I've asked this already but it gained no traction so I feel like this is a better wording of the question/title. I found an excellent list of population per county in late medieval/early modern time periods for England here: ENGLISH MEDIEVAL POPULATION: RECONCILING TIME SERIES AND CROSS SECTIONAL EVIDENCE (warwick.ac.uk) (It's near the bottom, Table 8b.) Is there something like this for other countries in the medieval/early modern time, preferably around 1400 (post-Black Death)-1600? This can be for any other country/region in the world, and what would be the absolute best is if it was by county/region of the country, so I can see the population in different areas of it. I know population was rarely counted back then, but it would be really nice to find some more that show different populations by different areas of countries in 1400-1600. :D I would especially love something like this for the Ottomans by eyalet/viyalet or whatever but anything works, anywhere in the world!
For the Spanish territories there are a few "censos de pecheros" (tax-payers census) for the late 15th and the 16th centuries. You shall find the population of the different territories listed by "vecinos" (neighbours), which is more or less to say paterfamilias. To get a reasonable idea of the actual population, you should multiply the number of vecinos by 5.
I'll give you some links in a moment.
Censo de pecheros, 1528, volume 1. https://www.ine.es/prodyser/pubweb/censo_pecheros/tomo1.pdf
Censo de pecheros, 1528, volume 2. https://www.ine.es/prodyser/pubweb/censo_pecheros/tomo2.pdf
Relaciones topográficas, 1578 https://bibliotecadigital.jcyl.es/es/consulta/registro.cmd%3Fid%3D2367
About the censo de los obispos, 1587 https://www.ine.es/explica/docs/historia_censos.pdf
Censo de los millones, 1591 https://www.ine.es/ss/Satellite?L=es_ES&c=INEPublicacion_C&cid=1259949890789&p=1254735110672&pagename=ProductosYServicios%2FPYSLayout¶m1=PYSDetalleGratuitas
A good compilation of different 16th century census for the provinces of Castile, made in 1829. It also includes the Censo de Quintanilla of 1482. https://bibliotecadigital.jcyl.es/es/consulta/registro.cmd?id=7823
I hope this helps
The major source for population estimates during this period derives from the tahrir defters. These were records of the number of tax-paying people of a specific town or city. Notably, they are not a record of the total population of the town or city. However, many models for deriving the total population from these statistics have been suggested.
The most common calculation I have seen is:
(((# of tax-payers) / (% of people subject to the tax)) * (AVG. # of people per household))
So, if you'd like an example of this, we can look at "Ottoman Tax Registers as a Source for Labor Relations in Ottoman Bursa", which puts the number of tax-payers in Bursa at 5748 in 1487, 9525 in 1521, and 14394 in 1573.^(1) Using this incredibly rough formula, we come to 31,933 people in 1487; 52,916 people in 1521; and 79,966 people in 1573.
Using "Wine Production, Marketing and Consumption in the Ottoman Crimea, 1520-1542"^(2), if we were to look at Kefe, a Crimean holding of the Ottomans, we find that there are a reported 1790 Muslim households. With Muslims making up 45% of the population in Kefe, according to the same tahrir defters used in this source, we can derive the total number of households. Therefore, we can get a rough estimate and say that there was around 18080 people in Kefe in 1520.
If we wanted to look at İçil, in Anatolia, we find that in 1584, there are a recorded 28,003 households.^(3) Using the same calculation, we get a rough estimate of 155,572 people.
While these numbers are interesting, they are certainly inaccurate. The "% of people subjected to the tax" is still up for debate. Some scholars argue around 10%, while others argue that this percentage is much higher.^(3)
And depending on what formula you are using, the numbers can significantly vary. For example, in "A Portrait of the Ottoman Cities", the author suggests that by the end of the 16th century, there were about 8000 tax-payers in Bursa.^(5) Compared to the estimated 14,394 in our earlier source.
While these methods for determining population are clearly inaccurate and debated, they are—for now—the standard for estimating population for Ottoman historians.
Unfortunately, I have never come across an article or book that compiles the information of all these various tax records. Therefore, finding information on a large number of towns and cities is rather difficult and you must rely on small snippets of the tax records that the academic authors' use to illustrate their larger points. For example, the information on Kefe is from an article about wine production.
The University of Connecticut has put together a list of some published tax records. But I have yet to learn Turkish, unfortunately, which a majority of the sources are written in. And even if I was fluent, very few of the sources are available through my university's library. They also have an Excel sheet, "Tax Rate in Ottoman Districts" with this information written down, but it only contains ~40 entries and is fairly unfruitful for our purpose of determining population.
As we can see, determining population in the Ottoman state during this period is a bit tricky and, unfortunately, the information is not easily accessible. For your project, I would recommend just trying your best, as this information is hard to gather even if you are familiar with the sources.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
^(1) Ottoman Tax Registers as a Source for Labor Relations in Ottoman Bursa (Hofmeester and Lucassen), see page 29.
^(2) Wine Production, Marketing and Consumption in the Ottoman Crimea (Halenko), 1520-1542, see page 531.
^(3) Ottoman Tax Registers as a Source for Labor Relations in Ottoman Bursa (Hofmeester and Lucassen), see page 30.
^(4) Internal migrations in sixteenth century Anatolia (Gümüşçü), see page 240.
^(5) A Portrait of the Ottoman Cities (Acun), see page 268.