Ar'ara (, ; lit. "Juniper tree")
[Palmer, 1881]
p.144
/ref> is an Arab
Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world.
Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
town
A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city.
The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...
in the Wadi Ara
Wadi Ara (, ) or Nahal 'Iron (), is a valley and its surrounding area in Israel populated mainly by Arab citizens of Israel, Arab Israelis. The area is also known as the "Triangle (Israel), Northern Triangle".
Wadi Ara is located northwest of t ...
region in northern 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 ...
. It is located southwest of Umm al-Fahm
Umm al-Fahm ( , ''Umm al-Faḥm''; ''Um el-Faḥem'') is a city located northwest of Jenin in the Haifa District of Israel. In its population was , nearly all of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm ...
just northwest of the Green Line, and is part of the Triangle
A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called ''vertices'', are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called ''edges'', are one-dimension ...
. In , the population was .
History
Persian to Mamluk periods
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 Persian period have been found here.
Burial complexes from the 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 ...
period have been excavated at Ar'ara, revealing clay lamps, glass vessels and beads, commonly used in the 1st to 4th century CE.[Massarwa, 2007]
Ar‘ara Final Report
/ref> Rock-cut tombs with niches, and 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 ...
period ceramics have been found.
In the Crusader period, the place was known as "Castellum Arearum". In the land allocation made by sultan Baybars in 663 H. (1265-1266 C.E.), Ar'ara was shared between his amirs ''Ala' al-Din'' and ''Sayf al-Din Bayhaq al-Baghdadi''.
A few clay fragments from the Mamluk
Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...
period have been found at the same location as the Roman remains.[
]
Ottoman period
Ar'ara, like the rest of Palestine, 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. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Musmus belonged to the Turabay Emirate (1517–1683), which encompassed also the Jezreel Valley
The Jezreel Valley (from the ), or Marj Ibn Amir (), also known as the Valley of Megiddo, is a large fertile plain and inland valley in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. It is bordered to the north by the highlands o ...
, Haifa
Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...
, Jenin
Jenin ( ; , ) is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, and is the capital of the Jenin Governorate. It is a hub for the surrounding towns. Jenin came under Israeli occupied territories, Israeli occupation in 1967, and was put under the administra ...
, Beit She'an Valley, northern Jabal Nablus, Bilad al-Ruha/Ramot Menashe, and the northern part of the Sharon plain.
In 1596, Ar'ara appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being 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 ...
'' of ''Sa'ra'' of the '' Liwa'' of Lajjun
Lajjun (, ''al-Lajjūn'') was a large Palestine (region), Palestinian Arab village located northwest of Jenin and south of the remains of the biblical city of Tel Megiddo, Megiddo. The Israeli kibbutz of Megiddo, Israel was built 600 metres ...
. It had a population of 8 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 ...
households and paid a fixed tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives; a total of 9,000 akçe.
By the eighteenth century, the village remained in the administrative district of Lajjun, but the revenue of the place was farmed for the Mutasarrıf
Mutasarrif, mutesarrif, mutasarriff, or mutesarriff () was the title used in the Ottoman Empire and places like post-Ottoman Iraq for the governor of an administrative district in place of the usual sanjakbey. The Ottoman rank of mutasarrif was e ...
of Jaffa
Jaffa (, ; , ), also called Japho, Joppa or Joppe in English, is an ancient Levantine Sea, Levantine port city which is part of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, located in its southern part. The city sits atop a naturally elevated outcrop on ...
.
In 1838, it was noted as a village in the Jenin district.
In the late nineteenth century, the site was described as: A village of moderate size on high ground, with a spring to the east, a second to the west and a well
A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
to the south. There are rock cut tombs near. The population is stated by Consul Rogers (1859) as 400, the cultivation then being 30 feddan
A feddan () is a unit of area used in Egypt, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Oman. In Classical Arabic, the word means 'a yoke of oxen', implying the area of ground that could be tilled by oxen in a certain time. In Egypt, the feddan is the only n ...
s.
A population list from about 1887 showed that ''Ar'arah'' had about 600 inhabitants; all 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 ...
s.
British Mandate
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, Ar'ara had a population 735, all Muslims.[Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Haifa, p]
34
/ref> This had increased in the 1931 census to 971, still all Muslims, in 150 houses.[Mills, 1932, p]
87
/ref>
In the 1945 statistics, Ar'ara and Arah had a population of 2,290 Muslims,[Department of Statistics, 1945, p]
13
/ref>
1,490 in Ar'ara and 800 in 'Ara,[Department of Statistics, 1945, p]
15
note a and a privately owned land area of 29,537 dunums, in addition to 5,802 dunams of publicly owned land. Of this, 1,724 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 20,560 for cereals, while 33 dunams were built-up (urban) land.
File:'Ara 1942.jpg, Ar'ara 1942 1:20,000
File:Qannir 1945.jpg, Ar'ara 1945 1:250,000
State of Israel
Ar'ara was transferred from Jordanian to Israeli jurisdiction in 1949 under the Rhodes
Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...
armistice agreements.
By 1962 the area had been reduced to 7,269 dunums, partly due to expropriations of 8,236 dunums by the Israeli government in 1953–54.[ One case of expropriation from a private landowner named Younis became a test case before the High Court of Israel in 1953,] as the land had been expropriated by the government without notifying the owner.[ In 1954 the court ruled that the law did not require the owner to be notified and did not provide a right for the owner to contest the expropriation in advance.][ This ruling and one other effectively ended the possibility of land owners using the courts to contest the seizure of their land.][ The neighboring village of ʿAra was merged with Ar'ara in 1985.
]
Maqam Shaykh Khalaf
Maqam
Maqam, makam, maqaam or maqām (plural maqāmāt) may refer to:
Musical structures
* Arabic maqam, melodic modes in traditional Arabic music
** Iraqi maqam, a genre of Arabic maqam music found in Iraq
* Persian maqam, a notion in Persian clas ...
Shaykh Khalaf is the only building which was noted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Mandate area, and it is located on a slope by the highest point in the village, set in the middle of extensive graveyards. The Maqam is a single rectangular chamber, covered by a dome
A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...
. The two top courses are chamfer
A chamfer ( ) is a transitional edge between two faces of an object. Sometimes defined as a form of bevel, it is often created at a 45° angle between two adjoining right-angled faces.
Chamfers are frequently used in machining, carpentry, fur ...
ed towards the dome. On the north side is a doorway, and double window set inside shallow arch
An arch is a curved vertical structure spanning an open space underneath it. Arches may support the load above them, or they may perform a purely decorative role. As a decorative element, the arch dates back to the 4th millennium BC, but stru ...
es. There is also a set of windows on the west side. Inside, there are three cenotaph
A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although t ...
s, located east-west, close to the west wall. A 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".
...
is located on the south wall. The date of the building is not known, but according to A. Petersen (who inspected the place in 1994), the architecture indicate an eighteenth or early nineteenth century date.[Petersen, 2001, p]
94
/ref>
See also
* Arab localities in Israel
Arab localities in Israel include all population centers with a 50% or higher Arab population in Israel. East Jerusalem and Golan Heights are not internationally recognized parts of Israel proper but have been included in this list.
According to ...
References
Bibliography
* (II, p. 88)
*Baedeker, K., 1867, ''Palestine and Syria. A Handbook for Travellers,'' Dulan & Co., London ( p. 299)
*
* Cited in Petersen, (2001)
*
*
*
*
*
*Hartmann, R., (1910),
Die Strasse von Damascus nach Kairo
, ZDMG (=Zeitschrift des Deutschen Morgenlandische Gesellschaft), 64, ( pp. 665–702) (p
700
*
*
*
*
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*
External links
Official website
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 8
IAA
Wikimedia commons
{{Haifa District
Arab localities in Israel
Triangle (Israel)
Local councils in Haifa District