Qaqun
Encyclopedia
Qaqun was a Palestinian
Arab
village located 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) northwest of the city of Tulkarm
at the only entrance to Mount Nablus from the coastal Sharon plain.
Evidence of organized settlement in Qaqun dates back to the period of Assyrian rule in the region, and it was continuously inhabited by Arab
s since at least as early as the Mamluk
period. Qaqun was depopulated during a military assault by Israel
i forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
.
n artifacts
have been discovered in Qaqun. Among these are fragments of stelae recording the victory of Sargon II
over the Philistine city-states in the 8th century BC, providing evidence of the establishment of Assyrian rule in Palestine.
In the 1st century AD, Antipas
, like others close to the Herodians
who ruled over parts of the region at the time, was granted dominion over large areas of land. One of the gifts (doreai) he received was a parcel of land located in the Plain of Sharon which included Qaqun, among other villages.
In the Crusader
period, a castle called Caco or Cacho was here, of which an 8.5m tower survives. It was mentioned in 1123 and apparently still held by the lord of Caesarea in 1253.
In 1160, Benjamin of Tudela
visited Qaqun which he identified as being ancient Keilah
.
sultan Ruqn al-Din Baybars
(1259–1277) in 1267. Under Mamluk rule, Qaqun was the capital of one of six districts that made up the province of as-Sham, the Mamluk administrative unit for a part of the governorship of "Mamlakat Gaza", one of the region's three Mamluk administrative governorships, the other two being "Mamlakat Dimashq" (Damascus
) and "Mamlakat Zafad" (Safed
). Qaqun and also Lyyda
appeared to be independent provinces later in this period. Baybars had ordered its fortress rebuilt and had its church renovated and made into a mosque
. Its markets were re-established, and it soon became a commercial center with a caravanserai
for merchants, travelers, and their animals. While early scholarship often attributed the construction of the fortress to Crusaders, both the fortress and mosque at Qaqun are now thought to have built during the reign of Baybars, who also built the administrative center and large market there.
In December of 1271, as Baybars was battling the Mongols
in Aleppo
, the Crusader
forces of King Edward
raided Qaqun, but were quickly fought back by the forces of the Mamluk emir
s.
At the end of the 13th century, the Via Maris
was moved eastward inland to improve the line of defence since Palestine's coastal cities were the first to fall to competing powers seeking to expand their domain. The route followed the coast of the Sinai, passing through Al-Arish, Rafah
, Khan Yunis
, and Gaza
. There, a branch then turned eastward to Jerusalem
, onto Hebron
while another passed through Beit Hanoun
to Ramlah through Daris and continued north to Lydda
, through Jaljulia
and Tira to the center of Qaqun. From Qaqun, the route branched into two, one leading to Jenin
and the other to Wadi Ara
. Many of these places were villages that had khans
constructed in them in the 14th century. The khan in Qaqun was built in 1315, and under Mamluk rule, khans like the one in Qaqun were used by couriers on horseback, forming part of the postal network
on the Gaza
-Damascus road. Al-Qalqasandi
(d .1418) mentioned Qaqun as a pleasant, though not particularly prosperous town, with a mosque, a bath, a handsome fort, and wells.
of Hasseki Sultan Imaret
in Jerusalem, established by Hasseki Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana
), the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent
. By 1596, Qaqun was the center of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun under the liwa'
(district) of Nablus
and it had a population of 127. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat
and barley
, as well as on goat
s and beehive
s.
During Napoleon Bonaparte's Campaign in 1799, Napoleon's forces defeated the Ottoman troops who had been sent to Qaqun to stop their advance towards Acre
. In the 1830s, the inhabitants of Qanqun participated in the revolt against Egypt, and was thence destroyed by the army of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
during his Syrian campaign (1832–1840).
In the late 19th century, Qaqun was described as a large village built around the central tower of the Crusader/Mamluk fort. Its houses, built of stone and mud, were dispersed over the surface of a hill. There was arable land in the surrounding area. Claude R. Conder writes of there being a Crusader
era tower in Qaqun during his visit there.
, Qaqun had 260 occupied houses and a population of 1367 Muslims.
In 1944/45 a total of 713 dunum
s were used for citrus
and bananas, while 34,376 dunums were allocated to cereals; 210 additional dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which 80 dunums were planted with olive trees.
Just prior to the 1948 war, in addition to the mosque and fortress, Qaqun also housed of an elementary school for boys and hundreds of homes for its more than 2,000 inhabitants. The village families were made up of the al-Hafi, Abu-Hantash, Matrouk and al-Shaykh Ghanem clan
s.
on 6 March 1948, according to the History of the Haganah. No further details are provided by this source, but the Palestinian newspaper Filastin
reported an attack on the morning of 7 March. Quoting a communiqué issued by Palestinian militia forces, the paper said that the large attacking unit failed to penetrate the village, and that it threw a number of grenades which wounded two women.
On the 9th May 1948 the Alexandroni Arab affairs experts decided on a meeting in Netanya
, in preparation for the declaration of Israeli statehood and the expected pan-Arab invasion, to immediately "expel or subdue" the inhabitants of the Palestinian villages of Kafr Saba
, al Tira, Qaqun, Qalansuwa, and Tantura. The final operational order did not say what was to be done with the inhabitants, but repeatedly spoke of "cleaning" or "clearing" the village.
After the establishment of the State of Israel and the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, regular Iraqi forces entrenched in the Triangle region
threatened to cut Israeli-controlled territory in half by capturing Netanya
. An Iraqi attack was repelled on 29 May 1948, when Israeli forces successfully defended the villages Ein Vered
, Kfar Yabetz
and Geulim
. Arab attacks originated in Ras al-Ein
, Tira, Qalansawe
and Qaqun, and the capture of any of these was deemed likely to bring to an end the Iraqi effort in the Netanya area.
Qaqun was chosen as the target of an Israeli offensive, and on 5 June at 04:00, the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade
attacked the village. A frontal assault was conducted on the Iraqi headquarters to the north of the village, after the nearby mill was cleared. The Israel Defense Forces
were only able to clear the village during the day, and used reinforcements from the 32nd Battalion at Ein HaHoresh
, which flanked the Arab forces from the south. Iraqi counter-attacks from Kalansawe and Tulkarem lasted until nightfall, with both sides bombing each other's positions from the air. Israeli forces were able to hold on to the village and put an end to Iraqi advances on the coastal plain. Alexandroni suffered 16 casualties and by their estimate the entire Iraqi battalion was wiped out. According to the Alexandroni memorial website, the Iraqi defeat in the battle is considered its biggest of the war.
However, according to Benny Morris
, the attack was preceded by an artillery barrage that precipitated the evacuation of most of Qaqun's inhabitants to nearby groves. And only a few local militiamen and several dozen Iraqi Army soldiers remained to fight and they were rapidly overwhelmed by the Alexandroni infantry.
Two days later, on the 7 June, Joseph Weitz noted Qaqun among the villages which they had to decide as to whether destroy (to prevent the villagers from returning), or renovate and settled with Jews. By December 1948 the IDF
General Staff\Operations approved the depopulation of the remaining small border-hugging sites ("khurab") in the Triangle
area. It was instructed that "an effort should be made to carry out the eviction [of Arab civilians] without force". But if force proved necessary, the Military Government was authorized to use it. Among the sites evicted was eight in the Qaqun and Gharbiya area.
ha-Ma´pil was built on what had traditionally been village land in 1945, 3 km to the northwest. Three settlements were founded on village land in 1949: Gan Yoshiyya, 1 km due south of the village site, Ometz
, 1 km north of the site; and ´Olesh, 4 km southwest of the site. Haniel
was built on village land in 1950. Yikkon was built in the early 1950s to serve as a transit camp for new Jewish immigrants, and was later made into a regional school. Burgeta, built in 1949, is 5 km to the southwest but is not on village land.
Walid Khalidi
described the remaining structures of the village in 1992:
The estimated number of Palestinian refugees from Qaqun, as of 1998, was 14,034.
The Nature and Parks Authority and the Hefer Valley Economic Development Corporation recently ordered that the former site of Qaqun, its fortress and other ruins be declared a national park
. The plan is to rehabilitate the site and turn it into a "focal point that will draw tourism."
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
village located 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) northwest of the city of Tulkarm
Tulkarm
Tulkarem or Tulkarm is a Palestinian city in the northern Samarian mountain range in the Tulkarm Governorate in the extreme northwestern West Bank adjacent to the Netanya and Haifa districts to the west, the Nablus and Jenin Districts to the east...
at the only entrance to Mount Nablus from the coastal Sharon plain.
Evidence of organized settlement in Qaqun dates back to the period of Assyrian rule in the region, and it was continuously inhabited by Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s since at least as early as the Mamluk
Mamluk
A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
period. Qaqun was depopulated during a military assault by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
.
Ancient and classical
AssyriaAssyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n artifacts
Artifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
have been discovered in Qaqun. Among these are fragments of stelae recording the victory of Sargon II
Sargon II
Sargon II was an Assyrian king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V. It is not clear whether he was the son of Tiglath-Pileser III or a usurper unrelated to the royal family...
over the Philistine city-states in the 8th century BC, providing evidence of the establishment of Assyrian rule in Palestine.
In the 1st century AD, Antipas
Herod Antipas
Herod Antipater , known by the nickname Antipas, was a 1st-century AD ruler of Galilee and Perea, who bore the title of tetrarch...
, like others close to the Herodians
Herodians
The Herodians were a sect or party mentioned in the New Testament as having on two occasions — once in Galilee, and again in Jerusalem — manifested an unfriendly disposition towards Jesus .In each of these cases their name is coupled with that of the Pharisees...
who ruled over parts of the region at the time, was granted dominion over large areas of land. One of the gifts (doreai) he received was a parcel of land located in the Plain of Sharon which included Qaqun, among other villages.
In the Crusader
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
period, a castle called Caco or Cacho was here, of which an 8.5m tower survives. It was mentioned in 1123 and apparently still held by the lord of Caesarea in 1253.
In 1160, Benjamin of Tudela
Benjamin of Tudela
Benjamin of Tudela was a medieval Jewish traveler who visited Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 12th century. His vivid descriptions of western Asia preceded those of Marco Polo by a hundred years...
visited Qaqun which he identified as being ancient Keilah
Keilah
Keilah was a city in the lowlands of Judah . In 1 Samuel, David rescued it from the attack of the Philistines but the inhabitants proved unfaithful to him, in that they sought to deliver him up to Saul . He and his men "departed from Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go.” They fled to the...
.
Mamluk rule
Qaqun was captured by the MamlukMamluk
A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
sultan Ruqn al-Din Baybars
Baibars
Baibars or Baybars , nicknamed Abu l-Futuh , was a Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. He was one of the commanders of the forces which inflicted a devastating defeat on the Seventh Crusade of King Louis IX of France and he led the vanguard of the Egyptian army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, which marked...
(1259–1277) in 1267. Under Mamluk rule, Qaqun was the capital of one of six districts that made up the province of as-Sham, the Mamluk administrative unit for a part of the governorship of "Mamlakat Gaza", one of the region's three Mamluk administrative governorships, the other two being "Mamlakat Dimashq" (Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
) and "Mamlakat Zafad" (Safed
Safed
Safed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
). Qaqun and also Lyyda
Lod
Lod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...
appeared to be independent provinces later in this period. Baybars had ordered its fortress rebuilt and had its church renovated and made into a mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
. Its markets were re-established, and it soon became a commercial center with a caravanserai
Caravanserai
A caravanserai, or khan, also known as caravansary, caravansera, or caravansara in English was a roadside inn where travelers could rest and recover from the day's journey...
for merchants, travelers, and their animals. While early scholarship often attributed the construction of the fortress to Crusaders, both the fortress and mosque at Qaqun are now thought to have built during the reign of Baybars, who also built the administrative center and large market there.
In December of 1271, as Baybars was battling the Mongols
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
in Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, the Crusader
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
forces of King Edward
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
raided Qaqun, but were quickly fought back by the forces of the Mamluk emir
Emir
Emir , meaning "commander", "general", or "prince"; also transliterated as Amir, Aamir or Ameer) is a title of high office, used throughout the Muslim world...
s.
At the end of the 13th century, the Via Maris
Via Maris
Via Maris is the modern name for an ancient trade route, dating from the early Bronze Age, linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia — modern day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria....
was moved eastward inland to improve the line of defence since Palestine's coastal cities were the first to fall to competing powers seeking to expand their domain. The route followed the coast of the Sinai, passing through Al-Arish, Rafah
Rafah
Rafah , also known as Rafiah, is a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip. Located south of Gaza, Rafah's population of 71,003 is overwhelmingly made up of Palestinian refugees. Rafah camp and Tall as-Sultan form separate localities. Rafah is the district capital of the Rafah Governorate...
, Khan Yunis
Khan Yunis
Khan Yunis - often spelt Khan Younis or Khan Yunnis - is a city and adjacent refugee camp in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the city, its refugee camp, and its immediate surroundings had a total population of 180,000 in 2006...
, and Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
. There, a branch then turned eastward to Jerusalem
History of Jerusalem
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE, making Jerusalem one of the oldest cities in the world....
, onto Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
while another passed through Beit Hanoun
Beit Hanoun
Beit Hanoun is a city on the north-east edge of the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the town had a population of 32,187 in mid-year 2006. It is administered by the Palestinian Authority...
to Ramlah through Daris and continued north to Lydda
Lod
Lod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...
, through Jaljulia
Jaljulia
Jaljulia , officially also spelled Jaljulye, is an Arab town in Israel near Kfar Sava. In 2011, it had a population of 9,000.- History :...
and Tira to the center of Qaqun. From Qaqun, the route branched into two, one leading to Jenin
Jenin
Jenin is the largest town in the Northern West Bank, and the third largest city overall. It serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate and is a major agricultural center for the surrounding towns. In 2007, the city had a population of 120,004 not including the adjacent refugee...
and the other to Wadi Ara
Wadi Ara
Wadi Ara or Nahal Iron , refers to an area within Israel that is mostly populated by Arabs. It is located northwest of the Green Line and is mostly within Israel's Haifa District. Today, Highway 65 runs through the wadi.-Geography:...
. Many of these places were villages that had khans
Khan (title)
Khan is an originally Altaic and subsequently Central Asian title for a sovereign or military ruler, widely used by medieval nomadic Turko-Mongol tribes living to the north of China. 'Khan' is also seen as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289...
constructed in them in the 14th century. The khan in Qaqun was built in 1315, and under Mamluk rule, khans like the one in Qaqun were used by couriers on horseback, forming part of the postal network
Postal history of Palestine
The postage stamps and postal history of Palestine emerges out of its geographic location as a crossroads amidst the empires of the ancient Near East, the Levant and the Middle East...
on the Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
-Damascus road. Al-Qalqasandi
Ahmad al-Qalqashandi
Shihab al-Din abu 'l-Abbas Ahmad ben Ali ben Ahmad Abd Allah al-Qalqashandi was a medieval Egyptian writer and mathematician born in a village in the Nile Delta. He is the author of Subh al-a 'sha, a fourteen volume encyclopedia in Arabic, which included a section on cryptology...
(d .1418) mentioned Qaqun as a pleasant, though not particularly prosperous town, with a mosque, a bath, a handsome fort, and wells.
Ottoman rule
During early Ottoman rule in Palestine, the revenues of the village of Qaqun were in 1557 designated for the new waqfWaqf
A waqf also spelled wakf formally known as wakf-alal-aulad is an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law, typically denoting a building or plot of land for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. The donated assets are held by a charitable trust...
of Hasseki Sultan Imaret
Hasseki Sultan Imaret
Hasseki Sultan Imaret was an Ottoman public soup kitchen established in Jerusalem to feed the poor during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent...
in Jerusalem, established by Hasseki Hurrem Sultan (Roxelana
Roxelana
Haseki Hürrem Sultan was the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire.-Names:Sixteenth-century sources are silent as to her maiden name, but much later traditions, for example Ukrainian folk traditions first recorded in the 19th century, give it as "Anastasia" , and Polish...
), the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as "The Lawgiver" , for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system...
. By 1596, Qaqun was the center of the nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun under the liwa'
Liwa (arabic)
Liwa or Liwa is an Arabic term meaning district, banner, or flag, a type of administrative division. It was interchangeable with the Turkish term "Sanjak" in the time of the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the empire, the term was used in the Arab countries formerly under Ottoman rule...
(district) of Nablus
Nablus
Nablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.Founded by the...
and it had a population of 127. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
and barley
Barley
Barley is a major cereal grain, a member of the grass family. It serves as a major animal fodder, as a base malt for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods...
, as well as on goat
Goat
The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...
s and beehive
Beehive
A beehive is a structure in which bees live and raise their young.Beehive may also refer to:Buildings and locations:* Bee Hive, Alabama, a neighborhood in Alabama* Beehive , a wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings...
s.
During Napoleon Bonaparte's Campaign in 1799, Napoleon's forces defeated the Ottoman troops who had been sent to Qaqun to stop their advance towards Acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
. In the 1830s, the inhabitants of Qanqun participated in the revolt against Egypt, and was thence destroyed by the army of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt
Ibrahim Pasha was the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, the Wāli and unrecognised Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. He served as a general in the Egyptian army that his father established during his reign, taking his first command of Egyptian forces was when he was merely a teenager...
during his Syrian campaign (1832–1840).
In the late 19th century, Qaqun was described as a large village built around the central tower of the Crusader/Mamluk fort. Its houses, built of stone and mud, were dispersed over the surface of a hill. There was arable land in the surrounding area. Claude R. Conder writes of there being a Crusader
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
era tower in Qaqun during his visit there.
British Mandate rule
At the time of the 1931 census1931 census of Palestine
The 1931 census of Palestine was the second census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine. It was carried out on 18 November 1931 under the direction of Major E. Mills. The first census had been conducted in 1922...
, Qaqun had 260 occupied houses and a population of 1367 Muslims.
In 1944/45 a total of 713 dunum
Dunum
Dunum is a municipality in the district of Wittmund, in Lower Saxony, Germany....
s were used for citrus
Citrus
Citrus is a common term and genus of flowering plants in the rue family, Rutaceae. Citrus is believed to have originated in the part of Southeast Asia bordered by Northeastern India, Myanmar and the Yunnan province of China...
and bananas, while 34,376 dunums were allocated to cereals; 210 additional dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, of which 80 dunums were planted with olive trees.
Just prior to the 1948 war, in addition to the mosque and fortress, Qaqun also housed of an elementary school for boys and hundreds of homes for its more than 2,000 inhabitants. The village families were made up of the al-Hafi, Abu-Hantash, Matrouk and al-Shaykh Ghanem clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
s.
1948 War
Qaqun was the victim of a "hit-and-run" raid carried out by the Irgun Zvai LeumiIrgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
on 6 March 1948, according to the History of the Haganah. No further details are provided by this source, but the Palestinian newspaper Filastin
Filastin (newspaper)
Filastin was a twice-weekly newspaper published from 1911-1948 in Palestine. Published from Jaffa, the principal publishers were Isa al-Isa and his cousin Yusef al-Isa. Both al-Isas were Greek Orthodox, opponents of British administration, and supporters of pan-Arab unity...
reported an attack on the morning of 7 March. Quoting a communiqué issued by Palestinian militia forces, the paper said that the large attacking unit failed to penetrate the village, and that it threw a number of grenades which wounded two women.
On the 9th May 1948 the Alexandroni Arab affairs experts decided on a meeting in Netanya
Netanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
, in preparation for the declaration of Israeli statehood and the expected pan-Arab invasion, to immediately "expel or subdue" the inhabitants of the Palestinian villages of Kafr Saba
Kafr Saba
Kafr Saba was a Palestinian-Arab village famous for its shrine dating to the Mamluk period and for a history stretching back for more than a millennium...
, al Tira, Qaqun, Qalansuwa, and Tantura. The final operational order did not say what was to be done with the inhabitants, but repeatedly spoke of "cleaning" or "clearing" the village.
After the establishment of the State of Israel and the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, regular Iraqi forces entrenched in the Triangle region
Triangle (Israel)
The Triangle , formerly referred to as the Little Triangle, is a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line, located in the eastern Sharon plain among the Samarian foothills; this area is located within the easternmost boundaries of both the Center District and...
threatened to cut Israeli-controlled territory in half by capturing Netanya
Netanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
. An Iraqi attack was repelled on 29 May 1948, when Israeli forces successfully defended the villages Ein Vered
Ein Vered
Ein Vered is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council. In 2007 it had a population of 1,200....
, Kfar Yabetz
Kfar Yabetz
Kfar Yabetz is a religious moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain near Tayibe, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 494....
and Geulim
Geulim
Geulim is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain near Netanya, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lev HaSharon Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 774....
. Arab attacks originated in Ras al-Ein
Rosh HaAyin
Rosh HaAyin is a city in the Center District of Israel. To the west of Rosh HaAyin is the fortress of Antipatris and the source of the Yarkon River. To the southeast is the fortress of Migdal Afek...
, Tira, Qalansawe
Qalansawe
Qalansawe also Qalansuwa is an Arab city in the Center District of Israel. According to Israel Central Bureau of Statistics statistics for the end of 2007, the total population was 18,500...
and Qaqun, and the capture of any of these was deemed likely to bring to an end the Iraqi effort in the Netanya area.
Qaqun was chosen as the target of an Israeli offensive, and on 5 June at 04:00, the 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade
Alexandroni Brigade
The Alexandroni Brigade is an Israel Defense Forces brigade that fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Along with the 7th Armoured Brigade both units had 139 killed during the first battle of Latrun - Operation Ben Nun Alef .The unit is currently a reserve unit.-Katz controversy:In 1998, Teddy Katz...
attacked the village. A frontal assault was conducted on the Iraqi headquarters to the north of the village, after the nearby mill was cleared. The Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
were only able to clear the village during the day, and used reinforcements from the 32nd Battalion at Ein HaHoresh
Ein HaHoresh
Ein HaHoresh is a kibbutz in central Israel within the jurisdiction of the Hefer Valley Regional Council.It was founded in November of 1931 by Hashomer Hatzair members from Eastern Europe who reclaimed the land...
, which flanked the Arab forces from the south. Iraqi counter-attacks from Kalansawe and Tulkarem lasted until nightfall, with both sides bombing each other's positions from the air. Israeli forces were able to hold on to the village and put an end to Iraqi advances on the coastal plain. Alexandroni suffered 16 casualties and by their estimate the entire Iraqi battalion was wiped out. According to the Alexandroni memorial website, the Iraqi defeat in the battle is considered its biggest of the war.
However, according to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
, the attack was preceded by an artillery barrage that precipitated the evacuation of most of Qaqun's inhabitants to nearby groves. And only a few local militiamen and several dozen Iraqi Army soldiers remained to fight and they were rapidly overwhelmed by the Alexandroni infantry.
Two days later, on the 7 June, Joseph Weitz noted Qaqun among the villages which they had to decide as to whether destroy (to prevent the villagers from returning), or renovate and settled with Jews. By December 1948 the IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
General Staff\Operations approved the depopulation of the remaining small border-hugging sites ("khurab") in the Triangle
Triangle (Israel)
The Triangle , formerly referred to as the Little Triangle, is a concentration of Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line, located in the eastern Sharon plain among the Samarian foothills; this area is located within the easternmost boundaries of both the Center District and...
area. It was instructed that "an effort should be made to carry out the eviction [of Arab civilians] without force". But if force proved necessary, the Military Government was authorized to use it. Among the sites evicted was eight in the Qaqun and Gharbiya area.
After 1948
KibbutzKibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
ha-Ma´pil was built on what had traditionally been village land in 1945, 3 km to the northwest. Three settlements were founded on village land in 1949: Gan Yoshiyya, 1 km due south of the village site, Ometz
Ometz, Israel
Ometz is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the coastal plain near Zemer, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hefer Valley Regional Council.The moshav was founded in 1949 by demobilised IDF soldiers from the 32nd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade...
, 1 km north of the site; and ´Olesh, 4 km southwest of the site. Haniel
Haniel, Israel
Haniel is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Sharon plain near Netanya and Kfar Yona, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hefer Valley Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 785....
was built on village land in 1950. Yikkon was built in the early 1950s to serve as a transit camp for new Jewish immigrants, and was later made into a regional school. Burgeta, built in 1949, is 5 km to the southwest but is not on village land.
Walid Khalidi
Walid Khalidi
Walid Khalidi is an Oxford University-educated Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center...
described the remaining structures of the village in 1992:
"The fortress on top of the hill, a well that belonged to the family of Abu Hantash, and the school building are all that remain of the village. The fortress is surrounded by stone rubble and the remains of houses, and the school building is still used as a school by Israelis. Cactuses and an old mulberry tree grow south of the hill. The surrounding lands are covered by orchards. In addition, cotton, pistachios, and vegetables are grown on the lands. There is an Israeli fodder-processing factory northeast of the village site.
The estimated number of Palestinian refugees from Qaqun, as of 1998, was 14,034.
The Nature and Parks Authority and the Hefer Valley Economic Development Corporation recently ordered that the former site of Qaqun, its fortress and other ruins be declared a national park
National park
A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
. The plan is to rehabilitate the site and turn it into a "focal point that will draw tourism."
See also
- List of Arab towns and villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
- List of villages depopulated during the Arab-Israeli conflict
External links
- Qaqun Site موقع قرية قاقون
- Welcome To Qaqun
- Qaqun from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural CenterKhalil Sakakini Cultural Center is an organization established in 1996. It is located at 4 Raja Street, Ramallah in the West Bank. The traditional manor that houses the centre was the former family home of Khalil Salem Salah, the mayor of Ramallah between 1947/1951, is now owned by the Palestinian...
- Qaqun by Rami Nashashibi (1996), Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society.