Al-Hamra ( ar, الحمرا), was a Palestinian

Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...

village in the

District of Baysan The Beisan Subdistrict ( ar, قضاء بيسان, he, נפת ביסאן) was one of the subdistricts of Mandatory Palestine. It was located around the city of Baysan. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the subdistrict disintegrated; most of it beca ...

. It was located 7.5 kilometres south of

Baysan Beit She'an ( he, בֵּית שְׁאָן '), also Beth-shean, formerly Beisan ( ar, بيسان ), is a town in the Northern District of Israel. The town lies at the Beit She'an Valley about 120 m (394 feet) below sea level. Beit She'an is be ...

. It was depopulated by the

Israeli Army The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branc ...

during the

1948 Arab-Israeli War Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

. The village was named after the

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...

tribe who settled in the village lands centuries ago.Khalidi, 1992, p. 50 The population in 1945 was 730, expanding to 847 in 1948. In 1945 the village's total land area was recorded as 11,511

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s, 8,623 of which was Arab owned while 2,153 duname were owned by

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

with the remainder being public property. Al-Hamra was situated 175 meters below sea level.

History

There are archaeological sites located just east of the village that are traced back to the era of the

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

ites, particularly the '' tells'' of Abu Kharaj and al-Shuqaf. Al-Hamra receives its name from the al-Hamra clan, a branch of the al-Suqur ("the Falcons") tribe. According to Walid Khalidi, the al-Hamra clan settled in the area several centuries ago because of its abundant water supplies and fertile soil. The first reference to the village was in 1281 when Qalawun, the

Bahri Mamluk The Bahri dynasty or Bahriyya Mamluks ( ar, المماليك البحرية, translit=al-Mamalik al-Baḥariyya) was a Mamluk dynasty of mostly Turkic origin that ruled the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate from 1250 to 1382. They followed the Ayyubid d ...

sultan, traveled through it on his way to

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

from

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. During the rule of

Sanjar al-Jawli Sanjar ibn Abdullah Alam al-Din Abu Sa'id al-Jawli (also spelled Sangar al-Gawli, Sanjar al-Jawali or Sinjar al-Jawili, 1255–14 January 1345) was a powerful Mamluk ''emir'' and the Governor of Gaza and much of Palestine between 1311–20 during ...

(

Governor of Gaza The following is a list of rulers of Gaza. During Mamluk and early Ottoman rule, Gaza served as the capital of a province which at times included most of central and southern Palestine or the coastal plain up to Jaffa. Ayyubids *Nasir al-Din ...

and much of

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

from 1311-20 and 1329) he ordered the construction of Khan Salar, a caravansary named after his friend, the former viceroy of the sultanate Emir Salar.

British Mandate era

During the beginning of the 20th-century, al-Hamra's homes were widely scattered and were either permanent adobe brick structures or camel-hair tents. The village's main crops were grain, oranges, olives and vegetables. In the 1945 statistics, in the British Mandate era, Al-Hamra had a population of 730

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

s and the total land area was 11,511

dunums A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

. Of this, Arabs used 32 dunams for irrigated areas and plantations, 8,427 was used for cereals, while 733 dunams were uncultivable.Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p
134
/ref>

1948, aftermath

No visible structures remained in the village since its depopulation by Israeli forces in 1948. Trees, including fig groves, cacti and grass covered the site when Khalidi visited in the early 1990s.

References

Bibliography

* * * * *

External links

al-Hamra (Baysan)
Zochrot, *Survey of Western Palestine Map 9:
IAAWikimedia commons
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamra, al- Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Bedouin groups Palestinian bedouins