Aqraba () is a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

town in the

Nablus Governorate The Nablus Governorate () is an administrative district of Palestine located in the Central Highlands of the West Bank, 53 km north of Jerusalem. It covers the area around the city of Nablus which serves as the ''muhfaza'' (seat) of the go ...

, located eighteen kilometers southeast of

Nablus Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...

in the northern

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

. According to the

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS; ) is the official statistical institution of Palestine. Its main task is to provide credible statistical figures at the national and international levels. It is a state institution that provid ...

(PCBS), Aqraba had a population of 10,024 inhabitants in 2017. According to

Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem The Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ; ) is a Palestinian NGO founded in 1990 with its main office in Bethlehem in the West Bank. ARIJ is actively working on research projects in the fields of management of natural resources, water m ...

since 1967,

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

has confiscated 1,425 dunums of Aqraba and

Yanun Yanun () is a Palestinian village in the Nablus Governorate of the State of Palestine, in the northern West Bank, located southeast of Nablus, and 3 miles north of Aqraba. It lies within Area C, under total Israeli control, of the West Bank. It ...

's land for use for settlements, Israeli Military bases and for the Wall Zone. According to Kerem Navot, 3,265 dunams of mostly cultivated land were seized per military order T12/72 and transferred to the settlement of Gittit. Nearby hamlets surround the village and are considered to be natural extensions of Aqraba; they are the ''khirbets'' of al-Arama, al-Kroom, Abu ar-Reisa, ar-Rujman, Firas ad-Din and Tell al-Khashaba. The total population of these hamlets was estimated to be 500 in 2008. The prominent families of Aqraba are Al Dayriyeh, Bani Jaber, Al-Mayadima, Bani Jame', and Bani Fadel.

Etymology

The origin of the name is Semitic - Canaanite or Aramaic. In

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

'aqraba' means "scorpion"."Acraba, the last village adjacent to the desert"
at christusrex.org,

Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF), Latin for 'Franciscan Biblical Studies', is a Franciscan academic society based in Jerusalem. It is a center of biblical and archaeological research and studies, established by the Franciscan Custody of the H ...

, Jerusalem. 2000-12-19.

History and archaeology

Pottery

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s from

Iron Age II The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...

and

Crusader Crusader or Crusaders may refer to: Military * Crusader, a participant in one of the Crusades * Convair NB-36H Crusader, an experimental nuclear-powered bomber * Crusader tank, a British cruiser tank of World War II * Crusaders (guerrilla), a C ...

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultan of Egypt, Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate of Egyp ...

period,Finkelstein and Lederman, 1997, p. 818 as well as rock-hewn

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

s have been found in Aqraba. In 1874 surveyors found near the village rock-cut ''kokhim'' tombs. Ancient texts referencing Aqraba or the

toparchy ''Toparchēs'' (, "place-ruler"), anglicized as toparch, is a Greek term for a governor or ruler of a district and was later applied to the territory where the toparch exercised his authority. In Byzantine times, the term came to be applied to inde ...

named after it include

1 Maccabees 1 Maccabees, also known as the First Book of Maccabees, First Maccabees, and abbreviated as 1 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which details the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire as well as the founding and earliest hi ...

Book of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees is an ancient Jewish apocryphal text of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as well as by Haymanot Judaism, a denomination observed by members of Ethiopian Jewish ...

(Ethiopian version), Pliny,

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

, documents discovered in the Wadi Murabba'at caves,

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

, and Epiphanus' AD 392 work ''

On Weights and Measures ''On Weights and Measures'' is a historical, lexical, metrological, and geographical treatise compiled in 392 AD in Constantia by Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 315–403). The greater part of the work is devoted to a discussion on Greek and Roma ...

'' ( Syriac version), and it is also mentioned in the

Tolidah The ''Tolidah'' or ''Tulida'' () is a Samaritan chronicle that is considered the oldest Samaritan historical work. Written mainly in Samaritan Hebrew, with sections in hybrid Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic, the book provides a concise sum ...

(a Samaritan chronicle compiled in the 12th-19th centuries), and KafPer.

Late Hellenistic and Roman periods

During the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

it was an important town (see ''

Mishna The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

'', Ma'aser Sheni 5:2), named by

(37–c. 100) as Akrabbatá, the capital of a district called Akrabbatène (''Wars'' 3:3, 5).Sharon, 1997, pp
110111
/ref>

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

calls the town 'Akrabbeim and the district Akrabbatinés. A few km to the northwest are the remains of a mountaintop Hasmonean-Herodian fortress, at the site known as

Khirbet el-'Ormeh Khirbet el-'Ormeh () or Horvat Ormah () is an archaeological site located in the West Bank, around ten kilometers southeast of the State of Palestine, Palestinian city of Nablus. The site contains the remains of a Hasmonean-Herodian architectur ...

Byzantine period

Aqraba was inhabited by Christians during the

period. A Syriac document notes that the village contained two Byzantine-period monasteries named for saints Titus and Stephan.Ellenblum, 2003, p
245
/ref> According to local tradition and British scholars, the mosque was built over a Byzantine-period church.

Early Muslim period

The inhabitants of Aqraba became Muslim during the Early Muslim period (630s–1099). Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Aqrabani, a follower of the noted Muslim jurist

al-Shafi'i Al-Shafi'i (; ;767–820 CE) was a Muslim scholar, jurist, muhaddith, traditionist, theologian, ascetic, and eponym of the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. He is known to be the first to write a book upon the principles ...

, lived and was buried there in 180 AH/796–797 CE.Pringle, 2009, p. 235 The 14th-century historian

Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (; 18 February 1372 – 2 February 1449), or simply ibn Ḥajar, was a classic Islamic scholar "whose life work constitutes the final summation of the science of hadith." He authored some 150 works on hadith, history, ...

mentions an 8th-century member of the

Lakhm The Lakhmid kingdom ( ), also referred to as al-Manādhirah () or as Banū Lakhm (), was an Arab kingdom that was founded and ruled by the Lakhmid dynasty from to 602. Spanning Eastern Arabia and Southern Mesopotamia, it existed as a dependen ...

tribe from Aqraba as among the transmitters of a

hadith Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...

(Islamic tradition).

Crusader/Ayyubid and Mamuk periods

Several medieval buildings and other remains described in the 1930s and 1940s were still visible in the 1990s. These include a fortified

courtyard A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky. Courtyards are common elements in both Western and Eastern building patterns and have been used by both ancient and contemporary a ...

building northwest of the mosque known as al-Hisn ("the castle") dominating the village from its highest point, an open cistern or pool (Arabic:''birka'') in the centre of the village,Pringle, 1997, p.
20
/ref> and a domed building said to be Mamluk, probably a mosque, used as the village school. The mosque's

mihrab ''Mihrab'' (, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "''qibla'' wall". ...

was flanked by marble columns topped by capitals, both from the

period. The village

mosque A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were si ...

is built on the remains of a church, and in the

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 completed Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) and in 1880 for the soon abandoned Survey of Eastern Palestine. The ...

the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

inscriptions found there on a lintel decorated by a cross, are described as similar to Timeline of the Palestine region#Crusader period, Crusader-period ones.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, pp
389-390
/ref> Pottery

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s from the Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo), Mamluk period and a construction inscription in Arabic from 1414 have been found in the village.

Ottoman period

Aqraba, like the rest of

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

, was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

in 1517, and in the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 1596 the village was recorded in the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level divisi ...

'' (subdistrict) of Jabal Qubal, part of

Sanjak Nablus The Nablus Sanjak (; ) was an administrative area that existed throughout Ottoman rule in the Levant (1517–1917). It was administratively part of the Damascus Eyalet until 1864 when it became part of Syria Vilayet and then the Beirut Vilayet ...

, with a population of 102 households, all Muslim. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, olive trees, goats and bee-hives; vineyards and fruit trees, in addition to occasional revenues, and a press for olive oil or grape syrup; a total of 3,960

akçe The ''akçe'' or ''akça'' (anglicized as ''akche'', ''akcheh'' or ''aqcha''; ; , , in Europe known as '' asper'') was a silver coin mainly known for being the chief monetary unit of the Ottoman Empire. It was also used in other states includi ...

.Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 131 During his travels in the region in 1838, Edward Robinson mentions it, believing it was ancient ''Acrabi''. The French traveler

Victor Guérin Victor Guérin (; 15 September 1821 – 21 September 1890) was a French people, French intellectual, explorer and amateur archaeologist. He published books describing the geography, archeology and history of the areas he explored, which included ...

visited in 1870, and described it as a large town with 2,000 inhabitants. He further noted that it consisted of four quarters, each headed by a

sheikh Sheikh ( , , , , ''shuyūkh'' ) is an honorific title in the Arabic language, literally meaning "elder (administrative title), elder". It commonly designates a tribal chief or a Muslim ulama, scholar. Though this title generally refers to me ...

. Clermont-Ganneau came in 1873-74 and was told of the governor ''el Kadery'', who resided in Aqraba at the time of

Jezzar Pasha Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar (, c. 1720–30s7 May 1804) was the Acre-based Bosniak Ottoman governor of Sidon Eyalet from 1776 until his death in 1804 and the simultaneous governor of Damascus Eyalet in 1785–1786, 1790–1795, 1798–1799, and 1803 ...

. He is said to have erected considerable buildings in the town. In 1882, the PEF's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' described it as "A large village, surrounded with olives, of houses better built than most in the country. It stands on a saddle between two hills, one of which rises north of it 700 feet, the village standing at the mouth of a pass, through which the main road runs. The place is crescent-shaped, whence perhaps its name, 'curved.' To the south is the fertile plain (''Jehir 'Akrabeh''). There is a mosque in the east part of the village, founded on the remains of a Christian church, and a second sacred place (''er Rafái'') on the south." The estimated population was 600 to 800 souls.Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p
386
/ref>

British Mandate period

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 divis ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Aqraba had a population of 1,160; 1,158

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

sBarron, 1923, Table IX, Sub-district of Nablus, p
25
/ref> and 2 Orthodox Christians,Barron, 1923, Table XV, p
47
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census, where Aqraba (together with the smaller location Kh. Fasayil) had a population of 1,478, all Muslims, in a total of 309 houses.Mills, 1932, p
59
/ref> In the 1945 statistics Aqraba (including Kh. Fasayil) had a population of 2,060, all Muslims,Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p
18
/ref> with 142,530

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s of land, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 3,383 dunams were plantations and irrigable land, 19,732 used for cereals, while 55 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

Jordanian period

In the wake of the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

, following the

1949 Armistice Agreements The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,ruled by Jordan. In 1961, the population of Aqraba was 2,875.

Israeli occupation

Since the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

in 1967, Aqraba has been under

Israeli occupation Israel has occupied the Golan Heights of Syria and the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It has previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to 1967, control of the Palestinian terr ...

. According to

(ARIJ), Israel has confiscated 1,085 dunums of land from Aqraba and

, for the settlements of

Gitit Gitit may refer to: * Gitit, Bik'at HaYarden, Israeli settlement on the West Bank * Gittith, a Biblical musical designation {{disambiguation ...

and Itamar, whereby the land for Gitit was taken from Aqraba, while the land for Itamar was taken from Yanun. A later estimate states that the total extent of Aqraba lands amounted to 36,000 acres (145,000 dunams), of which 83% were confiscated, leaving the 4,000 residents with 6,000 acres (25,000 dunams). The acquisition of land from Aqraba for the establishment of Gitit involved aerial spraying with poison. Aqraba7440

Some farmland near

owned by 300 Aqraba villagers was classified as an IDF firing range in 1967, but exercises were customarily suspended for brief periods in the past to allow the villagers access to their lands, according to local Palestinians. Since then they claim, the area has not been used as a firing range for two decades. Recently, as of 2012, these villagers, who either farm or live there, have been denied access. They claim that this restriction does not apply equally to the Givat 777 outpost of the Itamar

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

. They complain of settler harassment, the burning of vehicles, and of settler sheep flocks being led to graze on their wheat fields. The IDF has replied that both Palestinians and Israeli settlers are treated in the same way. In August 2014, the IDF brought in bulldozers to demolish 4 Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the town, in the al-Taweel neighbourhood, claiming that they were built without a permit. However, the villagers claimed that the houses had been there for a century. In October 2014, a village mosque was set alight in a suspected arson attack by Israeli settlers as part of a "price tag" attack. A similar arson attack took place in April 2018, with settlers also spraying graffiti on the mosque walls.

Economy

The village's total land area is 34,700

s, of which 1,783 is built-up area. Around 62% of the remaining land is covered with olive and almond groves, 8% with other fruits and vegetables and the remaining 30% for grazing purposes.A new Expansion in the colony of Itamar on the Lands of the Palestinian Town of Aqraba: General Information about Aqraba
The Land Research Center via POICA. ARIJ and LRC 2007-10-21 Sources of employment include public sector jobs, agriculture and industry.

Government

31% of Aqraba and

land are located in Area B, giving the

Palestinian National Authority The Palestinian Authority (PA), officially known as the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a c ...

control over its administration and civil affairs. The rest, 69%, is in

Area C Area C (; ) is the fully Israeli-controlled territory in the West Bank, defined as the whole area outside the Palestinian enclaves (Areas A and B). Area C constitutes about 61 percent of the West Bank territory, containing most Israeli settle ...

. The town is governed by a

municipal council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, borough cou ...

, consisting of eleven members including the mayor. In the 2005 Palestinian municipal elections, the

Fatah Fatah ( ; ), formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (), is a Palestinian nationalist and Arab socialist political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...

-backed Future Palestine list won the majority of the seats (six) while the

Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...

-backed al-Islamiya list won five seats. Jawdat 'Abd al-Hadi was elected mayor.Local Elections (Round Three)- Successful lists by local authority and No. of votes obtained
Central Elections Commission - Palestine. p.4.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * (pp
228266
7) * * * * * * * * (p
159
* * * * *

External links

Aqraba municipality Aqraba
Welcome to Palestine *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 15
IAAWikimedia commonsAqraba Town Profile (including Yanun Locality)

(ARIJ)
Aqraba, aerial photo
ARIJ
March 2009 demolition orders for Aqraba homes and mosque
{{Nablus Governorate Towns in the West Bank Municipalities of Palestine Ancient Samaritan settlements