Sa'sa' (, ) was 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 ...

village, located 12 kilometres northwest of

Safed Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel. Safed has been identified with (), a fortif ...

, that was depopulated by

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 ...

i forces during the

1948 Arab-Israeli war Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The current Constitutions of Constitution of Italy, Italy and of Constitution of New Jersey, New Jersey (both later subject to amendment) ...

. The village suffered two massacres committed by

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

forces: one in mid-February 1948 and the other at the end of October the same year.Khalidi, 1992, p. 495 Its place has been taken since 1949 by Sasa, an

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

History

Sa'sa' was built on the site of a

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

(early second millennium B.C.) settlement whose remains (walls, tombs, cisterns, and olive and wine presses), have been unearthed. One village house had foundations which has been dated back to fourth century by archaeologists. Architectural fragments of a

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

from the Late Roman and/or Byzantine period were excavated at the site. The Arab geographer

Abū 'Ubayd 'Abd Allāh al-Bakrī Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ʿAmr al-Bakrī (), or simply al-Bakrī (c. 1040–1094) was an Arabs, Arab Al-Andalus, Andalusian historian and a geographer of the Muslims in Western Europe, Muslim W ...

(d.1094) reported that one passed through Sa'sa' when travelling from Dayr al-Qasi to

Safad Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel. Safed has been identified with (), a fortified town in the Upper Gal ...

. A house excavated in 2003 yielded ceramics dated to the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries CE, in the Mamluk period.

Ottoman period

In 1516 Sa'sa', with the rest of Palestine, came under the control of 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 ...

. Shortly afterwards Sa'sa' was made a checkpoint where travellers were charged a toll and tariffs were collected on various goods. The first records of these levies are from 1525/6. In 1596 Sa'sa' was classified as a village 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 Jira, part of ''

liwa' A sanjak or sancak (, , "flag, banner") was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans also sometimes called the sanjak a liva (, ) from the name's calque in Arabic and Persian. Banners were a common organization of nomad ...

'' ("district") of Safad, with a population of 457. It paid taxes on

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

barley Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikele ...

olive The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'' ("European olive"), is a species of Subtropics, subtropical evergreen tree in the Family (biology), family Oleaceae. Originating in Anatolia, Asia Minor, it is abundant throughout the Mediterranean ...

s and fruits, as well as on

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a species of Caprinae, goat-antelope that is mostly kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the ...

beehive A beehive is an enclosed structure which houses honey bees, subgenus '' Apis.'' Honey bees live in the beehive, raising their young and producing honey as part of their seasonal cycle. Though the word ''beehive'' is used to describe the nest of ...

s, and

vineyard A vineyard ( , ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines. Many vineyards exist for winemaking; others for the production of raisins, table grapes, and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is kno ...

s. According to these tax records all the villagers were

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 ...

.Petersen, 2001, p
274
/ref> In the eighteenth century Sa'sa' is mentioned as one of the fortified villages of

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

controlled by

Zahir al-Umar Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Dhaher el-OmarDAAHL Site Rec ...

's son, Ali. After the defeat of Zahir al-Umar in 1775, Ali continued to resist the Ottoman authorities and defeated an army sent against him at Sa'sa'. Excavations in 1972 on the west side of the hill revealed the remains of a large rectangular structure (15m x 41m) with 2m thick walls made out of rubble stone with

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

facing. At the south-west corner of the building there was a solid semi-circular tower (diameter 7m). The main part of the structure is a rectangular hall divided into two rows of five bays. There was a central row of four piers and two half-piers which would probably have supported a cross-vaulted roof. In a later phase an outer skin (2m wide) was added, making the wall a total of 4m thick. At the same time the round tower was converted into a square plan. According to the excavators, the place was occupied for a "fairly long" period, and suggest that it was probably part of the fortress built by Ali, (son of

Zahir al-Umar Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Dhaher el-OmarDAAHL Site Rec ...

) in the eighteenth century. The design of the building is compatible with other fortresses of the period, like Qalat Jiddin and Dayr Hanna. In 1875,

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 ...

found it to be a Muslim village with about 350 inhabitants. In 1881, the PEF's '' Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described Sa'sa' as a village with a population of 300, built on a slight hill that was surrounded by vineyards and olive and fig trees. A population list from about 1887 showed ''Sa'sa to have about 1,740 inhabitants, all Muslim. Pottery vessels from the Rashaya al-Fukhar workshops, dating to the late Ottoman and early Mandate eras have been found here.

British Mandate era

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, ''Sa'sa'' had a population of 634; all

,Barron, 1923, Table XI, Sub-district of Safad, p
41
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 840, still all Muslims, in a total of 154 houses.Mills, 1932, p
110
/ref> The village had a small market-place in the village center with a few shops, as well as a

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 ...

and two elementary schools, one for girls and one for boys. In the 1944/45 statistics the village had a population of 1,130 Muslims and a total land area of 14,796 dunams. Of this, 4,496 dunums were used for cereals; 1,404 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while 48 dunams were built-up (urban) area.

1948 war

During the 1948 Palestine war, Sa'sa' was the site of two massacres committed by Israeli forces. On the night of 14-15 February 1948, Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach in the north, ordered an attack on Sa'sa'. The order was given to Moshe Kelman, the deputy commander of Third Battalion. The order read: "You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible".Pappe, 2006, p.
77
/ref>Khalidi, 1992, p. 496 According to Pappé, the quote says which said "warriors" should be read "villagers". Khalidi, referencing "The History of the Haganah" by Ben-Zion Dinur, say they referred to the massacre as "one of the most daring raids into enemy territory." A Palmach unit entered the village during the night and, without resistance, planted explosives against some of the houses. Historians estimate 60 villagers were killed and 16-20 houses demolished.Benvenisti, 2000
p. 107
/ref> A second massacre occurred after the surrender of the village on 30 October. Historian Saleh Abdel Jawad writes that "many villagers" were killed. Currently, there are few remains of the Palestinian village of Sa'sa', with the exception of the village

, which has now been converted into the kibbutz cultural center. In 1992, the

historian Walid Khalidi described the remains of the village: "Some of the old olive trees remain, and a number of walls and houses still stand. Some of the houses are presently used by kibbutz Sasa; one of them has an arched entrance and arched windows. A large portion of the surrounding land is forested, the rest is cultivated by Israeli farmers."

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * Cited in Petersen, (2001) * * (p
256
* *Gibson, S and Braun, E. (1972) Sa'sa', HA, 63-64, pp 11–12 (in Hebrew). Cited in Petersen, 2002 * * * * * * * (Sa'sa' pp. 46, 95) * * * * (pp
368
369) * * *

External links

Sa'sa'
Zochrot *Survey of Western Palestine, map 4
IAAWikimedia commons
the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center *, Dr. Moslih Kanaaneh
Sa’sa’
Dr. Khalil Rizk. {{Authority control District of Safad Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War