page_title: Jericho
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Jericho / History and archaeology / Ottoman period / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Jericho from the 1871-77 Palestine Exploration Fund Survey of Palestine
context_page_description: Jericho is a Palestinian city in the West Bank. It is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It is the administrative seat of the Jericho Governorate, and is governed by the Palestinian National Authority. In 2007, it had a population of 18,346. The city was annexed and ruled by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and has been held under Israeli occupation since 1967; administrative control was handed over to the Palestinian Authority in 1994. It is believed to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the city with the oldest known protective wall in the world. It was thought to have the oldest stone tower in the world as well, but excavations at Tell Qaramel in Syria have discovered stone towers that are even older.
  Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years, almost to the very beginning of the Holocene epoch of the Earth's history.
  Copious springs in and around the city have attracted human habitation for thousands of years. Jericho is described in the Hebrew Bible as the "city of palm trees".
context_section_description: In the 19th century, European scholars, archaeologists and missionaries visited often. At the time it was an oasis in a poor state, similar to other regions in the plains and deserts. Edward Robinson (1838) reported 50 families, which were about 200 people, Titus Tobler (1854) reported some 30 poor huts, whose residents paid a total of 3611 Kuruş in tax. Abraham Samuel Herschberg (1858–1943) also reported after his 1899–1900 travels in the region of some 30 poor huts and 300 residents. At that time, Jericho was the residence of the region's Turkish governor. The main water sources for the village were a spring called Ein al-Sultan, lit. "Sultan's Spring", in Arabic and Ein Elisha, lit. "Elisha Spring", in Hebrew, and springs in Wadi Qelt.
  J. S. Buckingham (1786–1855) describes in his 1822 book how the male villagers of er-Riha, although nominally sedentary, engaged in Bedouin-style raiding, or ghazzu: the little land cultivation he observed was done by women and children, while men spent most of their time riding through the plains and engaging in "robbery and plunder", their main and most profitable activity.
  An Ottoman village list from around 1870 showed that Riha, Jericho, had 36 houses and a population of 105, though the population count included men, only.
  The first excavation at Tell es-Sultan was carried out in 1867.
caption: Aqueducts around Jericho from the 1871-77 PEF Survey of Palestine
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