THE JERUSALEM JEWISH COMMUNITY, OTTOMAN AUTHORITIES, AND ARAB POPULATION IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A CHAPTER OF LOCAL HISTORY*

The disintegration of the central Ottoman government in the eighteenth century had a significant impact on the situation in Jerusalem. This essay investigates the relations in the second half of that century between one minority group in the city (the Jewish community) and the Ottoman authorities in Jerusalem and in Da mascus, the capital of the Sancak, as well as the Jewish community's relations with the Arab population of Jerusalem. The research is based on a new historical source that has recently been discovered: the original account books of the Jewish community in Jerusalem of eleven years in the second half of the eighteenth century (between 1760 and 1796). The main conclusion of the present research is that the Jewish community was forced to pay considerable sums of money "under the table," which became fixed payments, in addition to the formal taxes paid to the Ottoman authorities ? a phenomenon which is not unique to the Jerusalem of that period. The essay contains precise data and