To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in 16th-Century Eretz-Israel

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Maps and Tables MAPS 1. Maritime Travel Routes 2. Jewish Population in Sixteenth-Century Eretz-Israel 3. Jerusalem's Quarters in the Early Ottoman Period TABLES 12 34 58 1. Jewish Households According to Tal;rir Registers 60 2. Jewish Households According to Neighborhood 61 3. Population of Safed in the Sixteenth Century According to Ottoman Survey Returns 99 4. Communities and Congregations in Safed According to Population Censuses 112 Preface M ore than forty years have elapsed since Israel's second president, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, published his pioneering study Ere? Yisrael veYishuvah ta};wt ha-Shilton Ha-Ottmani (The Land of Israel and Its Jewish Community under Ottoman Rule; Jerusalem, 1957), a survey of the entire four-hundred-year period of Ottoman hegemony. The chapter specifically devoted to the sixteenth century is only some sixty pages in length. In the intervening period Eretz-Israel studies have made tremendous strides, both in the discovery of new texts and in the renewed analysis of previously known ones. The fruits of these discoveries and this analysis have appeared in hundreds of scholarly articles and dozens of monographs. Especially noteworthy are the examination and publication of Muslim sources from Turkey and Jerusalem that greatly elucidate aspects of Jewish life in Eretz-Israel, of the Jerusalem community in particular, in conjunction with known and newly discovered Hebrew sources, specifically dozens of Geniza documents. This monograph represents the fruits of years of study and source analysis. Basing my effort on the work of my worthy predecessors for the backgroundprimarily on the studies of the late Professor Uriel Heyd and of Professors Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, who together and separately laid the foundations for the study of the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Eretz-Israel during the period under consideration-I set before me as my goal the critical assessment of all the known sources, including many from the Cairo Geniza, which I myself have published, in order to draw a new portrait of Jewish society in Eretz-Israel during this period of radically significant changes in the history of Eretz-Israel and its Jewish society. This comprehensive investigation of the history of Jewish settlement in sixteenth-century Eretz-Israel is a slightly revised and updated version of the Hebrew original, Aliyah ve-Hityashvut be-Ere? Yisrael ba-Meah ha-16 (Jerusalem, 1993). The sixteenth century bears witness to the strong influence of the Iberian exiles and their descendants, as significant numbers of these individuals made their way to Eretz-Israel in the century's early part, leaving their mark on the social, economic, and intellectual spheres. The beginning of the period is demarcated by the Ottoman conquest, which temporarily brought improved condi- ...