[JeffChrz]

I noted that when I read what Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad.” (It’s a free ebook that you can find online.)

The way he described it in the late 1860s was that the Middle East then was a poor, neglected province of the Ottoman Empire.

[Verginius Rufus]

I have a 1911 Baedeker handbook, The Mediterranean (translation of the 1909 German edition)), which includes information on Jerusalem and other places in the Holy Land that a traveler might want to visit.

For Jerusalem it says that the population is estimated at about 70,000, of which 45,000 are Jews, 15,000 Christians (nearly half Syrians of the Greek Orthodox faith), and about 10,000 Moslems.

For Bethlehem it says the population is about 11,000, almost all Christians.

For Er-Ramleh, it has the population "exceeding 7,000, including 2500 Christians." It says the mosque in that town was built in 1318 in a style resembling the Romanesque transition buildings of the Crusaders.

There was a separate volume, Palestine and Syria, which I don't have, which would have given fuller information.