Palesine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, to 1930

In the mid-19th century, Jerusalem had a population that is said to have not exceeded 8,000. Jews were only about 5 percent of its population. Jewish migrants coming from Poland and Russia arrived in the 1880s, fleeing pogroms and harsh discrimination. Jews, running from anti-Semitism also came from other countries. There were indigenous Jews in Palestine and Jews who had arrived three centuries or so earlier, from Spain and Persia. By around the turn of the century the Zionist movement in Europe was helping Jews establish agricultural communities in Palestine, and there were many Jewish immigrants who preferred not to farm. By 1911, Jerusalem's population was between 60,000 to 70,000 inhabitants. Something like 40,000 of the people in Jersusalem were Jews, and there were about 9,000 Christians and 7,000 Muslims.

Palesine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, to 1930