Ottoman policy and restrictions on Jewish settlement in Palestine: 1881–1908—part I

Periodisation in history is arbitrary, but for the Jews of Imperial Russia, already an unhappy community, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 ushered in a painful new era. The pogroms after his death were followed by the notorious 'May Laws' of 1882 which stepped up economic discrimination against the Jews. The stirring among the Jewish community, both physical and intellectual, was heightened. Many more of them started to leave, mainly for America, and not a few began to think seriously about Jewish nationalism, with the result that the 'Lovers of Zion' Movement gained momentum. Some of them, whether for reasons of sheer physical safety or nationalism or a combination of both, thought of finding a home in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte was well-informed of these trends and of their contagious effects on other Jews, especially in AustroHungary, from the start. What is more, the Porte decided to oppose Jewish settlement in Palestine in autumn 1881, some months before the increased flow of Jews in that direction got under way. ('Palestine', for the purpose of this article, is used to mean the area referred to in contemporary Ottoman parlance and documents as 'Arzi Filistin', which at the end of the nineteenth century was not a single administrative unit but was made up of the Mutasarriflik of Jerusalem to the south and the Sancaks of Nablus and Acre in the north; these Sancaks were part of the Vilayet of Sam ('Syria') until 1888, whereafter they were incorporated into the new Vilayet