Ok in summary Mark Twain is not a WP RS because there are accurate estimates of concomitant population which is contradictory to your earlier statement that There are no accurate estimates of population at the time so laregely scholars can relate to the observations of travelers at the time This reference and others like it breech WP RS by not conforming to the subsection Beware false authority Authority of authors Prefer authors with an established reputation in the field where Wikipedia uses them for reference Mark Twain is a satirist and a writer of fiction not a respected demographer These references are also in breech of Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence Claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community Be particularly careful when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them There is no conspiracy to silence these claims This account is problematic because Twain s work seems to indicate that the 350 000 people do not exist in Twain s time or that there are much less people than 350 000 living in Palestine Verified and peer reviewed sources indicate that there were 350 000 people in the area concomitant to Twain s visit That s what needs to be said in a section on demographics not the musings of a satirist and fiction author Self published sources Main article Wikipedia VerifiabilityA self published source is a published source that has not been subject to any form of independent fact checking or where no one stands between the writer and the act of publication It includes personal websites and books published by vanity presses Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published and then claim to be an expert in a certain field For that reason self published books personal websites and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources Exceptions to this may be when a well known professional researcher writing within their field of expertise Twain s work is also in breech of this portion of WP RS as well His accounts can not be considered verified or subject to any form of independent fact checking He is also not a well known professional researcher writing within their field of expertise If we were doing original research or if we did not have good population estimates then this information would be valuable Since There are no accurate estimates of population at the time so laregely scholars can relate to the observations of travelers at the time is clearly wrong and we do have accurate estimates of population at the time it is clear that we need to use these and expunge the article of all non scholarly sources including the Herbert Samuel link I contributed earler