Kafra ( ar, كفرة), 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 10.5 kilometres north 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 ...
. Built along both sides of the
Wadi
Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water ...
Kafra, the village had been known by this name since at least the time of 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 ...
.
[Khalidi, 1992, p. 52] It was depopulated by the
Israel Defense Forces during the
1948 Palestine War on May 16, 1948.
History
Adolf Neubauer
Adolf Neubauer (11 March 1831 in Bittse, Hungary – 6 April 1907, London) was at the Bodleian Library and reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University.
Biography
He was born in Bittse (Nagybiccse), Upper Hungary (now Bytča in Slovaki ...
connected it with a place mentioned in the Talmud, called Kefra.
The Crusaders
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 ...
spelled it ''Cafra''.[
]
Ottoman era
In 1875, 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 Min ...
visited and found many basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...
ruins, but the village itself was deserted.
In 1882, 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 the village as being "a ruined village with traces of antiquity. Dr. Tristram mentions it as inhabited in 1866, and containing drafted masonry, but the ruins do not appear important."
British mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the Mandatory Palestine authorities, ''Kafra'' had a population of 273; all Muslims, increasing slightly in the 1931 census to 298; all Muslims except 1 Christian, in a total of 81 houses.
In the 1945 statistics, the population was 430 Muslims,[ with a total of 9,172 dunams of land.][ Of this, 36 dunams were for plantations and irrigated land, 7,284 for cereals, while 18 were built-up land.][Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p]
134
/ref>
References
Bibliography
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External links
Kafra
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 9:
IAA
Wikimedia commons
{{Palestinian Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Palestine War
Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War