Sharafat, East Jerusalem
Encyclopedia
Sharafat is a Palestinian
village in East Jerusalem
. Historically, it was located in Palestine
, about 5 km to the south west of Jerusalem. It is mentioned in Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th and 15th centuries, Ottoman tax records from the 16th century, and the travel writings and ethnographies
of European and American visitors to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries.
During the period of Mamluk
rule (c. 13th - early 16th centuries), Sharafat was home to the Badriyya a renowned family of awliya (Muslim saints) to whom the village was dedicated as a waqf
(Islamic trust) by the viceroy of Damascus
in the 14th century, and whose family tombs continue to be venerated to this day.
After the 1948 Palestine War
, Sharafat lay in the area to the east of the Green Line
that was annexed by Jordan
until 1967. Following the occupation
of the West Bank
by Israel
in the 1967 Six-Day War
, it was added by Israel to the expanded Jerusalem District
. In the 1970s, the Israeli government expropriated land from the village to build the Israeli settlement
of Gilo
, whose subsequent expansion saw the destruction of homes, vineyards and orchards in Sharafat. The Palestinian Authority (PA), established pursuant to 1993 Oslo Accords
, considers Sharafat a part of its Jerusalem Governorate
. In 2002, the population was made up of 978 Palestinians.
, in the Seam Zone
.The built-up area of the village lies 400 metres (1,312.3 ft) south of Gilo
, 700 metres (2,296.6 ft) from Teddy Stadium. Some tracts of village land were expropriated
by the Israeli government in 1970 for the construction of Gilo. According to Jordan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations
, an additional 1,350 dunam
s (1.35 km2) were expropriated in 1983.
In 1996, the total land area of the village was 1,974 dunams (1.974 km2), with a built-up area of 285 dunams. Of these, 1,962 dunams were privately owned by Muslims, and the remainder was public land. Zuhur and Deir Cremisan
are often included in land and population surveys as part of Sharafat. In 2003, the combined land area was 8,939 dunams, housing a population of 963 in 245 dwellings.
rule (c. 13th - early 16th centuries), Sharafat was home to the Badriyya a renowned family of awliya (Muslim saints) to whom the village was dedicated as a waqf
(Islamic trust) by the viceroy of Damascus
in the 14th century, and whose family tombs continue to be venerated to this day. Sharafat is mentioned in Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th and 15th centuries, Ottoman tax records from the 16th century, and the travel writings and ethnographies
of European and American visitors to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries. Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th century mention the Husseini
family renting the lands of Sharafat. The specific branch who leased the village from a fief-holder is said to be al-Husyani al-Wafā'i, descendants of al-Husayn ibn Ali
, grandson of the founder of Islam
, Muhammad
, and the village remained in their possession throughout the Mamluk period.
The Jerusalemite chronicler Mujīr al-Dīn
's al-Uns al-Jalīl (c. 1495) documents the exploits of Sufi
notables in Hebron
and Jerusalem, and provides much information about the history of Sharafat in the Mamluk
period. The Abdu l-Wafā' or the Wafā'iyya are described by him as a family of Sufi scholars and ashrāf ("honoured ones") whose origins were in 12th century Iraq
. Al-Sayyid Badr al-Dīn Muhammed (d. 1253, also known as Sheikh Badir), a renowned Sufi wāli
(Muslim saint) from this family took up residence in Dayr al-Shaykh
. 'Abd al-Ḥafiz (d. 1296–1297), his grandson, established roots in neighbouring Sharafat when Dayr al-Shaykh had become too small to accommodate the growing population, relinquishing the revenues to the land he owned in the latter for the benefit of those remaining. Dāwūd, the son of al-Ḥafiz, established a zāwiya and tomb in Sharafat where all his descendants were buried. The most famous of these were al-Sayyid 'Alī and al-Sayyid Muhammed al-Bahā', considered "pillars" of the Holy Land
and its surroundings (wa-kānā a'mida al-arḍ al-muaqaddasa wa-mā hawlahā).
Under Mamluk rule, the village of Sharafat was dedicated as a waqf
("Islamic trust") to the Badriyya family by the viceroy of Damascus
in 1349. Al-Dīn's al-Uns al-Jalīl suggests that Sharafat was named for this family of ashrāf. The Palestine Exploration Fund
notes that prior to its renaming, the village was known as Karafat (the opposite of Sharafat, which means "noble"). Badriyya (also called Sitt Badriyya), Sheikh Badir's daughter, was also buried in Sharafat, as was her husband, Ahmed et-Tubbar. The simple, unadorned tomb of Sitt Badriyya overlooks a valley that is today crowded with highways, but is still venerated by area residents, who believe that she can render assistance in times of drought.
that recorded tax related information for the villages in the area in 1596–1597. It had a population of 12 Muslim families. A 16th-century Ottoman map situates Sharafat in the green belt around Jerusalem.
James Finn
, the British consul
to Jerusalem during Ottoman rule, writes of visiting Sharafat between 1853 and 1856. He describes it as a small village perched on high hill to the southwest of Jerusalem which could be seen from there. The villagers are described as "a robust and well-fed people," who expressed to him that they were happily exempt from a family feud between the Abu Ghosh
and Mohammed 'Atallah that was the disturbing the peace of nearby Beit Safafa
.
In her book, Bertha Spafford Vester, an American who lived in Jerusalem's American Colony
in 1881 and 1949, writes about the grave of a female saint in the village who was venerated by Muslims and Christians alike. In 1929, the American Colony
established a child welfare station in Sharafat, in a room provided by the village sheikh
which was also open to women from the neighbouring villages.
In 1931, the population of the village was recorded as 158 Muslims. In interviews with area residents conducted between 1925 and 1931 by Hilma Natalia Granqvist, the Finnish ethnographer, when asked which villages were renowned for having more daughters than sons, Sharafat was named along with the villages of Beit Sahour
and Ein Karem.Granqvist, 1950, p. 66.
, Sharafat lay in the area to the east of the Green Line
that was occupied by Jordan
until 1967. Musa Alami
a Palestinian nationalist
and politician, owned a house in Sharafat where he hosted members of the foreign press and British visitors.Serene Husseini Shahid
mentions Sharafat in her book A Jerusalem Childhood: The Early Life of Serene Husseini. Her grandfather, Fadi al-Alami, Jerusalem's mayor under Ottoman rule, is said to have bought land in Sharafat after falling in love with an oak tree
in the village that was thought to be 1,500 years old. Shahid's family owned a summer home in the village where she made friends with Miriam, the daughter of Ali Mishaal, the village mukhtar
. Shahid writes that the mukhtar's home was surrounded by Israeli forces during a raid across the armistice line in 1951. The house was blown up, and Miriam and her daughter were partially buried in the rubble for a day before being rescued. They both succumbed to their wounds in the hospital.
carried out a raid on Sharafat on the orders of Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion
after IDF intelligence determined that it had served as a base for an attack in which an Israeli man was murdered, his wife raped, and their home robbed. IDF troops from the 16th (Jerusalem) Brigade entered Sharafat at night, surrounding and blowing up two houses, one of which belonged to the village mukhtar
. Three women and five children (aged 1–13) were killed, and five women and three children were injured.Moshe Dayan
, characterized the operation as "an eye for an eye." Reuven Shiloah
, head of the Mossad
, told the British ambassador that the incident had been provoked by "Arab raiding, raping, etc. from [the] Jordan side." He also told King Hussein that individual soldiers may have been involved in the raid. Samir Rifa'i
, the Prime Minister of Jordan, who had been regarded by Israel as "generally reasonable and conciliatory," described the IDF raid on Sharafat as "fiendish" and "provocative", and became convinced that Israel "did not seriously desire peace," thereby derailing American hopes for pursuing peace talks. According to Benny Morris
, such punitive raids constituted a prime IDF strategy between 1951 and 1953.
by Israel
in the 1967 war, Sharafat fell under Israeli control, and it came to form part of Israel's expanded Jerusalem municipality in the Jerusalem District
. Government expropriations of land east of the Green Line in the green belt around Jerusalem in 1970 enabled the creation of Jewish satellite neighbourhoods, among them Gilo, which was constructed in 1973 on land belonging to Palestinian residents of Sharafat, Beit Jala
, and Beit Safafa
.
The impact of the land confiscations in Sharafat is discussed by the permanent observer of the Palestine Liberation Organization
to the United Nations
in a letter dated November 6, 1986. The case of Halimeh Abdal Nabi, a 70-year-old woman, whose home was demolished in 1986, is outlined therein in detail: In the early 1970s, 40 dunams of land were confiscated from the Abdal Nabi family in order to build roads for the new settlement of Gilo. The kitchen and well of the woman's house were destroyed around this time, and to accommodate Gilo's expansion in 1976, Palestinian vineyards and orchards were also destroyed and homes demolished. A wall built by the Israeli construction company, to separate Abdal Nabi's home from the settlement, blocked her access to her own staircase. Following the demolition of her home in 1986, she went to live in her neighbour's house. Though she wanted to set up a tent on her land, which The Red Cross was willing to provide, she was unable to do so after it was discovered that her land had been declared a "military zone" in 1975.
Ray Hanania
, a Palestinian-American journalist, notes that documents attesting to his grandmother's nephew's land ownership rights in Sharafat are at the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem, but that he has been unable to procure them despite paying them more than two dozen visits since the lands were confiscated in 1970. Hanania describes the land of Sharafat as, "a rambling field of olive
trees and small orange groves," noting that to Palestinians, "the land is everything."
coin date from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A ritual bath (mikve) was documented near the site.
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...
village in East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem or Eastern Jerusalem refer to the parts of Jerusalem captured and annexed by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then captured and annexed by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War...
. Historically, it was located in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, about 5 km to the south west of Jerusalem. It is mentioned in Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th and 15th centuries, Ottoman tax records from the 16th century, and the travel writings and ethnographies
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
of European and American visitors to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries.
During the period of Mamluk
Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo)
The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt was the final independent Egyptian state prior to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in 1805. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The sultanate's ruling caste was composed of Mamluks, Arabised...
rule (c. 13th - early 16th centuries), Sharafat was home to the Badriyya a renowned family of awliya (Muslim saints) to whom the village was dedicated as a waqf
Waqf
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...
(Islamic trust) by the viceroy of 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...
in the 14th century, and whose family tombs continue to be venerated to this day.
After the 1948 Palestine War
1948 Palestine war
The 1948 Palestine war refers to the events in the British Mandate of Palestine between the United Nations vote on the partition plan on November 30, 1947, to the end of the first Arab-Israeli war on July 20, 1949.The war is divided into two phases:...
, Sharafat lay in the area to the east of the Green Line
Green Line
- Geographic demarcations :* Green Line, a name for the Gothic Line or "Linea Gotica", a German defensive line in Italy during World War II, renamed the "Green Line" in June 1944...
that was annexed by Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
until 1967. Following the occupation
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
of the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in the 1967 Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
, it was added by Israel to the expanded Jerusalem District
Jerusalem District
The Jerusalem District is one of six administrative districts of Israel. The district capital is Jerusalem. The Jerusalem District has a land area of 652 km². The population of 910,300 is 67.8% Jewish and 30.6% Arab...
. In the 1970s, the Israeli government expropriated land from the village to build the Israeli settlement
Israeli settlement
An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...
of Gilo
Gilo
Gilo is a neighborhood in southern East Jerusalem with a population of 40,000, mostly Jewish. It is one of the five ring neighborhoods of Jerusalem and is built on land in the West Bank that was annexed to Israel in 1980 under the Jerusalem Law. The international community regards it as an...
, whose subsequent expansion saw the destruction of homes, vineyards and orchards in Sharafat. The Palestinian Authority (PA), established pursuant to 1993 Oslo Accords
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles , was an attempt to resolve the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict...
, considers Sharafat a part of its Jerusalem Governorate
Jerusalem Governorate
The Jerusalem Governorate is one of 16 Palestinian governorates situated in the central portion of the West Bank. Its claimed district capital is East Jerusalem, which is, however, under Israeli occupation and regarded by Israel as being part of its territory. The total land area of the...
. In 2002, the population was made up of 978 Palestinians.
Geography
Sharafat is situated on a mountain-ridge at an altitude of 764 metres (2,506.6 ft). It is located east of the Green LineGreen Line
- Geographic demarcations :* Green Line, a name for the Gothic Line or "Linea Gotica", a German defensive line in Italy during World War II, renamed the "Green Line" in June 1944...
, in the Seam Zone
Seam Zone
Seam Zone is a term used to refer to a land area in the West Bank located east of the Green Line and west of Israel's separation barrier, populated largely by Israelis in settlements such as Alfei Menashe, Ariel, Beit Arye, Modi'in Illit, Giv'at Ze'ev, Ma'ale Adumim, Beitar Illit and Efrat.As of...
.The built-up area of the village lies 400 metres (1,312.3 ft) south of Gilo
Gilo
Gilo is a neighborhood in southern East Jerusalem with a population of 40,000, mostly Jewish. It is one of the five ring neighborhoods of Jerusalem and is built on land in the West Bank that was annexed to Israel in 1980 under the Jerusalem Law. The international community regards it as an...
, 700 metres (2,296.6 ft) from Teddy Stadium. Some tracts of village land were expropriated
Expropriation
Expropriation is the politically motivated and forceful confiscation and redistribution of private property outside the common law. Unlike eminent domain or laws regulating the foreign investment, expropriation takes place outside the common law and may be used to denote an armed robbery by...
by the Israeli government in 1970 for the construction of Gilo. According to Jordan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, an additional 1,350 dunam
Dunam
A dunam or dönüm, dunum, donum, dynym, dulum was a non-SI unit of land area used in the Ottoman Empire and representing the amount of land that can be plowed in a day; its value varied from 900–2500 m²...
s (1.35 km2) were expropriated in 1983.
In 1996, the total land area of the village was 1,974 dunams (1.974 km2), with a built-up area of 285 dunams. Of these, 1,962 dunams were privately owned by Muslims, and the remainder was public land. Zuhur and Deir Cremisan
Cremisan
The Cremisan Monastery is a Salesian monastery in the West Bank, near Beit Jala. The monastery, located on a hill 850 metres above sea level, is five kilometres from Bethlehem and 12 kilometres from Jerusalem...
are often included in land and population surveys as part of Sharafat. In 2003, the combined land area was 8,939 dunams, housing a population of 963 in 245 dwellings.
Mamluk era
During the period of MamlukMamluk Sultanate (Cairo)
The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt was the final independent Egyptian state prior to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in 1805. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The sultanate's ruling caste was composed of Mamluks, Arabised...
rule (c. 13th - early 16th centuries), Sharafat was home to the Badriyya a renowned family of awliya (Muslim saints) to whom the village was dedicated as a waqf
Waqf
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...
(Islamic trust) by the viceroy of 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...
in the 14th century, and whose family tombs continue to be venerated to this day. Sharafat is mentioned in Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th and 15th centuries, Ottoman tax records from the 16th century, and the travel writings and ethnographies
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
of European and American visitors to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries. Jerusalem chronicles from the 13th century mention the Husseini
Husseini
Husseini is an Arabic surname.-Etymology:It is a nisba derivation of the given name Hussein...
family renting the lands of Sharafat. The specific branch who leased the village from a fief-holder is said to be al-Husyani al-Wafā'i, descendants of al-Husayn ibn Ali
Husayn ibn Ali
Hussein ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was the son of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah Zahrā...
, grandson of the founder of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, and the village remained in their possession throughout the Mamluk period.
The Jerusalemite chronicler Mujīr al-Dīn
Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi
Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī , often simply Mujir al-Din, was a Jerusalemite qadi and Arab historian whose principal work chronicled the history of Jerusalem and Hebron in the Middle Ages. Entitled al-Uns al-Jalil bi-tarikh al-Quds wal-Khalil Mujīr al-Dīn al-'Ulaymī (Arabic: ) (1456–1522), often...
's al-Uns al-Jalīl (c. 1495) documents the exploits of Sufi
Sufism
Sufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...
notables in 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...
and Jerusalem, and provides much information about the history of Sharafat in the Mamluk
Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo)
The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt was the final independent Egyptian state prior to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in 1805. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The sultanate's ruling caste was composed of Mamluks, Arabised...
period. The Abdu l-Wafā' or the Wafā'iyya are described by him as a family of Sufi scholars and ashrāf ("honoured ones") whose origins were in 12th century Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Al-Sayyid Badr al-Dīn Muhammed (d. 1253, also known as Sheikh Badir), a renowned Sufi wāli
Wali
Walī , is an Arabic word meaning "custodian", "protector", "sponsor", or authority as denoted by its definition "crown". "Wali" is someone who has "Walayah" over somebody else. For example, in Fiqh the father is wali of his children. In Islam, the phrase ولي الله walīyu 'llāh...
(Muslim saint) from this family took up residence in Dayr al-Shaykh
Dayr al-Shaykh
Dayr al-Shaykh was a Palestinian Arab village in the District of Jerusalem, also known as the Jerusalem corridor. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War...
. 'Abd al-Ḥafiz (d. 1296–1297), his grandson, established roots in neighbouring Sharafat when Dayr al-Shaykh had become too small to accommodate the growing population, relinquishing the revenues to the land he owned in the latter for the benefit of those remaining. Dāwūd, the son of al-Ḥafiz, established a zāwiya and tomb in Sharafat where all his descendants were buried. The most famous of these were al-Sayyid 'Alī and al-Sayyid Muhammed al-Bahā', considered "pillars" of the Holy Land
Holy Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
and its surroundings (wa-kānā a'mida al-arḍ al-muaqaddasa wa-mā hawlahā).
Under Mamluk rule, the village of Sharafat was dedicated as a waqf
Waqf
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...
("Islamic trust") to the Badriyya family by the viceroy of 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...
in 1349. Al-Dīn's al-Uns al-Jalīl suggests that Sharafat was named for this family of ashrāf. The Palestine Exploration Fund
Palestine Exploration Fund
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society often simply known as the PEF. It was founded in 1865 and is still functioning today. Its initial object was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine with a remit that fell somewhere between an expeditionary...
notes that prior to its renaming, the village was known as Karafat (the opposite of Sharafat, which means "noble"). Badriyya (also called Sitt Badriyya), Sheikh Badir's daughter, was also buried in Sharafat, as was her husband, Ahmed et-Tubbar. The simple, unadorned tomb of Sitt Badriyya overlooks a valley that is today crowded with highways, but is still venerated by area residents, who believe that she can render assistance in times of drought.
Ottoman era
Sharafat is listed in the Daftar-i Mufassal, a book of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
that recorded tax related information for the villages in the area in 1596–1597. It had a population of 12 Muslim families. A 16th-century Ottoman map situates Sharafat in the green belt around Jerusalem.
James Finn
James Finn
James Finn was a British Consul in Jerusalem, in the then Ottoman Empire . He arrived in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth Anne Finn. Finn was a devout Christian, who belonged to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, but who did not engage in missionary work during his years in...
, the British consul
Consul
Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...
to Jerusalem during Ottoman rule, writes of visiting Sharafat between 1853 and 1856. He describes it as a small village perched on high hill to the southwest of Jerusalem which could be seen from there. The villagers are described as "a robust and well-fed people," who expressed to him that they were happily exempt from a family feud between the Abu Ghosh
Abu Ghosh
Abu Ghosh is an Israeli Arab town in Israel, located west of Jerusalem on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. It is situated 610–720 meters above sea level. In 2010, it set the Guinness World Record for largest dish of hummus...
and Mohammed 'Atallah that was the disturbing the peace of nearby Beit Safafa
Beit Safafa
Beit Safafa is an Arab neighborhood in south Jerusalem midway between the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Patt and Gilo, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Beit Safafa had a population of 5,463 in 2000. It covers an area of 1,577 dunams.-History:...
.
In her book, Bertha Spafford Vester, an American who lived in Jerusalem's American Colony
American Colony
The American Colony was a colony established in Jerusalem in 1881 by members of a Christian utopian society led by Anna and Horatio Spafford. Now a hotel in East Jerusalem, it is still known by that name today.-History:...
in 1881 and 1949, writes about the grave of a female saint in the village who was venerated by Muslims and Christians alike. In 1929, the American Colony
American Colony
The American Colony was a colony established in Jerusalem in 1881 by members of a Christian utopian society led by Anna and Horatio Spafford. Now a hotel in East Jerusalem, it is still known by that name today.-History:...
established a child welfare station in Sharafat, in a room provided by the village sheikh
Sheikh
Not to be confused with sikhSheikh — also spelled Sheik or Shaikh, or transliterated as Shaykh — is an honorific in the Arabic language that literally means "elder" and carries the meaning "leader and/or governor"...
which was also open to women from the neighbouring villages.
In 1931, the population of the village was recorded as 158 Muslims. In interviews with area residents conducted between 1925 and 1931 by Hilma Natalia Granqvist, the Finnish ethnographer, when asked which villages were renowned for having more daughters than sons, Sharafat was named along with the villages of Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour is a Palestinian town east of Bethlehem under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority...
and Ein Karem.Granqvist, 1950, p. 66.
Jordanian era
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War1948 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...
, Sharafat lay in the area to the east of the Green Line
Green Line
- Geographic demarcations :* Green Line, a name for the Gothic Line or "Linea Gotica", a German defensive line in Italy during World War II, renamed the "Green Line" in June 1944...
that was occupied by Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
until 1967. Musa Alami
Musa Alami
Musa Alami was a prominent Palestinian nationalist and politician.Alami was born in the Musrara district of Jerusalem, Palestine into a prominent family...
a Palestinian nationalist
Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian nationalism is the national movement of the Palestinian people. It has roots in Pan-Arabism and other movements rejecting colonialism and calling for national independence. More recently, Palestinian Nationalism is expressed through the Israeli–Palestinian conflict...
and politician, owned a house in Sharafat where he hosted members of the foreign press and British visitors.Serene Husseini Shahid
Serene Husseini Shahid
Serene Husseini Shahid was born in Jerusalem as a member of the influential Husayni family. Her father was Jamal al-Husayni, her maternal grandfather was Mayor of Jerusalem Faidi al-Alami, and her maternal uncle was Musa al-Alami....
mentions Sharafat in her book A Jerusalem Childhood: The Early Life of Serene Husseini. Her grandfather, Fadi al-Alami, Jerusalem's mayor under Ottoman rule, is said to have bought land in Sharafat after falling in love with an oak tree
Oak Tree
Oak Tree may refer to:*Oak, the tree*Oak Tree, County Durham, a village in County Durham, England*The Oaktree Foundation, a youth-run aid and development agency*Oak Tree National, golf club in Edmond, Oklahoma...
in the village that was thought to be 1,500 years old. Shahid's family owned a summer home in the village where she made friends with Miriam, the daughter of Ali Mishaal, the village mukhtar
Mukhtar
Mukhtar meaning "chosen" in Arabic, refers to the head of a village or mahalle in many Arab countries as well as in Turkey and Cyprus. The name refers to the fact that mukhtars are usually selected by some consensual or participatory method, often involving an election. Mukhtar is also a common...
. Shahid writes that the mukhtar's home was surrounded by Israeli forces during a raid across the armistice line in 1951. The house was blown up, and Miriam and her daughter were partially buried in the rubble for a day before being rescued. They both succumbed to their wounds in the hospital.
1951 Israeli raid
On the night of February 6–7, 1951, the Israel Defense ForcesIsrael 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...
carried out a raid on Sharafat on the orders of Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
after IDF intelligence determined that it had served as a base for an attack in which an Israeli man was murdered, his wife raped, and their home robbed. IDF troops from the 16th (Jerusalem) Brigade entered Sharafat at night, surrounding and blowing up two houses, one of which belonged to the village mukhtar
Mukhtar
Mukhtar meaning "chosen" in Arabic, refers to the head of a village or mahalle in many Arab countries as well as in Turkey and Cyprus. The name refers to the fact that mukhtars are usually selected by some consensual or participatory method, often involving an election. Mukhtar is also a common...
. Three women and five children (aged 1–13) were killed, and five women and three children were injured.Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. The fourth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces , he became a fighting symbol to the world of the new State of Israel...
, characterized the operation as "an eye for an eye." Reuven Shiloah
Reuven Shiloah
Reuven Shiloah was the first Director of the Mossad from 1949 to 1952. Born in Ottoman ruled Jerusalem as Reuven Zaslanski, he would later shorten his last name to Zaslani and use the codeword Shiloah. From an Orthodox Jewish family and with a rabbi for a father, Shiloah abandoned the religious...
, head of the Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
, told the British ambassador that the incident had been provoked by "Arab raiding, raping, etc. from [the] Jordan side." He also told King Hussein that individual soldiers may have been involved in the raid. Samir Rifa'i
Samir al-Rifai
Samir al-Rifai was a six-time Prime Minister of Jordan.Al-Rifai served under Kings Abdullah I, Talal and Hussein:*Prime Minister of the Emirate of Transjordan from 15 October 1944 to 19 May 1945...
, the Prime Minister of Jordan, who had been regarded by Israel as "generally reasonable and conciliatory," described the IDF raid on Sharafat as "fiendish" and "provocative", and became convinced that Israel "did not seriously desire peace," thereby derailing American hopes for pursuing peace talks. 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...
, such punitive raids constituted a prime IDF strategy between 1951 and 1953.
After 1967
Following the occupation of the West BankWest Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
by Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in the 1967 war, Sharafat fell under Israeli control, and it came to form part of Israel's expanded Jerusalem municipality in the Jerusalem District
Jerusalem District
The Jerusalem District is one of six administrative districts of Israel. The district capital is Jerusalem. The Jerusalem District has a land area of 652 km². The population of 910,300 is 67.8% Jewish and 30.6% Arab...
. Government expropriations of land east of the Green Line in the green belt around Jerusalem in 1970 enabled the creation of Jewish satellite neighbourhoods, among them Gilo, which was constructed in 1973 on land belonging to Palestinian residents of Sharafat, Beit Jala
Beit Jala
Beit Jala is an Arab Christian town in the Bethlehem Governorate of the West Bank. Beit Jala is located 10 km south of Jerusalem, on the western side of the Hebron road, opposite Bethlehem, at altitude...
, and Beit Safafa
Beit Safafa
Beit Safafa is an Arab neighborhood in south Jerusalem midway between the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Patt and Gilo, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Beit Safafa had a population of 5,463 in 2000. It covers an area of 1,577 dunams.-History:...
.
The impact of the land confiscations in Sharafat is discussed by the permanent observer of the Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
in a letter dated November 6, 1986. The case of Halimeh Abdal Nabi, a 70-year-old woman, whose home was demolished in 1986, is outlined therein in detail: In the early 1970s, 40 dunams of land were confiscated from the Abdal Nabi family in order to build roads for the new settlement of Gilo. The kitchen and well of the woman's house were destroyed around this time, and to accommodate Gilo's expansion in 1976, Palestinian vineyards and orchards were also destroyed and homes demolished. A wall built by the Israeli construction company, to separate Abdal Nabi's home from the settlement, blocked her access to her own staircase. Following the demolition of her home in 1986, she went to live in her neighbour's house. Though she wanted to set up a tent on her land, which The Red Cross was willing to provide, she was unable to do so after it was discovered that her land had been declared a "military zone" in 1975.
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania is an Arab-American Palestinian Christian journalist also known for his stand-up comedy. Hanania writes a syndicated column with a particular focus on the Middle East, and after the September 11 attacks, created Comedians of Middle East conflict, a comedy act with the hope of defusing...
, a Palestinian-American journalist, notes that documents attesting to his grandmother's nephew's land ownership rights in Sharafat are at the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem, but that he has been unable to procure them despite paying them more than two dozen visits since the lands were confiscated in 1970. Hanania describes the land of Sharafat as, "a rambling field of olive
Olive
The olive , Olea europaea), is a species of a small tree in the family Oleaceae, native to the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean Basin as well as northern Iran at the south end of the Caspian Sea.Its fruit, also called the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the...
trees and small orange groves," noting that to Palestinians, "the land is everything."
Development projects
In 2010, the Latin Patriarchate launched a construction project to house dozens of Christian families, mostly young couples with children. Some 9,000 square meters of land were purchased by the families and the Jerusalem municipality granted the necessary construction permits. Eighty apartments are now under construction.Archaeology
Archaeological excavations in 2007 found a terrace compound that may have been part of the agricultural periphery of Sharafat or Beit Safafa in the last century. A quarry and winepress were ascribed to the period of Roman–Byzantine occupation. Ceramic artifacts and a HasmoneanHasmonean
The Hasmonean dynasty , was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE, the dynasty ruled semi-autonomously from the Seleucids in the region of Judea...
coin date from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. A ritual bath (mikve) was documented near the site.