Allar, Jerusalem

Allar
Allar
Arabic	علار
District	Jerusalem
Coordinates	31°43′26.10″N 35°03′45.00″E / 31.723917°N 35.0625°E / 31.723917; 35.0625Coordinates: 31°43′26.10″N 35°03′45.00″E / 31.723917°N 35.0625°E / 31.723917; 35.0625
Population	440 (1945)
Area	12,356 dunums
Date of depopulation	October 22, 1948[1]
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Matta, Bar Giora

Allar (Arabic: علار‎) was a Palestinian Arab village located southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Wadi Sarar ("Valley of Pebbles"). The name was shared by the twin villages of 'Allar al-Sifla ("Lower Allar") and 'Allar el-Fawqa ("Upper Allar"), with official imperial ledgers often listing them both under the single entry of Allar.^[2]

Habitation in the village spanned centuries and is attested in architectural remains and documents from the Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman and Mandate Palestine periods. Allar was depopulated during the 1948 Palestine war and the Israeli localities of Matta and Bar Giora were established on its former lands.

History

The older of the two villages appears to have been Lower Allar. Remains of a Crusader-era church and cloister made up of five other vaulted buildings attest to habitation there in the 12th century. One of these buildings is thought to be a Cistercian house, a sister house of Belmont built in 1161 known as Saluatio.^[3]

From the 13th to 16th centuries, the villages were ruled by the Mamluk Sultanate based in Cairo and appear together in a document dating to circa 1264 that lists land grants made in Palestine by the Sultan Baybars to his amirs.^[2]

Toward the beginning of four centuries of rule over the area by the Ottoman Empire, in August 1553, two leaders of Allar were held accountable for the village failure to pay taxes and were arrested by the imperial authorities.^[4] The imperial defter of 1596 lists Allar as part of the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Jerusalem with 204 inhabitants who paid taxes on wheat, barley, olive trees, molasses, goats, and beehives.^[5]

The waqf custodian of the mosque in Allar (and that of Bayt Nuba) in 1810 was appointed by the Ottoman authorities, and hailed from the Jerusalem family of notables, the Dajanis.^[6] Also in the village was a shrine dedicated to al-Shaykh Ibrahim ("Abraham the Sheikh").^[5]

Western travellers who wrote of the village include Edward Robinson, who travelled throughout Palestine and Syria in 1838 and Victor Guérin, whose travels spanned many years in the latter half of the 19th century. Both describe Lower and Upper Allar as two distinct villages located in a valley. Robinson calls it er-Rumany wadi ("Pomegranate Valley"), while Guérin calls it Oued el-Limoun ("Valley of the Lemons/Limes"), so named because of the abundant presence of a variety of citrus tree there known to the Arabs as limoun. Both note the presence of a large, ancient, ruined church in Lower Allar. Robinson describes a fine fountain further up the valley that irrigated fruit trees and gardens below, noting the abundance of olive trees. Guérin describes A'llar es-Sifla ou et-Tahta as an oasis covered in grape vines, citrus, pomengranate and fig trees, irrigated by an ancient canal and a second inexhaustible water source.^[7][8]

The inhabitants of Upper Allar moved to Lower Allar at the end of the 19th century.^[9] While Upper Allar was repopulated during the period of British rule in Mandate Palestine and housed a primary school, it is listed in British censuses from the time as a mazra'a ("farm").^[9]

In 1945, Allar had a population of 440 Arabs, all of whom were Muslim.^[10] During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Allar was depopulated as a result of a military assault by Israeli forces on 22 October 1948.^[1] It was one of a series of villages occupied during Operation ha-Har, an offensive launched by Harel Brigade and Etzioni Brigade to widen the Jerusalem corridor.^[11]

The operation began on the night of 18-19 October with an attack on the Egyptian Army/Muslim Brotherhood forces stationed in the village to defend it alongside local militia. Great care was taken not to draw Transjordan's Arab Legion into the battle. The Egyptian army was forced to retreat to the west, and several villages southwest of Jerusalem were captured. The residents were expelled or fled under pressure, probably in the direction of Bethlehem and Hebron hills. Refugees who camped in the nearby gullies and caves were driven out in subsequent raids.^[11]

Refugees from Allar and other Palestinian villages who are old enough to remember life there express nostalgia for the natural abundance of the land lost. One Umm Jamal recalls eggplants, pomegranates, cucumbers and green beans as among the many products grown on the village lands which were fed by springs known to locals as Umm al-Hasan ("Mother of Goodness"), Umm al-Sa'd ("Mother of Happiness"), Umm Nuh ("Mother of Noah"), al-'Uyun ("The Eyes"), and Umm al-'Uyun ("Mother of the Eyes").^[12]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Morris, 2004, p.xx, village #346. Also gives cause of depopulation.
2. ^ ^{a b} Petersen, 2002, p. 92.
3. ^ Pringle, 1998, pp. 47-51.
4. ^ Singer, 1993, p. 44.
5. ^ ^{a b} Khalidi, 1993, pp. 206-207.
6. ^ Kushner, 1986, p. 111.
7. ^ Robinson, 1838, p. 14.
8. ^ Guérin, 1869, p. 380
9. ^ ^{a b} Kark and Oren-Nordheim, 2001, pp. 267, 275-276.
10. ^ Hadawi, 1970, p. 56.
11. ^ ^{a b} 'Allar, Palestine Family.net Allar, Palestine Family.net
12. ^ Davis, 2010, p. 24.

Bibliography

• Davis, Rochelle (2010), Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Illustrated ed.), Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804773130, 9780804773133 
• Guérin, Victor (1869), Description géographique, historique et archéologique de la Palestine: ptie. Judée (t. 1-3) Part 1, Volume 2 of Description géographique, historique et archéologique de la Palestine, Harvard University 
• Hadawi, Sami (1970), Village Statistics of 1945: A Classification of Land and Area ownership in Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3150.html 
• Kark, Ruth; Oren-Nordheim, Michal (2001), Jerusalem and its environs: quarters, neighborhoods, villages, 1800-1948 (Illustrated ed.), Wayne State University Press, ISBN 0814329098, 9780814329092 
• Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, ISBN 0887282245 
• Kushner, David (1986), Palestine in the late Ottoman period: political, social, and economic transformation, BRILL, ISBN 9004077928, 9789004077928 
• Morris, Benny (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521009676. http://books.google.com/?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=benny+morris&q. 
• Petersen, Andrew (2002), A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine: Volume I (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology) Allar, p. 92-93
• Pringle, Denys (1998), The churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: a corpus, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521390362, 9780521390361 
• Robinson, Edward; Smith, Eli (1856), Biblical researches in Palestine, and in the adjacent regions: a journal of travels in the year 1838, Volume 2, Crocker and Brewster 
• Singer, Amy (1994), Palestinian peasants and Ottoman officials: rural administration around sixteenth-century Jerusalem (3rd, Illustrated ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521476798, 9780521476799 

External links

• Allar, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
• Allar, from Baheth for Studies.