Tarqumiyah

Tarqumiyah ( ar, ترقوميا) is a Palestinian city located 12 kilometers northwest of Hebron, in the southern West Bank, in the Hebron Governorate of the State of Palestine.

History

Tarqumiyah is an ancient town situated on a rocky hill. Cisterns have been found here.
According to the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP), this place is the early Christian Tricomias, an episcopal see.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
310
/ref>

Ottoman era

Tarqumiya, like the rest of Palestine, was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517, and in the census of 1596 the village appeared to be in the ''Nahiya'' of Halil of the '' Liwa'' of Quds. It had a population of 17 families, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,33% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, olive trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 6,500 akçe.

In 1838 Edward Robinson passed by and noted that Tarqumiya was on the most common path from Gaza, via Bayt Jibrin to Hebron. While resting at Tarqumiya, he was visited by the local Sheikh and other dignitaries, who “demeaned themselves kindly and courteously." He further noted it as a Muslim village, between the mountains and Gaza, but subject to the government of el-Khulil.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, Appendix 2, p.
117
/ref>

In 1863 Victor Guérin found it to have 400 inhabitants,Guérin, 1869, p
345
/ref> while an Ottoman village list from about 1870 counted 45 houses and a population of 108, though the population count included men, only.

In 1883 SWP described Tarqumiyah as “A small village on a rocky hill near the low lands. On the east, about a mile distant, is a spring; on the south are olives.”

British Mandate era

According to the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Tarqumiyah had a population of 976 inhabitants, all Muslims,Barron, 1923, p
10
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 1,173, still entirely Muslim, in 225 inhabited houses.

In the 1945 statistics the population of Tarqumiya was 1,550 Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
23
/ref> and the total land area was 21,188 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. 1,029 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 6,614 were used for cereals, while 152 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

File:Tarqumiya 1945.jpg, Tarqumiyah, British Mandate map, 1:20,000
File:Dawayima 1945.jpg, Tarqumiyah 1945 1:250,000

Jordanian era

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

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