Censuses of the Jewish inhabitants of the Alexandria and the Holy Land, including Sidon (Saida) and Beirut, were compiled by Sir Moses Montefiore between the years 1839 and 1875.
The Montefiore Endowment first commissioned the Israel Genealogical Society to transliterate the censuses of the Families into modern Hebrew script and also translate them into English. It then commissioned the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) to give similar treatment to the censuses of the Institutions.
Censuses of Families and Institutions have since also been published on-line by the Endowment with a search engine in Hebrew and in English. The censuses were taken in the years 1839, 1840, 1849, 1855, 1866 and 1875.
A research paper on demographic details of the gro
wth of the Jewish population of the Holy Land in the latter part of the 19th century by Daniel Kessler was published in Volume 6 (2016) of Middle Eastern Studies. It is also available on this website by kind permission of the Editor. Censuses Research Paper
