Editing Jerusalem (section)

===Demographic history===
{{Main|Demographic history of Jerusalem}}
[[File:Demographic history of Jerusalem by religion.png|thumb|361x361px|Demographic history of Jerusalem by religion based on available data]]

Jerusalem's population size and composition has shifted many times over its 5,000-year history. Since the 19th century, the [[Old City (Jerusalem)|Old City]] of Jerusalem has been divided into [[Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)|Jewish]], [[Muslim Quarter (Jerusalem)|Muslim]], [[Christian Quarter|Christian]], and [[Armenian Quarter|Armenian quarters]]. Matthew Teller writes that this convention may have originated in the [[1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria|1841 British Royal Engineers map of Jerusalem]],<ref name=Teller>{{cite book |last=Teller |first=Matthew |title=Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City |publisher=[[Profile Books]] |year=2022 |issue=map |isbn=978-1-78283-904-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ |access-date=30 May 2023 |page=Chapter 1 |quote=What wasn't corrected, though—and what, in retrospect, should have raised much more controversy than it did (it seems to have passed completely unremarked for the last 170-odd years)—was [[1840–41 Royal Engineers maps of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria|[Aldrich and Symonds's] map's]] labelling. Because here, newly arcing across the familiar quadrilateral of Jerusalem, are four double labels in bold capitals. At top left ''Haret En-Nassara'' and, beneath it, ''Christian Quarter''; at bottom left ''Haret El-Arman'' and ''Armenian Quarter''; at bottom centre ''Haret El-Yehud'' and ''Jews' Quarter''; and at top right—the big innovation, covering perhaps half the city—''Haret El-Muslimin'' and ''Mohammedan Quarter'', had shown this before. Every map has shown it since. The idea, in 1841, of a Mohammedan (that is, Muslim) quarter of Jerusalem is bizarre. It's like a Catholic quarter of Rome. A Hindu quarter of Delhi. Nobody living there would conceive of the city in such a way. At that time, and for centuries before and decades after, Jerusalem was, if the term means anything at all, a Muslim city. Many people identified in other ways, but large numbers of Jerusalemites were Muslim and they lived all over the city. A Muslim quarter could only have been dreamt up by outsiders, searching for a handle on a place they barely understood, intent on asserting their own legitimacy among a hostile population, seeing what they wanted to see. Its only purpose could be to draw attention to what it excludes. |archive-date=9 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230609194835/https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> or at least Reverend [[George Williams (priest)|George Williams]]' subsequent labelling of it.<ref name=Teller2>{{cite book |last=Teller |first=Matthew |title=Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City |publisher=[[Profile Books]] |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-78283-904-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ |access-date=30 May 2023 |page=Chapter 1 |quote=But it may not have been Aldrich and Symonds. Below the frame of their map, printed in italic script, a single line notes that 'The Writing' had been added by 'the [[George Williams (priest)|Revd. G. Williams]]' and 'the Revd. Robert Willis'… Some sources suggest [Williams] arrived before [[Michael Alexander (bishop)|[Michael] Alexander]], in 1841. If so, did he meet Aldrich and Symonds? We don't know. But Williams became their champion, defending them when the Haram inaccuracy came up and then publishing their work. The survey the two Royal Engineers did was not intended for commercial release (Aldrich had originally been sent to [[Syria (region)|Syria]] under 'secret service'), and it was several years before their military plan of Jerusalem came to public attention, published first in 1845 by their senior officer Alderson in plain form, without most of the detail and labelling, and then in full in 1849, in the second edition of Williams's book The Holy City. Did Aldrich and/or Symonds invent the idea of four quarters in Jerusalem? It's possible, but they were military surveyors, not scholars. It seems more likely they spent their very short stay producing a usable street-plan for their superior officers, without necessarily getting wrapped up in details of names and places. The 1845 publication, shorn of street names, quarter labels and other detail, suggests that… Compounding his anachronisms, and perhaps with an urge to reproduce Roman urban design in this new context, Williams writes how two main streets, north-south and east-west, 'divide Jerusalem into four quarters.' Then the crucial line: 'The subdivisions of the streets and quarters are numerous, but unimportant.' Historians will, I hope, be able to delve more deeply into Williams's work, but for me, this is evidence enough. For almost two hundred years, virtually the entire world has accepted the ill-informed, dismissive judgementalism of a jejune Old Etonian missionary as representing enduring fact about the social make-up of Jerusalem. It's shameful… With Britain's increased standing in Palestine after 1840, and the growth of interest in biblical archaeology that was to become an obsession a few decades later, it was vital for the Protestant missionaries to establish boundaries in Jerusalem… Williams spread his ideas around. {{ill|Ernst Gustav Schultz|de||he|ארנסט גוסטב שולץ}}, who came to Jerusalem in 1842 as Prussian vice-consul, writes in his 1845 book Jerusalem: ''Eine Vorlesung'' ('A Lecture'): 'It is with sincere gratitude I must mention that, on my arrival in Jerusalem, Mr Williams ... willingly alerted me to the important information that he [and] another young Anglican clergyman, Mr Rolands, had discovered about the topography of [Jerusalem].' Later come the lines: 'Let us now divide the city into quarters,' and, after mentioning Jews and Christians, 'All the rest of the city is the Mohammedan Quarter.' Included was [[Kiepert maps of Palestine and Jerusalem|a map]], drawn by [[Heinrich Kiepert]], that labelled the four quarters, mirroring Williams's treatment in ''The Holy City''. |archive-date=9 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230609194835/https://books.google.com/books?id=SgQ3EAAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Most population data before 1905 is based on estimates, often from foreign travellers or organisations, since previous census data usually covered wider areas such as the [[Jerusalem District]].<ref>Usiel Oskar Schmelz, in Ottoman Palestine, 1800–1914: studies in economic and social history, Gad G. Gilbar, Brill Archive, 1990 {{Google books |id=sdYUAAAAIAAJ |title=Ottoman Palestine 1800–1940}}</ref> These estimates suggest that since the end of the [[Crusades]], Muslims formed the largest group in Jerusalem until the mid-nineteenth century.

Between 1838 and 1876, a number of estimates exist which conflict as to whether Jews or Muslims were the largest group during this period, and between 1882 and 1922 estimates conflict as to exactly when Jews became an absolute majority of the population.