Talk:1834 looting of Safed

Page name
I would lie to point out that the "Safed Plunder" is an event name in Jewish literature, not a description like 1834 pogrom or 1834 riot/massacre. Changing its name or including another 1838 event as part of it is incorrect.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for full quotes
I have checked the sources cited. Besides being of dubious reliability, I cannot find information supporting key claims in our article. The parts bolded below are not supported by the sources I could see. Could someone provide full quotes please?

They had been incited by a local Muslim clergyman and self-proclaimed Islamic "prophet" called Muhammad Damoor, who "foresaw" the massacre which he instigated. From his "prophecies":"'the true Believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels.'"

The pogrom went on for 33 days. It caused the Jewish community to dwindle; '''many Jews were beaten to death or severely wounded. Accounts tell of blinding men, torturing men and women. Alexander Kinglake described the events as a massacre,  and Abraham Yaari and others refer to incidents of mass-rape''' of Jews in Safed, Galilee.

It is not clear how many died, but historians assert the number is high, likely over 500.

Thanks.  T i a m u t talk 18:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a question. Are you actually trying to make these articles citations better or are you attempting to deny that the Arabs carried out genocides upon the indigenous pre-Zionist Jewish population? Just a question. talk —Preceding undated comment added 18:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC).


 * I'm totally unfamiliar with this event and am hoping to be better educated about it. I'd like to see better sources but cannot find any. So I am asking for someone to reproduce the passages relevant to the material included in our article. Hopefully, it will contain footnotes citing other works. I'm also aware that sometimes some editors include information in articles that is not actually in th spurces cited. Given that I'v not heard about this event outside of this page, I'd like to make sure that's not the case here. Can you provide the information I have asked for?  T i a m u t talk 18:27, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I learned about this event in university. I'll look for more sources but this isn't my exact area of expertise for my bachelors in History. I learned about it in contrast to the Palestinian claim that "Jews and Muslims lived peacefully before Zionism." I think the general problem with these articles is that the Pro-Palestine side wants to delete anything that disproves that the Old Yishuv experienced massacres and the Pro-Israel side wants to delete anything about Plan Dalet. I'll look for sources but I think a authority on this time period and subject should be found. DionysosElysees (talk) 18:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[[User_talk:Tiamut|talk] 18:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Tiamut's concerns over sources are justified. Something like this should be based on the research of modern historians, but at the moment it is a mixture of old second-hand accounts, primary sources uncritically presented, and in some places no clear source at all. Fortunately I found a good scholarly source: Tudor Parfitt, The Jews in Palestine 1800-1882, has about 6 pages on it. Some of it contradicts what is here, such as the claim of 500 deaths. Parfitt also says that the sources disagree on who the perpetrators were. I'll be doing some rewriting based on this source in the near future. Zerotalk 00:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Kinglake's second hand account
All of the sources in this article appear to lead back to Kinglake's 1844 book Eothen. The chapter on this subject is very colourful, and Kinglake is very clear (1) that he did not witness any of these events, and (2) that the people who told him the story wanted him to influence the consul in Damascus.

Does anyone else agree that the tone of this article is totally incorrect in light of this? Or can someone provide sources which lead back to any meaningfully stronger evidence? Oncenawhile (talk) 23:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Numbers
The article includes the sentence "It is not clear how many died, but historians assert the number is high, likely over 500". Can anyone verify the source? i cannot see the number 500 in the google snippet. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I asked for verification of this and several other things as well above. None has yet been forthcoming.  T i a m u t talk 19:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Rivlin and Isseroff
Other than Kinglake, this article (and the rest of the internet) have one other underlying source for this event, which at this stage do not qualify as RS. That is, an article written in 1934 by a Zionist journalist named Eliezer Rivlin (born 1889 ), and translated recently by the late blogger Ami Isseroff. The article is interesting but the translation cannot be RS without the original, and the original would need to clear a high bar given the context in which it was written. Can any Hebrew speakers find the original? Oncenawhile (talk) 00:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Eothen, what it actually contains
This book of Kinglake is a marginal source, but since we are probably going to keep it we should cite it accurately. Far from describing the affair as a massacre (as our text explicitly states, Kinglake wrote only of theft. There isn't a single death mentioned in his book.  There isn't a single rape either, in fact he says that the worst thing that happened ("the most odious of all outrages") was that women were searched for valuables. Zerotalk 19:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * From what I could see of his work online, that was what I had determined as well, but I thought he might have written about deaths elsewhere in the text, which is why I asked for quotes above. Thanks for double checking that.  T i a m u t talk 19:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Multiple editions are at archive.org. I checked the two editions cited here.  (I also reverted myself as it wasn't 24 hours yet, I'm away from home and can't keep track of the time.) Zerotalk 19:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I've restored your edit (this is when 1RR is just plain stupid - i.e. when there is factually incorrect information in an article and you can't fix it because you already fixed something else in the lt 24 hours).  T i a m u t talk 19:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I've asked several Hebrew and Arabic speakers to look for sources in their respective languages. Hopefully unquestionable sources can finally be put into this article so that this horrible massacre of the indigenous people of the Southern Levant can be put into all the Israeli and Palestinian articles that reference this time period.

talk 3:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

This "dionysoselysees" person (who was an earlier banned user), keeps spamming about a few specific incidents in two cities in Palestine; and he also seems not to have realized that the Jews in those two specific cities of Palestine (who were either caught up in this 1834 revolt or in-fighting among Druze factions in Al-Jalil). Also these Jews he is discussing in what is termed the "old yishuv" were people that immigrated to Muslim ruled Palestine from Europe (Germany, Spain, etc).Historylover4 (talk) 23:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

About the argument on the sources
Maybe Kinglake's source is one of few sources in english, but if you look at the hebrew article, you'll find there some more sources, which you cannot ignore. I talk about Moshe Raisher's book, Shaarey Yerushalaim (Jerusalem Gates), 1867. (There is a site which contains the full 1875's edition of the book, published in Lemberg, Galicia) - http://www.hebrewbooks.org/35736

also, Yisroel ben Shmuel of Shklov's book, Pe'at ha-Shulchan, published in 1836, testfies about the events.

And the last - Menachem Mendel of Kamenitz, Hotel owner which lived in Safed in the date of the events wrote a book named Korot Ha-Eytim, published in Vilnus, 1839, which also testifies about the events. The text of the book exists as a part of Ben-Yehuda Project - http://benyehuda.org/boym_m/korot_haitim.html

It's not a big deal to search for english sources, cause you barely find some. You need to find a way to investigate sources in more languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.11.54 (talk) 16:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem is that some of these are primary sources that we can't just make our own conclusions from. The book of Parfitt I started to use (and will finish when I get home from my present travels) quotes from these and draws conclusions; that's what we need. Zerotalk 21:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

unreliable sources
These sources are unacceptable: Zerotalk 22:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Bat Ye'or (controversial activist)
 * "Sir Moses Montefiore symposium" (no author, no title, quote contradicts better sources in three different ways, who needs it?)
 * http://www.israel-palestina.info -- Even if the original source is reliable, which can be argued, this web page is not reliable and we cannot trust its translations


 * So Bat Ye'or is a "controversial activist", and let me guess, Ilan Pappé is "eminently reliable", am I right? Pilusi3 (talk) 00:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone cited Ilan Pappe? Can you point out where?  Zerotalk 03:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Al over Wikipedia.In any case you have some problem with the source you should use advice of uninvolded editors on WP:RSN.She is well known historian but we can attribute the source to comply with WP:NPOV policy--Shrike (talk) 09:08, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You won't find any place where I cited Pappe, and I'm not embarrassed to have high standards. Bat Ye'or is not a historian, she's a "journalist and political commentator" like her article says.  Her credentials in Palestinian history are zero. Zerotalk 10:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't said that you cited Pappe I only said that he is widely cited all over Wikipedia.Like I said I think she is WP:RS but she should be attributed like Pappe and Khalidi in other articles.--Shrike (talk) 11:03, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We do not need to attribute Ye'or here. The article does rely on her own material, but rather on a quote she reproduces. Chesdovi (talk) 22:09, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We have to trust this activist to translate and objectively present the quote, which in fact we cannot do. Her style is always to selectively present material in a biased fashion according to her anti-Muslim agenda. Zerotalk 10:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ye'or's translation seems in sink with other accounts I have found in Hebrew. If anyone can provide me for the souce of Farhi's account, (unable to view note 120), or the name of his biography, it would be helpful. Chesdovi (talk) 15:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Ye'or is a promoter of the silly "Eurabia" xenophobic myth and libel, she is not a source that should be used in any article.Historylover4 (talk) 21:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Page title
No sources I could find in English call it the "Great plunder". In Hebrew, it looks like only מנחם מנדיל מקמניץ refers to it as that. No English source calls it "Safed plunder", but some call it "pogrom". I see no reason how the word "great" can be kept. Thoughts? Chesdovi (talk) 20:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. Actually this event seems to have no common English name at all. Zerotalk 23:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Mainly "pogrom" in WP:RS, some "pillage." (Probably can't cite WP:Consistency consideration of 1660 destruction of Safed etc.) In ictu oculi (talk) 04:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't like "great" and prefer "progrom" and "pillage" over "plunder."-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 02:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't like "great" either, and I don't think "pogrom" is appropriate. Zerotalk 03:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We could call it "1834 Safed massacre", but that would mitigate the calamity, in which more people were seriously and horribly maimed for life, mentally and physically, in addition to the pillage of prized possessions and violation of girls and boys by crazed predators. "Pogrom" does seem to encapsulate the whole unfortunate month-long event more accurately. Chesdovi (talk) 13:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If the most of the sources use word pogrom then we should use it too.--Shrike (talk) 13:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Noting GS's cmt above, I would like his input here. Meanwhile I shall move it to "1834 Safed pogrom," as Zero did not explain why it's not appropriate. Chesdovi (talk) 17:49, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Pogrom is a highly charged word. I am not saying that makes it wrong, but I suspect that most authors in references which use this word are doing so in the context of a wider POV push. Chesdovi, please could you show us the sources who use this word and let us know what the general theme f their work is (i.e. whether they have a POV?)? Oncenawhile (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I have added a POV-title tag. Having looked at a number of references, e.g. here and here, the word implies anti-semitism and government involvement.

The key issue is that the article is clear that the motive for the attack may or may not have been anti-semitism. So we shouldn't use a title that suggests that it was. Oncenawhile (talk) 20:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC) Best Wishes ' Ankh '. Morpork  19:35, 15 April 2012 (UTC) Best Wishes ' Ankh '. Morpork  10:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The name is given according to reliable sources as shown in talk.What other name you propose based on WP:RS?--Shrike (talk) 12:41, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Why do you say that the word 'pogrom' suggests anti-Semitism? All dictionary definitions that I have checked make no such reference. It is undue (and possibly inaccurate) to claim this based solely on the link provided, which states that it,"implies the murderous and violent actions of one group against another, indeed in the strict sense, of non-Jews against Jews" (which is incontrovertibly the case here).
 * In the past few days a series of edits have been made which give the appearance of attempting to find sources that narrowly define a "pogrom" as something which must be antisemitic and genocidal, and which cannot occur during a war, and as a term that is sometimes "misused in an inflammatory way" (e.g. ). The intent appears to be to very narrowly define the term, and thus justify the removal of the description "pogrom" from various anti-Jewish attacks made by Muslims or Arabs, or in Arab territories. (see, for example, the following edits: ). Since this is no doubt unintentional or a simple misunderstanding or error, perhaps the individual making these edits can explain the actual reason for them. Jayjg (talk) 00:28, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes very happy to. The point is the same across all, and you will note that my editing on this point has been mostly confined to talk pages. I suggest we continue this conversation on talk:pogrom, but in summary from everything i have read the word pogrom implies that people are being targeted because of their race. In other words, it implies something about the intent of the perpetrators of the crime. I do not believe that intent has been established here, or in the other articles I tagged. Oncenawhile (talk) 08:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting that a particular group was not targeted in the killings? Why is the killing and raping of Jews as well as the destruction of their homes and synagogues by local Druse and Muslim Arabs not "A riot aimed at persecution of a particular group, usually on the basis of their religion or ethnic origin."
 * I'm going by what the article says: "One account suggests the rioting was premeditated, organised by a local anti-Semitic Muslim cleric,[3] while others believe it was a spontaneous attack which took advantage of a defenceless population in the midst of the armed uprising against Egyptian rule.". To my mind, the first interpretation would be a pogrom, but the second would not be. So it's disputed. Oncenawhile (talk) 12:27, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * We name articles based on WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RS usage, not based on how Wikipedia editors define events. Please review the relevant policies. Jayjg (talk) 23:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There is no common name for this event. Actually the overwhelming majority of sources calling it "Safed pogrom" or similar seem to be Wikipedia derivatives. Zerotalk 00:10, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed - I have spent some time looking but there's nothing obvious. And the word pogrom is definitely not used in the majority of cases. Jayjg, I presume this means you have no objection to changing the title? Oncenawhile (talk) 07:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * How did you determine that "the word pogrom is definitely not used in the majority of cases"? What do you even define as "the majority of cases"? Let's try to do this based on policy and evidence, rather than unproven assertions. Jayjg (talk) 11:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Moshe Ma'oz writes: "'Similarly, the Jews of Safed were brutally attacked by Muslim and Druze peasants from the vicinity in 1834 and again in 1837 (after the Safed earthquake).' […] 'It seems that all these anti-Jewish outbreaks, like many other cases of persecution of Jews, had a common motivation among both Muslims and Christians, namely their traditional religious intolerance and popular feelings of contempt towards the Jews.' -- (pp. 147-48 Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman period.)"
 * Can we rely on his appraisal to call this and other similar events "pogroms"? Chesdovi (talk) 11:32, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of referenced material
Zero please don't delete referenced material, this can be considered disruptive (referring to responses to the plunder). Also per upgrade of the State of Palestine, your insisting on utilization of "Palestine" as political division here doesn't make sense, rather confusing. There was no "Palestine" administrative division at the time, and this can easily be considered WP:SYNTH. No one is contesting that this area was named Palestine, but also Galilee and Land of Israel, and even Syria (Ottoman Syria in administrative sense) and few more terms. We should utilize the proper administrative and political division - Egyptian-occupied Ottoman Syria is the most correct for 1834, or Egyptian-occupied Eyalet of Beirut.GreyShark (dibra) 21:22, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you realize the implications ensuing from your animadversion against the narrative voice for 'Palestine' throughout history i.e, you are arguing implicitly that wherever the West Bank is mentioned we should write: 'Israeli-occupied West Bank/Palestine'. Historians don't do that for all periods of Palestine's history. By this antic logic of temporal bureacratization, we can't write the history of Judea except by regular name changes calling it in terms of a division of the Fifth Satrapy under Cyrus, or of an eparchy under the Seleucids, of a province of Syro-Palestina under the Romans, of Palestrina Secunda under the Byzantines, of Falastin under the Arabs, of the sanjuk of Jerusalem under the Ottomans, of the Eyalet of Beirut under the Egyptians - sheer nonsense that flies in the face of so many books from Moshe Gil's to Gudrun Krämer's, who describe all these events within the context of Palestine. What's the problem with the universally used 'Palestine' here, Greyshark?Nishidani (talk) 16:37, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It this long political manifest is why you insist to remove category:1834 in Ottoman Syria?GreyShark (dibra) 18:10, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * There is nothing in the least SYNTH about "Palestine" in this context. Following the majority of reliable sources is the opposite of SYNTH. If we are formulating a sentence specifically about government administration then we should strive to use the correct official division names, but if we merely want to inform the readers where a place was we should use the common name for its region. Zerotalk 19:52, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * It is Upper Galilee to be most precise.GreyShark (dibra) 18:33, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This has been a problem for a while. Some edits are several years old, like this one I saw today when I was reading about a topic, but most are newer. "Palestine" is what the vast majority of scholars and other reliable sources writes and is also more precise than the large region that was Ottoman Syria. In this case, it also changes the meaning because the part about rising Palestinian nationalism is changed to "Arab nationalism" and a link to that, though the source speaks about the former. --IRISZOOM (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I saw 's edit on Gaza City and decided to look around and found how it got there. It was not only one word that was changed but many. As I said above, it is not only wrong to remove Palestine because it's the most used term but also because it changes the meaning. Being "in", "biggest" etc. of Palestine is not the same and being the biggest in southern Levant or Levant etc. Similar edits were discussed on Talk:Gaza City/Archive 1. --IRISZOOM (talk) 20:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

A new source
This source in Hebrew Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and Its Yishuv (or in pdf) looks like it might have some well sourced information on this topic. Oncenawhile (talk) 01:00, 19 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure much is there. Google translation of part of first para on page 32: Fellahin uprising of 1834 began in Safed, with the support of the governor and the majority of dignitaries and Muslim religious leaders. For 33 days, the rebels paid distress and attaches to the Jews of Safed. Muslim fellahin, Safed residents of nearby villages, looted and destroyed houses in the Jewish quarter and desecrated the 13 synagogues that. Men were beaten, tortured, maimed and women were placed which were attacked and raped; Even Hannibal was ashamed of such acts. However, only a few Jews were killed. Zerotalk 02:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

1833 and 1834 / Sternhell
The Sternhell quote refers to an event in 1833, which the editor who linked it here presumably figured was a typo or similar. However, the Jewish Encyclopedia source we use in the article states "In 1833, at the approach of Ibrahim Pasha, the Jewish quarter was plundered by the Druses, although the inhabitants escaped to the suburbs; and the following year it was again pillaged, the persecution lasting thirty-three days, and causing damage to the amount of 135,250 piasters, according to Löwe's investigations". So it looks like there were two events. Oncenawhile (talk) 08:31, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Article name
Per the discussion above, it has been established that there is no WP:COMMONNAME for this event. So the remaining question is what is the best name for the article based on the description of the event in the sources. See below a list of the manner of description used by the sources used in the article, as well as additional sources. Note where I have not linked the text, the link is already provided in the article.

[EDIT: added more sources, including those suggested by other editors]

Pogrom: (4)
 * Ronald Florence "pogroms against the Jews in Safed in 1834 and 1838"
 * Bostom: "Safed pogrom" Bostom is a controversial scholar who writes polemics against Islamic history
 * Lipman: "there had been worse 'pogroms'"  (note the use of pogrom is shown in inverted commas)
 * Yerushalmi: "attacked the Jewish quarter of Safed, looting... Safed pogrom" (in the latter reference, it's not clear from the quote whether he is referring to the 1833 or 1834 event, or another event)

Looting / Pillage / Plunder / Sack (per the wikipedia article Looting, these words are synonyms): (19)
 * The Hebrew wikipedia name uses the term "הביזה" or looting / plunder
 * This presumably comes direct from the testimony of Issac Farhi who focuses on the looting / plundering as the primary aspect of the event.
 * Ben-Zvi "Lootings of 1834"
 * Bloch "looting and murder... riots"
 * Nathan Schur "looting"
 * Jeff Halper "looting and killing"
 * Neophytos "looting"
 * Halper "looting and killing"
 * Abstracts "looting of Safed in 1834"
 * Katz "peasants looted Jewish and Christian houses and raped women"
 * Encyclopaedia Judaica "looting of 1834" and "1834, the year the community was pillaged by Arab villagers" article "Safed"
 * Finkelstein "pillage"
 * Bernard Lewis "violence and pillage"
 * Kramer "pillage"
 * Jewish encyclopedia "pillaged"
 * Green "Sack of Safed" and  "sacked"
 * Karagila "Sack of Safed"
 * Mordechai Abir "Pretese degli Ebrei di Safed dopo il saccheggio del 1834 fino alle sommosse dei Drusi del 1838"
 * Schwartz "scene of rapine"
 * Yerushalmi (per pogrom list above)

Riots (2)
 * Yaari "riots in Safed"
 * Martin Sicker "rioting and excesses"

Attack (2)
 * Israel M. Ta-Shma "attacked"
 * Almog "attacks"

Other
 * Kinglake uses the term "insurrection", presumably referring to the wider regional uprising, and his description is almost exclusively referring to the looting.
 * Gabriel Baer "pogrom-like" [i.e. not actually a pogrom]
 * Rossoff "Druze massacre of 1834"
 * Rabinowicz "during the Peasant's revolt"
 * Harris: "peasant insurrction... Druze uprising"
 * JPost: "rampage"

Oncenawhile (talk) 09:09, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

1834 looting of Safed
Per the thread immediately above, I propose to rename this article "1834 looting of Safed".

Comments grateful appreciated. Oncenawhile (talk) 09:10, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. Anyway you should make an official request per the process (that I don't known)... Pluto2012 (talk) 18:37, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose - First of all Hebrew wiki can't be used as a source moreover Hebrew sources or their title translation by JStor are not indication of WP:COMMONNAME and there are plenty of sources that call the event as pogrom ,,,, and many more.--Shrike (talk) 19:48, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Shrike, please could you provide the titles of the books you are sourcing and the quotes you are referring to? Of the links you posted, the first two are already in my list in the thread above (one of which says "pogrom-like", not pogrom), the third link doesn't work, the fourth link provides a snippet search function in which the word "pogrom" appears zero times, and the fifth link does not have a functioning search tool.
 * Thanks. Oncenawhile (talk) 21:04, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * ,, I ask you to provide links to your sources in similar manner thanks--Shrike (talk) 21:21, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Shrike, thanks for clarifying. I have added your additional links into the list above. As requested, I have added by links in the same format - they all point to the specific page or quote. The quotes which are not linked in the list refer to sources already used and linked in the article at 1834_Safed_pogrom.
 * Can you bring any more sources supporting use of the word pogrom? The list so far suggests it is rarely used. Oncenawhile (talk) 08:11, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * How much sources use "looting"? not some Hebrew translated titles or abstracts but books in English as we WP:ENGLISH Wikipedia not "Hebrew translated from English" Wiki.

Note that there is a clear search bias towards "pogrom" since there is no way to search for its absence. (One can use the key "-progrom" but that removes sources that use the word even on a different subject). Zerotalk 09:23, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Shrike, it depends if you include synonyms. Note that a number of common terms mean exactly the same thing, but via different derivations:
 * Loot is derived from Sanskrit "booty, stolen property"
 * Pillage is derived from Latin via French "to plunder", possibly originally "to strip away"
 * Sack is from Latin via French "to put plundered things into a sack"
 * Plunder is derived from German "to take away household furniture"
 * Rapine is from Latin via French "act of robbery, plundering, pillage"
 * If you just count "looting" and ignore the Hebrew sources, I count 9 above.
 * If you include the synonyms (and exclude the Italian), I count 17.
 * Oncenawhile (talk) 18:51, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Shrike, I just messaged you at User_talk:Shrike. Please could you let us know what your view is here? Oncenawhile (talk) 23:32, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * We looking for the common name per WP:COMMON We can't put together various terms like pillage ,sacking and etc and say they are the same and similar to looting  so we shouldn't rename the article because of it.--Shrike (talk) 16:56, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment Shrike. I am keen to close this long running debate if possible. To refresh everyone's memory, this article was originally named Safed Great Plunder, and Chesdovi changed the name unilaterally (see his explanation here at the time ), and was immediately contested. No consensus was ever gained on Chesdovi's renaming, and more sources were brought in the meantime.

Your comment back then was "If the most of the sources use word pogrom then we should use it too", and I agree with your logic. However, as I have shown above, most sources actually use the word "looting" (9 sources), with only 4 using the word "pogrom".

Could you please clarify, based on the sources we now have available, what you believe is the best title for this article and why?

Oncenawhile (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think current name is fine but if you think that article should be renamed use WP:RM/CM. --Shrike (talk) 06:46, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I am rather convinced by the arguments in favor of the move but we shoulod indeed follow WP:RM/CM. Pluto2012 (talk) 07:23, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 00:52, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

1834 Safed pogrom → 1834 looting of Safed – Background: The article began as Safed Great Plunder, was moved without consensus with this comment, and was immediately contested. The dispute over the move was based on (1) that the Hebrew wikipedia name uses the term "הביזה" which means looting / plunder, and (2) that per definitions of pogrom, the term pogrom is inconsistent in usage and interpretation when applied retrospectively / metaphorically as it is here.

Sources: No single name was found to meet the criteria of WP:COMMONNAME. The list above at is a list of the descriptive words used to describe this event from a review of the sources in the article and others on google books. It shows:
 * 1) Only 4 sources call this a pogrom, and three of them have problems (one is a controversial scholar with a motive for implying Islamic antisemitism, another uses inverted commas, and another is not clear from the quote whether he is referring to this event or another event in 1833)
 * 2) The most commonly used term is "looting" (9 sources). More broadly, 19 sources (16 in English) have been found using the term looting or its synonyms

Hence I propose we move this article to "1834 looting of Safed". Oncenawhile (talk) 08:06, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Support In more of the fact that more sources use the term "looting" or refer to the events in term of "attack", it makes sense that these events were not a "pogrom". A "pogrom" refers to a massacre during an attack of Jewish communities with the support of local authorities and often based on antisemite claims. These events didn't only focus on Jews but happened in whole Palestine during a "transfer" of control from Egyptians to Ottomans. The Jews were not particularly targetted by these attacks. Pluto2012 (talk) 08:17, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. The word pogrom implies a direct connection between the mobs that plunder and murder Jews, and local authorities, which is not the case here as Pluto notes.. It is not a synonym for outbursts of violence against Jews, in the way the four sources tend to use it as. Secondly, Oncenawhile0s source analysis sides with looting.Nishidani (talk) 10:07, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. Actually I'd prefer "plunder", but "looting" is ok. The reasons: (1) It is more common in sources, and especially more common in detailed sources.  Most offered uses of "pogrom" are only mentions in passing.  (2) It is less politically charged.  (3) It matches the events better. Even though there was violence against persons, it is clear that plunder was the primary objective of the rioters. Zerotalk 11:59, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose The word "pogrom" used widely in scholarly and other literature there is no need to change the name.[,,,,,,,.Moreover like I said earlier the looting term is not [[WP:COMMON]] most of the sources is just translation from Hebrew abstracts or translation of title of Hebrew articleby jstor so they can't be indication in WP:ENGLISH wikipedia.--Shrike (talk) 19:35, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 46 is a reference en passant, which combines 34 with 38, bundling them as pogroms
 * 47 says 'pogrom-like' more cautiously, not 'pogrom'.
 * 48 uses 'pogroms' in inverted commas, placing a 'doubt' over the precision of that term
 * 49 leads me to a wiki page.
 * 50 reduplicates the source used in 46 (Florence)
 * 51 Diana Muir, en passant, is an environmental historian.
 * 52 Gil Carl AlRoy's 'Semitic cousins’: ‘amity” before the Jewish state,' dates back to 1970. He was a professor of political science at Hunter College, and the link does not yield up the precise details to judge.
 * 53 Herb Keinon, is a specialist in diplomatic news, writing an op-ed for the JPost in 1997.
 * In short, the scholarly literature consists of the few sources already used in our text. It is not 'scholarly', given its imprecision, which scholars indicate in the matter I have shown above.Nishidani (talk) 20:01, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 49 is google book link.WP:COMMON doesn't require that words will be used in scholarly literature though most of the links is either by scholars or the articles/books printed in scholar publish house. Anyhow can you please show me where looting used in depth and not an en passant.Some of the "looting" sources is mere title or abstract translation so they shouldn't even count to WP:COMMON in WP:ENGLISH wiki.--Shrike (talk) 07:49, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * 49 is not a book link for me either. It is a plain Google search. Zerotalk 11:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Here is one slightly for you, though not enough I think. The book of Parfitt devotes several pages to the events of 1834 in Safed.  He introduces it as a "revolt" and refers to it that way multiple times. In his description of events he uses the words "loot" and "plunder" repeatedly. But in one place he says "As the pogrom took its course" (p. 61).  This all shows that Parfitt considers "pogrom" appropriate, but it isn't the primary way he describes the events. Zerotalk 11:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Support IPreference: "plunder" > "looting" > "pogrom". Reasoning per Zero. Kingsindian &#9821;&#9818; 21:39, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Speedy renaming of this article
The current title negates the fact that many people were killed in Safed and the renaming of this article was done without consensus. All the sources presented are pointing out that beyond looting there were massacres of people, something that was played down and omitted with the current title. The arguments shown by Shrike were ignored. --Tritomex (talk) 12:43, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Read the thread. Shrike's arguments were analysed in detail and found defective.Nishidani (talk) 18:35, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Only Jewish historians
All the references used in the article are based on Jewish historians writings, there is hardly any third-party Non-Jewish source.

This should be at least clarified throughout the article.

--Ahmodye (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please don't poison the well by applying yellow badges/triple parentheses. Do any of the sources identify the historians in this way? Jayjg (talk) 23:25, 8 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Well, Louis Finkelstein is a Talmud scholar and leader of Conservative Judaism , abraham P bloch is a Rabbi , Martin Sicker is an Israeli private lecturer on Judaism , on what basis are they considered reliable sources ? how Andrew G. Bostom , who is a controversial American critic of Islam who published articles in FrontPage Magazine (which was described as Islamophobic far-right by many scholars) to be a reliable source ? Isn't this against Neutral point of view ? --Ahmodye (talk) 02:08, 12 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Most historians of Jewish history are Jewish. It is no more surprising than the equal fact that most historians of American history are American. It has nothing to do with quality. We want the most reliable sources and we don't give a fuck what ethnic group they belong to. You are right about only one thing: Bostom is totally out of the question as a source and to see him listed there side by side with first-rate scholars like Parfitt is a travesty. Zerotalk 13:14, 12 November 2021 (UTC)