Thread by @lymanstoneky

Here's a good-faith-effort at what historic religious mix in Israel-Palestine has looked like over the last 2000 years. Since 1500 the data is pretty good, since 1800 pretty much uncontested. But pre 1500 there's a fair amount of guesswork involved.

While we're doing numbers, here's the HHI score for these religious communities. 17th-18th century was the most religiously monolithic period in 2000 years of history for the region.

If you take it back 2000 more years, the yellow line for Paganism obviously has its own majority period.

Obviously the large Jewish increase in recent centuries is migration. However, I remind everyone that in 1942 there were about 1 million Jews living in Muslim-majority societies excluding Israel-Palestine. Today there are ~100,000, being VERY generous.

So we can do some very basic math here and break out Israel's 2020 population into 4 different settlement groups and each group's population increase since settlement via fertility. Here's basically what we get, extremely approximately.

By this measure, about 1/3 of Israel's population today is either a) a descendent of pre-1880 Jewish population or b) a descendant of non-European Jewish immigrants, about 95% from Islamic-majority countries. That's similar to the share you get in surveys asking about Mizrahi ID.

Almost half are European immigrants post-1940 or their descendants. And the residual are 1880-1940 immigrants or their descendants, a mixture of origins, but contemporary Ottoman and British reports suggest disproportionately European.

So a fact that has to be delt with is that about 2.5 million Jews are in Israel because their families have been there ~forever or because they were violently expelled from Muslim countries, and another 200,000 are from families who immigrated legally 1880-1914 under Islamic rule

And then 1.1 million immigrated or are the descendants of immigrants who arrived pre-1940 under British governance; but, regardless, pre-Nakba. So that makes 3.8 million Jews in Israel-Palestine from sources that don't fit the "European colonization" framework at all.

The other half are indeed recent-European-descent, though I think colonization is still the wrong term since they were refugees from a genocide.

People asking about borders: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman borders are a bit fuzzy, but in general the territory in question here is a very close fit for Israel+Gaza+West Bank. So not Jordan/Lebanon. There's some fuzziness, but it's *fairly* consistent.

For the 1st-to-15th centuries, the intuitions are like this:

Nobody disputes a Jewish majority 1st century. Minority is largely various pagans.

Some people argue for a dramatic diaspora, so a much bigger Jewish fall post-1st century. Rome's wars did a huge amount of damage.

However, the key thing to understand is Rome's wars ruined the region-- for everyone. Yes JEws selectively died, but it's like like Pagans looked at AD 175 Jerusalem and were like "what a cool place to live!" A thousand years later, Jerusalem's population was still ~50% of AD60.

By some calculations, Palestine's population in the 7th century was still just 20% of its 1st century peak. The scale of depopulation is hard to exaggerate.

So the issue you get is, yes, huge numbers of Jews were killed or exiled-- but pagans/Christians didn't move in!

You could argue for a faster fall to 30% or something, but Roman Palestine was never emptied of Jews-- the textual and archaeological record makes that abundantly clear.

As far as the pace of conversion to Islam, obviously I assume 0 before 636. I assume a very slow conversion after-- scholarly sources suggest Muslim population west of the Jordan was exclusively garrison towns for a century.

Better data on jizya and conversions exist for Egypt and show very slow pace of conversion before the 2nd millennium. But Sultan Al-Hakim is really a turning point. After Sultan Al-Hakim, Islamicization seems to really take off.

You could push the start of rapid Islamicization a century or two earlier if you like, but not before 800.

And then in 1500 we start to get actual documentary tax lists, geneological records, administrative records, etc.

So you can certainly contest some of the exact timings in the pre-1500. Readily grant that. But I think the general scale and contour are correct.

For people asking, "Could you do just a post-1500 or post-1880 one?"

No. I will not produce a graph which visually implies Muslim majorities since time immemorial. I am likelier to produce a graph going back to 2000 BC than one just since 1500.

People asking about crusades.

I was unable to find a circa 1200 estimate that seemed at all credible, so I breeze right through the crusades as if nothing happened.

The big Christian decline is pre-crusades, in fact one of the MOTIVES for the crusades.

https://x.com/foxjust/status/1712182214979453043?s=20

Seriously you gotta read about Al-Hakim.

The OP was a good faith effort. A few point replied with some additional datapoints. Here it is with those points added. Mostly changes some of the pre-500 trajectories.

And here's estimates of actual population numbers.

I've accepted the Byzantine high-count because that's what people say happened, but I have to say I regard it with considerable skepticism even though all the evidence points to >800k Byzantine era population.

By the way, 0 AD-1850, do you know which religion actually had the largest cumulative population in the region?

Because of the incredibly high Byzantine population figures, the answer is: Christians.

anyways, I like to do historic religious demography!

https://x.com/lymanstoneky/status/1425542378937622544?s=20

I mentioned that I am skeptical of the high population counts for the Byzantine period. Some scholars put Byzantine-era Palestine population over 2 million people; but the best estimates are nearer 1 million-- but I have a real problem with that.

Why do I have a problem with that?

Well, two reasons. First, this paper, which uses the abundance of inscribed tombstones in the region with explicit mentions of plague to actually do a precise demographic analysis of the timing of 6th century plagues. cambridge.org/core/journals/…

The issue you get is you have a story where population in the region grew at a really exceptional date and then peaked at the plague and then didn't even get close to returning for 1200 years.

How plausible is that?

During the 2nd great Bubonic pandemic in the 14th century, nowhere in Europe AFAIK took more than 600 years to recover to pre-pandemic population. ENgland took 300 years.

Now, Palestine was a seat of major warfare continuously from 570-700. But 700-900 was fairly peaceful in the region. There's an episode of significant war 950-1000, but the 1000s are fairly stable Fatimid control until the crusades.

And yet through all those periods we observe no population increase-- actually a decrease! Conventional estimates say the region's population falls 70% from the Byzantine peak to the 1500s.

What's especially bizarre is the period sees whole new towns spring up, especially Arab garrison towns, and a wave of Arabic migration in.

Second reason is comparison to other populations. Here's estimated Israel/Palestine vs. some off-the-shelf estimates for Syria and Egypt in the long run.

Is it plausible that in 600, Israel-Palestine had as many people as Syria did?

Is it plausible that at a time when Egypt's population was plausibly crashing, Israel-Palestine's population was booming? Maybe-- but, really? What's the supposed dynamic here?

The challenge to me is if you put it as ratios, you tell a story where Israel-Palestine, with its very marginal lands, in 600 had the highest ISR+PAL+EGY+SYR population share ever, even in modern times where Israel benefits from way more advanced agriculture.

Maybe the figures here for Egyptian or Syrian population are wrong too. I'm open to that.

But Byzantine eastern armies in the 500s and 600s are ~25,000, vs. Valerian's army of 70,000 in the 200s.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of…

Galerius in 298 fields 25,000 in the east at Satala. Julian fields at least 60,000 men in 363. At Adrianople the eastern contingent has 30,000 men. At Ajnadin the Byzantines field maybe 50,000 men.

The only big exception here is Yarmuk.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of…

Contemporary sources claim over 100,000 Romans and allies. But most modern assessments suggest under 60,000, and their defeat basically ended the empire.

To me this suggests that the Byzantine recruiting pool wasn't appreciably deeper than the Roman one a few hundred years earlier, which challenges the notion of a 50-100% bigger population and economy.

Now you could say: sure Lyman, but that's because the Byzantine recruiting pool included Egypt, which shrank a lot. The total pool was smaller even accounting for an Israel-Palestine population boom!

But we can look at other granular sources. Because the Sassanids sacked Jerusalem we have multiple historic sources talking about the population of Jerusalem; combined with archaeology, we can guess it was <75,000. in the 6th century. That's smaller than the 1st century size!

If in fact the population of Israel-Palestine was so large compared to Egypt/Syria, you'd expect the region to become a seat of power of some kind. Instead, minor intra-Syrian polities manage to be independent, but Palestine never was in the Medieval period.

At no point do Tulunid or Fatimid rulers seem to have trouble controlling Palestine from a purely demographic point of view, though granted that's a bit later.

My point is that the relative population size doesn't really fit with the wider events of the day.

My guess would be that Byzantine Palestine was <800,000 people, >500,000, but I can't prove this from any sources. Why it essentially never repopulated is a question mark to me I leave for others.

Regardless, a key thing to recognize is that in ~1800, Palestine was extremely underpopulated, operating at maybe 1/4th-1/6th its carrying capacity with then-modern farming techniques. The reason Jewish settlement "worked" is because there was actually a lot of room.

Had they tried to settle in, say, Cyprus, it simply would not have worked-- Cyprus' population was basically stable from 0 AD to 1900 and near local carrying capacity for premodern agricultural technology. Settlers wouldn't have had anywhere to live or farm.

Which is what makes the ultimate events of the 1930s and 1940s so unfortunate: there was room for everyone in Israel if a way could have been found to live in peace.

Oh all right, you got me-- of course I wasn't done. I disliked the high count enough, and was irritated that nobody has guesstimated the impacts of the Justinianic plagues + Sassanid/Arab wars, that I recalculated it all again.

The main difference here is I've more fully captured episodic events' impacts on total population; specific shares are not greatly altered, though I filled in the gaps in time more precisely.

The Christian population decline 550-1100 is really interesting to me. It's there no matter what sources you use. But what's striking to me here is that it's *not* driven by conversions. The Muslim population hardly rises.

The key point is, even if you don't take my figures as gospel, the Muslim share of population rose amid an epochal *decline* in population, in other words, the total Muslim population didn't rise much.

One possible explanation for this could be that economic conditions in Palestine were pretty bad, everybody was hitting Malthusian constraints, but the Caliphate kept rotating in garrisons and getting a handful of converts.

But.... I don't think this makes sense. The Abbasid Caliphate was a pretty decently functional regime, and population was SO far below carrying capacity that Malthusian constraints should have been nonexistent.

After 1000 we know conversions picked up. Big Sufi evangelism effort, Al-Hakim's persecutions, Arabic became firmly settled as the main language (it began to achieve dominance in the late 800s).

But maybe more plausibly and interestingly is a great migration of Christians out of Palestine. This article lays out a compelling case for a major migration 630-750, which I have accepted: but to make the demography work, it must have continued. brill.com/display/book/e…

In this telling, about 400,000 Christians were displaced by the Islamicization of Israel-Palestine over the period 635-1000 AD. Again, the above article provides archival evidence and identifies some named refugees of this move.

Which suggests that the reason for the slow repopulation is that the potential repopulat-ers had up and left. The Muslim population logged pretty decent growth rates for a premodern society actually, it just took centuries to make up for the ethnic cleansing of Christians.

Was it ethnic cleansing?

Debatable. Some resettlements were forcible via treaties, we know that. And after about 1000 we get a pretty serious persecution of Christians under the Fatimids. And the jizya if applied today would be seen as, uh, let us say problematic.

Ultimately though the Muslim rulers were fairly tolerant of Christians, and in fact the Muslim conquest may have been less violent than the Sassanid one in 614. So voluntarily emigration was probably the dominant component.