User talk:Huldra

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Note to self

Hutteroth.jpg

Hello,

I notice you have a page on this book: Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Someone removed the maps from my copy of this book, and I was wondering if you have an image of the map somewhere. I am interested in creating my own map of the data in this book, and it seems like the Statistics section omits some information that may be on the map (specifically the cities). This would be a great help.

Thanks in advance. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 07:24, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you create an account, add an email address in the profile, and send me mail I will send you the map. Neither Huldra nor I can upload the map because of the copyright restrictions. Zero^talk 12:47, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is as Zero0000 says; I cannot upload the maps to wikipedia (due to copyright), but I can share with you, if you have an email-address, Huldra (talk) 20:47, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have sent a couple of maps. Please don't make email-addresses public, cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:13, 13 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure why, but the book omits all the cities in Palestine at the time. Luckily I have found another book which discusses their population: Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century by Bernard Lewis and Amhon Cohen.

Do you have a formula you use to convert the grid coordinates in HA to longitude/latitude? I'm sure I could probably figure it out with QGIS, but I want to be as accurate as possible. Also, do you know what's up with those 900+ Y-coordinates in Nahiya Sawbak (page 173)? Last question - did the Ottomans not collect taxes in the Negev? The book never discusses this. The Gaza area is strange too - even Khan Younis doesn't appear in the list, despite being north of Rafah, which does. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 03:31, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See my talk page for an online source that does conversions. Note that coordinates in the far north might be in the Levant Grid rather than the Palestine Grid. I agree the Khan Yunis is not present. Maybe it wasn't populated then except for the khan. Another detailed source (Cohen&Lewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century) only lists taxes collected at a checkpoint at the khan. Zero^talk 05:40, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nahiya Sawbak was in the far south near Aqaba, where the Palestine grid uses 9xx northings, see Palestine grid. Zero^talk 14:42, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I will be trying to take a look at HA p.173 in the nearest future, cheers, Huldra (talk) 23:57, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've made a spreadsheet of the coordinates and population in the book, if you're interested. I am not able to type in Arabic quickly, so I have yet to add the place names. I also incorporated information from the Cohen and Lewis book.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n71rH49R9sz_wZ6ZI_NrXVBUh678l_MsMa0kpK1-jy4/edit?usp=sharing 47.14.104.130 (talk) 01:28, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I don't read (or speak) Arabic, (or Hebrew), so English names is fine. Also, a list whit what each column (A, B, C, etc) stand for would be nice. I am still working on the HA, but there are so many things which distract me, unfortunately, Huldra (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the column names. I'd rather not add the English versions of the Arabic names, because the transliterations in the book use an outdated system, which is different from the one recommended by Wikipedia's Arabic style guide. Since HA's transliteration relies on diacritics, just typing out the English letters will result in a loss of information, e.g. the distinction between د and ض. Furthermore we don't really know how these names were pronounced other than the ones with corroborating evidence. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 21:00, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

sorry, I cannot see the column names? Also, you have to mention which grid-system they use for each grid number, when it is not Palestine Grid. And I should warn you: there are a few typos HA, see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arraba,_Jenin#Hütteroth,_and_Abdulfattah:_typo, cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2025 (UTC) Ok, I see the column names, now, thanks, Huldra (talk) 21:32, 31 August 2025 (UTC) I though 7+ (or P) meant "Villages still inhabited in the late mandatory period", - or not? Huldra (talk) 21:37, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, you are right about the +/-. I don't know why I misread. I have fixed that.

There is an easy way to convert from the Palestine and Levant grids to latitude/longitude which I found.

For Palestine Grid: https://epsg.io/transform#s_srs=28191&t_srs=4326&ops=1074&x=NaN&y=NaN

For Levant Grid: https://epsg.io/transform#s_srs=22700&t_srs=4326&ops=1585&x=NaN&y=NaN

Note that you have to multiply the grid coordinates by 1000, e.g. 212 to 212000.

I tried looking through your page and correcting all the typos, but it's possible that I missed some. I did not fix the typos in column 11 (households + bachelors added together) because the correct value can be calculated from the other columns anyway.

I wrote a script to copy all the Romanized place names from your page and put them in the sheet. There are a few errors since the script wasn't perfect, but not many. It helps with identification but I would prefer to eventually type the arabic out. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 02:03, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am full of respect for the work HA did, but as all pioneering work, they have their mistakes, have notified them with HA-typo. There are two types of typos that easily found:

A when the numbers of taxable units don't add up (see Talk:Al-Walaja#Typo_in_Hütteroth_and_Abdulfattah,_1977,_p._116 and Talk:Julis
B when the total revenues don't add up (I mostly haven't specified those).

A script finding the A and B typos would be interesting.

Also, several additional places have been identified, eg by Roy Marom in the "Ramle" area, also some by Harold Rhode, Ehud R. Toledano and others. Search for "Not identified in HA!" and then look in the article for who has identified the place, this list is very incomplete!! Also, the 7+ / 7- seem to have a lot of mistakes, Huldra (talk) 21:39, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A is easy to find. Al-Walaja, Dayr 'Isfir, Lod, Ajloun, Sawbak, Maruniyya, Duqara, Majdal, Rumman, Sarkubit as well as MZ24 in Nahiya Bani Juhma do not add up correctly.

I didn't have time to type in all the revenues, so B can't be done.

I've added the 4 villages that weren't identified in HA. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 02:34, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that list is useful. I have just recently started adding the revenues, and became aware of all the typos.

And I added 2 more villages in the Ramle-areas that Marom identified. I am sure there are lost of places (outside Israel/Palestine), which would be possible to identify, too. Israel/Palestine is the area which was best known to H&A -> largest % of places identified, and it is also the area which most researchers have investigated afterwards...

There are also quite a lot of typos in the grid-numbers; I haven't added all...cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone compiled the data from the Defters like HA did, but for a different region? Apparently there was a research project to do something similar for Hungary, and I would be surprised if the ones in Anatolia have not been transcribed. I am not sure if the Turkish government makes the documents accessible to the public. If so, it would greatly enhance the pages for cities/villages all around the Middle East.

I was also wondering if you have any information that may explain the extreme population drop in Ramla in the 16th century. This isn't noted on the Wikipedia page for it, but it probably ought to be included if there is an interesting explanation. You can see it on Cohen & Lewis p. 140. HA treats it as a "town" in his book despite it being smaller than the adjacent village Lod. It may just be a case of missing data like the city of Quds/Jerusalem in 1596/7 being incomplete, and a similar thing may have happened to Ramla. I don't have all the books in your list of sources on the HA page, so there might be something there that I'm unaware of. 47.14.104.130 (talk) 21:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you lack any sources, just email me. I have most of them digitally, and can send them to you.

I haven't seen anyone else on wp making anything like my HA page. I also have pages on User:Huldra/Robinson 1838 info, and User:Huldra/Guerin. All pages are very much "work in progress".

I seem to recall a reviewer for one of my WP:DYKs mentioning that the original defters were online, and wanting me to link to them (ah, found it: [1]) I am afraid I don't speak or read either Arabic, Turkish or Hebrew.

And an editor working on Jordan, sent me a copy of a PhD called "the Ottoman province of Damascus in the sixteenth century" by Muhammad Adnan Salamah Bakhit, with lots of interesting info, which I haven't "mined" yet.

Also of another PhD called "şam eyaleti̇’ni̇n güney sancaklarinda (Fi̇li̇sti̇n) nüfus" ("Levant in the 16the century")(in Turkish, but with names in Arabic) from U. of Istanbul, I guess I could use google-translate, another source which I haven't "mined".

As for the population decline in Ramle: check Andrew Petersen: "The towns of Palestine under Muslim rule 600-1600", p.96 ff. Huldra (talk) 22:28, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Looks like the second (Turkish) source does the same as HA but includes all the defters of the 16th century. "The Ottoman province of Damascus" has population counts by nahiya for the entire province (which includes Palestine), and by village for the liwa Damascus. Helpfully it cites the number of each defter for every area of the eyalet. This means that if we could access it online, data for the entire Levant would be pretty easily obtainable.

I tried the link in the page you sent and it looks like it requires a log in. They are certainly online somewhere though. Some of them are on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Ottoman+government%22

I can read Arabic but not Ottoman Turkish- and it definitely takes a concerted effort to decipher just the script in the records.

This site seems to have an exhaustive lists of all books compiling data from the defteri: https://ottoman.uconn.edu/bibliography/published-tahrirs/

47.14.104.130 (talk) 04:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again, for some reason, I never thought of checking archive.org. They have Tahrir Defteri 686, the Safad 1696 info (which Rohde used for his thesis, while HA mistakenly used no. 72) (Not that understand a word of it...) Also relevant is:

Tapu Tahrir Defteri 131, Gaza 1525

As for the uconn-link: that is far more info about the subject than I intend to go into.....:/ What I had thought of doing, however, is to link to who gets the revenue. (the p, m, z in HA). We should have an article about each. My knowledge about Ottoman taxes are too incomplete to make any useful articles about the subject at the moment. I have to work on Taxation in the Ottoman Empire, first. Huldra (talk) 21:38, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

Hey, Huldra. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 00:00, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I am 20 today!, Huldra (talk) 20:16, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete articles

Hey Huldra, i made new articles and fixed the grammar. How can i delete this two articles: Category:Izra' District Category:Populated places in Izra' District

Best regards Syrian91 (talk) 09:21, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, missed this yesterday. User:Zero0000, can you help deleting thesis cats.?Huldra (talk) 23:50, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

?

Why did you ad Palestine grid to a large amount of former Syrian villages in GH? Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:52, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi User:Supreme Deliciousness, I am trying to find the villages mentioned in the 1596 tax-records, and their location is given in grid-numbers, see User:Huldra/HA. Most of the GH villages are mentioned in Nahia Jawlan Garbi; see User:Huldra/HA#Nahia_Jawlan_Garbi cheers, Huldra (talk) 21:20, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

October 3, 2025

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Notifying you due to your previous discussions in the talk pages. See here 81567518W (talk) 17:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]