The Jewish Majority in Jerusalem in the 1850s, Another Source
Here are quotes from Bartlett's Jerusalem Revisited:
"The Jews are also the most numerous body in Jerusalem, and there is good reason to believe that their total number is about 11,000; divisible into Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The latter, or German and Polish Jews, are about 4,000. Their numbers are augmented by constant arrivals from Europe. . ."
[Jerusalem Revisited, p 42].
Hence, he estimates the numbers of Sefardi and Oriental Jews at the time as between 6,000 and 7,000 [p 43]. He also reports the Judeophobia of the Muslim and local Christian population [pp 42-43].
As to the Muslims and Christians, he writes: "The Moslem population is decreasing, as well as in fanaticism" [p 50]
He goes on: ". . . while the native Moslem population is diminishing in numbers and influence, the Christians, strengthened and supported from abroad, are gaining in both respects." [p 51]
I find Bartlett's paintings and other pictorial works to be very interesting. Several of them have been very widely published. A good number of them appear in:
Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Painting the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi & New York: Hemed 1997).
Ben-Arieh's book also contains a reliable account of Bartlett's career and works (see Chapter 4, pp 78-95). Of particular interest is his depiction of religious Jews gathered at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount enclosure (p 86). This work was painted in 1842 and besides its intrinsic human interest, it belies recent claims by Arab propagandists and their Western partisans that Jews were not interested in the Western Wall before 1967. I have used Ben-Arieh's book as the main source about Bartlett, although I found the quotes in his own book, Jerusalem Revisited (1855).
Labels: Ashkenazim, demography, Jerusalem, majority of population, Oriental Jews, Sefardim
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