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Template:Infobox former Arab villages in Palestine
The village of Qisarya (Template:Lang-ar) was located 37 kilometers (23 mi) south of Haifa.
History
After the Muslim conquest, during the Mamluk area, the ruins of Caesarea Maritima by the Crusader fortress near Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast was uninhabited. First in 1664 a settlement is mentioned. It consisted of 100 "Moroccan" families, and 7-8 Jewish ones. In the 17th hundred it again declined. In 1884 a community was established by Bushnaks (Muslim immigrants from Bosnia) who built a small fishing village. The village decline in economic importance occurred when a railway was built bypassing the port, ruining their livelihood. Qisarya had a population of 930 Muslims and 30 Christians in 1945. In 1944/45 a total of 18 dunums of village land was used for citrus and bananas, 1,020 dunums were used for cereals, while 108 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.
1947/1948, Massacre, and Aftermath
In December 1947 the local leader, Tawfiq Kadkuda, had made approaches to Jewish officials in an effort to establish non-belligerency agreements with local Jewish settlements. The 31 January 1948 Lehi attack on a bus leaving Qisarya, killing 2 and injuring 6 people, precipitated an evacuation of the population, who fled for fear of further attacks, mainly to al-Tantura. Also during February 1948 the 'Arab al Sufsafi and Saidun Bedouin, who inhabited the dunes between Qisarya and Pardes left the area. After that the remaining inhabitants were expelled and the village houses were demolished by the Palmach 4th battalion between 19–20 February and October 1948. According to a testimony collected from Battalion members obtained by Israeli historian Uri Milstein: "In February 1948, the 4th Battalion of Palmach, under the command of Josef Tabenkin, conquered Caesaria."
The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village remains in 1992: "Most of the houses have been demolished. The site has been excavated in recent years, largely by Italian, American, and Israeli teams, and turned into a tourist area. Most of the few remaining houses are now restaurants, and the village mosque has been converted into a bar"
Petersen, visiting the place in 1992, writes that the nineteenth-century houses were built in blocks, generally one storey high (with the exception of the house of the governor.) Some houses on the western side of the village, near the sea, have survived. There were a number of mosques in the village in the nineteenth century, but only one ("The Bosnian mosque") has survived. This mosque, located at the southern end of the city, next to the harbour, is described as a simple stone building with a red-tiled roof and a cylindrical minaret. It was used (in 1992) as a restaurant and as a gift shop.
A Great Mosque was seen there in 439H (1047) by Nasir-i-Khusraw. This was converted into the church of St. Peter in Crusader times. A wall, which could belong to this building, has been identified in modern times.
See also
Footnotes
- Roger, 1664; cited in Ringel 1975, 174; cited in Petersen, 2001, p.129
- Petersen, 2001, p129
- Laurence Oliphant, or, Life in Palestine (Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1887), p182.
- "Caesarea". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2007-10-22.
- Government of Palestine, Village Statistics, 1945.
- Khalidi, 1992, p. 183
- Hadawi, 1970, p.91
- Morris, 2004, p 92
- Morris, 2004, p 130
- Morris, 2004, p 129
- Morris, 2004, p 77 and p 354
- The Palestinian Nabka: The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine by THe Palestinian Return Centre, Sept 2000 pg. 18
- Khalidi, 1992, p.184
- ^ Petersen, 2001, p.129-130
- Pringle, 1993, p. 170 -171
Bibliography
- Abu Shama (d.1267) (1969): Livre des deux jardins ("The Book of Two Gardens"). Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Cited in Petersen (2001).
- Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener (1881): The Survey of Western Palestine: memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archaeology. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. vol 2 12-29, 34, map VII
- Guérin, M. V. (1875): Description Géographique, Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine. Samarie, 2 pt. ("Seconde partie -Samarie")("Tome II") p. 321-339
- 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, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0-88728-224-5 p. 182-184
- 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
- Mariti, Giovanni (1792): Travels Through Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine; with a General History of the Levant. Translated ... p. 396 ff
- Morris, Benny (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-00967-7
- 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. ( p.140 )
- Petersen, Andrew (2001), A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine: Volume I (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology) p. 129-130.
- Pringle, Denys (1993), The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A-K (excluding Acre and Jerusalem), Cambridge University Press
- Robinson, Edward, Eli Smith (1841): Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838a, Published by Crocker & Brewster, 1841 Item notes: v. 3 p. 44
- al-'Ulaymi Sauvaire (editor) (1876): Histoire de Jérusalem et d'Hébron depuis Abraham jusqu'à la fin du XVe siècle de J.-C. : fragments de la Chronique de Moudjir-ed-dyn p. 80-81
