al-Midya ( ar, المدية) is a

Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

village in the

Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate The Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate ( ar, محافظة رام الله والبيرة ') is one of 16 governorates of Palestine. It covers a large part of the central West Bank, on the northern border of the Jerusalem Governorate. Its district ...

in the western

West Bank The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, located west of

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ar, رام الله, , God's Height) is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank that serves as the ''de facto'' administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusale ...

. According to the

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS; ar, الجهاز المركزي للإحصاء الفلسطيني) is the official statistical institution of the State of Palestine. Its main task is to provide credible statistical figures a ...

, the village had a population of over 1,301 inhabitants in 2007.

Location

Al Midya is located (horizontally) west of

. It is bordered by

Ni'lin Ni'lin ( ar, نعلين) is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank, located west of Ramallah. Ni'lin is about east of the 1949 Armistice Line (Green Line) bordered by Deir Qaddis, the Israeli set ...

to the east and north, the Green Line (the Armistice Line 1949) to the west, and Saffa to the south.

History

The ancient village site is located at ''Ras al-Midya'', S-E of the village, where pottery from the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

and later periods has been found. Al-Midya was apparently mentioned by Ishtori Haparchi during the

Mamluk Mamluk ( ar, مملوك, mamlūk (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural), translated as "one who is owned", meaning " slave", also transliterated as ''Mameluke'', ''mamluq'', ''mamluke'', ''mameluk'', ''mameluke'', ''mamaluke'', or ''marmeluke'') ...

era.

Ottoman era

El Midieh-Modin from the 1871-77 Palestine Exploration Fund Survey of Palestine

Al-Midya was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

in 1517 with all 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 ...

, and in the 1596 tax−records it appeared under the name of ''Midya as-Sarqiyya'' as being in the ''

Nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' of Ramla, part of

Gaza Sanjak Gaza Sanjak ( ar, سنجق غزة) was a sanjak of the Damascus Eyalet, Ottoman Empire centered in Gaza. In the 16th century it was divided into ''nawahi'' (singular: ''nahiya''; third-level subdivisions): Gaza in the south and Ramla in the north ...

. It had a population of 25

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 ...

households and paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on wheat, barley, summer crops or olives or fruit trees, and a press for olives or grapes; a total of 6,500

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (also spelled ''akche'', ''akcheh''; ota, آقچه; ) refers to a silver coin which was the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. The word itself evolved from the word "silver or silver money", this word is deri ...

. In 1870,

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (15 September 1821 – 21 Septembe 1890) was a French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included Greece, Asia Mino ...

visited, and thought that ruins found there were the graves of the Maccabees. However,

Clermont-Ganneau Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (19 February 1846 – 15 February 1923) was a noted French Orientalist and archaeologist. Biography Clermont-Ganneau was born in Paris, the son of Simon Ganneau, a sculptor and mystic who died in 1851 when Cler ...

made extensive excavations later, and he found Christian crosses in the oldest part of the largest structure. He concluded the ruins were from the 5th century or later, that is, from the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

era. An official Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that ''el-medje'' had a total of 42 houses and a population of 159, though the population count included men only. It also noted that it was located half an hour east of

Jimzu Jimzu ( ar, جمزو), also known as Gimzo (meaning "sycamore plantation"), was a Palestinian village, located three miles southeast of Lydda. Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan of Mandatory Palestine, Jimzu was to form part of the proposed Arab st ...

. In 1882, PEF's ''

Survey of Western Palestine The PEF Survey of Palestine was a series of surveys carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1872 and 1877 for the Survey of Western Palestine and in 1880 for the Survey of Eastern Palestine. The survey was carried out after the ...

'' described ''Midieh'' as being a village of a "good size", with houses either built of

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

or stone. To the north was a small olive grove, to the south a tank. The most "peculiar feature" they found was named ''er Ras''. It was a high conical knoll, with a

maqam MAQAM is a US-based production company specializing in Arabic and Middle Eastern media. The company was established by a small group of Arabic music and culture lovers, later becoming a division of 3B Media Inc. "MAQAM" is an Arabic word meaning a ...

on top, and rock-cut tombs on the side.

British Mandate era

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divisi ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Midya had an all Muslim population of 245,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p
21
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 286, still all Muslim, in 59 houses.Mills, 1932,
67
/ref> In the 1945 statistics, the population of el Midya was 320 Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
30
/ref> who owned 7,020

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 of land according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 688 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 2,304 for cereals, while 8 dunams were built-up (urban) land. File:Shilta 1944.jpg, Al-Midya 1944 1:20,000 from 1919 survey File:Burj 1945.jpg, Al-Midya 1945 1:250,000 (upper left quadrant)

Jordanian era

In the wake of the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had ...

, and after the

1949 Armistice Agreements The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,Jordanian rule. The Jordanian census of 1961 found 570 inhabitants.

1967-present

Since the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...

in 1967, al-Midya has been under

Israeli occupation Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to a ...

. According to the

Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem The Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ; ar, معهد الابحاث التطبيقية - القدس) is a Palestinian NGO founded in 1990 with its main office in Bethlehem in the West Bank. ARIJ is actively working on research project ...

, Al-Midya's total land area was 6,959

s in 1942, but after 1948 most of the village's western land was expropriated, leaving 892 dunams, of which 217 were classified as built-up (urban) areas. In 1986, when the population amounted to 570 people, largely dependent on agriculture, the villagers were woken at 3:00 a.m. by the arrival of Israeli military vehicles and were informed that a curfew would be in place until 9 pm that day. Throughout the day, roughly 1,000 Israelis, soldiers protecting the operation and workers from the Israeli Lands Administration and Nature Reserve authorities who drove bulldozers to grade a road down a steep hillside to a rough track running below it, and chainsawed an olive grove extending over 1,100

s, destroying 3,000 trees. When the devastation was reported, Israel said the razing was to block Al-Midya from encroaching on Israeli state land, claiming that the olive trees were less than five years old, and planted to secure title to the area. Most cut trunks were over half a metre in diameter, suggesting centuries of growth. After the 1995 accords, 7.4% of village land was classified as

Area B The Palestinian enclaves are areas in the West Bank designated for Palestinians under a variety of U.S. and Israeli-led proposals to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The enclaves are often compared to the nominally self-governing black ...

, the remainder 92.6% as Area C. Israel has confiscated 186

s of land from Al-Midya for the construction of the

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...

of Hashmonaim. On 3 June 2022, a 17 year-old

by the name of Odeh Mohammed Odeh was shot dead by

IDF IDF or idf may refer to: Defence forces * Irish Defence Forces * Israel Defense Forces *Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006 * Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917 Organizations * Israeli Diving Federation * Interac ...

personnel in the village.

Archaeology

Excavations near Midya in the 19th century suggested that graves of the Maccabees were located here. Seven triangular tombs were found corresponding with the description of the first-century Jewish historian

Josephus Flavius Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for ''The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly d ...

, who wrote that the family’s seven pyramid-shaped graves were erected in the same place. In 1870, an ancient structure near the gravesite of Sheikh al-Arabawi, adjacent to al-Midya, was identified as a Hasmonean grave, but this was rejected by another biblical archaeologist,

Charles Clermont-Ganneau Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (19 February 1846 – 15 February 1923) was a noted French Orientalist and archaeologist. Biography Clermont-Ganneau was born in Paris, the son of Simon Ganneau, a sculptor and mystic who died in 1851 when Clermo ...

. Further exploration by the

Israel Antiquities Authority The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA, he, רשות העתיקות ; ar, داﺌرة الآثار, before 1990, the Israel Department of Antiquities) is an independent Israeli governmental authority responsible for enforcing the 1978 Law of ...

in the 21st century suggest the likelihood that Horbat Sheikh Gharbawi (Horbat Ha-Gardi) is the family tomb of the Maccabees, or marking the alleged tomb in the

era.Re'em, 2011
Horbat Ha-Gardi, Final Report
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * * * (p
341
ff, pic.) * p. 834-5? * * * * * * * * * * (pp.
235239
* *

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14
IAAWikimedia commons

Al Midya Village (Fact Sheet)

(ARIJ)
Al Midya Village Profile
ARIJ
Al Midya aerial photo
ARIJ {{DEFAULTSORT:Midya, Al- Villages in the West Bank Municipalities of the State of Palestine