Bayt Nuba ( ar, بيت نوبا) was 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 ...
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, located halfway between
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
and
al-Ramla
Ramla or Ramle ( he, רַמְלָה, ''Ramlā''; ar, الرملة, ''ar-Ramleh'') is a city in the Central District of Israel. Today, Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with both a significant Jewish and Arab populations.
The city was f ...
.
[ Historically identified with the ]biblical
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
city of Nob
, also known by the name NoB, is a Japanese singer. He is the former lead singer of the band Make-Up and a Project.R member.
Overview
With Make-Up, he recorded several songs for the anime ''Saint Seiya'', including the first opening song " ...
mentioned in the Book of Samuel
The Book of Samuel (, ''Sefer Shmuel'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Samuel) in the Old Testament. The book is part of the narrative history of Ancient Israel called the Deuteronomistic history, a series of books (Joshu ...
,[ that association has been eschewed in modern times. The village is mentioned in extrabiblical sources including the writings of 5th-century Roman geographers, 12th-century Crusaders and a Jewish traveller, a 13th-century Syrian geographer, a 15th-century Arab historian, and Western travellers in the 19th century. Depopulated by ]Israeli forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the Israel, State of Israel. It consists of three servic ...
during the 1967 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 states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Jun ...
, it was subsequently leveled by military engineers using controlled explosions, and 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 Mevo Horon
Mevo Horon ( he, מְבוֹא חוֹרוֹן, ''lit.'' Horon Gateway) is an Israeli settlement and religious moshav shitufi in the West Bank. Located near Latrun and Modi'in, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Binyamin Regional Council. In ...
was established on its lands in 1970.[Legal Brief](_blank)
/ref>
History
In Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christia ...
's 5th century ''Onomasticon
Onomasticon may refer to:
*Onomasticon (Eusebius)
*Onomasticon of Amenope
*Onomasticon of Joan Coromines
*Onomasticon of Julius Pollux
*Onomasticon of Johann Glandorp
*''Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum
Onomasticon may refer to:
*Onomasticon (Eusebius ...
'', the village is mentioned under the name ''Beth Annabam'' and is situated at a distance of 8 Roman miles
The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 English ...
from Lydda
Lod ( he, לוד, or fully vocalized ; ar, اللد, al-Lidd or ), also known as Lydda ( grc, Λύδδα), is a city southeast of Tel Aviv and northwest of Jerusalem in the Central District of Israel. It is situated between the lower Shephe ...
.[Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p.]
14
His contemporary, Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...
, identifies it as biblical ''Nob
, also known by the name NoB, is a Japanese singer. He is the former lead singer of the band Make-Up and a Project.R member.
Overview
With Make-Up, he recorded several songs for the anime ''Saint Seiya'', including the first opening song " ...
''.[
During the ]Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...
, it was called ''Betynoble''.[ The Crusaders identified Beit Nuba with biblical Nob,][Stubbs, ed., 1864]
p. lxxxvii
as did the 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela
Benjamin of Tudela ( he, בִּנְיָמִין מִטּוּדֶלָה, ; ar, بنيامين التطيلي ''Binyamin al-Tutayli''; Tudela, Kingdom of Navarre, 1130 Castile, 1173) was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, an ...
.[ The village served as the forward position for ]Saladin
Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi () ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known by the epithet Saladin,, ; ku, سهلاحهدین, ; was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from an ethnic Kurdish family, he was the first of both Egypt and ...
's troops for their move towards Jerusalem in September 1187 and later for Richard the Lionheart
Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was overl ...
and his troops who camped there in 1191 and 1192.[Pringle, 1998, pp]
168
224 337
/ref>
Writing in the 13th century during the time of 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'') ...
rule over 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 ...
, Yaqut al-Hamawi
Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) ( ar, ياقوت الحموي الرومي) was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine Greek ancestry active during the late Abbasid period (12th-13th centuries). He is known fo ...
, the Syrian geographer, noted of Bayt Nuba, that it was, "A small town in the neighbourhood of Filastin ( Ar Ramlah)."[Le Strange, 1890, p]
415
A road from Ramla
Ramla or Ramle ( he, רַמְלָה, ''Ramlā''; ar, الرملة, ''ar-Ramleh'') is a city in the Central District of Israel. Today, Ramle is one of Israel's mixed cities, with both a significant Jewish and Arab populations.
The city was f ...
to Jerusalem that passed through Bayt Nuba, al-Qubeiba, and Nabi Samwil
An-Nabi Samwil, also called al-Nabi Samuil ( ar, النبي صموئيل ''an-Nabi Samu'il'', translit: "the prophet Samuel"), is a Palestinian village of nearly 220 inhabitants in the Quds Governorate of the State of Palestine, located in the We ...
was the preferred route for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land at the time.[Pringle, 1998, p]
168
/ref> On the maps produced by the Palestine Exploration Fund
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, and is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study ...
, the road, which stretches from al-Qubeiba to Jerusalem, is marked in the legend as a Roman road.
Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi
Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī (Arabic: ) (1456–1522), often simply Mujir al-Din, was a Jerusalemite ''qadi'' and historian whose principal work chronicled the history of Jerusalem and Hebron in the Middle Ages.Little, 1995, p. 237.van Donze ...
(1496), the Jerusalemite ''qadi'' and Arab historian, discussed the village's name in the context of other villages beginning with the word ''Bayt'' ("House"). He noted that conventional wisdom among the locals of his time held that they are named for Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...
prophets that were thought to have resided there in antiquity. He also delineated the village as forming the westernmost limit of what was considered the area of Jerusalem at his time.[Moudjir ed-dyn, 1876, pp]
202
230
/ref>
Ottoman era
The waqf
A waqf ( ar, وَقْف; ), also known as hubous () or '' mortmain'' property is an inalienable charitable endowment under Islamic law. It typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for Muslim religious or charitabl ...
custodian of the mosque
A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...
in Bayt Nuba (and 'Allar) in 1810 was appointed by the Ottoman imperial authorities, and hailed from the Jerusalem family of notables, the Dajanis.[Kushner, 1986]
p. 111
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith
Eli Smith (born September 13, 1801, in Northford, Connecticut, to Eli and Polly (Whitney) Smith, and died January 11, 1857, in Beirut, Lebanon) was an American Protestant missionary and scholar. He graduated from Yale College in 1821 and from Andov ...
visited ''Beit Nubah'' in 1838[Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, p]
64
/ref> and 1852,[Robinson and Smith, 1856, p]
145
/ref> and identified it as the ''Nobe'' mentioned by Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...
and considered by some of their contemporaries to be ''Bethannaba''.[ ]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 ...
noted in 1863 the presence of a small mosque in the village named ''Djama Sidi Ahmed et-Tarfinù''. At his time, ''Beit-Nouba'' was made up of about 400 inhabitants whose homes were constructed on a hill between two valleys. In large, modern buildings in the village could be seen traces of more ancient building materials incorporated therein and there are some ancient cisterns as well.[Guérin, 1868, pp]
285
286.
Socin
Sozzini, Sozini, Socini or Socin is an Italian noble family originally from Siena in Tuscany, where the family were noted as bankers and merchants, jurists and humanist scholars. The family has been described as "the most famous legal dynasty of t ...
found from an official Ottoman village list from about 1870 that ''Bet Nuba'' had 23 houses and a population of 97, though the population count included men, only. Hartmann found that ''Bet Nuba'' had 20 houses.
In 1873, Charles Simon 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 ...
discovered the remains of a large medieval church in the village.[Pringle, 1993, pp]
102
103 In 1883, the 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 Bayt Nuba as a "good-sized village on flat ground".
In 1896 the population of ''Bet Nuba'' was estimated to be about 723 persons.
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, Bayt Nuba had a population of 839 inhabitants, all Muslims.[Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p]
21
/ref> This had increased in the 1931 census to 944, still all Muslim, in 226 houses.[Mills, 1932, p]
18
/ref>
In the 1945 statistics the population of Beit Nuba and Ajanjul
Ajanjul ( ar, عجنجول, ''Ajanjǔl'') was a Palestinian Arab village in the Ramle Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine. It was depopulated during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine. History
The Abu Ghosh family took up residence ...
was 1,240, all Muslims,[Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p]
29
/ref> while the total land area was 11,401 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, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,002 dunams were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 6,997 for cereals, while 74 dunams were classified as built-up areas.
Jordanian era
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 garrisoned by the Arab Legion
The Arab Legion () was the police force, then regular army of the Emirate of Transjordan, a British protectorate, in the early part of the 20th century, and then of independent Jordan, with a final Arabization of its command taking place in 195 ...
to defend the Latrun salient. Located behind the front line, it was subject to a skirmish attack launched by Israeli forces in Operation Yoram on the night of June 8, 1948.
The 1949 armistice line fell just a few kilometers to the south and west of villages in the Latrun salient and with a dispute between Israel and Jordan over where it lay exactly, much of the area surrounding Bayt Nuba was declared no man's land, resulting in social and economic separation from the surrounding areas. Residents of Bayt Nuba and other Latrun villages were granted Jordanian citizenship following Jordan's annexation of the 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 ...
in 1950. Many were prompted many to leave the area to seek livelihoods in Jordan, the Persian Gulf, South America or elsewhere due to violence between villagers and Israeli troops and the loss of access to farmlands.[Kelly, 2009]
pp. 29-32
/ref>
In 1961, the population was 1,350 persons.[Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p]
24
It was further noted (note 2) that it was governed by a mukhtar
A mukhtar ( ar, مختار, mukhtār, chosen one; el, μουχτάρης) is a village chief in the Levant: "an old institution that goes back to the time of the Ottoman rule". According to Amir S. Cheshin, Bill Hutman and Avi Melamed, the muk ...
.
1967, and aftermath
The Latrun area was captured by Israeli troops in the first few hours of the 1967 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 states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Jun ...
and the next night, orders were broadcast by Israeli military jeeps to villagers in Bayt Nuba, Yalo, and Imwas
Imwas or Emmaus ( ar, عِمواس), known in classical times as Nicopolis ( gr, Νικόπολις, lit=City of Victory), was a Palestinian Arab village located southeast of the city of Ramla and from Jerusalem in the Latrun salient of the We ...
to leave their homes, resulting in some 12,000 people leaving in the space of a few hours. With the war's completion, a radio announcement from the military said villagers in the West Bank who had vacated their homes should return; however, the villagers of Bayt Nuba and the others from the Latrun area were forbidden from doing so as most of the area was declared a closed military zone. Those who tried to return were stopped at checkpoints where some were shot at. The built up area of Bayt Nuba was destroyed in military engineered explosions after the war's end, an act witnessed by some of the former residents who had fled nearby hills. After the destruction, the remains of the medieval church, first described by Clermont-Ganneau, have not been located.[
Part of the farmlands of Bayt Nuba lay outside the closed military zone and some refugees from the village rented homes in a nearby village with a population of around 7,000 (called "Bayt Hajjar" by the author) to continue farming those lands.][Kelly, 2006]
p. 9
/ref> The settlement of Mevo Horon
Mevo Horon ( he, מְבוֹא חוֹרוֹן, ''lit.'' Horon Gateway) is an Israeli settlement and religious moshav shitufi in the West Bank. Located near Latrun and Modi'in, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Binyamin Regional Council. In ...
was built on the lands of Bayt Nuba in 1970.
References
Bibliography
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External links
Welcome To Bayt Nuba
Bayt Nuba
Zochrot
Zochrot ( he, זוכרות; "Remembering"; ar, ذاكرات; "Memories") is an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2002. Based in Tel Aviv, its aim is to promote awareness of the Palestinian ''Nakba'' ("Catastrophe"), including the 1948 Pa ...
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17:
IAA
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{{Authority control
Disestablishments in the West Bank Governorate
Arab villages depopulated after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War