reliable, indicate even fewer Jews in Egypt in the early nineteenth century: 5-7,000. There was probably some undercounting of the native Jews in the 1897 census. Otherwise, the population of native Egyptian Jews increased (Table 12) as might be expected. It was the foreign national Jews whose fluctuations caused an uneven record of growth. Foreign Jews made up approximately onehalf of the Jewish population, increasing in 1917 due to the war and decreasing

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in 1937 for unknown reasons. It is notable that the largest group of foreign national Jews in Egypt were French, continuing a long tradition despite British control of the country. Table 12. Jews in Egypt: Egyptian Subjects and Foreign Nationals Egyptian Foreign Total 1800 15,000 1897 12,693 12,507 25,200 * 1907 * 38,600 1917 34,607 59,587 24,980 1927 32,320 31,230 63,550 40,300 22,653 62,953 1937 *not recorded Table 13. Nationality of Jews in Egypt, 1937 Egyptian 40,300 Italian 2,654 Syrian, Pales. British French 6,665 Turkish 2,967 Other Greek

6,034 191 810 3,342

Like other Mediterranean Jews, Egyptian Jews were urban dwellers, concentrated in the two main governorates, Cairo and Alexandria. In 1907, 52% of them lived in Cairo, 37% in Alexandria. In 1927, 54% were in Cairo, 40% in Alexandria. In 1937, 55% were in Cairo, 39% in Alexandria. The Jews were widely distributed, however. In the twentieth century, small (30-1,500) communities existed in all but the desert regions. Judging by the regions where population rose and fell, the number of Jews fluctuated according to economic change (Table 14). Table 14. Jews in Lower and Upper Egypt in 1907 and 1937.* Lower 1907 1937 Upper 1907 1937 86 76 69 Asyut 389 Beheira 11 105 437 Aswan 734 Dahaqahliya 12 100 687 Beni-Suef 1,408 Gharbia 26 26 Faiyum 98 48 Minufiya 31 36 109 Girga 71 Xalyubiya 451 42 129 Giza 378 Sharqiya 64 146 Minya 53 104 Qena *excluding Cairo, Alexandria and the other governorates, as well as the desert and Red Sea provinces. spellings as in census

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The Jews of Iraq, Iran and Arabia The estimation of the population numbers of the Jews of Iraq, Yemen, and Iran is necessarily less precise than the estimation for other regions. No satisfactory census was taken in Iraq, Yemen, or Iran until after World War II. Estimation using the statistical tools of demography is possible, but the demographic effects of political events, such as World War II, and of mass migration into Israel are difficult to evaluate. Iraq The first somewhat accurate census of Iraq's entire population was taken in 1947. It recorded 118,000 Jews. However, this may have been an undercount of rural Jews in the Northern, Kurdish region. 123,000 Jews migrated f r o m Iraq to Israel from 1948 to 1951, with some thousands remaining, so it is likely that the Jews of Iraq were undercounted by 10% in the 1947 census. Table 15 is a demographic projection of the Jewish population of Iraq to 1939 and to Ottoman times. The figure for 1800 is a reasonably informed guess. Few Jews were found in Southern Iraq (the Ottoman Basra Province). The Jews of Central Iraq were naturally centred in Baghdad, but small and large Jewish communities existed in Central Iraq in both Ottoman and later times. The Jews of Iraq were significantly less centralized than were Jews of Syria, Anatolia, and the Balkans. This was especially true of the northern Iraqi Jews, who traditionally lived in villages and small towns. An Ottoman population registration taken just before World War I showed that less than one-fifth of the Jews of the Mosul Province lived in the capital city and that Jews were spread out throughout the small cities and villages. Only one small district, §ehir Pazar, had no Jews. Rural sections of Mosul Province were significantly undercounted in the registration, so the proportion of rural Jews must have been more than 80%. After World War I, a large proportion of these rural Jews migrated to cities, many to Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, but the northern Iraqi Jews remained primarily rural. Table 15. Jews in Iraq 1800 1878 1912 1939

74,000 74,000 87,000 119,000

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There is no accurate information on Jewish migration into Iraq. Iranian sources do mention Jewish migration to the Ottoman Empire, presumably because life was better there. Some or most of this may have been migration of "Kurdish Jews" to Northern Iraq. Arabia Jews in the Gulf coast were few and usually not enumerated. The Bahrain census of 1950, the first in the Gulf area to enumerate Jews, counted only 293 Jews. Those normally called Yemeni Jews lived in southern Arabia, in Aden and Yemen proper. Of these, only the Jews of Aden, ruled by Britain, were enumerated in censuses, taken for administrative purposes as part of the Census of India. However, the figures were considerable undercounts, particularly of women. The Jews of Hadramut, who were largely nomadic, were never enumerated. The best way to estimate the population of Yemeni Jews is to resort to a combination of theory, Israeli in-migration statistics, and some historical speculation. It is known that 48,400 Jews migrated f r o m South Arabia to Israel between 1948 and 1951, leaving 2-3,000 behind. Standard demographic analysis indicates that in Yemen this population, which had relatively high fertility and mortality, could have increased only slightly each year. Using this growth rate, it is possible to project the Yemeni Jewish population back to 1912, allowing for the 14,500 Yemeni Jews who migrated to Palestine between 1919 and 1945. One cannot project it further back, because a revolt against the Ottomans in Yemen in 1904-5 affected the Jewish population to an unknown extent. Table 16. Jews in Southern Arabia 1912 57,000 1939 59,000 The Jews of Southern Arabia were dispersed throughout the region, living in the cities, small towns, and villages. S. D. Goitein estimated that there were more than 1,000 separate Jewish settlements, with only one-fourth of the Jews living in the main cities. Iran The first census statistics on Iran do not appear until 1956. By that time, out-migration from Iran and migration to cities has already clouded the demographic picture. The census listed 65,232 Jews. The Jewish population had obviously urbanized considerably by 1956. However, there were still very few districts that did not have some Jewish population. Historically, the Jews

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of Iran were widely distributed. The largest areas of settlement were found in the centre and west of the country — the main zone of Jewish settlement lay west of a line drawn from Tehran to Esfahan to Shiraz (the same region in which non-Jewish population was most dense). Jews were not numerous in the Northwest and were very few outside of major cities in the East. In earlier years, Jewish settlement was also most dense in the West. Table 17. Jews in Iran, 1956, Districts of Largest Settlement Abadan 1,544 Sanandaj 1,573 Isfahan 4,528 Shiraz 8,453 Hamedan 1,737 Tehran 35,797 Kermanshah 1,625 Yazd 1,337 Little concrete information is available on the Iranian population before 1956. Estimates have been published, but they depend on unrealistic assumptions of fairly rapid population growth. It has been assumed here that Iran did not possess the sort of civil order, sanitary regime, or medical assistance that would allow the population, Jewish or otherwise, to grow at more than a very slow rate. Moreover, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that there was little Jewish in-migration to Iran; conditions for Jews there were simply not good enough to attract Jewish migrants. Rather allowance has to be made for the 28,565 Jews who migrated to Israel from Iran from 1948 to 1956 and the 1,729 who earlier migrated to Mandate Palestine. Table 18 is a projection drawn with these assumptions in mind. It is not precise. Table 18. Jewish Population of Iran, Projections from the 1956 Census Yearly Rate of Year Population Increase 1800 47,800 none 1878 47,800 .005 1912 55,500 .010 1939 72,700 .015 65,200 1956

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Demographic calculations have not been included here. Many of the calculations can be found in the following: Bachi, Roberto, The Population of Israel, Jerusalem, 1976. Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics, Immigration to Israel, 1948-1972, Jerusalem, 1973-75. McCarthy, Justin, "Jewish Population in the Late Ottoman Period" in Avigdor Levy, ed., The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, Princeton, New Jersey, 1994, pp. 375-397. . Muslims and Minorities, New York, 1983. , "The Population of Ottoman Europe Before and After the Fall of the Empire" in Heath W. Lowry and Ralph S. Hattox, eds., Illrd Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Istanbul, 1990, pp. 275-298. , "The Population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq", Asian and African Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, March, 1981, pp. , The Population of Palestine, New York, 1990. _ Schmelz, Uziel O., "Jewish Refugee Migration to Israel, 1932-1980", Occasional Paper 1989-08, The Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989.

THE POPULATION OF THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS

Nineteenth and early twentieth century European and American commentators had no idea how many Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Yet this did not stop them from valiantly presenting statistics on Armenian population. Their estimates ranged from fewer than one million to three million, and their supposed methods of collection were as varied as the estimates themselves. American missionary reporters simply increased the numbers of Armenians, often doubling them. Other writers printed Ottoman statistics with completely uninformed "corrections". Ottoman population statistics were sometimes deliberately falsified either to make a political point or simply because the writer would not admit that he did not know. 1 Europeans who took the simple expedient of asking Armenians their group's numbers drew up many estimates. Travellers constructed total population numbers by multiplying the numbers in the villages and towns they had observed. Enterprising scholars found what they felt were a sure way to statistical truth when they took all available estimates, then averaged them. Hundreds of estimates were made, each as unreliable as the next. 2 The many estimators necessarily failed, because the only way to know a population's number is to count it. Reliable data on the population of Ottoman Armenians only could have come from one of two sources—the Ottoman population registration system or the Armenian Church. The former was a well-ordered system of registers of population, which were both updated routinely at the local level and in nation-wide updates (erroneously called censuses). The latter, many assumed, must have kept records of Armenians, analogous to Western European baptismal records. Knowing that Armenian Church figures would have carried weight in the deliberations of the post-World War I peace conferences that were creating a new Armenian state, Armenian apologists duly presented "Armenian Patriarchate Statistics". As might be expected, the Patriarchate Statistics gave

^For example, A. Ubicini, Letters on Turkey, tr. Lady Easthope, London, 1856. He stated that his figures were based on "the census of 1844", which was a complete fabrication. No such Ottoman population record of eastern Anatolia was made at such an early date. 2 For the most quoted estimates, see Esat Uras, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question. 2nd pr., Istanbul, Documentary Publications, 1988, pp. 353-366. Nikola Michoff provided the most exhaustive, and entertaining, collection of estimates in his La Population de la Turquie et de la Bulgarie au XVIII" et XIXs s„ 4 vols., Sofia, 1919-1935.

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a very high figure for the Armenian population, but that was not enough to make the case that Armenians were a majority of the population in eastern Anatolia. The Patriarchate Statistics therefore made every effort to divide the Muslim population. The category "Muslim" was broken down into Turks, Circassians, Persians, Laz, Gypsies, Sedentary Kurds, and Nomadic Kurds. Under "Other Religions" were listed "Kizilbashis, Zazas, Chareklis, and Yezidis." The intent was obviously to show that there were more Armenians, counted at 1,018,000 than Turks, set at 666,000. This was an understandable tactic, one that avoided the question of whether these ethnic groups would have preferred Muslim or Armenian rule. As will be seen below, however, even these figures could only be derived by adding considerably to the Armenian numbers and subtracting from the number of Turks. An even more telling point, though, is the question of how the Armenians could ever have known how many Muslims were ethnic Kurds, Turks, Circassians, etc. The Ottomans had never counted the population by ethnic group or any category other than religion, and no one else had counted the Muslim population at all. In 1912, no one knew the ethnic groups of Ottoman Muslims, surely not the Armenian Patriarch. Table One. Ottoman Registration Data and the "Armenian Patriarchate Statistics" for the "Six Vilayets" Ottoman Registration Armenian Patriarchate Statistics Statistics" 784,917 (19%) (39%) 1,018,000 Armenians (4%) 176,845 165,000 (6%) Other Christians (77%) 3,173,918 1,432,000 (55%)* Muslims 666,000 Turks 62,000 Circassians 13,000 Persians 10,000 Laz 3,000 Gypsies 242,000 Sedentary Kurds 182,000 Nomadic Kurds 140,000 Kizilbas 77,000 Zazas, et al. 37,000 Yezidis 2,955 (**%) 0 (0%) Jews 4,138,635 2,615,000 Total *Note that the original figures do not include any figure for Muslims as a group. **Less than 1%. II

THE P O P U L A T I O N OF THE O T T O M A N A R M E N I A N S

281

The "Patriarchate Statistics" claimed six viláyets (provinces) as "Turkish Armenia", excising the portions of those provinces that, it was admitted, had very few Armenians. 1 Although exact geographic designations were not given in the Patriarchate Statistics, it is possible to ascertain approximately the Ottoman provinces that corresponded to the "Patriarchal" borders and compare Ottoman and Armenian statistics. The Ottoman figures in Table One have been corrected for undercounts of children and adult females, but this does not affect the proportion of Armenians and Muslims, because the same correction factor is applied to all religious groups. Thus, the Armenian population is assumed to have been as much undercounted as the Muslim—a necessary procedure which, however, adds selectively more to the Armenian population, which was more urban and thus better enumerated. In order to be comparable to Ottoman registration data, the various Muslim ethnic groups in the Armenian figures have been added together as Muslims. In fact, the Armenian Patriarchate Statistics were pure invention, and the dubious source of the so-called Patriarchate Statistics reflects on their accuracy. No one at the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul has ever claimed t h e m . 2 Indeed, there is no record of registration statistics on Armenian population ever having been kept by the Patriarchate. Unlike the situation in Western Europe, no baptismal on marriage records were generally taken or retained, much less centrally collated. Even had there been such records, how would that have given population figures on Muslims and other Christians? These "Patriarchate figures" did not appear at the Patriarchate, nor in Istanbul, nor even in the Ottoman Empire. They appeared in Paris on 1913, in a book written by Marcel Léart (a pseudonym of Krikor Zohrab). 3 It does appear that the Armenian Patriarchate may have collected estimates of Armenian population from Armenian bishops, but these numbers are different than those of the Zohrab inventions and do not include any data on Muslims. As seen in Appendix Three below, they are only slightly different than the figures in Table Two, which are Ottoman counts corrected for under-enumeration of women and children. 4

"Exclusive of the regions of Hekkiari, those situated to the south of Seghert of Bitlis, the south of the province of Diyarbakir, the south of Malatia, and the West and Northwest of S ¡vas". Because these are not descriptions of actual administrative districts one can only find rough correlations in Ottoman statistics. The Ottoman figures in Table One approximate the borders in the Patriarchate Statistics. ^The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople only printed estimates on Armenian population in 1878, for use at the Congress of Berlin. At the time, the Patriarch stated that there were an amazing 3 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, a figure obviously not drawn from any actual count. La Question arménienne à la lumière des documents. Paris, Augustin Challamel 1913. The figures were later quoted and represented as authoritative in a number of post-war propaganda documents, such as La Population arménienne de la Turquie avant la guerre, Paris, 1920 and Kevork Mesrob, L'Arménie (autorisé par la commission des documents du conseil consultatif national arménien). Constantinople, 1919. These spurious figures are often quoted as accurate today. 4 W h a t may be actual statistics from the Patriarchate (Appendix Three) also indicate an Armenian population far lower than these "Patriarchate Statistics."

282

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To find the actual Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire one must rely on the type of governmental population statistics that are the staple of demographic studies throughout the world. The principle is the same everywhere, the only way to know a population is to actually count it. The Ottoman Government counted its population through a registration system that recorded births, deaths, and migration. Unlike the Patriarchate figures, the Ottoman population figures were used for internal governmental purposes, not propaganda. Although the modern Ottoman population registration system began in the 1830s, not until just before World War I did the Ottomans publish any of the data in a western language, only in Ottoman Turkish, indicating the published statistics were not meant to affect foreign opinion. Internal population documents, never intended to be seen outside the administration and only recently found in archives, and those published statistics were consistent with each other. In short, the intent of the Ottoman Government was to produce the type of usable, accurate population statistics that were seen in other countries. As in most developing countries, particularly Middle Eastern countries, the Ottomans consistently undercounted women and children. The undercounts have been corrected thorough the use of standard demographic techniques. 1 These, it might be noted, do not favour any one sub-group of the population. Armenian population is corrected (statistically increased) at the same rate as that of Muslims and other groups. Table Two gives the Ottoman population figures corrected for the undercount of women and children. 2 Figure One is a graphic representation of the Armenian and Muslim populations in Anatolia, Istanbul, and Edirne Vilayeti, the region that contained all but a small amount of the Ottoman Armenian population.

See Justin McCarthy, Muslims and Minorities: the Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York, New York University Press, 1983: "The Population of Greater Syria and Iraq, 1878 to 1914", Asian and African Studies, 15/1 and "The Population of the Ottoman Balkans", Proceedings of the Third International Congress on the Social and Economic History of Turkey, Istanbul. The Isis Press, 1990. Statistical calculations make more space than is available in a short article. The calculations are found in these sources. ^The figures for Ottoman Asia are primarily based on the final population publication of the Ottoman Empire, Dahiliye Nezareti, Sicil-i Ntifus Idare-i Umumiyesi Miiduriyeti, Memalik-i Osmaniye'nin 1330 Senesi Nufus Istatistigi, Istanbul, 1330 M. (See Muslims and Minorities) This source is deficient for the Istanbul Vilayeti, however, probably because it was composed after the Balkan Wars, which considerably confused the demographic picture, and perhaps because of changes in the definition of resident population. The figures for Istanbul in Table Two are those of the 1313 Istatistik (Nezaret-i Umur-i Ticaret ve Nafia. Devlet-i Aliye Osmaniye'nin 1313 Senesine Mahsus istatistik-i Umumisi, Istanbul, 1315). They have not been corrected for undercounts or projected, because the present state of knowledge of migration to and from Istanbul makes this impossible. There may be slight undercounts. The figures in the table are for Ottoman provinces as they were through most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the very end of the empire's life, some of these provinces were divided (e.g., Asir separated from Yemen, Kutahya and Afyon Karahisar taken from Hudavendigar). The provinces have been "reunited" to ease comparisons. Qatalca and §ehir emaneti are included in the Istanbul figures.

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