"In 1835, Mr Fisk, an American missionary, visited Hebron. He estimated that there about 400 Arab and 120 Jewish families; the Jewish population having significantly dropped since the 1834 rebellion.[81]
In 1838, Hebron had an estimated 1,500 taxable Muslim households, in addition to some 240 Jews, 41 of whom were tax-payers. 200 Jews and one Christian household were under 'European protections'. The total population was estimated at 10,000.[82] At the time the population of Hebron was given according to the number of taxpayers, i.e., male heads of households who owned even a very small shop or piece of land.
On July 25 1834 Ibrahim Pasha's Arab[83] army attacked the Jews of Hebron. [84][85]
When the Government of Ibrahim Pasha fell in 1841, the local clan-head Abd ar-Rahman Amr once again resumed the reins of power as the Sheik of Hebron. Due to his extortionate demands for cash from the local population, most of the Jewish population fled to Jerusalem.[60] In 1846 the Ottoman Governor-in-chief of Jerusalem (serasker), Kýbrýslý Mehmed Emin Pasha, waged a campaign to subdue rebellious sheiks in the Hebron area, and while doing so, allowed his troops to sack the town. Though it was widely rumoured that he secretly protected Abd ar-Rahman,[86] the latter was deported together with other local leaders (such as Muslih al-'Azza of Bayt Jibrin), but he managed to return to the area in 1848.[87] By 1850, Hebron had grown to the point where it was considered a large village or small town.[60] The Jewish population consisted of 60 Sephardi families and a 30-year old Ashkenazi community of 50 families.[60]
In 1855, the newly appointed Ottoman pasha ("governor") of the sanjak ("district") of Jerusalem, Kamil Pasha, attempted to subdue the rebellion in the Hebron region. Kamil and his army marched towards Hebron in July 1855, with representatives from the English, French and other Western consulates as witnesses. After crushing all opposition, Kamil appointed Salama Amr, the brother and strong rival of Abd al Rachman, as nazir of the Hebron region. After this relative quiet reigned in the town for the next 4 years.[88][89] Hungarian Jews of the Karlin Hasidic court settled in another part of the city in 1866.[90] Arab-Jewish relations were good, and Alter Rivlin, who spoke Arabic and Syrian-Aramaic, was appointed Jewish representative to the city council.[90] From 1874 the Hebron district as part of the Sanjak of Jerusalem was administered directly from Istanbul.[91]
Late in the 19th century the production of Hebron glass declined due to competition from imported European glass-ware, however, the products of Hebron continued to be sold, particularly among the poorer populace and travelling Jewish traders from the city.[92] At the World Fair of 1873 in Vienna, Hebron was represented with glass ornaments. A report from the French consul in 1886 suggests that glass-making remained an important source of income for Hebron: Four factories were making 60,000 francs yearly.[93]
The Jewish community was under French protection until 1914. Hebron was highly conservative in its religious outlook, with a strong tradition of hostility to Jews.[94]
[edit] British rule The British occupied Hebron on 8 December 1917. Later, this was sanctioned as a part of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palestinian Arab decision to boycott the 1923 elections for a Palestinian Legislative Council was made at the fifth Palestinian Congress, at which most of the Palestinian Arab political organisations were represented. It was reported by Murshid Shahin (a pro-zionist activist) that there was intense resistance in Hebron to the elections.[95] At this time, following attempts by the Lithuanian government to draft yeshiva students into the army, the famed[who?] Lithuanian Knesses Yisroel, relocated, after consultations between Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, Yechezkel Sarna and Moshe Mordechai Epstein, to Hebron.[96][97][98] The majority of the Jewish population lived on the outskirts of Hebron along the roads to Be'ersheba and Jerusalem, renting homes owned by Arabs, a number of which were built for the express purpose of housing Jewish tenants, with a few dozen within the city around the synagogues.[99] In the 1929 Hebron massacre, Arab rioters killed 67 Jews and wounded 60, and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; 435 Jews survived by virtue of the shelter and assistance offered them by their Arab neighbours, who hid them.[100][101] Two years later, 35 families moved back into the ruins of the Jewish quarter, but on the eve of the Palestinian Arab national revolt (April, 1936,) the British Government decided to move the Jewish community out of Hebron as a precautionary measure to secure its safety. The sole exception was Ya'akov ben Shalom Ezra, who processed dairy products in the city, and resided in the city on weekdays. In November 1947, in anticipation of the UN partition vote, the Ezra family closed its shop and left the city.[102]"