Template:Infobox Former Arab villages in Palestine al-Lajjun (Template:Lang-ar) was Palestinian Arab town of nearly 1,300 people located Template:Km to mi northwest of Jenin. It was captured by Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequently destroyed.
History
Antiquity
Lajjun was built on the site of the Roman city of Maximianpolis, which had developed from the town of Legio. Legio was established by Emperor Hadrian to guard the Wadi Ara region, a line of communication between the coastal plain of Palestine with the Jezreel Valley.[1]
According to some Muslim historians, the site of the Battle of Ajnadayn fought between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire was at Lajjun. According to Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi, in the tenth century while under the control of the Abbasid Caliphate, the town was the center of a nahiya that formed a part of the District of Jordan, a district of the Province of Syria.[2] The nahiya included the towns of Nazareth and Jenin.[3] Tenth-century Persian geographer Ibn al-Faqih writes that
there is just outside of al-Lajjun a large stone of round form, over which is built a dome, which they call the Mosque of Abraham. A copious stream of water flows from under the stone and it is reported that Abraham struck the stone with his staff, and there immediately flowed from it water enough to suffice for the supply of the people of the town, and also to water their lands. The spring continues to flow down to the present day.[4]
When the Crusaders invaded and conquered the Levant from the Fatimids in 1099, al-Lajjun's Roman name was restored and the town formed a part of the lordship of Caesarea. During this time, Christian settlement in Legio grew significantly. John of Ibelin records that the community "owed the service of 100 sergeants". Bernard the archbishop of Nazareth granted some of the tithes of Legio to the hospital of the monastery of St. Mary in 1115, then in 1121, he extended the grant to include all of Legio, including its church as well as the nearby village of Ti'inik. By 1147, the de Lyon family controlled Legio, but by 1168, the town was held by Payen the lord of Haifa. Legio had markets, a town oven and held other economic activities during this era.[1]
In 1182, the Ayyubids raided Legio and in 1187, it was captured by them under the leadership of Saladin's nephew Husam ad-Din 'Amr and its Arabic name was restored.[1] In 1226, Yaqut al-Hamawi writes of the Mosque of Abraham in al-Lajjun and that it is a "part of the Jordan Province, and lies 20 miles from Tabariyyah and 40 miles from ar-Ramlah.[5] The Ayyubids ceded al-Lajjun to the Crusaders in 1241, but it fell to the Mamluks under Baibars in 1263. A year later, a party of Templars and Hospitallers raided al-Lajjun and took 300 male and female captives to Acre. In the treaty between Sultan Qalawun and the Crusaders on June 4, 1283, al-Lajjun was formally listed as belonging to the Mamluks. The Mamluks fortified it in the 15th century and the town became a major staging post on the postal route between Egypt and Damascus.[1]
Early Ottoman rule and the Tarabay family
The Ottoman Empire conquered most of Palestine from the Mamluks after the Battle of Marj Dabiq. As the army of Sultan Selim I moved south towards Egypt,[6] the Tarabay clan of the Bedouin Bani Harith tribe aided them as guides and scouts.[7] When the Mamluks were completely uprooted and Selim returned to Istanbul, the Tarabays were granted the territory of Lajjun. Lajjun eventually became the capital of the Sanjak of Lajjun encompassing the Jezreel Valley, northern Samaria and the Lower Galilee. After a short period in which the Tarabays were in state of rebellion, tensions sharply decreased and the Ottomans appointed Ali ibn Tarabay as the governor of Lajjun in 1559. His son Assaf Tarabay ruled Lajjun from 1571 to 1583, when he was deposed and banished to the island of Rhodes. During his reign, he extended his power and influence to the Sanjak Nablus. Six years later, in 1589, he was pardoned and resettled in the town, however, an impostor named Assaf attempted to seize control of the Sanjak of Lajjun. Known later as Assaf al-Kadhab ("the Liar"), he was arrested and executed in Damascus where he traveled to confirm his appointment as governor of Sanjak Lajjun.[6]
Assaf Tarabay was not reinstated as governor, but Lajjun remained in Tarabay hands, through Governor Tarabay ibn Ali who died in 1601 and was succeeded by his son Ahmad who ruled until his death in 1657. Ahmad, known for his courage and hospitality,[6] helped the Ottomans defeat the rebel Janbulad and giving shelter to Yusuf Sayfa — Janbulad's main rival. Ahmad, in coordination with the governors of Gaza (Ridwan family) and Jerusalem (Farrukh family) also fought against Fakhr ad-Din II in a prolonged series of battles,[6] which ended with the victory of the Tarabay-Ridwan-Farrukh alliance, after their forces routed Fakhr ad-Din's army at the 'Auja river near Jericho.[8] The Ottoman authorities of Damascus, thus expanded Ahmad's fief as a token of gratitude. Ahmad's son Zayn Turubay ruled Lajjun wisely for a brief period until his death in 1660. He was succeeded by Ahmad's brother Muhammad Tarabay, who — according to his French secretary — had good intentions for governing Lajjun, but was addicted to opium and weak as a leader. He died in 1671, and other members of the Tarabay family ruled until 1677 when the Ottomans replaced them with a government officer.[9] The main reason behind the Ottoman abandonment of the Tarabays was that their tribe, the Bani Harith migrated east of Lajjun to the eastern banks of the Jordan River.[10]
Later Ottoman rule
By the eighteenth century, al-Lajjun was replaced by Jenin as the administrative capital of the sanjak, and by the nineteenth century, it was renamed the Sanjak of Jenin.[11] Zahir al-'Umar, who became the effective ruler of the Galilee for a short period during the second half of the eighteenth century, was reported to have used cannons against al-Lajjun in the course of his campaign (1771-1773) to capture Nablus.[12] It is unclear whether this attack led to the village´s decline in the years that followed. When when the British consul James Finn visited the area in the mid-nineteenth century, he did not see a village.[13] The authors of the Survey of Western Palestine noticed a khan, however, to the south of the ruins of al-Lajjun in the early 1880s.[14]
In the late nineteenth century, Arabs from Umm al-Fahm migrated to al-Lajjun to make use of its farmland.[15][16] Gradually, they settled in the village, building their houses around the springs, especially next to the khan. When the massive mound at nearby Tall al-Mutasallim (ancient Megiddo) was excavated by German archaeologists in 1903, some of the inhabitants of al-Lajjun reused stones from the ancient structure that had been unearthed to build new housing.[17]
British Mandate Period
Today
Kibbutz Megiddo, associated with Hashomer Hatzair, a pillar of the Peace Now movement, has been built on the site of Lajjun's village lands. A few of the buildings from Lajjun still stand within the kibbutz grounds, including a mosque known as the "White" which was built in 1943, and is today used as a carpentry shop.[18]
Demographics
During early Ottoman rule, in 1596, al-Lajjun had a population of 226 people. In the British Mandate survey in 1922, there 417 inhabitants, more than doubling to 857 in 1931.[19] Sami Hadawi counted al-Lajjun with Umm al-Fahm and seven hamlets in his 1945 land and population survey and in total the population was 5,490.[20] The projected population of al-Lajjun alone in 1948 was 1,280. Refugees from the town and their descendants numbered 7,857 in 1998. The prominent families of al-Lajjun were the Jabbarin, Ghubayriyya, Mahamid and the Mahajina.[19]
References
- ^ a b c d Pringle, 1993, p.3.
- ^ le Strange, 1890, p.39.
- ^ le Strange, 1890, p.301.
- ^ le Strange, 1890, p.492.
- ^ le Strange, 1890, p.493.
- ^ a b c d Ze'evi, 1996, p.42.
- ^ Ze'evi, 1996, p.41.
- ^ Ze'evi, 1996, pp.49-50.
- ^ Ze'evi, 1996, p.41.
- ^ Ze'evi, 1996, p.94.
- ^ Doumani, 1995, p.39.
- ^ Abu Dayya 1986:51, cited in Khalidi, p.335
- ^ Finn 1868:229-30, cited in Khalidi, p.335
- ^ SWP (1881) II:64-66, cited in Khalidi, p.335
- ^ Rami, S.al-Lajjun Jerusalemites.
- ^ Khalidi, p.335
- ^ Clarence Fisher 1929: The Excavation of Armageddon. University of Chicago Press. p. 18, cited in Khalidi, p.335
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Benvenistip319
was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Welcome to al-Lajjun Palestine Remembered.
- ^ Hadawi, 1970, p.55.
Bibliography
- Benvenisti, Meron; Kaufman-Lacusta, Maxine (2000), Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, University of California Press, ISBN 0520211545, 9780520211544
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: Check|isbn=
value: invalid character (help) - Doumani, Beshara (1995), Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, University of California Press, ISBN 0520203704
- Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center
- Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0887282245
- Morris, Benny (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521009677, 9780521009676
{{citation}}
: Check|isbn=
value: invalid character (help); Text "authorlink-Benny Morris" ignored (help) - le Strange, Guy (1890), Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund
- Pringle, Denys (1993), The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521390370
- Ze'evi, Dror (1996), An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s, SUNY Press, ISBN 0791429156