Al-'Abbasiyya
| Al-'Abbasiyya | |
|---|---|
|
Tomb of Yehuda ben-Yaakov (Ar: Huda ibn-Yaaqub) in Yehud, originally a Muslim shrine and today a Jewish one[1] | |
  Al-'Abbasiyya | |
| Arabic | العبْاسِيّة/اليهودية |
| Also spelled | al-Abbasiya, al-Yahudiya, Yehudiya[2] |
| Subdistrict | Jaffa |
| Coordinates | 32°01′51″N 34°53′25″E / 32.03083°N 34.89028°ECoordinates: 32°01′51″N 34°53′25″E / 32.03083°N 34.89028°E |
| Palestine grid | 139/159 |
| Date of depopulation | May 4, 1948[3] |
| Cause(s) of depopulation | Military assault by Yishuv forces |
| Current localities | Yehud |
Al-'Abbasiyya (Arabic: العبْاسِيّة), also known as al-Yahudiya (Arabic: اليهودية), was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jaffa Subdistrict. It was attacked under Operation Hametz during the 1948 Palestine War, and finally depopulated under Operation Dani. It was located 13 km east of Jaffa. Some of the remains of the village can be found today in the centre of the modern Israeli city of Yehud.
History
In 1596, Yahudiya appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the Nahiya of Ramla of the Liwa of Gaza. It had a population of 126 Muslim households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summercrops or fruit trees, sesame, and goats or beehives.[4]
The French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, which he called Yehoudieh, in 1863, and found it to have a population of more than 1,000 people. The houses were made of adobe bricks, several topped by palm leaves. Near a noria he noticed an ancient sarcophagus, placed there as a trough.[5][6]
In 1882, the Palestine Exploration Fund's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described the place as "a large mud village, supplied by a pond, and surrounded by palm-trees."[7] They also noted a ruined tank, or birkeh, to the south of the village.[6]
British Mandate era
In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yahudiyeh had a population of 2,437, all Muslims,[8] increasing in the 1931 census, when Yahudiya had a population of 3,258; 3,253 Muslims and 5 Christians, in a total of 772 houses.[9]
The old name, Al-Yahudiya, is thought to be taken from the name of the biblical town of Yahud, mentioned in Joshua 19:45, and later called Iudaea by the Romans. In 1932, the town was officially renamed Al-'Abbasiyya,[10][11] because the inhabitants did not want the town name to be connected to Jewish people, with the chosen name was mostly in memory to a sheikh (al-'Abbas) who was buried in the town but also alluding to the Arab Muslim Abbasid Caliphate.[1]
By 1945, the population had increased to 5,800; 5,630 Muslims, 150 Jews, and 20 Christians, with a total of 20,540 dunums of land.[12][13] Of this, a total of 4,099 dunums was used for citrus and bananas, 1,019 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, 14,465 were for cereals,[14] while 101 dunams were classified as built-up areas.[15]
On December 13, 1947 twenty-four armed men from Irgun attacked the village approaching from the Jewish town of Petah Tikvah. The attackers wore khaki uniforms and drove through the village in four cars. One group fired on villagers at a cafe and another set bombs and grenades in houses. 7 Arabs were killed (two women and two children, 3 and 4 years old among them) and 7 others seriously wounded (two women and girl of 4 among them). An armored British police vehicle was fired upon by the attackers.[16][17]
1948 and after
On September 13, David Ben-Gurion requested the destruction of Al-'Abbasiyya, among other Palestinian villages whose inhabitants fled or were expelled.[18]
References
- 1 2 Benvenisti, 2001, p. 276
- ↑ El-Yehudiyeh =The Jewish place, family, tribe, or female, according to Palmer, 1881, p. 220
- ↑ Morris, 2004, p. xviii, village #213. Also gives cause of depopulation.
- ↑ Hütteroth and Abdulfattah, 1977, p. 155
- ↑ Guérin, 1868, pp. 321-322
- 1 2 Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 278
- ↑ Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 258
- ↑ Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Jaffa, p. 20
- ↑ Mills, 1932, p. 16
- ↑ Khalidi, 1992, p. 232
- ↑ Conder and Kitchener, 1882, SWP II, p. 219
- ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 53
- ↑ Village Statistics April 1945, The Palestine Government, p. 15
- ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 97
- ↑ Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. 147
- ↑ Irgun Attacks in Palestine: 21 Arabs, 3 Jews Are Slain NY Times, December 14, 1947
- ↑ Haganah kills 10 in raid on Arabs NY Times, December 20, 1947
- ↑ Sa'di and Abu-Lughod, 2007, p. 37. Ben-Gurion wrote: "because of a lack of manpower to occupt the area in depth ... there was a need to partially destroy the following villages: 1. As Safiriya 2. Al-Haditha 3. Innaba 4. Daniyal 5. Jimzu 6. Kafr 'Ana 7. Al Yahudiya 8. Barfiliya 9. Al Barriya 10. Al-Qubab 11. Beit Nabala 12. Dayr Tarif 13. At Tira 13. Qula." Also quoted in Morris, 2004, p. 354
Bibliography
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al-'Abbasiyya. |
- Barron, J.B., ed. (1923). Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922 (PDF). Government of Palestine.
- Benvenisti, Meron (2001). Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23422-2.
- Conder, Claude Reignier; Kitchener, H. H. (1882). The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology 2. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
- Guérin, Victor (1868). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine. Vol 1, Judee, pt. 1.
- Hadawi, Sami (1970). Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center.
- Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter; Abdulfattah, Kamal (1977). Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. ISBN 3-920405-41-2.
- Khalidi, Walid (1992). All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. ISBN 0-88728-224-5.
- Mills, E, ed. (1932). Census of Palestine 1931. Population of Villages, Towns and Administrative Areas (PDF). Jerusalem: Government of Palestine.
- Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6.
- Palmer, E. H. (1881). The Survey of Western Palestine: Arabic and English Name Lists Collected During the Survey by Lieutenants Conder and Kitchener, R. E. Transliterated and Explained by E.H. Palmer. Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
- Sa'di, Ahmad H.; Abu-Lughod, Lila (2007). Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory (Illustrated ed.). Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13579-5.
External links
- Welcome To al-'Abbasiyya
- Survey of Western Palestine, Map 13: Wikimedia commons
- Al-'Abbasiyya at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
