Bayt Nuba

History

Historically identified with the biblical city of Nob mentioned in the Book of Samuel, that association has been eschewed in modern times. The village is mentioned in extrabiblical sources including the writings of 5th-century Roman geographers, 12th-century Crusaders and a Jewish traveller, a 13th-century Syrian geographer, a 15th-century Arab historian, and Western travellers in the 19th century.

The Israeli settlement of Mevo Horon was established on its lands in 1970.

History

The name Bayt nūbā /Bēt nūba/ in its current form, is of Aramaic extraction, with the 2nd component is from Aram. nwb’ “the fruit”.

5th century Christian scholar, Eusebius of Caesarea, mentioned the village in his Onomasticon, under the name Beth Annabam and situated it at a distance of 8 Roman miles from Lydda. His contemporary, Jerome, identifies it as biblical Nob.

During the Crusades, it was called Betynoble. as did the 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela.

In the Crusader period, Kurds settled in Bayt Nuba. Writing in the 13th century during the time of Mamluk rule over Palestine, Yaqut al-Hamawi, the Syrian geographer, noted of Bayt Nuba, that it was, "A small town in the neighbourhood of Filastin (Ar Ramlah)." A road from Ramla to Jerusalem that passed through Bayt Nuba, al-Qubeiba, and Nabi Samwil was the preferred route for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land at the time. On the maps produced by the Palestine Exploration Fund, the road, which stretches from al-Qubeiba to Jerusalem, is marked in the legend as a Roman road.

Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi (1496), the Jerusalemite qadi and Arab historian, discussed the village's name in the context of other villages beginning with the word Bayt ("House"). He noted that conventional wisdom among the locals of his time held that they are named for Hebrew Bible prophets that were thought to have resided there in antiquity. He also delineated the village as forming the westernmost limit of what was considered the area of Jerusalem at his time.

Ottoman era

The village does not appear in 16th century tax records.[[File:BeitNuba1.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Part of medieval church discovered by Clermont-Ganneau, and destroyed in 1967.]]

The waqf custodian of the mosque in Bayt Nuba (and 'Allar) in 1810 was appointed by the Ottoman imperial authorities, and hailed from the Jerusalem family of notables, the Dajanis.

Edward Robinson and Eli Smith visited Beit Nubah in 1838 and 1852, and identified it as the Nobe mentioned by Jerome and considered by some of their contemporaries to be Bethannaba.

Socin found from an official Ottoman village list from about 1870 that Bet Nuba had 23 houses and a population of 97, though the population count included men, only. Hartmann found that Bet Nuba had 20 houses.

In 1873, Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau discovered the remains of a large medieval church in the village. In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine described Bayt Nuba as a "good-sized village on flat ground".

In 1896 the population of Bet Nuba was estimated to be about 723 persons.

Some residents of the village had origins in Transjordan.

British Mandate era

In the 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Bayt Nuba had a population of 839 inhabitants, all Muslims. This had increased in the 1931 census to 944, still all Muslim, in 226 houses.

In the 1945 statistics the population of Beit Nuba and Ajanjul was 1,240, all Muslims, while the total land area was 11,401 dunams, according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 1,002 dunams were allocated for plantations and irrigable land, 6,997 for cereals, while 74 dunams were classified as built-up areas.

Jordanian era

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the village was garrisoned by the Arab Legion to defend the Latrun salient. Located 2 mi behind the front line, it was subject to a skirmish attack launched by Israeli forces in Operation Yoram on the night of June 8, 1948.

The 1949 armistice line fell just a few kilometers to the south and west of villages in the Latrun salient and with a dispute between Israel and Jordan over where it lay exactly, much of the area surrounding Bayt Nuba was declared no man's land, resulting in social and economic separation from the surrounding areas. Residents of Bayt Nuba and other Latrun villages were granted Jordanian citizenship following Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1950. Many were prompted to leave the area to seek livelihoods in Jordan, the Persian Gulf, South America or elsewhere due to violence between villagers and Israeli troops and the loss of access to farmlands.

In 1961, the population was 1,350 persons.

1967, and aftermath

The Latrun area was captured by Israeli troops in the first few hours of the 1967 war and the next night, orders were broadcast by Israeli military jeeps to villagers in Bayt Nuba, Yalo, and Imwas to leave their homes, resulting in some 12,000 people leaving in the space of a few hours. With the war's completion, a radio announcement from the military said villagers in the West Bank who had vacated their homes should return; however, the villagers of Bayt Nuba and the others from the Latrun area were forbidden from doing so as most of the area was declared a closed military zone. Those who tried to return were stopped at checkpoints where some were shot at. The built up area of Bayt Nuba was destroyed in military engineered explosions after the war's end, an act witnessed by some of the former residents who had fled nearby hills. After the destruction, the remains of the medieval church, first described by Clermont-Ganneau, have not been located.

Part of the farmlands of Bayt Nuba lay outside the closed military zone and some refugees from the village rented homes in a nearby village with a population of around 7,000 (called "Bayt Hajjar" by the author) to continue farming those lands. The settlement of Mevo Horon was built on the lands of Bayt Nuba in 1970.

Where did they come from

Some of Bayt Nuba's residents were Kurds who settled in Palestine during the Crusader era, while others came from Transjordan.

References

Bibliography

References

1. Palmer, 1881, p. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp00conduoft#page/286/mode/1up 286]
2. Mundinger, Ulla. "Walking on Ruins: The Untold Story of Yalu." ''Jerusalem Quarterly'' 69 (2017): 22.
3. Davis, U. (2004). APARTHEID ISRAEL AND THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND OF CANADA.
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5. Kanj, Jamal Krayem. ''Children of catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian refugee camp to America''. Garnet Publishing Ltd, 2010.
6. Keinon, H. "Palestinians campaign to regain 'occupied' Latrun". Jerusalem Post.
7. (Autumn 1973). "Palestinian Emigration and Israeli Land Expropriation in the Occupied Territories". [[University of California Press]] on behalf of the [[Institute for Palestine Studies]].
8. Boaz Zissu. (2012). "Excavations near Nahmanides Cave in Jerusalem and the question of the identification of Biblical Nob". Israel Exploration Journal.
9. [https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:lWDnajg4NN0J:www.nion.ca/pdf/latrun-40-years-later.pdf+yalo+jordan+village+population&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESihja_bise16cuqZUyvYfKdPJkOdRsHpNQ8p6eLpkO-grooLTvYbiMqwA3TE02CAwTL4xOtFQj_Y0bG8jZdkTAmbVmJpXMkIgpodhPibDmbby59w42nWZAN-3yWhWGaodnW45AN&sig=AHIEtbS8xTtoY4ynI5T782aBcomrTDfnqAAl-Haq Legal Brief]
10. (2023). "Early-Ottoman Palestinian Toponymy: A Linguistic Analysis of the (Micro-)Toponyms in Haseki Sultan's Endowment Deed (1552)". Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins.
11. Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp03conduoft#page/14/mode/1up 14].
12. (2003). "Palestine in the Fourth Century A.D.: The Onomasticon by Eusebius of Caesarea". Carta.
13. The Crusaders identified Beit Nuba with biblical Nob,Stubbs, ed., 1864, [https://books.google.com/books?id=AwAHAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22beit+nuba%22&pg=PR87 p. lxxxvii].
14. The village served as the forward position for [[Saladin]]'s troops for their move towards Jerusalem in September 1187 and later for [[Richard the Lionheart]] and his troops who camped there in 1191 and 1192.Pringle, 1998, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Y0tA0xLzwEC&pg=PA168 168], [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Y0tA0xLzwEC&pg=PA224 224],[https://books.google.com/books?id=2Y0tA0xLzwEC&pg=PA337 337]
15. Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in '''Shomron studies'''. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 365
16. Le Strange, 1890, p. [https://archive.org/stream/palestineundermo00lestuoft#page/414/mode/2up 415].
17. Pringle, 1998, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Y0tA0xLzwEC&pg=PA168 168]
18. Moudjir ed-dyn, 1876, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/histoiredejrus00ulayuoft#page/202/mode/1up 202], [https://archive.org/stream/histoiredejrus00ulayuoft#page/230/mode/1up 230]
19. Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in '''Shomron studies'''. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 346
20. Clermont-Ganneau, 1896, p. [https://archive.org/stream/archaeologicalre02cler#page/73/mode/1up 73]
21. Kushner, 1986, [https://books.google.com/books?id=XgRDT9wMUhYC&dq=allar+palestine&pg=PA112 p. 111].
22. Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 3, p. [https://archive.org/stream/biblicalresearch03robiuoft#page/n81/mode/1up 64]
23. Robinson and Smith, 1856, p. [https://archive.org/stream/laterbiblicalre01smitgoog#page/n194/mode/1up 145]
24. [[Victor Guérin]] noted in 1863 the presence of a small mosque in the village named ''Djama Sidi Ahmed et-Tarfinù''. At his time, ''Beit-Nouba'' was made up of about 400 inhabitants whose homes were constructed on a hill between two valleys. In large, modern buildings in the village could be seen traces of more ancient building materials incorporated therein and there are some ancient cisterns as well.Guérin, 1868, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/descriptiongog01gu#page/285/mode/1up 285]-286.
25. Socin, 1879, p. [https://archive.org/stream/zeitschriftdesde01deut#page/147/mode/1up 147]
26. Hartmann, 1883, p. [https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_BZobAQAAIAAJ#page/n948/mode/1up 140]
27. Clermont-Ganneau, 1896, pp. [https://archive.org/stream/archaeologicalre02cler#page/70/mode/2up 70] ff.
28. Pringle, 1993, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=BgQ6AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA102 102]-103
29. Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p. [https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp03conduoft#page/13/mode/1up 13]
30. Schick, 1896, p. [https://archive.org/stream/zeitschriftdesde19deut#page/n230/mode/1up 123]
31. Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p. [https://archive.org/stream/PalestineCensus1922/Palestine%20Census%20%281922%29#page/n23/mode/1up 21]
32. Mills, 1932, p. [https://archive.org/details/CensusOfPalestine1931.PopulationOfVillagesTownsAndAdministrativeAreas 18]
33. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1945, p. [http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/yabber/census/VSpages/VS1945_p29.jpg 29]
34. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. [http://www.palestineremembered.com/download/VillageStatistics/Table%20I/al-Ramla/Page-066.jpg 66]
35. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. [http://www.palestineremembered.com/download/VillageStatistics/Table%20II/al-Ramla/Page-114.jpg 114]
36. Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. ''Village Statistics, April, 1945.'' Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p. [http://www.palestineremembered.com/download/VillageStatistics/Table%20III/al-Ramla/Page-164.jpg 164]
37. Morris, 2008, pp. 239-240.
38. Kelly, 2009, [https://books.google.com/books?id=EttcIv9MelcC&dq=nuba+palestine&pg=PA30 pp. 29-32]
39. Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, 1964, p. [http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/yabber/census/JordanCensusPages/JordanCensus1961-p24.pdf 24] It was further noted (note 2) that it was governed by a [[mukhtar]].
40. Kelly, 2006, [https://books.google.com/books?id=lJcSnJzPZNQC&q=hajjar+7%2C000 p. 9]