Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Violent Deaths in Late Ottoman Palestine: New Evidence from Newspapers and Population Registers

Emanuel Beška, Institute of Oriental Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences1
Sarah Büssow, Ruhr University Bochum

In late Ottoman Palestine, newspaper articles reporting on homicides often carried the simple, one-word headline Qatīl (“A Killed Person”). Yet behind every terse headline lay a tragic incident. Some of these reports were brief, while others resembled short crime stories, offering vivid details of the circumstances leading up to the event, the crime itself, and its aftermath. These accounts make it possible today to examine various aspects of homicide at that time. One might focus on the immediate conditions of a particular case or consider the broader context. While delving into selected illustrative cases, this paper uses the available data to address several issues.

First, it examines which demographic groups were most vulnerable to homicide in Palestine on the eve of World War I, and touches on perceptions of victims’ age. Another particularly compelling topic concerns the reporting of femicides. In this article, we present several cases of this phenomenon, which remains taboo even today. Lastly, we turn our attention to comparing reports of homicides in newspapers with the corresponding entries of the victims in the death register. Although the register remains silent regarding the circumstances of the killings, it nevertheless provides valuable contextual information and may offer insights into how – and by whom – the author of the newspaper report obtained the information.

Late Ottoman Arabic newspapers published in Palestine during the Second Constitutional Era (1908–1914) contain a wealth of information about various types of death (Beška 2025). In this article, we focus specifically on homicides, and in particular, on their victims. The primary sources analyzed in this article are texts published in al-Quds, a semi-weekly (later weekly) Arabic newspaper based in Jerusalem, published between 1908 and 1914 by the Greek Orthodox Christian journalist Jurjī Ḥabīb Ḥanāniyā (1864–1920). As the newspaper was based in the mutaṣarrifiyya (that is, the special independent district) of Jerusalem, the vast majority of the homicides it reported on occurred in there, while a small number of reports referred to places in the districts of Nablus and Akka north of Jerusalem, and one case was reported from the Mahjar, the Palestinian diaspora in the Americas.

The second primary source consists of the death register of the city and subdistrict of Hebron (Vefayāt-ı mahsus vukuat defteri 198). Some of the homicides that occurred in this subdistrict were also reported on in al-Quds. In the final section of our article, we compare the newspaper reports with the corresponding entries in the registers.

Ages of Male Homicide Victims

In total, among the 386 available issues of the newspaper, we identified 68 articles reporting incidents in which 92 individuals were killed by other people – either deliberately or accidentally. We included only those articles that documented a newly identified death or deaths, whether resulting from an incident reported for the first time or from a previously reported one in which an injured person died later after the initial article had been published. However, it is possible that we have missed some cases; many pages of the newspapers are torn, wrinkled, or otherwise damaged, sometimes the text is smudged, and the general print quality of later issues is poor.

Additional articles occasionally reported on the same events. For example, six articles cover the killing of two Maghribi guards of an olive grove by a shepherd in Bethlehem. However, we counted only two of them: the first (210/3/3),2 which documented the initial death of 25-year-old al-Ḥājj Ḥamāda, and the second (211/4/1), which reported the subsequent death of al-Ḥājj Muḥammad, who died from injuries he sustained in the incident. The remaining four articles provided further details about the act and its subsequent investigation, but did not report any new fatalities and were therefore excluded from the final tally of 68 articles.

Particularly relevant for this paper are 30 articles that specify the ages of the victims (27 males and 3 females).3 This means that, based on al-Quds newspaper reports, the exact age at death can be determined for almost a third of the reported homicide victims. By cross-referencing the names from newspapers and population registers, it might be possible to establish the age at death of additional individuals. Although the sample is not large, it nonetheless provides valuable insights and preliminary answers. This sample also serves as a useful point of comparison with Franzis Heßling’s findings based on an Ottoman population register from the village of Isdud in the subdistrict of Gaza (Heßling 2025), as well as with the findings of Büssow and Büssow (2025) in the Hebron death register.

Heßling has discussed various aspects of people’s lives in Isdud. She found 162 male entries which included the date of death (Heßling 2025); however, they did not record the cause of death. With regard to the age-at-death distribution she remarked,

“Another striking feature demanding explanation is the increased mortality rate among men in young adulthood. Possible explanations include a higher incidence of accidents at work or violence among younger men (see Krause and Büssow 2024).”

Significantly, Büssow and Büssow (2025) have provided the age-at-death distribution for 51 male homicide victims in the Hebron region, drawing on the Hebron death register containing data on 3,154 deceased individuals. They showed that nearly one-quarter of the recorded homicide victims were aged 21 to 30 and almost one-third were between 31 to 40; those aged 41–50 and 61–70 accounted for 12% and 8% respectively.

A thorough examination of the texts published in al-Quds yields data that partly answer the question posed by Heßling of whether homicide contributed to the increased mortality rate among male youth. The analysis of the sample from al-Quds supports her observation regarding the high mortality rate among young male adults. 15% of the victims – four individuals – were between 15 and 20 years old at the time they were killed. Significantly, one-third of the male homicide victims with confirmed ages at death fall within the 23–26 age group, overlapping with Heßlingʼs peak cohort. Moreover, men in their thirties were also considerably more likely to become homicide victims (22% of the victims) than those in their forties and fifties according to the data from the newspaper. While several cases involving men in their thirties were reported in al-Quds, only one male victim in his forties was mentioned, and none in their fifties. This pattern also closely aligns with Heßling’s findings.4

In addition, and notably, the articles identified in al-Quds show an increase in homicide victims in their sixties, with five such cases reported. Interestingly, al-Quds does not mention any homicide victims in their seventies, while one slain individual was in his mid-eighties (83/2/1-3). The homicide cases involving fatalities among sexagenarians may warrant further exploration to identify possible reasons for this sudden increase.

A comparison of the cohorts of male homicide victims in the newspaper reports and in the Hebron register reveals a difference in vulnerability by age: in the register, men in their thirties were the most vulnerable group, whereas in the newspaper data, the peak vulnerability occurred in the twenties (Figure 1).

Age group                   al-Quds                        Hebron register

21–30                          37 percent                    24 percent

31–40                          22 percent                    32 percent

21–40                          59 percent                   56 percent

Figure 1: Cohorts of male homicide victims in newspaper reports and in the Hebron register.

Perceptions of Age

The newspaper reports often referred to men in their twenties and thirties as “youth” (Arab. shābb, pl. shabāb). Our examination of the termʼs usage shows that individuals described as shābb/shabāb in homicide reports ranged in age from 20 to 38 years old. This “youth” cohort comprised about sixty percent of the male homicide victims – a figure closely matching the Hebron register, where men aged 21 to 40 accounted for a similar (slightly lower) proportion. In non-crime contexts, however, the term could be applied more broadly: for instance, a 17-year-old Jewish homicide victim was referred to as a boy (Arab. walad) (206/3/4), while an even younger 13-year-old educated boy was identified as a “youth” in an editorial discussing patriotism (153/1/1).

Given that many men and women in Palestine died before the age of forty (Büssow and Büssow 2025; Heßling 2025), perceptions of age are an important indicator of social understanding. The term shabāb stands in contrast to other contemporary descriptions of age groups. For instance, the ethnographer Hilma Granqvist, who studied the rural Palestinian village of Artas in the 1920s, documented numerous expressions of age referring to biological signs of aging (such as gray hair) or to the ability to perform specific tasks (various types of agricultural or pastoral work, carrying weapons, etc.; Granqvist 1931, pp. 36–37).

Female Victims

Another noteworthy observation concerns reports on female homicide victims. Although al-Quds contains only ten such reports, this remains a significant finding. Female individuals are markedly underrepresented in the death registers overall (Büssow and Büssow 2025), and particularly so in cases involving violent deaths. Hebron Death Register No. 198 recorded 52 cases of homicide, only one of which involved a woman – a 50-year-old wife from the city of Hebron. The circumstances surrounding her death remain unknown (Nüfus Book 198, p. 13, serial no. 65). It is highly likely that the actual number of unreported cases of killed women was considerably higher.

It is notable that the three killed women from the newspaper’s articles (whose age is mentioned) were quite young. One was a 10-year-old girl who was accidently killed by celebratory gun fire during a circumcision ceremony (203/4/1). Another was a 19-year-old woman who was murdered by her cousins (168/4/3). Although the motive is not specified, it is possible that she was killed for refusing to marry one of them, as a similar case took place in the subdistrict of Jenin and was reported in al-Quds two and a half months later (186/3/1). Another possible motive is honor killing. The third victim was a 23-year-old teacher who was shot by bandits close to Tulkarm while traveling at night in a carriage from her hometown, Nazareth, to al-Ramla, where she worked (262/4/1).

At least two cases of fatal domestic violence were reported in al-Quds. In the village of [Bayt] Fajjār, following a report by local inhabitants that a man had murdered his wife; according to the paper, the authorities were about to exhume her body (166/3/1). Additionally, a man named Muṣṭafā Nāṣir, from the village of al-Walaja, stabbed his wife to death; the motive remained unknown (387/3/2). It is noteworthy that the cases we would describe as femicides today received particular attention in the newspaper.

Moreover, of the 92 individuals reported killed in al-Quds, either in Palestine or, in one case, of a Palestinian abroad, 10 were women. It is important to note that one article, published on 21 October 1912, reports the killing of 10 people without specifying their sex, referring only to “persons” (Arab. ashkhāṣ) and “corpses” (Arab. juthath) (317/4/1-2). This article states that three people from the village of al-Jūra were killed three weeks earlier on the coast while returning from Jaffa. Soon afterwards, another four people were killed at the same spot. Later, three lifeless bodies were found near Dayr Sunayd, all of whom were from that village. If the population registers from these two villages are available, it might be possible to identify these individuals and their sex. Therefore, depending on whether these 10 individuals are included (totaling 92) or excluded (totaling 82), women constitute between 10 and 12 percent of the reported victims. This percentage closely aligns with the proportion found in the subset of articles that recorded victims’ ages at death, providing further evidence of the disparity between male and female homicide victims.

Revenge Killings

A specific type of murder occasionally reported in the press was blood revenge (Arab. thaʼr). This was a practice in which the male relatives of a homicide victim killed the perpetrator or a male member of his family.5 All cases discussed in al-Quds occurred after a relatively long interval following the original act being avenged – ranging from approximately one year (321/4/1-2) to four years (61/4/2). In the latter case, the victim was severely injured but did not die.

One notable incident took place in the city of Gaza, involving a member of the law enforcement authority named Saʻīd Mustū. He served in the mounted gendarmerie (Arab. al-jāndārma al-sawārī), and had killed Ibrāhīm ʻAlī Ḥillis two years earlier while investigating criminals from the al-Shujāʻiyya neighborhood. Since then, the Ḥillis family had sought to avenge the death of their relative. In June 1910, Muṣṭafā Ḥillis finally carried out the revenge, fatally injuring Saʻīd Mustū in the Gaza market; Mustū died a few days later in the hospital (155/4/2-3).6.

Comparison of Newspaper Reports with Corresponding Entries in the Hebron Death Registers, 1905–1914

When looking at the Hebron death registers in the Nüfus collection from 1905–1914, it is possible to identify some of the homicides mentioned in the newspapers of that time. Yet not all appear in the registers, and none are accompanied by contextual information. For the register’s administrative purposes, the simple notation of “qatīl/qatl” (“a killed person”) or “maqtūlan” (“killed”) was deemed sufficient.7

The official registration of deaths often took place weeks or even months after the homicide had occurred. This delay was due to the timing of the report submitted by the village or neighborhood muhtar, who was responsible for notifying the next central administrative unit of deaths within his jurisdiction. As a result, we frequently find entire blocks of entries in the register that correspond to deaths over a given period, collectively reported by the muhtar before being forwarded to the registration office. In contrast, the timing and accuracy of newspaper reports on homicides likely depended on the informants and sources available to the writer. The supposed immediacy of such “latest news” was, therefore, often strikingly inconsistent.

Newspaper editors often received information about the homicides after they had been officially registered as well; in some instances, the events had occurred quite some time earlier. It appears that the newspaper may have obtained such information through various channels – either from an informant in the Nüfus administration, the police, or by observing proceedings in criminal court. The latter might have been true for the following article:

A quarrel had taken place some time ago (Arab. mundhu mudda) – between Ḥasan al-ʻArab, ʻAbdaljawād Sālim al-ʻArab, Salāma al-ʻArab and Muḥammad Salāma al-ʻArab from the village of Dūra in Jabal Khalīl al-Raḥmān. ʻAbdaljawād was killed after being struck with a stone. (al-Quds, 11 October 1910, 182/3/4)

The latter part of the article reveals the source of this information – the trial of the accused individuals, reportedly held on 10 October, a day before the article was published. Two of the defendants were sentenced to prison terms of three months (Ḥasan) and five years (Muḥammad Salāma), respectively, while Salāma was acquitted.

We find this case recorded in the death register (Nüfus book 198, p. 157, serial no. 81), but, as mentioned above, without any additional detail beyond the note that ʻAbdaljawād (born 1280 AH or AR), son of Sālim, had been killed. As the article in al-Quds noted, the incident had taken place earlier. While the journalist recorded the victim’s name and the cause of his death, he did not provide the actual date of the event. The death register, however, allows us to determine the exact date: 6 Haziran 1325 (Rumi calendar), corresponding to 19 June 1909. The date of registration was 21 Teşrīn-i Evvel, that is, 3 October 1909. The information from the register thus makes it also possible to ascertain that a year and three months elapsed between the act itself and the sentencing of the perpetrators by the court.

Yet there is also a case in which a newspaper article on a homicide was published even before the death had even been officially registered. “It came to our ears (Arab. balaghanā) that a young man (Arab. shābb) was killed in in the village of Ḥalḥūl a few days ago (Arab. mundhu biʻat ayyām)  (al-Quds, 30 May 1911, 239/3/2). The article does not disclose the name of the victim, but it describes the circumstances of his death. The man was shot dead while guarding sheep. His body was taken to Hebron, where an autopsy was performed.

Looking at the death register of Ḥalḥūl for that year, the only entry that fits the case is that of Maḥmūd Ḥiṭa, born in 1289, whose cause of death is recorded as “killed” (maqtūlan). The date of death is given as 9 Mayıs 1327, corresponding to 22 May 1911. The registration date, however, is listed as 9 Temmuz 1327, i.e., 22 July 1911 (Nüfus book 198, p. 78, serial no. 43). Thus, he would have been 37-38 years old, placing him at the upper end of the “youth” range. If Maḥmūd was indeed the unnamed victim described in the newspaper article, the author must have written about the incident before the death had been officially reported and entered into the register. It is therefore likely that the information came from someone involved in the investigation of his death.

Inaccuracies in dating can also be observed in the following example. These may have resulted not only from incorrect information provided by the source, but also from confusion arising from the simultaneous use of four different calendrical systems in Ottoman Palestine: the Rumi (Ottoman solar) calendar used in administrative contexts, the Hijri (Islamic lunar) calendar employed in religious and private life, the Julian calendar utilized in newspapers edited by Greek-Orthodox journalists, and the Gregorian calendar, which was mainly used in communication with European interlocutors. The incident took place in the village of Idnā, which was reportedly divided into two rival factions. “On 18 Rajab the people of this village started a fight with shooting and hitting with swords and sticks which lasted more than seven hours” (al-Munādī, 16 July 1912, 24/3/2-3). The article reports that several officials, including the examining magistrate, the public attorney, the municipal doctor, and an officer of the gendarmerie went to the village to investigate the incident. Their inquiry established that three people had been killed and 56 injured in total: 21 with gunshot wounds, and 35 with other injuries. It is likely that, once again, one of the officials who took part in the investigation reported the event to the newspaper.

The date of this event was given as the 18 Rajab 1330 (Hijri), corresponding to 20 Haziran 1328 (Rumi) or the 3 July 1912 (CE). We do not find a corresponding entry in the death register of Idnā for this specific date. However, there are two victims recorded as having died by violence (both marked by the comment maqtūlan) within a few days at the beginning of the month of Haziran – that is, at the end of the Hijri month of Jumādā II, or mid-June 1912, thus about two weeks earlier. One man died on 2 Haziran, the other on 5 Haziran 1328. Since these dates are very close to that mentioned in the article, they were likely the victims referred to.

The first victim was Ḥusayn Ḥamdān b. Aḥmad Ḥamdān Bashīr. His year of birth is not recorded, but as he left behind a wife and both parents, he was probably a young adult. He died on 2 Haziran 1328, and his death was announced and registered on 18 Ağustos 1328 (31 August 1912) (Nüfus book 198, p. 98, serial no. 20).

The second victim, Muḥammad al-Zughayr b. Yūnus (b. 1298), died three days later. His death was announced and registered somewhat earlier, at the end of the month of Temmuz, i.e., the beginning of August: 21 Temmuz 1328, or 3 / 5 August 1912 (Nüfus book 198, p. 98, serial no. 19).

Here too, the author seems to have reported the violent incident before the victims were officially registered. While his dating may have been imprecise, his information about the number of victims was probably correct. Although only two victims of violence are listed in the death register, the actual number might have well been higher. As we know from previous studies, death registers tend to underrepresent certain categories of the deceased – especially women and young children, but also, at times, men (Büssow and Büssow 2025).

Conclusion

Newspaper reports on violent deaths in late Ottoman Palestine are a valuable source for a variety of topics. While population and death registers do not provide details about the circumstances in which homicide victims perished, the press’s strong focus on such stories gives substance to these records, illuminating both the immediate conditions and the broader context of such tragic incidents. In this way, the dialogue between the two types of sources can yield new insights into social history, as demonstrated by the examples discussed in this article.

Another interesting aspect concerns the use of language and its possible instrumentalization. The term shabāb (“young man”) applied to individuals who had already surpassed the average life expectancy of the time is particularly noteworthy and deserves further investigation.

Reports of femicides also warrant additional research, as newspapers appear to be a more promising source on this topic than the death registers are.


References

Sources

Newspapers

al-Munādī (1912)

al-Quds (1908–1914)

Ottoman census records

ISA Israel State Archives, Nüfus book 198 (Vefayāt-ı mahsus vukuat defteri), Hebron, the City and District, 1321–1330/1905–1914.

Secondary Literature

Ben-Bassat, Yuval and Johann Buessow. 2024. Late Ottoman Gaza. Cambridge University Press.

Beška, Emanuel. 2025. “Public Notes on Death: Palestinian Newspapers as a Complementary Source of Data on Mortality.” LOOP – Late Ottoman Palestinians. Retrieved July 1, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13fp4

Sarah Büssow and Johann Büssow. 2025. “Mortality and Life-Course Patterns in late Ottoman Palestine: Insights from the Hebron Region.” LOOP – Late Ottoman Palestinians. Retrieved September 29, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14ptr

Heßling, Franzis. 2025. “Life Courses of Women and Men in the Village of Isdud (1905–1916) LOOP – Late Ottoman Palestinians.” Retrieved June 22, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13x4z

Granqvist, Hilma, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village, vol. 1, Helsingfors 1931.

Krause, Katharina and Sarah Büssow. 2024. “The Death Register of Ottoman Hebron (1905–1915): Formal Aspects, Surprising Finds, and Research Questions.” LOOP – Late Ottoman Palestinians. Retrieved July 3, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/124ul

Sharrāb, Muḥammad Muḥammad Ḥasan. 2000. Muʻjam buldān Filasṭīn. Amman: al-Ahliyya.

Stewart. Frank H. 2000. “Thaʾr.” Encyclopedia of Islam, Second Edition (EI2). Vol. X: 442–443. Leiden: Brill.


  1. The research for this paper was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract no. APVV-23-0011, VEGA 2/0014/22, and MVTS COST COREnet.[]
  2. The first number indicates the issue number, the second the page number, and the third the column number. Unless the name of the newspaper otherwise specified, the reference pertains to al-Quds.[]
  3. By contrast, other Palestinian Arabic newspapers provided far less information regarding the age of crime victims. The detailed coverage of the incidents and the thorough description of the investigation teams suggest that al-Quds was able to draw on insider information from the Jerusalem police.[]
  4. The ages at the time of death in our sample are distributed as follows: men 15, 17, 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 25, 25, 26, 26, 26, 26, 30, 31, 32, 35, 35, 36, 38, 45, 60, 60, 60, 65, 65-70, 85; women 10, 19, 23.[]
  5. For more details on the concept of thaʼr, see EI X, 442–443.[]
  6. For more on the Ḥillis family, their notoriety, and the neighborhood where they lived, see Ben-Bassat and Büssow 2024, 71, 85–86[]
  7. It is noteworthy that the entries do not include any indication of whether an official investigation or legal proceedings had taken place, such as a reference to a corresponding file number. This is striking because other life events – marriage, divorce, childbirth, death, and changes in military status – routinely received such file numbers, which were then recorded in the individual’s entry in the BasicNüfus Register. One might expect this to be the case even more so for a criminal act, which was hardly an everyday cause of death. We even find cases of fallen soldiers whose circumstances of death were described in more detail in the death registers (Krause and Büssow 2024).[]
Emanuel Beska
Emanuel Beska
Sarah Buessow
Sarah Buessow

The text only may be used under licence Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Emanuel Beska, Sarah Büssow (November 14, 2025). Violent Deaths in Late Ottoman Palestine: New Evidence from Newspapers and Population Registers. LOOP – Late Ottoman Palestinians. Retrieved June 5, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/155er


You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.