Historical geographies of a Damascan population crisis: Jawlān and Ḥawrān in the late Mamluk - early Ottoman periods

Abstract

This multidisciplinary study examines the potential causes of a severe and rapid population and settlement decline during the period of transition in the Jawlān and eastern Ḥawrān regions in the province of Damascus. The Jawlān had been part of a relatively small and centralized sultanate in the Mamluk period. However, in the sixteenth century it was incorporated into an empire that ruled over three continents, thus its importance and standing gradually diminished. Newly recovered data from archaeological surveys, two archaeological excavations, fifteenth-century Arabic chroniclers and sixteenth-century Ottoman tax registers (defters) evidence the magnitude of a demographic crisis that occurred in one of the province's most fertile areas at a time when neighboring regions enjoyed continuity, stability and growth. The study conclusions are significant: nomadization in conjunction with an internal, seasonal migration process likely caused the steep decline, and not external migration or sudden demographic decline due to plagues or natural disasters. This shift from sedentary to nomadic or semi-nomadic life lasted for a long time; the vast majority of the area residents were Bedouin, able to adapt quickly to the new reality that combined work in the (mazra'as) with cattle raising.