Qalunya

Qalunya
Qalunya, before 1949
Qalunya
Arabic	قالونيا
Also Spelled	Qaluniya, Colonia, Kolonia
District	Jerusalem
Coordinates	31°47′38.97″N 35°9′27.25″E / 31.7941583°N 35.1575694°E / 31.7941583; 35.1575694Coordinates: 31°47′38.97″N 35°9′27.25″E / 31.7941583°N 35.1575694°E / 31.7941583; 35.1575694
Population	1,056 (1948)
Area	4,844 dunums
Date of depopulation	early April, 1948,[1]
Cause(s) of depopulation	Military assault by Yishuv forces
Current localities	Mevaseret Zion

Qalunya (Arabic: قالونيا‎, also transliterated Qaluniya, Colonia and Kolonia) was a Palestinian Arab village located 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) west of Jerusalem.^[2]

Prior to the village's destruction in 1948, with the exception of 166 dunums, Qalunya's land was privately owned: 3,594 dunums were owned by Arabs, while 1,084 dunums were owned by Jews.^[2]

Location

Qalunya stood on a mountain slope, facing southwest; Wadi Qalunya passed through its eastern edge. The village lay on the Jerusalem-Jaffa highway, and a dirt path linked it to its neighboring villages.^[3]

History

Qalunya is identified with the Canaanite town of Mozah (Joshua 18:26), its name was found stamped on pottery handles in Tall al-Nasba. After A.D. 71 Vespasian settled 800 Roman soldiers in the town, which became a Roman settlement known as Colonia Amosa or Colonia Emmaus.^[3]

The word colonia produced the Byzantine name, Koloneia, for the site. The status of the site in the early Islamic period has not been established, but the name was preserved in Crusader times as Qalonie or Qalunia and in Arabic as Qalunya. Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali (d.1522) reported that in 1192 it was a village near Jerusalem.^[4]

In 1596, Qalunya was a village in the Ottoman Empire, nahiya (subdistrict) of Jerusalem under the liwa' (district) of Jerusalem, and it had a population of 110. It paid taxes on a number of crops, including wheat, barley and olives, as well as on goats, beehives and molasses.^[5]

In the late nineteenth century, Qalunya was described as a moderate-sized village perched on the slope of a hill, 300 feet (91 m) above a valley. Travelers reported that it had a "modern" restaurant. The villagers tended orange and lemon trees that were planted around a spring in the valley.^[6]

During the 1929 Palestine riots, several residents of Qalunya attacked an outlying house belonging to the Maklef family, killing the father, mother, son, two daughters, and their two guests. Three children survived by escaping out a second-story window; one, Mordechai Maklef, later became Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. The attackers included the lone police officer and armed man in the area, as well as a shepherd employed by the Maklef family. The village was subsequently abandoned by Jews for a year's time.^[7]

1948, and after

On 11 April 1948, as part of Operation Nachshon, a Hagana forces entered the village and blew up 50 houses.^[8] Qalunya was one of four villages that were systematically destroyed by Hagana units in this fashion in the immediate wake of the Deir Yassin massacre; the others being, Beit Surik, Biddu and Saris.^[8]

References

1. ^ Morris, 2004, p. xx village #359. Also gives the cause of depopulation.
2. ^ ^{a b} "Qalunya". Palestine Remembered. http://www.palestineremembered.com/Jerusalem/Qalunya/index.html. Retrieved 2008-03-18. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Khalidi, 1992, p. 309
4. ^ Al:Khalidi 1968:181, Cited in Khalidi, 1992, p.309
5. ^ Hütteroth, Wolf-Dieter and Kamal Abdulfattah, 1977, Historical Geography of Palestine, Transjordan and Southern Syria in the Late 16th Century. Erlanger Geographische Arbeiten, Sonderband 5. Erlangen, Germany: Vorstand der Fränkischen Geographischen Gesellschaft. p. 118. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 309
6. ^ Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener: The Survey of Western Palestine. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. (1881) III:17. Quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p.309
7. ^ Segev, Tom (1999), One Palestine, Complete, Metropolitan Books, p. 324, ISBN 0805048480 
8. ^ ^{a b} Pappe, 2006, p. 91.

Bibliography

• Conder, Claude Reignier and H.H. Kitchener (1881): The Survey of Western Palestine: memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archaeology. London:Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. vol 3
• 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 
• 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 
• Morris, Benny (2004), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521009677, 9780521009676 
• Pappé, llan (2006), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Paperback 2008 ed.), Oneworld Publications Limited, ISBN 978185685554 

External links

• Welcome To Qalandiya
• Qalunya, from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center