Jit, Qalqilya

Jit ( ar, جيت) is a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank, located 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) west of Nablus. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the village had a population of approximately 2,320 inhabitants in 2006.

Location

Jit is located (horizontally) north-east of Qalqilya. It is bordered by Sarra and Beit Iba to the east, Fara'ata and Immatain to the south, Kafr Qaddum to the west, and Qusin to the north.

History

No Byzantine remains have been found here, leading scholars to suggest that the early Muslim inhabitants came there as a result of migration, and not conversion. However, in 2011 two reliefs of menorahs dating from the Byzantine period, probably of Samaritan origin, were discovered in Jit.

Diya al-Din (1173-1245) refers to the presence of Muslims in Jit during his lifetime, and that followers of Ibn Qudamah lived here.

Ottoman era

In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as ''Jit Jammal'', located in the ''Nahiya'' of Jabal Qubal of the '' Liwa'' of Nablus. The population was 50 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, such as wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and beehives, a press for olive oil or grape syrup, in addition to occasional revenues and a fixed tax for people of Nablus area; a total of 20,000 akçe.

A map from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by Pierre Jacotin named it ''Qarihagi,'' (Quryet Jitt) as a village by the road from Jaffa to Nablus.

In 1838, ''Kuryet Jit'' was noted as a village located in the District of ''Jurat 'Amra'', south of Nablus.

In 1870, Victor Guérin noted between seven hundred and fifty and eight hundred people in the village. Also, "here Guérin observed among the houses a certain number of cut stones of apparent
antiquity. Many of the houses are in a ruinous condition, others are completely destroyed. On the north-west side of the hill he found a great well, into which one descends by fifteen steps, now fallen to pieces. It gives a supply of water which never fails. The place is probably the old ''Gitta'' mentioned by Justin Martyr and Eusebius as the birthplace of Simon the Magician."

In 1882, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described ''Kuryet Jit'' as: "A well-built stone village with a high house in it, standing on a knoll by the main road, surrounded with olives; it has a well to the west; the inhabitants are remarkable for their courtesy, this part of the country and all the district west of it being little visited by tourists."

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, ''Qariyet Jit'' had a population of 285 Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Nablus, p.
24
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 289 Muslims, in 70 houses.

In the 1945 statistics the population of Jit was 440 (all Muslim),Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
18
/ref> while the total land area was 6,461 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 816 were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 3,915 for cereals, while 61 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas.

Jordanian era

In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements

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