Suba (village)
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Suba (Arabic:صوبا) was an Arab village west of Jerusalem that was depopulated and destroyed in 1948.
The site of the village lies on the summit of a conical hill called Tel Zova (תל צובה), or Jabal Suba, in Israel, rising 769m above sea level.
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[edit] Ancient history
The castle was excavated by archaeologists in 1986-9.[1] Middle Bronze Age cairn-tombs have been excavated in the neighborhood of the ruined Arab village, though the site itself has not yielded artifacts from before the late Iron Age. The place can perhaps be identified with Σωρης mentioned in the Greek version of Josh. 15:59.[2][1] Another tentative Biblical identification, with Zobah of 1 Sam 14:47 and 2 Sam 23:36, is now discarded.[2] In the later Roman period, it was mentioned in rabbinical sources as Seboim. Christian pilgrims identified the site with Modi'in, the origin of the Maccabees. This erroneous identification continued until the mid-19th century.[1]
[edit] Belmont Castle
Sometime before 1169, the Crusaders built a castle there called Belmont, run by the Hospitallers.[2] Today, parts of the northern and western Crusader wall remain, as well as ruins of a tower and other structures. These include large underground cysterns, some pre-dating the Crusader period.[2]
Belmont Castle was taken by Saladin in 1187. According to the chronicles it was destroyed by him in 1191 but no trace of the destruction was located during the archaeological investigation.[1]
[edit] Post-Crusader period
Settlement at the site continued, and was mentioned as "Suba" about 1225 by Arab geographers.[2][3] In 1596, there were 60 Muslim and 7 Christian families living there. The village economy relied on wheat, barley, olives and grape syrup.[2] In the mid-nineteenth century, the village was controlled by the Abu Ghosh family. The fortifications they raised in the village, and part of the crusaders' walls as well, were destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha in 1832.[4] In 1931, the population consisted of 434 Muslims, rising to 620 Muslims in 1945.[5]
[edit] Suba in the modern period
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the village saw fierce fighting, due to its key location near the Jerusalem highway. In late 1947 and early 1948, irregular forces of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood stationed in Suba took part in the fighting against Jewish forces, including attacks on Jewish traffic on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Road. The village was attacked several times by the Haganah, and finally conquered by the Palmach during the night of July 12-13 as part of Operation Danny. Most of the inhabitants had fled during the fighting, and those who remained were expelled.[6] In October 1948, the "Ameilim" group of Palmach veterans established a kibbutz called Misgav Palmach on village lands 1km to the south. Later it was renamed Kibbutz Zova.[4]
Today Tel Zova is a national park surrounded by the lands of the kibbutz. The ruins of the village are visible along with remains of Belmont Castle.
The village of Suba has had two books written about it, one by Ibrahim ‘Awadallah published in Amman, Jordan in 1996, and another by Muhammad Sa’id Muslih Rumman, on the West Bank, published in 2000. [7]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e R.P. Harper and D. Pringle (2000), Belmont Castle, The excavation of a Crusader Stronghold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0197270093
- ^ a b c d e f R.P. Harper and D. Pringle, Belmont Castle: A historical notice and preliminary report of excavations in 1986, Levant, Vol XX, 1988, pp 101-118. Same authors, Belmont Castle 1987 : Second preliminary report of excavations, Levant, Vol XXI, 1989, pp 47-62.
- ^ Guy le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1980, p538.
- ^ a b W. Khalidi, All that Remains, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992, pp 317-319.
- ^ Census of 1931; Village statistics of 1945.
- ^ B. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004, p436.
- ^ Rochelle Davis: Peasant Narratives Memorial Book Sources for Jerusalem Village History, January 2004, Issue 20 Jerusalem Quarterly
