Table of Contents
Setting the Stage: Populations, Not Yet Nations
Before the rise of modern nationalism or the formalization of borders, the land that would later become central to the Israel-Palestine conflict was inhabited by diverse communities. “Jewish” and “Arab” in this early period did not yet mean modern national identities. They referred to religious, linguistic, and cultural communities living under successive empires, especially the Roman, Byzantine, and later Islamic and Ottoman empires.
This chapter focuses on how Jewish and Arabic-speaking populations were present in, attached to, and transformed the land before 1917, without yet forming the national movements that would later clash. It also underlines that neither community appeared “from nowhere”: both had long, evolving histories in the region.
Jewish Presence from Antiquity to Late Ottoman Times
The Jewish historical connection to the land reaches back to ancient Israelite kingdoms and to the Second Temple period, and has religious, cultural, and legal-symbolic dimensions. For centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the failure of later revolts, many Jews remained in the region, while others dispersed throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.
Under Roman and then Byzantine rule, there were still significant Jewish communities in cities like Tiberias, Sepphoris (Zippori), and Caesarea, as well as in rural Galilee and the coastal plains. Rabbinic Judaism took shape in part within these communities, with centers of learning that produced influential religious texts. Over time, however, political upheavals, economic shifts, and discrimination contributed to a decrease in the proportion of Jews in the local population, even as a continuous, if fluctuating, minority remained.
Following the Arab-Muslim conquest in the 7th century, the region became part of successive Islamic empires. Jewish communities continued to exist in cities such as Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and later Tiberias, often as protected non-Muslim communities (dhimmis) under Islamic law. They paid special taxes and had restricted political rights, yet generally enjoyed a measure of communal autonomy to run religious courts and institutions. The fortunes of these communities rose and fell with specific rulers and economic conditions, but the presence itself did not disappear.
By the late Ottoman period (roughly the 16th to 19th centuries), Jews lived in four cities that would later be called the “Four Holy Cities” of Judaism: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. Their numbers were modest compared to the Muslim majority, but they formed visible and often economically important minorities, especially in Jerusalem and Safed. Many of these Jews were descendants of older communities; others had come over centuries from North Africa, the Ottoman heartlands, and Europe, often for religious reasons such as living and dying in the “Holy Land.”
Over time, Jewish communities in the region became more diverse in ritual tradition and origin. Sephardi Jews (originating from Iberia and the eastern Mediterranean) and Mizrahi Jews (from Arab and Persian lands) were particularly prominent. From the early 19th century onward, a growing number of Ashkenazi Jews from central and eastern Europe also settled, usually for religious rather than explicitly nationalist reasons at this stage. These varied groups did not yet see themselves as a single “nation” in the modern political sense, but they did share religious ties to the land and to Jerusalem in particular.
Arab and Arabic-Speaking Presence and Formation
The Arab-Muslim expansion in the 7th century brought Arabic language and Islam to the region. Over the following centuries, many of the inhabitants gradually adopted Arabic and Islam, through processes of conversion, intermarriage, and administrative integration. The result was the formation of a predominantly Arabic-speaking, mostly Muslim population, alongside Christian and Jewish minorities, all of whom were part of broader Middle Eastern societies.
These Arabic-speaking communities were not “newcomers” in a simple sense. Many were descended from local peoples who had lived under earlier empires and had adapted to the new linguistic and religious order. By the medieval period, urban centers like Jerusalem (al-Quds), Nablus, Gaza, Hebron, and Jaffa were culturally and linguistically Arab, even if their inhabitants had mixed ancestries reaching back to Aramaic, Greek, or other local populations.
Under Islamic rule, Arab identity was at first more closely linked to tribal and religious affiliations than to the territory itself. People thought of themselves using multiple layers of belonging: to family, clan, village or neighborhood, religious community (Muslim, Christian, Jewish), city, and the wider empire. Over time, especially in the Ottoman period, an emerging sense of local attachment to the land, often expressed in terms such as “the people of this country” or “the people of this land”, began to blend with broader Arab cultural identity.
Rural life was central to this early Arab presence. Villages cultivated cereals, olives, and grapes; nomadic or semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes moved between grazing grounds and sometimes clashed or cooperated with settled communities. Cities linked this countryside to regional and international trade networks. In many areas, the social reality was an interplay of town-dwelling merchants and notables, peasant farmers, and Bedouin tribes, all using Arabic as their main language and participating in a shared regional culture.
Christian Arabs, especially in cities like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, were an important part of this Arabic-speaking fabric. They maintained churches, educational institutions, and connections with Christian communities abroad, while also being integrated into local Arabic-speaking society. The presence of Arabic-speaking Christians complicates any simple equation between “Arab” and “Muslim,” showing that language and culture, rather than religion alone, defined Arabness in this period.
Coexistence, Hierarchies, and Everyday Interaction
Throughout the centuries before 1917, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities inhabited the same cities and, in some cases, the same villages and neighborhoods. Daily life often involved cooperation: shared markets, trade partnerships, and professional networks. Jewish merchants might trade with Muslim farmers; Christian artisans might work for Jewish and Muslim clients; and different communities might share local customs, foods, and even forms of music and storytelling.
At the same time, these relationships were shaped by legal and social hierarchies. In Islamic empires, Muslims held political and military power, and non-Muslims were second-class subjects in law. Jews and Christians organized themselves into recognized religious communities (sometimes referred to as “millets” in the Ottoman system), with their own communal leadership and courts, but they were subject to special taxes and restrictions. The specifics varied by time and place, and actual treatment ranged from periods of relative tolerance and prosperity to episodes of persecution, discrimination, or local violence.
Despite these hierarchies, long-term coexistence created shared local identities. A person might think of herself as a Jerusalemite or a resident of Nablus first; her religion and broader affiliations mattered, but so did the shared urban or rural environment. These overlapping attachments helped sustain a social order in which conflict between communities, while not unknown, did not usually take the form of large-scale national confrontation.
Crucially, relations between Jews and Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians in this period were not structured as a struggle between two competing “nations” for exclusive sovereignty. Conflicts tended to revolve around resources, taxation, local power struggles, or religious privilege at particular holy sites, not around an overarching national claim over the entire territory.
Demographic Patterns and Perceptions of the Land
Estimating population numbers before modern censuses is difficult, but most available sources agree that by the late Ottoman period, Arabic-speaking Muslims formed the majority of the rural population and a majority overall, with significant Christian and Jewish minorities, especially in certain towns. Jerusalem was unique: by the late 19th century, Jews likely formed a plurality and then a majority of the city’s residents, while remaining a minority in the broader region.
Perceptions of the land were shaped less by rigid geographical borders and more by administrative divisions and religious maps. The region was frequently thought of as a collection of districts or sanjaks, such as Jerusalem and Nablus, within larger provinces of the empire. For Jews around the world, however, the land retained a symbolic unity through religious texts and traditions that referred to “Eretz Yisrael” (the Land of Israel). For local Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians, the land was experienced through localities and regions—Galilee, the coastal plain, the central highlands—embedded within the larger Islamic and, later, Ottoman political space.
Pilgrimages also shaped demographic and cultural patterns. Jewish pilgrims came to pray at sacred sites, especially in Jerusalem and Hebron, while Christian pilgrims visited churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Some pilgrims stayed and integrated into local communities, adding to the diversity of the population and reinforcing the religious significance of the land for many groups beyond those who lived there permanently.
By the 19th century, foreign consulates, missionaries, and travelers described these populations in ways that reflected their own interests and biases. Some Western observers emphasized the ancient Jewish connection to the land; others portrayed the local Arabic-speaking population as the principal “native” inhabitants. Their accounts, though often partial or inaccurate, would later be used by various parties to support political claims about who “really” belonged.
Emerging Local Attachments Before Modern Nationalism
Before explicit national ideologies took root, both Jewish and Arabic-speaking communities had ways of expressing attachment to the land that were not yet national in the modern political sense. Many local Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians saw the region as their home by virtue of centuries-long residence, family ties, and economic life, even if they primarily identified with religious or local categories. They were “people of the country,” rooted in particular villages, cities, and landscapes.
Jewish communities within the region, and especially the much larger Jewish communities abroad, cultivated religious and emotional ties to the land through liturgy, law, and pilgrimage. Prayers for return to Zion, references to Jerusalem, and religious practices centered on the land sustained a sense of connection through long periods when most Jews did not live there. Within the land itself, Jews living in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias often saw their residence as spiritually significant, framing themselves as “guardians” of holy places or as part of a centuries-long presence that anticipated a future redemption.
By the late 19th century, subtle shifts in language and thinking began to appear. Some local Arabic-speaking intellectuals wrote about the region not only as part of the wider Ottoman Empire but also as a distinct place with its own people. At roughly the same time, some of the Jews who arrived from Europe began to speak about settlement in political, not just religious, terms. However, these developments belong more squarely to later chapters focused on the rise of national movements.
For the period before 1917, it is enough to recognize that both Jewish and Arabic-speaking communities had long-standing, evolving relationships with the land. These relationships were shaped by empire, religion, language, and daily life, not yet by the national programs that would later redefine “Jew” and “Arab” as competing claimants to the same territory.