Kefr Ishu'a

Umm Safa/Kafr Ishwa ( ar, أم صفا) or Um Al-Safa is a Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate.

Location

Umm Safa is located north of Ramallah. It is bordered by 'Ajjul and 'Atara to the east, Deir as Sudan and Ajjul to the north, Nabi Salih and Deir Nidham to the west, and Jibiya, Burham and Kobar to the south.

Important Bird Area

A largely forested 3,500 ha site in the vicinity of the villages of Umm Safa and Nabi Salih has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a population of lesser spotted eagles.

History

It has been suggested that this was "apparently connected with an ancient Ishvah or Mizpeh,"Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p
291
/ref>Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP II, p
378
/ref> but this does not agree with modern archaeology.Finkelstein et al, 1997, p. 401

Ceramic remains from the Byzantine era have been found here, as have sherds from the Crusader/Ayyubid and Mamluk eras.

Ottoman era

Pottery sherds from the early Ottoman era have also been found here, and it was mentioned in the sixteenth hundreds tax records under the name of ''Kafr Shu''.

In 1838 ''Um Safah'' was noted as a Muslim village the ''Beni Zaid'' district.

In 1870, Victor Guérin climbed up on the hilltop which Umm Safa occupied, and found that the village had about 300 inhabitants. He further noted that: "It must go back to an ancient site as is shown by the materials used in the building of some houses and several columnar sections scattered about the ground. A copious spring, called ''Ain Umm Safa'', provides the villagers with water. They venerate, under a koubbeh, the remains of ''Nabi Hanan''." An official Ottoman village list from about the same year, 1870, listed ''Kefr Eschwa'' as having 24 houses and a population of 120, though the population count included men, only. It was noted as being located north of Dschibija.

In 1882 the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described Umm Suffah (also called ''Kefr Ishwah'') as "a village on high ground on the Roman road to Antipatris. It contains a small mosque or Moslem chapel, and has a well to the north."

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, ''Umm Sufa'' had a population of 80 Muslims,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramallah, p
17
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 89 Muslims, in 27 houses in ''Umm Safah'' (or ''Kafr Ishwa'').Mills, 1932, p
51

In the 1945 statistics, the population of ''Umm Safa'' (''Kafr Ishwa'') was 110 Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
26
/ref> while the total land area was 4,083 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,364 dunums were used for plantations and irrigable land, 821 for cereals, while 17 dunams were classified as built-up areas.

Jordanian era

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

The Jordanian census of 1961 found 252 inhabitants in Umm Safa.

1967-present

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Umm Safa has been under Israeli occupation.

After the 1995 accords, 16% of village land has been defined as Area B land, while the remaining 84% is Area C. Israel has confiscated a total of 227 dunams of land from the village in order to construct two Israeli settlements: Ateret and Hallamish.

The village have two tombs within it.Frantzman and Bar, 2013, p
102
/ref>

References

Bibliography

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* (Kefr Achoua (p
39
..mentioned in Socin)
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External links

Umm Safa
Welcome to Palestine
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 14
IAAWikimedia commons Umm Safa Village (Fact Sheet)
Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ)
Umm Safa Village Profile
ARIJ
Umm Safa Aerial photo
ARIJ
Locality Development Priorities and Needs in Umm Safa Village
ARIJ
{{Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate

Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate
Municipalities of the State of Palestine
Important Bird Areas of the State of Palestine